Female gamers: Weal or woe?

[Mark]

It's true. He is. And so is his even-more-awesome wife.

I recommend to anyone taking Rel up on this offer that you make him pay. It keeps him humble.

Crock-blocker

 

[reveal]

I'm pretty awesome and kind of a big deal and happen to be a girl...

Two out of three ain't bad.

 

[Mark]

Two out of three ain't bad.

I've heard rumors you were against awesome.

 

[Desdichado]

I am excellent.

I would only add to the awesomeness of your campaign by being involved in it.

I'm pretty awesome and kind of a big deal

Yeah, well at my gaming table, we have a modesty requirement. Sorry.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

That's okay.

At my table we only allow awesome gamers.

You can have girl parts or boy parts, but if you don't have awesome parts, you are OUT.

 

[Desdichado]

You can have girl parts or boy parts, but if you don't have awesome parts, you are OUT.

I hesitate to ask, but...

How do you know their parts are awesome? Do you inspect them regularly for quality control?

 

[gamecat]

Perhaps it's a sign of how stagnant my social life has become; but I haven't met any female gamers in some time. The last time I did have a female gamer in my group (it was seven years ago, in high school), she created a crepuscular silence in the game, as the whole group (myself included) disintegrated into "competitive jackasses".

Nowadays, I think it would work different, but I don't know any she-gamers with an interest in D&D. My girlfriend spends more time in front of the PS3 than I do, and she's a voracious magic player, but D&D just confuses her and she has no interest.

I think it's all a matter of maturity. If you're seventeen years old and your hormones are surging, yeah, I think it can be woe (on the fault of both genders). Add some age and wisdom, and I think someone can appreciate the differing viewpoints offered by differing genders.

 

[Dyson Logos]

Most of my groups (and I game in several groups) are mixed-gender groups.

That said, one of my groups that meets every second Sunday is an all-guy group, and was set up specifically to be such. Everyone in the group (except for myself) is married or in a long-term relationship and the event is a "Guys' evening in". Three of the players' wives spend the day together also (as their "girls' night out") but not at the game.

I'm not going to call the wives sexist for wanting a "girls' night out", so turning around and calling the group sexist for wanting a "guys' night" seems a bit off.

One of the groups I'm peripherally involved in but don't game with is an all-girls group. They game once a month on Saturday, and have two of the players from my Gamma World game in their group, as well as one of the players from my Tuesday Night B/X game.

 

[kitsune9]

Having played d&d almost exclusively with an all male group, the concept of a female gamer is somewhat foreign to me. In the dozen or so sessions I've played with female players, I've found that female gamers, by virtue of their gender alone, change the gameplay experience dramatically.

Most of the time it's a headache.

Hear me out now, I've got nothing against female players. They're awesome and everything. The problem arises mostly with the male players whenever there's a female present. They almost always act differently. Some guys will hold back from being their normal selves and restrain themselves from cracking potentially offensive jokes where they otherwise wouldn't hesitate. Some guys will go out of their way to try to impress the female, in game or otherwise. I've wanted to pull out my hair during sessions where guys spent the entire 3 hours chatting up the girl, distracting her and everyone else from the session and holding it up.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? How do you deal with it? I want to include a few female friends into my gaming sessions but I don't want the atmosphere of the group to change.

This hasn't been my experience. The females in my group were the wives of the players. One played D&D just to be with her husband and wasn't too rules saavy, the other was really into fantasy and wanted to play, but she needed the kind of "emotional" roleplaying experience such as the romance, chivalry, etc. instead of combat or dungeon crawling. Any kind of combat really irked her and she often got bored where she would break out her laptop or sewing kit. Over time, her investment in the game decreased as she eventually divorced her husband and hated the other gamers.

I've played with a few other female gamers that were into gaming, but the overall impression from them was they were definitely into the roleplaying aspect and were turned off by combat. Similar to girls who like movies but want to go see "date movies" instead of an action film or big-budget whatever. I'm not being stereotypical though, because it was just my experience playing with these particular ladies. I'm sure that there are other female gamers out there that like to blow stuff up and murder everything in sight a la Grand Theft Auto and female gamers in between.

 

[Piratecat]

That said, one of my groups that meets every second Sunday is an all-guy group, and was set up specifically to be such. Everyone in the group (except for myself) is married or in a long-term relationship and the event is a "Guys' evening in". Three of the players' wives spend the day together also (as their "girls' night out") but not at the game.

I've run an almost all-female (one guy) group before as well. Fun campaign. One woman in particular grabbed the role of sword-jocky with both hands and refused to let go. Several of those players were new to the game, and it was a fun and safe way to teach them the rules.

In the two campaigns I'm now running, 6 of the 12 players are women.