D&D General Gamer Stats From White Dwarf in the 80s

Phil on Twitter has posted a few interesting stats from White Dwarf back in the 80s. These include what games were being played in 1987, and a letter about male/female ratios in the same era. Short version: mainly D&D, very few women.

"Fascinating stuff - what RPGs were being played in the UK in 1987 ... T&T higher than you might've thought. Indiana Jones too!"

"I know people say women have always been in gaming, and that's true. But this single stat highlights why for many of us seeing a female gamer in the wild was unheard of until the Masquerade began to change things... Average readership of White Dwarf in 1987 was 16.08... Which means they'd now be 48"

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[Zardnaar]

I don't doubt her experiences but you can't really paint everyone with the same brush.

 

[Hussar]

Be cool. Hussar's being civil in a discussion on a subject that's often fraught with frustration, obfuscation, recrimination, misdirection, vexation, and ruination often born from an aspiration to cause a truncation of all conversation. Nothing I have seen from Hussar in this or other treads would suggest they are a toxic influence on gaming.

S'okay. I believe that [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] was making a joke. And a good one at that. At least, that's how I take it. Not a worry.

 

[Hussar]

I'm curious actually, and in the spirit of asking more questions, how common were single sex schools in England in the 80's? I honestly didn't know. Is it something widespread or was it only a couple of schools.

Because, if it's only a couple of schools, then "we went to single sex schools" basically makes you an outlier and doesn't really explain the fact that 99% of the respondents were male. Unless 99% of gamers went to all boys schools.

Again, it's not about assigning blame. I frankly don't care. But, it IS about not dodging things either. Claims that girls didn't get into gaming because of other girls smacks of rewriting history given the rather large amount of counter evidence - games being marketed largely to boys for example.

Because, let's not forget, once someone got it into their head to market to women, they suddenly had women playing RPG's - Vampire being the prime example here. Vampire players certainly weren't 99% male, and yet, D&D remained a mostly boys club until this decade.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I was born in 1970, started rpging in 1982. We knew what sexism was - I remember discussing whether the cover of White Dwarf 77 (1986) was sexist with my gaming group. The concept was widely available in the culture - on TV, in comics fanzines, and even in White Dwarf. That same issue contains an article by Chris Felton entitled Gaming for Heroine Addicts, which is essentially advice to male rpgers about how to be less sexist. I don't necessarily agree with its points - it makes 'sweeping statements' about women - but it's an interesting historical artefact, given this discussion.

From the article:

Fantasy rolegames are often accused of sexism... This causes great problems for the hobby since it deters many women from participating. Yet women can enjoy gaming, so how do we make the games more attractive to them?...

The key to a game which women will enjoy is to cut the sexual imbalance out of the way it is played. This means cutting it out of the society the GM builds...

The next step is to stop powergaming. Powergaming is the art of designing your game to fulfill players' most simplistic fantasies. Few women are attracted by the 'let's rush in there and kill 'em all'
game; they prefer a more thoughtful approach where characterisation, and problem solving are more important than amassing experience points...

There is a third, more radical step - play characters of the opposite sex.

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, comments about how "I couldn't do anything about it" are entirely true. You very likely couldn't do anything about it. You weren't a publisher. You weren't writing the material. You weren't marketing the material. You weren't a game store owner. On and on. You just played the game. So, yeah, realistically, there is nothing you could have done to change things.

But, that doesn't suddenly make it someone else's fault either. It's not the jocks or the other women. It's the fact that we supported those publishers. We supported those writers. We gave them our saved up allowances and spent all sorts of cash on the hobby and kept the hobby going. We continued to support the system in which women realistically were being excluded from.

Could we have done anything directly to change that? Probably not. Very likely not. Like I said, we were just playing a game. We weren't out to change society. The game looked like it did and we liked it, so, obliviousness is bliss.

And the hobby stayed that way until the last five or six years. Nearly forty years of an all boys club. We can't point fingers at anyone else for that.

 

[JonnyP71]

We have an exam that many pupils take called 'the 11+'. If you pass this exam you are entitled to go to what is known as a 'grammar' school - many of which are single sex.

The most common form of schools we have are the state-run 'comprehensives' and semi-independent 'academies', these are free, with no entrance exam. These are mixed.

In addition to the 11+/Grammar school selective system, we have a lot of selective Private schools - most of which also have an entrance exam - parents pay to send their children to these schools, and thus these tend to be the domain of more wealthy families, and lean towards a more strict environment, with a heavy emphasis on academic excellence. These schools are also mostly single sex, though that is changing slowly. I passed the exam for a fairly prestigious Private school, and my parents nearly bankrupted themselves to send me there.

My experience in the early 80s with gaming was that D&D appealed much more to the more geeky/intellectually minded - typically the type of child who would attend a Grammar school or Private school. Very few of local kids I knew who went to non-selective state schools had any interest in gaming of any sort, whereas video game chatter - and to a lesser extent RPG chatter - was common amongst those I knew at the Private school I attended (which was a 40 minute train journey from where I lived).

 

[MGibster]

S'okay. I believe that [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] was making a joke. And a good one at that. At least, that's how I take it. Not a worry.

In my defense I'm just really not all that bright!

 

[MGibster]

Because, let's not forget, once someone got it into their head to market to women, they suddenly had women playing RPG's - Vampire being the prime example here. Vampire players certainly weren't 99% male, and yet, D&D remained a mostly boys club until this decade.

Vampire brought a lot of people who weren't typically role players to the hobby. I wonder if it was the table top game that did that or the Minds Eye Theater live action role playing game that attracted new people to the hobby.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm curious actually, and in the spirit of asking more questions, how common were single sex schools in England in the 80's? I honestly didn't know. Is it something widespread or was it only a couple of schools.

Because, if it's only a couple of schools, then "we went to single sex schools" basically makes you an outlier and doesn't really explain the fact that 99% of the respondents were male. Unless 99% of gamers went to all boys schools.

Again, it's not about assigning blame. I frankly don't care. But, it IS about not dodging things either. Claims that girls didn't get into gaming because of other girls smacks of rewriting history given the rather large amount of counter evidence - games being marketed largely to boys for example.

Because, let's not forget, once someone got it into their head to market to women, they suddenly had women playing RPG's - Vampire being the prime example here. Vampire players certainly weren't 99% male, and yet, D&D remained a mostly boys club until this decade.

I'm in New Zealand but you could get White Dwarf here and went to a ye olde traditional boys school from mother England complete with Victorian architecture. Prefects, uniforms, pull your socks up, school song, houses. And an official old boys network.

The Co Ed school was Catholic only 10% non Catholic were allowed iirc. One boys, one girls school.

Theres 4 co ed high schools where I live now, I think the other 5 or 6 are single sex.

According to my wife 3 are boys, 4 are girls and the rest co ed. Not sure how many total there are due to rural area technically being in city limits but over half are single sex it seems.

 

[Zardnaar]

To be fair, comments about how "I couldn't do anything about it" are entirely true. You very likely couldn't do anything about it. You weren't a publisher. You weren't writing the material. You weren't marketing the material. You weren't a game store owner. On and on. You just played the game. So, yeah, realistically, there is nothing you could have done to change things.

But, that doesn't suddenly make it someone else's fault either. It's not the jocks or the other women. It's the fact that we supported those publishers. We supported those writers. We gave them our saved up allowances and spent all sorts of cash on the hobby and kept the hobby going. We continued to support the system in which women realistically were being excluded from.

Could we have done anything directly to change that? Probably not. Very likely not. Like I said, we were just playing a game. We weren't out to change society. The game looked like it did and we liked it, so, obliviousness is bliss.

And the hobby stayed that way until the last five or six years. Nearly forty years of an all boys club. We can't point fingers at anyone else for that.

In the 80s games/toys were generally targeted at males or females. Guys liked GI Joe and Transformers, girls got My Little Pony and Cabbage Patch dolls. They tried crossovers with things like Masters of the Universe but then guys didn't want to play with girls toys and the girls weren't overly interested either.

RPGs and Video games were aimed at males. So were game books. It's just the way it was then.

I was allowed to play with my sisters Barbie's if I wanted to but she wasn't keen as boys also got fire crackers and knives via Cubs/Boy scouts. Barbie's and GI Joe's tended to explode or get used with tennis rackets.

And if we hadn't of supported the games and video games girls wouldn't have gotten the chance to play with them either when things changed. There would be no D&D. The video game industry almost died in 83.