Tip about getting female gamers...

[kingpaul]

We have two females in our group. So my suggestion is, get married.

Yep, that's how we got our first female player, my wife.

Unfortunately, my wife still refuses to game. She tried Immortal once, didn't like it...and has refused to listen to me tell her that the other games are not like Immortal

My next tactic is to get my 2-yr-old daughter to game...but my wife isn't keen on that at the moment.

 

[barsoomcore]

I think it's naive to think that women do not have some behaviors and tendencies that are common among women as a whole.

Name one. Go on. Name one behaviour, one tendency, that ALL women possess. Sure, it may be true that MOST women exhibit behaviour A or tendency B, but what good does that do you unless you just want a shallow interaction?

You say it yourself: "Any allusions I make to understanding are merely supperficial and nothing more. "

What's the point in superficial understandings? Or are you saying that you only understand your two-year girlfriend superficially?

People are hard to understand. Human beings are complex, wacky, usually irrational creatures. Sure, physiology plays a role. So does race, class, height, place of origin and virtually every other detail. We're different from each other in so many ways. Does this mean we can't understand each other? Or only in superficial ways?

I don't think so. I think it's entirely possible to understand another person. Never perfectly, of course -- people will always surprise you and themselves. But if you pay attention, listen to what they say and watch what they do, of course you can understand them.

I don't find women any harder to understand than men. Some women I know are very easy to understand, while some guys I've known for years still make me scratch my head in confusion.

In my opinion, if you think you understand women or anyone else for that fact, you are lying to yourself.

Really? I used to hold that opinion myself. But I came to realize that there's a long continuum between "perfect" understanding and "no" understanding. The fact that people can surprise you doesn't mean you don't understand them.

My real complaint with your comment, Arravis, has to do with the way you seem to take one woman's actions to be representative of ALL women. So that if one woman does something you don't understand, suddenly you don't understand WOMEN.

Did you understand why Prince changed his name to that kooky symbol? Did you go around the next day saying, "Gee, I just don't understand men?"

Maybe you did. Maybe for you it's all about biology and inability. Maybe I'm lying to myself.

But when Socrates says, "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance," I don't see how that means we can't understand each other.

(sorry, typos again)

 

[Arravis]

Everyone is an individual, physiology plays different roles in different people depending on their own circumstance. But there are clear and obvious tendencies. If you choose not to see them, that's your concern.

People are extremely complex, you can never truly understand someone. To claim to do so insults them, I feel. Everyone is complicated, but the closer they are to your own experience and situation, the more of them you understand you are likely to understand. It's easier for me to understand the behavior of a computer-geek guy gamer then the behavior of a mountaineering catholic priest. My life experience and situtation are alot closer to the gamer-geek and therefor I can closer relate and understand situations he's likely to find himself in. I can guess how the mountaineering catholic priest feels and lives his life, but it's only a guess not based on any real experience. In the end, since it's just a guess, it's a basic coin toss.

I don't have breasts or a vagina, I don't produce large amounts of estrogen, I can't give birth or have all the social pressures and issues that women have. I can only guess at those things. Thus, it's really a coin toss. I try not to simplify people by pretending I understand them. I love my girlfriend for all the wonderful complicated things she does, not because I always understand them. I try to understand them, always, but in the end, it's just a guess.

I think on this issue we simply have to agree to disagree. I suspect you don't understand where I'm coming from, nor I you.

 

[alsih2o]

Did you understand why Prince changed his name to that kooky symbol?

i completely understood that one... i am not stating it didn't make him an easy target, but it made complete sense to me.

did you read any of his reasons?

 

[Damon Griffin]

Can they quote Monty Python or Princess Bride? (you gotta know that would get points with me ) If the answer to any of those is yes, then that person might enjoy roleplaying. The person's gender doesn't really have anything to do with it.

A group of us watched The Princess Bride (no, not for the first time) just last night. [Warning: For those who have not yet experienced the DVD, the line "Have fun storming the castle!" seems to have been included in EVERY -- SINGLE -- ONE -- of the bonus features on the disc. I recommend NOT watching all the bonus features in a single sitting, short as they are.]

In a previous Forgotten Realms campaign, my wife Peni wrote her character background such that her father had committed suicide in connection with massive accumulated debt, which she was working diligently to pay off. Later, the DM revealed that her father's death wasn't as voluntary as she'd thought, and that he'd actually been murdered and matters arranged to look like a suicide.

By now she'd paid off the debts and could shift her focus to finding her father's killer(s). She began to rehearse the line "Hello. My name is Garnet Stormweather. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Quotes from Monty Python, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Babylon 5, Princess Bride and a dozen other sources are weekly staples of our game (sometimes to the annoyance of one or two of our group members who aren't as thoroughly steeped in this stuff as the rest of us).

Regarding the general observation that female gamers tend to be less inclined toward fight fests, and often have a keener interest in the roleplaying aspects of the game than their male counterparts, this may shed a bit of light:

My wife was recently reading a book about aggression in girls; it mentioned in passing a UCLA study which suggested that the well known "fight or flight" option was incomplete; that there is a "tend and befriend" option which occurs more readily to females than to males. In brief, the "tend and befriend" option asks the question "who can I ally with in order to get out of this situation, or at least reduce the danger to myself?"

If the UCLA study has any validity, then it would make sense that male gamers are more likely than females to limit their options to "Huzzah! We attack!" or "Run away! Run away!", while women may be more likely than men to say "Wait, maybe we can come to some kind of understanding and avoid the fight altogether."

The XP system being what it is, it's clear that D&D was written by men. Few activities are worth as many points as killing something. ("Huzzah!")

Oh, and FWIW, most of my gaming has been done with only one or two female gamers in the group at a time (often none), over the course of many years and many different groups. However, my present group consists of 5 men and 3 women, plus one more woman on the periphery who runs a LARP that three of our tabletop gamers play in; she herself no longer has time for tabletop pursuits and was never a very regular player when she did.

 

[barsoomcore]

did you read any of his reasons?

Oh yeah, actually I put that in there because I feel like I did understand, but figured most people wouldn't. Cheers!

 

[alsih2o]

Oh yeah, actually I put that in there because I feel like I did understand, but figured most people wouldn't. Cheers!

i feel so much better, i thought i was the only one who got that

 

[barsoomcore]

I suspect you don't understand where I'm coming from, nor I you.

Not at all. I understand you perfectly. Heh.

 

[barsoomcore]

The XP system being what it is, it's clear that D&D was written by men. Few activities are worth as many points as killing something. ("Huzzah!")

Yeah, that always burns me. IMC, I set CRs for encounters or challenges rather than creatures -- so you get the XP simply for getting through the encounter or succeeding at the challenge, regardless of whether or not you killed anything. Killing a creature in and of itself isn't worth anything -- solving problems and achieving goals is.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Yeah, that always burns me. IMC, I set CRs for encounters or challenges rather than creatures -- so you get the XP simply for getting through the encounter or succeeding at the challenge, regardless of whether or not you killed anything. Killing a creature in and of itself isn't worth anything -- solving problems and achieving goals is.

3e does give XP for defeating traps, same as if a monster of the same CR had been defeated, but past that, our group has always been obliged to award "bonus" XP for any worthwhile activity that doesn't involve killing. I don't like having to call these "bonus" points because (a) the core rules should be giving me points for this kind of thing; and (b) it sounds like I'm getting extra points on top of those that most people get for "Huzzah! We attack!" when in fact I'm getting these points instead of the combat XP in most cases.

We also recognize that non-violent approaches to a situation often should be worth fewer points, and we're okay with that. If I kill the rampaging monster, it's dead and won't bother the village any more. Full XP. If all I do is drive it off before any villagers got hurt (this time), okay, I encountered the monster and survived, but I did not achieve a long term solution. Fewer points. Now, if I find out why the monster is repeatedly attacking, and arrange matters so that he/she/it no longer feels it necessary to threaten the village, then, yes, that should be worth the same number of XP as killing it...maybe even more.

Doesn't really matter as long as DM and players agree on what things should be worth XP, and how many.