Turnabout Is Fair Play - Female Gamers

[Merkuri]

Heh, I was the gamer first, and when I started going out with him Awayfarer would sit at my house and browse through my D&D books when I couldn't give him my full attention. It was his first experience with D&D, and before I knew it I invited him to my weekly online game. Now he's our DM.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Every female gamer I've met got into RPGs independent of any male companion.

Most girlfriends I see dragged to the gaming table either leave from boredom or because the GM after the game politely asks the boyfriend not to drag people to the game who don't want to be there to play the game.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Playing with women is trouble. They don't care about roleplaying, just like to hack and slash, swear too much at the table (which tends to embarrass male players and make it difficult to add new ones to the group), and tend to always have sex on their minds and manage to find really crude innuendoes in everything.

Trouble, I tell you.

This was my experience in college, where about half the group was generally female. I tell you, the women got the party into so much trouble, it was great!

 

[Greylock]

Every single group I have played with, no exceptions, has had at least one female gamer. The group I am currently in is split 50/50, plus the DM. Not sure where the stereotypes come from, because I have played for over twenty years and never have played in an all male group.

 

[pawsplay]

I think once you get past the five year mark or so in terms of experience, the gender gap narrows to nearly nothing, and then widens again once you cross 25 years or so. There was definitely a difference in the old hobby industry, and it seems boys are much more likely to get hooked at a young age due to the activities they often pursue. But I don't think gaming, or any specific style of gaming, seems to be very gender specific.

 

[maddman75]

Playing with women is trouble. They don't care about roleplaying, just like to hack and slash, swear too much at the table (which tends to embarrass male players and make it difficult to add new ones to the group), and tend to always have sex on their minds and manage to find really crude innuendoes in everything.

Trouble, I tell you.

This matches my experience exactly, only not so much with the swearing.

In the last game I was in, the girl gamer ran off with the GM. Since I was the GM, it worked out well for me.

 

[DM_Jeff]

It's a new generation. My wife was into D&D before me of her own accord, we currently have 1 of our male gamers 'cause he's married to one of my female players who joined on her own, and my 2nd group has a female gamer whose fiance stays home and plays video games.

-DM Jeff

 

[lukelightning]

They don't care about roleplaying, just like to hack and slash...

I know you meant this in jest, but of the 5 women that I have gamed with for any length of time, 4 seemed irrationally bloodthirsty.

DM: "You enter the tavern, the bartender says 'good day.' What do you do?"
Female Player: "I stab him in the throat with my spear."
Rest of us: *Stunned silence*

I'm not sure if she did that to be evil (despite the fact that her character was 'neutral good') or if she was just inexperienced and thought that was what you're supposed to do in the game (which has a sort of logic to it...we killed everything else we encountered...).

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

The only group I've been in that didn't have at least one gal-gamer was in the Navy, and once my wife joined the group, that didn't hold true either.

I met my wife in the Air Force and, although the initial attraction was there outside of gaming, the fact that she was a gamer sinched it for me.

I think not having a gender balance, or at least one person to off-set the imbalance, is crucial to a good game. My Navy group had a hard time staying on track and power-gamed pretty horribly, until my wife came along and straightened them out.

 

[KenSeg]

Our group is evenly divided as we are two married couples. The DM and his wife were both gamers who met at a convention. She got into gaming on her own. I was the gamer and introduced my wife to gaming back when we were dating in high school, long long ago.

-KenSeg
gaming since 1978