Lilivati's page

*grabs club and tosses on the saber tooth tiger toga, just to save you all the trouble of accusing me of needing them*

Do you want the guys to treat you like everyone else or do you want them to worry about your feelings? With at least some of the gamers this is pick one OR the other because they're mutually exclusive.

When I'm playing its kind of rare that i stop and think "hmmm, how will our unibrowed goateed optimizer feel about me doing X action" or "how will the other guy take this..." On occasion it does occur to me that something will upset one of the girls at the table. (my only concern with the other one is sending her into a laughing fit that will last hours and spontaneously flare up again)

Either you want that extra consideration, you don't want that extra consideration, or you want people to give that extra consideration without revealing that they're doing it: in other words you want their untrained charisma penalized bluff to beat your sense motive. "Why can't you overcome a lifetime of poor interaction with human beings and lie better" should be a self answering question.

See, I think it's more that we're introducing the idea that the expectation that everyone at your table behave like a respectful human being (which, incidentally, includes not spouting sexist/racist/homophobic/what-have-you crappola regardless of who is or is not present) is not synonymous with special consideration.

Frankly, the people whose behavior inspired this thread, who are convinced their behavior should be excused because they're "just joking", because they've always been that way, because people will always be that way, and everyone else should just get over it, are the ones asking for special consideration- not the women (and men) at the table who are made uncomfortable by their actions. They are asking their fellow players to excuse what would not be excused in most other settings.

That said- socially awkward people are socially awkward. Heck, I'm one of them. I really prefer that when I make someone uncomfortable or piss someone off that they tell me, because I'm NOT good at picking up on this stuff, and it helps me improve my own behavior. I don't expect other people to be more perfect than I am. But I do expect them to not be jerks or make excuses when the problem is pointed out.

There are a lot of things coming to mind when I read this thread, but the strongest is I really hate special butterfly syndrome. I don't actually want to be treated like an exotic "catch" at the table- whether that treatment is negative OR positive- and it's all too often that guys, especially guys who I only know through gaming, don't know how to simply treat me like a regular person. Girl gamers are not some kind of rare species that should be revered, studied, oogled, or preserved in the wild, know what I mean? The vast majority of women are there for the exact same simple reason as the vast majority of men- to have fun at a particular activity. It's not malicious and usually not even a conscious action, just a subconscious attitude some players exhibit.

But yeah, being put on a pedestal as an example of what some dude wishes more women were like (into his hobbies), or having guys at the table act overbearingly helpful in an attempt to seem welcoming, is as annoying as being demeaned for lacking a Y chromosome. Or worse yet being told, proudly, that you're not "one of those girls" as if their off-hand dismissal of the majority of your sex, and all the misogynistic assumptions that come with it, is somehow supposed to be a compliment.

For the most part though, my positive experiences outnumber the bad, though like most women (that I've met) I have my share of awful anecdotes. And most of the awkward players I've encountered have mellowed out after we've played a month or two together.

If I make a monster character, I expect that working to overcome prejudice against the character (in the case of good or neutral characters, anyway) will be part of playing them. In some ways the conflict is both internal and external to the character, because they're caught between self-knowledge that they are, due to nature or circumstances or whatever, different, but their culture may well merit its reputation. I'm actually disappointed when their race is brushed over, because it's jarring and breaks immersion in the game world, as well as eliminates one of the reasons I made that character.

But on the other hand I also expect the GM to step in during character creation and tell me if this is not an element they want in this game, not be passive-aggressive towards my character over their race for the entirety of the campaign. When I'm using a character concept that I know might not fly, whether it's a monster race or a strange background or an odd class combo, I always seek GM input before proceeding, and I fully expect them to be honest with me. If they're not, they have only themselves to blame for the resultant situation, imo.

As far as "special snowflakes" are concerned, all characters are unique in their own ways, even the nth "raised a farmer and left home after tragedy" character. When everyone is unique, uniqueness is no longer "special". A snowflake comes from a player (or GM) assuming their atypical race/background/ability/whatever will confer recognized, fully positive specialness in-game or in-game advantages. Unique is not the same as special or important, and it's only when those wires get crossed that stuff like this really becomes a problem. (Barring of course particular campaigns where certain concepts just won't work, but you could say that of any character feature, not merely race.)

Personally, I find Pathfinder slightly harder to run more roleplaying intensive games in than 3.5e, largely due to the way they reduced the skills, one of the main non-combat elements of the game. But this is minor.

I actually had the opposite experience. Before the skill consolidation, my characters were either stuck maxing out on the stuff they "needed" to the detriment of the flavor skills, or I felt like the character could never have all the skills the character OUGHT to have due to things that are logically associated with each other requiring separate ranks (perception is probably the best example of this). Skill consolidation allows my characters to actually take character flavor skills to a much greater extent than before. More options is not necessarily better for RP when you are dealing with finite resources like skill points.