On Mon, 19 Dec 2005, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>If I'm understanding you correctly, would it be fair to say that one of RBW>the canonical "female stories" in this sense is the romance plot? (As RBW>distinct from the subplots one tends to see in action films, in which RBW>the female lead has a gender-ambiguous name and argues incessantly with RBW>the male lead...) That's one, at least. I suppose, if I follow my own analogy, "female stories" should involve whatever pop-fic women read. Which, if I take my mother as a test case, also involves things like Janet Evanovich and so forth. Now, Googling on that, I find a lot of that classified under "romance" (which IIRC it isn't, but maybe "romance" means "women's fiction" in those cases) but mostly it's "mystery/thriller." I'd throw in "humor," having read a few of them while staying at Mom's. (Until she moved back to town this summer, she lived four hours away, so I'd take our son down there periodically so she could get her grandchild fix.) Of course, in poking around on the net, I find that Evanovich is described as "a former romance writer" so maybe that's the reason for the classification. RBW>I ask because I like the idea of a romance-based RPG as a change of pace RBW>from the basically action- and investigation-centred games that I tend RBW>to run. I haven't seen _Blue Rose_, but reviews have been very mixed and RBW>it sounds pretty fluffy; what I'd really like to see is something to RBW>support multiple romantic genres, for example a Regency game in the RBW>style of Georgette Heyer. Well, the Evanovich stuff, and plenty of other stuff like it, is basically action- and investigation-centered. It's just that the action is gentler, and the investigation is really a sideline. I'd have to analyze it more (and I don't remember any specifics well enough just now), but I'd tentatively say the stories are more about the predicaments the heroine gets into. Sometimes the mysteries get solved serendipitously (q.v. especially any book with a cat on the cover, especially if the cat's name is part of the series). I'm not really sure any of that would translate well to a roleplaying game, at least one I'd be interested in playing. I do admit I like that sort of book, if I'm in the mood for lite-n-fluffy reading, though I rarely have time. RBW>A big part of the problem, I suspect, would be in finding the players; RBW>most of the people who'd enjoy a game like this probably aren't already RBW>gamers. That's the thing... I've never really been able to explain to anyone how to attract more women gamers, because I'm really not one. (And yes, I'm straight. I *said* it was a paradox...) -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
