Earthdawn: Character Generation & Regeneration (feat. at gamingangels.com)

Author’s note: Afternoon, folks. I know it’s been a little while since I posted a blog – things have been crazy with the move, job hunt, etc. So for now, I’ll post what I had published over at GamingAngels, an article on Earthdawn, character generation (and regeneration), and being a mentor for another girl at the table. I hope you guys enjoy, and make sure to check out www.gamingangels.com (@GamingAngels on Twitter).

In the realm of classic medieval fantasy tabletop RPGs, Earthdawn is considered a second generation game, having come not long after a second edition of Dungeons and Dragons was released. It has all the familiar races – Human, Elf, Troll, Dwarf, Ork – and a few most haven’t seen before – the T’skrang, a lizard-like race, the Obsidimen, who are the rock-people, and the Windlings, who are a bit like ADD-addled Kinder in nature, and stand only about 18 inches high and have wings.

My first campaign was Earthdawn, in which I played a T’skrang archer, the elfiest T’skrang you’d ever meet – because I was teased that every girl’s first character is an elf. To avoid that stereotype, which is a bit silly, I admit, I picked the T’skrang, the least conventionally attractive (besides the Ork) of the lot. And I was timid during my first campaign, because all these gentlemen had been gaming for years – decades for some – longer than I had. But my timidity coupled with the absolutely ridiculous damage that the archer class deals made me come off as a silent, wandering crusader, a la Clint Eastwood. The problem in this is that Earthdawn Elves are much more like Vulcans than they are the airy-fairy waify Fae creatures that most imagine they are, they are much more stoic and reserved.

I have since, more or less, gotten over that Girls Only Play Elves stigma (which, I suppose, stems from there being no “Pretty Pretty Princess” class), and I try to enforce the silliness of that stereotype to any woman I bring into the gaming fold. If you want to play an elf, you can play an elf and don’t let any boy stop you. In fact, I had an elf in the short-lived D&D 4e campaign back in October. And I quite liked her.

We have started a new Earthdawn campaign, and my boyfriend, who is known as Blur, is running it. The table borders on large, with four players, two of whom are a married couple, Michael and Ashley, a gentleman by the name of Brian, and myself. With the exception of a one-shot session of Lacuna Blur ran for Michael, Ashley, and me, this is Ashley’s first experience in role-playing. I’ve been trying to be her guide and voice of reason, beyond what the GM can provide. I know what she’s going through, and I’m trying to address the problems that I’ve had and still have, character-wise.

So we made characters back in December, but didn’t get to play a session until January. By then, I had lost the feel for my character (which was a human thief loosely based on Parker from TNT’s Leverage), and Ashley had lost the feel for hers as well. Blur, in his infinite GM-saintliness, as also his knowledge of having to live with me, granted that we tweak our characters to our desires, or even remake some. Games have been few and far between, and as I write this in February, we have only had two sessions, and I think it’s fair to let people fiddle around with characters and their development – especially because he runs such a character-driven game.

So during one of our regular evenings together with Netflix, a roaring fire, a beagle and a chihuahua mutt, Blur instructed us to remake our characters, so that they aren’t the same person. That had been a problem – our original characters, her elf troubadour and my human thief, made out of sight and earshot of the other’s, ended up being remarkably similar, names, coloration and everything. And when we had been discussing revamping them, totally separately, we kept coming up with the same ideas. So Blur sat us down with our Player’s Guides and new character sheets and said, “Talk to each other this time. Get out of each other’s heads.”
New result: Ashley has a human scout, who is city-based, and I have an elven beastmaster, who is obviously wilderness-based. The similarities of characters has never been the real problem; it has only been that we haven’t discussed how to cover all the bases between us. We have a backstory that will allow us to integrate really well with each other, and with the storyline.

During her character generation, we talked about stats that were important to the class, racial bonuses she’d be getting, and how to avoid the Jack of All Trades syndrome. Since she is going to be a city-based scout, her dexterity and perception stats are going to be the most important. She also threw a bunch into strength and toughness, and had little left over for willpower and charisma. This all sounds good if you’re going to be a woods/wilderness-based scout, because you’ll have your navigation talents and survival checks, but if you’re spending all your time in the city underworlds, you’re going to need to be able to talk to people, manipulate them, and not get pushed around. Toughness is a great stat to have high, of course, because it gives you more recovery checks after combat, but I told her strength was probably going to play a limited role in what she wanted for her character.

And that’s the point: you pay attention to the stats you NEED for your class, but you have to consider them in light of the PERSON you’ve got forming in your head. Personality is the key part in determining the rest of your stats, unless you’re just looking to twink the hell out of the character and the game, and I suppose everyone goes through that stage.

But the point is if you’re going to play, and play successfully, you need to have someone (or everyone) be willing to fill in some gaps, even if filling them in isn’t precisely what they originally intended their character to do. It is, after all, only a game, and as long as you have fun, you win.

MMO: emphasis on multiplayer

We just moved and remained jobless. I think that it has less to do with SC’s 12% unemployment rate than with the fact that we haven’t been looking too hard. I signed up with an employment agency, so they’re looking for me. Blur has to take the Bar exam at the end of the month, and studying for that has taken up almost all of his time.

That being said, I have been playing a lottttttttttttt of WoW. I’ve actually started being social in the game, something I had never really done before; I had played with friends but never with strangers. I never joined a guild, never participated in raids – probably because I had overheard all the raids my ex had participated in, and how people talked to each other – man, was I okay with no one ever talking to me like that. And this is probably silly, but you hear all the snobby talk about n00bs and what have you, these level 60s then 70s then 80s – and I never wanted to be on the receiving end of this nasty talk.

Blur explained to me when I first signed up that n00bs aren’t people that have new characters, or people that had never played before, but people that talked a big game and can’t deliver, that guy that makes a fool of himself and often doesn’t realize it. You know, cocky assholes. Moral of the story? Newbie does not equal n00b.

And before about a year ago, I was vehemently, violently against the game and all it stood for, MMOs in general, and anyone that played one. Which is stupid. It is, of course, based on my experiences with a few special jackasses in college, one of whom purported to be in love with me but consistently chose the game over me. Which is just an AWESOME feeling.

/sarcasm

The point is, I had written off an entire genre of games because of a couple of douchebags, and started judging people because of it. Terrible idea. Because then I started dating a wonderful person, who is full of love and sweetness and light (though he claims he’s a mean old man), who played these games. But I was gunshy. He actually cancelled his WoW account because he knew how much it bothered me. (I know, right?!) A few of his friends started playing City of Heroes/City of Villains, and he started up. He offered to let me run around for a while in the game, and it was fantastic. I made a character on his account and would play when he wasn’t doing homework. Finally, he convinced me to start my own, and finally, asked me what the beef with WoW was. I couldn’t articulate it without having an emotional and nervous breakdown, so he said, why don’t you try it? I very carefully and cautiously said yes – and he and his sister and I restarted accounts and ran around for a while.

And it’s fabulous. I never played as much as most people I knew, and barely played at all when I was working full-time. But then we moved, and Blur is studying for the Bar, and I’m waiting for the employment folks to get me a job – and I am leveling like crazy.

the marginalized marginalizing

When I was growing up, we didn’t have any game consoles. When I was about 6, we owned a Game Boy for about 3 months, with only one game (Tetris, naturally), and my father sold it in a garage sale because he was the only one that played it. My sister and I read voraciously, and my favorite movie was a film version of Bizet’s opera Carmen. My best friend in the eighth grade had a Playstation, and I remember staying up all night, playing with this novel contraption, until I had beaten Tekken 3 and The Lion King. In high school, our home PC saw a lot of Chip’s Challenge, Minesweeper, and eventually, various editions of You Don’t Know Jack and The Sims.

My first game console was a PS2, which I won in a dorm-sponsored contest my sophomore year of college, and I used it as a DVD player, mostly. My sister gave me a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which I thought was stupid. I forked out the $40-something for a Tomb Raider game, which got a lot of play at first, then slowly began to collect dust. The list goes on: an ex-boyfriend introduced me to Kingdom of Hearts in 2006 and I didn’t even make it out of the intro section; I played Legend of Zelda for the first time on our Wii earlier this year, and only played it while I was home sick; when my boyfriend bought our Xbox 360, I begged him to get Prototype, because I had seen a friend play it and you can karate kick a helicopter and I can count how many times I’ve played it on one hand. And if anyone is playing Halo in the room, I have to take a Dramamine.

My goodness, I have a low frustration threshold. And I feel bad – these games cost serious cash. Well, serious cash if you’re broke and have a college degree and still can’t find anything better than retail management, which another story altogether.

My point is this: those of us who identify as “gamers” aren’t a homogenous group. I wasn’t a part of the Console Wars of the 90s. I don’t like FPSs. I don’t go through the Wii store, browsing classics, and get warm squishy feelings of nostalgia; I recognize names, at best.

But you know what I do like? Rolling dice, and running my level 43 Night Elf Hunter around Azeroth. As much as we all hate to admit it, there is a hierarchy among gamers – console gamers are cooler than FPS gamers, who are cooler than MMORPG gamers, who are cooler than tabletoppers, who are cooler than LARPers. (You know what, LARPers? You guys got the balls to put on pointy hats and capes and hit each other with PVC. You go, Glenn Coco.) And I recognize that I fall pretty specifically near the bottom of this list, but I think that’s silly. I get some people aren’t into roleplaying. That’s fine. But it has been like pulling teeth finding a social website with any specifications for both “female” and “roleplayer” – and that’s the meat of the matter.

We ladygamers spend a lot of time and energy and frustration letting everyone know we’re underrepresented, misrepresented, and otherwise insulted (just look at any “girl gamer type” list for nauseating stereotypes). But when you happen across a ladygamer website, even the best, underrepresent MMORPG players, and seemingly fail to represent tabletoppers at all. And when you reveal these facts about yourself, that you weren’t on line at GameStop for Mass Effect 2 at midnight because you were busy killing a direwolf at your D&D game or leveling up your gnome mage, there’s a bit of shuffling of collective feet, that maybe you’re not cool enough to hang with the big kids, that maybe you go to Ren Fairs in costume, that maybe you’re just plain weird.

We can all agree everyone here is part a marginalized demographic, and so it makes no sense to me to further marginalize part of the folks that are trying for recognition. And you’re right: ladygamers are the minority. But if you think that you’re the first girl to pose in her underwear with an Xbox controller, think again. Try being the least experienced of your peers by decades. Try being the only girl at the table.

#geeksunite

I’m lying on my stomach on the floor of The Cellar – which is actually just the second bedroom of the apartment we’re in the process of vacating. Today has not been a productive one: I slept until 11, fiddled about on Jezebel until the start of the iPad unveiling (liveblog can be found here: live.gizmodo.com), and then found out my old job is screwing me. My day has alternately been disappointing, exciting, and furious. But here we are to talk about a few things.

1. I GMed my first session last week. Our friends the Bakers were in town, their final visit before the semester starts, and I spent my insomnia one night using Twitter to tell Mrs. Baker to come up with an interesting setting, or possibly even characters, that I could run with one of the nights they would be here. Of course she did not, but that is to be expected of anyone. As my first adventure behind the screen, I chose something that seemed simple, not-so-crunchy, and familiar. I chose PDQ. Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies is the handbook that we’ve got to describe PDQ, though it can be inserted into any genre/historical era game you like. We agreed upon pirates. The Golden Age of Piracy. note: This is a good choice, for if you know me, you know that I did my senior honors thesis in college on just that subject, with a little pirate literature thrown in. Who can blame for wanting to read Treasure Island and watch Pirates of the Caribbean for a grade? It was a rocky start, as I was also in charge of cooking dinner (we had chili) for the four of us, and also coming up with a storyline. The frustrating/awesome thing about PDQ is that it is so open-ended, and the GM’s section in the book encourages you to find out your players’ characters’ motivations are, and just build a story around that. It’s hard, that being said, to a) come up with a one-shot that touches on multiple motivations, especially when you have 3 players, and b) come up with a storyline when NO ONE WILL MAKE A CHARACTER. Whoever said GMing is like herding cats is totally, completely, and unabashedly correct. When they finally got their acts together, I spent the next 15 minutes or so, before starting the game, coming up with a few things, enemies/battles/etc., and about 15 minutes during actual play completing that arc. It was, of course, a little combat heavy: but as I was assured later, at the Waffle House on Whiskey Road, it is really hard to have a story-heavy one-shot. I thanked them for popping my cherry gently, as it were.

One of the biggest things I noted though was the difference between tactically-minded gamers (D&D players, specifically) and character/story-driven gamers. Blur has noted on more than one occasion that I have had a most unique entry into the gaming world & community – the folks we play with, generally male, are at worst, slightly socially awkward, but unwind once they’ve had a drink or two. Our game circle is filled with awesome people who have healthy relationships with significant others and parents, live in their own apartments (or have roommates), have friends outside of the geek community, and seem very, very normal on the outside. Apparently this is not always the case. My entry has also been a non-D&D-based one: my first D&D game came in October/November of 2009, almost a year after I started gaming. And I think that game started so that I could say I had played D&D. The next newest to the campaign was Blur, who has been gaming for 10 years. That game ended abruptly, for no articulated reason, but I suspect that it is so crunchy, and known so well by every other player at the table, that what I thought was “ooh, neat!” was, “ugh, hit him till he falls down” to them. Which is the same reason it’s like pulling teeth to get someone to run a Shadowrun game for me!

2. Steve Jobs &c. unveiled the iPad today. First of all, that is a stupid name. Are there no women on the Apple marketing team? Right now, at 4:43 p.m., EST, #iTampon is the number 2 trending topic on Twitter – above above #Apple, #iPhone, #Kindle, #OfficialAppleiPad, and #SteveJobs. srsly? Second of all, there is this article from Gizmodo, listing 8 things that suck about the iPad, besides the name. The things that grind my gears are its lack of Flash support, because that’s not integral to anyone’s internet experience these days – cough – its lack of multitasking, because everyone knows that we do not live in an ADHD-addled universe, where if something doesn’t have a HUD or an ability to Tweet or check Facebook, we’re really over it – cough – and its lack of a forward, or backward, facing camera, because people don’t feel the need to document every single thing they’ve ever done – I gotta stop coughing. Long story short, if I can get a touch-screen Kindle/iPod Touch and a new MacBook (just because I want one), I’ll be happy as a clam.

3. I will be making guest-blog appearances on gamingangels.com. Because no one talks about tabletop RPGs.

4. I have spent so much time on Twitter today, I am starting to think in 140-character bursts. Seriously. But gained a number of followers – thanks, guys! #geeksunite

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Another session, another accusation of character brutality. Le sigh.

The way PDQ# Ephemera work is, at the end of the session, the GM and the players discuss events/reactions/people/etc. that might be a factor during the next session. Whenever you perform an action with the applicable Ephemera in mind, you get a +2, much like any of your other Fortes. At the end of last session, my girl Abigail had some rowdy, robust Scotsman flirting with her at the bar. She and Sebastian, the other PC, convinced him to show them up to some spooky Roman ruins that were pertinent to the plot. Long story short, the bad guys were there, and Sebastian was getting overwhelmed, since it was about 25-1, so I sent the Scot into the fray, full aggressive stance.

As in, he had no defense dice. Turns out, he had 2 hit points.

Two. Hit. Points. A big Scottish dude with a sword and a gun. Two hit points.

And in my defense, a) I didn’t realize he had 2 hit points, as I thought he was more of a person and less of a minion, and b) I didn’t expect a half-dozen guards to jump him and beat him to a bloody pulp. Which, you know, they did.

Solution? You can sacrifice Ephemera, and have them soak the damage you would have taken.

GM says, “You want to sacrifice ole Argyle?”

I say, “Hell yes.” GM gapes at me. I say, “What? Argyle was a silly name, anyway. He was a fool, dying in the name of love. Soldiers don’t die for causes, soldiers die for the soldiers next to them, and in this case, I was the soldier next to him. I sent him off with a kiss. Tons of Celts have died for far less.” Gaping continues. “What? Next action?”

In any event, I ended up with the highest body count. Again. I have this predisposition for – not cruelty – perhaps ruthlessness – in game. Our man Friday, mentioned in the last entry, enjoys his explosive spectacles, having little interest in the body count. He’s much more Bay/Bruckheimer, whereas I am more, um, Tarantino/Rodriguez, in my efforts.

I think this is a matter of style and perspective. I think, that in a fight, we are here to win. There is no sense in getting into a fight if you are not willing to shoot a few chickens to get an omelet, then what the hell are we here for? This isn’t real; this is a game, and if rolling a high enough number allows you to jump on a horse, cut it from its carriage yoke, pick up a 130-lb girl and sling her on the back, and charge up a snow-covered embankment where you may or may not be using the thorny brambly icy stairs, then, dammit, I am allowed to deliver a stinging headshot every minion I can reach in a single combat round. What the hell! Likewise, I am not really that interested in the aforementioned scenario, unless of course it allows me to use more fortes for extra bonuses, and receive extra style dice from the GM for being an effing badass.

Which, let’s be fair, is this little girl’s dream. Don’t tell me I’m going to play an elf. Don’t tell me I’m a pretty pretty princess. Don’t accuse me of being some airy-fairy squeaky twee bullshit. My elves are like Legolas – the movie version – all body count and crazy-eyes. I am a self-rescuing princess. My characters are strong, quick-witted and surefooted, certain of their likes and dislikes (even if I am not), and they deal serious mother-frakking damage.

And the ever-present question: the only other PC in the game, Sebastian, is represented by my dear boyfriend, Blur. Seb is a scholarly, well-traveled, martial artist yogi wizard awesomeface, with exotic tattoos (this is 1892) and dangerous occult knowledge. And if my Abigail is anything like me (and I fear she is, more than anticipated), that is just the type of gentleman she would go for. And now that Argyle is out of the way…

Who wants to be a wizard?

I quit my job.

I finally did it.

The last 6 months have been the most overwhelming, painful, exhausting, unrewarding half-year I’ve ever struggled through. During that time, I gamed so little, I did so little of the things that I actually enjoyed. My standard response to the question “what are you going to do now?” was “All the things I should have been doing all along.” Brava.

Starting with this. Well – kidding – I picked up the first three books of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files – the box set for $13! Thanks, Books-A-Million! Yesterday, I allowed myself an hour or two of browsing jezebel.com, gawker.com, facebook, etc., whatever, and finally finally finally closed my laptop, threw on the Must last.fm station, turned away from the TV, and cracked open Storm Front. And when I looked up again, I was on page 47.

Jesus, has reading always been this wonderful? Where did it go? I am telling you right this second, right now, I am NEVER taking a job, ever again, that keeps me from this lovely, squishy, delightful feeling of settling into a warm chair and a half and spending some time in a place that isn’t your own, letting your drink turn luke-warm, letting hours hours hours pass without note. So help me. I am never giving that luxury up. Ever. Again.

And now for why we’re here. A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend Blur and I had a delicious Waffle House run with our resident go-to GM, a fellow we call Adder. We sat there and chatted, and he finally said to us, “We need to get our game on.” I nodded, and Blur put his fist on the table and said,

“I want to be a wizard!”

And of course he does. Everyone has a go-to class. Our man Friday is a DEX-based fighter, more interested in how AWESOME his fights look than the body count. Our friend Michael is a sneak. And Blur is a wizard. I mean, he IS a wizard. His job in high school was MAGICIAN. And the last few games, he’s played a bard in D&D 4e, a voodoo witch doctor in Deadlands, and a Beastmaster in Earthdawn. In fact, of all the games we’ve played together, I’ve never experienced him playing a wizard. Which is weird, I guess.

Long story short, Sherlock Holmes had just come out, and besides us all being actual Sherlock fans, not just my being a Robert Downey, Jr./Jude Law fan, we decided on a sort of quasi-horror 1892 London gaslight type thing.

Next problem? Blur wants to be a wizard, dammit, and I just don’t trend toward the human-based supernaturals. I don’t have any issue with your classic medieval fantasy Tolkien set up, because supernatural stuff just goes along with that. But if someone introduces me to a human, realistic, historically-based environment, I don’t expect dragons and goblins and all that. I can get behind a fae element, but a very faint one. So Blur’s wizard is going to be fighting… Jack the Ripper? Ehhh…

BUT! If we have a wizard that’s less the magiest mage that ever maged, less a pointy-hat Dumbledore type, and more an occultist, more of a follower of the secret arts in their secret societies for rich, well-appointed men… then maybe this could work.

We’re draping this environment over the PDQ# framework, which is the system used for Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies, which I’ve never played, but which sounds awesome. It uses at most, about 3 or 4 D6′s, and is a very simple framework. We’ve played two sessions so far, and it’s pretty fantastic, and isn’t too orcs-and-goblins. We’re chasing my character’s father, which seems to involve werewolves, but like the werewolves that are just people who are possessed by a rogue wild wolf spirit, not so much Oz-on-Buffy werewolves. Which is fine – I’m down with witchcraft/druidry/pantheism/etc., which is where we are now.

Blur has been suggesting, more, recently, that I run a session of something. I never put away the idea of running a session of Traveler based on the sci-fi novel I’m attempting to write – something else I’ve neglected since I started working full-time at the store. I’ve never even totally rejected the idea of running a session of one of the World of Darkness games…

—
Here’s the link to Swashbucklers.

wandering behind the screen

A girlfriend of mine whose husband is in our Deadlands game has made tentative offers to try rolling dice. We have told her of the Star Trek RPG (the TV series/movies/books of which she is a big fan), and it seemed like a go. And she asked, do they have a Firefly RPG? Well, of course they do, but apparently it’s awful. My s.o. dutifully informed her of this, and then mentioned a game called Traveller, which is basically the Firefly universe, but not affiliated. He said, “If you want to play a Firefly game, I’ll run a Traveller game, and you can make Mal or Kaylee or whatever.” And then I got to thinking – I do all this writing, I do all this storytelling in my free time – should I run the Traveller game?

I’ve never run a game before. I’m pretty new to this. In fact, I’m currently participating in my second (Deadlands) and third (D&D 4th ed) campaigns ever. I’ve expressed vague interest in running a session, or, you know, whatever, before, maybe a Swashbucklers of the Seven Seas – appropriate mention, I suppose, for it is Talk Like a Pirate Day – but everyone around me, save my uninitiated girlfriend, has run many a campaign, and has been doing it for years. My boyfriend’s second session EVER, he ran. So this is the idea that I’m up against. I think it would be fun – but I’ve been doing this for less than a year, and these gentlemen have all been doing it for 10-20x that, and that’s just intimidating. I’m better than I used to be, but the reason my first [Earthdawn] character turned out to be this Clint Eastwood silent-but-badass archer tskrang was because I was TERRIFIED to actually get into some roleplay; also, her damage was disgusting.

Terrified, you ask? Oh, sure. It’s nerve-wracking as hell to sit down at a table full of people that have been doing this since you were in elementary or middle school, and try to be on par with them. Because I have this competitive streak. And I wanted my first campaign to be epic. And, you know, it was fine, and I was fine, but every time I sat down, I was excited to be there and scared shitless. It’s gotten better. I think the reason behind it, though, was because a) it was a FULL table, with 5 PCs, b) it was all people I knew had done it forever, and c) we were already friends and I didn’t want them laughing at me. I didn’t want to go overboard. Can you even go overboard in RP? Who even knows.

The point is, I get really nervous thinking about running for a bunch of dudes that have been doing this forever. Which is silly, considering if I were to run this Firefly knockoff Traveller game, or even just session, it would be with my boyfriend, and this girlfriend and her husband, and she’s brand new to all this in general, and they’re both forgiving guys – especially since they have to sleep with us at the end of the day – which is why we girls ended up kicking their asses in Risk when we totally had no business doing so – and so it should, should, should be fine. It should be AWESOME. I’d like to do it, but I’m experiencing the old familiar panic. Maybe by the time she’s rationalized gaming to herself, I’ll have familiarized myself with the Traveller rules enough to sit down for a few hours and roll some dice.

the only girl at the table

Right.

New plan: Tuesday night D&D 4th Edition game. Some fussing occurred about my choice of a half-elf storm sorcerer from the DM, because he was concerned that someone that flashy would conflict with his planned cloak-and-dagger plots. It’s a party of 3: a Tiefling warlord, a changeling bard, and my half-elf. But apparently while I was at work today, our noble DM, debating with the other two gentlemen, decided to revise his plotting, bringing us into a much more piratey, buckle-your-swashes type of setting. This pleases my half-elf sorcerer, who is yet just a twinkle in her player’s eye. I have not heard of a revision from our Tiefling, but our changeling bard is hemming and hawing, unsure of what he would like to play – as changelings are wont to do, I suppose.

This brings me to my next point: being the only girl at the table. There are two subsets to this topic – being the girl that people imagine when they hear about “gamer chicks,” with her Huge Tracts of Land t-shirt, mom jeans, Doc Martens, ponytail, whatever you hear – or being the girl whom no one would ever suspect of being a gamer, because she seems so “normal.” And I’ve already mentioned I hate that word.

So here I am, sitting on the couch, having skipped the Rock Band tonight to blog instead, just home from my surprising job as a manager of a “fashion” store in the mall, with my trendy little skinny jeans, my argyle sweater vest (geek chic?), listening to the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog soundtrack, talking about my D&D character. I mean, I keep my dice bag in my purse. What? And the table we’re forming up isn’t my first (though I am newer to it than any of the other players I’ve ever played with), and it certainly isn’t my first as the only girl. I anticipate a few questions related to this subject – and feel free to ask more.

Q: How do I cope with this?
A: “Cope” makes it sound so painful. A lot of times, being the only girl at the table is a blessing. Because girls are NOT expected to be gamers, especially, you know, girls that are “normal” and “cool” and not “socially retarded,” a lot of us don’t ever get exposed to the community. We just don’t run in those circles, because we’re very specifically expected not to. I know, because I work with more South Carolina sorority sisters than you can imagine, and none of them are very comfortable with the fact that I even play WoW, which is the cooler end of the spectrum. But if, somehow, you get introduced to The Table, and you want to dabble, you’re surrounded by a bunch of guys who really don’t care less, and have probably been doing this since high school, and who aren’t afraid to get in there and really roleplay, because who’s going to judge them? These are probably theatre kids, and, trust me, they’re not going to judge you. (And for additional comfort, what are Hollywood stars, other than successful theatre kids? Famous gamers include Mike Myers, Stephen Colbert, Vin Diesel, Robin Williams. But more on that later.) Also, it’s hilarious to create a PC that’s male, make him lovesick, and force the DM pick up female roles. Ha.

Q: You make it sound like there are gamer chicks running around everywhere… but where ARE all these other girls?
A: Look, if you’re a gamer chick, you are in the majority. Deal with it. But just because I’ve played at a number of tables where I’m the only girls doesn’t mean I’ve never played at a table where there are other girls – in fact, I’ve been a part of a campaign with another girl, and there is this once-a-month World of Darkness Hunter game we play in which another girl is involved. This is a tight-knit community at the best of times, and you’ll probably do a lot of recycling with both genders, so if you insist upon having another girl at the table, it’s probably going to be the same girl that you had the last time, and the time before that…

Q: I see the upside to being the only girl. Now what’s the downside?
A: The downside. Yes, I suppose there’s one of those, too. You know all those stigmas about girl gamers being socially awkward? Well, as you might imagine, they exist for the guys, too. And just like any good stereotype, it is often based on truth. Now, you might get a table full of guys who are cool as hell, who are good roleplayers, and, hell, why not, good-looking, to boot. It happens – I’ve seen it. Most of my tables are recycled because these guys are my friends and this is a social activity and it’s tons of fun. That’s the thing – people generally find you a good gamer if they think you’re an interesting human being. It’s a worry I ran into, thinking that because I’m new at this (and a girl) that they’d think I wasn’t any good. And what’s to be good at? Dice roll as they will, and all you have to do is be interesting. Tell a story, or be cinematic, or use a funny accent. If they like you, they’ll invite you back.

Deadlands meets retail: Hell on Earth

So we’re about 3 sessions into our Saturday Deadlands campaign, and I have to bow out gracefully and/or take on a much more minor role in the story, and that is dumb.

Explanation: I work at Express, in the mall, and was recently promoted to a management position (yay!). This means, among other things, that I could no longer be “unavailable” to work Saturdays (boo), even having played the Jew card. Lame.

That being said, Deadlands is one of the most flavorful tabletop RPGs out there – it has elements of steampunk/”Hell on Earth” with an Old West storyline. There are dice, of course – and you’ll be using a lot more d12s than you’re used to, I warrant – but initiative rolls rely on cards. You roll your quickness die, and the result of the roll determines how many cards you get from the deck. GM (Marshal) does the same. Then you start at Ace of Spades, and work your way down the line, those with the higher cards going first. The Huckster class (pretty much the mage class) literally has to play poker with the demons to see how effective his spells are. The problem becomes, sometimes it takes a long time to resolve a fight… a reeeeeeeally looooong time.

Just ask Bruce Campbell how badass this game is – he wrote the intro to the newer version of the Player’s Guide.

The point IS, I can’t play anymore because our game day is Saturday, and we’ve got a number of people coming in from out of town, people who work REAL jobs, like Monday through Friday 9-5 jobs, and it can’t be moved to some innocuous weeknight that would totally make my life more bearable.

So a few of us are looking at starting up a D&D Eberron game for said innocuous weeknight, which I guess is like a steam/cyberpunk D&D. I haven’t looked much at it, but will update again when I have done proper research. Because if I have to work 40 hours a week in the mall, and can’t game in my off time, I may very well hit someone with a bat.

Also, Blizzard released a trailer for the new WoW expansion. Not sure of its ETA – sometime in 2010 – but will keep you all posted. New races, new class combinations, new zones, new secondary skill: archaeology! This former archaeologist is way too excited.

Read about it here: Kotaku: The Big Changes in WoW: Cataclysm

huge tracts of land

This blog is intended to be an interactive discussion on geeklore/culture and how we ladies fit into it – or, more often, how we don’t.

I’m going to talk about a whole lot of things, from Bruce Campbell to tabletop gaming (a la Dungeons & Dragons) to how to break that stereotype of “being a gamer chick.” I’m pretty new to the tabletop set, but apparently I have been inundated with other facets of “geek culture” since I was a child – there are pictures of me at a Ren Fair in a stroller - I liked Star Wars before I realized it was cool – I was first introduced to The Evil Dead sophomore year of high school. I hung out with theatre kids, I was in the marching band, I get it.

But this is the point where I tell you I’ve also been working in fashion for the last year and a half, and where I tell you if you’re sporting more than a C cup, that “huge tracts of land” t-shirt isn’t your only option. And also, if you’re in a sorority, there is no shame in asking people what WoW server they’re on. I’m guilty of this myself – working in the industry that I do, it doesn’t often come up that I finally got a mount for my night elf hunter last night. And that’s seen as more furtive among women than it is among men. Why? Probably because men just don’t talk about things they don’t have in common, while women are ashamed of their gaming tendencies. Silly. That being said, I’m more likely to be teased by non-gaming girls than non-gaming guys. Why? That I don’t have an answer for. And I’m here for input.

One of the more upsetting things I’ve been exposed to in gamerlore is the overwhelmingly negative definitions of “gamer chicks” and “girl gamers” on urbandictionary.com. For some reason, men seem to think that if you’ve ever picked up an Xbox controller, used QWE to navigate, or rolled a set of dice (particularly the last, because that’s just UNTHINKABLE), you’re some kind of cave troll. Or we’re models hired for a stint at a Con to lure geek money to their booths.

Why can’t we be seen as ‘normal’? An awful word itself, but I know that I am neither cave troll nor supermodel. And neither are 90% of the female population out there.

Intellectual and social stuff aside, if it comes up, I have no problem discussing how dreamy Nathan Fillion is. Believe that.