Are female D&D players comfier around male D&D players these days?

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S'mon

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(This seems like a nice neutral venue to ask this question) :grin:

I was just musing on Facebook that 18-20 years ago, female D&D players often seemed wary of male players, and this sometimes constrained how eg they'd play their PCs, avoiding eg Red Sonja type characters. My impression is this seems to have changed in recent years, especially in the 5e D&D era 2014+. Female players these days seem a lot comfier playing the characters they want to play, and I get the impression they generally don't seem worried about male players being obnoxious to them. I was wondering if anyone else has noticed a change like this, or if I'm just imagining it?
 
Well, I'm not the standard guy to ask. I make women, generally, very comfortable and I take absolutely no shit when that doesn't go well. Call me a GM of extremes.
 
My first DM, in the 80s, was a girl, and I've RPGed with a mix of girls and guys since. I think the idea that girls didn't roleplay was always revisionist history based on stereotypes about geeks & gamers popularized in media in the 90s and early aughts. If girls never wanted to game with you I think that's probably something to do with you personally, and not the hobby.
 
I think the idea that girls didn't roleplay was always revisionist history based on stereotypes about geeks & gamers popularized in media in the 90s and early aughts.
I tend to agree. The two f2f groups I played with in the 90s were predominantly women. Most of the groups I was aware of at the time were mixed. For that matter that group I played 3E with for a couple of months in 2002 was 3 guys and 5 women.
 
Most of the groups I've played with have been mixed. I've experienced very few instances of male players being creepy. I think people soon work out who the weirdoes are and avoid them, so you mostly end up with groups populated by decent people. The stereotype of male players as greasy, lecherous neckbeards is just that: a stereotype conjured up by the sort of person who says things like, "well, we all know what men are like" or from creative fiction writing venues such as /r/rpghorrorstories.
 
I'll be honest I'm very old school about how women should be treated, I've always welcomed them to my games, and I've always been very up front about what kind of bad behavior wasn't acceptable. in game, I'm completely even handed - everyone is a PC ad that's the game. It doesn't need to be complicated.
 
My ex-wife gamed, my sister games (and is a fantastic GM), I've gamed with women IRL a considerable amount, and my current D&D GM is a young woman. She's perfect for a D&D DM. I played with far more real face-to-face female players than I've ever played online something like thirty-five to twelve? not counting online friends I didn't know were women at the time-- pre-voice chat mind you. Still game with most of the online ones too.

Did have one whose then-boyfriend tried to tell her what to do, but the entire rest of the group stepped in and convinced him to let her make her own decisions. (This was for an Atomic Highway game. She was a great player.) Out in the real world, I've not found it far less of a problem, than online.

Probably should add a caveat that this is "since I started counting" which goes back to around 2000. Prior to that, I didn't pay much attention to the makeup of groups.
 
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I don't know about comfier except it was my sister that got me into rpg's in the late 70's. In the 80's mostly it was guys, though at 15 boys can be sort of out there, by uni my gf was dragging me along to play vampire.
 
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(This seems like a nice neutral venue to ask this question) :grin:

I was just musing on Facebook that 18-20 years ago, female D&D players often seemed wary of male players, and this sometimes constrained how eg they'd play their PCs, avoiding eg Red Sonja type characters. My impression is this seems to have changed in recent years, especially in the 5e D&D era 2014+. Female players these days seem a lot comfier playing the characters they want to play, and I get the impression they generally don't seem worried about male players being obnoxious to them. I was wondering if anyone else has noticed a change like this, or if I'm just imagining it?
I think you're right, at least to an extent, Obviously, women have been in the hobby since the start (the inflluence of Lee Gold on early RPG culture is massively underestimated in my book) and there's always been at least a handful of women in my games (a trickle in the 80s with a massive jump in the White Wolf era).

Obviously, the obnoxiousness can still happen (see the Reddit RPG Horror Stories forum) but I think the influx of women into the hobby has meant that's more likely to be seen as individual wankers rather than something throughout the hobby.

If anything, it's even more noticable in LARP. Of the local LARP organisers, I'm actually the only bloke I can think of. The rest are all lasses.
My first DM, in the 80s, was a girl, and I've RPGed with a mix of girls and guys since. I think the idea that girls didn't roleplay was always revisionist history based on stereotypes about geeks & gamers popularized in media in the 90s and early aughts. If girls never wanted to game with you I think that's probably something to do with you personally, and not the hobby.
Definitely think that's a factor. However, I also think you can see a notable leap in women involved in public play (shops and conventions) than there was in the 80s. So at the very least, women seem to be more willing to play with strangers.
In a lot of ways this isn't the right forum for this question. Something about average age... :grin:
I'll have you know I was boardgaming with some perfectly pleasant 20 something women just a few hours ago. :p
 
It's also worth mentioning that women in the 70's and 80's were held back more, even if they were there.
Think that was probably very group dependent. Even as a 14 year old I wouldn't have tried to tell my fellow player Tracy how to play her PC, because I'm pretty sure she could have kicked the shit out of me. (She did kick boxing).
 
Think that was probably very group dependent. Even as a 14 year old I wouldn't have tried to tell my fellow player Tracy how to play her PC, because I'm pretty sure she could have kicked the shit out of me. (She did kick boxing).
I'm talking about society in general, things were more chauvinist, so even if their involvement was equal, their visibility was less.
 
Definitely think that's a factor. However, I also think you can see a notable leap in women involved in public play (shops and conventions) than there was in the 80s. So at the very least, women seem to be more willing to play with strangers.

I think that has more to do with the destigmatization around the activity though, rather than actual hobby products appealing more to women.
 
Pre 90s I think it was a sausage fest. Yes there were women in it but all the estimates I can see list the upper bound to be around 10% of all players. That matches what I saw back then. The 90s brought Vampire and that changed everything. There were women playing for sure and ones who made significant contributions but they ratio skewed heavily male.
 
Pre 90s I think it was a sausage fest. Yes there were women in it but all the estimates I can see list the upper bound to be around 10% of all players. That matches what I saw back then.


I think you were just living in the wrong place
 
I think you were just living in the wrong place
Maybe. E E-Rocker lived for all intensive purposes in the same area. I'm curious if his experience matched mine. If you read The Platinum Appendix of Designers and Dragons, Shannon Apple line goes into demographics of the 70's & 80's and he's where I got the high end of 10%. He's not someone I would expect to be trying to diminish the role/presence of women in the hobby so I tend to think the numbers are roughly accurate. It matches my experience but I'd only be able to speak to the <10 crowd for to 70s and <18 for the 80s.
 
If you read The Platinum Appendix of Designers and Dragons, Shannon Apple line goes into demographics of the 70's & 80's and he's where I got the high end of 10%. He's not someone I would expect to be trying to diminish the role/presence of women in the hobby so I tend to think the numbers are roughly accurate.

But where is Applecline getting that demographic info from?

Do we even have accurate demographic numbers today? Let alone 40 years ago?
 
But where is Applecline getting that demographic info from?

Do we even have accurate demographic numbers today? Let alone 40 years ago?
It would fit with what I've seen of both White Dwarf and Dragon reader polls of the time, but obviously there you get the issue of self selection bias.
 
The answer seems to be that he's basing it on a combination of analysis by Gygax and Fine and Fine in particular was basing it on a combination of magazine surveys, convention attendees and referee lists.


I mean, that would leave out every gamer I've ever known in my life...

If someone said to me convention attendance was only 10% women, I'd prolly be like "that makes sense"
 
He acknowledged the self selection and difficulty getting hard numbers. Most reports I believe showed the female portion of the audience under 3%. The highest was I think 5%. 10% sounds reasonable.
 
He acknowledged the self selection and difficulty getting hard numbers. Most reports I believe showed the female portion of the audience under 3%. The highest was I think 5%. 10% sounds reasonable.
At the time? Sure, I'd buy that range. :thumbsup:
 
my experience in the 80s was closer to 30-40%
Almost every group I gamed with in the late 80s/early 90s (in central and eastern Europe) was two/fifths or one/third female-to-male, with a handful of other demographics here and there.

No offense intended nor taken from any of the considerate comments here, but as a female who's been gaming through more than a few decades, I can say that I find it a bit weird when well-meaning male gamers try to make me feel comfortable or champion again inconsiderate behavior around the table. Maybe this is a generation perspective difference, but whatever gets said around an rpg table that may or may not be offensive, almost every girl has heard worse. Most of us can take care of ourselves. :grin:

Again, no offense intended--I'd rather feel weird about a guy showing chivalry than to be gaming with a repressed jerk who's lechery is accepted and/or encouraged by a tableful of other jerks.
 
I think you're right, at least to an extent, Obviously, women have been in the hobby since the start (the inflluence of Lee Gold on early RPG culture is massively underestimated in my book) and there's always been at least a handful of women in my games (a trickle in the 80s with a massive jump in the White Wolf era).

Obviously, the obnoxiousness can still happen (see the Reddit RPG Horror Stories forum) but I think the influx of women into the hobby has meant that's more likely to be seen as individual wankers rather than something throughout the hobby.

If anything, it's even more noticable in LARP. Of the local LARP organisers, I'm actually the only bloke I can think of. The rest are all lasses.

Definitely think that's a factor. However, I also think you can see a notable leap in women involved in public play (shops and conventions) than there was in the 80s. So at the very least, women seem to be more willing to play with strangers.

I'll have you know I was boardgaming with some perfectly pleasant 20 something women just a few hours ago. :p

Thanks. I'm interested in whether there's been a perceptual shift within the last 20 years. 5e D&D definitely made D&D (& thus RPGs) more popular, and according to WoTC the proportion of female players has increased, to around 40% I think. I used to do a lot of public play including running my own Meetup, but Covid shut that down so my experience after 2019 has been less broad. I do think female players ca 2019 seemed more comfortable playing with strangers compared to say 2010.
 
Over the years, less than 10% of rando recruits at my table were women. This includes board games. Played with plenty more in public venues.

Proportion didn't seem to be much different in other long term games I've been in.

Unless you're in a public venue like a gamestore or con, where someone (you?) might be running an open play session, your chances of meeting (and recruiting?) women players are pretty low.

For whatever reason, women seem to have more longevity once they find a specific group or venue.... Also, the rando women gamers I've known tend to be single. It's been rare to have partnered women play without their partners at the venue (such as their own home or a con.)

Once I had a guy offer to play at my table and his girlfriend was going to be there just hanging out. I declined. Felt weird.
 
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In the mid 1980s onwards my initial gaming group were a bunch of male school mates, then later it was uni mates in the early 1990s. We just did our own thing, so not sure what it was like in the organised play scene, but the comic/game stores and the computer stores were male dominated in my region

By the late 1990s there was definitely more women in the geek/gaming scene, but none of our girlfriends wanted to be part of it, so it was just something I did with the guys

From the mid 2000s onward my gaming group has primarily consisted of just four of us - an old school mate, a longtime work mate, his sister, and myself. Having a female member is really great, it works out so much better than what it was like before

We have occasional guest players, but it’s mainly just the four of us.
Been doing this for at least fifteen years now

We link up online once a week with voice chat for a 2hr mmo session, and aim to meet in-person once a month for an afternoon trpg session.

With the trpgs we generally take turns with each of us GMing for a stretch, or alternating. This way we all get the chance in the GM chair and we cycle thru different genres and systems, avoiding GM or player burn out

I don’t think we moderate anything, we are all adults with similar tastes and hobbies. I don’t think gender even enters into it, it’s more about having aligning interests and getting along well together.

Really great bunch of friends to have
Seems to have worked out pretty good for us so far
 
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I never noticed this as a problem when I was playing in the 90s. Quite frankly, D&D players were the only women who were ever comfortable around me.

That, itself, has been less of a problem for me growing up. I don't attribute this to prevailing social norms, so much as "growing up" for me has involved becoming a whole lot less of a revolting creep.

Calm down, whomever is hastily banging out a reply-- I didn't say I wasn't a "revolting creep" anymore, just that I'm a whole lot less of one that I was at 15 or 25.
 
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