Female Gamemasters?

[Ketherian]

*Raises hand*

Hi.

I fit the category. GM'ing and playing for 20+ years. Of all the people I regularly game with (about 14 people), there is 1 other female GM/Player. I have met a handful of other female GM's online and at local gaming conventions. From that non-scientific count, I guess women who GM are in the minority.

Online I tend not to ask questions about gender, so I have no way of even guessing how many other women are on these forums, never mind whether they regularly GM.

 

[Gilladian]

Right now, my face to face group consists of myself (female), my husband, my mother, and my best friend (also female). I've been almost exclusively our DM for the past 30 years... we play mostly DnD; right now we're playing an E6 version campaign of 3.5e. I'm also running an intermittent game of Dungeonworld online for my best friend (same female friend as above) and two guys (one of whom is my brother, the other of whom shows up about 1/3 of the time).

Over the 35+ years I've been gaming, our group has ranged from having only me to having more female than male players. There was at least a 3 year span where the group was ALL female, excluding my husband. And he was only playing about half the time, at that point. Of course, I was attending a women's college at that time, so recruitment was a bit slanted in that direction!

Women like to game. Women like to GM. The shortage of women in the hobby is more a reflection of the fact that many groups don't realize they're not making it comfortable for women to join them; they think of the activity as a "guy thing".

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I've been in games with four different female DMs over the years.

 

[Razjah]

I have gamed with many women, but I have only had two women GM. One ran a 4e dungeon crawl that was a mini-campaign. The other ran an awesome Feng Shui campaign. I have no preference for the gender of my GM, as long as the game is fun. I have seen some women like different aspects of the game, which has helped make the game more interesting.

I currently game with a group of only men and I miss gaming with women. The guys have various porn stars and naked/scantily clad women as screen savers seems really weird to me (and I'm a guy). I just don't get it, they don't seem to understand how sexist some of their actions are and how it would make a woman uncomfortable. Or they don't care. I really hope it isn't that they don't care.

 

[was]

Have played under two different female GM's. Both ran DnD 3.5

 

[Ratskinner]

I've been a player under two female GMs. (I'm male.)

The first was an early Vampire game...and it was bad, more for her youth, I think.

The second was a 2e game. I think she did fine and it would have been better if her boyfriend hadn't kept repeating "That's not how we usually do it, but you're the DM" or "its supposed to be <blah blah>" every few seconds.

Both of these took place in the early 90's.

 

[haakon1]

I think I've game with about 10 different DM's/gamemasters over the years . . . only remember one female one, in a GURPS campaign.

Female players have ranged from 0-2 per group . . . in my experience, around 12-15% of players.

So overwhelmingly male hobby, from what I've seen . . . similar to say, interest in military history. I have only one female friend who is into that . . . and probably only about 3 male friends who are . . . all 4 are D&D players too.

So maybe it's our wargaming roots, and generally warlike nature of our campaigns? Playing Army Men only with swords and magic might not be as intriguing if you haven't grown up playing "bang bang your dead" games.

 

[Mark Hope]

My sister ran a kickass campaign when we were both still in school. Really intricate and inventive with cool atmosphere. And my wife ran some Ravenloft once, but she had a problem player who was very disruptive and that kinda put her off DMing. Oh, I think she ran Vampire once as well also. So generally speaking my GMs have been male, but not exclusively so.

 

[Razjah]

So maybe it's our wargaming roots, and generally warlike nature of our campaigns? Playing Army Men only with swords and magic might not be as intriguing if you haven't grown up playing "bang bang your dead" games.

I have seen similar situations. The women I have gamed with tend to prefer games with less crunch and more character interaction. Games like Burning Wheel, World of Darkness, or the Supernatural game using the cortex system. I think many games like D&D make combat the central experience, which tends to favor men's attitudes toward gaming. Where the women I have gamed with see combat as important, but something that should be resolved quickly and efficiently to allow the entire struggle of completing the goal of the campaign to be the central experience.

 

[Janx]

I've played in a session or two GMd by a woman. Seemed to work fine.