To WotC: How to Pick Up Girls

[DM_Jeff]

This is an open letter to WotC about the 4e announcements…and girls. They’re like oil and water. Am I the only one to have noticed this?

I DM for two different D&D groups. Among them, I have five savvy, smart and beautiful female players. Not a one of them have done anything except turn up their nose, smirk, or roll their eyes when presented with anything related to 4e.

I mean, have you noticed how your videos and design articles have read since GenCon? Let me give you a recap: “Monsters. Kill. Powers. Kill. Monsters. Rooms. Technologically integrated (wtf?). More rooms. Never rest. Power. Monsters. Kill. Monsters. Power. Rooms.”

Real nice. My girls like to give a good thrashing (um, in D&D) as much as the next guy. But with the talking down to we all got at GenCon and the overall ‘feel’ of 4e chasing away all the guys at my table already, at the very least you could throw the girls a rope here. I mean, while my players have already resolved to follow me and my 3.5 campaigns I have materials for over the next 21 years, if you had ‘got the girls’ with 4e we might have been looking forward to it!

Imagine: all the girls sitting around my table folding their arms refusing to play unless us guys upgraded. Hell yeah we’d shell out! But you’re doing nothing for us.

“Characters get alternate sources of power”. Good job, real sexy. Geez, who’s writing this stuff? I mean, WoD started getting the girls, late 2nd edition D&D drew them in, and then 3e D&D kept them. The launch of 3e had iconic named characters with personality (and fashion-plate sketches to boot), evocative names in the rules, and articles about the types of stories and intricate characters you can create.

With 4e all you’ve done is tell my female players they’re too dim to create effective fighting machines so you’ll redesign everything for them. The clinical approach to encounter design and monsters and rooms and killing and monsters and killing and rooms? Yeah, that’ll get them interested.

So, just a word of warning, you’ve already lost my girls. I haven’t seen any other female players jumping hoops about 4e either, and if you didn’t notice the wonderful, numerous influxes of female attendees at GenCon, you DO have another buyer base to choose from. It’s like the 70’s all over again. It’s OK, WotC, go talk to the girls. They won’t bite.

 

[Abe.ebA]

You neglected to include a part where you explained a solution to the problem.

Any girls interested in 4e at this, vastly-pre-release, point are presumably already familiar with 3e. As such, they already know about the narrative aspects of the game and about character customization. Since all of the 4e press so-far has been aimed at convincing current players that the move to 4e will be a step up from the current edition, what else besides rules differences should they include? Info about encounter design and character design pretty much embodies the totality of crunch in d&d, which is what's going to be changing between editions. You could feasibly keep exactly the same fluff material from 3e (or 2e or 1e or whatever) and just re-write the crunchy back-end to make the transition to 4e. So why should WotC include sketches of new iconic characters, evocative place/thing/person/action names, or descriptions about how intricate your character can be when preaching the benefits of the new crunch system to players already familiar with the fluff aspects?

If you have any suggestions regarding getting girls into gaming or aspects of the new edition that might do it (simplified character design would actually probably help, provided that you pitch it as "y'know, you can make a character in like 5 minutes and see if you like the game" rather than, "WotC thinks you're a moron because you're a girl, so they're taking away all the BigHardMath and putting it in the boy box") I'd like to hear them. I'm not WotC, but I do have a lot of female friends who don't game that could drastically increase my pool of potential players if they were interested.

 

[DM_Jeff]

This is why I posted it under humor, I was feeling sarcastic and ticklish this morning, that's all. Not making a real serious commentary or anything, I'm sure they'll get around to it as the release date draws closer. Maybe...

-DM Jeff

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

The move toward an "older" feel of the game is a good one. While we'll always have proponents of different gaming styles, the mood and reaction to 4E's announcements appears to be positive. Your post seems to attribute female gamers to those types of players that prefer intrigue over dungeon delving, character concepts over character advancement, and method acting over rolling dice. I know some gamer girls that would disagree with what appears to me as stereotypical pigeon-holing. Since when did women unite against technology?

The moment 4E tries to kow-tow to all the diverse factions of player types is the moment it loses its soul. Pick a theme, stick with it, make the best damned game possible. That's the mantra, and the mantra is good. Pleasing everyone via political correctness results in the dilution of the very potion that makes D&D...well, D&D.

You haven't see the result that is 4E, nor have I. Seems a little early to pass judgment - on the game, or on its potential female fan base. Small sample sizes general result in flawed and general attributions levied at the community in whole.

Maybe you're right and women will burn 4E books and fawn over grognard 3.5 DMs. If so, and because thus far I've liked pretty much everything I've seen and heard about 4E, it looks like I'm lucky I'm already married. Plus, I'm ugly.

W.P.

 

[Obergnom]

Hehe,

allthough you posted it as humor, I think there is some truth in there. I have yet to meet a female gamer concerned about balance (be it encounter or class balance)... being able to play an interesting and well liked character (ie. lots of options to build different characters fitting to their personal vision and being able to contribute without hours of intricate character building and management) allways seemed to be what they were looking for. (And rarely found in 3.5)

 

[Eridanis]

Over to the 4E forum we go...

 

[Eldragon]

Since my entire strategy for picking up girls consists creating a first impression where I insult them, I think WOTC is doing a pretty good job.

 

[schporto]

I haven't seen all of the 4e material, but I think DM_Jeff's 'girls' would've like the see a more narrative based view. So I looked at the video showing the DnDI(? - where the persenter is moving pieces on the virtual board). It looks more like chess. Instead have an iconic up there moving, and tell a story doing it. Play act this out. Have the two (or more) people sitting at computers and playing using the DnDI. Just moving and stuff. Have one of the people be female.
I think its in the packaging.
-cpd

 

[Gothic_Demon]

I have three girls in my six person gaming group, and their first comments on the videos were:

"Character generator I can see my character in! Yeah!"
"A board without having to carry my carefully painted figures! Yeah!"
"What do you mean no Eberron upgrade? What's gonna happen to my warforged!"

So, two out of three techy answers for me. Not a bad result. Maybe it's just your girls in particular?

 

[DM_Jeff]

Anyway, glad most are taking this in the funny way I intended (yet still offering my opinion). Let me sort of the tech part:

The girls I game with love their computers just fine. They're not afraid of them or anything, it's just the selling point of making online supplementary tools and "virtual tabletops" does nothing at all for them. They shrug. They're simply not impressed at all. They'd use it, I suppose, but it's not a plus to them, so far they've told me it seems silly. I don't know, I just hang out with them sometimes (except the one I married, who I hang out with all the time).

All in all I was just offering a commentary on how "boyz and their toyz" 4e seems to be focused on.

-DM Jeff