"Observations from the duck blind." Topic

Dear List

One of the interesting aspects of this weekend's "THE WEEKEND" for me was overhearing observations and conversations. This is not direct interactions but in effect eavesdropping on my part. Also watching body language and attitude. In the lack of any really serious empiric data it's the next best thing. Like observing animals from the blind.

One of the things I noticed this convention was that virtually no one sat around the table twiddling with their cell phones, and when they did they were off them quickly and back to the game. This goes to the quality and excitement of the games put on which was high. Few people sat there with an expression on their mugs that looked like their dog just died.

Especially interesting for me was the attendance of six friends, couples, who were "newbies" to gaming. These were Norm who has played two gams at my place and still very much of a novice, and Doug who before he walked into the ballroom hadn't seen a wargame in his live, and their two wives, and Breanna his daughter and her fiancé Ryan. Both of those played in ONE game but are avid Euro Game and D&D'ers so they are not quite virgins, but this was the first time they saw the games on the massive level that we do.

Debbie (Norm's wife) and Kim (Doug's wife) didn't play but set up their own popular side games and Breanna played with them. Ryan is a gaming whiz and played in several games and Doug and Norm did also.

What was interesting was the testimony of these newbies who were turned off by the more complex gams and rule systems. This they did not say to ME, but I overheard them talking about it later on.

What was interesting is that the things they objected to most or which turned them off most were..

Games where he had to roll a succession of die. That is you roll die,to get a general result, then roll another die to get a more specific result, and then a third die to get a particular result, and then another die for modifiers.

Games with modifiers.

The other thing was When told you had to roll a 2 through 11, and they rolled a 12, they got to do what they wanted to. Might have been legal but it does not seem so.

Finally there was a sense of anomie. In the large game they were in they really did not have a sense of purpose or goal or what they were doing. That is relate their specific tot he general.

Breanna did not play any of the big games and her fiancé told me that she was a little uncomfortable with the large scale of the games. That she preferred "smaller more compact things. This is obvious from a person who is experienced in the small group dynamics of a D&D crowd, and hence not used to the free-wheeling games we put on.

One other thing that came up watching these people is my own observations from here and elsewhere, that the tendency of GM's is to marginalize newbies by putting them on the edge of things where it's rather boring rather than in the think of things. Also that it's a bad idea to put newbies in a game where the system requires that each person take his turn in solo before moving on to the next player. This can take a long time for resolution.

On the good side there were no people who took advantage of the "newbies" and most wee quite helpful, even from the other side.

Another observation was that one large game was almost dying from the start from lack of interest from even veteran gamers because the rules took too long to explain, about an hour. This had no less than four cheat-sheets, and that's a rule book in and of itself. Further I noticed that while almost all the games had cheat-sheets, 90% of the people never looked at them, and instead waited to be told what to do by the GM. If that's the case then one wonders why we make them--- or use them.

I will ponder these things in my heart.

It may have to be that we construct games somewhat different than we do.

Otto

otto:

thank you for the post. It gave me a lot of things to think about in running a game and keeping the game interesting for all involved, which is the prime reason to have a game in my opinion.

-clark 182

Food for thought, especially as I'm testing a new scenario with some old rules. BTW I try to get the newbies or young players to be the CinC or take a main position/unit whenever I can.

Dear Corporal Pat

I've done that, but I'm always concerned that if the newbie is the CIC he can be effectively shut out of the game by more veteran players who might not listen to his orders, or make decisions for him. Also that the inherent shyness of gamers might allow him to withdraw, always absent himself from the game.

My tendency is to put the newbie in command of the center and stay right by him as an aide-de camp. I like to say this is the "sink or swim" method and to an extent-- it is, but we toss him into the shallow part of the kiddie-pool where it's warm and not too deep and we're standing right next to him with a life- preserver.

But then I make short rules. My ACW rules are one page two sides, my modern naval rules six pages, my ancient rules four pages and my modern rules 10, my 18th century 12. But it really doesn't matter what size the rules I always think that you should concentrate on getting the fundamentals down with a new gamer in 10 minutes. After that, you've lost him.

In a convention you're always having newbies in the game even if they've been gamers for a generation.

One further thing I forgot to put in.

The one thing I did notice on the faces of the newbies was an intense interest, and they were fascinated by the sense of wonder and the look of the magnificent table with all the toys. Their excitement was palpable and obvious. That's good. They weren't forced or dragooned into it.

The wives were another thing. It needs more analysis.

What I saw was that the same look of eagerness and sense of wonder was on their faces as well. For the non gaming wives (as opposed to the D&D fiancé) this was the first time they really had contact with this, and even the non gaming fiancé had seen a big game only once. The point is, that the sense of wonder was there, and there was an eagerness to play, at the start, but that never translated into stepping up to the table and expressing a desire to play. that was curious. So the excitement of the visuals is there, but it wasn't the rules, they didn't even stand around to start or hear the rules. This is curious. Something else must have deflected them from playing (though they did watch now and then.

I can make no pronouncement on this and while I have a theory I have to wait to test it. But it would be premature to state it.

Otto

Interesting subject: why most wives don't play?

There probably are many answers.

Obviously one point is that if they don't see any other women playing and only men, they think/feel that it's more masculine and that they will be marginalized in the game, or they fear that they will not understand the rules.

Another point is (although I certainly don't want to generalize, but) in most games the players play the role of army commanders, army officers etc. Male roles. Of course you can always say "it's not only masculine, you can be Queen Budicca etc" but that's still a very unusual role.

I have a parallel in a different domain. I used to be a professionnal re-enactor and it involved talking with Town councils to organize medieval events etc. In the French political system there is a deputy Mayor in charge of all cultural events in every town, and usually you have to talk with him. For years I had been used to see the glint in their eyes (although they tried to conceal it) when I showed them pictures of "knights" (my colleagues and me) fighting with swords and firing late medieval guns. It remembered them their old dreams when they were kids.
Then a new law took effect in 2001: it became compulsory that half of town councillors were women. A good law IMO, but I was surprised by what followed.
As culture is not always considered to be a very important subject, many Mayors gave this responsability to a female concillor.
And when I came to meet these female deputy Mayors, they were no interested to see fighting knights: it did not look culturally interesting in their eyes.
I was happy enough to have an answer, all re-enactors know it now, it was "everyday life": yes we had a fight of knights but most of the time we displayed and explained the life of medieval normal people, cooking, crafts, etc: it was "educative".
They loved to hear that.

BACK to wargames. I've sometimes seen wives/daughter caught in a game when they were given roles that they understood more than being army commander: brigands chieftain, or lady defending her village, etc.

Don't misunderstand me I'm certainly not telling that all women players should be specialized in some roles and men in other roles.

But…

dear Patrice

My hunch is that it's something in the area you speak about below.

"Obviously one point is that if they don't see any other women playing and only men, they think/feel that it's more masculine and that they will be marginalized in the game, or they fear that they will not understand the rules."

I don't think it's the rules I think it's the women in and among large groups of men. Marginalization may have something to do with it though I think it's more a basic instinct thing. I can't get my head around it yet, but I'm working on it. Interestingly what I have found that I can vouch for is that the smaller the group the more likely women are to play.

I make a joke of it that I can't be bothered recruiting individuals, that I recruit whole families. This will be the FOURTH family I've recruited, basically mother, father, son(s), and daughter(s). Three of them already are dedicated gamers and never saw or heard of Wargames before. Anyway, it just seems to work out that way.

What I noticed is that recruitment of women is easier in these family groups.

Specifically I run a lot of games at my house and all of the "families above' except one, first got their look and introduction to miniature war games at games at my house.

1. It SEEMS that the more successful "recruitments" occurred when one or more family members were on the same side. This is both of men and women, but the woman seemed to go along better when they had one and possibly two family members there. The most successful one I had was where all FOUR family members played on one side and I was on the other.

2. It seems that the closer the ratio of males to women the better. If there were two women there and three men, it was fairly successful. If there were two women and 8 guys, less so. It did not matter if the two women were on the same side or opposite sides. It just seemed that they participated more they were a higher percentage of the total players.

3. It didn't make a difference what the character of the game was, ancients, historicals, sci-fi, fantasy, the women could play and adapt in all. The disinterest seemed to come in from some other factors, but I have not pinpointed that yet.

4. Farting, belching and lewd comments were more or less out. However the last one about coarse jokes and even sexist comments could go quite far PROVIDED THE WOMEN WERE ALLOWED TO SET THE BAR. This decreased or seemed to with more men around. Less men and the women felt free to become more open.

5. Women were very touchy about being patronized. However some caveats must be made. As a GM I could be quite patronizing and even condescending at times, and that was accepted to an extremely greater degree than from another player. I shudder to say this but the right type of GM might be the "father figure" as opposed to other players. This is purely subjective of course, but it's what I've seen.

6. Women seem to like the game a lot more when they became the center of attention, (naturally, who doesn't) and they seemed to imbibe quite difficult concepts easily when this was the case rather than at other times.

7. Women do not flirt in the games and players who tried were generally disliked.

8. Not in my games but… a friend who is a female gamer of some renown once put on games at a Historicon convention for women only. Her intention was to give the wargame widows something to do, and also to try and explain to them this weird hobby their husbands had. The first game only allowed women and the game was one of Amazons versus Guals, with the Amazons raiding for "breeding stock."

I did not play in this game, but I was quite interested and I asked her if she would mind if I watched from a discreet distance and as if I was just sitting there reading. This she allowed.

What was interesting was four points.

1. The women eagerly played in the game, mastered the opoints and complexities of the game quickly, and got intot he game eagerly.

2. Within a few minutes these allegedly unkowlegable in wargames women had mastered all the vocabulary like
"Well if you had supported me better we wouldn't be in this fix, and "I can't roll dice to save my life!"

3. The postures and body language they exhibited soon became exactly like guys at a table and the language became cruder and cruder. That is, they became virtually images of their husbands and boyfriends.

There were lots of other minor observations, many of which simply confirmed that they were no different than male gamers.

Over the next couple conventions my friend put on variatons o f this game. These included one where the men and women were intermixed on both sides and this, often with the SAME women from the first game turned into the usual case in matters like this, the women quickly withdrew and became silent and at times sullen and the men pushed them out or relegated them to dice rolling, (often quite condescendingly). In another game the men were on one side and the women on the other. THAT was a fiasco and I am sure that in many hotel rooms that night there was blood on the walls, and the men slept in the chair at the very least.

I'm still trying to make sense of many of these observations and I'm hoping that as "The Weekend" convention continues I can make some more observations and glean some more data.

So that's pretty much all I know on the subject.

By the way I've asked women about the why and wherefore of not gaming, but I never get a straight or consistent answer. Even when I do they are not particularly convincing.

That's why youhave to do this sort of semi-clandestine observation.

Otto

Great discussion and some interesting observations.

Women and men are created quite differently. While most often I appreciate the differences (keep your minds out of the gutter) I would really enjoy bringing my wife into wargaming. She still tells the story, that is at least a decade old, about when we were playing Risk and how I had taken a continent that she had just spent significant time capturing. She still has neither forgotten nor forgiven, perhaps if we could both be on the same side but --- it is hard telling not knowing and she is not interested in trying.

Regardless, I thought my game went very well, with everyone having a good time. Lots of joking, and laughing, even amongst the supposed losers (the Order of the Pink Pansy presentation is always a hoot). I enjoyed the hell of it and will be back next year if you will have me.

BTW, my wife isn't interested, and I wouldn't let her play anyway (the primary reason being that the few times she has sat down and rolled the dice, she has decisively kicked my ass :) ).

Ciao, Colonel Bill
ageofeagles.com

Dear Bill

Of course you are invited. You are most welcome.

Anyone can get an invitation to "The Weekend" all you have to do is ask for one. You're on the permanent invite list.

But to continue,

the phenomenon is intriguing. There are outliers. The wife and mother of the first family I converted whole hog is something of an outlier- being fanatically interested in the hobby but not in prepping for it. She likes to play war games but doesn't like to talk about it and is not dedicated enough to do painting. That's not unusual a lot of gamers are that way too.

The problem I am convinced must be very very simple and staring us right in the face, or very very complex that may defy any resolution at all.

For example one could find a lot of women who will eagerly play boardgames but not miniature wargames. Could it be that the whole amount of dedication in building and painting armies and scenarios and the essentially free-form format of mini games is the reason? Perhaps. That's a common phenomenon, but it does have contradictions of women who don't like to play but like to paint, and women who will play general board games but not military ones, but then some other women will play both.

On the other hand there are women who will play, paint, and build Fantasy and D&D games tot he level of obsession of males.

Once can multiply cases and contradictions to infinity.

My own guess, hunch, feeling, is that it's not in the internals of the game(s) but rather in herd/-pack/group dynamics. That's why I'm thinking getting another PhD in Animal behavior-- well at least studying for it. I don't think I'll live long enough to get an actual PhD in it.

Otto

there are a couple of things that can play into this, starting with biology [but not the kind you think…] Having worked in a woman dominated profession, teaching, as well as following the huge explosion of brain research, here are a few things that might apply:

1. From MRI imaging they have found that when women are in a conversation a wide swath of their brains light up. When men are in a conversation, the area behind the left and right ears light up [It is a thump-sized area]. While there is wide variation between the two sexes, there is no overlap in how much activity in the brain takes place between the two sexes. Regardless of what you might make of that, it is obvious that women have a very different experience of conversation than men, and a much more complex one. Women use an average of 6,000 words a day, men 2,000. So when you come home from work, you've spent your 2,000 and your significant other has 3,000 or more to go…

2. Whether it is cultural or not, in working together, women tend to communicate to tighten bonds, men to solve problems. Something I saw repeatedly in schools and business was the dynamics where the man, the administrator, was approached by a subordinate with an issue. The woman would explain, for an extended period of time, 'the problem'. The man would attempt to suggest solutions, but the woman would first want to continue to explain. Finally, when the woman felt she had detailed the issue, she would thank the man and leave, leaving the man very frustrated, because the problem hadn't been solved, while the woman felt frustrated because the man hadn't 'understood' her issues, not wanting the problem solved by the adminstrator in the first place.

Now, how could that influence whether women play wargames? [My wife kicks my ass regularly too]

1. They are reading things into the conversations and play men aren't.
2. They are far more interested in the interplay between people than the interplay on the table. [It would have been interesting to compare the amount of conversations and topics of the women at the Amazon game to those of the men. For instance, I suspect there were far more supportive statements shared by the women than by the men.]

Another aspect is how women are focused on the personal in a conversation. [The author of "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" made a career out of this difference.] Most of us men have had the experience. You mention that the dishes are piling up, or the floor is dirty etc. [thinking to solve that problem, even with team-work] and the woman asks
"So you don't think I'm a good house-keeper? or I should be doing more etc?" Another example, in reverse, is when the woman says, "We are going to need more light-bulbs, the one in the bathroom is out."

That isn't a statement about the next grocery-shopping expedition, but a request for you to change the light bulb now. Because women 'read more into conversation than men', women often feel the request is obvious, while the man is oblivious.

For a wargame, actions on the table or comments about 'not being supported' etc. could be taken far more personally or have far more nuences for a woman than a man would assume.

Just some thoughts.

While the above are valid and have good, salient points, I believe that the controlling factor in the gender difference we see in wargaming is that women tend to prefer to know what they are doing when they are doing it (expertise activity tendency) and men tend to like to chase after small, shiny objects (exploratory activity tendency).

This also explains why when you see women playing wargames, they tend to clean up.