women and role-playing games

[cellio]

Elsewhere, in a locked entry, a game designer asked what game designers ought to be doing to market role-playing games to women. (Women gamers are definitely a minority.) I wanted to record my (slightly-edited) reply to him. (If this post generates discussion, I'll probably point the original poster at it. This post is public.)

What got me into RPGs, in high school, was that it was a natural outgrowth of the books I was reading. SF&F nerd ostracized by the "cool" kids was the right basis, as it turned out. I, not the guys around me, was the instigator.

Once I got to college I found games to play in, all run by men, and I played rather than running for many years. (As a self-taught GM I was pretty terrible at it.) I was often the only woman in the group despite trying to draw female friends in. I didn't try to analyze it much then; I chalked it up to geek/non-geek rather than male/female. (I didn't know too many female geeks.) There wasn't much "R" in the RPGs I was playing at the time, by the way. More about that later.

More recently, I've seen the "associate" effect [that somebody else wrote about] dominate -- a woman who plays in the game because her husband does, etc. I don't think it's a new trend; I think it's just that I'm now in a position to run into it more. The most recent campaign I played in started with three women (among seven players): one was a not-very-interested wife of a gamer and both of them drifted away after one session; one was the wife of the GM and she was very interested but had a low threshold for rules-geeking; and I was the third. The two women who stuck around both engaged most with (1) storytelling and (2) interesting magic (not just direct-damage spells, though we used those too). I should note that I personally detest games like "Once Upon a Time", but I love the cooperative storytelling of a campaign with a plot and an arc through it. (What's the difference? Maybe the pace? Dunno.) I liked pure-hack-and-slash games when I was in college, but now they don't draw me. I want to craft a three-dimensional character who shares an interesting world with other non-cardboard characters.

To market to women like the two of us, then, emphasize the power of the system to tell interesting stories, to allow character development that isn't pure-optimization stat-wrangling, and throw in some interesting magic. Oh, and don't make the rules so complicated that they get in the way of the story; D&D 3.0/3.5 had its flaws but combat was smooth and spell effects were easy to calculate, and that's huge. I walked out of the only game of Traveller I ever played an hour into character creation because the whole thing was just too complicated. (Bookkeeping is fine -- RuneQuest! was one of my favorite RPGs, back in the day -- but it has to stay in the background.)

So that's one woman's view, for what that's worth.

Comments

[alienor.livejournal.com]

to allow character development that isn't pure-optimization stat-wrangling,

When I dabbled in table top RPGs (mid 1990s) I vastly preferred White Wolf's storytelling system over D&D (uh, 2.0?). With D&D the rules were complicated and I felt they didn't have much relation to telling the story. I'd roll for something and someone would tell me what it meant, but where the numbers came from and why that stat related to this action were very vague (it could also not have been well explained).

WW, OTOH, had very clear attributes, and how the numbers on my character sheet related to the actions I was trying to take was much clearer.

When I played D&D, I felt like I told the GM what I wanted to do, and he translated it into the game for me (dice rolls, etc). In the WW system, it flowed a lot more naturally for me.

(For the record, I played Werewolf; I wasn't one of THOSE Vampire players, :-)

[cellio]

I've heard of White Wolf but never played (or read) it. What does it do to better relate the character sheet to the actions you're talking? Is it more about traits and skills and less about raw statistics like strength, for instance? Or does it go in the other direction, having only a few stats to allow maximum GM flexibility? What does the game do to make the story more prominent?

[alienor.livejournal.com]

It's been probably 15 years since I've played...

Here's a link to a Werewolf character sheet:
http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/WtA/WerewolfRev2-Page.pdf

You get allocations of points and just fill in the dots of the talents that you want. Some of the categories are fill in the blank, and there's a list of those in the books to choose from.

I don't remember anymore how those dots become rolls, but one thing I remember is that all of the dice are D10, so no matter what I did, I just had to pick up D10 (not wait for the GM to tell me which dice to use).

N used to Storytell (GM) White Wolf games when we met, so his memory is probably clearer on the mechanics. If you want more detail than just looking at the character sheet and my vague descriptions, I can get him to write something for you. He's also more familiar with D&D 3.0 (since I never played it and he has) so can do more comparison. I'll ask him this weekend.

WhiteWolf Systems

[fenrir1323.livejournal.com]

alienor requested that I comment on this since I have some experience with the WhiteWolf systems. I used to run a Mage and a Werewolf.

Now, this has been a few years since I last ran a WW game. Also. WhiteWolf reworked some of the game systems a while back so my information may be out of date when compared to what you can find on the shelves of the local gaming shop.

One of the first differences between the D&D system and WW is the dice required. WW uses a D10 system, meaning all you need are 10 D10s to cover all roles. When compared to the multiple types of dice required by D&D, this simplifies the system. You always know you have selected the correct die in WW.

As for the rolls, typically they would be a stat plus a skill, rolled against a stated difficulty. Each die that was equal to or greater than the difficulty counted as a success. The more successes you achieved, the more spectacular the outcome.

Let me provide an example. You are walking down the street and you hear two people arguing in a language that is not your native tongue. You wish to determine what language it is, and if you can understand what they are saying to each other. As your storyteller, I would ask first for a Perception + Languages roll. Lets say that you're average human, so you have two dots in perception and you speak Spanish (1 dot in languages). You would roll 3 D10s. I set the difficulty at 6 (a standard difficulty rating). You roll a 3, 6, 8. You now know the two men are speaking Portuguese. Since it is a language that you don't know, trying to understand them will be a more difficult (most likely an 8) Intelligence + languages roll. You roll a 7, 5, 1. Since you rolled a 1, a critical failure, I would tell you something completely different than what they actually said.

Now that is a quick example, but you can see that the system is rather open to ST interpretation. There are very few tables that need to be referenced. I found that it allowed me to weave a more compelling and involved story through a modern time line since I wasn't always looking things up to determine a course of action.

One of the other things I enjoyed about the WW system was that all of the subsets could exist in the same game environment. You could have Mages, Changelings and Werewolves as players with Hunters and Vampires in opposition. This allowed for the creation of a vast and highly complex interactive environment for players to move through. It takes a strong storyteller to handle that scenario, but it is quite possible.

Now naturally, like all players want to do, I had players that tried to break my games through creative rule application. So there will always be rules lawyering, no matter what system you play in.

I hoped this has helped.

Re: WhiteWolf Systems

[cellio]

Thank you! That does help. It sounds like WW has distilled things down to a simple and flexible system -- simple enough to not require lots of rules consults and flexible enough to easily handle unexpected situations. Yet there is enough structure there, it sounds like, to not require GMs to be expert the first time out.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

When I played D&D, I felt like I told the GM what I wanted to do, and he translated it into the game for me (dice rolls, etc).

We were playing Hero for a while recently, and that is essentially how it went. Which makes the rule system kind of unnecessary because it moves it from a GM/player common modelling and action framework into something the GM uses by themself to track the world. And there are much simpler ways to do that.


There is something to be said for the interaction of rules and character--in the longest-running D&D game I was in, my character was a wizard, and there was this thing where his behavior and concept were evolving, essentially, in response to the spell selection I was taking. (And vice-versa, because I would pick spells in theme with how I thought of him at the time. Although since he eventually ended up a follower of Zagyg with points in Perform[yo-yo], maybe he was just following the mages' tendency of going insane.)

[cellio]

My character in Ralph's game evolved quite a bit too. She started out as a simple sorceress with aspirations of things like flying and polymorph, and ended up being a flying often-polymorphed-in-combat paladin. :-)

[jeannegrrl.livejournal.com]

I agree w/ alienor. Having played both ADD (2nd ed) and a bunch of White Wolf (Vampire, Mage, and Changeling) I found I could more easily get into the world/story with my WW characters than I could w/ my ADD ones, with the exception of a college ADD game I played that had an exceptionally good story-crafting GM. Story was vastly more important to me than pure action. I was never "the girlfriend," in my gaming groups, nor were most of the gals I gamed with - but maybe I had a knack for finding the independent gamer gals. :-)

Haven't played in years though. Raising kids put a crimp in RPG fun, especially when Hillel doesn't share the hobby. at. all.

[cellio]

I asked alienor some questions that you might be able to answer too.

A good story-crafting GM makes a big difference. Most of the hack-and-slash games I played in college were (A)D&D, but ralphmelton ran an excellent story-oriented game using D&D 3.0 (and later 3.5). How much of that was aided by the system and how much was impeded I'm not sure; it seemed to this player like the game got more flexible from AD&D to 3.0, but it's still D&D.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Technically, I've played AD&D (1st ed.) a million years ago, but most of my experience has come from the last decade or so, in a system of my GM's devising (he's been running campaigns in it for a couple of decades). Krayzen has a reasonably complicated technical side for using skills (especially in combat or tense social situations), but the focus has always been on story and character development, which I prefer: I'm definitely more interested in figuring out puzzles (missions) than I am about killing monsters and taking treasure. (In fact, in a bunch of previous campaigns, my character's ended up poorer, and barely killed any living thing, but was very pleased with how my character developed.)

Oh, and in my previous group, I was one of 2 women in a 5-person group (one was a girlfriend of another player, but there in her own right), while in the current one, I'm one of 3 women in a 4-person group (currently; there's supposed to be another guy joining after some parental health issues resolve). I know a bunch of other women who enjoy role playing but don't currently have games to play in.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I always wanted to get into Traveller, because the books were so shiny looking and there were so many! Unfortunately that was also what kept me away from it. When you have to save up money just to buy a cheap plastic d4 you aren't going to be playing Traveller.

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

I've always been an associate gamer. I've been playing D&D with my husband for a good 15 years now, playing practically every edition. And in all of them I've had to have him set up the mechanics for me. When 4th came out I remember thinking that I'd heard the character creation system had been simplified. So I sat down the with PHB and a blank sheet. Guess what? I still couldn't create my own character. I work out the personality and general abilities, and my systems optimizer husband fills in the stats/abilities/items. It works well for us.

[cellio]

I've played 4th-edition once, with pre-generated characters, so I don't know how generation works there. The game itself was enjoyable enough but felt like a computer game adapted for figures and dice. I remember wondering if that was what WoW was like (I've never played).

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

D&D 4E has been called tabletop WoW in the past. Definitely they adapted some of the main concepts (I am really not sad to have seen Vancian magic get the axe), but D&D is still much more about tactics and clever playing than WoW could ever be.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...very interested in the storyline, low tolerance for rules geeking...wife of the GM too? I don't know anyone like that ;-)

All kidding aside, I agree -- it was the storytelling that kept me from saying "I have better things to do." And, I liked the people in the group.

It's interesting -- WoW, for me, has a great deal of internal story that doesn't always get expressed because not many of my guild mates are into RP. It's fun when we do it, but it's the friends I've made within our guild who keep me logging in.

[cellio]

Yeah, liking the people you're spending 3-4 hours a week with (or more :-) ) is pretty important too.

Huh -- I didn't know WoW had story elements; I thought it was strictly about beating up monsters to take their stuff and improve your skills so you could beat up bigger monsters (like Diablo, or at least Diablo filtered through Dani). Thanks for cluing me in.

[hlinspjalda.livejournal.com]

I was always much more interested in the shared-narrative type of story line, frustrated by high-ballistic games and cut-throat backstabbing PCs. For me it really was about collaborative fiction.

Mr. Fixer came from a strong D&D background, but we were early adopters of GURPS. I liked the system much better because it was more realistic (particularly with respect to healing, but also because of the interesting ways to flesh out a character that were not, at that time, available through D&D). Runequest was a bit too technical (too many numbers for him), and we liked the cross-storyline capabilities of having one unified system (phasers vs. magic vs. broadswords). We gamed pretty seriously for a few years, mostly in GURPS, and I was learning how to GM because I enjoyed devising scenarios.

But then we discovered the arts in the SCA in about 1985. We made the conscious decision to spend our creative energies on the SCA rather than gaming. Sometimes I really miss it, though, and we've kept every single scrap of our gaming paraphernalia. Even in the recent move, it was not something either of us considered ditching.

[cellio]

I had to evolve into shared-narrative games; my earlier games were all about the fights and loot. Not so much the back-stabbing PCs, though, as it's hard to keep that between characters without spilling over into the players and if it does that's no fun.

I, too, haven't played RPGs so much since getting active in the SCA. But I did enjoy my most recent game quite a bit and I'm less active in the SCA than I was, so we'll see. Of course, I'm also now more heavily involved in my congregation...

And I still have all my books too, including the D&D "blue book" that was my first.