Female and Male Gamers

[Morik]

Hello to all,

I have a real proble with the mixed gender group I'm playing. Although I managed so far to offend no one it seems here is a clash of what female wants to play and males wants to have in roleplay.

The group is fairly large:
Three females: Klaudia, Cathleen and Sabine (age 41, 34, 26)
Five males: Jörg, Robin, Rainer, Florian and Daniel (29, 40, 37, 17,16)

ehm, I'm male and age 36. (why I feel the need to give away the ages? Odd me.)

The females are really want to Roleplay and are happy without to much fighting. The females want to talk to other NPCs or PCs and love making decisions in a peacefull manner (something I like to).

Klaudia has played DND before (with me and Daniel, Florian) but is not an experienced player. The other woman have NEVER EVER played DND or any other roleplaying product.

The males are more to a good fight. There behaving like real gentlemen, though. No wonder. Klaudia is my wife, Cathleen is the girlfriend of Robin, Sabine is the girlfriend of Jörg.

These group will come together for the first time, but I've seen some parts of the group already in some adventures (mostly my wife Klaudia with Daniel and Florian).

I knew the others very well (Robin, Rainer, Jörg) for we have played as a gaming group for over 14 years!

I assigned an adventure (FR Campaing setting) with two parts. The first will relay heavy on roleplaying where I think the woman will have the most fun. I have very put much work in detailing NPCs and the monsters too (all have names and histories, I even implemented the monsters in the region with histories, where they come from, if the locals know them, fights with the monsters before and so on). So they will be some fights as the story goes on.

NO Random encounters at all (which I use very seldom anyway).

This will hopefully be of some fun for the male players.

Now to the second part!

The adventure, as it comes together, will have a major fight with villians which were detailed and outlined in the first part (these monsters were encountered only for a brief moment in the first part and then vanished from sight, but the PCs learned form second sorces what part they will play in the story).

This major fight I invented mostly for the fun of the males for I knew they will love it.

But I know also that major fights in DND rely heavily on experienced players. At this point I would drown in rule explanation if I have to run the females too, because they are not knowing the rules for fight.

So my take is to leave the woman out of the fight and only do it with the male players. I will tell the woman why I guess it's better I have the second part of the adventure with the males alone. But I will definatly let the woman decide wheter they want to take part of a great fight. But then they have to learn some rules first.

For the first part I will not tell them all rules of DND. I will make some special charakter sheets with only the basics (Armos Class, Hitpoints, some vital skills or feats for the respecting charakters played by the female players and of course magical items or some spells (two to four spells, not more), and then the background of the charakters).

I hope this approach will lead to a good end. I really don't know.

What do you think. Will this sucks, have you some ideas for me to spare? Or do you played with this kind of mixed groups before and offer some insights on how to get along at best with this situation?

(If you want I will tell you what kind of adventure I invented for these specific group - in a summerise, of course).

Any remarks are wellcome
Eric

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The lack of experience is no reason that the women should not play the "battle" part.
Be fair and gentle, explain them what their combat options are. This might slow the combat down, but if the men are able to explain their combat actions well (not only rule-wise, but also role-wise), than the women will have fun in combat and might be further interested. Perhaps allow some more "style and fun" than usual - include the options to intimidate or bluff the opponents in combat.

I have only poor experience with female gamers, but as far as I know, they are not incapable or unwilling to fight ...
Inexperience with the rules will probably be the greatest problem. But there is no reason to "hide" some informations, at least not the one on the character sheet.

As an example, when filling in the values for skills or explaining what the class skills are, briefly explain what a skill is meant to do... Not everything is "automatically memorized" - the amount of information is to much - but it allows for some basic understanding.

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Dougal DeKree]

Sounds interesting

Hi! Maybe you could just tweak the adventure in a way that there is no exclusion, but a division of tasks? Have you thought about having part of the group fight skirmishes only to distract the villains attention from the sneaky other part, with the task to go and talk some other force into helping them win in the end? Maybe here you can have both sides happy PLUS add some horrific cliffhangers?! Hope this helps you a bit.

Dougal DeKree, Gnomish Illusionist and fan of Nystul

P.S.: And no, women can be truly awesome fighters, if given the proper motivation...

 

[Ashtal]

I'm going to echo the poster above: lack of experience is no reason to withold their participation from the climatic battle of the game. You wouldn't send inexperienced male players out of the battle, would you? The same goes for your women players.

They only way any new player learns how to play the game, male or female, is to let them play it. Not telling them the rules, keeping them out of the final battle, all that stuff sure isn't the way to teach a new player how to play the game. Stop worrying so much that they won't like it. If they didn't like it, or weren't interesting in trying, they wouldn't be at the table.

 

[shilsen]

You already have some good advice here, so I'd just like to reiterate some of it. If you don't let the players (all of them) pick up the rules, you'll never be able to get an enjoyable campaign going, since you'd be wasting too much time trying to "fix" the adventures for whoever participates in them. Take time out to explain the combat (and other) rules and for the first couple of fights, and I'm sure your inexperienced players will pick up soon. Make sure not to overwhelm them with options either.

Also, I'd suggest not making it obvious to your female players that you have completely diferent expectations from them (as you seem to have) as from your male players. What would be best is to not have different expectations at all, but that might take a little time to achieve

 

[Morik]

They only way any new player learns how to play the game, male or female, is to let them play it. Not telling them the rules, keeping them out of the final battle, all that stuff sure isn't the way to teach a new player how to play the game. Stop worrying so much that they won't like it. If they didn't like it, or weren't interesting in trying, they wouldn't be at the table.

First, thank you for all your really good advices.

I guess you're right, but -sigh- it's just that: We do not play very often (as I'm the only one who prepare adventures and doing all the other stuff too) and the players tend to forget the rules (not all of the rules but some essentials sometimes).

NMaybe I could describe the fights in detail with some colorful events (spells are good for that) or when a monster do go down how it begs for mercy or I might describe it's death in a very dramatic way?

The idea to leave out the females were born out of experience.
The females I will play with are somehow strong pacifists (at least with the way of weapons). But they are not so reluctant to do the -poisen- and -intrigue- thing (odd, isn't it). Sounds like a cliche to me, if I think more about it, but in my case, it's just that.

But hell, I will give it a try, as you said. I will not even ask them to vote on this. I will just let them in the fight. The advantage is that they will know all the monsters and villians by name and their part in the adventure when it comes to the 'great fight' (fight will take place in the outdoors - a great field and in the background a castle ruin).

For the rules: In the first part I still believe it's better to downsize the rules to the basics of the game. This way they will not overhelmed by the rules and learn what the essentials part are).

When it comes down to the great fight -yes- they will have to learn the combat rules in full. I agree definitively with that.

Thanks again for your comments,
they were very useful to me
Eric

 

[Eben]

For your entertainment: a quote form H.G. Wells in his book Little Wars. (The first commercially available wargames rules from 1912 if I'm not mistaken.)(note: this is not my personal opinion)

"Little Wars is the game of kings - for players in an inferior social
position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to a hundred
and fifty - and even latter if the limbs remain sufficiently supple - by
girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women." H. G.
Wells, Little Wars.

 

[Voadam]

I would agree that excluding players from part of the game and even a whole evening is a bad idea.

Have some small combats before the big one so that they can get the feel of the combat rules in doses. Either single opponenets or a couple not so tough opponents. Have the first one use only basic attacks and spells, do not throw in enemy tactics like grappling until they have a chance to get used to the core of the system. Definitely be cinematic and descriptive of the combats. Intimidation, war cries, surrendering and begging for mercy all can be part of combat and provide for interaction. Be careful of pacing however, there are times when keeping things fast paced really helps the mood and feel of combat.

 

[Morik]

Have some small combats before the big one so that they can get the feel of the combat rules in doses. Either single opponenets or a couple not so tough opponents.

This kind of combat is exactly what I already wrote down for the adventure.

The PCs have all the 6th level.
Paladin 6th, (Daniel)
Ranger/Sorcerer 2/4 (Florian)
Druid 6th (Klaudia)
Fighter/Wizard 3/3 (Rainer)
Fighter 6th (Cathleen)
Thief 6th (Sabine)
Sorcerer 6th (Jörg)
Cleric 6th (Robin, which happens to be my brother, in reality I mean)

The combat in the first part are as follows:

One undead (a zombie) will be the first, this is not a challenge, and only will take place if they want to fight this monster. It's a zombie with some memories of his former life (but this memory will slip more and more away). The PCs have to press out vital infos and then maybe combat the monster, I don't know this forsight.

Then it will become tougher:

Two combatants:
a Dark Naga
and a Shield Guardian

And if the players are really unlucky a Nightmare will join the fight (and aid the naga and guardian).

Otherwise the last fight will be the Nightmare.

I really are the opinion that these fights are not so a challenge for the group.

What you think?

 

[Quickbeam]

Two quick comments, to consider in addition to the excellent advice alreasy posted:

1) One of your female players has a fighter, and another one plays a rogue. Both should adapt to melee combat quite well giventheir characters strengths and abilities.
2) Role playong is still very possible in the midst of combat. If the female (or male) players do not wish to directly engage in the melee, they can tumble, taunt, trip, sunder, supply cover for their comrades, cast spells (the druid), and in general create havoc to distract the opponents while other characters wade into battle.

Don't assume that their pacifistic nature will make them adverse to this final encounter. In the end, they may prove invaluable while learning a great deal about the game.