"Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress"

[vixengmer]

"A girl's Guide to the D&D Game"
A gamer guy friend with good intentions at heart gave this to me as a birthday gift a couple of years ago. I have been playing RPGs for 8 yrs now and have played video games and pc games from Atari on. I have mixed feelings about the contents of the book. I just wanted to know if anyone else had happened to read this book and what they thought of it?

[DeathQuaker]

Disclaiming that I never *bought* the book, and only read a few chapters:

1. Some of the discussions of gaming were fun, and the attempt to explain what gaming was to an assumed audience who had no familiarity with it wasn't bad.

2. BUT I also found much of the text extremely condescending. One thing comes to mind is comparing choosing your equipment to shopping... while I can see the comparison, the way it was presented grated on me.

3. I found a lot of the text to be veiled advertisements for Wizards of the Coast products more than discussions of gaming. Now, of course "Confessions" is a WotC product and they will want to promote their own material, but as a gamer aware of all the wide world of gaming, it presented a very limited view of gaming in favor of its own products. I imagine a better book could be written by someone who was NOT Token Girl from Hasbro's marketing department who was forced to play D&D just so she could write that book.

As noted, I did not read the entire book and my vision of it may be skewed.

[Terquem]

I felt the book was dishonest. I have known many girl gamers and my experience has always been that girl gamers are not anything like the "persona" she describes for herself. It is as if the editors at WoTC instructed her to write a book with the assumed attitude that she was some kind of "constructed person" (a mythical sort of 17 year old hipster-chick with a keen knowledge of the fashion world). All of her feigned interest in the game seemed forced and contrived, and designed to show the miraculous power of their "newest" line of products to win over someone you would never "expect" to like playing D&D.

Latter reading her Facebook page and blogs at WoTC it seemed obvious that she was in fact just another regular gamer girl pretending to be a hipster chick at the beck and call of her editors. (As a personal note I become very disillusioned with her after she crowed so mightily about the 4th edition PhB winning an award at gencon, when I belive the book was not an all around superior gaming product and that it was just coporate politics, big convention in bed with big company. The year the 4th edition PhB won there were so many better fantasy role playing game rules books released.)

The book was interesting and I would recommend it. I even wrote a positive review of it at DnDonlinegames.com. I think I look at the book differently now then I did then (after reading more of her editorial writing)and that probably isn't fair. I think it should be read by any girl who has a gamer for a boyfriend and actually doesn't play herself. But it is really not much more than a advertisement style testemonial.

[lynora]

I found it to be a moderately entertaining read, but more a good tool for getting my guy friends to get it through their heads that girly and gamer were not mutually exclusive. After that example my tendency to design clothes for my character or know the floor plans of the party's base seemed so mild and non-annoying by comparison that they totally stopped giving me grief about it. :)
Aside from that it's really not a good example of the standard gamer girl experience, but then I'm not sure there can be a standard experience since there are so many different types of gamer girls.

[stardust]

ooh, you design clothes for your characters... we should totally get together and compare notes.... which do you think is more adventurer-appropriate, a calf-length pant, or full-length? Or does it depend on the character?

[lynora]

stardust wrote:

ooh, you design clothes for your characters... we should totally get together and compare notes.... which do you think is more adventurer-appropriate, a calf-length pant, or full-length? Or does it depend on the character?

Totally depends on the character. I had one who went adventuring in full length skirts, which did cause trouble from time to time...prima donna sorceror. ;)

But as to pant length...loose pants or skin-tight. Cause it they're loose, totally go with calf-length, but skin-tight should be long so that they're easier to tuck into boots. :)

[Dennis Harry]

I bought it for my wife as she expressed in it when it came out, she was not all that impressed when she read it. I read it after her and found it a quick read with soem entertaining parts but I forgot it existed until I saw this post.

[LazarX]

I actually thought the book was written as a comedy, not an actual biographical account.

[LazarX]

stardust wrote:

ooh, you design clothes for your characters... we should totally get together and compare notes.... which do you think is more adventurer-appropriate, a calf-length pant, or full-length? Or does it depend on the character?

Interestingly enough, we've had scenes like that on World of Warcraft. :)

We'd scour dungeons for particular drops... not because of their combat effectiveness but because of the neat looks. like the spider-themed dress that would drop in Dire Maul. It just screams elf. Built quite a few pirate outfits that way too.

[lynora]

LazarX wrote:

stardust wrote:

ooh, you design clothes for your characters... we should totally get together and compare notes.... which do you think is more adventurer-appropriate, a calf-length pant, or full-length? Or does it depend on the character?

Interestingly enough, we've had scenes like that on World of Warcraft. :)

We'd scour dungeons for particular drops... not because of their combat effectiveness but because of the neat looks. like the spider-themed dress that would drop in Dire Maul. It just screams elf. Built quite a few pirate outfits that way too.

That is totally awesome. :D

[stardust]

Yes, I have a blood elf priestess who got this amazing beautiful purple robe from Razorfen Kraul or whatever its called. After the release of Cataclysm, the robe level requirement was changed, so it went red on me. I refused to take it off though.... it was too beautiful. So for about a level, I had a robe that wasn't doing anything for me.... Thankfully I got to the new level requirement without dying too many times... lol.

[princeimrahil]

After skimming through a few chapters, I quickly decided the best way to make sure that my female friends do NOT play D&D with me was to give them this book - the gender expectations in there seemed pretty offensive, frankly.

Which is sad, because I thought the idea was a really great one, and I had high hopes for it.