You asked~Female gamers

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

Just my two cents here...our newest player is a girl. She's a self-admitted nerd now, but before she was a preppy, popular girl (who just recently balked at shopping one day since it was preventing her from playing D&D with us--she couldn't believe what she had said, LOL)Anyway, she's a big, buff, female elven fighter, and she loves combat. Now, granted, she's only played in two or so games, but I still find that fairly surprising.

The two other women I've gamed with are my grandmother and my first DM's wife--women of 68 and late 40s respectivley--also didn't seem to mind combat either. But that was first edition in a very hack and slash game...

 

[Humanophile]

...

You're losing rhetorical ground here. (Mind you, I agree with you, but that's besides the point.) A game can be designed one way or the other, but when there's combat there's a dice roll, when there's a dice roll there's always number crunching, and when heads butt people will always be the same whether they're rolling D20's, D10's, or D6's. Leaving aside whether it's right or wrong, nature or nurture, a majority of current gamers will have a black/white, right-wrong, linear mentality. (As a matter of fact, I think that a large part of the appeal of fantasy to many of these people is a reality where Good and Evil are clearly and neatly labeled, sectioned, and where you can dole out a good beating and leave things at that. It's linear and neanderthal, but if we don't want to alienate potential gamers, we shouldn't alienate a sure thing either.) As such, your wannabe he-men and mathematicians will be the things barring girls from coming back to the table, or even coming to it in the first place. And I strongly question the wisdom of making rules to discourage them. They're paying customers as opposed to possible customers, and I think we can all agree that a White Wolf system or somesuch isn't exactly the best or easiest system to work with.

So while it's possible to create a game that'd be more attractive to girls, you'd need a different type of gamer around the table, and a setting/ruleset to match. And of the three, I think that D&D's legacy and inertia will make it hard pressed to meet any of the above.

 

[S'mon]

Re: Re: You asked~Female gamers

The art in gaming has always been something that bugged me. I've never seen any trends towards non-violent or violent gaming in either sex (or any other easily generalized trends) but the portrayal of women in game products has always bugged me.

For example, every last female character in Mage Knight Dungeons is clad in little more than butt floss and a few strategic scraps of armor. If I had daughter, I could never imagine myself picking up such a product for her. Our male heroes can be puny weaklings (Raistlin) or tubby layabouts (Bilbo Baggins). Heck, the ugly fighter is a classic D&D stereotype. Yet, female heroes are consistently portrayed as sex objects. It's a stupid double standard, it sends a message better confined to teeny bopper magazines and other pop culture trash, and is a state of mind the gaming industry would do well to leave behind. Admittedly, things are much better than they used to be, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

As a male purchaser of RPG product with a dislike for political correctness, I'd like to see the same variety in depiction of female characters as with male - I like the big-bosomed barbarian babes type art, likewise the mighty-thewed, loincloth clad male barbarian, but in fantasy there's equally a place for fully-armoured female knights a la Joan of Arc or nerdy little bespectacled female wizards, as well as seductress sorceresses, scantily-clad rogues, ugly half-orc female fighters, etc. I strongly disagree with people who want to ban any 'cheescake' art whatsoever, but it certainly shouldn't be the only art around. Variety is the spice of life.

I'd also argue that different sorts of art are appropriate to different products - the art in the 3 core D&D 3e rulebooks comes across to me as blandly inoffensive, which is ok - these are core books aimed at the widest possible market. Art for Lankhmar or Conan type product should be very different from art for a Tolkienesque world, say.

 

[Wolfspider]

EDIT: A wave of good sense crashed into me, so I deleted my post.

 

[Kichwas]

Re: Re: Re: You asked~Female gamers

I like the big-bosomed barbarian babes type art, likewise the mighty-thewed, loincloth clad male barbarian, but in fantasy there's equally a place for fully-armoured female knights a la Joan of Arc or nerdy little bespectacled female wizards, as well as seductress sorceresses, scantily-clad rogues, ugly half-orc female fighters, etc. I strongly disagree with people who want to ban any 'cheescake' art whatsoever, but it certainly shouldn't be the only art around. Variety is the spice of life.

I Strongly agree.

I don't mind the cheesecake. I love it. I do mind the lack of beefcake.

To me fantasy imagry is all about Frazetta and Vallejo and that crowd.

It should be sensual, nearly erotic; and powerful, full of emotion and dynamic energy.

It's fantasy after all. I want it bigger than life.

 

[Klaus]

As an artist, I wanted to add to the discussion of art styles and the portrayal of women.

Being married, I have a pretty good gauge at home when I create female pictures. I try always to portray characters that my wife would like to play. And I tend to avoid the chainmail-bikini syndrome.

Take a look at the females portrayed throughout my website (like in the sig). There are a lot of sexy women, most of them fully dressed (I must mention the Bard in my Core Classes section, who is dressed in trousers, leather armor, long-sleeved blouse, and yet just screams "sexy"). And my Core Races females are all dressed up.

(Okay, so maybe I did a wallpaper featuring the Bard in a leather bra. That was after many requests, and she's far more dressed than what was riginally requested ).

My two cents.

 

[Carnifex]

Female gamers? Well, my current group is 50% females, (4 out of 8). To be honest, they're all dedicated and excellent roleplayers. *shrug* so it makes it hard to pick out any differences over hack'n'slash opinions etc.

 

[Wuxia]

Take a look at the females portrayed throughout my website (like in the sig). There are a lot of sexy women, most of them fully dressed (I must mention the Bard in my Core Classes section, who is dressed in trousers, leather armor, long-sleeved blouse, and yet just screams "sexy").

Right. And as far as "core classes" are concerned, Lidda is certainly the cuttest little thing in the PH. And she's as dressed as can be, and she's not "all in curves" either.

 

[Darklone]

Hmmm

Several points noone here seemed to mention (and yes, I DID read all the posts):

- Many here talked about violence being caused by male psychology. I strongly disagree. Women use mental violence, men rely more on their superior physical strength. Many crimes committed by men would have been committed by women too if they had the physical means to do it. So much for the statistics. E.g: Manslaughter while screaming at each other will more often see the woman dead.

- Female gamers. I am rather young here (closing in on 30), but I played more than 20 years... That way I noticed many changes in gamers society. I think the main reason for less female gamers is still that most of them don't know the game or don't think they would be allowed to play. It takes something to enter a sworn group of gamers even for a man, for women it may be lots harder. How often do I hear about girlfriends who joined a game group after listening or watching several times? Most women I know never knew what roleplaying was about and had no intention to find out. When they did, they were interested.

- About violence in gaming... Hmm. Just started a newbie group with two women and three guys. Very intelectual group that one. They had made it clear that they didn't want to confront problems that consisted of hacking and slashing your way through hordes of enemies. Ok. I used a villain that murdered some farmers and set up an ambush with undeads. As the players defeated that ambush (Wizards Amulet from Necromancergames), I did it as someone at the necro boards proposed and let the villain accuse the players for murder in the next village... they were put into jail. As the cityguards told them to drop the weapons and follow them, they all suddenly wanted to kill them . It's the easy way to go. If you wanna have fun and relax, thinking about non violent solutions is tough. Bashing everything you encounter is easy and satisfying. That's my experience with both females and males.

Summa summarum: I think we will have more female players in the next 15 years... I already noticed more teenagers talking about roleplaying games compared to when I was young. Most small kids I know do know roleplaying. The more little guys there are who roleplay, the more girls hear about it. The more males and females know roleplaying, the more gonna play IMHO. No need to think about how to make the game more appealing to females, they will play it how they like it. I don't see many differences between the genders as soon as both know about roleplaying.

Hmm perhaps one difference. Women in my groups and others I know tend to play male characters. They say it's easier. Since they don't wanna play against the stereotype that women are more peaceful.

 

[Ashtal]

And here's the first battle axe:

Notice how eager you are to fight???

And notice how eager you are to associate her reply with anger?

It read more frustrated to me, which is how I felt reading this thread starting from the beginning.

You know, I wouldn't chance a thing - A SINGLE THING - about gaming as it stands, except making sure that women weren't all tits and asses and pieces of meat. That's all you have to change and for the most part, that's already happened. As long as you don't carry over the unfortunate sexism of real life into your game table and make women feel uncomfortable being there, then those WHO LIKE FANTASY will play these games.

There's no big secret to getting people to play these games - they will either like it or not. But if the material is sexist, or the men she plays with are sexist, then she's not going to play with that group. She may drop it, she may find others, but it's like anyone out there, male or female: if you make them feel like the odd person out, like they don't belong, or that they are weird or different from you, they aren't going to have a very positive experience. THAT keeps people out of gaming, not artificial barriers based on gender expectations.