Female gamers: Weal or woe?

[Toben the Many]

I game in two groups who have female players, and I've gamed with female players for quite some time now.

I don't see any "woe" to gaming with girls or women. Usually, I like it, because they tend to approach problems differently than males do. Because of that, the games we play tend to follow different storylines or get different perspectives.

That said, the group I used to game with literally had a "no girls" policy, because it was all a group of married guys with kids who treated their gaming sessions as a sort of "poker night" with the fellas. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I think it depends on the reason that you are gaming. If you're gaming to have male bonding time, then yes, having a woman there might be awkward. It may even be that you are doing that subconsciously and not even know it.

However, with the two groups that I'm in now, it is totally not a problem. But gaming with those two groups is not seen as male bonding time. Instead, it's seen as more of a group social activity like bowling or tennis for everybody.

 

[Lizard]

Sounds to me like the problem is (grossly immature) male gamers, not female gamers.

 

[Phlebas]

to the OP

I'll just add my 2c as a 30 something gamer who hasn't had an all male game since university and has brought in a few new role-players to existing groups.

1 - female gamers are good gamers, or bad gamers, or indifferent gamers. it depends on the person.

2 - female gamers swear lots and make crude jokes and never swear and get easily offended. or they will be somewhere in between. it depends on the person. Generalities normally aren't.

3 - adding new people to groups will change things. if you play beer and pretzels games and add a teetotaller than this will change more than if you invite one of your drinking buddies. Thats life and the gender of the person is only one of many factors that will determine the success or failure of the new group

4 - if you worry about the affect on the game, especially if its well established then try re-boot. when everyone has new characters and is equally checking out new rules then the newcomer is less obvious and gets to make their own dynamic

5 - if you want to keep the game as is, but also try new people then get 2 games going. keep the old one as is and then start a new one in parallel with some/none/all the players from the old game. You will probably find that this keeps the old gamers happy, and quite often gives you a running in period to sort the group dynamics out. you can always then move to one or the other game with the entire group (My regular group does this a lot as it gives the DM's a chance to rotate and avoid burn out)

6 - stop over analyzing and just invite her to join. The more you expect issues the more chance you have of taking molehills and turning them into mountains. Its just a game.....

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sounds to me like the problem is (grossly immature) male gamers, not female gamers.

There seems to be a second category - "Poker Night" groups. Groups that want the men to be among themselves. Of course females pose problems there. But you can avoid that if the entire group is aware of the "Poker Night" nature of their games. Or if they consciously - as a group - to get away from that, or create a second group that's not "Poker Night".

But maybe you're right - that group doesn't really have a problem if they are self-concious about what they're doing. The immature male players are more of a problem...

 

[Xath]

I've never played in a group that didn't have at least one female.

However, I've noticed that the groups that tend to have the more awkward (I will never learn to spell that word) behavior towards female gamers tend to be the younger crowd. My current group is a full 1/2 women. We average in our mid-late 20's. We're mostly couples, but none of our female players are "the girlfriend" stereotype. The groups that had the most "discomfort" for me were mostly those I found through my college gaming club, but after a few sessions, it seemed that everyone got comfortable again and we all returned to a normal social dynamic.

 

[Xath]

The biggest problem I have found is they tend to get pregnant.

I...seriously hope you're trolling.

 

[ki11erDM]

I...seriously hope you're trolling.

Only about 30% trolling.

There are more important things in life than D&D and bring those more important things to the table it can only distract from the game. Is that bad? Sure! Is that good? Sure! It is life. But to pretend that those events don’t change things is just being incredibly naive.

What really sucks is when you have a couple playing in your game and they have a child. They both want to play, but someone has to watch the child… or you have to pay for a baby sitter… or your gaming group becomes the baby sitter. And it is up to your group to decide if that is ok. But if you only have 6 hours a month to set aside to play and hang out with your friends you may or may not think babysitting during that time is a good thing. EDIT: And this is why I am hoping DDI will rock.

But to be fair the ‘girlfriend’ playing D&D to hang out with her man is the most common issue. Everyone should be playing because they like to play… not to impress someone. Once you have people playing for that reason it does not matter if it is a guy or girl you are going to have issues. But that has been well covered in other posts and threads.

 

[Silver Moon]

The biggest problem I have found is they tend to get pregnant.

Sounds like you're playing a different type of role-playing than the rest of us.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, I've been playing in groups with both genders for 27 years now and greatly prefer it to single-gender games (that I've played at conventions). For a long-running campaign stretching several years of both character and player time I think that having participation from both male and female players and characters makes for a more realistic game.

 

[knightofround]

Last year, one of my housemates ran an a girls-only campaign. As a guy it was interesting to watch from the sidelines; there was much more roleplaying and less hack-n-slash. I was surprised though that the campaigns were just as violent as the all-male campaigns, and the language level was pretty much the same.

From my own experiences with D&D, I believe that women make slightly better DMs than men. In general they tend to be more organized, more story-orientated, and have an easier time roleplaying the opposite gender when need be. It's not that men make bad DMs, it just seems that male DMs tend to trend towards the side "I'm here to come close to killing the PCs" rather than "I'm here to create an awesome story".

And I think men make slightly better PCs, as they seem to be able to stay more focused and are have better party cooperation. Not that all female gamers are self-centered, and easily bounced off-topic, but I've tended to see it more in female gamers than male gamers on average.

Of course, both of these are VERY slight generalizations. From what I've seen, women who choose to participate in D&D often have tomboyish tendancies anyway. Even if they are especially girly, when they come to the table they play more like a tomboy -- even in the all-female campaign I mentioned above, most of the players were very girly IRL.

What is really interesting is how few female game designers are out there. I wonder if one of the main reasons RPGs have traditionally male-dominated is because the games have been designed for a more male (ie hack-n-slash) environment.

 

[Timeboxer]

It's not that men make bad DMs, it just seems that male DMs tend to trend towards the side "I'm here to come close to killing the PCs" rather than "I'm here to create an awesome story".

I'm here to create an awesome story and kill your PCs. And I'm all out of story.