Where Did All The Girls Go?

[Hussar]

My first thought when someone brings up a lack of females in playing RPGs is: So?

I've got no problem with women being in my RPG group/game. But if women, in general, aren't as intereted in RPGs, so what?

Does anyone care that there aren't many men quilters, scrapbookers, Twilight fans, etc.?

If a woman wants in on my game (and I've had some in my games), I'm all like, "Great, we play Thursday nights. Come on in."

But if I look around my table and see just six guys sitting there, I don't think, "Gee, something's missing."

Bullgrit

Honestly, I think the best answer to that is, it matters if you want the hobby to grow. If you're perfectly content with the state of the hobby as it is, then sure, we don't need to expand into new demographics. However, if you would like to see the hobby grow, continuing to focus on the 15-25 male demographic isn't likely going to work. That demographic is pretty much sewn up.

So, how do you grow the hobby? Well, a pretty good way would be to double the player base by getting a 50:50 gender split instead of the 9:1 we have right now.

I can't recall a gaming group that didn't have at least one, usually two or more females in recent times. Sure 25 years ago it was different, but now... many women play in my gaming groups. I had a 4E home game that was 4 females and 2 males.

This matches my experience as well. Pretty much every group I've played with over the years has had one or two women in it. Usually 1. But, yeah, definitely a very small minority.

You want to bring more women into gaming? Start accepting them. Stop seeing them as "girl games" and see them as "gamers."

I pretty much agree with everything else you said, but, I do question this. How do you design a game that is gender neutral? Do we really want to do that, and would it actually attract female gamers? Or, could we instead expand current design to include strong female roles and whatnot in order to attract female gamers?

Is simply treating women as androgynous enough to make the game appealing?

 

[sev]

And, finally - why does it matter? If 80% of gamers are men, does that matter? Why do we need to recruit more women? We're not into marketing or anything - it's just a game. And some things appeal more to one gender than another (how many men are into crafts? Or horseback riding? Or baking? All of those are hobbies that have both genders involved... but tend to have more women). So why is this even an issue?

My first thought when someone brings up a lack of females in playing RPGs is: So?

I've got no problem with women being in my RPG group/game. But if women, in general, aren't as intereted in RPGs, so what?

I care that women who would otherwise be interested in RPGs are being driven away from the hobby.

I find gaming cons frustrating, because it's not fun to fight to be heard while half the people there are assuming I'm somebody's girlfriend (or nowadays, probably somebody's mom). I stopped gaming for years because the books filled with half-naked women were used as excuses by male players to be jerks, and the jerks were more often the rule, rather than the exception. I stopped recruiting my female friends to play, because they'd take one look at the source materials and ask me why I bothered spending my time with a game that could barely recognize my existence?

I also care because teamwork benefits from a diversity of viewpoints.

I also care because, to borrow what the editor of Weird Tales magazine has already said better than I can: "Any successful subscription-based cultural institution -- whether a theater company, symphony orchestra, or, yes, magazine -- can tell you from experience that a subscription base inherently suffers from attrition, and the only way to overcome the attrition rate is to constantly reach out to new audiences that haven't previously been paying attention to your product." And while RPGs as a whole aren't a "subscription based product," the industry does need us to keep buying its stuff, or we'll be seeing a lot less stuff. And I like the diversity & quality of product that comes with an industry that's doing it for love *and* for making money, instead of what you get from an industry that's doing it purely for love.

And I care because I spent seven years in a career already over-supplied with men. When on top of that I spend my free time in a hobby that's also over-supplied with men? Well, unlike Bullgrit, I *do* notice what's missing.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I pretty much agree with everything else you said, but, I do question this. How do you design a game that is gender neutral? Do we really want to do that, and would it actually attract female gamers? Or, could we instead expand current design to include strong female roles and whatnot in order to attract female gamers?

Is simply treating women as androgynous enough to make the game appealing?

Strong female roles can be really helpful.

It's funny to me, because one of the things D&D seems to avoid are the actual references to incredibly strong and powerful women throughout Earth's history. We have Conan the Barbarian, but no Joan of Arc. Good King Halvard the Second, but no Hatshepsut.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say "Actually have female NPCs in the first place." Unless someone needs rescuing or flirting, it's a nasty habit to just make everyone male. It leads to weird situations where the entire world seems to either be made of dudes, damsels in distress, or wanton barmaids. Look at Forgotten Realms - most of the female NPCs are expressedly female, and the goddesses tend to have domains of "Sleeps with lots of dudes" or "Is so catty you can't even imagine."

I think both Pathfinder and 4e do expressedly better. Golarion makes a huge leap in this by making the two primary paladins deities, Iomedae and Sarenrae, both female - the very opposite of Forgotten Realms, where paladins seemed to be a Boys Only Club all on its own. 4e has a number of female deities, and none of them have the "is really just one of those catty teases don't you hate women like that guys AMIRITE" quality.

 

[outsider]

I care that women who would otherwise be interested in RPGs are being driven away from the hobby.

Yeah, this is a serious problem. I consider dealing with this problem to be FAR more important than trying to bring in women/girls who aren't interested in the hobby.

 

[boar]

First, I have to give some credit to the OP. As a fellow blogger, I can see that the time and effort put into this essay were substantial. The essay is well written, logically structured, and clearly articulated. I also value the essay for the very interesting discussion it has sparked in these forums.

Unfortunately, the content of the essay itself is rather lacking; despite its length, it offers less true insight than many of the posts in this thread. As others have noted, the essay is riddled with assumptions and trite generalizations. It also suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of how to apply evidence to reach a conclusion.

I disagree with attempts in this thread to trivialize the author's thesis on the basis that "it's not a problem." If a hobby is actively hostile to 50% of the population, then the word "problem" is a pretty reasonable description of what's happening. However, the author's inability to provide relevant evidence -- not even anecdotal evidence! -- renders the essay little more than a series of well-written conjectures that establish neither the causes of the problem nor the best means to fix it.

 

[Dark Mistress]

This is just my personal opinion based on my own history and on talking to other gamer girls I know.

To answer the question.

Where did all the Girls go? IE why are there not more gamer girls?

Male gamers is 90% of the time the reason. Now it is not all male gamers or even most male gamers. But it only takes one creep at a table of 6 to make it be a bad experience for a woman trying to game. I can't count the number of groups I have left because of that. So far there is 3 times I have nearly hung up dice bag for my inability to find groups I felt comfortable in.

Sadly in my experience it is common enough that I never go to cons anymore nor do pickup games. Because the vast majority of the time it is not a fun experience.

The books, the rules, the art etc none of that bothers me. It is how the GM runs the game and how my fellow gamers treat me that make the biggest impact.

Anyways that's just my opinion as I said based on my own personal experiences and from talking to other gamer girls or former gamer girls i know or have known over the years.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Roleplaying appeals to nerds and there are fewer female nerds than male nerds.

If you want to make rpg-ing appeal to non-nerds then you need to get rid of the 300 page rulebooks, as WoW and murder mysteries have done.

Of course then the nerds will say:
1) It doesn't have a 300 page rulebook, so I don't like it. And people that do like it are stupid.
2) It isn't a roleplaying game so it has no place in our hobby.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Well, a pretty good way would be to double the player base by getting a 50:50 gender split instead of the 9:1 we have right now.

That figure squares with my own experience, which is fairly extensive. About half the groups I've been in have had no women, and half, one woman. Around five players is a typical size.

The women who game that I've met seem to prefer male company to female, which would make sense. Women who prefer female company are very unlikely to get into gaming at all. Ironically, if more women did join the hobby it could make it less appealing to those currently in it. But that's always the case, change anything and you make it less appealing to the current fanbase. Just ask 3e fans.

A significant number of male gamers probably like the 'boys club' atmosphere and the chance to get away from their wives. I think there's a big difference between 'boys club' groups and 'couples' groups.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Roleplaying appeals to nerds and there are fewer female nerds than male nerds.

I'm not sure that this is true, though I do think that female nerds, nerd out about different things.

If you want to make rpg-ing appeal to non-nerds then you need to get rid of the 300 page rulebooks, as WoW and murder mysteries have done.

This I agree with.

Of course then the nerds will say:
1) It doesn't have a 300 page rulebook, so I don't like it. And people that do like it are stupid.
2) It isn't a roleplaying game so it has no place in our hobby.

This has some truth but more importantly the companies that make rgps need to sell stuff to justify their existance. This is where the 300 page rule books come from.

 

[mkill]

First of all, props to my ex-girlfriend, one of the best DMs I've ever met.[1]
Girls love RPGs, and I know tons of avid female roleplayers. However, there are a few hard and sad truths:

Gamers smell. FFS guys, shower before the game. Do some personal grooming. You too, fatbeard. Most nerdy guys have a high tolerance level for that kind of thing, women don't.

Don't be creepy. If you didn't get laid in the last 5 years and you're desperate, pay a hooker. Don't harass female gamers or act weird around them.

Treat them as an individual. Most women enjoy storytelling over number crunching, but that doesn't mean one is all-female and the other is all-male. As with any other players, the DM has to find out what they like individually and make sure they have fun.

That's pretty much it. Everything else you read about getting more women into the hobby may or may not be true. I definitely think it's not about RPG as such or the products as such: In fact, most female gamers I know don't mind cheesecake at all and some are big fans of Luis Royo et al. (And that's before we talk about LBGT gamers...) The problem are misogynistic tendencies in the gaming community, and these have to stop.


[1] We didn't match in RL as well as we did at the table but that's a different story...