One thing that's come up in my reminisces on the origins of the hobby, both my entry to it and of the hobby itself, is the concept of women at the gaming table. Based on my own experience, I don't don't get the stories of their disinterest in the hobby. In the heady early 80's of fifth grade we had some girls in our class play since it was the height of the fad and everyone played. They all gave it up by 6th grade, but by 8th grade - while my group was all XY chromosome types - I was in touch with another group with regular female players.
Fast forward to 11th and 12th grade and I was regularly playing with that group which was a male DM, 5 male players and 2 female players, neither of which were the DM's girlfriend. This group was out of town and I had to drive to it, but my in town group, by this point, also contained women, with upwards of 3 of them at the table by the time we left for college. Two (Jen and Amy) of those came into it through being girlfriends of players. The third was dating me but I met her via gaming and she'd been at the table as long as any of us had been. Plus once Jen and I went to UConn she continued to game even though she was no longer seeing the guy from our hometown gaming group. The "DM's girlfriend" stereotype just didn't hold water.
Once in college my game groups were 1/3 to 1/2 women (sometimes making up the majority of the players with the gender parity coming from me behind the screen), which is a ratio that has held true ever since. My wife wasn't a gamer when we got married but I assiduously courted her with settings tailored to her interests and simple mechanics (though she was likely hooked just by listening to the hilarity emerging from the group on game days). My current Mech & Matrimony group is 3 women to 1 man as players, if the scheduled Girl Genius game had gone off it would have been all women players and my PBEM is 3 women to 2 men as players. The parent and child group of A Distant Inheritance would have a larger female contingent if Jay or Kris had ever produced a female spawn.
So that's my personal experience, which doesn't seem to hew at all to the general consensus: my circle has lots of gaming women, couples and families. The question to the masses is if my experience is so atypical. (The secondary question is: If so, why? I can acknowledge in the early days my gaming group also being my theater buddies rather than wargaming friends might have had something to do with it, but what about from college on, when no one was doing theater any more.)
Plans for 2024: Creation of an NSR setting for super-heroes; My D&D 3E campaign as an example of sandboxing via published adventure, and likely more.
My data all supports the stereotype. One girl joined my Call of Cthulhu campaign in high school because, I discovered, she was interested in me. Once we broke up, she stopped.
ReplyDeleteIn college, my groups were all male, and only one woman ever expressed interest in joining, but that was unfortunately late in my final year and I had wrapped up most of the gaming by then. Note that while I lived in an all-male house and tended to run games for other guys who lived there, the building also contained an all-female house and we shared kitchens, laundry, and lounges.
After college things changed a little -- and (not coincidentally, I think) this was at the same time that more women started entering the hobby with the release of Vampire: The Masquerade. The Runequest game I played in had one woman player, my 1889 game had two, the Amber Diceless campaign I played in had two.
The highest female-to-male ratio in any game I've run was 50-50, in the last year or so of my GURPS 1950s Men In Black campaign, and in the current School of Night.
Jim is being a little disingenuous here -- in most of the games he cites: 1889, Amber, GURPS MIB, one of the women playing was his wife. In the School of Night game, one of the women is his wife, and the other is his daughter. So he's basically solved the ratio issue by _making his own players_.
DeleteDiane, your presence as a player certainly counts - I counted all of the 'entered gaming through boyfriend/husband' players in my list as well. The key part indicator is if the women keep playing (or would keep playing) after they break up with the guy who brung them.
DeleteAs far as building players from a kit, well, I'm still willing to give some credit for doing it the old fashioned way. If one of his female players could only play for a few hours after each lightning strike and had a greenish cast to her skin I'd probably be less charitable.
Still, I concede your point that Jim is not out actively recruiting new female players, but since I know you were originally attracted to his bookshelf of Science Fiction novels and not his mad d6 skilz he must have been doing something right via a vis gaming recruitment.
My data doesn't support the stereotype -- although, as my most regular GM -is- my girlfriend, that rather biasses the report--still, I remember at least one regular female player back in high school, and Lisa's regular Kerberos Club game is 2 women and 3 men (including her as GM).
ReplyDeleteI think that in the end -- groups that are all men will tend to stay that way. Groups that contain at least one women are more likely to get other women in them.
Given that theory, what is needed then is to seed existing game groups, a sort of feminine pluviculture that would cause it to, as they say, rain women. Now how does one go about doing that, since the metaphor breaks down at the idea of tossing fantasy and SF minded girls out of planes....
DeleteOur high school group met the stereotype; that was in the 80-82 timeframe. We had four core players and one occasional player, all male, and for a short period of time, the DM’s girlfriend.
ReplyDeleteIn college, we were on an all-male floor of a study dorm, and the only woman to play did so for one session, and came as the DM’s date.
Our current group is more varied, although the core players are from the college group (myself and two other guys) and the other players are two wives and one woman who I used to date and introduced to the game.
My current girlfriend is less interested in the game, but plays occasionally.
If I'm reading that right, all of the women players entered as significant others to the male players, even if not all of them still hold that position? That certainly seems to be the most common entry point into the hobby.
DeleteInterestingly, during my collegiate V&V game one of the players was there are the boyfriend of on of the female players (and the brother of another female player). Eventually the romantic relationship ended but the player stuck around till the end of the campaign. I don't believe he games any longer. He is still, however, the brother to the third player - in that at least he has been unswerving devoted. That makes it clear that a) he abides by the standard cliches of gamer girlfriends albeit with a gender reversal and b) that I have absorbed an entirely too Wodehousian diction from an overdose of Blandings Castle.
My brother played and that was my original introduction, but I never played. Then I meet the infamous Lounge Livers of Shippee Hall, and still never played. That might have been because I was getting a theatre degree and had zero free time in college. Then I started dating a DM and that was a brief beginning into D&D. Then, finally Brian sucked me into his gaming-verse. I wouldn't have continued to play if my only option was looong term games of D&D, I don't find it all that interesting. I love the variety of shortish games that Brian creates.
ReplyDeleteI've never played a game as the only woman and frequently there have been more of us than them. but, I only play int the Brian-verse, so I'm part of why he's posed the question.
Good to know that you aren't interested in long term games of D&D - alas that's something I'm kinda starting with the family group (well, long term for me, it'll probably last 9 months...). I do wonder if the shorter term games that I run act as a draw for some players - especially female players. I know that it makes them more narrative in their design since we have less time to randomly explore.
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