Quote from: Kellri;356774Compare that with WFRP or Traveller, which take at least 2 hours just for chargen and maybe another hour to explain mechanics.

If it's taking you 2 hours to chargen characters for WFRP you are doing something seriously wrong.  If it's taking another hour on top of that to explain mechanics you are really doing something wrong.

D&D certainly has the advantage of a relatively easy but not boring chargen. The lore isn't hard to grasp either. The hardest thing for me was the D&D mindset.
"We're going into the sewers."
"...Why?"
"There are giant spiders in there!"
"Okay, so why are we going down there?"
"They might have gold and cool stuff!"
"...right."

I didn't make that up.
I don't know about 4th edition. I tried running it for a mixed group, but the powers proved problematic. A new player wanted to use one of her powers, but I told her she couldn't use it without holding a sword, as per the description of that ability. I was asked, "Why? All I'm doing is yelling at one of my friends. Why do I need a sword to do that?" I couldn't come up with a good answer for it, and we ended up trying an older edition instead.

I don't know about that, I've always found D&D (in any incarnation) to have more boring chargen than, say, WFRP 2e, which has truly awesome chargen.  The difference is that in some versions of D&D, the "boring" part is over very fast, while in others, it drags on through having to sit there while the wiener kid next to you reads through every single one of 1028 feats to try to optimize his level 1 bard.

RPGPundit

Yeah that's a great blog. Hope his tv show takes off.

Quote from: Balbinus;356687All that said, single player computer gaming is a heavily male dominated hobby, the games women are playing are ones that encourage social interaction in a non-competitive way - sharing stuff, getting together and having a laugh while "bowling" and so on.

I think that's to do with societal trends wholly unrelated to D&D, going back to the original point.

Depends on the computer game. A lot of the single player puzzle / clicky games have a lot of or are dominated by women players. Bejeweled and the like.

OTOH I really doubt there a lot of women (historical) wargamers, computer, counter or miniature. I've been to Historicon, the historical wargaming equivalent to Gencon. Aside from the expected wives and daughters we *think* there was one woman gaming there, and she was either a crossdresser in serious need of a makeover and some coordination tips or a body trapped in an awkward transitional moment. :confused: Warhammer and the like do get some female players, but again, mainly significant others or relatives of male gamers. Though if 4chan is *any* representation of gaming, females do get into the WH40K Dawn of War computer games. (re: Iron Shrine Maiden / Macha et al)