Hahahaha. "You encounter a strange creature that looks like it has bled for 5 days and it is still not dead." "Holy shit! It must have a huge 18+ CON! Is it a troll?"
We asked 4 boys who play DnD all the time if they knew anything about DnD: "Yeah, I love DnD" We then asked 4 girls who knew nothing about DnD what they knew about it: "No, I don't know anything about it." Amazing!
Where? At 0:45? Because they do not say the boys play it all the time. They literally say "We asked four boys, and four girls, what they think of DnD" *1* of the boys said it was his favorite game, the others basically just said "D&D," or "Dungeons and dragons." And at any rate, do you know if the girls suddenly stopped playing after this? Are you going to make the assumption that they don't also play it a lot now? For all we know, they may be playing it together right now.
"the others basically just said "D&D," " One of the others also said he hasn't played with girls in ETHER of his groups... as in he plays more than 1 group 2:10 The rest of your post is irrelevant. You're trying to move the goalpost. For someone who whines and accuses those who disagree with you of misrepresenting people, you sure are guilty yourself.
Great, so now you have two repeat players that play it at least frequently. That is two out of four. Can you confirm the last two? I'm not here moving any goal posts, i'm exercising skepticism, pointing out where pricemac is making an assumption he cannot reasonably back up, by assuming that all these boys; quote: "play DnD *all the time*" That is a very bold claim to make with no knowledge of the kids beyond this *1* source of information. If you want to continue being his advocate, be my guest, but you're not really helping anyone.
+Atticus Cseh Nowadays it it more common, but if I can put on my crotchey hat, I can say this was hardly the case in the past. I can remember sizable D&D conventions that were complete sausage-fests. Even after all this time, there is still a gender bias to the hobby that needs addressing. D&D groups like yours are helping to do just that :) Keep it up.
+DrOver Lord "There is still a gender bias to the hobby that needs addressing." What? If girls want to play RPGs, then they'll play it. If boys want to play it, then they'll do it. Nothing needs addressing. Girls are not more valuable, or less valuable in the RPG community, just because they're girls. They're just people. There's nothing wrong with having a convention that is all male, just like there'd be nothing wrong if it was all female.
+JeremyxFisher Personally, as a DM I wouldn't want to play with all males or all females. I really like the differences in how they think and approach problems, the game and story always ends up being more well rounded. A quick, and perfect example... They were looking for a dungeon where one of the party members daughters was being held, they tracked it to this warehouse that was under construction, but couldn't find the entrance. The guys started tossing things around looking for it, and trying to intimidate the workers into telling them, while the girls used disguises to try to obtain blueprints. They both managed to find it at exactly the same time, but in very different ways... I was pretty proud of them lol.
Cute D&D video I found on youtube! I am a female gamer and have been for over 20 years. I was originally invited into the group (aka allowed to play) by three brothers on the condition that I played a cleric. They needed a healer and potions were expensive. I played from late elementary school up to the point when I went away to college. I'm back to playing again after letting it slip in the break room at work. I'm now the Dm for the group! The Good: I love the fact that girls can get into D&D now. Things have come far. It's great that something that was considered nerdy is now more mainstream...and oddly games (board and role playing) are kind of trendy. Boys and girls, women and men can actually say in public that they are D&Ders an it's not something that will automatically result in them being the object of ridicule. People you wouldn't think would touch a game own Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan, or Ticket To Ride. This openness will give many more the chance to explore and have fun with games that wasn't really the norm when I was young. Et Tu Gwen? D&D? It was a slip of the lip about my favorite D&D monster in the break room at work where I thought I was going to catch a ribbing from my co-workers. They all stopped, mouths agape, stared at, me and gave me the, "you played D&D?!" At this point all was lost, so I said defiantly,"AD&D actually. Advanced. First and second edition. And I have the white box. Original D&D. The real deal. I think it's worth quite a bit." ...Which is actually a bit of a fib as the white box is really my brothers, but I have it on semi permanent loan! They looked at each other and revealed that there was a group that is made up of several work friends+some people I didn't know. They asked if I ever wanted to join them, I would be welcome, and I replied, "Do you need a cleric?" Yada Yada, I am now Dm-ing and shown them the error that was 4e. AD&D R.U.L.E.S. Although 5e is really really really good! The Meh. I do have to take a little issue with the tone of this video though. It's very nice that girls "can do anything." I have a great career in nursing and a lot of that is due to the "be all you can be" mantras that were given to me during my life, and Title IX put me thru school. The issue is: I am finding this tone one sided. The Rant. Again. Rambunctiousness from boys is not an aberrant behavior that needs to be stifled. It's natural. It's part of who they are. I think boys do need some time to themselves that they can express themselves as they want. I coach boys wrestling and think I have a good idea of how to focus this energy. Society tells boys in none too subtle ways that they are broken, their behaviors and feelings are "off" and need to be changed. No wonder after years of being told that they don't meet society's expectations that college entrance ratios between men and women are 45% to 55%. For some reason this proportion is not something that people take seriously. If it were an election, the losing party would take heed as this is considered a landslide. But we don't her about it. If this gap was the other way there would be outrage! Why are we failing girls? Why aren't we getting women into college? What's wrong? How can we change or schools and teaching methods to give girls the opportunity to get into college? Wait...it's boys not getting into college? Um. Nevermind. Work Rant. It can be illustrated by my same work, for years, had been having a bring your daughter to work day. When I brought this one sided ideology up, my manager informed me that boys were welcome to come...to "bring your daughter to work day." That was sending a mixed message(IMO). I suppose partially because of my pricky attitude, partly her ideals that this took ...4-5? years to remedy and change the name to "bring your child to work day." Nursing is a darn good job. It's not just for women anymore. I have a car, great savings, no student debt, or any debt, a 401k, and pretty good health care plan. And I wish more men would go into it as some of my residents are heavy and I need some more muscly staff (men or women lol) Women/girls are not the underdogs we used to be. Is everything peachy? No. **** no! What I would like is an updated style of thinking where BOYS are taught that they can do anything. Validate their inner roughhousing. Educate them in a manner that will broaden their future horizons. Give them the tools to get them into college, and recognize that this is a problem! I love that girls are playing D&D. I love that fact that the group of kids had fun together. It would have been fun for me to have another girl in our group. With the number of gamer girls now all female groups are possible! Things are moving forward for girls and women. They have a bond I don't fully understand but do admire. I also hope that the boys will get some games in together as a group. Sometime we just need to stay out of their way and let them have a boys night on their own. They need to curse, belch, punch each other on the arm, brag, tell tall tales, complain, get loud, and get serious. Be it age 8 or 88.
I think the keyword you used is "women". Young girls who are still trying to figure out gender roles are pushed towards thinking this isn't a place for them. I'm glad this is getting attention and raising a touch of awareness.
"unthinkable" refers to the perspective of the specific group of boys in the video based on their reaction when I first suggested they try playing with girls
I am a female, and I started playing D&D at the age of 9. I was always interested in these things and had many friends that seemed interested as well, but I do not think that many of the boys that had the resources and people to DM for them had ever thought of inviting girls to play, not giving the girls a chance to be exposed or ever have a chance at D&D. This video also does not look at the older demographic of D&D, which I think is where the real story and true essence of D&D comes in. Many more females are introduced into D&D later on, but the amount of people playing is still swayed towards males, many more females start playing D&D once you have the opportunity to purchase the full campaigns and have dedicated players play a serious session of D&D. I started playing with family, which game me a taste of serious D&D with a full campaign and I was able to understand most of it. So I think that this video is focusing on the wrong point, making it so that they take girls before most of them are exposed to D&D for the purpose of making sure that it looks like none of them have ever heard of it, when realistically if you were to take, say higher middle grade and high school females, I believe that many more of them would know what D&D was, and possibly play it.
Each gender is surrounded by difference ideas which instead of resulting in a gradient, results is a chasm. A girl surround by princesses and stories, will not have much fun playing with a boys construction trucks in the sand and vice-versa. Video games however are starting to become a grey area, which leads to both genders having this common link to share. This video clearly shows that boys assume girls won't like it predominantly because they never played with them. This is because girls don't even know about it or show no interest, which is nothing but a lack of horizon broadening from the girls parents.
Being a long time gamer (when 'gamer' meant RPGs and board games as a hobby), I've had mixed groups since the late 80s and my two girls have been playing for years. They are 16 and 18 now and love to play each week. Great bonding time with them, and they play right alongside friends of mine who have been playing for as long as I have.
+Monty Baconeater Tacos are not too bad as a DC on Digestion. It really depends on the taco. The standard American taco is like a 5 DC, while the infamous "Death" Tacos are a whopping 30. But common tacos are hard to fail unless you have low Constitution and are not trained to have proficiency with Digestion(your ability to receive well-fed buffs and resist debuffs via food poisoning). I have a +6 because I have a +2 Constitution modifier and I have +4 bonus to Digestion. I literally can't suffer indigestion from tacos unless I roll a natural 1. But also, due to my "Tex-Mex Cuisine" historical feat, which confers an advantage on anything I eat that's Tex-Mex. I would have to roll TWO natural 1's, which that should be a 1/400th chance.
so true, one of my fave players was a girl who played a ragemage werewolf barbarian. she made things crazy real quick. then i had another girl(LAMIA monk) who literally wanted to whore and get awsome clothing. she died to a 8 headed hydra after being told her wis check of 24 thinks she has little chance of fighting this .
1. most people get into RPGs as teenagers. These little kids playing is an weird exception.2. It's not the 90s any more. We're kind of past the shock of females actually playing games.3. 4th edition sucks. those poor children.
+Preston Selby I got into RPGs when I was 18 years old (I wanted sooner, but I did not had the chance, and I am a female). And I am the "latecomer". Here, everybody I know, played with etc. started when they were 11-13 years old, and 8 out of 10 still doing it (the majority of RPG players are between 30-50). I guess it depends on where you live. :) 4th? Eh,I pass, thanks
+Preston Selby Pretty much all editions of D&D and its step children like PF and FC sucks when it comes to representing and introducing people to the hobby of Roleplaying Games. They're excellent at introducing them to D&D though. PS. D&D can be a great entertaining game, mostly a resouce tactical combat board game, but a great such game. Just not such a great RPG.
So, you approached 6 girls, two of which rejected the game outright. Of the remaining 4, 3 had no idea what the game was. One of those girls openly states that DnD is not something most girls would be interested in. And yet... it's boys (and boys alone) that need to change, to be taught a lesson? That seems rather hostile to boys, to hold them exclusively responsible for girls choices. And why is it that boys "must" make room for girls? As you're experiment demonstrated, the boys restrained themselves... they did not feel comfortable being themselves around the girls... are boys not entitled to this boys time? We're seeing this more and more these days... when boys gather to relax, to get some downtime, without constantly feeling judged, they are called sexist (the implication of this video and the need for "boys" to be taught that girls can play too), their safe spaces are demanded to be opened to girls, for no other reason than girls want what boys have, rather than building their own things (nothing was stopping those girls from playing their own game of DnD)
+MNeilGri The "lesson" was intended equally for the boys and for the girls. Of course boys are entitled to boys time, but it doesn't necessarily have to be activity-based. I don't even have an objection to a group of boys having an exclusive all-boys DnD group. But they should know that if they WANTED to play with girls, it is possible that girls would enjoy it. I know many of the adults in the gaming community who have commented on this video have said that this isn't news and they grew up playing in boy/girl groups and that's fantastic for them. The situation specifically to these kids though is that the boys truly thought that girls would not be interested in playing with them. After the experiment, I didn't force them to continue playing together and usually it is still an all boys group - but every few sessions one or two of the girls join and they all have a fun time. The lesson for the girls (in the video and watching the video) is to have an open mind about trying something new- even if they had never heard of it or didn't think they would like it. Now, in the future they will have a context for DnD and feel empowered to play or start their own group, if that's something they're interested in doing.
+MNeilGri I saw both genders behave differently. For the girls, they were playing DnD and playing with non pink toys. For the boys it was mostly a mitigation of their fart jokes. A Guys Night can be anything the guys want to do and the same goes for a Girls Night. Who's to say that these girls can't have a girls night in the form of a DnD campaign based around the Princesses within some fantasy world's royal court? That would be taking playing princess to a whole new level, which would involve story telling and statistics. DnD was not created exclusively for a particular gender and the same goes for strip clubs. Adults with preconceived notions ultimately impose ideas of what future generations identify as gender roles. With 2020 on the horizon its important to empower both boys and girls to be open minded and enjoy safe hobbies and past times regardless of preconceived notions. Exposing boys to ready bake ovens and more stringent hygiene standards is just as ok as exposing girls to DnD. Exposing kiddos to socializing with the other gender in a positive manner might actually lend itself to understanding one another at a deeper and more humane level, once they are 16 and want to get their freak on. Maybe this social experiment could be a 'butterfly effect' towards fewer children born out of wedlock due to people having a deeper understanding of the opposite gender. you never know.
Nate Magnum You're arguing a strawman. Arguing against things I've neither said nor addressed. Saying you should not force boys to accept women into their groups is not the same as saying DnD is not for girls. But in modern society, any activity boys and men tend to gather around has had feminists and SJW's demanding girls be allowed to play... not just on their own, but with the boys.... and then demanding the boys play by girls rules of conduct. meanwhile, women demand "safe spaces" and women only gyms so they can do their own thing without having to deal with men around all the time. It's hypocritical, selfish and incredibly annoying. And it's not helping gender relations... it's creating a divide as more and more men are feeling restricted and shit upon.
+Nate Magnum A lot of girls play D&D and it`s not something mindblowing. So stop the fucking social enginering. Boy`s tend to bond over different things than girls and that ist absolut okay. Groups with mixed genders tend to have different dynamics. Gender rules are a natural thing, because we are natural beeings and we constructed this society to ensure our survival. We have the fortune to live in an age where technology leveled the playing field, so parts of the occupations and hobbys can be undertaken by both genders. And that is fine. But you won`t force a 110 lbs Women to work in a warehouse where she has to load containers. But i`m pretty sure physical limitations of the female body are just social constructs.
+Grimi1982 Gah.. As usual, someone has to conflate physical differences with mental ones. The latter of which tends to be total BS. As for women wanting "safe places".. Well, gosh, why would they want that? Its not like, for example, conventions treat them like shit, don't give them speaking opportunities, ignore harassment, when it happens, and generally play like its a boys club, then.. for some stupid reason decide it would be better to have their own conventions. Funny how that works... There is real harassment, problems, mistreatment and dangers which lead women to want "safe spaces" to "do their own thing". This isn't some silly thing they are just doing to be different, its because other places, they get hurt by idiots. That said, most gender rules are **not** natural at all. There is nothing natural about every toy on the boys shelf being a gun, while every one on a girls shelf, or so close to that as to not matter, being pink, and a doll. There is nothing "natural" about schools putting up posters, for something like a science activity, and "accidentally" writing it in such a way that makes it seem like only boys are being encouraged to look into it. Heck, it hasn't been that long, maybe.. 30 years? since a guy wanting to become a nurse was a) weird, b) discouraged, and even c) stated by some to be, "Nothing a real man would want to do anyway.", among a whole host of other stupid things. Yeah, a lot of girls play D&D. But.. define "a lot". How about video games, what, again, is "a lot"? What was it before, why isn't it more? What bloody stupid assumptions are being made, in part because we can't even have certain classes, without segregating them, either intentionally, or by false conclusions about who would want to be there, which *cause* women to not be involved with certain things. And, how the heck is any of it "natural"? Heck, back when the first electronic computer, the ENIAC went online, 99% of all of the programmers where "women", and their primary method of programming the machines was "mathematics". Less than 20 years ago computer programming was practically a sausage fest. It still is in game design, and almost no women, at all, are going into sciences, never mind mathematics. What changed exactly? Heck, if we are going to babble about stereotypical "differences", I would think that the fact that all modern programming is done with languages would make women "better" than men at it right? That is their thing, according the the stereotyping - languages, while its men that are supposed to "get math". Only.. its taken years just to see women recognized as game makers, never mine players. Natural my ass. The only thing natural about it is that humans form groups, and the biggest "group" in the history of history has been "men, who own everything else around them", and.. the primary function of such groups is, invariably, "If I have to share something, it damn well better be someone in my group I am sharing it with." So.. of course, when all the false alpha, actually zeta, males, who are scared of losing their toys to other people, get together and decide who they want to share with, and who they don't, those funny people with breasts and high voiced tend to be the first, and most obvious "outsiders, who want to take our stuff." Its so freaking absurd that humanity has taken the thinking of 4 year old children and defined this as "normal and natural", especially since, among primates, with the exception of the uncooperative ones, who drive off and/or kill their other male rivals, **none of them act like this**. Heck, even wolves are not this stupid. But humans.. Yeah.. we are experts at making up stupid reasons to treat people that are not like us like shit, and excuses for why its "normal and natural" that we are doing so (and, by extension, teaching our own, and everyone else's kid who is unlucky enough to hear the excuses, the same lessons in, "Why girls don't like those things, or do these other things, and its 'natural' that we make these arbitrary gender rules up." Its just too bad that psychology experts have, for years, been ripping the excuses to shreds, and showing that.. funny enough, when you throw out the assumption that the rules exist, boys and girls **both** act the same way. Its only when you spend 15-20 years turning on into a bloody football star, and the other into some delusional "princes" that there are "differences". And, you can't even turn on a cartoon without this BS being thrown in their faces, most of the time.
While the basic premise is a nice one, it COMPLETELY glosses over the fact that many guys actually WANT girls to play RPGs with them, and then the girls turn around and call them nerds and losers. So as much as it pains you to imagine it, women can also be mean and cruel and non-inclusive.
+Rantandreason It's generally not the game that is exclusionary, but the community around it. Most players aren't tastemakers. They've been "recruited" into the hobby by a friend or family member of theirs. If those who "recruit" people are gender-biased, they won't involve girls, and thus, you get a lopsided gender spread, a "boys club". That being said, we can't forget that boys and girls are raised differently as well, making them fundamentally different in what they might like to do in their games. Older versions of DnD was very combat-centric: You go to the dungeon, you bop the big bad on the head with the biggest stick you can wield and you grab whatever isn't bolted to the walls, and you split. Guys, in my experience, tend towards domination-type gameplay: Have the most skilled warrior, with the shiniest armor, the most power, etc. etc. Women, on the other hand, tends more towards intrigue, mystery, character interaction and politics; The more subtle (and quite frankly, harder to DM) parts of RP'ing. This is of course different from person to person, but I've experienced a general tendency towards that end. And I would say that the game has developed quite significantly towards rules supporting the more subtle and complex ways of playing, as opposed to the fairly blunt and straight-forward dungeon run.
xxhellspawnedxx Absolutely utter horseshit!!!!!!!!! If you want to play the game, go buy it!!!!! There is NOTHING stopping anybody from playing it, period! It's like saying that you can't go out and buy a soccer ball and play with your friends because other people are playing soccer too and you don't like the way they play. It is absolutely ridiculous that anyone could ever come up to the delusional conclusion you have come to. I learned to play on my own. I have computer games for the C64 that were based on D&D. I went out and bought a tonne of used books. I DMd games for friends, never having done it before in my life. I'm sorry if you can't understand this concept, but the entire world isn't trying to oppress you just because you never thought to do something. Grow the hell up and take some personal responsibility for yourself.
xxhellspawnedxx"Older versions of DnD was very combat-centric:" FALSE! D&D, like any roleplaying game, is whatever the hell you want it to be. I don't even know where to begin because your entire premise is so utterly wrong. You are essentially saying that a game which revolves around make-believe and imagination is somehow oppressive to women because SOME people chose to play it as a dungeon crawl. Not everyone played that way. Not by a long shot. And that doesn't include the host of other RPG games out there which have nothing to do with either dungeons, or dragons. Little Fears Big eyes small mouth Bunnies and Burrows Paranoia Feng Shui Ninjas and Superspies Castle Falkenstein GURPS Earthdawn Call of Cthulu Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, Changling, Demon, Hunter and the entire line, which was done as LARP allllll over the place and involved next to no combat, and included MANY women who loved Vampires All Flesh must be eaten Beyond the Supernatural After The Bomb Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rifts DC Heroes Marvel Superheroes Those are all game systems me and my friends have played, and that's not all of them. GURPS, of all systems, you are attempting to say that the roleplaying system that is specifically meant to create your own rpg, the way you want it to be, means that this genre is somehow oppressive to women? You are mindblowingly wrong in this. Go out, find the system you want to play, LEARN IT, and run it. Either you are completely and utterly delusional, or you are saying that women lack the skills and ability to learn an RPG system and do it for themselves, the way they want to do it. So which is it?
Rantandreason I'm not saying they were locked to that way of playing, I'm saying that the rule-set was heavily developed towards combat and dungeoneering, rather than the sort of intrigue you see favored in the rule-set of Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance, where the entire premise is one of of a shadow society, of intrigue and deceit, of social capital and manipulation. Let's be real here. As a complete novice in your preteen or early teen years, you generally don't go to buy a shitload of books, and then start to modify the rules to suit your way of playing. You try to find a setting and a rule-set suited to your liking. Only after extensive experience in RP'ing do you generally start to add new things to it that is outside of the rules established in the books. And this, I'd say, is a threshold that scared many potential female players away in the early years.
In my younger playing days (11-17), girls and Dnd really were mutually exclusive. You could either have a lvl18 elemental forces-manipulating, death-dealing, reality-rippling wizard (Oh Eladriel, how I miss you) or a girlfriend, but you couldn't have both. Learned gender roles may have been a factor, but just as important if not more so was social status--with some exceptions my group members and I were so unpopular that girls wanted nothing to do with our game much less us. Cause and effect were/are ambiguous--were we unpopular because we played Dnd or did playing Dnd make us unpopular? We used to hide the fact that we played like it was a dirty little secret. Talking about it in the daylight outside of our Friday night gaming sessions was taboo. Dnd along with its fantasy origins was for the unwashed residuum of the high school social scene. Post-LOTR movies and GoT tv series that might not be true anymore, but in the early 90s it sure felt like something to be ashamed about and hidden from public view.
I am one of the original D&D players from back when the AD&D first edition came into being. Back then the far right Holy Roller Christian types considered it to be Satanic. It was an hysteria. Our group pretty much had to keep our gaming hidden from the rest of the highly religious community that surrounded us. It warms my heart to see this video.
As a gamer girl myself, this video was really nice to see. Thankfully, while growing up, I was never discouraged from something because it was "boys only", especially gaming, though I have found that it is a predominantly male centric market. From an early age I loved comic books, video games (my favorites have always been RPGs), and sci-fi, though I was not able to start playing tabletop until college. I ended up marrying my 2nd DM, who taught me 3.5E, and we still play together! We very rarely have other female players, and the ones we do find don't often stay long, which makes it tough to show others that girls play these types of games too and enjoy them! We very much look forward to when our son is old enough to play and hope that other children will want to join us as well, no matter their gender.
"These kids... can get pretty bawdy. Hopefully with the girls that will get toned down a bit, otherwise people will be uncomfortable." By 'people', I presume you mean you think the girls would be uncomfortable. Surprise, girls have a dirty sense of humour too. In my D&D groups I'm generally the first with the innuendo, unless I'm playing with one particular other person - also a woman - who is quicker on the draw with the 'inappropriate' humour. Girls and women aren't delicate flowers that must be protected from 'gross' things. More often than not we'll be laughing just as hard if not harder than the men.
I know many women can be very dirty in their humour. Actually to the point where I myself have become a bit uncomfortable once. However I think it is natural for both genders to tone it down a bit when they are with someone that they do not know. But once they are comfortable with them, they once again open up, testing the waters, trying to find out where the limits are.
Yeah I dunno, I've been playing with the same core group since high school, at one point we pretty much all had girlfriends, and they all joined us. They liked it so much, a few invited friends. Some of the 'core group' had to start sitting out because of work. We ended up with more girls than guys at one point. It was a little bit different but... people are just people.
The thing I find most unbelievable about this is the ages of the kids playing D&D. Of course, I haven't played in years. For all I know, there's a junior version of the game.
So it's all about teaching guys that girls can do what they do and not about teaching girls there's no stigma to playing D&D? RPGs don't have gender bias, they just are. Mostly people outside of gaming tend to push these gendered stereotypes. I like what you did here, but i don't like the incredibly one sided message.
Topcats Lair most of these kids are too young to know of the stigmas towards D&D, so it'd be counter-productive to start pointing them out. And for the people who are not familiar with the game, we hoped that this portrayal of it would give them a frame of reference to what it is and make it seem less intimidating and bust some of the stereotypes without directly addressing them on the nose.
Meredith Ashley there's a simple way of doing that, not making it out from the onset that women in D&D is a revolutionary concept. Sorry, it's just really prevalent that geek culture is portrayed like that to people outside the subcultures. Again, i like what you did in this instance but it would be great if you showed footage of older D&D sessions where, at least in my exp the gender ratio is more or less even. I've actually had more female DMs then male.
Topcats Lair The "revolutionary" element of the concept was in jest- we are teasing this particular group of kids and the people in general who still don't understand what D&D is and how all types of people can have fun playing it. We were silly about it in the narration because of exactly what you're saying- there's no reason these kids or anyone should have the preconceived gender notions that they did going into it. As you saw from the beginning, the idea of playing with girls to THESE boys in particular was hard for them to imagine and the point of the documentary was to prove to them that gender is not a determining factor when it comes to whether or not a person will enjoy the game.
Meredith Ashley If you haven't seen it i suggest seeing Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Currently has a kickstarter for the bluray release. Has a similar message but was done a decade ago. Also it's incredibly funny. www.kickstarter.com/projects/deadgentlemen/the-gamers-dorkness-rising-definitive-blu-ray-edit
I've been roleplaying for over 30 years and my experience has shown that the gameplay is better with both genders are playing together. The roleplaying part is bigger and the hack'n slash part is usually less, so in my book it is essential.
I've been playing D&D since 8th grade (in 198mumble). It was at a local park, where the club got use of one of the rooms at the park's gym/auditorium. For 3 years, I was the only girl in the group, and then another girl joined. The club was large enough that we'd often have two separate games running at the same time, usually D&D at one table, and either Traveler or Villains and Vigilantes at the other. I remember the guys were a little leery of me at first, but after the first month of showing up and pulling my weight in-game, it was just generally accepted that I was part of the crew (even getting the phone call asking where I was on the few days when I couldn't attend and nobody knew it beforehand). RPGs with mixed groups is awesome. My son, now 11, can't picture NOT gaming with boys AND girls, since that's how the family plays with our friends.
This is awesome. My one comment: there's a ton of great material out there today teaching girls they can do anything they set their mind too. But there's not a ton of messages letting boys know they don't have to live up to out-dated gender expectations either.
I don't know if anyone mentioned this (I could not find) but isn't this game for ages 14 and up? It's pretty impressive to see this age group (forgetting gender) interested and showing the attention span that this game demands. . .
Sad, when I started D&D was only played by boys.... I have been with D&D since it started in the early 80's. I still have the original books and I was fortunate to meet the creator . Gary G. My kids are into it now,yes. They are boys and girls. The game will never end... Thanks for the vid!
+Ka MiK Because gender ideologues are attempting to insert gender into everything they can. This is a game based on imagining whatever you want to imagine, and they are trying to make it seem like somehow women are oppressed by this
Thanks so much for this video! I tweeted it to Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton and posted to Facebook. I'm going to pass it on to others in the future too, as I encounter them! :D
I liked this video. So well made (nice speaker imprint voice) and funny. Let's debunk the clichés!Children are naturally spontaneous, open-minded and... "chaotic good". ^^
I find this to be the opposite with adults that have never played before tho. I recently had a campaign run with my co-workers and the positive responses and knowledge leaned a lot more to girls than boys. Everyone who played tho had a great time.
My mom won't face it that I'm a geek. She thinks I'm on a end up like a loner or something but Almost EVERY actor plays DnD because it helps with character creation and like getting into character. ANY TIPS how too tell her I'm a geek?
"Playing D&D With Girls" sounds like it should be a movie..... sort of a sequel to "Riding In Cars With Boys"... ish.... Great experiment for sure. Thanks for posting it Geek & Sundry
Women are excellent roleplayers and real fun to play with. I'm delighted by the fact that more and more female gamers join DnD groups. Back when I was a boy of the age of 10 I'd have loved to play my favorite game with girls but that unfortunately never happened.
Great. Hopefully, they'll just keep loving the game and not start going on about 'microaggressions' and what not. Oh, here it is. The DM and 'gender roles'. Couldn't just have girls playing D&D. Nope. Had to turn it into a problematic issue that we have to talk about.
zorro baggins but it is an issue for a lot of people? I don't know where you live but if kids this age were involved in anything over here where I live it would affect them one way or another, and sometimes boys get the worst end of the stick. A girl this age playing D&D can get the "Geek ugly girl" tag real quick, and it'll will stick aaall the way into middle school until the boys's balls drop and find anything attractive. A boy this age playing with dolls can get the 'faggot wissy wimpy' tag real fast and it'll last aaaalll the way into highschool when girls start appreciating different kinds of men. Children in both these cases can get bullied and even beaten up for shit like this, especially boys. So it's not things "kids make up", it's a serious issue that doesn't want to be seen by people often, and it isn't about gender, it's about fucking CHILDREN COMITTING SUICIDE. (And yes I hate where I live I want to gtfo of here)
I joined my first gaming group when I was 17. There were 4 guys and 3 girls. The exact ratio varied over the course of the next 10 years but there was always at least 1 in the group. Group 2: Originally just guys. Then my long term girlfriend joined and she has been playing ever since. That group lasted about 5 years. Next group lasted about 2 years and was a close to 50 50 mix. Current group, been playing for about 5 years or so. Broad mix of ages, 12 the youngest, 55 on the other end, 50 50 mix with some of the noobs started playing in their late 40's. Buddies wife had always wanted to play when she was younger but was told "Girls don't play". She plays now and loves it.
I can dig it. I remember the first girl I played an RPG with was around 6th or 7th grade. She GM'd Marvel Superheroes. I never really thought it was unusual that she was a girl playing RPGs, nor did I really notice that I never encountered a girl playing RPGs up until then (I got into it about 2nd grade.) Anyway, cool vid!
I played D&D with boys in the late 70's and early 80's and then with men in the 00's, I've moved onto more original tabletop RPGs at the end of the 00's. However no one ever thought it was unusual to have a female player and in most cases I was not the only female players. Still I'm glad to see this was a positive situation for everyone involved.
I can't help but feel like we're dragging identity politics into a game that should rightly have none. Just because "come on people, it's the current year!"
Cool vid. Any teachers out there? Get games going at school! I run 3 lunchtime games during the week and the mix is almost even: group 1 (6 boys), group 2 (6 girls), group 3 (4 boys, 2 girls). All are equally passionate and the shared experiences are priceless.
Me and my gf play D&D. We also play with the DM's wife. There are a couple of guys, but overall we have balance in my city. I appreciate the video! This was amazing and kinda adorable. I've been trying to get my nephew and nieces involved in a homebrew game, but they would rather play on phones or watch Netflix. I really need to help them get away from this constant "screen time stimulation". It can't be good for them. I would very much like to see them use their imaginations.
I'm in my forties and have only recently (about 7 years ago) had a female friend come into my life that likes gaming and DnD type games. I think this is a very poor showing on the part of womankind and it's about time they got their shit together and started representing!
In our group, in the 80's, we could never get the girls to play D&D. Probably because it was a nerdy thing to do. Also, there was a lot of people who associated D&D with Witchcraft and Satanism, which didn't help as well. We always played Pen and Paper D&D, no boards or models. It was always about activating the imagination and a time to just get away from the problems of the real world.
+Matt Johnson The point in saying that is not that there is no "gender difference" (I am not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I suspect it is an attempt at misrepresenting people's claims in an effort to feel right). I think people are saying that because this is a huge "all boys" DnD group and the video acts as if this is some sort of routine injustice. Their premise is faulty.
This was delightful. "I killed three monkeys!" Great quote, it was like she fulfilled her own personal victory conditions for the day. Clockwork Couture also seems like a pretty amazing venue to host a roleplaying game, which adds a nice touch of appeal to any new player, I should think. :} Storytelling games like D&D ought to be a natural fit for girls, but they've been marketed toward boys and designed for them in mind with a lot of emphasis on the fighting aspect. Some games are all about fighting monsters, of course, and that's cool, but the potential of the medium is limited only by the imagination of the players and the GM. Thanks for making this short documentary. It was very entertaining and interesting to hear the perspectives of young kids of both genders on the experience of playing D&D.
Played 5E beta testing at my LGS, and one of the guys there had been dragged in to play by his 15 year old daughter! Was totally cool, as he hadn't played himself in years, and she was super into it.
Brilliant video! Thanks for bashing stereotypes. As an old-school RPG-er this is great to see the new generation willing to open up games to everyone. Also this fuels my theory that nerds and geekdom will unite the world :) 5:02 and 5:19 were by far the best bits. Ah, these lessons that boys must learn as they become men.
I am 15 years old, almost 16, I ran my first dnd game, it was amazing! It took about 4 hours, but who cares? We all had fun, me and my players. Now, after I finished the standard campaign from the Starter Set, I've decided to make my own one, and it seems it's doing good. My campaign's name is "Strange Island". It will have 3 Acts. I am actually working on the first act which will have about 3-4 Chapters. Each act is about to defeat bosses from each race (Orcs, Elves, Skeletons and Evil Mages). I really love this game. I live in Romania, so this game isn't that much popular.
A bit late, but I actually DM a group that save for me is entirely women. I never expected them to be so responsive when I brought up D&D as a pastime, but they love it and look forward to every session now!
Very cool. I play (DM) for both of my daughters and they love it. My youngest still needs some help, but 5e is so much easier to teach a young newer player and that helps a lot.
Tee Hee, like, omigawd, smashing Patriarchy and all that, smashing gender conventions, blah blah. I've been playing D&D and other roleplaying games since the 90's; and the groups were nearly always a mix of boys and girls. This is not a new concept, not even in gaming. This is a cherry picked example trying to skew a narrative about a situation that just isn't there.
I grew up in a community where nerdliness wasn't even a thing until recent years. So by time I was into D&D when I was 15-16 it was mainly my group of friends and I, with all but one player being a girl. I'm in a group now that is technically mostly boys, but of those who actually come it's about 50/50 =u="
The first time I played DnD it was at my high school's DnD club. There where 13 girls and 4 boys. It's hard for me to remember that this isn't the norm. I currently am a member of an all girls dungeon that spawned from my high school club.
Woman make for some of the best DnD Characters. I DM a group of 5 (3 guys ,2 ladies) and the ladies are the more investigative while the guys are the more "i attack with my weapon". The ladies in my group like to play the support classes (druid/wizard) and they do a fine job of making sure the group doesn't die and uncovering lore, secrets, and hidden knowledge. The guys all play martial classes and pretty much absorb all the damage flung at the group and the first to go into combat.
I have always regarded Dungeons and Dragons as the greatest role playing epic fantasy game for children to adults and it is a high powered strategy game worthy of respect when you play it...says the Ranger
When I first starting playing, back in the 80's, as a kid (second, third grade) it was mainly me, a friend of mine (as the DM) and his slightly older sister. They had been playing for awhile with their older brother and I was the newbie. We played like that (with their older brother being DM when he was out for a visit) for years with other people coming and going from our school friends and whatnot.
There is a Hobby Store I visit once in a great while. They have a back room for people to play magic the gathering and tabletop wargames. Once time I went I saw a girl between 10 and 12 playing Warhammer Fantasy.
People have the desire to take everything, to pillage everything, to manipulate everything. Seeing, deciphering, learning does not touch them. -- Jean Baudrillard.
This is pretty funny because lately I see more and more girls playing D&D and I wouldn't even be surprised if one day more girls play than guys. Although the average age is a bit older than this.
I started playing D&D @ a young age. I still have my original books from 1979 & what D&D gave me was the power of imagination & that's something everyone can use in life....I do 8>)
i played tabletop D&D for the first time yesturday and it was so much FUCKING FUN. There were two other girls in the group and the other 5 guys were really helpful and inviting. I cant wait to play again!! :D
***** Yeah, I'm sure the 5 guys were helpful. They were probably falling all over themselves to help, though trying to not be too obvious. For some reason, gamer girls are very popular with guy gamers LOL
that may be true however, 4 of the 5 guys have girlfriends! lol i freaking love playing d&d now though, even though i'm still pretty noobish at pretty much everything lol
***** GF's don't matter. Gamer girls are hot LOL. I'm not saying that they'd cheat or dump their GF's for you, but to the mind of gamer guys, gamer girls make the ideal woman. I'm a guy, I've been gaming on and off since the early 1980's (yeah, I'm an old fart), and I've recognized that mindset in myself, and I've seen it in others over and over, so I'm confident that at least a few of them are probably thinking it, at least subconsciously (they might not even realize they're thinking it). Welcome to the club, noob ;) I actually love new gamers, because they still think of their character as a real person, and they make their decisions accordingly. After you get to know the rules really well, the temptation is to start thinking like a gamer. When you think like a gamer, you begin to think of your character in terms of statistics and how to become more powerful instead of in terms of what a real person would do. Guys seem to be more susceptible to this temptation than the ladies, so you have that going in your favor also. I hope you continue to enjoy playing for a long time to come. You can make some great friends, it's fun, and it can help develop traits that will be beneficial throughout life (such as teamwork and thinking outside the box to solve problems).
The only people that I know play DnD are two girls; one is an old middle school sweetheart and the other my online gaming friend. They have both invited me to play with them a couple times and while one group was roughly balanced the other was actually mostly girls.
It's true that females of any age tend to not play D&D, but I've had females at my table playing alongside males. Yes, some off coloured jokes were made, by both groups. This is a game of relaxing and getting to know others. I have had no bad sessions with both fe/male groups. It's all on how the individual feels about the game. People do give D&D a bad name, but it is for everyone, male and female, young and old. This proved only that little boys and girls think in different ways, while boys are open to playing games like D&D, girls tend to stay away. I'm glad the females are taking up the "nerdy" life with tabletop games, and do wish to see more. But in the end, it's up to them.
"Don't pass out when you hear the word blood,"
Boy, you don't even know yet, hahaha
Oh. I just got that.
Hahahaha. "You encounter a strange creature that looks like it has bled for 5 days and it is still not dead." "Holy shit! It must have a huge 18+ CON! Is it a troll?"
I was looking for someone to say it!! THANK YOU XD
Rosa Lina what about getting cut open and still being alive fighting off a herd of goblins
haha
We asked 4 boys who play DnD all the time if they knew anything about DnD: "Yeah, I love DnD"
We then asked 4 girls who knew nothing about DnD what they knew about it: "No, I don't know anything about it."
Amazing!
Honestly, you make the assumption that they play it all the time.
No, they don't make that assumption... it's literally said in the video.
Where? At 0:45? Because they do not say the boys play it all the time.
They literally say "We asked four boys, and four girls, what they think of DnD" *1* of the boys said it was his favorite game, the others basically just said "D&D," or "Dungeons and dragons."
And at any rate, do you know if the girls suddenly stopped playing after this?
Are you going to make the assumption that they don't also play it a lot now?
For all we know, they may be playing it together right now.
"the others basically just said "D&D," "
One of the others also said he hasn't played with girls in ETHER of his groups... as in he plays more than 1 group 2:10
The rest of your post is irrelevant. You're trying to move the goalpost. For someone who whines and accuses those who disagree with you of misrepresenting people, you sure are guilty yourself.
Great, so now you have two repeat players that play it at least frequently. That is two out of four. Can you confirm the last two?
I'm not here moving any goal posts, i'm exercising skepticism, pointing out where pricemac is making an assumption he cannot reasonably back up, by assuming that all these boys; quote: "play DnD *all the time*"
That is a very bold claim to make with no knowledge of the kids beyond this *1* source of information.
If you want to continue being his advocate, be my guest, but you're not really helping anyone.
It's really not that rare to have girls playing D&D. My group has 2 girls and 3 guys.
+Atticus Cseh truth.
+Atticus Cseh Nowadays it it more common, but if I can put on my crotchey hat, I can say this was hardly the case in the past. I can remember sizable D&D conventions that were complete sausage-fests. Even after all this time, there is still a gender bias to the hobby that needs addressing.
D&D groups like yours are helping to do just that :) Keep it up.
+DrOver Lord "There is still a gender bias to the hobby that needs addressing." What? If girls want to play RPGs, then they'll play it. If boys want to play it, then they'll do it. Nothing needs addressing. Girls are not more valuable, or less valuable in the RPG community, just because they're girls. They're just people. There's nothing wrong with having a convention that is all male, just like there'd be nothing wrong if it was all female.
+DrOver Lord Why does it need addressing?
+JeremyxFisher Personally, as a DM I wouldn't want to play with all males or all females. I really like the differences in how they think and approach problems, the game and story always ends up being more well rounded. A quick, and perfect example... They were looking for a dungeon where one of the party members daughters was being held, they tracked it to this warehouse that was under construction, but couldn't find the entrance. The guys started tossing things around looking for it, and trying to intimidate the workers into telling them, while the girls used disguises to try to obtain blueprints. They both managed to find it at exactly the same time, but in very different ways... I was pretty proud of them lol.
Story of my life, kid. 5:18 "They were more violent than I expected by a ton."
STAB THE MONKEY!
"Playing Dungeons and Dragons with girls was weird because....they were so good"
Cute D&D video I found on youtube!
I am a female gamer and have been for over 20 years. I was originally invited into the group (aka allowed to play) by three brothers on the condition that I played a cleric. They needed a healer and potions were expensive. I played from late elementary school up to the point when I went away to college. I'm back to playing again after letting it slip in the break room at work. I'm now the Dm for the group!
The Good:
I love the fact that girls can get into D&D now. Things have come far. It's great that something that was considered nerdy is now more mainstream...and oddly games (board and role playing) are kind of trendy. Boys and girls, women and men can actually say in public that they are D&Ders an it's not something that will automatically result in them being the object of ridicule. People you wouldn't think would touch a game own Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan, or Ticket To Ride. This openness will give many more the chance to explore and have fun with games that wasn't really the norm when I was young.
Et Tu Gwen? D&D?
It was a slip of the lip about my favorite D&D monster in the break room at work where I thought I was going to catch a ribbing from my co-workers. They all stopped, mouths agape, stared at, me and gave me the, "you played D&D?!" At this point all was lost, so I said defiantly,"AD&D actually. Advanced. First and second edition. And I have the white box. Original D&D. The real deal. I think it's worth quite a bit." ...Which is actually a bit of a fib as the white box is really my brothers, but I have it on semi permanent loan! They looked at each other and revealed that there was a group that is made up of several work friends+some people I didn't know. They asked if I ever wanted to join them, I would be welcome, and I replied, "Do you need a cleric?" Yada Yada, I am now Dm-ing and shown them the error that was 4e. AD&D R.U.L.E.S. Although 5e is really really really good!
The Meh.
I do have to take a little issue with the tone of this video though. It's very nice that girls "can do anything." I have a great career in nursing and a lot of that is due to the "be all you can be" mantras that were given to me during my life, and Title IX put me thru school. The issue is: I am finding this tone one sided.
The Rant. Again.
Rambunctiousness from boys is not an aberrant behavior that needs to be stifled. It's natural. It's part of who they are. I think boys do need some time to themselves that they can express themselves as they want. I coach boys wrestling and think I have a good idea of how to focus this energy. Society tells boys in none too subtle ways that they are broken, their behaviors and feelings are "off" and need to be changed.
No wonder after years of being told that they don't meet society's expectations that college entrance ratios between men and women are 45% to 55%. For some reason this proportion is not something that people take seriously. If it were an election, the losing party would take heed as this is considered a landslide.
But we don't her about it. If this gap was the other way there would be outrage! Why are we failing girls? Why aren't we getting women into college? What's wrong? How can we change or schools and teaching methods to give girls the opportunity to get into college? Wait...it's boys not getting into college? Um. Nevermind.
Work Rant.
It can be illustrated by my same work, for years, had been having a bring your daughter to work day. When I brought this one sided ideology up, my manager informed me that boys were welcome to come...to "bring your daughter to work day." That was sending a mixed message(IMO). I suppose partially because of my pricky attitude, partly her ideals that this took ...4-5? years to remedy and change the name to "bring your child to work day."
Nursing is a darn good job. It's not just for women anymore. I have a car, great savings, no student debt, or any debt, a 401k, and pretty good health care plan. And I wish more men would go into it as some of my residents are heavy and I need some more muscly staff (men or women lol)
Women/girls are not the underdogs we used to be. Is everything peachy? No. **** no! What I would like is an updated style of thinking where BOYS are taught that they can do anything. Validate their inner roughhousing. Educate them in a manner that will broaden their future horizons. Give them the tools to get them into college, and recognize that this is a problem!
I love that girls are playing D&D. I love that fact that the group of kids had fun together. It would have been fun for me to have another girl in our group. With the number of gamer girls now all female groups are possible! Things are moving forward for girls and women.
They have a bond I don't fully understand but do admire.
I also hope that the boys will get some games in together as a group. Sometime we just need to stay out of their way and let them have a boys night on their own. They need to curse, belch, punch each other on the arm, brag, tell tall tales, complain, get loud, and get serious. Be it age 8 or 88.
Yes! The bias against boys is getting extreme.
ruclips.net/video/OFpYj0E-yb4/видео.html
Cleric? Yep always the same reason they wanted a healer. Forget healing when in doubt flame strike.
@@matthewhamlin392 Hell yeah my fellow caster!
Jesus christ save the paragraph for your resume yeesh
@@Ak1mboWar dang I get a reply in 3 years. That's amazing.
Back in 1982, we had girls in our D&D group, and in 83 most of the girls in my class were playing both D&D and Gama Wars.
This isn't unthinkable. Our D&D group is 50/50. At one point there were more women playing then men!
I think the keyword you used is "women". Young girls who are still trying to figure out gender roles are pushed towards thinking this isn't a place for them. I'm glad this is getting attention and raising a touch of awareness.
"unthinkable" refers to the perspective of the specific group of boys in the video based on their reaction when I first suggested they try playing with girls
Both of my daughters play with my group and are also now part of groups at school. My youngest daughter started a group. They love this game,
Dang I've played with 5 girls total 3 like It one I'm not in touch with and my sister won't play it because its too nerdy
+forgetsin Our current Call of Cthulhu game is 3 women, one guy, who's the DM.
I am a female, and I started playing D&D at the age of 9. I was always interested in these things and had many friends that seemed interested as well, but I do not think that many of the boys that had the resources and people to DM for them had ever thought of inviting girls to play, not giving the girls a chance to be exposed or ever have a chance at D&D. This video also does not look at the older demographic of D&D, which I think is where the real story and true essence of D&D comes in. Many more females are introduced into D&D later on, but the amount of people playing is still swayed towards males, many more females start playing D&D once you have the opportunity to purchase the full campaigns and have dedicated players play a serious session of D&D. I started playing with family, which game me a taste of serious D&D with a full campaign and I was able to understand most of it. So I think that this video is focusing on the wrong point, making it so that they take girls before most of them are exposed to D&D for the purpose of making sure that it looks like none of them have ever heard of it, when realistically if you were to take, say higher middle grade and high school females, I believe that many more of them would know what D&D was, and possibly play it.
Each gender is surrounded by difference ideas which instead of resulting in a gradient, results is a chasm. A girl surround by princesses and stories, will not have much fun playing with a boys construction trucks in the sand and vice-versa. Video games however are starting to become a grey area, which leads to both genders having this common link to share.
This video clearly shows that boys assume girls won't like it predominantly because they never played with them. This is because girls don't even know about it or show no interest, which is nothing but a lack of horizon broadening from the girls parents.
@@memesouls8653 That's utter bollocks and you know it.
Being a long time gamer (when 'gamer' meant RPGs and board games as a hobby), I've had mixed groups since the late 80s and my two girls have been playing for years. They are 16 and 18 now and love to play each week. Great bonding time with them, and they play right alongside friends of mine who have been playing for as long as I have.
i was playing DnD with girls when this DM was still shitting green
:) I was also! Funny right! I even met girls because of dnd at age 15. Lots of gaming back then on military bases. 27 years ago
+Monty Baconeater Tacos are not too bad as a DC on Digestion. It really depends on the taco. The standard American taco is like a 5 DC, while the infamous "Death" Tacos are a whopping 30. But common tacos are hard to fail unless you have low Constitution and are not trained to have proficiency with Digestion(your ability to receive well-fed buffs and resist debuffs via food poisoning).
I have a +6 because I have a +2 Constitution modifier and I have +4 bonus to Digestion. I literally can't suffer indigestion from tacos unless I roll a natural 1. But also, due to my "Tex-Mex Cuisine" historical feat, which confers an advantage on anything I eat that's Tex-Mex. I would have to roll TWO natural 1's, which that should be a 1/400th chance.
cool story
so true, one of my fave players was a girl who played a ragemage werewolf barbarian. she made things crazy real quick. then i had another girl(LAMIA monk) who literally wanted to whore and get awsome clothing. she died to a 8 headed hydra after being told her wis check of 24 thinks she has little chance of fighting this .
1. most people get into RPGs as teenagers. These little kids playing is an weird exception.2. It's not the 90s any more. We're kind of past the shock of females actually playing games.3. 4th edition sucks. those poor children.
+Preston Selby The simpleton has spoken! Behold his words of naiveté! They shall echo in nothingness forevermooooOOOooore!!!!!
+Preston Selby That's way I went back to playing the 1st & 2nd edition of D&D, because of the 4th edition.
+Preston Selby LOL@ #3. it's quite true though.
+Preston Selby I got into RPGs when I was 18 years old (I wanted sooner, but I did not had the chance, and I am a female). And I am the "latecomer". Here, everybody I know, played with etc. started when they were 11-13 years old, and 8 out of 10 still doing it (the majority of RPG players are between 30-50). I guess it depends on where you live. :) 4th? Eh,I pass, thanks
+Preston Selby Pretty much all editions of D&D and its step children like PF and FC sucks when it comes to representing and introducing people to the hobby of Roleplaying Games. They're excellent at introducing them to D&D though.
PS. D&D can be a great entertaining game, mostly a resouce tactical combat board game, but a great such game. Just not such a great RPG.
women generally start playing DnD later in life since girls go through 'maturity' sooner and games are viewed as immature concepts.
So, you approached 6 girls, two of which rejected the game outright. Of the remaining 4, 3 had no idea what the game was. One of those girls openly states that DnD is not something most girls would be interested in. And yet... it's boys (and boys alone) that need to change, to be taught a lesson? That seems rather hostile to boys, to hold them exclusively responsible for girls choices.
And why is it that boys "must" make room for girls? As you're experiment demonstrated, the boys restrained themselves... they did not feel comfortable being themselves around the girls... are boys not entitled to this boys time? We're seeing this more and more these days... when boys gather to relax, to get some downtime, without constantly feeling judged, they are called sexist (the implication of this video and the need for "boys" to be taught that girls can play too), their safe spaces are demanded to be opened to girls, for no other reason than girls want what boys have, rather than building their own things (nothing was stopping those girls from playing their own game of DnD)
+MNeilGri The "lesson" was intended equally for the boys and for the girls. Of course boys are entitled to boys time, but it doesn't necessarily have to be activity-based. I don't even have an objection to a group of boys having an exclusive all-boys DnD group. But they should know that if they WANTED to play with girls, it is possible that girls would enjoy it. I know many of the adults in the gaming community who have commented on this video have said that this isn't news and they grew up playing in boy/girl groups and that's fantastic for them. The situation specifically to these kids though is that the boys truly thought that girls would not be interested in playing with them. After the experiment, I didn't force them to continue playing together and usually it is still an all boys group - but every few sessions one or two of the girls join and they all have a fun time.
The lesson for the girls (in the video and watching the video) is to have an open mind about trying something new- even if they had never heard of it or didn't think they would like it. Now, in the future they will have a context for DnD and feel empowered to play or start their own group, if that's something they're interested in doing.
+MNeilGri I saw both genders behave differently. For the girls, they were playing DnD and playing with non pink toys. For the boys it was mostly a mitigation of their fart jokes. A Guys Night can be anything the guys want to do and the same goes for a Girls Night. Who's to say that these girls can't have a girls night in the form of a DnD campaign based around the Princesses within some fantasy world's royal court? That would be taking playing princess to a whole new level, which would involve story telling and statistics. DnD was not created exclusively for a particular gender and the same goes for strip clubs. Adults with preconceived notions ultimately impose ideas of what future generations identify as gender roles. With 2020 on the horizon its important to empower both boys and girls to be open minded and enjoy safe hobbies and past times regardless of preconceived notions. Exposing boys to ready bake ovens and more stringent hygiene standards is just as ok as exposing girls to DnD. Exposing kiddos to socializing with the other gender in a positive manner might actually lend itself to understanding one another at a deeper and more humane level, once they are 16 and want to get their freak on. Maybe this social experiment could be a 'butterfly effect' towards fewer children born out of wedlock due to people having a deeper understanding of the opposite gender. you never know.
Nate Magnum You're arguing a strawman. Arguing against things I've neither said nor addressed. Saying you should not force boys to accept women into their groups is not the same as saying DnD is not for girls. But in modern society, any activity boys and men tend to gather around has had feminists and SJW's demanding girls be allowed to play... not just on their own, but with the boys.... and then demanding the boys play by girls rules of conduct. meanwhile, women demand "safe spaces" and women only gyms so they can do their own thing without having to deal with men around all the time. It's hypocritical, selfish and incredibly annoying. And it's not helping gender relations... it's creating a divide as more and more men are feeling restricted and shit upon.
+Nate Magnum A lot of girls play D&D and it`s not something mindblowing. So stop the fucking social enginering. Boy`s tend to bond over different things than girls and that ist absolut okay. Groups with mixed genders tend to have different dynamics.
Gender rules are a natural thing, because we are natural beeings and we constructed this society to ensure our survival. We have the fortune to live in an age where technology leveled the playing field, so parts of the occupations and hobbys can be undertaken by both genders. And that is fine.
But you won`t force a 110 lbs Women to work in a warehouse where she has to load containers. But i`m pretty sure physical limitations of the female body are just social constructs.
+Grimi1982 Gah.. As usual, someone has to conflate physical differences with mental ones. The latter of which tends to be total BS. As for women wanting "safe places".. Well, gosh, why would they want that? Its not like, for example, conventions treat them like shit, don't give them speaking opportunities, ignore harassment, when it happens, and generally play like its a boys club, then.. for some stupid reason decide it would be better to have their own conventions. Funny how that works... There is real harassment, problems, mistreatment and dangers which lead women to want "safe spaces" to "do their own thing". This isn't some silly thing they are just doing to be different, its because other places, they get hurt by idiots.
That said, most gender rules are **not** natural at all. There is nothing natural about every toy on the boys shelf being a gun, while every one on a girls shelf, or so close to that as to not matter, being pink, and a doll. There is nothing "natural" about schools putting up posters, for something like a science activity, and "accidentally" writing it in such a way that makes it seem like only boys are being encouraged to look into it. Heck, it hasn't been that long, maybe.. 30 years? since a guy wanting to become a nurse was a) weird, b) discouraged, and even c) stated by some to be, "Nothing a real man would want to do anyway.", among a whole host of other stupid things.
Yeah, a lot of girls play D&D. But.. define "a lot". How about video games, what, again, is "a lot"? What was it before, why isn't it more? What bloody stupid assumptions are being made, in part because we can't even have certain classes, without segregating them, either intentionally, or by false conclusions about who would want to be there, which *cause* women to not be involved with certain things. And, how the heck is any of it "natural"? Heck, back when the first electronic computer, the ENIAC went online, 99% of all of the programmers where "women", and their primary method of programming the machines was "mathematics". Less than 20 years ago computer programming was practically a sausage fest. It still is in game design, and almost no women, at all, are going into sciences, never mind mathematics. What changed exactly? Heck, if we are going to babble about stereotypical "differences", I would think that the fact that all modern programming is done with languages would make women "better" than men at it right? That is their thing, according the the stereotyping - languages, while its men that are supposed to "get math". Only.. its taken years just to see women recognized as game makers, never mine players.
Natural my ass. The only thing natural about it is that humans form groups, and the biggest "group" in the history of history has been "men, who own everything else around them", and.. the primary function of such groups is, invariably, "If I have to share something, it damn well better be someone in my group I am sharing it with." So.. of course, when all the false alpha, actually zeta, males, who are scared of losing their toys to other people, get together and decide who they want to share with, and who they don't, those funny people with breasts and high voiced tend to be the first, and most obvious "outsiders, who want to take our stuff."
Its so freaking absurd that humanity has taken the thinking of 4 year old children and defined this as "normal and natural", especially since, among primates, with the exception of the uncooperative ones, who drive off and/or kill their other male rivals, **none of them act like this**. Heck, even wolves are not this stupid. But humans.. Yeah.. we are experts at making up stupid reasons to treat people that are not like us like shit, and excuses for why its "normal and natural" that we are doing so (and, by extension, teaching our own, and everyone else's kid who is unlucky enough to hear the excuses, the same lessons in, "Why girls don't like those things, or do these other things, and its 'natural' that we make these arbitrary gender rules up."
Its just too bad that psychology experts have, for years, been ripping the excuses to shreds, and showing that.. funny enough, when you throw out the assumption that the rules exist, boys and girls **both** act the same way. Its only when you spend 15-20 years turning on into a bloody football star, and the other into some delusional "princes" that there are "differences". And, you can't even turn on a cartoon without this BS being thrown in their faces, most of the time.
While the basic premise is a nice one, it COMPLETELY glosses over the fact that many guys actually WANT girls to play RPGs with them, and then the girls turn around and call them nerds and losers. So as much as it pains you to imagine it, women can also be mean and cruel and non-inclusive.
+Rantandreason So can men. There were a few who played with our group for a while that thought all women were too stupid to play.
+Rantandreason It's generally not the game that is exclusionary, but the community around it. Most players aren't tastemakers. They've been "recruited" into the hobby by a friend or family member of theirs. If those who "recruit" people are gender-biased, they won't involve girls, and thus, you get a lopsided gender spread, a "boys club".
That being said, we can't forget that boys and girls are raised differently as well, making them fundamentally different in what they might like to do in their games. Older versions of DnD was very combat-centric: You go to the dungeon, you bop the big bad on the head with the biggest stick you can wield and you grab whatever isn't bolted to the walls, and you split.
Guys, in my experience, tend towards domination-type gameplay: Have the most skilled warrior, with the shiniest armor, the most power, etc. etc. Women, on the other hand, tends more towards intrigue, mystery, character interaction and politics; The more subtle (and quite frankly, harder to DM) parts of RP'ing. This is of course different from person to person, but I've experienced a general tendency towards that end. And I would say that the game has developed quite significantly towards rules supporting the more subtle and complex ways of playing, as opposed to the fairly blunt and straight-forward dungeon run.
xxhellspawnedxx
Absolutely utter horseshit!!!!!!!!!
If you want to play the game, go buy it!!!!!
There is NOTHING stopping anybody from playing it, period! It's like saying that you can't go out and buy a soccer ball and play with your friends because other people are playing soccer too and you don't like the way they play.
It is absolutely ridiculous that anyone could ever come up to the delusional conclusion you have come to.
I learned to play on my own. I have computer games for the C64 that were based on D&D. I went out and bought a tonne of used books. I DMd games for friends, never having done it before in my life.
I'm sorry if you can't understand this concept, but the entire world isn't trying to oppress you just because you never thought to do something.
Grow the hell up and take some personal responsibility for yourself.
xxhellspawnedxx"Older versions of DnD was very combat-centric:"
FALSE! D&D, like any roleplaying game, is whatever the hell you want it to be.
I don't even know where to begin because your entire premise is so utterly wrong. You are essentially saying that a game which revolves around make-believe and imagination is somehow oppressive to women because SOME people chose to play it as a dungeon crawl.
Not everyone played that way. Not by a long shot.
And that doesn't include the host of other RPG games out there which have nothing to do with either dungeons, or dragons.
Little Fears
Big eyes small mouth
Bunnies and Burrows
Paranoia
Feng Shui
Ninjas and Superspies
Castle Falkenstein
GURPS
Earthdawn
Call of Cthulu
Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, Changling, Demon, Hunter and the entire line, which was done as LARP allllll over the place and involved next to no combat, and included MANY women who loved Vampires
All Flesh must be eaten
Beyond the Supernatural
After The Bomb
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Rifts
DC Heroes
Marvel Superheroes
Those are all game systems me and my friends have played, and that's not all of them.
GURPS, of all systems, you are attempting to say that the roleplaying system that is specifically meant to create your own rpg, the way you want it to be, means that this genre is somehow oppressive to women?
You are mindblowingly wrong in this.
Go out, find the system you want to play, LEARN IT, and run it.
Either you are completely and utterly delusional, or you are saying that women lack the skills and ability to learn an RPG system and do it for themselves, the way they want to do it.
So which is it?
Rantandreason I'm not saying they were locked to that way of playing, I'm saying that the rule-set was heavily developed towards combat and dungeoneering, rather than the sort of intrigue you see favored in the rule-set of Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance, where the entire premise is one of of a shadow society, of intrigue and deceit, of social capital and manipulation.
Let's be real here. As a complete novice in your preteen or early teen years, you generally don't go to buy a shitload of books, and then start to modify the rules to suit your way of playing. You try to find a setting and a rule-set suited to your liking. Only after extensive experience in RP'ing do you generally start to add new things to it that is outside of the rules established in the books.
And this, I'd say, is a threshold that scared many potential female players away in the early years.
"They were more violent than I expected..." hahahah I lol'd on this :D
my daughter is a elvish necromancer when she first played D&D
Who else got confused about their feelings about this vid and just didn't rate it?
In my younger playing days (11-17), girls and Dnd really were mutually exclusive. You could either have a lvl18 elemental forces-manipulating, death-dealing, reality-rippling wizard (Oh Eladriel, how I miss you) or a girlfriend, but you couldn't have both.
Learned gender roles may have been a factor, but just as important if not more so was social status--with some exceptions my group members and I were so unpopular that girls wanted nothing to do with our game much less us. Cause and effect were/are ambiguous--were we unpopular because we played Dnd or did playing Dnd make us unpopular?
We used to hide the fact that we played like it was a dirty little secret. Talking about it in the daylight outside of our Friday night gaming sessions was taboo. Dnd along with its fantasy origins was for the unwashed residuum of the high school social scene.
Post-LOTR movies and GoT tv series that might not be true anymore, but in the early 90s it sure felt like something to be ashamed about and hidden from public view.
I am one of the original D&D players from back when the AD&D first edition came into being. Back then the far right Holy Roller Christian types considered it to be Satanic. It was an hysteria. Our group pretty much had to keep our gaming hidden from the rest of the highly religious community that surrounded us. It warms my heart to see this video.
That was back in the early 80s. D&D.
I now live in Nor Cal. now. Over half my gaming group is female. I grew up in the Bible Belt South.
ahahahah, it's so cute how these boys were blushing very hard once the concept of girls joining their group was proposed.
As a gamer girl myself, this video was really nice to see. Thankfully, while growing up, I was never discouraged from something because it was "boys only", especially gaming, though I have found that it is a predominantly male centric market. From an early age I loved comic books, video games (my favorites have always been RPGs), and sci-fi, though I was not able to start playing tabletop until college. I ended up marrying my 2nd DM, who taught me 3.5E, and we still play together! We very rarely have other female players, and the ones we do find don't often stay long, which makes it tough to show others that girls play these types of games too and enjoy them! We very much look forward to when our son is old enough to play and hope that other children will want to join us as well, no matter their gender.
"These kids... can get pretty bawdy. Hopefully with the girls that will get toned down a bit, otherwise people will be uncomfortable." By 'people', I presume you mean you think the girls would be uncomfortable. Surprise, girls have a dirty sense of humour too. In my D&D groups I'm generally the first with the innuendo, unless I'm playing with one particular other person - also a woman - who is quicker on the draw with the 'inappropriate' humour. Girls and women aren't delicate flowers that must be protected from 'gross' things. More often than not we'll be laughing just as hard if not harder than the men.
+Heather Ackroyd I am the one making 95% of the dirty jokes in our games. Everyone knows that now and expects it.
I know many women can be very dirty in their humour. Actually to the point where I myself have become a bit uncomfortable once. However I think it is natural for both genders to tone it down a bit when they are with someone that they do not know. But once they are comfortable with them, they once again open up, testing the waters, trying to find out where the limits are.
Im pretty sure he was talking about himself being uncomfortable
We really need more people interested in DnD. It's difficult when you're the only one you know who at least likes DnD.
Yeah I dunno, I've been playing with the same core group since high school, at one point we pretty much all had girlfriends, and they all joined us. They liked it so much, a few invited friends. Some of the 'core group' had to start sitting out because of work. We ended up with more girls than guys at one point. It was a little bit different but... people are just people.
The thing I find most unbelievable about this is the ages of the kids playing D&D. Of course, I haven't played in years. For all I know, there's a junior version of the game.
What is Dungeons and Dragons?
1 Quote popped in my mind here..
Saving people, hunting things... The family business..
Dean approves.
@@paulcoy9060 I've never met a 14 year old girl named paul
@@DoomMishima That's because they usually change their name later in life.
So it's all about teaching guys that girls can do what they do and not about teaching girls there's no stigma to playing D&D? RPGs don't have gender bias, they just are. Mostly people outside of gaming tend to push these gendered stereotypes. I like what you did here, but i don't like the incredibly one sided message.
Topcats Lair most of these kids are too young to know of the stigmas towards D&D, so it'd be counter-productive to start pointing them out. And for the people who are not familiar with the game, we hoped that this portrayal of it would give them a frame of reference to what it is and make it seem less intimidating and bust some of the stereotypes without directly addressing them on the nose.
Meredith Ashley there's a simple way of doing that, not making it out from the onset that women in D&D is a revolutionary concept. Sorry, it's just really prevalent that geek culture is portrayed like that to people outside the subcultures. Again, i like what you did in this instance but it would be great if you showed footage of older D&D sessions where, at least in my exp the gender ratio is more or less even. I've actually had more female DMs then male.
Topcats Lair The "revolutionary" element of the concept was in jest- we are teasing this particular group of kids and the people in general who still don't understand what D&D is and how all types of people can have fun playing it. We were silly about it in the narration because of exactly what you're saying- there's no reason these kids or anyone should have the preconceived gender notions that they did going into it. As you saw from the beginning, the idea of playing with girls to THESE boys in particular was hard for them to imagine and the point of the documentary was to prove to them that gender is not a determining factor when it comes to whether or not a person will enjoy the game.
Meredith Ashley If you haven't seen it i suggest seeing Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Currently has a kickstarter for the bluray release. Has a similar message but was done a decade ago. Also it's incredibly funny.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/deadgentlemen/the-gamers-dorkness-rising-definitive-blu-ray-edit
Meredith Ashley this should be an ongoing
I've been roleplaying for over 30 years and my experience has shown that the gameplay is better with both genders are playing together. The roleplaying part is bigger and the hack'n slash part is usually less, so in my book it is essential.
I've been playing D&D since 8th grade (in 198mumble). It was at a local park, where the club got use of one of the rooms at the park's gym/auditorium. For 3 years, I was the only girl in the group, and then another girl joined. The club was large enough that we'd often have two separate games running at the same time, usually D&D at one table, and either Traveler or Villains and Vigilantes at the other. I remember the guys were a little leery of me at first, but after the first month of showing up and pulling my weight in-game, it was just generally accepted that I was part of the crew (even getting the phone call asking where I was on the few days when I couldn't attend and nobody knew it beforehand).
RPGs with mixed groups is awesome. My son, now 11, can't picture NOT gaming with boys AND girls, since that's how the family plays with our friends.
This is awesome. My one comment: there's a ton of great material out there today teaching girls they can do anything they set their mind too. But there's not a ton of messages letting boys know they don't have to live up to out-dated gender expectations either.
I don't know if anyone mentioned this (I could not find) but isn't this game for ages 14 and up? It's pretty impressive to see this age group (forgetting gender) interested and showing the attention span that this game demands. . .
That DM is so cute. :-P
I hope a follow up video is made, I'd enjoy hearing the group's observations after a few years of playing together.
That was awesome! The eyes and "but I might" at the end. xD
Sad, when I started D&D was only played by boys.... I have been with D&D since it started in the early 80's. I still have the original books and I was fortunate to meet the creator . Gary G. My kids are into it now,yes. They are boys and girls. The game will never end... Thanks for the vid!
+Purdue1984 D&D started in the mid-70s.
+EelKat Wendy C. Allen
1974 is the mid-70s.
Adorable. Props to the DM for leading such a large group, let alone young kids who are so uncomfortable around the other sex. :X
Wtf does the year have to do with it?
"Its 2014!" So what??
+Ka MiK It's the current year! That justifies anything I say.
+Ka MiK Because gender ideologues are attempting to insert gender into everything they can.
This is a game based on imagining whatever you want to imagine, and they are trying to make it seem like somehow women are oppressed by this
Rantandreason
This isn't unique to gender ideologues, its just a general logical fallacy used by all sorts of people.
Ka MiK
No it's not, but in this case it is. SJWs have been attempting to say D&D is sexist and non-inclusive, all of which is horse shit
Rantandreason
aye
Thanks so much for this video! I tweeted it to Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton and posted to Facebook. I'm going to pass it on to others in the future too, as I encounter them! :D
I liked this video. So well made (nice speaker imprint voice) and funny. Let's debunk the clichés!Children are naturally spontaneous, open-minded and... "chaotic good". ^^
I find this to be the opposite with adults that have never played before tho. I recently had a campaign run with my co-workers and the positive responses and knowledge leaned a lot more to girls than boys. Everyone who played tho had a great time.
Dude that one 9 year old talking about BOTH of his groups.
He's got more dnd going on than I do.
That looks like 4th edition, god damn that would of been slow and combat heavy for that many players.
My mom won't face it that I'm a geek. She thinks I'm on a end up like a loner or something but Almost EVERY actor plays DnD because it helps with character creation and like getting into character. ANY TIPS how too tell her I'm a geek?
Yeah just slowly say hey I like these things
DEAL WITH IT!!!
thanks XD Connor Jessen
I can try that, man, you make it sound easy and non-stressful XD
And when you want more, try GURPS...
Taylor, youre my kinda girl
“I thought it was like a video game”
Me: Shut up MILLENNIAL
Gen Z*
Millennial is actually Gen Y, don’t know why they changed the name
I saw a Police Call Box, Dr Who must be joining their D&D game.
"Playing with girls was weirder than I expected, because they were so good!" YES....YES WE ARE
"Playing D&D With Girls" sounds like it should be a movie..... sort of a sequel to "Riding In Cars With Boys"... ish....
Great experiment for sure. Thanks for posting it Geek & Sundry
Learned something new. Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed this video.
Women are excellent roleplayers and real fun to play with. I'm delighted by the fact that more and more female gamers join DnD groups. Back when I was a boy of the age of 10 I'd have loved to play my favorite game with girls but that unfortunately never happened.
This was awesome. It gives me hope. I wonder how many have played in the seven years since this.
Great. Hopefully, they'll just keep loving the game and not start going on about 'microaggressions' and what not.
Oh, here it is. The DM and 'gender roles'.
Couldn't just have girls playing D&D. Nope. Had to turn it into a problematic issue that we have to talk about.
+zorro baggins I know, where is the video of boys playing with barbies turned into a social awareness issue?
+zorro baggins Yeah, I agree. We should just let people play and not try to make an issue out of everything in our lives.
zorro baggins but it is an issue for a lot of people? I don't know where you live but if kids this age were involved in anything over here where I live it would affect them one way or another, and sometimes boys get the worst end of the stick.
A girl this age playing D&D can get the "Geek ugly girl" tag real quick, and it'll will stick aaall the way into middle school until the boys's balls drop and find anything attractive.
A boy this age playing with dolls can get the 'faggot wissy wimpy' tag real fast and it'll last aaaalll the way into highschool when girls start appreciating different kinds of men.
Children in both these cases can get bullied and even beaten up for shit like this, especially boys.
So it's not things "kids make up", it's a serious issue that doesn't want to be seen by people often, and it isn't about gender, it's about fucking CHILDREN COMITTING SUICIDE.
(And yes I hate where I live I want to gtfo of here)
I don't think I've ever played a session without at least one woman in the group.
This was a great mini doc!!!❤❤❤
I joined my first gaming group when I was 17. There were 4 guys and 3 girls. The exact ratio varied over the course of the next 10 years but there was always at least 1 in the group. Group 2: Originally just guys. Then my long term girlfriend joined and she has been playing ever since. That group lasted about 5 years. Next group lasted about 2 years and was a close to 50 50 mix. Current group, been playing for about 5 years or so. Broad mix of ages, 12 the youngest, 55 on the other end, 50 50 mix with some of the noobs started playing in their late 40's. Buddies wife had always wanted to play when she was younger but was told "Girls don't play". She plays now and loves it.
I can dig it. I remember the first girl I played an RPG with was around 6th or 7th grade. She GM'd Marvel Superheroes. I never really thought it was unusual that she was a girl playing RPGs, nor did I really notice that I never encountered a girl playing RPGs up until then (I got into it about 2nd grade.) Anyway, cool vid!
I played D&D with boys in the late 70's and early 80's and then with men in the 00's, I've moved onto more original tabletop RPGs at the end of the 00's. However no one ever thought it was unusual to have a female player and in most cases I was not the only female players. Still I'm glad to see this was a positive situation for everyone involved.
I can't help but feel like we're dragging identity politics into a game that should rightly have none. Just because "come on people, it's the current year!"
Cool vid. Any teachers out there? Get games going at school! I run 3 lunchtime games during the week and the mix is almost even: group 1 (6 boys), group 2 (6 girls), group 3 (4 boys, 2 girls). All are equally passionate and the shared experiences are priceless.
I have been playing RPGs since the 70's and there have been women in every gaming group I played in and almost every group I knew about.
Me and my gf play D&D. We also play with the DM's wife. There are a couple of guys, but overall we have balance in my city.
I appreciate the video! This was amazing and kinda adorable.
I've been trying to get my nephew and nieces involved in a homebrew game, but they would rather play on phones or watch Netflix. I really need to help them get away from this constant "screen time stimulation". It can't be good for them. I would very much like to see them use their imaginations.
I'm in my forties and have only recently (about 7 years ago) had a female friend come into my life that likes gaming and DnD type games. I think this is a very poor showing on the part of womankind and it's about time they got their shit together and started representing!
In our group, in the 80's, we could never get the girls to play D&D. Probably because it was a nerdy thing to do. Also, there was a lot of people who associated D&D with Witchcraft and Satanism, which didn't help as well.
We always played Pen and Paper D&D, no boards or models. It was always about activating the imagination and a time to just get away from the problems of the real world.
I am amused at the number of comments that amount to "I've played with girls in the past and therefor there is no gender difference."
+Matt Johnson The point in saying that is not that there is no "gender difference" (I am not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I suspect it is an attempt at misrepresenting people's claims in an effort to feel right). I think people are saying that because this is a huge "all boys" DnD group and the video acts as if this is some sort of routine injustice. Their premise is faulty.
This was delightful. "I killed three monkeys!" Great quote, it was like she fulfilled her own personal victory conditions for the day. Clockwork Couture also seems like a pretty amazing venue to host a roleplaying game, which adds a nice touch of appeal to any new player, I should think. :}
Storytelling games like D&D ought to be a natural fit for girls, but they've been marketed toward boys and designed for them in mind with a lot of emphasis on the fighting aspect. Some games are all about fighting monsters, of course, and that's cool, but the potential of the medium is limited only by the imagination of the players and the GM.
Thanks for making this short documentary. It was very entertaining and interesting to hear the perspectives of young kids of both genders on the experience of playing D&D.
Played 5E beta testing at my LGS, and one of the guys there had been dragged in to play by his 15 year old daughter! Was totally cool, as he hadn't played himself in years, and she was super into it.
+Deamonic Very cool story. I played games with my folks when I was a kid. It's a great way to bond.
Brilliant video! Thanks for bashing stereotypes. As an old-school RPG-er this is great to see the new generation willing to open up games to everyone.
Also this fuels my theory that nerds and geekdom will unite the world :)
5:02 and 5:19 were by far the best bits. Ah, these lessons that boys must learn as they become men.
I am 15 years old, almost 16, I ran my first dnd game, it was amazing! It took about 4 hours, but who cares? We all had fun, me and my players. Now, after I finished the standard campaign from the Starter Set, I've decided to make my own one, and it seems it's doing good. My campaign's name is "Strange Island". It will have 3 Acts. I am actually working on the first act which will have about 3-4 Chapters. Each act is about to defeat bosses from each race (Orcs, Elves, Skeletons and Evil Mages). I really love this game. I live in Romania, so this game isn't that much popular.
Great video. Heroes of Awesome feels a lot like this.
Sad part of this is the year D&D came out, I was playing, my gfriends were playing... the only guy in the group was my older brother....
I'm a teenage girl and I play D&D, I freaking love it but yeah, I only play with guys
A bit late, but I actually DM a group that save for me is entirely women. I never expected them to be so responsive when I brought up D&D as a pastime, but they love it and look forward to every session now!
Very cool. I play (DM) for both of my daughters and they love it. My youngest still needs some help, but 5e is so much easier to teach a young newer player and that helps a lot.
We nearly always had mixed groups when we played (starting back in the 70s!)
Tee Hee, like, omigawd, smashing Patriarchy and all that, smashing gender conventions, blah blah.
I've been playing D&D and other roleplaying games since the 90's; and the groups were nearly always a mix of boys and girls. This is not a new concept, not even in gaming.
This is a cherry picked example trying to skew a narrative about a situation that just isn't there.
THG shut the fuck up
Now that's a lot miniatures
I grew up in a community where nerdliness wasn't even a thing until recent years. So by time I was into D&D when I was 15-16 it was mainly my group of friends and I, with all but one player being a girl.
I'm in a group now that is technically mostly boys, but of those who actually come it's about 50/50 =u="
The first time I played DnD it was at my high school's DnD club. There where 13 girls and 4 boys. It's hard for me to remember that this isn't the norm. I currently am a member of an all girls dungeon that spawned from my high school club.
Woman make for some of the best DnD Characters. I DM a group of 5 (3 guys ,2 ladies) and the ladies are the more investigative while the guys are the more "i attack with my weapon". The ladies in my group like to play the support classes (druid/wizard) and they do a fine job of making sure the group doesn't die and uncovering lore, secrets, and hidden knowledge. The guys all play martial classes and pretty much absorb all the damage flung at the group and the first to go into combat.
Super cool! These kids are impossibly cute. Glad you could expand some minds for the girls as well as the boys!
Since when I was like 15 I've always played with girls. I still do. It's not weird, it's not unheard of: D&D is for everyone.
i run 4 DnD groups at my daycare each week. also each group has 6 to 7 children and half are girls and they all love it :)
I have always regarded Dungeons and Dragons as the greatest role playing epic fantasy game for children to adults and it is a high powered strategy game worthy of respect when you play it...says the Ranger
When I first starting playing, back in the 80's, as a kid (second, third grade) it was mainly me, a friend of mine (as the DM) and his slightly older sister. They had been playing for awhile with their older brother and I was the newbie.
We played like that (with their older brother being DM when he was out for a visit) for years with other people coming and going from our school friends and whatnot.
Woah woah woah! You're just gonna casually slip in a TARDIS in there?
I love this video, it has such a nice message of equality behind it and wonderful young people getting along well
There is a Hobby Store I visit once in a great while. They have a back room for people to play magic the gathering and tabletop wargames.
Once time I went I saw a girl between 10 and 12 playing Warhammer Fantasy.
People have the desire to take everything, to pillage everything, to manipulate everything. Seeing, deciphering, learning does not touch them.
-- Jean Baudrillard.
Wow. Did Jean Baudrillard ever meet Trump in person ?
Man they told me I had to be 14 etc before I was supposed to handle this sort of game.
This is pretty funny because lately I see more and more girls playing D&D and I wouldn't even be surprised if one day more girls play than guys. Although the average age is a bit older than this.
Him: if your a player it's your job to act out..(tries to continue)
Me: OH NO! Act out, sounds right to me!
I started playing D&D @ a young age. I still have my original books from 1979 & what D&D gave me was the power of imagination & that's something everyone can use in life....I do 8>)
A few kids play D&D and their first scenario entails...a tavern...NOICE! ^~^
Shoutout to you! Very Good Video
That is a very large group! That must have been a tough game to run!
''But I might''
Hahaha his facial expression, ''Yeah you heard right''
i played tabletop D&D for the first time yesturday and it was so much FUCKING FUN. There were two other girls in the group and the other 5 guys were really helpful and inviting. I cant wait to play again!! :D
***** Yeah, I'm sure the 5 guys were helpful. They were probably falling all over themselves to help, though trying to not be too obvious. For some reason, gamer girls are very popular with guy gamers LOL
that may be true however, 4 of the 5 guys have girlfriends! lol i freaking love playing d&d now though, even though i'm still pretty noobish at pretty much everything lol
***** GF's don't matter. Gamer girls are hot LOL. I'm not saying that they'd cheat or dump their GF's for you, but to the mind of gamer guys, gamer girls make the ideal woman. I'm a guy, I've been gaming on and off since the early 1980's (yeah, I'm an old fart), and I've recognized that mindset in myself, and I've seen it in others over and over, so I'm confident that at least a few of them are probably thinking it, at least subconsciously (they might not even realize they're thinking it).
Welcome to the club, noob ;) I actually love new gamers, because they still think of their character as a real person, and they make their decisions accordingly. After you get to know the rules really well, the temptation is to start thinking like a gamer. When you think like a gamer, you begin to think of your character in terms of statistics and how to become more powerful instead of in terms of what a real person would do. Guys seem to be more susceptible to this temptation than the ladies, so you have that going in your favor also.
I hope you continue to enjoy playing for a long time to come. You can make some great friends, it's fun, and it can help develop traits that will be beneficial throughout life (such as teamwork and thinking outside the box to solve problems).
Eleven years old and casting finger of death. Must be a prodigious mage.
The only people that I know play DnD are two girls; one is an old middle school sweetheart and the other my online gaming friend. They have both invited me to play with them a couple times and while one group was roughly balanced the other was actually mostly girls.
One of my party member is a girl but when asked why we only play with one is "they just won't play with me"
It's true that females of any age tend to not play D&D, but I've had females at my table playing alongside males. Yes, some off coloured jokes were made, by both groups. This is a game of relaxing and getting to know others. I have had no bad sessions with both fe/male groups. It's all on how the individual feels about the game. People do give D&D a bad name, but it is for everyone, male and female, young and old. This proved only that little boys and girls think in different ways, while boys are open to playing games like D&D, girls tend to stay away. I'm glad the females are taking up the "nerdy" life with tabletop games, and do wish to see more. But in the end, it's up to them.