My wife is a GM (that is how we met actually, I moved into the area and joined her group). Back in '77-78 when she and her friends started playing D&D they wanted to play so she GMed. Has been GMing since.
Specific Answers:
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? How was it? Why do you think there are so few?
So few- social issues mentioned in the thread. I've had a female GM.. how was it - I married her. :D
If you are a female GM, do you feel like you have been met with any additional challenges? Was it a leap for you to get your start?
Can't really answer the second part for the wife, because of her situation. The first part - oh yes. A number of male personality types don't take well to women in charge. And some of those that do still unconciously treat females in a group setting with less respect than the guys - she had to become very pushy/strongly authortative to maintain control on some of her groups.
When I get home, I'll ask her directly and post her comments.
|
Forgive me for not being entirely on the main topic here; wanted to discuss something else that got brought up. This is going back a few weeks, but I wanted to offer comment on those 'healer incidents.' For what it's worth, this isn't strictly (though it can be influenced by) a gender identity thing... it's a role thing. You can see nearly identical behavior in video games like Team Fortress 2, where the Medic class (a stereotypical German man) is able to heal one person at a time.
Often, there will be only one Medic on a team of 16 to 32 people. With the 'one at a time' limit it's pretty much guaranteed you can't save everyone mid-fight. Some of them will chew the Medic player out for it, even though that Medic has basically sacrificed a lot of personal fun (few of the Medic's weapons are particularly good) in the name of improving the team's overall odds of winning. They simply lack empathy and constant personal service. One imagines these are likely the same sort of people who are rude to the service staff at a diner.
There is a set of players in any game that are willing to be mean to healers regardless of gender/gender identity; it's not just Pathfinder/D&D/etc. Though one supposes certain aspects of the specific Healer class back in 3.5 don't help fight these stereotypes, and I'm glad we're not seeing that sort of thing repeated often here.
I'm glad you got out of that group though. If everything is as bad as you say, nothing good could have came from sticking around and being their 'Heal Plz.' Especially if they're that openly abusive about it.
On a side note, while I haven't had time to read every post I'm glad to see how civil and constructive this thread has been!
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? Ho was it? Why do you think there are so few?
I couldn't care less if the DM is male or female, I just care about the quality of the DM, and the quality of the fellow players. I got no problem with intelligent women, or one being in charge etc. Gender is irrelevant.
That said, if she's drop dead gorgeous besides being intelligent, and single too, my brain would melt and dribble out my ears just to try to talk with her.
I would have to say female GMs are more likely to emphasize 'roleplay' over 'rollplayer'. This is a personal observation of perhaps a dozen female GMs, three belonging to a V:tM group and another sharing a game world with her fiancee/husband. None have been below average, primarily due to them either having lots of experience playing or asking advice.
Guys seem to hate asking directions or for help.
|
Interestingly, I have never had a female GM!
We actually just signed up for several PFS sessions at an upcoming con, and I specifically chose to play at the table of a couple female GMs. One of them is at least a 4 star GM, at that! I'm pretty excited about it and might even fan girl out a little bit! :D
Hopefully she's flattered an doesn't think I'm annoying.... ;)
On a related note, I've started my eleven year old sister roleplaying this past week (running Castles and Crusades for simplicity). While discussing backstory for her character, she told me that I "should just let her make up the story and run the monsters." I think I may have a tiny female GM on my hands soon. Maybe once she gets the hang of what dice to roll, she'll start running stuff for my littler siblings.
It is obscenely crazy how fast she's adapting to the game though. It took me a couple sessions to understand the concept of leveling when I first started playing at her age (15 years ago), and she's fully grasping concepts like the fact that if her dwarven fighter multiclasses into wizard, he won't be as powerful at either class as a single classed character. She did it anyways, mostly because she wants to light things on fire and then hit them with her sword to make sure they're dead. It has reminded me never to tick off preteen girls. They are cruel, capricious creatures.
I'm an old gamer. I've played allot of systems, genres and groups. Admittedly I've been away from the hobby for awhile now, but in my day I've had several women play with my groups at various times. A few were there just to be with their S.O. and were just seat fillers. Some were down-right disruptive and ruined the game for us, as they felt they had to prove something. One was a fantastic gamer who was probably one of the best role-players I have ever sat at a table with.
None of my tables ever had a woman GM
None.
And I consider that tragic.
As I sit here and look across the room at my bookshelves, I see fully 75% of my favorite fantasy and sci-fi authors are women. They are some of the best story and character creators I have ever encountered. Now imagine if you could have that imagination, and the kind of organization and discipline it takes to write like that sitting behind the screen at your table.
What an awesome thing that would be.
*waves* Over here. I'm a woman. I GM. I'm going to be GMing 3 games at the upcoming ConQuest Avalon in Sacramento the first weekend of November. But yeah, female GMs are hard to come by.
|
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? Ho (sic) was it? Why do you think there are so few?
I like to think at this point in my gaming life I see past gender/race/sexuality lines when all I really care about from a GM is presenting a good story and being a fair interpreter of the rules.
That being said, my GF GM'ed for the first time last week and did just fine. She was very nervous but took extra prep time to get past that nervousness. None of the players seemed to have any kind of issues with her being female.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The best two GMs I've played under were both women, for what it's worth. Honestly, I'll be happy when people don't even think to ask this question any more than they'd ask, "What do you think of short GMs?"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Oh hey there necro'd wife thread
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? How was it? Why do you think there are so few?
Well I am a man who has been running in games over the past 10 years under a female GM and frankly she is among the top 2 GM's I have ever played under in my 35 years of gaming.
She is great at the creation of story and NPC personalities and handles system mastery just fine.
I'm not sure I am qualified to speculate why the female gender may be less drawn to RPG games than the male. I am sure there are demographics and psychological/social reasons beyond my understanding why that is.
At the very least I would assume the percentage of female GM's would be comparable to the percentage of say female authors though.
I started gaming in 9th grade and when I hit my 20's there were at least one woman in almost ever gaming group I played in after. My current group is 2 women and 3 men but it used to be 4 women and myself for a while.
You know, it just occurred to me: I think most of my GMs might have been female. I might just be going through a weird brain blank, but the preponderance of them might have been. Huh.
The best two GMs I've played under were both women, for what it's worth. Honestly, I'll be happy when people don't even think to ask this question any more than they'd ask, "What do you think of short GMs?"
Short GMs are the worst...nevermind. :P
I missed this thread the first time around - my wife GMs, about 2/3's as often as I do overall. I'm not sure I could count *all* the female GMs I've had, but they probably make up about a third of the total. Our gaming tables are typically 1/3 to 2/3 female.
As far as differences, I don't see much on an overall quality level. Perhaps a skew towards story-emphasis vs. rule-emphasis, but hardly decisive.
Love the diversity of experiences at the table!
I've had several female GMs, all of them good.
I'm currently co-GMing with a woman. She does most of the plot, I do most of the mechanics. We trade ideas back and forth. This is for a light comedic superheroes campaign that we are running both for a group of adults and teens. The two groups run separately.
Another game I play in is run by the female author of that game.
I've only been GMed by two women. Not pleasant experiences but they were related, had related social issues that don't involve the game but effect how they GM and are only two out of the pool so I can't say that my experience reflects the norm at all.
About half my DM have been female, no real difference
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yep! Had 2 women DM's. Lots of fun. I have no opinion one way or the other.
Now, ENGINEERS...you don't wanna let engineers play D&D with you.
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? Ho was it? Why do you think there are so few?
I wish there were more female players let alone female GMs. Unfortunately, they are very rare where I play. It's pretty much like this.
Had a great one a few years ago, good player too, very entertaining.
I've tried to pass the torch to a few, but those female players I know seem quite happy to just play and get into that rather than dming. I see that a bit as well, it isn't hard finding female players, but they don't dm very often.
Chatting to one of my friends recently, and she might run a dungeons and discourse game, so that will be great if it gets going. I helped with advice (been running games for 10 years in total). DMing might help her to be a bit more confident too.
Now, ENGINEERS...you don't wanna let engineers play D&D with you.
:(
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a big fan of Ed Greenwood and Zeb Cook. I havent found a female fantasy author that wrote anything that really 'grabbed my soul and hung on to it'.
and unfortunately
I have had girls at the table that felt like 'adjuncts' to someone else at the table... As if they were simply there because they'd rather not be home alone on game night. Only serving as a way to help along a gm's plotline when a party is resistant to it... that kind of thing. It was kinda sad to see.
On the other hand.
My wife had an open invitation to join my gaming group and adamantly refused to do it.
She has always been interested in writing and I always thought she'd be good at gaming.
She also adamantly refused to let me teach her chess.
She let someone from her work teach her chess and wouldnt play me until she was able to beat everyone else at her work with reasonable confidence.
Now she's even joined a gaming group and we talk about her table all the time, but its not a table that i'm at.
Finally they asked her to try running a game.
She came to me for help putting it together.
I do not run the system that her table is running but i've run similar plots in similar systems for decades.
Her table normally only runs one-offs. Never a story that lasts more than one day.
On the day her campaign was done they asked her to keep it going.
So I know at least one girl who I knew would be great at gaming.
And with a little help and encouragement she's running tables as good as they've ever had.
I think my wife could run a good trap-filled dungeon game. She cackles with wicked glee when killing adventurers in tower defence games.
She is quite content to play and try a range of games, but hasn't asked to dm yet (also doesn't really have the time).
The main difference I've noticed with female GM's is that some male players treat them differently, due to a disregard for females in general.
As a player, I've never experienced a Gygaxian female GM, whereas it's a common occurrence with male GMs.
It's hard to say if any angle of gender politics influences this latter thing though, as you'd need a large even sample set and a lot of study to correlate it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
so wait, my wife should not have made this thread?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
hmmm ok
so before Lamontia cries internet tears
why is it bad
Where is Lady Ophelia? I thought she would had poked her head. She GM'd a game for me at PaizoCon and did a great job. Only female GM that Ive ever had.
|
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? Ho was it? Why do you think there are so few?
I had several female GM's over the years. Most were at least as competent as the majority of male GM's. I eventually married one of them.
As to why there are so few Female GM's, most of the ones I knew would be unwilling to tolerate a lot of the munchkin attitudes I see with random groups. They were much more comfortable with home games comprised of close friends.
As a player, what are your thoughts on female GMs? Have you had one? Ho was it? Why do you think there are so few?
I am a male caucasian, mid twenties, and have played D&D since 2nd edition, sum total of RPG experience is about 15 years.
I got my fiancee into the game. She has GMed in solo games with me, and during a brief period on Roll20 when we did a run of 3.5's Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. She is a fantastic GM, with some flaws. She was a fiction writer first (NaNoWriMo is an obsession for her), but she is also a lawyer - she can learn the rules. She is imaginative, and her background brings entirely different game worlds that the standard D&D tropes. Her biggest weakness is occasionally getting game rules wrong. That normally can be corrected mid game but if its not going to be player knowledge, it can be disastrous (early on she didn't know that two different types of DR do not stack).
All in all, I wished she GMed more. I have had almost a dozen GMs over the years, and she is tied for 1st with one of my male friends.
I have had several women in my games, and played alongside two female PCs once (coincidentally, also in a 3.5 Expedition to Castle Ravenloft game). It felt natural and fun. As to why do I see so few, my fiancee explained to me that, for some women, they may want to test the water to see if they feel comfortable and/or safe in that environment. I don't like playing with/recruiting sexist/bigoted jerks in my games, so I don't invite them. Other players' tables may not be so forgiving - peoples' experiences vary. (I hate to bring this up, but GAMERGATE is an example for self-selection of female gamers - it's hard to be at a table if players' make jokes about rape or players who degrade women. I don't want to play with them either). With that reticence in mind, those people might not want to commit to it before getting their feet wet.
From a GM perspective, you want people who you 1) like and 2)can commit to regular attendance. I had this happen in my current campaign - one M2F trans player wanted to test the water, and the people who I already had as a core group all had friends dying to play and were ready to commit then. I had the choice of picking someone who *might* play, or someone who *would* play, and I try to limit myself to a maximum of 6 players. Going back to GMing, you generally need to have played and enjoyed the game for a while before you GM. Summarily, if female (or, indeed, any other person) players don't get experience due to missed opportunities or principled self-selection, they are less likely to GM. I feel this a real loss and the lack of female GMs and players is a detriment to the hobby as a whole.
Now, I must return to plotting what my male player will do now that his male PC has discovered he is carrying' a spawn of Tiamat in his abdomen.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
so wait, my wife should not have made this thread?No... the point is she should not have felt it necessary to have done so. Nor would she if this hobby were as egalitarian as we like to claim it is. We should be at the point where having a Female GM isn't a novelty, but simply be accepted as a matter of course. Your wife made this thread... you would not have the need to have done so if you were a person taking the realms of being a GM. You would not be in a position to have your place question or to question your place.
The problem is... we are clearly not there yet. Instead we've approached a point where we have meaningless crusades like GamerGate, where someone has been remorselessly hounded simply because of her gender.
so she should not have made this thread a year and a half ago because she should not have to make this thread?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't feel like I've been met with any specific challenges as a female GM, but that's largely because (other than at Paizo Con) I only GM for people I know well enough to want in my home, which is a pretty small and select group. Part of the reason for that exclusivity, however, is the experience I've had as a player at convention pick-up games and store events (to be fair, I've never played a pick-up game of Pathfinder, so I retain hope that our players are better than average :-) ).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've never played a pick-up game of Pathfinder, so I retain hope that our players are better than average :-) ).
If Cosmo is in your group he is bringing down your average. :P
Oh can I
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Guys, seriously, take it down a notch. It's a good thing your wife made this thread, Lamontius. As far as I can tell, LazarX is just saying it's a shame we even have to ask whether female GMs have experienced gender-based harassment.
|
I don't think gender really comes into it (except for corner cases, maybe, but that's an exception).
A lot of players just tend to always think of themselves as players and never really think of putting themselves in the GM seat, or are too worried they won't be able to be a decent GM. Applies to both genders.
|
Ooh. I'm a rare species. Yup, I'm a female GM. Small too.
If the number of GMs were proportional to the number of players, and I can count on 2 hands the number of above 18 female players there are in this region, then proportionately the number female gms would be countable on 1 hand. Actually 2 fingers, myself included.
A lot of people don't pick up pathfinder due to the massive number of rules involved. When you add additional rules you need to learn on the GMs side and prep time for scenarios, thats even worse, causing a lack of GMs.
It may be cultural also, where males are supposed to take the dominant role, and girl gamers are shunned. My family does not encourage any kind of gaming.
I'm a transgender woman and a GM. I haven't GMed in person, though, since coming out of the closet. I run a fair number of play-by-posts over on EN World, though.
My wife has GMed a few times. She's good at it and did a fabulous job with We Be Goblins, but doesn't like GMing all that much. Ironic, since she's now a freelance layout artist, game designer, and RPG Superstar Top 16 contestant (2011). :D
Late '70s, I played in a number of games, but only one female GM. She was not very good, basically running a game so her BF could play one of the cheezyist abominations I have ever seen. In '80, she started a new game for the girls in her dorm. Yeah, all girl! Every girl complimented her on her keeping track of all the plot lines. I guess soap operas have benefits.
That said, she was up to snuff on the rules as a player and often ran the crew in my game. She shed the 'gf' role and became a dynamic player and solid GM for Traveller. Interestingly, two of the girls from her dorm game have run games I played in, both solid GMs.
Most of the early GMs were mediocre, regardless of sex. The precious few females were not much better than the Mean of the males, probably because no one dared criticize them, but none were remotely as bad as some of the males. The women GMs (years pass, all the 'girl GMs' started having kids) increased in quality faster than the average guy, usually relying on each other for friendly criticism. Guys suffered more from ego issues and got their backs up when called on rules, etc.
The only female GMs in my current contacts are dedicated to either running APs (1), kitchen table games for their kids/etc (2) or learning PF after years of 4E with the help of her parents' old OD&D crew (1). All 4 are much more open in the running of the game than most guys. The mother of the last strongly influenced my current running style, letting the players basically run the rules while I handle the world.