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Prodigal
 
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Matt Pennington (6/14/2008)
Sarah (6/14/2008)
Matt - what do you intend to do with all this statistical analysis?Er nothing? I was motivated by Bacon's post refuting the idea that women in LRP choose talking over fighting to go and have a look at our data to see if I could find anything interesting there. Having looked I thought it was worth posting the data up here, so that others could look at it. Ah right, you had an attack of stats. I understand. 
_____________________________________________________ It is not a competition. It is a web forum.
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Heroic Knight
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| What can I say? I started off at Maelstrom with no combat skill at all, only career ones - medical skills, as it happened. Now I have mortal calls and armour. I made these choices because they made sense for the evolution of the character at the time. I would never say I want "one thing" from LARP. I don't think I'd ever build a character now without at least one combat skill, but that, frankly, is because I am now a hell of a lot more confident in my OC skill than I used to be. I enjoy hitting people; I also enjoy talky. I don't feel either of those things is affected by my gender any more than it is by the colour of my hair. However, I would say that many of the cultures at Maelstrom do seem to have a distinct gender bias, with woman by and large frequently seeming to be steered towards the more social and less aggressive roles. That's purely from personal observation, though.
Maelstrom - Captain Sasagani of the Havocstani Medical Corps. "Every inch the wolf - all five feet of you."
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Wag
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The Pale Queen (6/14/2008)
I don't feel either of those things is affected by my gender any more than it is by the colour of my hair.
Lets imagine for a moment that women didn't like fighting and enjoyed talking. Ignore the data, lets just imagine it's true for a moment. I don't believe that any women would be consciously aware of this bias arising from their gender. This is because you cannot separate your analysis of yourself from yourself. If women were genetically prone to like the colour blue they wouldn't look at a blue dress and say "I really like that dress because I am a woman" they'd say "I really like that dress, blue is one of my favourite colours". The woman likes blue because she is a woman but she is not conscious of her preference deriving from her genetic make-up or her social conditioning.
Our preferences, our likes and dislikes come from somewhere inside us. We're conscious of experiencing the preference, but I don't know any way in which we could be conscious of appreciating why we experienced the preference. We can analyse data for lots of people and work out patterns for preferences but I don't think it works the other way. We can't ask people why they like things to find out what the patterns are in what people like.
What I'm trying to get to is that if a woman says "I don't like fighting, but it's not because I'm a women" I have to say I don't think you can actually know that. Of course there are reasons why you do or don't like fighting, maybe you've grown lazy, maybe it's the colour of your hair doesn't match your sword. The point is that statistically these reasons seem to crop up in women more than in men (IF the prejudice is true). Men don't say "I like fighting because I am a bloke" they say "I like fighting because I like the adrenalin rush, and beating people up with a rubber sword" or "I like fighting because my hair colour matches my sword" or whatever.
I hope that doesn't sound horribly patronising. I don't think I've managed to say what I wanted to say very effectively there, but I think the point is important, so hopefully it makes some sense.
Consider this idea - think of every feeling, desire and preference you have. Now ignoring anything society says to you, can you think of any where you are conscious of the reason that you like and desire (or dislike) that thing is "because you are a woman"? I'm guessing no.
Another example. I like women. I am sexually attracted to women. It's really weird and I can't think of any reason for it at all. I just don't understand why I like women, but I do. It's definitely not because I'm a man, that's no more relevant than the colour of my hair, I just happen to find women sexually attractive.
If that seems crazy that's because we know that the reason I like women is because I'm a bloke, because 90% of blokes like women and everyone knows it. My point though is that I'm not remotely conscious of my gender being the reason why I like women. In fact I cannot explain it to you at all, I am aware of my preference but I have no basis for it, other than an urge that just seems to be in me.
However, I would say that many of the cultures at Maelstrom do seem to have a distinct gender bias, with woman by and large frequently seeming to be steered towards the more social and less aggressive roles. That's purely from personal observation, though.
Do you have any insight over who is doing the steering or how that steering happens?
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Champion
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Now, as good as statistics are, they don't necessary reflect the experience “on the ground” as it where.
Therefore I'm going to combine poorly applied statistics to my own personal experiences and draw even more spurious and unlikely conclusions about what women want from larp from a very small sample and a very small cutsection of the game
(I play a eidolon, which to non-maelstromers is like an angel, only less so. Death is generally less problematic that for most characters, and due to both the initial ideological and political set up of the game, and subsequent player-led actions; tends to occur on a regular basis)
+++++++++VERY MILD FOIP++++++++++++
I recall being "involuntarily discorporealated" in the region of about a dozen times last maelstrom.
Around 2/3 -3/4 of these where by female players. (even if arguably only one or two where actually technically female characters...)
I unfortunately don't recall the exact stats but I was stomped into the ground by a variety of characters with female players, this ranged from succubus “sister” through to paladins so shiny they cause lens-glare to half-ninja, half-geshia, half-armour, half-angel avengers and being stomped by small but very irate golems.
(The last caused some amount of OC fear due since I had saw in her eyes the burning wrath of a woman scorned because you once wrote some “esoteric fiction” involving their husband's character)
And this isn't counting mercy killing by such kind characters as Necromantically empowered, oriental, killing machines.
Now even at my conservative estimate of 0.66 Khaniel-smitage quotant originating from from female playerbase. Which when the 2.28:1 ratio is factored in, it appears that the average female player has a staggering 456% chance of kicking in my character than the average a male player.
Therefore it seems that what women want from LARP is to kick in Khaniel.
Also, the nature of the player base meant that I believe only one of the above examples would have registered on Matt's list as having “combat based skills”, the rest where outside that grain, or just pwned me with SINGLES.
So possible reasons for this include.
1) Being knocked over by violent, armoured women is something I actively seek to achieve in my game.
2) I offend women on some level. They beat me with rubber swords to feel better.
3) I amuse women on some level. They beat me with rubber swords because it's funny.
4) Coincidence. It merely happens to be that the Greatsworded wielding MAN-angels where busy elsewhere or hungover.
5)Some women like the religion side of the game which includes smiting things in the name of righteousness. It has got intricate character building through complex moral choices and then from these judgments you go onto hit the bad things with rubber swords.
6) My character really, really deserves it.
However, I expect the real reason is:
What ever statistical distributions towards behaviour say, there will be plenty of cases which go against the grain hence by attempting define “feminine Larp Behaviour” you will immediately create a slew of counter examples which work to run assumptions and trends. It therefore becomes very hard to define an aspect of the game as "feminine" or "not feminine" without defining a sizable number of female players in such category. Greatly reducing it's worth.
I would make a profound point now, but instead I'll go to sleep.
Maelstrom: Khaniel, Liberated Angel of Enlightenment
RL: Tom
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Champion
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But individual experiences and 'oh but that doesn't apply to me' is sort of opposite to the point of what is being done here. Every individual is going to be different to the 'average' ISTR that the average UK make was 33 called John Smith and worked in IT earning £30k. IIRC there were only 3 people at the time of the survey that actually fulfilled all of those criteria. Anecdotal, but still, you get my point. When a survey size is approx 30 million, and only 3 people meet the mean, what chance is there in a survey size of 1000?
Somthing that these stats cannot allow for is the large group dynamics, where a large group of oc friends, all decide to play (say for example) Gnolls. Girls in that OC group will join the Gnoll group, despite, perhaps having a preference to play wemics, or humans ... for ooc reasons.
Still very interesting nevertheless. I'm not really shocked at the preponderance of girls towards beatrix potter lrp :p
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Wag
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Rich (6/15/2008)
Somthing that these stats cannot allow for is the large group dynamics, where a large group of oc friends, all decide to play (say for example) Gnolls. Girls in that OC group will join the Gnoll group, despite, perhaps having a preference to play wemics, or humans ... for ooc reasons.
That's all possibly true, but we could just as easily postulate the inverse, that Gnolls and Amusars appeal strongly to women but because they're roleplaying in mixed groups they tend to drag a few men along with them into their group.
I think any attempt to explain the statistics in terms of these individual characteristics is very dangerous. You can always find a rationale why some data point is unusual if you set out to do so. Without the ability to go and test that hypothesis, it's ultimately meaningless. In this case I think the data either suggests a meaningful conclusion by itself or it doesn't. I'm still convinced that the cultural data choices show nothing interesting at all (other than the interesting result that male/female gender bias doesn't affect culture). The skill data is more complex but does seem to have some interesting points.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Heroic Knight
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Matt Pennington (6/15/2008)
I'm still convinced that the cultural data choices show nothing interesting at all (other than the interesting result that male/female gender bias doesn't affect culture). The skill data is more complex but does seem to have some interesting points.I think racial choices could be a dataset with interesting results.
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Masquerades & Massacres (Jane Austen's Aliens): Organiser
Maelstrom: Papa Abgal (The Rum Fairy of Doom, High Exarch of Entertainment)
Serenity: Xavier Yu Ji ('Pointy Hat Man')
White City: Too Many Characters To Mention!
Dark Ages Society: Godfrid Swine-Herd (Scummy Saxon), Hauk Ragnarsson (Rus Viking Flashman)
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Wag
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Illithidbix (6/15/2008)
What ever statistical distributions towards behaviour say, there will be plenty of cases which go against the grain hence by attempting define “feminine Larp Behaviour” you will immediately create a slew of counter examples which work to run assumptions and trends. It therefore becomes very hard to define an aspect of the game as "feminine" or "not feminine" without defining a sizable number of female players in such category. Greatly reducing it's worth.
I hope I wasn't trying to define feminine LRP behaviour, however I don't think any number of counter examples have any effect on a statistic. If you are a woman you may be unusually tall. You may be a giantess, twice the height of every man you ever met. It doesn't change the fact that your gender is, on average, shorter than men. This is really the whole benefit of statistics over anecdotal evidence. If you have good quality statistics that differ from your anecdotal evidence it shows you that your evidence is not representative of the general case.
Averages never have anything to say about the individual except in terms of probabilities. An individual woman may be tall or short, but the probability is that she is shorter than 6ft.
Whenever you attempt to collect or analyse data about a politically sensitive issue like gender bias you need to be very careful about what the statistics mean. All these numbers say is what skills, on average, the female players who like Maelstrom, choose.
One thing I think would be very interesting would be to ask Ian Sturrock what the gender bias in his players for Hyborian Tales. Hyborian Tales is obviously a smaller game than Maelstrom but whereas Maelstrom is seen as a political game, Ian markets Hyborian Tales as traditional high quality battle linears. If his ratio of male:female players is close to 2.28 that *suggests* that gender doesn't affect what style of game you are offering.
Sarah asked earlier what the statistics were for and I said nothing. I'm not sure that's really true. I think anyone who runs an LRP event is always looking for ways to make the event more enjoyable and appealing. That's particularly true for me, because since Maelstrom is commercial the numbers affect the profitability. If I could increase the number of women playing Maelstrom without losing male players so that the ratio was 1:1 then I'd be a very happy and much wealthier man. If the statistics and ensuing discussion can give me some insight into ways to get more women (or people) to play Maelstrom then I'm interested in it.
That may sound somewha | | | |