The Black Campbell

Despite it’s image as a white male geek-only hobby, role playing has been pulling female players from the beginning. In the past, it was rare to see a woman at the gaming table, but I’ve been lucky enough to have females in my gaming groups since the mid-1980s. Back then, often they would  bystart off coming to a session with their spouse or boyfriend, find the experience enjoyable, and would stick with it. More recently groups of mine have either had gender parity, or have even been female heavy.

One of the reasons for this is the shift from barbarians smashing monsters for their stuff fantasy toward a multiplicity of genres and settings. Female players now often enter the hobby either through the popular White Wolf World of Darkness settings or through licensed universes like Supernatural or other TV shows-turned-RPG. I’ve noticed a lot of time they come in through LARPing, and tabletop gaming is an extension of the former.

Having women at the table can require the GM and other players to look at the role of women in the the game setting itself. There are some settings that make gender less of a concern — science fiction worlds are often egalitarian regarding the relationship of women and society, as do many modern settings. Women can (often) do the same jobs as men. Case in point: women are not allowed to join the special forces in the real world, but in the Stargate universe, women are going through the gate as often as men are; the explanation early on was that CPT Carter was a subject matter expert, hence was a benefit to the team. In sci-fi or even “spy-fi”, women are just as bad ass as men.

For settings in which the characters are superhuman or supernatural in quality, there is the same wiggle factor for ignoring gender inequality. A female vampire is just as deadly as a male one; they’re vampires. Superheroes and superheroines can match each other; they’re superheroes. And having powers that make you supra or supernormal mean never having to put up with crap from normals.

In games that are historically-based, this can become problematic. Women were often boxed into socially-acceptable roles of mother and homemaker, and those outside the home were often viewed with suspicion, or assumed to be of “loose morals.” There are still exceptions to the rule, even in true history. Female aviators were trailblazers in the 1920s and 1930s, loosing the bonds of society as they did the bonds of gravity. This sort of “new woman” was often reflected in pulp fiction — where women were often the damsel in distress or the femme fatale, but there were women of strength and competence. In the 1950s and ’60s, these pulp heroines and villains showed up in comics and cartoons like Wonder Woman and Johnny Quest, and in movies such as the James Bond series or television like The Avengers. The women in these serials were strong, competent, and even when they hid their activities behind more respectable facades, they were essential to the plotlines, not just the “girl of the week to be rescued.”

Prior to the 20th Century, however, females — if one were to keep the conventions of the period intact — were greatly constricted in their ability to adventure. There were, as always, exceptions: Lady Jane Digby was an adventuress of noble background that became a famed adventuress in Arabia in the late 1890s. The pirates of the Caribbean had Mary Reid and others. Lady Emma Hamilton might have not wielded a rapier or gun (that we know of), but she was instrumental in the politics and espionage of the Napoleonic period.

When playing in these settings, part of the fun is experiencing the society, the technology, the events of that historical period. So in steampunk settings in the Victorian Age, half the fun for a female character is flaunting the conventions of society. They might disguise themselves as a man, they might have a high-enough birth that a eccentric behavior like running about the world stopping madmen from [insert plot] with their steam-powered gadgets. Some women have simply never cared to let men govern their actions. they often were shunned by good society, but there are always men that admire and love strong women,and social circles that like to tweak the nose of the squares of their time. For Victorian settings, the player characters (and the femme fatales) are the exception to the rule. Most women can’t get away with running about the globe, or traveling to Mars, but Lady X has always been somewhat scandalous — which makes her popular in society, if only as a curiosity to some, and social punching bag for others.

There’s a saying, “Well behaved women never make history” and it’s true. Female players that want to play strong women in a setting where they might be constricted should be encouraged to do so. This is where the GM and other players need to pull together to make it work.

Case in point: even though Shadowrun is a sci-fi/fantasy setting, one group had players that tended to run roughshod over the women playing. In bar scenes where the boys were throwing about the usual uber-macho quips and beating on each other for fun, the girl character was a distraction, at best. As a player, I made that character my “partner in crime”, and by doing so got her more screen time and gave her the chance to show what she could do without the misogynists playing ruining it for the female player. (And yes…the players in question were misogynists in that classic “chivalric” mode — they treat women as madonna or whore; there’s not real room in their mindset for much outside that.)

When I was running a Victorian-period steampunk campaign, I made the social constructions part of the fun, part of the challenge for the characters to overcome. For the wealthy, well-connected lady she had to be careful with her love affairs and her behavior in public…her class was one that catted about frequently with each other, often knew of the intricate affairs that were on going, and while gossip might fly, in public everyone upheld the same social conventions: so long as no one was embarrassed, so long as there was no legal entanglements, you could get away with being eccentric…as long as the family image was maintained. It provided an interesting and unique challenge for 20/21st Century women that were used to being able to do as they pleased.

For female characters of the middle class, keeping up appearances was even more important, as it could effect the chances for marriage. One solution around this was to have them already married, either to an absent or indulgent husband, or to have them be young and in the company of either a friend or relative. Another means is the “masked heroine” idea — that female Zorro that fights crime or whathaveyou without revealing her identity. Nuns, wives of colonial officials often were dragged out into the bush and jungles of the third World in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Danger might cometo them and rising to the occasion could lead to a memoir that might make them a celebrity…and celebrity often gives people a certain flexibility in their behavior.

Poor female characters are often considered to be “loose” when they aren’t at home having babies, is the popular view of the Victorian period today, but the fact was that poor women didn’t have much in the way of expectation because of this image…for that reason, poor women, more than the middle class, had the freedom to work, to eat and drink in the pubs with men, to act much more independently than their betters. Going on an adventure in the darkest wilds of Africa with men might earn her a reputation, but often that would be outside the concern of the proletarian women (unless they were looking to climb the ladder.)  Even then actresses (often equated in the period to prostitutes) could find ways to leverage their looks and outrageous behavior to get invited to social events to entertain. Lola Montez was able to work her way up from actress/whore to lover of kings. And when you’re a king’s mistress, your betters have to put up with you in the drawning room and dance floor.

Some cultures also are more permissive. Scottish and Irish history is full of women who are hard to control, and who made history in the medieval and Renaissance period. Indian princesses sometimes lead armies (google the Rani of Jhansi, for one.) Find something that works for the character’s background and run with it.

Ultimately, it will depend on the maturity of the players and the type of characters players want to engage with, and how open they are keeping the elements of the period being played in (this goes for sexual preference and race, as well.)

(Apologies for the short ending. I’m between projects and trying to punch out a blog post before getting onto the next one. Feel free to comment and discuss the subject in the comments section. I’m sure there’s a multiplicity of opinions out there.)