Give me what I want and maybe no one gets hurt

I`d concur, and in my experience this is quite rare, because women tend to make men very aware of the fact that they`re not speaking/dealing with other men, by a myriad of reprimanding expressions, from slight frowns to outloud indignation, when they do treat them as such, or use words and expressions that are too 'laddy', unless you found an extremely gender neutral topic and use only words that women would find appropriate, in which case you`d already be very aware. The company of women can be very stimulating in many ways, but constantly having to treat them as something special can be very off putting, too.

Ten to fifteen years ago I`d have offered for consideration that women and ethnic minorities are far too busy being taken seriously to engage in silly activities like LRP. Especially for women that is less true today. Most immigrants I try to explain LRP to still think it`s an extremely silly and un-adult way to spend one`s leisure time, but so do most natives.

It is a simple fact however, that 'generic fantasy' isn`t generic at all, it is based on Northwestern European mythology. As such, it resonates in the Nordic Germanic and Celtic soul, and less so in others. (Slavic fantasy, for instance, isn`t considered generic in these parts, even though, IIRC, Slavic people outnumber Germanic people.) I think it`s fair to say that the slant in favour of 'white' Europeans is actually quite normal, in this part of the world. In the Ukraine they play Slavic LRP, in Japan they play Japanese LRP.
It would also be kinda hard to set too divergent a culture in the European landscape. And even if an African participant in a NW European event could suspend his disbelieve far enough to accept that a grazy meadow is a sandy part of the Sahara, or a stretch of neatly planted timber trees is the deep end of the jungle, I`m afraid he`d still find it jarring that so many 'natives' are being played by 'white' people with next to no instinctive connection with the setting - even if they are highly interested and inspired.
As an aside, I read in an article a year or so back, that non-European immigrants visit the country side far less often than indigenous people. Apart from the obvious - no ancestral connection to the landscape and no family to visit in the more remote backwaters - the article suggested that the main reason for this is that those immigrants mostly come from developing nations were the countryside is regarded as backward, and the city as the place to be. If this is indeed true, I suspect there will be less of an inclination to visit cultural roots in more natural surroundings.

As to gender preferences: tastes, preferences and capabilities of men have a wider spread than those of women, so if one would ever strike gold in the search of 'what women want' and change the setup of systems and events accordingly, I suspect the gender ratio would change significantly, as most men will simply never like LRP, and even if they did, they would all go to different systems catering to their specific tastes. At the same time - and maybe not unrelated to the previous - men are the more adventurous of the two recognized sexes and I fear that if you do find 'what women want' it would pretty much be in the line of 'a home, a family, social security and gameshows with a sassy host'. And although I can imagine Matt Pennington as a sassy host - no idea what he looks like, but he has the social demeanour - and as such the formula might be more than economically viable, giving the masses it would appeal to, I don`t think I`d attend. And I doubt if many women who are playing now would find it very exciting.
So I`m back to what I`ve always said, that LRP is basically a boys` game and that anybody who appreciates it as such is more than welcome, and that those that don`t would be wasting their time with it.

But I still think that mortality rates say more about how people actually play than the way they set up their characters. Of course, the first thing a potential player will see, even before attending, is the way characters can be set up, and as such it may draw more players if you make that part more appealing, but it`s a rather shallow attempt if you intend to keep them.
New players (as in 'virgin' LRPers) trickle into the hobby drawn by word-of-mouth, which, in the context of this thread, is a good thing. As discussed in the 'Future of UK LRP' thread, the best way to draw new players is to put up a simple system with a simple setting, offering catering and entertainment and doing away with as much hassle (from accumulating kit to traveling to the site) as possible. Which is not bad in itself, but while this significantly lowers the threshold, I suspect it does so primarily for men. (With simple setting I mean something that most people can immediately relate to - unless you want to appeal to another niche market. How many interesting female archetypes pop into your mind when you try to think of such a setting? I mean archetypes you can put a name to, like Morgaine le Faye or Queen Boedicca, the only two I can think of at the top of my hat. Well, I can think of more, but even though spending your days in a convent writing mystic poetry sounds very interesting to me, I don`t think it would work at an event.) Then again, more players equals more word-of-mouth, so eventualy the ratio would normalize again, I suppose.

And for what it`s worth: twice as many girls as boys study jewelry making as a trade IRL.

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IRL: Edwin Hofstra

- mostly crewing at the moment

So; yes. If you take it that they literally thought that statistics were the work of the deville and eville and in need of burning at the stake, then yes they would be wrong. Given this, anyone quoting them blindly would indeed be a bit ignorant.

Not that I'm saying I'm not ignorant, but I am bright enough to know that I know jack shit about far too many things even to list. But I think they meant what I think they meant, which was that stats can easily be manipulated and because numbers are beyond question to most people who take such things at face value-( which is most people) they are accepted as proofs and clever people can use them to prove all kinds of whack. I am sorry I didn't clarify this position with regards to the quote, I just didn't think people took Twain to be that ignorant, or the other bloke come to that, but I can see as the qouter I might be percieved (and probably am to a degree) quite ignorant of a more implied, rather than literal meaning.

* I wasn't there and can only make assumptions based on the fact that even though they may have lived in a mathematical dark age, that both gentlemen were then and now regarded as a bit clever.

~'What is Archangel worth? - 'Nothing...everything'~