Female Gamers? Are there more of us now?

[Babette]

pick me ...pick me...

hmmmmmmmmmmm i've only been gaming for 6 years and LARPed (Vamp the Masq, changeling,werewolf(i loved my black furies character)-for 2 years.have not done either 2 for what seems like an enternity

besides D&D played Dark Sun, Sword & Sorcery, another one whose name is eluding me other genres such as Vamp the Masq, werewolf, star trekk( that was funny and fun and not because i was GM)...

another fantasy one where there was a lot of rolling for stats and rolling for misc stuff or have i mentioned it??? but mostly D&D and Vamp were the regular...

i mostly played half elves or fem dwarfs...i even went through an amazon phase...she was fun and unrelenting and probably annoying

i was either the only fem or there would be one other...even in card gaming (magic the gathering, Vamp, and at present Game of Thrones)...

as for changinging the dynamics...i'd have to say heck yes....think about it and to what degree... :\

i loved having another fem in the group but sometimes there would be the initial terratorial thing...

i was also DM and GM of Vamp the masq and Star Trek (some of the games)

anyway sci/fi- fantasy
love it...love it...LUUURRVVE it

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I am female and I have played rpg for long time. 19 years actually.

There are one other woman in few groups I often play with, and one in those groups I myself rarely play with. Other women/girls I have gamed with, but they aren't interested in gaming nowdays.

I have 10 different characters in campaings that are still active.
I don't see my play-style differ so much because I am female.

I like min-maxing my characters for D&D (not so much in every system). I like combat, and social situations if they make sense and don't bore be to death.

I disaprove and dislike any roleplaying that takes player to other room with dm to play some personal thing with npc/npcs and game stands still for other players (6-8 of us) for hour. I used to play with people where few players did this all the time, and we who didn't got playtime 3 hours of 8.

I hate mapping with passion, but if someone else takes that job I like dungeoncrawling. I don't have favourite character classes as such, but if playing something D&D (whatever variation) and I don't have idea, I play neutral or chaotic good human fighter or rogue/fighter or rogue.

I hate elves. I've never played one, in any system, except as an npc. Dunno.

My current character include

female human fighter/ranger/holy liberator of Tanil in scarred lands game. Really nice person, especially compared when rest of group who started as cg went to more cn.

male human ranger/barbarian from Albadia (another scarred lands game) who has strange background.

female human shaman from oriental adventures game (bastardized mix of Rokugan and Kara-Tur). She is pretty pasifistict, druidic kind of character, and our large groups only healer.

female half-demon wizard, who has political ambitions. And demon blood doesn't make it easy for her.

I currently dm two games still alive.

Groups don't play so often, so one game-day a week is best we get. Resolving campaings takes time because of this.

 

[Ogre Mage]

I have been playing D&D since I was 11. Female gamers were definitely in the minority, but we did have one who gamed with us. As time has gone by and I've gotten older (28) the number of women I've gamed with has increased slightly, but they are definitely still in the minority at the gaming table. In 17 years of off-and-on gaming, I have played with roughly a dozen female gamers.

In my current group, we have had 2 women players. One only played for a few months and then stopped because she had other interests. About 6 months after she quit, another joined. For awhile she played both D&D and Mage, but due to her work schedule she is only able to play in Mage right now.

I think women gamers have had more of an impact with the off-topic chatter as opposed to anything we do in game. For instance, at an all-male table, the players sometimes make sexist off-topic remarks. That has rarely occured with a female player present. However, the dynamics of how we approach challenges in-game has not been seriously altered by the presence of women gamers.

I am curious if women gamers seem more attracted to some game systems over others. I have heard more women play White Wolf games vs. D&D, but don't know if this is true since I haven't played WW extensively.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I think women gamers have had more of an impact with the off-topic chatter as opposed to anything we do in game. For instance, at an all-male table, the players sometimes make sexist off-topic remarks. That has rarely occured with a female player present.

I haven't noticed woman's presence in game stop off-topic remarks, sexual included. (unless that woman in question was someone's mom walking into room, that is).
It is usually dm who puts stop to off-topic remarks after a while, especially if they irritate someone or stop the game for too long.
In some groups sexist off-topic remarks are more rampart than in others, where any off-topic is frowed upon and 'tasteless' more so.

 

[hunter1828]

My wife games in my regular table-top game, and has for the past four years.

I also co-DM a play-by-post game based at a Yahoo group. We have 18 total players, 7 of them are female. That's a pretty good percentage.

hunter1828

 

[Cor Azer]

The first time I ever role-played, half the group was female (3-3) so I never really noticed an all make thing. For the longest time in junior high, I really only hung out with make friends, so that tended to make my games mostly male.

My current face-to-face group is 8 people (including me) and half are female. My PbeM game is 9 people (including me) and two are female.

One woman has been playing since before we met her, two just got into the game within the last several years (about the time Third Edition was released), one got into the PbeM to see how her boyfriend passes the time and has started to enjoy it, and the newest one started playing with us just a couple of weeks ago - she used to play a lot of MERP, but had never played D&D before.

I don't know if there's more women playing now than before (percentage-wise) though, although I have introduced more women to gaming than men in my years of playing.

 

[Pseudonym]

And guys - are you finding more women joining your campaigns now? Do you find it changes the feel of your game in any way?

I currently run a game with five guys and three girls. In the past I have gamed with women, though it does seem that the number at the table has increased in the past five years or so. Then again, it may be due to the fact that I am older now, and broadening my gaming circle beyond the same group of guys I have been gaming with since high school.

It does seem that the vast majority of women I meet gaming are there due to attachment with guys in the campaign. For example in the game I DM, one of the women is my fiancé, the other is a girlfriend of one of my players, and the last in the daughter of one of my other players. For the two older women, their gaming predates any relationships with their significant others in the game, but the probably wouldn't be in my campaign where it not for that dynamic.

As to the matter of having female gamers altering the nature of the game, I don't believe that has happened. If anything, having one of them being only fourteen has had a greater impact on things than their gender.

 

[Barak]

In my F2F games, I have 4 players, and they're all males. So that makes 5 males if you include me.

in my 2 PBPs.. The first has 2 females and 3 males, and the DM is male.

The second has.. 2 females (one is one of the 2 from the other one) and 5 males, and a male DM as well.

So I dunno. Oh, and note that everyone plays characters of their own gender, except in the 7 players PBP, one of the guys play a female character, if you're interested in that info.

 

[JesterPoet]

My group has more women than men. I think the women tend towards "role"-playing more often, though, which is what I like, so it's good for me.

Now, if only one of them would run... but that's another story.

 

[Wolfspirit]

You know you've been around ENWorld for a long time if you know for a FACT that Gamers seeking Gamers isn't online dating for roleplayers... er.. never mind.

Seriously though, in my main D&D group we've actually lost two of our female players to work or moving, allthough the remaining one has insisted we get more women to play before more guys can join. On the other hand, in the World of Darkness group, there's an allmost even split between girls/guys. For some reason in that group they decided that I was going to be the honorary female, despite being the biggest, hairiest guy there. Must be the whole "wearing a dress" thing I did for a theatre performance.

In the various IRC games I've played, I think there's been about two female players out of a pool of about 40. Several female characters, male players, though.