Quote from: Corolinth on February 09, 2023, 01:50:20 PM
I believe the claim being made (implied, whatever) is that when women come into role-playing game hobbies, they do so during fad cycles. In other words, they only come in when it is popular, and therefore socially acceptable to engage.

That's a big part of it, yes. As much as the narrative is men keeping women out of interests, women police themselves wwaayyy more than men police them. Statistically speaking, women are more agreeable and group orientated than men, so fear of social ostracism is very real. Traditionally, women who were part of the loser nerd gaming groups were unusually individualistic and contrary.



The other half of the contention is that, again statistically, men gravitate far more strongly towards statistics and obsessive hobbies than women. I don't think it's a coincidence that the peaks of games pushed as narrative experiences (Vampire in the 90's, Fate in the 00's, 5E lately) saw spikes in female participation.

Also modern tools like VTT's do a TON of the mathematics and notekeeping. Someone can play a class now without even really understanding how it works, and just be there for the community and acting aspects of roleplaying.

Disclaimer: Before the howls of outrage about someone's mom/sister/daughter/wife/gf having a doctorate in Mathematics, and running Rolemaster from memorized tables, that's why we have outliers. Also, plenty of men find maths tedious, and wouldn't paly RPG's if you had a gun to their heads.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 01:47:37 PM
Every woman I've ever gamed with or seen gaming, with the notable exception of an autistic woman, were HEAVILLY in to the role part of roleplaying, and the mechanics were very much secondary, even an annoyance. YMMV.

Heh, reminds me of my autistic female player. She roleplays well - albeit always pretty much the same scary gimlet-eyed character - but her real love is the number crunching & exploits, especially multi-classing. 4e was, unsurprisingly, her favourite game. She loved Pathfinder & was a bit disappointed she couldn't get us into PF 2e.

Quote from: S'mon on February 09, 2023, 02:42:17 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 01:47:37 PM
Every woman I've ever gamed with or seen gaming, with the notable exception of an autistic woman, were HEAVILLY in to the role part of roleplaying, and the mechanics were very much secondary, even an annoyance. YMMV.

Heh, reminds me of my autistic female player. She roleplays well - albeit always pretty much the same scary gimlet-eyed character - but her real love is the number crunching & exploits, especially multi-classing. 4e was, unsurprisingly, her favourite game. She loved Pathfinder & was a bit disappointed she couldn't get us into PF 2e.

Greetings!

Sounds like she is a great player, S'mon!

When I was a kid, my best friend at the time had introduced D&D to me. So, I had been a player for a few months when I decided to start DMing my own campaign. In the beginning, this was all even before AD&D. I had a boxed set, I think. The main rulebook was this kind of turquoise-blue softcover, with a dragon on the cover looking at you. The dragon was in a large chamber, laying amidst his treasures. Characters only went to 3rd Level. Maybe 4th. Anyhow, I had this book, a bag of dice, and a big box of Grenadier Miniatures that my mother had bought me. My mother had taken me to a local specialized hobby shop, called "Games People Play". They had all kinds of board games, miniatures, paints, books and stuff, like D&D.

So, one of my earliest campaigns--perhaps my first then, as DM, was playing D&D with my own mother and father. My father played a devout, righteous, crusader cleric. A priest that was part Father O'Malley and part King Longshanks, with a bit of Sir Galahad. Chainmail, flanged mace, a stout shield, a silver neck-chain and holy cross around his neck, and a well-worn, leather-bound copy of the Scriptures at his side. My father's character always had some Scriptural quotation or exhortation for the party. My father was very well-read, and enjoyed bringing various medieval elements into the game and his character's portrayal. My mother loved playing a mystical, furry barbarian. Chanting and praying to the elements and the savage gods, dressed in furs, and carrying a spear and a large battle-axe. She was always very much into her barbarian character, playing a violence-prone, materialistic, and suspicious, tribal savage. She was always eager to slaughter her enemies, and gather up whatever loot or valuables to be gained, whether such was gold, new weapons, jewelry, or new furs. Finding animals and new beasts was always fun for her as well, such as gaining a fierce war dog, or a happy donkey. She was also jealous and possessive, too.  Such great fun playing with them! My friends would come over to play, and they also loved playing together with my parents. They thought my mother and father were so cool! *Laughing*

So, yeah. One of my first players of D&D in my campaigns was a woman, my mother. She was definitely into roleplaying too. She liked the drama and the fighting and the wondrous monsters, as well as more ordinary animals. The actual rules mechanics though? Far less of a priority or her. She trusted me or my father to make sure everything was fair and by the rules, her using the right dice or whatever. She was a fantastic player, and very fun!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 01:06:40 PM

Since this is a good source of data...

You say most of them had never played before? What percentage came looking for 5E because of Critical Role or some such, and you were there to redirect them with a promise of "it's like 5E but better?"

EDIT: Oh, and are you at a club and these women turn up and join in, or are you recruiting female friends and relatives?

EDIT FOR CLARITY:rytrasmi puts his ladies within the last 5 years, thus solidly within the D&D fad period, when it became cool to be a nerd.

TL;DR answer:  It's a network effect.  Recruit friends, relatives, and co-workers.  They like it.  They know someone that gets invited.  And so on.

To answer your questions, first of all consider that for some people, I don't actually know what first piqued their interest.  It never came up.  In other cases, they may have been exposed to something RPG-related earlier, but my invitation was the first time they had to try it.  I know for more of them than I don't know, but when we are talking hundreds of players, some it never came up, and some I haven't seen in 20+ years.  So in all cases I'm only answering to the best of my knowledge.  Though as a natural part of trying to help my recruitment, I have asked when I could.

That out of the way.  I've been actively recruiting non-gamers as players since 1981.  In those early days, it was rarely possible to recruit anyone female because we typically played all night, and in our neck of the woods, no parent was going to sign up for a bunch of coed teens staying up all night unsupervised, and no parent was interested enough to stay up all night to help us.  So it was all guys for those sessions, because I was the only one running, and that was my potential pool of players.  However, on a handful of occasions, I was able to run a game at school or some other public, daytime venue, and it was often more ladies than guys.  The usual reason cited for attending was to find out about it this thing they had heard the guys talking about but not had a chance to try yet. 

Post high school, I could invite anyone I wanted, and did.  In college, we had a circle of guys in a guys-only dorm that played cards, board games, RPGs of several types, and even primitive video games together.  That's was people that were interested and handy, and the only time I've spent serious time gaming with others that came with prior experience.  IIRC, every single person in that circle had gamed prior to college, but I might be wrong about 1 or 2 of them that were older than me.

Mostly parallel to that I group, I started a group of all previously non-gamers, except 1 lady had played AD&D once (and not enjoyed it), and 1 lady had heard about it and wanted to try it.  The rest were coming in completely unaware that it was even a thing. 

By the time I was working, new invites were a combination of co-workers and a growing network of previous people in the groups.  For example, we had a lot of spouses, male and female, try it out.  The spouses weren't always interested.  Sometimes, it was friend, of a friend, of a friend.  When I worked for awhile in a different geographic region of the US, I started a new group of nothing but my wife and a bunch of co-workers.  That was a case of a lot of us that all weren't from there, who didn't know anyone else there, and we did all kinds of things together.  Me hosting a game was just another one on the list.

Sometimes I was running whatever was popular now--but critically this was not because I was running it to attract players, but rather was running it because it was the thing I wanted to run.  I have never run "the popular thing" to attract players, but have instead run my game, and let the attraction work itself out.   Note that almost everything I have run has had house rules.

On a few occasions where I have run for small conventions, I would say that what typically happens is that 1 or 2 people in the game really enjoys what I am doing, while the rest do not.  The ones that do not, that have bothered to tell me why, have usually cited my games being different that what they expected and/or were used to.  So it's possible that the stereotypical D&D game is different enough from what I run to change the dynamic of attracting and keeping players.  OTOH, I've noticed over the years that when it comes down to kicking doors in and kicking goblin butts, the ladies seems to be a tad more enthusiastic than the guys, on average.   

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 09, 2023, 04:10:06 PMOTOH, I've noticed over the years that when it comes down to kicking doors in and kicking goblin butts, the ladies seems to be a tad more enthusiastic than the guys, on average.

As a tangent, I don't allow players to play the opposite sex. I know this statement is likely to summon outrage from some as iridescent as as a nuke going off, but I have my reasons.

In my experience, women tend to play male characters like swaggering murder-hobos, and men tend to make slutty characters. Anyone screaming in rage at this, you do you. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one player who has complained about this rule in decades (because he had a legit fetish for playing huge, cartoonishly muscular women)  and think I get better roleplaying out of my players as a result.

Dear people who regularly play the opposite sex/GMs with games full of said players, and they're amazing and totally not stereotypes: I'm thrilled for you, congratulations. No, I don't feel I am missing out on this unique and satisfying roleplaying experience.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 04:25:00 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 09, 2023, 04:10:06 PMOTOH, I've noticed over the years that when it comes down to kicking doors in and kicking goblin butts, the ladies seems to be a tad more enthusiastic than the guys, on average.

As a tangent, I don't allow players to play the opposite sex. I know this statement is likely to summon outrage from some as iridescent as as a nuke going off, but I have my reasons.

In my experience, women tend to play male characters like swaggering murder-hobos, and men tend to make slutty characters. Anyone screaming in rage at this, you do you. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one player who has complained about this rule in decades (because he had a legit fetish for playing huge, cartoonishly muscular women)  and think I get better roleplaying out of my players as a result.

Dear people who regularly play the opposite sex/GMs with games full of said players, and they're amazing and totally not stereotypes: I'm thrilled for you, congratulations. No, I don't feel I am missing out on this unique and satisfying roleplaying experience.

As a GM, I routinely role play characters of many different races, sexes (including irrelevant), etc.  A player can play whatever they feel comfortable playing.  If they are stupid about it, I won't have to do anything, because the other players will razz them mercilessly.  This is the advantage of playing with normal people.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 04:25:00 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 09, 2023, 04:10:06 PMOTOH, I've noticed over the years that when it comes down to kicking doors in and kicking goblin butts, the ladies seems to be a tad more enthusiastic than the guys, on average.

As a tangent, I don't allow players to play the opposite sex. I know this statement is likely to summon outrage from some as iridescent as as a nuke going off, but I have my reasons.

In my experience, women tend to play male characters like swaggering murder-hobos, and men tend to make slutty characters. Anyone screaming in rage at this, you do you. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one player who has complained about this rule in decades (because he had a legit fetish for playing huge, cartoonishly muscular women)  and think I get better roleplaying out of my players as a result.

Dear people who regularly play the opposite sex/GMs with games full of said players, and they're amazing and totally not stereotypes: I'm thrilled for you, congratulations. No, I don't feel I am missing out on this unique and satisfying roleplaying experience.

I've never seen or enforced this rule myself. I have seen more than one guy play the slutty female character. There's a laugh and some eye rolls and the game continues. Mostly when I'm in a game where people are playing the opposite sex, it amounts to little more than a slight annoyance to keep track of. "Oh yeah, right I forgot you're a guy." It comes up sometimes in social challenges but often it's just forgotten fluff.

I'm a guy who's played many female characters, mostly due to using random character generation rules. Some systems I like have options to roll everything and sometimes run with it.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 04:25:00 PM
Dear people who regularly play the opposite sex/GMs with games full of said players, and they're amazing and totally not stereotypes: I'm thrilled for you, congratulations. No, I don't feel I am missing out on this unique and satisfying roleplaying experience.

Yeah I'm definitely in the allow-cross-sex-play camp, and have played plenty of female PCs. But same-sex play seems actually more ubiquitous now than it used to be. I have one female player who identifies as non-binary who often plays male PCs, but I think everyone else from say 25 players is playing same-sex.

Edit: I think I see more slutty male PCs and murder hobo female PCs than vice-versa... one female half-orc barbarian blacksmith is a bit of a slutty murder hobo though - she likes to nail the strongest male warrior wherever she visits. Nail one way or another. 

I've had two separate occasions where a female player played a male dwarf because, "I just can't see a dwarf as female."  If they couldn't have played opposite sex, they wouldn't have played a dwarf at all.

Quote from: S'mon on February 09, 2023, 04:43:29 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 04:25:00 PM
Dear people who regularly play the opposite sex/GMs with games full of said players, and they're amazing and totally not stereotypes: I'm thrilled for you, congratulations. No, I don't feel I am missing out on this unique and satisfying roleplaying experience.

Yeah I'm definitely in the allow-cross-sex-play camp, and have played plenty of female PCs. But same-sex play seems actually more ubiquitous now than it used to be. I have one female player who identifies as non-binary who often plays male PCs, but I think everyone else from say 25 players is playing same-sex.

Edit: I think I see more slutty male PCs and murder hobo female PCs than vice-versa... one female half-orc barbarian blacksmith is a bit of a slutty murder hobo though - she likes to nail the strongest male warrior wherever she visits. Nail one way or another. 

It's a game where you pretend to be someone/something you're not, can't be, aren't allowed to be IRL.

IME guys that are timid tend to play the opposite, same with women, they love the murder-hobbo-ish characters because it's something they can never be IRL.

Of course there's always the exception, but IME women who play slutty women tend to cause problems in the group IF their PC starts flirting with the PC of a male player.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 04:25:00 PM
In my experience, women tend to play male characters like swaggering murder-hobos, and men tend to make slutty characters. Anyone screaming in rage at this, you do you. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one player who has complained about this rule in decades (because he had a legit fetish for playing huge, cartoonishly muscular women)  and think I get better roleplaying out of my players as a result.

Dear people who regularly play the opposite sex/GMs with games full of said players, and they're amazing and totally not stereotypes: I'm thrilled for you, congratulations. No, I don't feel I am missing out on this unique and satisfying roleplaying experience.

You mean, when your players play characters of the same sex they are not ridiculous stereotypes? Amazing!

I also have been fine with cross-gender play. I suspect most posters here are similar. Regarding demographics of theRPGsite,

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2023, 12:13:57 PM
ShieldWife, and if BoxCrayonTales isn't female I'll eat my hat. Apart from that I don't personally know of any.

Which means we're representative of traditional roleplaying. A whole lot of dudes, mostly white, with any women or Western-minorities fully welcome as equals.

There's a huge difference between 99% male and majority male. As SHARK put it in the other thread,

Quote from: SHARK on February 07, 2023, 11:27:21 PM
Women and minorities have always been welcome. I had girls, black guys, Hispanic guys, Asian guys all eager to play D&D going way back. In the intervening years, that has never changed, except to increase in popularity with both women and minority gamers.

I generally agree with SHARK. White males were the core demographic from the beginning, but there were always exceptions. When I was in grade school circa 1980, I didn't know any girls who played - but then, at that time, girls had cooties. From research of that time, women were likely only 5 to 10% of the players. (Gygax estimated 10-15%, but Gary Alan Fine puts it closer to 5%.) But by 1999, RPG players were around 20% women - likely many of them World of Darkness and other games. Some recent estimates put the number of women role-players as high as 40%.

I don't have any numbers for race or ethnicity, but I'd guess non-white males are at least as common as women.

As an aside, I'd caution against using RPG conventions as a basis. There are a lot of people who will play a game with their friends, but aren't interested in going to a dedicated convention. Conventions tend to concentrate the longer-term, harder-core segment of players - which is different from the more casual people who play with their friends. I've known many women players who were uninterested in going to conventions, despite being enthusiastic about the gaming.

----

There's nothing wrong with theRPGsite being 99% male, but I don't think we're representative even of RPG players in the 1980s, and even less so RPGs in the 1990s. We're far more male-dominated. (I'm not sure about race/ethnicity - we might be representative on that front.)

Quote from: jhkim on February 10, 2023, 01:21:46 AMSome recent estimates put the number of women role-players as high as 40%.

See, when someone from a scientific background plops out figures like this, it's hard not to think you're not just pushing an agenda you'd like to be real.

Estimates by who? Using company data, or self reporting? What criteria is used to label someone a "roleplayer?" I'd bet good money it's bar is as low as "has tried an RPG" or "plays one only when other people want to"

When we look at video games, we find the oft-cited "women are half of gamers" to be, at best, only technically correct.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/beyond-50-50-breaking-down-the-percentage-of-female-gamers-by-genre

Here's men vs women playing video games. Most female gamers play on their phone, as a time waster, and not very often. But they are included as "gamers," alongside guys who buy consoles and gaming rigs, buy new games monthly, and play lots of hours.

Yes, they both play games, but only someone disingenuous would say both fit the mould of what we picture when the word 'gamer' is mentioned. It's like being called a boardgame enthusiast because you play snakes and ladders with your kids on rainy days.

Then the women who are real gamers, they cluster around a few genres, whereas guys play in great numbers in all genres. Hell, they're nearly a third even in the female dominated mobile clicker games.

Women enjoy and play RPG's. Women have always enjoyed and played RPGs. Women are playing in larger number than ever before. But men way outnumber them, and tend to obsess on them more (why else sausage fest game forums and Cons?) I don't think we'll ever approach parity, because in general the sexes have different likes, and there's only so far you can alter RPGs.

I'd also like to see the gender and race figures for gaming when society decides nerds are uncool again, and hipsters move on to motorbike jousting/competitive bird watching.

I hope everyone that truly loves the hobby stays with it once the bubble bursts, and I don't care what genitals they have, or the color of their skin. The trash will go out with the tide, and we'll know that the people that remain are actual gamers.

The last time I ran a public D&D Meetup ca 2018/19 I think it was still around 25% female/75% male, maybe getting up around 33%/66%.  One thing I noticed at another Meetup playing Tomb of Annihilation when it came out was that was the first time I'd ever seen multiple black players at one table, group was 2/6 black and 3/6 female. I think my own group of players is about 1/3 female 2/3 male. Of my game groups currently running, Faerun 7 has 3 female players and 4-5 male. Barrowmaze has 2 female players and 5-6 male, it started as an all male group, but the women infiltrated.    Odyssey of the Dragonlords restarting start of March is 3 female 3 male. Dragonbane playtest group this Sunday is 3 female 2 male.
40/60 seems high but not impossible. Public recruitment of strangers on eg Roll20 is almost all male though, almost like bulletin board numbers. 

I get a bit perturbed when I see the "white male gatekeeping" claims being made about the early days of D&D, especially from those who didn't even play during that time.  I started playing in 75-76 and I can say with utter certainty that there was no effort on our part to exclude anyone based on sex or color.  There was, however, a significant effort to "bar the gates" from those outside the hobby.

I once told a girl about D&D during recess and the next day I was in the assistant principal's office being told that it was inappropriate to talk about such things to young ladies.   The next recess she asked about it again, and the ensuing discussion resulted in a parent teacher conference with both families and the threat of suspension being bandied about.

We had a Chess & Battle club in elementary school where we played old Avalon Hill/SPI games and some pretty epic games of D&D.  One day some older girls asked to watch the session and we agreed (even offering to let them participate).  They hung around for the session and, when it was over, one of them loudly proclaimed, "I have never seen a bigger bunch of losers in my life!" and then they all laughed and walked away.  They actively persecuted many of us for the rest of our school careers.

As an example, one of them talked to a friend of mine and told him that she was actually interested in D&D now that it was more popular and that she didn't really understand it when they watched the game being played.  She asked if he would bring some books over and teach her how it worked.  The rest of us were dubious and warned him it was probably a bad idea, but he went anyway.  Of course he got there, was ambushed by a bunch of football player friends of hers (well, eventual football players) who ripped up his books, beat him up, tore off his clothes and sent him running home essentially naked.  The police were called by my friends family, which resulted in the girl/jocks reporting that my friend has exposed himself to the girl and that they were justified in beating the "little freak's" ass.  Luckily the police saw through that ruse without much difficulty and took appropriate action, but it didn't stop them from warning his parents about the potential hazards of playing D&D.  He never did get his books back.

I went to a public library while on a trip to another state that actually ran D&D games on the weekends.  I was actually surprised to see a young girl show up to play, and a little more surprised when I heard some grumbling about it.  Turns out they weren't grumbling about the girl for being a girl, they were grumbling about that the fact that the Library assigned an elderly librarian (female) who attended the session and basically vetoed anything unseemly going on.  Apparently fighting monsters, getting injured by a trap, seeing a dead body, and casting spells are extremely traumatizing to young women and could not be allowed in game while they were present.  Luckily the DM, an older man, was pretty good (and experienced with the restrictions) so the session still went relatively well, though a couple things still caught him by surprise.  He did note that the girls never come back after the first session.  Was it that the experience didn't grab them? That they didn't want to singled out with a chaperone? The lack of other girls?  That the boys were more aggressive outside the library environment? I can't say, but I suspect it wasn't gatekeeping that was responsible.

In high school we still took a lot of abuse.  However, there was a girl in AP classes with me and some of my gaming group who expressed an interest in playing.  After a bit of consternation due to what had happened in the past we decided to let her play and we all had a great time.  She was actually super creative and actually came up with some pretty devious solutions to some of the threats we were faced with in game.  We played fairly regularly until one day a white Chevy Nova pulled up next to me as I walking home and 3 guys jumped out and proceeded to wipe the floor with me.  Turns out it was her boyfriend (a freshman in college) who found out she was playing an RPG and decided he needed to put a stop to it.  At one time or another I, or one of the other groups would get approached by that guy (or his friends) and threatened or beaten if they felt that we deserved it.  We were told it would be a hell of a lot worse if we told her about it.  I'm sad to say that most of us started bowing out of sessions after that.  I sill lament that, but 17 year-old me just couldn't bring himself to stand up to the beatings and destruction of my tenuous high school social career over it.  It actually drove me away from D&D for the rest of my HS career (and for a couple years after that as I joined the Navy at 17).

I actually have some more related stories, as well as a much more tragic one concerning playing D&D with a young man of color that I probably still not equipped to deal with.  But I guess in my rambling what I'm trying to say that throughout most of my life it has never been the grognard that was worked to keep women out of the hobby.  It's almost always been outside actors trying to protect women from something they don't understand.  Sure, I didn't attend college as a young man, so I can't speak to that environment.  I can say that I had played D&D in over 30 states and half a dozen countries during the 70's and 80's and never really encountered a lot of the supposed sexist traits we supposedly exhibited in spades.  Am I saying that didn't happen?  Not at all.  I'm just saying that I don't believe it to be nearly as pervasive of the old gaming scene as many would have us believe.