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.