amazon: Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Hip Girl's Guide to the D&D Game

[Destil]

Sorry about that, people. Won't happen again.
I wonder how many women play RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. In my limited experience girls are outnumbered by guys by roughly 10-1.
It seems like that with other interests that tie in closely with Dungeons and Dragons like comic books, fantasy and science fiction movies and books, and heavy metal.
Its a shame.

Closer to 4-1, actually (at least 8 years ago). This came up in the Ryan Dancy threads recently. Back when Wizards first took over D&D they did an extensive market survey and made the results public. They can be seen here:
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/WotCMarketResearchSummary.html

 

[Fishbone]

Hmm, limited size from my experiences and all that, and I'm a younger guy. Its interesting to me that there is very little crossover between tabletop stuff and computer games, video games, card games in general(collectible, too).
Yeah, I really only have time for tabletop stuff now, I used to play Magic.

 

[qstor]

That's an odd choice of a product for Wizards...

I didn't see Wizards listed as the publisher?

But I would tend to agree. Wonder if Ryan Dancey thinks it worth the effort to publish this? Rather than the Complete Swashbuckler

Mike

 

[Fishbone]

Complete Pirate, maybe. Complete Swashbuckler, nah.
Howzabout...
Completely Sucky!:Support for gnomes, wu jens, shugenjas, hexblades, samurais, marshals, and swashbucklers.

 

[dcas]

I didn't see Wizards listed as the publisher?

Look under "Publisher" on the Amazon.com product page.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

<gigantic frakkin' nerd rant>
My whole issue with Sorceress is, why not Druidess or Paladiness (Paladinette?)? Why is it that only one class gets changed thusly?

Barbarianess, Bardess, Clericette, Druidess, Fighteress, Monkette, Paladiness, Rangerette, Roguess, Sorceress, Wizardette...

It's an either/or situation; either make them all have female variants, OR drop the sorceress pretentiousness.
</gigantic frakkin' nerd rant>

There is no precedent in the language for any of these except for, perhaps, druidess. We don't make up new words just to satisfy gendered language requirements, or we didn't since the 80s, when it was "Pee-Cee" to genderize everything before it became "Pee-Cee" not to.

 

[Fishbone]

Do you think you are sexist when you ask for a waitress in a restaurant? Its just a title convention. I think sorceress sounds kind of cool and its helpful because a lot of magic casters seem to have androgynous sounding names and tendencies, like V.

 

[dcas]

Do you think you are sexist when you ask for a waitress in a restaurant?

Why, yes. You should ask for a waitron or a waitperson.

 

[Fishbone]

Baloney. I suppose I should ask for busperson, too.
I'm a dishwasher and mopper to pay for community college. No gender implied for those lousy jobs, they're open to everybody!

 

[JustKim]

Hey guys, let me give you some insight on the whole feminine pronoun issue.

My full name is Kimberly, but I don't like to be called Kimberly. I prefer Kim (hence, JustKim) because Kimberly makes me feel like someone I'm not. It could be because Kimberly is too specific or formal, and I want to be like all the other Kims out there. It could be because Kimberly sounds kind of condescending, like an adult chastising a child. It could just be that I prefer the sound of it.

This does not mean I expect other women to share my opinion of the name Kimberly.

Political correctness is a precaution to prevent cultural offense. "African-American" is a politically correct term but it's also awkward. There are black folks who would find African-American offensive because it's specific or formal or condescending, and there are others who would prefer African-American because they're proud of the distinction.. like some women, I'm sure, are proud to be named Kimberly instead of Kim.

So don't try to decide by committee whether spellcasting women should be called sorcerer or sorceress. For every woman who doesn't want to be called a nurse, there's another who finds the carefulness of "personal care professional" obtuse.

Anyway, if we have that misconception straightened out, maybe we can work on the one about all D&D players being nerds. I propose we start by not Googling women's names and fawning over high school yearbook pictures.