I was awarded a
Masters Degree in Education by Xavier University in 2005. I state this not as a
boast, but to establish the basis for what I am going to discuss at length:
teaching and learning.
I use terms that apparently offend differing
parts of slightly more than half of our society for various reasons unbeknownst
to me. Those terms are: lady and female (in my world, those of our species not born
with a penis). I always assume one to be the former until proven otherwise. I
have a wife, a daughter, grand- daughters and a great grand-daughter and expect
them to be viewed by others similarly. I am a product of the Boomer generation
and make no apology for that.
Recently, my efforts
to bring more ladies into RPG’s have been misunderstood, impugned and insulted.
What follows is how this all came to be. If I repeat something here I said
elsewhere, I’m either sorry or it is important. In general, I use the term “wargaming”
as the tent that holds us all, boardgamers, minis players and RPG’ers.
Several months ago my wife stunned me with a request to put
together a D&D adventure for her
and a bunch of her lady friends from Zumba class, none of whom had any RPG
experience. I put together a very linear adventure (not so much “railroading” as
limiting potentially distracting factors) with the intent of analyzing early
actions for the lessons to be learned; sort of learning-on-the-fly. I gave them
pre-generated Player Characters with minimal info; all they had was their six
stats, their THAC0 and their HP. I explained each in about 30 words or less on
a handout and we were playing in 15 minutes from sitting down to the table.
Four hours after beginning they had chased down the wicked
bugbears who had stolen their patron saint’s finger to put in their soup, retrieved
said phalange and rendered the bugbears hors
de combat, and they all had a working knowledge of RPG’ing. We played with
a single sheet of paper, a writing utensil of some sort and a handful of dice.
Oh, yes, we also freely exercised our imaginations, had numerous laughs and
wondered where four hours had gone so quickly.
I realized that I had touched upon something dormant in our
hobby—rules overload and how this affects someone wishing to participate in the
hobby we love. That stack of books we all lug around is really intimidating;
newbies (of either sex) often feel that they will be at some sort of
disadvantage if they don’t know everything in those books when they first sit
down at a table.
How shocked would you be to know that I had the only set of
rules for at least three quarters on the whole campus, and possible in all of
southern Illinois in ’74-’75? The only reason someone in the group (well over a
dozen avid RPG’ers ) finally broke down and bought a set was because I was
graduating and taking mine with me to my new job at TSR.
I have taught in co-ed schools and I have taught in same-sex
schools. The two types of schools have radically different dynamics. I have
worked with every age of student, from pre-K to HS. More studies than I can
count or care to list here have had some very interesting research results when
studying classroom dynamics and environments. To sum up, very briefly: learning
occurs differently in same-sex classrooms than in co-ed settings. I am not a shrink,
nor have I read much in that field except as it might pertain to education and
class rooms, so I claim no special expertise in this subject. Percentage-wise,
more girls excel in the STEM fields in all-girls schools than do in co-ed settings.
There are all sorts of social and societal forces at play here, as well as
which students’ families can afford private schools which virtually all
same-sex schools are today. In the end. what it ultimately boils down to is
comfort; how embracing, inclusive and comfortable is the learning environment?
Girls learn differently when not in the presence of boys;
the same is true for boys when not around girls. All sorts of factors are at
work here: less fear of embarrassment in front of the other sex, no showing off
for the other sex, no being thought of oddly for showing interest in something
not associated with your sex, the list goes on and ends with just less
distraction.
From the beginning in Prussia, scores of years ago,
wargaming was a male, military pursuit. It was serious business, used to train men
to more efficiently kill, maim or capture more of the other sides’ men in war.
As the wargaming hobby evolved, from serious killing-efficiency exercise to
parlour entertainment for the wealthy, it remained a male pursuit, by and
large.
It is too easy for us in the 21st century to
declaim how horrid things were in the past in terms of today’s values and standards,
but that is what they were then. If a woman was interested in something such as
pushing brightly colored blocks of wood representing units of troops about on a
large table, she was the one thought
to be “odd”. (Gaming has always had a close relationship with Irony.)
I started The Dragon
magazine (the original name I gave it) in 1976. It was not until 1978 that we
got our second female subscriber (out of about 2700). I am sure there were
ladies buying copies in stores, but I had no way of knowing where or how many
or who, or what, etc. I got very few
submissions from female writers, and almost always used ones I did get, no
matter how badly they needed editing. I sought out lady artists; they were
damned few and far between. I continued that trend with Adventure Gaming, my later magazine. This was in the early’80’s and
still less than 5% of my subscribers were female.
I am going on about this to show how I have been wargaming
for over 50 years now, almost exclusively in the company of males, until
relatively recently.
After the success of the little thing I put together for my
wife and her friends, I thought to do
something like it for conventions, and maybe turn it into a teaching tool of
sorts. I have spoken to lady gamers who do not role-play; fear of the seeming
immensity of the rules is a factor. I have seen females of all ages sitting on
the edges listening but not playing; I want to change that. I want to do it in
a non-threatening setting that has so far worked very well; I have two more tests
scheduled at NTRPGCon and GameHole. For GH, I intend to run a ladies-only game for experienced players.
My intro-game is in no way wussed down; the danger is there
or it would be no fun. It is a hell of a lot simpler because I play D&D the way it was played at The Dawn of Role-Playing. It is enough
to tell the player to “roll a d20 and get a 12 or higher”; looking up the various
charts and tables is a buzzkill; that’s what the DM does.
I am beginning to understand J.D. Salinger a little better
lately.
If I had started a game club at a school, I would have
introduced them to RPG’s in the same way: boys-only and girls only
introductions; they will both learn it faster that way. Only after that would
we start a “mixed” campaign. Given that beginning, I would expect the co-ed
groups to be much more equally balanced as to leadership and problem solving
roles being filled more equitably.
The issue has arisen that my game is mis-advertised as “For
Ladies Only” if a male is the DM. Supposedly, my games place any lady players
in it “in my power”. The idea that a DM somehow “has power over” the players I
find abhorrent and counter to everything I have ever published, edited or
written.
The Dungeon Master/ Game Master/ Ship Master/Person
behind the Screen has control of the game,
not the players. We try to exercise that control sparingly; a good example
might be not letting the party find a level that is not yet done by not letting
them see a hidden door or secret passage. Another example might be subtly trying
to get the party to rethink a scheme they are set upon embarking on that you know, deep in your bones, is not a very
good idea as it entertains very little chance of success and likely to end in a
very gory and unsatisfying conclusion.
No DM can control what the players do. Where do you think
TPK’s (Total Party Killed) come from? Wandering Volcanic Eruptions? I have not
had a single party spontaneously combust.
I am genuinely sorry for any player that has suffered under
a DM with a “me v. them” mindset.
Those are the people that work at summer camp so they can lord it over and
terrorize the younger campers, instead of showing them how to catch a fish or
shoot a bow or whatever campers do today.
I am asked repeatedly “How can I know if I’m a good DM?”. My
answer is still the same’ “Do your players come back every session? If the
answer is ‘Yes’, you’re doing fine.”
I intend to run my “Ladies Only game” again at North Texas
RPG Con and at GameHole Con. I offer a comfortable, non-judgmental environment
in which persons with different plumbing than mine can come and learn through
doing. No control, no lording. Just fun.
To my naysayers and haters I say this; I know what I am
doing and I have been doing RPG’s longer than 98% of those doing them today.
That you would ascribe to me your fears, prejudices and past bad experiences
without asking my intent or studying my efforts is a sad commentary on
yourself, all alone in your tiny echo chamber.
