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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010397" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine RackSizing up the TargetThe Slayer’s Guide to Female Gamers is a 32-page humorous gaming supplement written by James Desborough and published by Mongoose Publishing. This softcover publication retails for $9.95.First BloodThe Slayer’s Guide to Female Gamers is another humorous entry in Mongoose’s Slayer’s Guide series along the lines of The Slayer’s Guide to Rules Lawyers. This time Mongoose takes aim at those “inhuman and unknowable” mythical creatures – the female gamer, and in doing so takes the male gamer stereotype to the absolute extreme.This supplement gives you a hilarious look at these mysterious figments of gamer imagination. You’ll learn the history of females in gaming, and a bit about their physiology. We learn the important fact, for instance, that “female gamers are not actually women … [but rather a] sub-species of demi-human”, a result of rather careful comparison between fantasy illustrations and real-life gamers that brings to light the rather disturbing lack of chainmail bikinis in real life. Female Gamers reveals the hideous weapons of these creatures – their fuzzy logic, tides, and hypnotic boobs – as well as preferred methods of warfare – catfights and dimensional mallets. A discussion of habitat brings out explanations for the typical “gaggle” of female gamers, along with their ingrained cruelty and relations with more typical fatbeards, munchkins, rules lawyers, and thespians (a bit of a nod to The Slayer’s Guide to Rules Lawyers).You’ll learn the secrets of female gamer roleplaying, everything from “playing the Princess” to “playing the Wench”. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to handle the situation if ever you have a female gamer join your roleplaying group.There are even a number of game mechanics for your female gamers – prestige classes like the “Velvet Goldmine” and “Ladette”; secrets of feminine magic, with spells like Male Servitude and Power Word –Fine; and even the critical feats of Pout and Cry. No gaming group should be without these critical rules additions.Critical HitsIf you’re a bit open-minded, and like this sort of self-deprecating humor, you’ll find that The Slayer’s Guide to Female Gamers is deucedly funny stuff. Don’t let the title fool you – it makes fun of all gamer stereotypes, and males come off much worse than females. To put it all into perspective, let me share my favorite quote from the book:“No amount of Jack Chick tracts can convince someone gaming is evil after they see first hand how fundamentally lame it is.”Better have a thick skin.Critical MissesIf you’re one of those poor, sad people suffering from osteoporosis of the funny bone, you’ll probably think that the contents of Female Gamers are sexist and that the humor is misogynist. You’ll be wrong, but I won’t be able to convince you of that.Female Gamers does suffer from a lack of real gaming content. The few “feats” and “spells” are better suited to players than player characters – there’s nothing here that’s going to enhance your game. I mention this because one of Mongoose’s later humorous products (Encyclopedia Arcane: Nymphology) actually contains some tidbits of useful gaming material – which makes this earlier product look a little incomplete in retrospect.Coup de GraceThe Slayer’s Guide to Female Gamers provides some very funny reading, but it is virtually devoid of gaming content (though what is present is OGC) – there’s really nothing you’re likely to play with here. If we had a humor-only score I’d give it an “A”, but scored against real gaming attributes this product sadly suffers.To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=385&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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