Women and Role-Playing Games

I think it’s still safe to say that our hobby of table top role-playing games is still dominated by guys.  By and large, ladies are not as into role-playing games.  So why is that?

I can give you some generalities, but I’m going to skip those and go for some that I think you can do something about.  But let me start with some stories about the early days of Legend Quest.  When I was designing LQ, we had several ladies gaming with us, but most of them wanted to play the games that were more board games or war games and seemed to endure the role-playing games because they were our friends.

As I was sketching the game rules out, a lot of the initial discussions were at bars, basically taking notes on napkins and brainstorming some ideas.  At that time I can tell you that I thought more about some of the ladies’ opinions then all but a couple of the guys’.  So when they told me things, I listened.  Some of what they said was that they hated all the different dice.  They found them confusing and saw no purpose to them.  They hated that everything seemed to have different rules.  If you learned how to play a mage, you had no idea how to play a warrior or rogue.  (Honestly - That was a huge part of my focus as well, and it shows in LQ.)

So what happened?  Well, I was focused on the rule book and supplements.  We had a lady running the business side of things, including the marketing.  She had a great idea.  You know how people put up all types of flyers at the smaller conventions?  Well she realized that none of the other game companies had women working with them, so she made up a specific flyer aimed at everything she loved about Legend Quest, and she hung them inside the stalls in the women’s bathroom.  We had women racing over, some dragging their boyfriends behind them.  Why?  Because we had actually listened to them.

So I said I would give you ideas of what you can do that will actually affect the outcome.  Here are some:  Many women are put off by role-playing games because of the way people have tried to teach them.  Handing a girl dice and saying roll those without explaining anything is a bad idea.  You will do better if you explain the why of what she’s doing.  This goes for most people, but for some reason gamers have a reputation for marginalizing the female folk.  I know I’m generalizing broadly here, but playing the percentages, much of this is probably true.

You need to let her create the character she wants.  Especially if she’s not too thrilled about playing, sticking her with the character the party needs, but she doesn’t want, is going to keep her face buried in her phone and not paying attention to the game.  This is where your game rules might not be helping you.  If she wants to play Catwoman and you give her a healer, forget it.  She’s not onboard.

If you’re thinking this is all about your approach, you’re right!  Where I’ve had the most luck was in sitting down with a new female player before the rest of the players get there.  "What kind of character do you want?"  Way too broad a question.  You can try to explain the different classes, but with most people, that won’t work.  I like to start with, “think about your favorite fantasy movie (typically Lord of the Rings) - who was your favorite character?”  LotR actually works well, because nearly everyone was a guy.  If you ask her about the Avengers, she might say Black Widow, even if that isn’t the type of character she would want to play.  The other thing that works is asking her how she wants her character in the game to fight - what’s your weapon?  Dagger, sword, spear, bow, fire spell, lightning bolt.  If she says she doesn’t want to fight, then you can discuss healers and the like, but more often than not, she’ll give you a pretty good idea of who she wants to be simply by choosing a weapon.

Chances are, the time will come when either you or one of your buddies wants to get his girlfriend to play.  How you start her off?  How you teach her to play?  These things are hugely important!  Start her off right, and you just might have a new player for life!

Why can I talk?  Because I got to know my wife over a gaming table - admittedly a miniatures game and not an RPG, but later RPGs.  I had GMed for girls all through HS and they came back more than once, even the one I threw things at because she said she was bored and wanted to order in pizza (which should have meant she was hungry, not bored, but anyway).  I have also GMed for my daughter and her friends.  This isn’t a case of being a GM for a girl once.  My games have typically run 25-33% female.  Am I an expert?  Maybe, maybe not, but at least this is experienced advice.

This post was written as part of the recently released The Zondarton Tribes:  The Fiercest Females aka All About Women in Role-Playing, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with orcs, but with a mind to making them interesting and far less predictable then they have been in far too many campaign worlds.

We hope we’re getting you interested?  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 48 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

Can Chicks Play RPGs?

Women playing RPGs has always been a questionable subject.  Most gamers were typically male, but as the times change so do the players.  So the answer is Yes, women can play, but there are some things you might want to watch out for.

First - Classifying all women into one group doesn’t work.  Every person is different and broad generalizations don’t work.  But there are some common issues that many women face when they are first trying RPGs.  So these aren’t for every single woman who might be joining your game, but they are common themes and likely to help.  These are good ideas for teaching anyone a new game, but there does seem to be something about teaching females that forces males to make these mistakes over and over again.

A too often tried way of “teaching” someone to play RPGs was to tell them which dice to use but never telling them why.  Male or female, this doesn’t work.  Now the best thing to do (wink wink) is to just play Legend Quest, because then you only need ten-siders.  But failing that, tell them why they are using that / those dice.  If the d20 is for attacking and the d8 is for damage, tell her that.  She will get it.

Anecdotally, several of us at Board Enterprises have detected what we believe is a pattern.  There is no science behind this, but women don’t seem to be as seduced by dice as men are.  We’re sure there are women out there who also have backpacks filled with dice, but far more often a woman only wants one set of dice, maybe one for each character.  Meanwhile, guys are buying dice they don’t have any use for.  Games with more dice seem to appeal to guys and with fewer dice seem to appeal to women.  We would love to open this one up for discussion, because we’re curious why!

Somewhat similarly - we think we’ve seen this trend - women more often seem to enjoy the role-playing aspects.  This might be an education issue as males are more often (even today) steered to math and engineering, while women are steered to more personality driven careers, but whether it is cultural or genetic doesn’t really matter.  So as a GM with a new female player, expect to hear questions hovering around “why”.  Why are we taking this job?  Why should I cast heal on the guy I don’t like?  Why do you believe some drunk guy in a bar when he says he saw a ghost?  Taken outside of a FRPG trope, they make perfectly logical sense, but as hard core gamers, these might be part of your willful suspension of disbelief.  Answering why questions can often make it a better campaign, though there is always going to be that person who just wants to kill stuff.

But simply role-playing and finding out why do not lead to simplistic answers.  If the answer as to why her dwarven warrior would attack these goblin bandits without any reason is that her character hates all goblins, then expect her to ask what bonus she gets.  You know - If you were to get that enraged over the sight of some villain type, wouldn’t all that adrenaline make you stronger?  We have sometimes referred to this as role-playing leading to control, but there’s more to it than that.

If the storyline communicated to explain the why questions and the role-playing aspects appeals to her - she just might start steering the party.  For a group of role-players, that can be great, because she is probably steering the party towards the best plotlines.  But for a more jaded group of players who are more interested in how many experience points they just earned, this level of role-playing might become annoying.

Look - Any new player is likely to change some manner of the dynamics of the group.  The first female player is more likely to change the dynamics of the group.  This is NOT a bad thing, at least it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  There is a famous quote that is up on the wall here:

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”
Machiavelli

This may not seem related to this post, but hear us out:  the folks who will gain by the new player(s) are going to be quiet.  Those that fear they will lose something with new players will be loud.  You as GM need to help manage this, mainly before the new player shows, so that they don’t feel unwelcome - no matter what the truth is.

Our point is really this:  more than half the people in the Western World are women.  That’s a huge group to draw players from.  If you find some who are interested in table top games, treat them with respect.  Why?  Because they deserve it, plus, others may not have.  By this one simple action, you may be able to attract fun and loyal players to your campaigns.

This post was written as part of the recently released The Zondarton Tribes:  The Fiercest Females aka All About Women in Role-Playing, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with orcs, but with a mind to making them interesting and far less predictable then they have been in far too many campaign worlds.

We hope we’re getting you interested?  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 48 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

2019 Small Bites Poll

Hey everybody!  It’s time for our 2019 Theme Survey.  Click on the link below to go out to our latest poll.  The next monthly themes are:  Wilderness Adventures, Making Minor Monsters Cool Again, Our Second Anniversary edition, and The Spectacular Entertainments of the Vandoi.  

But after that - What do you want us to do?  Take the survey and let us know your thoughts!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WCGPTY9