On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 05:03:56PM -0500, Karen J. Cravens wrote:
> I've known of some gaming groups that are either mixed-sex or all-female, 
> but from what I've known of them I've been inclined to keep my distance. 
> (I've heard of some non-local ones that sound just fine, but keeping my 
> distance there is still somewhat inevitable, and rather more literal.)

Hey -- coming to this discussion late, but what the heck.

Most of the gaming I've done has been in all-male groups.  That was
certainly true with any regular gaming group when I was in junior high.
There was one (disastrous) time when I was supposed to DM a *ginormous*
group of people through a D&D module, and out of maybe 12 people there was
one girl present.  The other plaers were monstrous to her, and it really
pissed me off.  (She ended up leaving in tears.)

But that's junior high for you.

As an adult, most of my groups have been all-male, but twice there has been
a single female gamer.  I was very happy the first time around, because
there had been a much more pernicious minority: I was the only cat person,
everybody else was a dog person.  (In fact, that was true the second time as
well.)

All that aside-- I never really noticed anything different about the female
gamers "because" they were female.  They were different, sure, but so was
everybody else.  One was a more "casual" gamer, but was interested and fun
to play with.  The other was a more serious gamer, and was also a lot of fun
to play with.

At the moment, my gaming group is three guys, soon to be only two guys, so
I'd be just as happy to find *anybody* compatable to join it.

I wouldn't object to trying a group of gamers where I was the only male
amongst a bunch of females.  And, if that didn't work out, I wouldn't object
to trying it again, becuase it would probably just be a group thing.  I
suspect that individual variation of people and groups is much larger than
any average difference between male and female gamers-- with the one
exception that from the reports we hear, there does seem to be a trend of
women being treated poorly in games.

-Rob

-- 
-=-=-= Rob Knop =-= rknop@pobox.com =-= http://www.pobox.com/~rknop =-=-=-
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