opinions of "Asterids parlor"

[ironvyper]

Now i am gonna preface this so i dont seem like a jerk right off. I have been gaming and GMing for years, but i am not super old (25 lol) and half my group is females and allways has been.

In my experiance female gamers and newby girls have by far felt the most comfortable in games when they are treated just like everyone else. No guys going out of thier way to be rude, and no PC (political correctness in this case) coddling either.

I have tried both ways, being nuetral and being coddling, (not in my nature to be a jerk for no reason) and inevitably when i tried to go out of my way to treat a girl gamer in the way that my admittedly very male, and very akward in this department brain says a girl should be treated she gets bored or tells me not to treat her special and just DM like i normally would, then i do and everyone has fun.

But recently i have been looking at the WOTC forums for 4e stuff and stumbled onto this section. Now maybe its just the half dozen threads i have read on there but it makes me wonder, are most players this whiny and PC? Are most newbies really looking this hard for anything to be offended over? And to any female gamers, do you really want to be treated this differently then guy gamers are treated?

this just seems like a huge step backward from making groups work together. Anytime you start separating people, by race, or gender or religion you start breaking them apart into groups and making them adversarial. So if this step is designed to make people work start being nice, its just plain dumb. And if its just market research by WoTC its not just dumb and divisive its offensive to me as a male because it seems from the tone of the "parlor" that guys dont know how to act around women.

I guess i am looking for others opinions on this and after reading a page or two of the topics if this actualy adds anything to gaming or just leads to more divisive infighting at a time when the new edition allready has the community eating each other alive?

 

[Aus_Snow]

I've played in, or run, campaigns with female players and/or DM, quite a lot. Most of the time, actually.

And this:

In my experiance female gamers and newby girls have by far felt the most comfortable in games when they are treated just like everyone else. No guys going out of thier way to be rude, and no PC (political correctness in this case) coddling either.

. . . sums up my experiences perfectly, too.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

With apologies to MLK

I have a dream that my four little Players will one day play in a game group where they will not be judged by the shape of their skin but by the content of their Player Characters.

If they have problems with your style of game...
Treat 'em like people.

If they have problems with the language at your table...
Treat 'em like people.

If they have problems with other gamers at your table...
Treat 'em like people.

 

[GAAAHHH]

With apologies to MLK


If they have problems with your style of game...
Treat 'em like people.

If they have problems with the language at your table...
Treat 'em like people.

If they have problems with other gamers at your table...
Treat 'em like people.

Soylent Green is made of people!

 

[krissbeth]

Uh, yeah, but it's still nice to chat with other women with an interest in gaming.

Plus, questions like this show me exactly why I can't stand a lot of gaming men and prefer to chat in the company of women.

 

[frankthedm]

Plus, questions like this show me exactly why I can't stand a lot of gaming men and prefer to chat in the company of women.

Care to elaborate? To me his questions sound reasonable and logical.

 

[JustKim]

Care to elaborate? To me his questions sound reasonable and logical.

I found the book pretty dreadful and I haven't been to the forum at all, but I can elaborate from my own perspective. Imagine that you are a member of a small minority, at least in representation, on a message board. Imagine that you will often be the only member of your minority chiming in on a particular subject and that others will probably not relate to you if you do. Imagine that there was a distinct board set up so that you would hopefully not be the minority anymore, and imagine that someone took a look at what was being discussed there and said "what's the point of all this?"

Do you see how the question could be taken sourly?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Imagine that you are a member of a small minority, at least in representation, on a message board...and imagine that someone took a look at what was being discussed there and said "what's the point of all this?"

Do you see how the question could be taken sourly?

I'm black, a Roman Catholic, a metalhead & a gamer who lives in Texas- I'm never in the majority.

IME, a safe harbor can be quite comforting to those within it, and it can provide an environment to discuss what would otherwise never be.

However, it doesn't lead to deeper understanding between those within and without, and at worst, can actually lead to alienation. One of the reasons I didn't attend a HBCU (Historically Black College or University) when I had the option- for free!- was that many of them have become so insular that larger and larger portions of the graduates are preaching the virtues of self-segregation as a cure for social ills like racism.

 

[roguerouge]

Dude, it's the interwebs. If it bothers you to be excluded, create a fake account and go pretend to be a woman in those forums.

 

[FriarRosing]

Think about it this way, dudes:

We live in a male-centric society for the most part, right? And D&D is generally a game enjoyed mostly by dudes. So if you're a lady playing with some dudes, and something comes up that bothers you, or is an issue in anyway, you'll probably be unlikely to bring it up. Or you'd just let it slide or something like that. The point of having a forum like that is so that you can have a place where you're comfortable bringing up issues that you hadn't mentioned to anyone because you might not have felt it was the place, or even worth mentioning in that environment.

I don't think the point is to say, "Hey women! Shun all those men and come over here and talk about how D&D hates women!" or anything like that. The point is to have a place where female players can mention things that they would be unlikely to mention some place else. Not that everything that'll come up would be big deal or anything like that, but just to have a place where anything could at least get said.