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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[Springheel]

Well, to be fair, that's because Leia doesn't actually do anything in 3 movies. She shoots a blaster a couple of time? She doesn't fly a ship. She doesn't rescue anyone, other than at the breakout in the detention scene where she shoots the wall.

You mean except when she kicks Lando out and flies the Falcon under Cloud City to rescue Luke?

 

[MGibster]

You mean except when she kicks Lando out and flies the Falcon under Cloud City to rescue Luke?

Plus she actively fought against the Storm Troopers on the Tantive IV, is able to resist torture, participates in her own rescue on the Death Star, commands the retreat from Hoth, infiltrates Jabba's palace by threatening to blow everyone up with a thermal detonator (like a BOSS!), and then strangles that slime ridden piece of filth to death with the very chain he thought to imprison her with.

The weird thing is that a lot of people complained that Leia was too masculine back in the 70s and early 80s.

 

[abirdcall]

On the topic of women in sci-fi/fantasy:

The exceptions prove the rule.

We don't need to bring up specific male characters and argue about whether men are well represented.

Women being in these movies continue to be exceptional events that are often criticized.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

My first game was i the early 80s with Ad&D, I was introduced by a friend who had 2 brothers and one other guy played. I was 16 girls were just other people I went to school with who ignored me, I wasn't part of the 'in crowd' so basically other than a circle of male friends, everyone either ignored or taunted us. The only gil I knew was my sister - and too me she was a spoilt brat who threw tantrums when she didn't get her own way so my inclination was just to ignore them.

This group was the only people I knew who had anything to do with gaming.

However over the next couple of years (last two years of high school) I did make one female friend who was into scifi and fantasy. Leaving high school we went our separate ways for about a year, before I ran into her again and she invited me to join a campaign run by her bf (he was was a few years older than us). This campaign had people she went to uni with and had DM and 7 players (the DM and two of the players a couple then and now play in my current campaign) made up of 4 males and 3 females. These for several years where the main gamers I associated with. So from that beginning it seemed to me gaming was if not evenly split there was a good proportion of females.

Then we started going to conventions - playing as a group it was often commented that in a group of 6 we would have 2 or 3 females and that we were unusual - we also often won the role playing awards - not sure if it was connected but thinking back it could well have been.

After a couple of years of playing we began DMing at the con and even writing the modules. This is where I first became aware of a real anti female stance - though this was around DMing, groups assigned a female DM often complained before they even run that a girl couldn't know the rules/ how can they be themselves or play their characters as they want with a female in charge, exact words used. After this as a group we drifted away from the cons and by the early 90s had really drifted away from RPGs as life, work and commitments took our time and energy (children for alot of them).

When 5E came out I contacted all those players and said if interested I would be happy to DM a module (HoDQ) to give it ago - so with myself and 5 of the old group and the daughter of the couple (she is 20) we started playing. Have now moved onto my own campaign.

In the last year I have started playing at my local gaming store (so I could play a character and not DM). The group I lay with there has 8 players though not all make it every week - 2 are female. Across the probably 60 players about 25% would be female - some daughters of others but most are just gamers like the rest of us.

However and this is finally the point I was trying to get too - none DM outside the cons I mentioned where the female DMs were basically chased away I have never encountered one who regulars runs - I am sure there are plenty out there. There are more females interested in gaming now than when I started but there is also some terrible bias around them and at least the game shop is a safe environment though this is the only one I know so maybe its not always.

So for my rambling and if you made it this far let me know you deserve an XP.

 

[Zardnaar]

Met first female DM this year. She seems popular, runs for new players.

 

[Hussar]

Perhaps to address the toxicity you need to understand how the hobby came to be male dominated in the first place.

We know that early on toxicity was not the issue. How do we know? Not because it didn't exist, but because in order to encounter toxicity a female would have to actually try and join (no internet in the 80s). And those of us males who where there have the same experience: no females ever tried to join in the first place. And there is little evidence for the spontaneous formation of all female groups. The barriers to entry occur much earlier. Toxicity is more a consequence of those initial barriers, not the cause.

As a Physics teacher, I am concerned about gender balance in Physics and Engineering, and it is very closely related. Whilst I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of toxicity in those subjects it's generally encountered by people who have already overcome those initial barriers.

You cannot possibly be serious.

See, this is why I get so bloody frustrated in these conversations. EVERY SINGLE TIME this comes up, we have to spend endless amounts of time pretending that we have a "prove" that the problem exists. And, no matter the MOUNTAIN of evidence it doesn't matter. We wind up faffing about, never actually talking about the problem because of endless derails by people who, for whatever reason, seem to think that nerdom was somehow this socially conscious group that was welcoming of all and sundry.

The fact that from day 1 RPG gaming was a white boys only club doesn't seem to matter. Oh, no, it cannot possibly be our fault that women weren't interested in gaming back in the day. NO, it must be someone else's fault.

It's so frustrating. And, frankly, it's a very, very short step from "Oh, well, I never saw it" to "it never happened and people are just making it up".

I mean, gender balance in the sciences is absolutely due to the toxic nature of the sciences and societies complete and utter failure to allow women into the sciences. Those initial barriers are PART of the toxicity, not some separate issue.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No, it cannot possibly be our fault that women weren't interested in gaming back in the day. NO, it must be someone else's fault.

What do you suggest WE could have done differently?

 

[Hussar]

What do you suggest WE could have done differently?

Who cares?

Why would I want to dwell on the past? We screwed up. We, as the hobby, did virtually nothing to make it accessible to anyone who was different than us. We built a great big wall around ourselves and then patted ourselves on the back about how inclusive we were being by making a safe place for geekdom.

Who cares?

I care about what we do NOW. What we do going forward. That we recognize the need for inclusive art in products and praise publishers who do so and condemn publishers that do not. That we don't simply brush off the actions of geek stars such as getting drunk at conventions, stalking women in hotels and then assaulting staff. No, we look at those people and show them the door. They are not welcome in the hobby, regardless of what games they wrote. We don't spend endless discussions on how we can be 100% perfectly fair whenever allegations are brought up and how we cannot do anything unless there's the issue is 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt.

No, we stand up as a hobby and say, "No." "We don't want this person or that person in the hobby. This or that person does not represent what we, as a fandom, think we should be".

In other words, we actually ACT as inclusive as we pretended to be for forty years.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Who cares?

I care.

I am responsible for my actions. I am not responsible for things I have no influence over. I am not "the hobby". There is no such thing as "the hobby" - only individuals. There is nothing I could have done differently in the 1980s that would have changed the situation. There are things I can do now, but even if I had known the future I could not have done anything differently when I was a child at a single sex boarding school. So no, I was not responsible for how things where In the 1980s. I am only responsible for trying to make things better NOW.

If we go round throwing blame then WE are being toxic. It make us part of the problem, not part of the solution.

 

[Hussar]

I care.

I am responsible for my actions. I am not responsible for things I have no influence over. I am not "the hobby". There is no such thing as "the hobby" - only individuals. There is nothing I could have done differently in the 1980s that would have changed the situation. There are things I can do now, but even if I had known the future I could not have done anything differently when I was a child at a single sex boarding school. So no, I was not responsible for how things where In the 1980s. I am only responsible for trying to make things better NOW.

If we go round throwing blame then WE are being toxic. It make us part of the problem, not part of the solution.

So, you absolve yourself of all blame? Fair enough I suppose.

Me, I realize that even though I don't think I ever harassed anyone in the hobby, nor do I think that I chased anyone away from the hobby, I am also obliquely responsible since I didn't become more active about inclusivity. I didn't insist that RPG products included art for both men and women that didn't depict women as sex toys. I bought products that were offensive. I contributed to the hobby in a thousand different ways, and none of them were actually addressing the fact that we were whiter than the average Klan meeting.

But, hey, again, I really, really don't care about what was. What's done is done. We can't change the past. We can recognize what happened and not try to hide it. Me, I recognize the fact that I was part of a group that was unbelievably toxic and closed. To be honest, I probably wasn't aware of just how bad it was. That's the point about things like this coming to light after the fact. Sure, I could self flagellate all I like but, my point has always been that we should not be white washing history, just like we've seen in this thread. Oh, no, it wasn't geeks being toxic, it was jocks and women and everyone else but us. Gimme a break.

But, I do agree with you on one thing. We can try to make things better now.