Stormonu
Legend
My personal experience has been that I have had a woman in my group since about midway through 2E D&D and even helped teach a group of girls to play Basic D&D as far back as '84. I've seen more female gamers in the years since the decline of 2E and the rise of the World of Darkness games. In fact, my oWoD Vampire game had only three players; all women (one being my wife...).
In my latest group, I have two women playing, and my wife occasionally plays (as long as its not Vampire...go figure). Though the ratio of male to female is still 2 to 1 or more, they've shown they are capable of handling any game thrown at them. I have noticed, however, over the years that there are some attitude differences between how men and women approach RPGs, and often which RPGs appeal to them more than others.
While I've seen both bloodthirsty male and female gamers, women tend to want to move the game past pure hack-n-slash. They tend to be bored with combat-only games that don't have some level of non-combat interactions. Many women I have gamed with wouldn't care if a combat never occurred in the game and the whole game was nothing more than personal interaction between their PCs and NPCs. However, with that said, I have seen women gamers leap with gusto into battles right alongside their male counterparts if the opportunity presents itself - sometimes even shaming the male players into combat they might normally avoid.
I've also noticed that women seem to almost have an aversion to games with lots of fiddly bits. Given the choice, I've seen women prefer games that don't require a lot of mathematic computations or tracking modifiers - the more straight-forward the system, the better. Most guys don't seem to care (or outwardly don't show their disapproval) with complex systems, and sometimes favor systems that model things in more detail. What I may be seeing, however, is a matter of male stoicism on our part.
In my mind, there isn't a crisis of a lack of female players in RPGs. In most cases I think it's simply a lack of knowledge - not as many women are aware of roleplaying as guys are, and I think in many cases with "the guys hanging out together" there's less chance (because of pure % of men vs. women playing) of them being approached to be involved in the game. My guess is that most women become aware of roleplaying through the fact their "significant other" is playing.
In my latest group, I have two women playing, and my wife occasionally plays (as long as its not Vampire...go figure). Though the ratio of male to female is still 2 to 1 or more, they've shown they are capable of handling any game thrown at them. I have noticed, however, over the years that there are some attitude differences between how men and women approach RPGs, and often which RPGs appeal to them more than others.
While I've seen both bloodthirsty male and female gamers, women tend to want to move the game past pure hack-n-slash. They tend to be bored with combat-only games that don't have some level of non-combat interactions. Many women I have gamed with wouldn't care if a combat never occurred in the game and the whole game was nothing more than personal interaction between their PCs and NPCs. However, with that said, I have seen women gamers leap with gusto into battles right alongside their male counterparts if the opportunity presents itself - sometimes even shaming the male players into combat they might normally avoid.
I've also noticed that women seem to almost have an aversion to games with lots of fiddly bits. Given the choice, I've seen women prefer games that don't require a lot of mathematic computations or tracking modifiers - the more straight-forward the system, the better. Most guys don't seem to care (or outwardly don't show their disapproval) with complex systems, and sometimes favor systems that model things in more detail. What I may be seeing, however, is a matter of male stoicism on our part.
In my mind, there isn't a crisis of a lack of female players in RPGs. In most cases I think it's simply a lack of knowledge - not as many women are aware of roleplaying as guys are, and I think in many cases with "the guys hanging out together" there's less chance (because of pure % of men vs. women playing) of them being approached to be involved in the game. My guess is that most women become aware of roleplaying through the fact their "significant other" is playing.
Last edited: