I just remembered the first time I played dnd with girls participating. It was the game which came with the old basic rules. The party entered a room full of sarcophagi opened one and found a small chest. They opened it and saw a small amount of gold and jewels. As one the girls eyes lit up. "Gold", they all cried, and instantly turned on the guys killing them and dividing ths spoils amongst themselves.
Thats funny! I can honestly (and tragically) say I have never been in a pnp game where girls were present :sadblinky
We also used to play a game called Risk. The blokes would all be playing individually then suddenly all the girls would unite and the game would end with Yah! Women rule the world. If the guys ganged up on one of the girls it would lead to tears and bitter recriminations along the lines of, " Well if you want to be play that..."
I played Risk with 2 other women and a man. We women did not gang up on the man, but one of the women received much criticism from the man because she wasn't playing 'logically.' She won the game. Enuf said.
That maybe because you outnumbered him. In our case the numbers were even. The men played as individuals, but at a certain point there was a sudden allliance of woman, and with the last man defeated the game ended with the women agreeing to a 3 way tie. Something all male groups never did. I'm not trying to make any specific point it's just a dynamic I find interesting. On a similar point I was told ( this may not be true) that at the university I went to the women's residence never put 3 girls to a room because 2 of them would pick on the other one. Similarly while 5 could get along 4 couldn't. Of course in close quarters guys often didn't get along either. In fact 2 guys who shared a room hated each other. They dealt with it by ignoring each other and bitching to everybody else.
One of my best friends and I used to team up to cheat effective at games so we could win (one person actually taking the win and the other having a health ego boost from the assist). And the problem is that while guys might often play individually where the girls will team up, from my observations, the alliance is often shorted lived and the fallout can get quite big.
I never did that, but I do remember plenty of shifting alliances, and the joy of renegeing on a treaty just before one fo the other players did.
i play a 3.5 game with two girl players. one plays her character about how i would expect from class/race combo. the other plays a monk like a rogue. seriously we kill a dragon get his stash and everyone but her is like, let's rest. her: "but there could be treasure other places... also never expect her to stand in battle and take a hit for an injured character as she complains if she is down one hp and my cleric doesn't do much healing mid battle. she gets so mad and tells me how bad the strategy is...then she realizes the broke warmage/bonded summoner kills everything anyways...dm allowing cloak of charisma +10 was a bad plan...me making one for him was a bad plan.
The girls I mentioned were playing for the first time, which I suppose has a lot to do with their reaction. I played a regular session for about a year with a group that included two girls and their actions didn't vary to much from the guys. All the time I played the groups were mainly good aligned so I don't know how different reactions would be to evil play.
My fiance plays with us, but she prefers to play a ranged archer (who sometimes can't seem to get hit) or a big two hander wileder, but always elves. My sister used to play back when we played second editon, she played a big two handed battle axe wielding fighter chick that didn't take shit from anyone. The fact that she could once a week unload a 20d6 fireball from said axe helped quite a bit to. On a side not she got the axe because our wizard got the chance to cast wish and rather than confer with the rest of the party the douche bag wished imediatly for set of bracers of ac: -10 (you know back when it was good to have negative ac instead of positive). Well he got the bracers but their owner the powerfull red wizard that made them wasn't to happy about their disaperance while he was wearing them. We did some major ass kissing and explained what happened and in the end he was nice enough to give my sis the boost to her axe as a consilation. He left in a puff of smoke snickering at the folly of youth. That axe saved our asses on many occations, i'll never forget the players around the table shouting "use the axe, no not like that, shoot the damn fireball."
That's what I used to love about playing wih a group of people with good imaginations. When I remember old games its both what happened in the story and how people reacted as characters and as players. The way we played I don't think anyone ever progressed beyond 5th or 6th level. Most games used to end with everyone dead except the wizard. Who was out of spells backed into a corner trying to defend himself with a dagger.
My dad didn't have a son so he was left with no choice than to teach me. I was playing PnP when I was in first grade. He taught me how to play Magic when I was even younger
