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Knight
 
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Alastair (6/17/2008)
I wonder if there is any correlation between age at which people start LRP and gender? Certainly at the LRP clubs I played at 15 years ago at age 14 there were women, but always older. Pretty much all the younger players (14-17) were male, and all were quite happy to apply one percentile, one fractal and one numerical damage reduction (after armour) to any given weapon swing, in a manner that frankly I find astonishing I thought was normal! Could there be a connection? I was 34 - any help with a theory there? I suspect I'm a bit of an extreme example for any gender starting out LARPing, although I do have a friend who was in his late 50's when he started playing (and is damn good, too). I am happy to learn any system with combat stats to work with, and in fact have played 2 full-on combat chars in one system and a combat char (who somehow never seemed to end up in a scrap) in another. Maybe it has something to do with WHY we start playing. If you start off as the previously mentioned token healer girlfriend, only there cos otherwise you spend the weekend without your fella, then maybe it IS just about the pretty dresses? On the other hand, if you start, as I did, because your bloke had this fab sounding hobby that you really wanted to try (and LOVED your very first event), then maybe you are happier to get involved in stats, combats, etc etc? I dunno, just doing me own bit of theorising.
Raina and Anara Tasar, Legion of Dreams
Cleopatra, Sinergy
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Apprentice
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elrohana (6/18/2008)[hrMaybe it has something to do with WHY we start playing. If you start off as the previously mentioned token healer girlfriend, only there cos otherwise you spend the weekend without your fella, then maybe it IS just about the pretty dresses? On the other hand, if you start, as I did, because your bloke had this fab sounding hobby that you really wanted to try (and LOVED your very first event), then maybe you are happier to get involved in stats, combats, etc etc? I dunno, just doing me own bit of theorising. Doesn't follow for me I'm afraid. I love fighting, its fab and brill and lots of fun and I like beating people up with rubber swords and being killed horribly in gigantic battles. Fighting is top. however I hate battleboards...hate them with my whole mind heart and soul, its like being forced to play d&d in a field, slow and time consuming. Maelstrom is about as complicated as I like my LRP fighting to be.
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Champion
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Sarah (6/18/2008)
What about talky combat characters?You mean the kind that won`t shut up no matter how hard often you hit `em? 
________________________________________________________ - IRL: Edwin Hofstra
- - mostly crewing at the moment
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Heroic Knight
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Ian Sturrock (6/17/2008)
In my experience of Maelstrom, the fighty characters die horribly because the talky characters in their group have annoyed someone
Or because the talky characters bugger off when the fighting happens.
I'm going to live a little dangerously, and actually answer the question in the OP. However, I do not know what all women want or I would be that one step closer to being Queen Of The World, I can tell you what I want out of a game:
1) PvP and limited NPC involvement - NPCs should be "colour 'n' garnish" facilitating the player aspect of the plot
2) Intrigue and mystery - I want stuff to find out, secrets and lies and the opportunity to get into big piles of Trouble
3) Conflict - this can be either fighting or political, but I want there to be a Them and an Us and for us not to get along
4) Variety - sometimes I want to ponce around in a big dress, other times I want to stab someone in the chest. I like games where I can pretty much be whoever I want to be
5) Chunky roleplay - I want to play alongside lots of well-developped and varied characters who I can interract with, build relationships with, fall in love with, kill, die for or plot their downfall
6) An interesting backstory or setting - something I can get my teeth into and expand upon when creating my character
7) Minimal rules - I want to roleplay, not count
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Lions not lolcats
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Champion
Group: System Moderators
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One interpretation about the stats at the front of this thread could be that theres a gender bias in playing races that *specifically* have a gender bias in their society brief. *(by this I mean Amun-Sa and Tritoni)
What Im saying is - Girls are more likely to pick a race that actually gives them some rp material in the background thats theirs. All roleplayers like to feel that they have an important or interesting role to play, and matriarchal or patriarchal societies in game have the effect of focusing attention both ways.
As for Jewellery being a pick, well - talismancy and various other bling things being stacked on said jewellery would mean concealed weaponry. Plus it could help with costume choices to have a proffession where you're making your own ic bling.
I would like more stuff in backgrounds and briefs that give out cool rp stuffs to all genders, but from just randomly thinking about it - maybe we need to put in more "secret order of Malathian Fishwife assasins" stuff? Maybe looking at backgrounds submitted from female players we'd see a trend of genre conventions that they would like more of?
Anyway, just random thoughts.
But if you really *want* to bug Me and are still trying because I didnt put the damm contact field in properly....Thegamefinisher@yahoo.co.uk
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Wag
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Coops (6/23/2008)
One interpretation about the stats at the front of this thread could be that theres a gender bias in playing races that *specifically* have a gender bias in their society brief. *(by this I mean Amun-Sa and Tritoni)
I wondered about that - but (from what I've seen on the PD forums) opinions do seem to vary about whether Amun-Sa does have a gender role bias - but I don't know how widespread that opinion is or whether it correlates with gender at all.
Coops (6/23/2008)
What Im saying is - Girls are more likely to pick a race that actually gives them some rp material in the background thats theirs.
It's an interesting proposition that women (significantly more than men) might view gender roles as "theirs" whether they are patriarchal or matriarchal.
Coops (6/23/2008)
I would like more stuff in backgrounds and briefs that give out cool rp stuffs to all genders, but from just randomly thinking about it - maybe we need to put in more "secret order of Malathian Fishwife assasins" stuff? Maybe looking at backgrounds submitted from female players we'd see a trend of genre conventions that they would like more of?
I think that might be problematic - even though (as far as I know) cultures other than Amun-sa/Tritoni don't have gender-specific roles I do hear reports of people in those cultures noting women playing characters determined to thwart the sexism which doesn't exist in that background. I'm not convinced you can put in specific gender roles into a culture to please the women who want to play with/rebel against gender-specific roles without pissing off the women who don't.
Having gender-specific roles in some cultures lets people self-select (whether they choose to or not, they have the option). Bear in mind that the percentages are ratios - not absolute numbers. More women than men may play wemics, while still only representing a small minority of women in the game.
Marios
P.S. Not many Yugorskian women and they get specifically mentioned in the public brief!
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Prodigal
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Coops (6/23/2008)
One interpretation about the stats at the front of this thread could be that theres a gender bias in playing races that *specifically* have a gender bias in their society brief. *(by this I mean Amun-Sa and Tritoni) What Im saying is - Girls are more likely to pick a race that actually gives them some rp material in the background thats theirs. All roleplayers like to feel that they have an important or interesting role to play, and matriarchal or patriarchal societies in game have the effect of focusing attention both ways. <snip> I would like more stuff in backgrounds and briefs that give out cool rp stuffs to all genders, but from just randomly thinking about it - maybe we need to put in more "secret order of Malathian Fishwife assasins" stuff? Maybe looking at backgrounds submitted from female players we'd see a trend of genre conventions that they would like more of? Obviously I can only speak for myself- but I personally like the fact that most larp settings don't have specific gender roles written into most of their cultures. I've really enjoyed playing an Amusar character, and I'm thinking about playing a Tritoni some day, but having gender roles written into the background tends to make me more cautious about playing a character from that culture. The reason for this is that specific gender roles make me feel like there's less flexibility in the approaches I can take towards the culture (obviously there's always the option of playing an character whose role is IC unusual for their gender, but I tend not to enjoy that much). I'm not saying 'less flexibility' is a bad thing, but it means I have to put a bit more thought into what I want to do with the character in advance (particularly in cultures written as patriarchal, because then I have to start thinking about how I set things up so that I'm likely to spend time doing stuff I find OC entertaining without having to assert myself too much IC). I'm currently playing a Fidelian at Maelstrom, and I already feel like I have material in the background that's really mine- it's the stuff relating to Yugorsk, and the Teacher, and the role of the church, and that sort of thing. Writing in an extra thing saying "and also, female Teacher priests from Yugorsk have special religious rituals that men aren't authorised to perform" wouldn't make me engage with the character role more- if anything, it would make me engage with it less, because it would just feel sort of random and pointless. It would also make me feel more self-conscious about the impact that my OC gender has on the character- which again, is not necessarily a bad thing (I enjoyed playing an Amusar), but in this case I can't see it adding anything to my enjoyment of the character. I also don't quite understand what you mean when you say patriarchal and matriarchal societies tend to "focus attention both ways"- it sounds like you're arguing that men also enjoy having their own gender-specific roles within an IC culture. It makes sense to me that men would enjoy doing that every now and then (like I enjoy playing restrictive gender roles every now and then)- but if it was something that just consistently increased men's enjoyment of characters in general, then wouldn't that mean that men would be flocking to Amun-Sa and Tritoni too? Unless you're arguing that men are less good than women at working out what sort of characters they'd enjoy?
WARNING: the information above may have been subjected to dangerously high levels of ignorance.
OOC (and on Pagga): Carrie
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Heroic Knight
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| What do women want from larp? Well this one wants not to be analysed based on gender, you know, a bit of escapism
~'What is Archangel worth? - 'Nothing...everything'~
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