Koen Van Daele

Thoughts, media and other stuff.

Sexism in gaming

At Enworld I watched the first movie in a series about sexism in gaming. Seems like I’ve really underestimated how bad it can get.

You see, I’m an adult white herosexual male who’s been gaming for about 20 years. In those 20 years, I’ve generally been the GM in all my gaming groups. In all those years my groups have been dominated by women. I ‘ve generally had more female than male players.

As an example, I’m currently the GM involved in two groups. One consists of me as the GM, two female players, a male homosexual players and a 10 year old boy. Currently playing Savage Worlds Daring Tales of Adventure. In the other group, we’ve currently balanced out to 3 male and 3 female players (but in the past the women were generally in the majority). Has been playing almost exclusively D&D for some 15 years now.

So, the entire idea that gamers are sexist is fairly foreign to me. I also generally do not visit cons (except for one con 10 years ago or so).

So I was rather baffled by the video. And I got really angered at reading some linked posts:

I’d hoped that in a environment that deals with imagination, we’d all be given equal rights and opportunities. And that we could all at least be polite to each other. I’m currently hoping it might be a US vs. Europe kind of thing, but even then, this sucks.

So, from having gamed this long with this kind of demographic, what have I learned?

In my D&D group I have one male player who understands the rules really well. In my Savage Worlds group there’s one female who understands the rules really well. All other players (male and female) tend have a rather superficial knowledge of the rules.

In my D&D group a couple of the women are the ones who get bored when we’ve been without a fight for too long. They like to kill things by lobbing fireballs at them and hacking away with greatswords. The Savage Worlds group is a lot less keen on fighting.

In my D&D group one of the women is very much focussed on world exploration and doesn’t really care very much for intra-personal relations. An other other is very much into these relations. And everybody is into having an adventure with a good plot as opposed to a big mega dungeon. Although we once did have lots of fun with an NC-17 rated campaign in Rappan Athuk.

The only thing I could say is that none of the female players have ever considered taking over GM duties. But that’s not saying much, since in all those years only one male player offered to do that either.

I was expecting to be able to say that I can pin some things to gender, but there really isn’t that much. Most differences are people-related and not gender related

So, please judge people on what they do and not on what they are.

How we all lost

The most sensible thing I’ve read about the PyCon joke incident

Melody Dean: we all want to know

One of my favourite songs on the new Amanda Palmer album is called “Melody Dean”. It’s been in the back of my minds for weeks now.

Naturally I was rather curious who Melody was (if anyone), so I Googled her. And then I started wondering if I was the only one who did this.

Well, apparently not!

Nederlanders snappen geen bal van Rendez-Vous

Nog steeds met mijlen voorsprong de beste Belgische eurovisie inzending.

Dear Religion,

This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school.

Yours, Science.

—Ricky Gervais

After spending 30 hours stranded at SFO, we finally took off. I think I’d gotten rather tired and homesick by then. So, then I discovered the best of Jacques Brel on the entertainment system.

I’d always known Brel, but never completely got it. For me, he was always a singer my dad loved, but I couldn’t really understand why. But there, on that plane, I got it.

This one’s for you. Still miss you.

Stoya™: Testing vs. Condoms in Pornography

stoya:

Monday, Sept 17th:

I woke up. I showered, washed my hair, and carefully shaved my underarms, legs, and genitals… avoiding any cuts or razorburn. I gently brushed my teeth and skipped flossing as dental floss can cause small cuts on gums. I went to the location where we were filming my newest…

On my way to LAX yesterday I saw a huge billboard by the Medical Association of America (or some such thing) asking people to vote B: Yes to condoms in pornography. To me and the Brit I was travelling with, it was utterly baffling that they had these billboards up there. But thanks to Stoya (via Amanda Palmer), I understand what it’s all about.

I still need to get used to the fact that people get to vote on this. Or anything else. It’s a different form of democracy than the one we have.