-	-	-	-	-
Dragon #57	-	-	-	Dragon magazine

Of the many people I’ve known in four
years of playing the D&D® and AD&D™
games, one guy I won’t forget created a
particularly savage universe for some
adventures. Many of the players in his
campaign were struck by the extreme
levels of violence during the sessions;
the atrocities committed were much encouraged
by the DM himself.

One afternoon he was showing me
the long lists of NPCs
from each city on his mapboards. “If
you’ll look at all the women characters,”
he said, “you’ll see that I made their
charismas really high and their
strengths really low. That’s so they’re
easier to rape when their city gets
conquered.”

None of his players were female; although
some of the guys in THE CAMPAIGN
wanted them, no willing women
were ever found — not surprising, since
women weren’t given any encouragement
to JOIN, and would have had difficulty
relating to a universe based on
rape, butchery and unbeatable monsters.
Eventually, even the male players tired of
THE CAMPAIGN, and it folded.

The best RPGs, to quote
Jean Wells and Kim Mohan in their article
Women Want Equality” (DRAGON
#39), allow for “the possibility of intrigue,
mystery, and Romance involving both
sexes, to the BENEFIT of all characters in a
campaign.” All-male D&D and AD&D
groups, for whatever FUN they are, lack
this and the loss can be felt by all. Some
players go to considerable lengths to
bring wives, girlfriends, and other female
acquaintances to Game sessions, help
them roll up characters, and get them
involved in the group. Sometimes a male
DM can make the chances
of equalizing a group a lot more difficult
by NOT examining his own feelings about
women players in The Game.

Male DMs must be aware
ov several factors when running a Game
with both sexes acting as players. One of
these things involves rape, which wise
DM’s will AVOID having occur regardless
of their players’ gender. Male players
with female characters don’t seem to
care much about this if it happens to
their characters; some even seem to get
a kick out of it somehow. If a female
character gets raped in the game, particularly
by one of the DM’s NPC’s, the
player in all likelihood will be very embarassed,
very upset, and very angry and
hostile. It’s probable that the player may
quit playing D&D games altogether, or at
least find someone else’s group. Sure, a
DM can argue that rape is something
that happens in both real and fantasy
worlds (is your fantasy world also beset
by inflation, high unemployment, and
racism to make it more real?), or that the
female player brought it on herself by
acting seductively (blaming the victim is
always fun), or that the female player is
getting upset over nothing. I’d be interested
in hearing what male gamers would
think if their favorite male characters became
part of a scenario reminiscent of
the novel/movie Deliverance. Sound exciting?
I didn’t think so. Keep it in mind.

Female players also resent being regulated
to a 2nd-class position in the
game. Many male DM’s are fond of game
universes set along the lines of John
Norman’s Gor/Counter-Earth series,
where women exist as slaves to serve
men.
 
 

The Arduin Grimoire Trilogy went
so far as to establish a whole character
class (for female characters) called the
Courtesan, BASSCIALLY a non-adventuring
prostitute. This will tickle the women in
your group as much as it would tickle
them in real Life, meaning they’ll probably
hate it with a passion. Women are as
capable of feats of heroism, genius, and
cunning as men are in D&D games. My
wife’s hobbit _ thief character (female)
once earned a place in local D&D lejend
by pulling off all the missiles from a necklace
of fireballs and throwing them all at
once into a cave full of Frost Giants, killing
about 50 of them and saving the
group from being shot with ballistas. The
same character was smart enough and
lucky enough to survive the entire trip
into Gary Gygax’s The Tomb of Horrors
module, which is a remarkable feat in
itself. She was the only character NOT
killed or seriously injured, always using
her head to avoid the gravest dangers.
The character ov another female player
was in a party with me walking in [the hills]
one nice Fantasy summer day when a
Beholder caught us at close range. In a
couple of rounds most of us had been
death-rayed, stoned, or telekinesed away.
All the survivors ran for the woods
except for her character, who was charmed
and made her nearly immune to
further magickal attacks. She could’ve
run; I certainly did. Instead she turned
around and made the Beholder into Hamburger
Helper. Her reward was instant
Hero status in our group for as long as
she gamed with us. Everyone in D&D
games wants to be great in some way,
men and women alike. To deny this to a
player on the basis of sex is to do all your
players a disservice.

Some female players enjoy having their
characters flirt a lot with the other male
PCs, just as the guys like
their characters to flirt with female characters.
Some want their characters to do
more than just flirt. What happens if
one’s character gets pregnant (which in
Game terms is a definite hold-back to
one’s career)? The DM can help circumvent
this problem in one of several ways:

— Don’t bother to “roll for pregnancy”,
assuming DIVINE INTERVENTION is responsible
(Isis and Athena don’t want
their female followers laid up having babies
all the Time, interrupting their careers,
etc.)

— Suggest in a ROUNDABOUT way that a
Wish could be used to prevent the possibility
of unintentional future. pregnancies.
If Wishes can do anything they can
certainly do this.

— Have a <Wizard> invent a magick
pill that permanently prevents conception
unless the female characters want to
get pregnant.

The most important thing a DM can do
for male and female players alike is to be
fair and not make a habit out of singling
out one sex for more protection or more
damaging encounters than the other
sex. If you have a gang of louts on some
streetcorner insult all the women characters
in one encounter, have another
group insult all the men in another.
Maybe better, have them insult everybody.
Fairness on the part of the DM will
be much appreciated by the group, because
it reduces friction between the
group members and The DM, and contributes
to the success of THE CAMPAIGN.

In short, giving an Amazon the same
chances for doing great deeds as a Hercules
has can really make The Game for
your players and for you.
 

OUT ON A LIMB

[...]

And in “Dungeons Aren’t Supposed
to be For Men Only,” part of a sentence
was left out. The female character charmed
by the beholder was made to go around and
pick up all our magical items we’d dropped in
our hurry to escape. One of the magical items
negated the effects of the charm and made
her highly magic resistant. That’s when she
greased it.
 

Thanks for making these corrections!

Roger E. Moore
Louisville, Ky.
(Dragon #60)