Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Peter Bailey <pbailey@*****.IPSWICHCITY.QLD.GOV.AU>
Subject: Re: Female Gamers
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 05:32:25 +0200
> >Well, you guys that have female players in your groups can consider
> >yourselves lucky... Personally I'd love to have some *real* ladies in the
> >team. I have one player that sometimes plays x-gender. The others take every
> >chance to molest him/her as much as possible then...

That's something of a reflection on life I think. You might find the boys
are a little more comfortable with the girl character because;
1. the girl's player is a guy and likely to understand the role play for
what it is.
2. the guys are a little less inhibited in the role playing environment. I
mean, how many of your players would happily geek someone for example?

> >It's just sooo hard convincing girls that gaming is fun and not just some
> >activity for antisocial geeks. At least here in Sweden.

I have two ladies who play in my games. The tend to chase the boy
characters worse than the boy characters chase them. Think yourself lucky.
Message no. 2
From: Stephanos Piperoglou <sneakabout@**********.HOL.GR>
Subject: Re: Female Gamers
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 19:31:49 +0200
On Sun, 18 Jun 1995, Peter Bailey wrote:

> 2. the guys are a little less inhibited in the role playing environment. I
> mean, how many of your players would happily geek someone for example?

This has nothing to do with the post, but I'd like to mention it:
In a run, my team dropped in at a corp sec dorm where 5 sec guards were
sleeping, and made short work of them. The look on my players faces (esp.
since they'd used pretty heavy firearms) was "Yeah, we got them good". So
I start describing the gory scene and watch the grins on their faces grow
wider until I tell them about the blood-splattered picture frame that
used to hold a photo of one of the guys wife and kids.

That gave 'em something to think about.

> > >It's just sooo hard convincing girls that gaming is fun and not just some
> > >activity for antisocial geeks. At least here in Sweden.
>
> I have two ladies who play in my games. The tend to chase the boy
> characters worse than the boy characters chase them. Think yourself lucky.

Well, I haven't even considered asking a girl to participate, though I
know of a couple that would be interested. Probably not in Shadowrun (at
least not the stereotypical way of playing it). Maybe Storyteller.

The biggest problem is that firstly, no offence meant, and besides I
don't stray as much from the category, the majority of roleplayers in the
community I game in *are* antisocial geeks. And after all, you have to
admit, girls *do* have different interests in gaming. I'm sure most girls
would get less of a satisfaction in geeking someone with a HAR than most
of the guys in my group.

------[ Stephanos J. Piperoglou ]-----<sneakabout@**********.hol.gr>----
Geek Code v.2.1 (finger for info): GCS/S/O d H-- s++:++ !g p?+ !au a16 w
v+++* C++++ UL++>++++ P+ L++>++++ 3 E>++ N+ K W--- M !V -po+@ Y++ t+
. 5++ !j R+++ G++ tv- b++ D+ B? e>--- u**(*) h! f+ r n@ y?
|\|||/ "Where would you aim if you had the biggest gun in the universe?"
8(o o) -Adm. Tolwyn, Wing Commander ]I[
`-(_)-oo----------------------------------------------------------------
Message no. 3
From: SilverFire <SSHERMAN@****.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Female Gamers
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 12:52:09 -0500
On Sun, 18 Jun 1995, Peter Bailey wrote:

> > >Well, you guys that have female players in your groups can consider
> > >yourselves lucky... Personally I'd love to have some *real* ladies in the
> > >team. I have one player that sometimes plays x-gender. The others take every
> > >chance to molest him/her as much as possible then...
>
> That's something of a reflection on life I think. You might find the boys
> are a little more comfortable with the girl character because;
> 1. the girl's player is a guy and likely to understand the role play for
> what it is.

In the group I'm in there's one girl who playes a male character and
normally people play characters of their gender. And the few females
there are in my group (me and three others) usually know the difference
between real life and roleplaying.

> 2. the guys are a little less inhibited in the role playing environment. I
> mean, how many of your players would happily geek someone for example?

I'd like to think that certain things our characters have to do
bother the players. We generally don't like getting into firefights, no
because killing bothers us, but because there is potential for one or
more characters to get fatally wounded. Except for my first character
all my characters have gotten carted off by DocWagon at one time or
another. As for geeking someone, my main character's favorite past-time
is hunting drug & chip dealers.

> > >It's just sooo hard convincing girls that gaming is fun and not just some
> > >activity for antisocial geeks. At least here in Sweden.
Oh, you see we don't have that many other females here on campus. We
have something like 6-8 guys for every female here.
> I have two ladies who play in my games. The tend to chase the boy
> characters worse than the boy characters chase them. Think yourself lucky.
>

I think we try to keep this out of our game seeing that it is an
unneccessary distraction and takes away from the game.

SilverFire

*****************************************************************************
Love could be so damn resilient, or it could be as fragile as glass. And like
broken glass, it could cut you so you bled to death. Love could be so damn
resilient.
Where does reality end and illusion begin?

Mary Rosenbaum
_Chimera_
Message no. 4
From: Tim Serpas <wretch@**.COM>
Subject: Re: Female Gamers
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 23:03:07 -0500
On Sun, 18 Jun 1995, Stephanos Piperoglou wrote:
> I'm sure most girls
> would get less of a satisfaction in geeking someone with a HAR than most
> of the guys in my group.
>

Well, until my compadre Angel (Marie, in real life) picked up that fully
decked out FN HAR with explosive ammo, she had to content herself with
a Ruger Superwarhawk. Marie giggles while evaporating the oposition with
her vehicle weapons, and once dragged a couple of wounded bod 6 teammates
into her van with her muscle aug-2. Marie plays a tough cookie!

Tim Serpas :Geek Code v.2.1: GS d- H++>+++ s:- !g p1 auVW a- w+ v+ C+
BS Physics : U P? !L !3 E---- N++ K++ W M- !V -po+ Y+>++ t+ !5 j+>$
wretch@**.com: R+ G'' tv+>! b+>++ D+ B-- e++>-- u+ h- f+>* r++ n+ y+
Message no. 5
From: Paul Jonathan Adam <Paul@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Female Gamers
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 19:41:16 GMT
> > I'm sure most girls
> > would get less of a satisfaction in geeking someone with a HAR than most
> > of the guys in my group.
> >
> Well, until my compadre Angel (Marie, in real life) picked up that fully
> decked out FN HAR with explosive ammo, she had to content herself with
> a Ruger Superwarhawk. Marie giggles while evaporating the oposition with
> her vehicle weapons, and once dragged a couple of wounded bod 6 teammates
> into her van with her muscle aug-2. Marie plays a tough cookie!

One character in my group - one of my wife's PCs - is a four-foot-eleven
Lion shaman with a taste for plastic explosives, armoured fighting vehicles,
and enormous combat spells: preferably all at the same time.

"He's ground-zero for the Hellblast just as the Bradley slams into him,
knocking him flying. What do you do?"
"Back up and drive over him properly!"

She takes a childish joy in creating the largest explosions possible from
available materials, although she considers nuclear weapons to be cheating
and "silly". Never let Stephanie start a firefight within five miles of
an oil refinery...

--
When you have shot and killed a man, you have defined your attitude towards
him. You have offered a definite answer to a definite problem. For better
or for worse, you have acted decisively.
In fact, the next move is up to him.

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
Message no. 6
From: Marc A Renouf <jormung@*****.UMICH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Female Gamers
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 13:32:14 -0400
On Sun, 18 Jun 1995, Stephanos Piperoglou wrote:

> In a run, my team dropped in at a corp sec dorm where 5 sec guards were
> sleeping, and made short work of them. The look on my players faces (esp.
> since they'd used pretty heavy firearms) was "Yeah, we got them good". So
> I start describing the gory scene and watch the grins on their faces grow
> wider until I tell them about the blood-splattered picture frame that
> used to hold a photo of one of the guys wife and kids.
>
> That gave 'em something to think about.

I have done similar things to my players. They have this habit
of being messy, and being messy in an urban environment leads to
problems. Powerblast is a wonderful spell, but when that area of effect
includes innocent civilians, things get ugly. Likewise when fully
automatic weapons miss their intended targets, those stray rounds have to
go *somewhere*. I had one incautious player whose fully automatic spray
(fired from a building to the street-level) went awry and caused a
commuter car to explode (Mitsubishi runabout, critically failed its
damage resistance test), killing the passenger and wounding several
others in the blast. When they see innocent people die through their own
carelessness, a few of them feel a split second of remorse.

Marc

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Female Gamers, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!