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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[Paul Farquhar]

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.

So you think we should have tried being black?!!

Listen, people don't choose the colour of their skin. They don't choose to not be born into an ethnically diverse community. They didn't even choose to have well-to-do parents who could afford to pay for a private education. We weren't inclusive. We weren't exclusive. We just played with the people we knew and didn't play with people we never encountered. That's not being toxic. That's being a child in a small community (ethnic mix in Devon = 95% white British - that's today, I suspect it was higher in the 80s).

And by the time of that survey, people where already challenging (and ridiculing) the cheesecake art associated with some D&D artists. And if you look at that list you can see many people where playing other roleplaying games. You don't see any chainmail bikinis in Traveller, or MERP, or Call of Cthulhu, or Golden Heroes. But they still didn't have girls queuing up to play. That's because the problem is much earlier, deeper and more fundamental that some childish artwork.

Art from Traveller
View attachment 107410

 

[MGibster]

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.

Interpreting the past is a worthwhile endeavor and many universities have entire departments devoted to that task. For this particular discussion it's not about living in the past it's about understanding how we got to where we are today. And human beings are amazing creatures that can do more than one thing. Discussing the past doesn't prevent us from working to make things better now.

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.

If you care about "NOW" why did you participate in a thread about a 32 year old primary source of information? Your complaint is out of place. If you don't care about the past then why discuss it?

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

Pretended? You're far more generous than I. Inclusiveness wasn't even on the radar for most of us back then.

 

[Sacrosanct]

In the mid 80s, you had Kim Mohan, editor of Dragon magazine, arguing in the letters section why the strength limitation for women in the biggest RPG was justified. It wasn’t just cheesecake art keeping women away

 

[Hussar]

/snip
Pretended? You're far more generous than I. Inclusiveness wasn't even on the radar for most of us back then.

But, but, but, I've read several posters here telling me that gamers WERE totally inclusive back then. It wasn't gamers keeping people out of the hobby, it was other folks who were bullying people. Gamers were completely free of any blame back in the day.

That's what I'm being told anyway.

And, I agree that we need to understand how we got here today. That's been my point all the way along. That we shouldn't be trying to pretend that we were something we weren't. And, looking how we were, we can do better now.

As to why I'm participating in a thread about 32 year old information, well, it's posts like this one:

So you think we should have tried being black?!!

Listen, people don't choose the colour of their skin. They don't choose to not be born into an ethnically diverse community. They didn't even choose to have well-to-do parents who could afford to pay for a private education. We weren't inclusive. We weren't exclusive. We just played with the people we knew and didn't play with people we never encountered. That's not being toxic. That's being a child in a small community (ethnic mix in Devon = 95% white British - that's today, I suspect it was higher in the 80s).

And by the time of that survey, people where already challenging (and ridiculing) the cheesecake art associated with some D&D artists. And if you look at that list you can see many people where playing other roleplaying games. You don't see any chainmail bikinis in Traveller, or MERP, or Call of Cthulhu, or Golden Heroes. But they still didn't have girls queuing up to play. That's because the problem is much earlier, deeper and more fundamental that some childish artwork.

that are about as tone deaf as you could possibly be. All those other games could change their art and no one cared because no one was actually playing those games. It was D&D and then everything else. NINETY NINE percent male. Oh, but, it couldn't possibly be because of the actions of gamers, publishers and game makers. No, of course not. It's never our fault is it? We just happened to live somewhere where no girls wanted to play.

Apparently 99% of White Dwarf respondents went to all boys schools. Could be, I suppose. It's possible. Large, flatulent monkeys might spontaneously explode from my vas deferens as well, but, it's equally likely.

What baffles me, honestly, is this defensive tone. Yeah, the hobby done screwed up in the past. But, we're trying to fix that. Well done us. Why is it so hard to admit that we might not have been as good in the past as we could have been?

 

[Azzy]

Why is it so hard to admit that we might not have been as good in the past as we could have been?

Tribalism. You see this also in nationalism, wherein you can't talk about the things one's country did wrong without someone getting defensive. :/

 

[Hussar]

BTW, I'll see your Traveller art, and raise you this one from the original Traveller book:

 

[JonnyP71]

We weren't inclusive. We weren't exclusive. We just played with the people we knew and didn't play with people we never encountered. That's not being toxic. That's being a child in a small community (ethnic mix in Devon = 95% white British - that's today, I suspect it was higher in the 80s).

This here is a key point. We all have different experiences, and it seems that some of those looking back have entirely unrealistic ideas of each contributor's own personal situation, and their capability to have any influence over that!

When I was doing most of my gaming it was 1983-1988 - I was 12-17 years old. I couldn't choose where I lived, I didn't have a choice regarding the school I attended, and I had very little control over my own social circles. My suburb of Birmingham was 100% white, very middle class. The school I attended was 100% male, about 90% white, and with a high proportion of pupils from *very* wealthy backgrounds - another reason why I was a bit of an outsider, as my family was poor in comparison.

I played RPGs with the people who accepted me. Just as I accepted them. Our group had one guy who was obviously gay (in the 80s, when it was tough to be open about it), another who was from India, and another who was a Polish immigrant. So by the standards of the time, and in comparison with the demographics of both my local area and my school environment, we were extremely diverse.

We didn't have the internet, we didn't have mobile phones, we didn't have gaming meetup groups/societies, we relied on public transport - there wasn't the communication network to break out from these smaller social circles - thus we played with the people we knew, who accepted us, and who were interested in gaming. We played the games that were available to us, those any one of us could afford, and those that were stocked by our gaming shop - the only gaming shop I was ever aware of in the 80s was Games Workshop in Birmingham town centre!!

There is no need for self flagellation on this topic. Quite simply, there is *nothing* most of us could have done to change a thing. We weren't even aware anything needed changing!!!!!

 

[Zardnaar]

Grew up in a town of around 12000 people, 94% white, 4% Chinese,1% Polynesian, 1% everything else. Went to an all boys school, after primary School had no female friends until around 95/96.

We didn't exclude anyone just played with who we knew which happened to be white and male in late 93/early 94.

Picked up female players in 96, she set me up with her friends. The few Polynesians we knew weren't interested in playing although one of them liked the books.

It was just the way it was, the boys school was violent with systematic abuse which I dodged the worst of it. I had no control over where I lived, what school I went to, or what cultures I was exposed to. Left that town 20 years ago try an avoid going back, live in NZ equivalent of San Francisco.

Gays make up 4% of the population here, in that town openly gay was about 0% or close to it. It wasnt about excluding anyone just who was available. Since then I have had 2 gay players with another 1 or two maybes, I don't ask/ don't care.

 

[MGibster]

But, but, but, I've read several posters here telling me that gamers WERE totally inclusive back then. It wasn't gamers keeping people out of the hobby, it was other folks who were bullying people. Gamers were completely free of any blame back in the day.

When I hear inclusiveness I think of efforts to get people into gaming who don't necessarily look like you and I can't recall much of that going on in the 80s. Role playing consisted of a largely white, middle class, male, (presumably) heterosexual adolescent audience. Admittedly I can only base this off my own very limited perspective and the observations made at my table, the few other gamers I knew who I didn't game with, and what I saw at my local game store as well as the very limited number of very small conventions I attended.

I admit that back then I thought of gaming as strictly a male activity due to the dearth of girls and anyone who wasn't white I saw playing back then. While I wasn't hostile towards the few I saw, I never made any effort to be inclusive. I never examined the games I played and thought to myself, "How can I change this to attract more girls and other people to the game?" I don't recall others talking a whole lot about this nor do I recall reading a whole lot about being inclusive in places like Dragon or Pyramid. (Maybe they did write about this on occasion and I missed it.)

that are about as tone deaf as you could possibly be. All those other games could change their art and no one cared because no one was actually playing those games. It was D&D and then everything else. NINETY NINE percent male. Oh, but, it couldn't possibly be because of the actions of gamers, publishers and game makers. No, of course not. It's never our fault is it? We just happened to live somewhere where no girls wanted to play.

We're talking about a hobby that grew out war gaming which is also very much male dominated. I don't know if hostility was the main reason girls didn't play D&D back in the day. I can tell you I didn't observe any hostility towards girls or young women the few times I ran into one who was playing, but, like I've said earlier, my perspective is very narrow.

We're talking about an era where toys were strictly segregated by sex. When I walked into Toys R Us or Kaybee Toys I knew exactly which aisles to avoid so I could skip the junk and go straight to the cool toys. And where do you think I found D&D material? It wasn't in the girl's section. But TSR did make some effort to market to girls and women with their print and television ads. Some of those featured Gygax's own daughter all dolled up but most of them just depicted regular girls playing the game. Heck, the D&D cartoon, which probably exposed more people to D&D than the game itself, had two girls as main characters.

What baffles me, honestly, is this defensive tone. Yeah, the hobby done screwed up in the past. But, we're trying to fix that. Well done us. Why is it so hard to admit that we might not have been as good in the past as we could have been?

People might be defensive because others are presuming that hostility must have been the main reason girls weren't seen playing D&D very often. It's entirely possible that there were plenty of girls interested in role playing games but they had no interest in D&D. There were certainly a lot of girls who were keen to play Vampire in 1991.

 

[Lylandra]

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.

Yep, yet in the sciences one could argue that at least women would have tried to get into them because they are, unlike gaming, not a hobby, but some sort of calling. Or at least offering well-payed jobs. But nope, the situation has been (and in some ways still is) so bad that even today many girls don't even consider getting into STEM.

Not like they don't care for scientific topics... take your average teen girl or younger, talk to them about the stars, the universe or the complexity of life and they'll be as easily enthralled as the boys. Teach them how to program their own little games with the avatars they like and they'll love it. But "STEM" as a field? Wouldn't touch it. Which is really sad.