As a player, do you have a preferred gender for your GM?

[Piratecat]

I'm pretty sure this thread has a spurious premise. It's like saying "how do you feel about GMs with brown hair?" I've had over a hundred GMs, both male and female, and I'm pretty sure that gender and skill are largely unrelated. The only link I can think of: if there are fewer opportunities for women to play, then it may be tougher for them to get extensive GMing experience. I haven't seen that in practice, though.

 

[Drowbane]

No. All I want in a GM is that they know their stuff, have some direction in mind, keep it interesting and most importantly - not be d-bags... this includes having a SO in the group (ick).

Gender doesn't fit into that equation at all.

 

[malcolypse]

In twenty years of gaming, I've played exactly one game under a female GM.

It was a blast.

It was maybe a year or two after I got into the hobby. She was probably a senior in high school at the time, so she was inexperienced at GMing. But the game was magnificent. Absolutely all story. We played for about three hours and never needed to roll any dice, we roleplayed our little hearts out.

Given my joy in that experience, I would never let prejudice keep me from RPing under female GMs.

 

[was]

I have only gamed under two female DMs, but loved the experience. Good plots and in-depth roleplaying.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I am fine with male or female. I have no experience with all the others

 

[delericho]

No preference. Although, to be honest, I'd prefer to DM myself.

I've only played with one female DM (actually, Storyteller - Changeling game). She did fine.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Hermaphrodites are always the best DM's.*






*Whoops, I hope I didn't give too much away there, [MENTION=23396]Drowbane[/MENTION].

 

[S'mon]

Interesting that most posters seem to be saying "I prefer to DM" and then prefer to talk about their preferences for players! I guess that speaks to the very heavy preponderance of DMs over players here on ENW.

Personally, I too mostly DM myself, being a player is the exception for me. But I was interested in finding out specifically whether players had personal preferences re DMs. I've seen a lot of discussions previously by DMs talking about players, I wanted to reverse things and see what players had to say re DMs.

To keep the thread nice, if you can phrase your preference as "I prefer X" rather than "not-X sucks" that would be great, thanks.

 

[S'mon]

I'm pretty sure this thread has a spurious premise. It's like saying "how do you feel about GMs with brown hair?" I've had over a hundred GMs, both male and female, and I'm pretty sure that gender and skill are largely unrelated. The only link I can think of: if there are fewer opportunities for women to play, then it may be tougher for them to get extensive GMing experience. I haven't seen that in practice, though.

I was asking whether people did have a preference, since I just realised that I seem to have a preference, so I don't see how that can be a spurious premise. If most people don't have a preference (which would tend to be my expectation), that is a perfectly valid response but would not render the premise spurious.

I'm particularly interested in the views of those for whom D&D is not a "guy thing" (or theoretically a 'girl thing', though that seems to be rare), I know some men/boys don't like females at the table at all, but for those players who don't have a problem with mixed-sex groups I was wondering if they have noticed a preference re GMs.

Response so far would seem to indicate that my personal preference may be unusual, but that so many male players have never had a female GM at all that it may be hard to say.

 

[Lwaxy]

With a woman in the room, I feel disrepectful describing some of these scenes.

If you feel like that, then it is probably not respectful, period, and you usually just don't care. Which is fine. I think if I was to respect all sensitivities all the time I might as well run a Disney game. In quite a few of my campaigns, the dreamscape and accordingly nightmarish stuff plays a considerable role, so for someone having issues with dreams and real nightmares this would probably not be the best set up.

EDIT: I never have played under a female GM, but I'll be the contrarian and say that I would be hesitant of a female GM to be able to deliver the type of game I like to play. I'd give it a try, most likely, but I'm not sure I'd dig it the way I have some of the male GMs who run games the way I do.

I don't run that many gritty games anymore, but I used to get negative comments a few times because obviously, a woman should be more sensitive and not go into detail about what exactly has happened on the battlefield or in a raided village, or even describe wounds in an ongoing battle. You don't just lost HP and die, you et your throat ripped out and your stomach cut open.

Note that I am usually not even super descriptive, I just happen to mention the state of the corpses and the moans of the injured and the mental state of the survivors. I don't like playing down the horrors of what is going on. It seems at the few cons I ran games back then people expected a female GM to have a more fairy style story game. OK, yes to the story game. But the fairies we saw ended up ripped apart.

I found the last few games (years back) I ran at public events I got stuck with most of the female gamers, which was ok in a way but I really prefer at least some males in the group.

As for my home games, I have quite some female players (who all but one fart like the males, which given the male players kind of matters) but only one female co-GM, and she is just starting out. She's worried about not making it right for everyone but I have a feeling once she gets it she won't be the fairy game type either.