Where Did All The Girls Go?

[jbear]

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.

Here is this reference to nerds and D&D again. Given, this may have been so back in the day. I question, however, the idea that D&D appeals to such a narrow range of people. This is certainly not been my experience. Anecdotes at best, maybe. But personal experience is still valid.

My group currently consists of 4 women, myself and 1 guy. We are all friends, my wife plays, so does her sister. 2 other women have been involved in the game, as have 3 other guys, at different times. They have come and gone for a wide range of reasons. Those that remain are the most stalwart players, the hardened core who have sunk their teeth deep into the game. Combat is at least a 50% feature of the game, and all my players relish rolling dice, playing tactically and thumping bad guys. Only one of the 4 women has ever said that she preferred the roleplaying part/skill challenges. After I tweaked her character she has recently expressed that she now enjoys combat more and more.

So, is this just an exception to the rule?

Personally, I have my doubts. Is there some underlying combination of key elements going on that has lead to such a happy chemistry where women are enjoying playing D&D on a regular basis?

Perhaps in part. Or perhaps it is merely the absence of some negative factors that Dark Mistress expressed has influenced her gaming experience, namely the 'creep' mentioned in several other posts.

Interest? Appeal? I think when you begin to use words like that with such broad strokes in relation to women, 'non-nerds' and playing D&D, then I think you're largely mistaken. I believe exposure and opportunity to learn the game in a friendly, comfortable, social environment play a big part in keeping D&D, and roleplaying in general, tagged with nerd-stigma.

I have introduced D&D to loads of people:

When I travelled through Italy with a circus, not only did I get the circus kids passionate about reading introducing them to Fantasy Books, but I got them into D&D as well. Yes, and the girls too! They never knew the amazing journey a book could take them on. They started asking for books for birthday presents! And one of the kids even made up his own game and DMed for us. Nerds??? Hardly! Acrobats, Jugglers, Trapeze artists and Tight Rope Walkers.

Other people that came and went from that game as people visited or I came and went included my friend who I did street theatre with, a skinny rake with dreadlocks down to his knees who walks the slack rope now on cabaret shows around europe when he is not meditating under a tree in silence for months in India. My girlfriend at the time, now wife and mother of my two children also played and continues to play with great relish. I'd already introduced her to Magic The Gathering, which we took with us on our travels, playing it between pints in bars all over Europe and the Canary Islands. To call her a nerd, well, you'd be having a hard time backing your words up. I won't brag and say how hot she is (oops, too late), but I will say she is a physiotherapist who became independant with her own job and house at the age of 21, which is very rare in Spain. Her other hobbies are cycling, rollerblading and bellydancing. Not very nerdy...

When we settled down in Madrid I got a game going with my girlfriend's entire family: mum, dad and sister. Her dad was the one that struggled the most, to say the least. And he is by far the nerdiest person I have ever played with, spending large amounts of his time studying 'neutrinos' and other related topics. Her mum is a real estate agent and part-time tarot card reader and santerista. Her passion: salsa! They are from Cuba... come on now, ever met a Cuban that you'd call a nerd? Really? Her sister is a pediatrist. She is totally into her fitness. She's one of those people who knows absolutely everyone in town.

I could go on about the other 7 different people i've introduced D&D to since 4e has come out: 1 artisan, 2 factory workers, 1 high school teacher, 1 secretary, 1 kung fu teacher, 1 grants commisioner. To say the least, a wide enough range of people from very different social upbringings, with different astes, interests, religions, political views etc. Yet, each of them showed interest and was appealed by the idea of playing D&D. I just gave them the chance to do it, where as otherwide, they never would have got to, nor would the thought occured to them to actively seek a game out... not in a million years.

I won't even get into telling you about the 10 kids I introduced it to on a summer camp in Ireland, kids form France, Russia, Spain and Greece ... sure some of them were a bit nerdy, but not all of them. And again 5 of those kids were girls. And when someone they looked up to put the game on the table and said, okay, who wants to give this a spin, the interest and the attraction was universal.

I could talk about my fellow worker, an actor doing a course in New York at the moment (who incidently got an audition for the HBO series they are about to start filming, 'A Game of Thrones'...which I'm sure will ring a bell), and helps run the juggling Club in Belfast in his spare time, and his friends who we organised a game with during the evenings (yep there was a girl involved in that too)... but I think I made my point a few paragraphs ago...

So, yeah, a few anecdotes at best. But I'm sure they bear some relevance.

 

[Uder]

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.

Rant!

The smelly gamer thing, while true in some circles, is usually just a lead-in to do what you've done here. Call gamers fat. Hairy. Ugly or otherwise outside the physical norm in some way. Once you say gamers smell, it seems you can say anything about them and nobody bats an eye - it's all a big jolly joke and the ugly, hairy troll people really shouldn't feel bad, after all if they'd just smell better, be less ugly and shave then we could all get on with not being put out by their horrifying presence.

It's really annoying to me (even as a non-"fatbeard"), that our oh-so-inclusive hobby can't muster any better than constantly trimming the ankles off of each other.

BTW, is good for the gander good for the goose? Would you tell a woman that they're too smelly, fat, or hairy, and they "FFS" had better clean up their act or nobody will want to pretend to be an elf around them?

Don't be creepy. If you didn't get laid in the last 5 years and you're desperate, pay a hooker.

Oh...kay. You can officially stop giving advice on how NOT to be creepy.

 

[Merkuri]

I'm a woman, a gamer, and a geek.

Along with pen and paper RPGs I also play video games, and let me tell you that in many cases they have a much longer way to go than RPGs. I was playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, and this game has backslid greatly since the first in the series as far how much it appeals to me (and, I suspect, other female gamers). One of the first cutscenes involves a female antagonist walking up a set of stairs, and the camera focuses on her nearly naked butt for a full 30 seconds. I nearly put the game down right there.

That's an example of what turns me off as a gamer. If the game seems to acknowledge that its target market is exclusively male and starts throwing in very scantily clad women in the art it's a big turn off to me.

In my PRGs, I want women NPCs in places of power. Heck, I just want some women NPCs, period.

I don't want to be treated as special because I am a woman. Don't make a big deal about me at the table and don't make a big deal about the fact that my character is a woman. I usually play female PCs, but that's usually just because I want to increase the variety in the party. For most of my characters you could probably have switched their gender with no change in the way their played.

I think the 3e and 4e D&D books did a very good job of not being offensive to female gamers. A big deal is to simply acknowledge that you have some female players by having some female characters in the books. That little bit goes a long way into making women more comfortable with the game from the start.

I don't want ponies or rainbows. I don't want dumbed down mechanics. I don't want every male NPC to fall in love with me. I want to roleplay my character, kill things, and take their stuff, just like the guys.

 

[Bullgrit]

For most of my characters you could probably have switched their gender with no change in the way their played.

Funny thing: guys get told that if they play a female PC just like they would a male PC, they're doing it wrong.

* * *

I wonder: do skateboarders and skateboard manufacturers worry about how they can get more females on boards?

* * *

It's been my experience, that a guy who is creepy/obnoxious to women is also considered creepy/obnoxious by men. I've left groups and dropped Players because they were creepy/obnoxious. But when this happens, I think, "That guy is creepy and obnoxious." It seems that a woman in my place would think, "That guy is creepy and obnoxious because I'm a woman."

A person who is creepy, obnoxious, unclean, and all is a poor person in general. It has nothing to do with my or your gender.

It's like with thoughts of racism. Sometimes it's not because you are a woman or of another race, it's because they are a jerk.

Well adjusted people, male or female, can get along with other people, male or female.

Bullgrit

 

[nedjer]

[No message]

 

[nedjer]

[No message]

 

[nedjer]

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[nedjer]

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.

Wow, patronising and unscientific The OP, it's a blog post. If the idea had been to present a scientific paper we'd have done that, and it'd have been read by about ten people.

You, like a few others, state that I'm making trite assumptions and generalisations, despite having done no reading or research that allows you to present a shred of scientific evidence of how specific remarks are incorrect. Much of the OP concerns evidence that is already part of a broad scientific concensus, i.e. considered fact and not requiring citation as a result.

Is it science's fault that you skipped and dismiss psychology, sociology, child development, teaching practice, . . . , (and the obviously available evidence specific to the topic), simply because you know nothing about these disciplines.

Thistle Games' material is researched by two psychologists, a maths/ science academic, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an information scientist. Their views within the post are not presented as a theory of child development or the final scientific word on all things roleplaying. The material is presented as informed opinion, which suggests ways of increasing access to the hobby for people who are genuinely interest in helping all kids get fun and learning out of tabletop RPGs.

Instead of making a constructive contribution to debating that or presenting the type of evidence you demand from posts, you're basically sniping

 

[Umbran]

Enough.

Nedjer, while you don't post much, you've been around for over a year now. The rules should be pretty clear to you.

No religion (we allowed the previous reference to creationism slip by, but clearly that was an error). No politics (Reagan and Bush? Come on, man!) . And we expect you to treat your fellow EN Worlder's with respect - insults and digs at their persons are not acceptable.

Thread closed.