5th Edition and the Female Demographic

[S'mon]

Well, I can think of a bunch of things in RPGs women and girl players seem to like more than men and boys do, on average - non-violent interpersonal interaction and interesting clothing/fashion are a couple that occur to me. My wife would spend hours on the old Neverwinter Nights game design tools getting the appearance of outfits and NPCs exactly right. She just started playing NN2 again (on her iMac) and the look of stuff seems to be a major factor with her, although she loves hacking up monsters*, as do all female players I've known.

Community and a sense of place seem to be a bit more important to female players. Paying attention to noncombat NPCs. This is all more adventure-level and campaign-level stuff, but WoTC's design decision to make 'adventures' a series of combats is not particularly attractive to most female players, I think.

*IME most women don't particularly enjoy vicarious combat, but all gamer girls do. I think trying to make D&D appeal to most women & girls is impossible and it would be foolish to try. Design it so it appeals to the tens of millions of women & girls worldwide who enjoy fantasy novels, CRPGs, MMORPGs, tv shows, movies et al, and you're doing alright.

 

[Chris Knapp]

If a designers could capitalize on the Twilight license, many women I know would buy the game no matter what was in the box. Actually getting them to play might be another story.

I think the upcoming Hunger Games movie could do a lot to generate interest. If you haven't read them, they are action packed and very violent in parts. But as my wife commented, the underlying relationships and the identifiable aspects of Katniss went a long way towards her acceptance of the violence and brutality of the setting.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Emo vampire angst?

Twilight, the RPG!!!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Desperate Housewights RPG.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I think to really see D&D become popular with women, we'd have to see D&D being picked up by groups of female friends. And not being introduced to it through the men in their life.

I've never heard of any group (outside the internet) being introduced to gaming via just picking it up. Everybody I know was introduced to the hobby by a friend, an acquaintance or a relative. And quite often by someone older than them.

I would expect this issue to self-correct over time, as the number of girl gamers goes up.

 

[nedjer]

Twilight, the RPG!!!

Please god no

 

[steenan]

I'm not a woman, but I often play in female-rich groups. I discussed gaming preferences with my female friends several times. It would be naive to expect a full agreement, but there are certainly several common points:

1. They care for a consistent and interesting story and for their characters' personal involvement. They prefer games that build around character goals and issues to both sandboxes and plotted games.

2. Most of them like combat, but they want it fast and furious, not tactical. Combat with dynamic descriptions, place for player creativity and a few simple rolls is strongly preferred. No woman I know likes playing with a map and miniatures.

3. They want time and opportunities to roleplay. Most often it's not an empty talk - they can be very goal-oriented in social interactions. But they prefer non-violent methods when possible and dislike combat, exploration or puzzles taking too much time.

4. They don't want complicated mechanics and mechanics for mechanics sake. They despise "building" characters and, in general, any mechanical decisions that don't come naturally from fluff. I think that is the preference most consistently shared by all my female players.

They like various RPGs, but D&D is low on their lists. It would be possible to create a more female-friendly D&D, but it would require removing several things that are seen as defining characteristics of this game. I would gladly play it, but I'm afraid that a lot of current players wouldn't.

 

[Insight]

As is the case with my niece, she'd heard about D&D (her boyfriend and his friends were playing, but they showed no interest in teaching her). She wanted to learn how to play so that she could play with them. I think this is a far more likely way that a female player will get into D&D.

The only way that WOTC can really affect this is to create something that appeals more to female players that can eventually push them towards D&D. This is likely to draw in females who have some interest in trying D&D but may be initially put off by the overwhelming rules of standard D&D and the stigma of D&D being a male-dominated hobby.

Unless a potential female gamer is like my niece, and finds someone to teach her D&D, she is unlikely to ever pick up the game to give it a try. The unnamed and unspecified product I propose would be an end-around to give potential female gamers a way to get into the game without necessarily knowing male players willing to teach them to play.

There are many RPGs out there that could appeal to female gamers. The problem is that none of them are D&D (and thus have a greatly diminished brand name in the eyes of potential gamers). WoD is a possibility, as it appeals to socializing and intrigue (as opposed to dungeon crawls). Another possibility is Call of Cthulhu, with an emphasis on avoiding combat. Finally, games like Blue Rose (from Green Ronin) seemed to be an attempt at a romance-flavored RPG.

 

[Croesus]

1) Is there anything that could be done to make D&D more attractive to a) women and b) girls?

Strictly anecdotal, but my own experience with female players suggests that the rules don't matter much - I've played HERO, 1E, 3E, Gamma World, and Savage Worlds with women. So I don't see that D&D has to do anything with the rules to attract women.

That said, what types of adventures we run does seem to matter. I've generally found that the women are far less interested in simply wandering around, getting into fights, killing things and taking their stuff. They enjoy kicking tail, but they want there to be a purpose to the action. No fights just for the sake of having a fight. [This contrasts sharply with a (male) player who - if a session has no fighting - grows antsy, practically like an addict needing his next fix.]

I've also found that the women want effective characters, but aren't terribly interested in spending a lot of time figuring out the best builds. Oftentimes I've done the leveling of their characters, translating what they want into specific feat/skill/power choices. It's not that they're indifferent to such things, but they seem to place a different value on their time, preferring to spend it actualy gaming vs. designing builds.

 

[Insight]

One thing I'd like to propose before this thread gets any further - there is no such thing as the TYPICAL female gamer. Females are people, of course, and are as varied as any of us males. I don't think there is one VIEW of female RPGing - they have many varied reasons for wanting to play D&D (or not playing D&D).

Let's not assume that all female gamers are the same.

[/soapbox]