Cerise Magazine

September 2007 Issue

Features

• From the Editors
• Craft Check: Handkerchief Dice Bags
• Gaming in the Media: Reflections on Princess Peach...
• Market to Me: Feminine gamers

Interviews

• Blogger Interview: Regina Buenaobra [Acid for Blood]

Articles

• Gender & Live-Action Role Play: LARP and Social Darwinism
  Author: Samara Hayley Steele

Samara continues her series on gender and LARP.

• D&D for Girls?
  Author: John Kim

John discusses a recent incident involving gender and the official Dungeons & Dragons discussion forums, what went wrong and some ideas for making it right.

• Reclaiming Pink
  Author: Olivia Luna

Olivia takes a critical look at the some of the uses of the color pink in the world of handheld gaming.

• Sisterhood is powerful: women-oriented gaming communities
  Author: Andrea Rubenstein

Andrea brings up some of the positive aspects of women-oriented gaming communities.

• Is Gamerdom Really a Bastion of Masculinity?
  Author: Latoya Peterson

Latoya looks at the perceptions of gaming and gamers and what that means for the female gamers out there.

Gamer Stories

• The Dice of Evil
  by Robyn Fleming

Reviews

• Puzzle Quest
  by Olivia Luna
• Nocturne
  by Bonnie Moxnes
• Retro Review: Castle of Dragon
by Abby Wilson

Odds 'n Ends

• The Back Page

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By John Kim

The big news of GenCon Indy 2007 was that a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is coming in May 2008. There was much talk of the changes — rebalancing the classes, adding continuous magic options to spellcasters, and adding resource spending to the non-spellcasters. There will be online support included with the products, allowing online character creation and online play. There will, in short, be a host of changes. However, the design process is not yet complete. There are still many months before the release of the fourth edition, and there is the possibility for feedback to change things.

The Book

The announcement spawned a host of interviews at GenCon, with all sorts questions asked about the upcoming changes to D&D. At one point, Sara Girard interviewed author Shelly Mazzanoble at GenCon 2007 about her new book, Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl’s Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game, due to be released on September 18th. From the book’s press release, a brief description:

With tongue-in-cheek humor and plenty of self-mockery, Shelly Mazzanoble chronicles her unexpected descent into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Shelly’s a girlie-girl through and through, but when a friend asks her to join his D&D game as an 134-year-old sorceress named Astrid Bellagio, she agrees, never expecting to actually like it. In spite of all the stereotypes — or maybe because of them — she actually finds herself getting game. Part Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, part D&D for Dummies, this book lays out how to create a character, make D&D-themed snacks (Magic Missile Meatballs, anyone?) and play the game, all the while taking a light-hearted look at the myths and realities of gamer stereotypes. For teen girls who love reading fantasy, for librarians running gaming clubs, or for those of you who want to figure out how to start one, here’s your stepping stone to a fun, rewarding, and totally geek-chic experience at the library, at school, or at home.

– Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl’s Guide to the Dungeons and Dragons Game

Advanced reading copies have gone out, and the book has been described thus: “It’s got a sassy, sarcastic voice and splits evenly on teaching you ‘how to play’ and providing context and encouragement.” It is specifically focused on D&D. It has some tongue-in-cheek quizzes on how to decide your alignment, race, and class — plus some mock diary entries. It is obviously aimed at a young adult/girl audience.

The Interview

At one point during the GenCon 2007 interview, available online, Shelly plugged a women’s forum on the Wizards of the Coast message boards:

Mazzanoble: One of the best ways to find out more is to visit our website, wizards dot com slash dnd. And, check out the message boards. And there should actually be a forum for women up there. Men can be on there too, but this is… should really be a place for women to just get on there and ask these questions, and find out how to be involved, and get support from one another, and hopefully people like you that have experience in gaming and are working in the industry or I can use my experiences and we can all be out there to support each other.
Girard: Do you think women need a special forum just for their gender?
Mazzanoble: No, I don’t think it should ever be a gender-specific thing but I think that women might feel like they’re not being supported in this community or in this industry so it might be nice for them to feel like there is a place that people are listening, and we want to know what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking and what they’re interested in.

One should note that she immediately answered the question about whether this should be a special forum where women should post. In her plug, at least, it was intended as an additional forum to address particular issues for female players, and to get feedback from female players in particular for the next edition. Presumably this was part of wanting to increase female players in the next edition.

The Thread

Indeed, on the Wizards message boards, along with other topics on the development of 4th edition, there was a thread called “Astrid’s Parlour: A Haven For Women Gamers”. Not technically a subforum, it was rather a permanent topic in the 4th edition list of topics. However, the thread was taken down within days in an apparent storm of controversy. In a post titled “Encouraging Women: How Not To Do It”, Morgan Davie wrote on his blog:

After about twelve hours of this, the thread was pulled entirely from the site with no explanation. It had been a complete train wreck. Obviously, because it’s gone you can’t view it – but essentially it was lots of guys saying “why do we need a special thread for women? This is inappropriate! where is the special thread for men?” “Why do women need a special hiding place, that’s sexist, they don’t need your protection” etc. etc. etc. All the usual stuff. The moderators said that it was meant to tie in with an upcoming book written by a woman gamer about getting into D&D (Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress), but because that book hadn’t been released many commenters felt entitled to question and ridicule and attack the existence of the thread. The subtitle, A haven for female gamers, was forgotten in the chaos.

- from the morgue

Later, there was a new thread put to replace it entitled “Astrid’s Parlor: Ways to Support Female Gamers”. What’s notable is that the original thread pitched itself as a place for female gamers to talk, whereas the second thread pitches itself as a place to talk about female gamers. And sadly, the latter thread indeed has lots of men giving their ideas about what female gamers would like. Many stereotypical ideas appear, including making the rules simpler, less focus on combat and/or more focus on story. While some of these undoubtedly have some truth to them, it is far less useful to get a man’s thoughts on what will appeal to girls than to actually hear from girls and women who are interested in playing.

What is sad is that both the video interview and the original thread title suggested that Wizards of the Coast was actually looking to hear from female gamers as part of their marketing. This was presumably not simply an ideological stance, but rather an attempt to expand their market. However, the voices of female gamers were drowned out in the arguments.

Thoughts

First of all, I think that the idea of actually hearing from women gamers is a vital one if Wizards of the Coast would like to expand their market. Problems with that particular thread should drive them to find other ways to contact girl and women gamers. One of the key points is distinguishing preferences of gamer girls as opposed to girls in general. There are many potential additions to the D&D line that might help bring in female players. However, distinguishing which will actually be useful calls for real research.

As an anecdote, I recently ran a game for an 11-year-old’s birthday party. The birthday girl had gone to the kids room at a local convention (Avalon’s ConQuest SF) the prior year, and had started a Living Greyhawk character in a special kids event. Months later, she specifically asked me to come in and run a D&D game using the Basic Set for her birthday party. There were a few immediate problems that I considered. She had invited six of her friends – five girls and one boy — to play. My first issue was character sheets and miniatures. I didn’t want to slog through character creation for these kids. However, there were only four pre-made character sheets in the set, and only one of them was female (Lidda). Luckily the birthday girl had somehow gotten copies of some other iconic characters including Naull and Mialee, even though I had been unable to find these online. I made up a color character sheet for Alhandra in Photoshop, and scrounged for female miniatures.

• Being “the real thing” was important to them. None of the birthday party guests wanted to play a watered-down or kidsy version of the game. They valued the glossy-sheeted characters not for the aesthetics, but because those seemed to be the most official.
• Having only four characters is really limiting. This is especially true given that only one is the token female (the halfling rogue Lidda). It was notable that the birthday girl got dibs on Lidda as her character. Having a much wider selection of pre-generated characters would make the game more open to players in general, but especially for this group, given that there was only one female character.
• Getting female miniatures is difficult. This is because the D&D minis are sold in randomized packs where most of the PC-appropriate minis are male. I recently had a chance to sift through huge bins of D&D minis at GenCon, and I picked up a bunch of female minis as a present. However, most people can’t do this. Perhaps there could be a few introductory packs with a wider variety of PC miniatures.
• The dungeon scenario in the Basic Set was really empty and dull. The original motivation is to recover a ring, but that’s found in the first room. Thus, exploring the rest of the dungeon is motivated only by looting. It is a cliché that girls are interested in story, but I felt the need to insert some sort of narrative and the players did have questions. I set them out to rescue two innocents captured by a necromancer, giving a mission and an ultimate opponent.
• The players of the wizard and sorcerer characters seemed a bit underwhelmed by their magic. It was very quickly used up and included some effects that seemed quite limited. I deliberately added in scrolls to my early rooms, which allowed their detect magic and read magic to have solid payoff, and kept them casting.

However, this set likely isn’t representative. I think the most major anecdotal point is that one female player gathered all the others. If you want to recruit more female players, listen to and encourage the current female players. They’re the best channels for recruitment. The birthday girl was hooked on D&D after being taken to a convention by a friend of her mom’s, and playing in a special Living Greyhawk event that was DMed by a woman. She in turn recruited a bunch of her friends for her birthday game. Capitalizing on network effects was a key part of 3rd edition D&D, which is why it is particularly unfortunate that efforts to make a haven for female D&D players were shut down.

Editor’s Note: At print time, “Astrid’s Parlor” has become an entire forum on the D&D message boards, rather than a single thread. Whether discussion in the forum will ultimately be supportive for women and girl gamers remains to be seen.

Article © September 2007 by John Kim.