Comics about RPGs and the One Girl

[benlehman]

Lesson of RPG comics: There is One Girl in the gaming group, and there's One Girl in the party. At max.

Case studies:
Knights of the Dinner Table. Sarah is the One Girl. She's an ass-kicker who can out-do any of the guys at their own game but is also less crazy than them.
Order of the Stick. Halley is the One Girl. She is the thief, wears skimpy clothing (despite being a stick figure) and is saucy.
Dumnestor's Heroes. Sue is the One Girl. She is practical, capable, and kinda fulfills the same role as Sarah from KotDT. In the real life portions, her player does as well.
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has many different girls and women with different goals and personalities (briefly: Arachne, Charlotte, Maura, Jone, Clover, etc.) However, and this is worth noting, the comic is explicitly about the "bad guys." Among the "good guys" in the comic, there's really only two female characters of any agency, one of whom is a plucky thief and one of whom is a bad-ass fighter chick.

This is just the comics that I read, natch. You will be able to come up with examples and counter-examples on your own.

(The first two comics are written by men, the third by a woman, and the last by a husband and wife team.)

So what do you make of this? Is female agency aligned Evil in D&D fantasy? Is the single girl in the gaming group, and how she acts, a realistic portrayal of the reality of a male dominated hobby or is it the inability of authors to write decent female characters?

Comments

[l-the-fangirl.livejournal.com]

Is the single girl in the gaming group, and how she acts, a realistic portrayal of the reality of a male dominated hobby?

Ahahaha.

Ahahhaha.

Aheeehehe.

Aheh.

Translated from snark: It hasn't been the reality for over fifteen years. I wouldn't chalk it up to an inability to write women, just as a disinclination to - which is as much of a problem, if not more.

Just to open up a can of worms, what's the last gamer comic you've read where there's a Black, Asian, Latino/a, or otherwise non-white player? Roy Greenhilt is a black PC and doesn't count...

I ask because, from my experience, not having one is similarly unrealistic.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

We don't know the races of the players in Order of the Stick, so we can only guess.

YAFGC also doesn't have "players" but it does deal with race both metaphorically and directly. The recent Jone story arc (about an orc woman and her half-orc daughter living in a human settlement) was a great metaphorical take on race and, further back in the archives, the Louie the Lich storyline was pretty amazing in terms of dealing with race directly, and also questioning what exactly is "evil" in D&D fantasy.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Start of the Lewie storyline (http://yafgc.shipsinker.com/index.php?strip_id=748). Sort of. You have to realize that he's just about to conquer the world, with the help of the death goddess, which then starts the flashback.

The Jone storyline (http://yafgc.shipsinker.com/index.php?strip_id=1220)

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

So my answers are:
1) I dunno.
2) Yes. Female agency outside of prescribed roles (good girl, slut, substitute guy) is aligned Evil in D&D fantasy.
3) Not for every group but I've definitely seen this one (and lived it) before.

[gillan.livejournal.com]

Maybe a realistic portrayal of the stereotype that still dominates how people think of the hobby, even those within it. :p

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's a pretty likely thing.

At the same time, I've totally played in groups with One Girl. It's not unrealistic, it's just maybe not as dominant in real life as it is in our fiction.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I've only really read one of the above, so take my answers as more about rpg-culture (perceived, portrayed, lived) than comics themselves.

1. Female agency evil? Yes. (though, this is generally true of a lot of media...ugh).

Drow, sorceresses, queens, hags, sirens, harpies, succubi, etc. Note how monsters defined by gender male are more neutral than monsters defined as female.

2. Single female in groups?

Well, I've seen this before. Mostly it's an all-guy group, where, one person decides they want to bring in their girlfriend/potential girlfriend. How they act is not so certain- some are completely not interested in the game itself, some are even more hardcore than the guys and can outgame them.

This dynamic of single female tends to disappear with older groups, I've noticed. Possibly because either more of the group brings in other female players OR because the women decide they get tired of the little boys' antics of space.

3. Inability to write female characters?

I've only read one of the comics above, but I've generally found that true in other comic mediums.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

What comic, out of curiosity?

If it's not YAFGC, you might like it.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Order of the stick.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

So here's my thought for game fodder: if female agency is evil, what does that mean about "good" and "evil" in the setting? Seems like interesting play fodder, at least.

By "older groups" do you mean older players or groups that have been around a while?

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Older as in age of players.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

...if female agency is evil, what does that mean about "good" and "evil" in the setting? Seems like interesting play fodder, at least.

Uncritically, it maps to a lot of pulp fantasy, particularly in sidekick/love interest/villainess roles in pulp fantasy. Critically, things like Artesia, Cry for Dawn, or Kevin Taylor's Girl porn comic series would fit. Hellboy would also be interesting to look at in that light.

Media-aside, it definitely makes for interesting play regarding stuff like "Protection from Evil", Evil artifacts, and Helm of Alignment Change. Gender change magic could also have some interesting alignment effects.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, yeah, alignment switching.

Damn.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-thiefofhearts-/]

Weregeek focuses on a gaming group of 5, 3 guys and 2 girls. The two girls (Abbie and Sarah) are rather well written and not "uber-awesome" at everything. There's also the main character's girlfriend who doesn't play, but she doesn't go down the route of "me or the game!" It's also written/drawn by a woman.

I see the two girls in this strip more realistic than Sara Felton, as they remind me of a few of my geeky lady friends.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Is it a comic that's explicitly "this is about a gaming group / an RPG" or is it a more general-geeky comic that has some gaming in it? I find that the second category (which includes Something Positive, Skin Horse, etc.) is, ironically, a lot more realistic.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-thiefofhearts-/]

No, it's specifically about the gaming group and their adventures, both at the table and in real life. The "real life issues" tend to be secondary.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Check. I made the mistake of starting at chapter 1.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-thiefofhearts-/]

Yeah, reality and fantasy seriously blurs in that comic. It moves to more campaign focused stuff after Mark meets everyone.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-thiefofhearts-/]

As for "can they write girl characters?"
I'd say most can, but as I see Sara Felton as a shining example of this problem of worried about offending anyone who isn't like yourself.
It's more of a "we don't want a woman being a bad role model" issue, I believe so they take up more of a role of den mother/saint. The same goes for many a sitcom where the dad is a dummy or just wacky while the mother is the one with her feet on the ground.

Lady writers tend to fall into a reverse trap where they write the main guy characters as those who can do no wrong or put them in situations/solutions that would be more appropriate for women.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, absolutely.

[russiandude.livejournal.com]

Not quite on topic, but tangentially interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html

[benhimself.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I buy Haley as an example of Evil Female Agency. Or even Saucy Female Agency. Yeah, there was that recent strip with the armor change and the "I think a little flaunting is in order" comment, but that sort of implies that the leather she's been wearing the rest of the comic hasn't been skimpy. I mean... I guess there's some evidence to support 'saucy', especially earlier on in the strip, but it's definitely not one of the first things I would think of when describing Haley's personality.

And I haven't read as much KODT, but wasn't Sarah the least "Evil" of the group?

They do both support the "One Girl" aspect, though, yeah (V's gender-ambiguitity aside). If you're looking for good counterexamples, I'd suggest Guilded Age (http://guildedage.net/), which has 3 females in the group of six main characters. It's more "Fantasy" then "RPG", but title aside, you really could say the same thing about YAFGC, so it's probably worth consideration if you're looking into that sort of thing.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I'm not using Haley as an example of evil female agency (although, she's a better example than I imagined, now that I think about it.) I'm saying that either there's one girl on the side, or the side is evil.

There's two bits, there.

yrs--
--Ben

[matt-rah.livejournal.com]

I have historically done very little gaming that was all-male, and only a little with only one woman in the group. That may have a lot to do with education level and geography, though.

Matt

KoDT...

[(Anonymous)]

... has always done fine, IMO, in depicting a pretty broad range of gamers, typical and otherwise.

Let's also keep in mind that KoDT is first and foremost meant to be a HUMOR strip, and thus is going to trade in certain easily-accessible gamer tropes and archetypes, though I'd stop short of calling them outright stereotypes.

Remember that while the Knights are the main characters, there are at least 3 groups of gamers that regularly show up... one of them is all guys, another has 3 women, one of them the DM... Sarah, while pretty smart and mostly level-headed, certainly gets flustered occasionally, and is hardly infallible.

The bottom line: Next GenCon, take a walk around, say, the big Living Forgotten Realms hall, and take a head count, I suspect you'll see plenty of 'one girl' tables, a few with 2 or 3, and a comparable number of female DMs. It's still largely a male-dominated hobby, more so outside of the relatively comfy confines of story game-land. The comics do a pretty decent job of reflecting the reality of the hobby in what's probably the significant majority of 'trad' game-group situations. I think assigning 'agency' is welding on an intent where none likely exists, looking for malice where simple oversight is the likelier explanation.

-Jim C.

Re: KoDT...

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I'm not attacking Knights of the Dinner table.

[jake-richmond.livejournal.com]

Worth mentioning:

.hack/whatever has quite a few prominent female characters, in each version of the manga, the game, the anime and the OVA. I'm re watching the original anime right now and there are 3 female characters of significance (the female lead, the experienced older female character and the mysterious system admin)who each diverge quite a bit from the character types in the comics you mention. I actually think the manga does a better job of this then the anime.

I mean, .hack isn't really the same thing as the other comics you're describing, but that's only because the others are taking such a narrow approach to "comics about gamers". .hack is definitely a comic about gamers.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is really western comics about TRPGs. Japanese stuff has its own issues.

[jake-richmond.livejournal.com]

True. Are there any Western comics about games/gamers that don't follow the nights of the Dinner Table/Order of the Stick approach? I'm blanking.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yet another fantasy gamer comic (http://yafgc.shipsinker.com) as described above is pretty different.

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

1. Comics authors tend to be lazy. Really, most authors tend to be lazy. Lots of shows, movies, comics, etc., have the "one girl" in a group of four or five. Occasionally there's two girls, if it's a group of five. Males are almost never the minority in fantasy/adventure stuff. There are exceptions, of course, otherwise I would never have found things to read as a preteen.

2. Uh, yes. I remember when Max was really into Dragonlance, discovering that the good and neutral gods were male, while the evil god was female. What's the matriarchal race in D&D? The drow (who are also dark-skinned).

3.I've only been the single girl in the gaming group twice, and one of those times was a single, completely miserable session. I've gamed in a lot of different groups since I was 12, so I'm inclined to think that gaming hasn't been male-dominated in a while, at least not from my corner. Gaming-related media has, but that's an extension of answer 1.

Though it's worth pointing out that YAFGC also has the sorceress Meegs.

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

Fucking Dragonlance, yeah. And the one notable good female god is Glowy Pacifist Healer Chick. (And let us not discuss the female *characters*.) I liked the books and all, especially when I was twelve, but...shut up, Tracy Hickman.

[aumshantih.livejournal.com]

Glowy Pacifist Healer Goddess is fine, as long as she projects a shadow goddess that eats demons for breakfast.

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

I support this.

Annnnd now I want to run a Dragonlance game where Takhisis and Mishakal are halves of the same soul, or maybe estranged lovers. God damn deconstructionist tendencies.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought of Meegs last night after going home.

YAFGC is really surprising.

yrs--
--Ben

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Regardless, with the exception of Clover (who's now married and pregnant ... hrm ...) there aren't very many significant female characters on the "good guys" side. Whereas with the "bad guys" it seems like %75 of the compelling characters are female.

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

I've been guilty of this myself (it always bugged me that I only put one woman in Dave's gaming group in Narbonic), but it probably just reflects the general tendency in fiction to have only one girl in any group of central characters.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

And in Skin Horse, which has a huge diversity of female characters (indeed, it kinda seems like female is the default gender of Skin Horse ... hrm...) the gaming group is nonetheless two guys and a girl. Huh.

yrs--
--Ben

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

My comics usually have about a 50/50 ratio of male and female characters, but people tend to perceive them as being female-dominated.

I should add another member to the gaming group in Skin Horse. We'll see. I don't know how Nick is even handling the cards.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

You're right. The staff is 50/50 split. Huh.

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

Yup, the rule of groups seems to be "females will never outnumber males." So you usually get one girl out of four or five, sometimes two out of five, and occasionally two girls out of four, though that's rarer.

That's one of the many reasons I really like Skin Horse and Smithson-- female characters are not outnumbered.

[andrewe.livejournal.com]

I believe that the comics think one gurl in the group is a dramatic exaggeration so as to provide their most basementest of readers with an "approachable" female object to fantasize about. Or to put it another way, tits sell.

(I agree with you folks that this has nothing to do with the reality of gaming; the only time I've played in a group with more men than women in the last 5 years was at a convention.)

Thanks for pointing out YAFGC

[amberley.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer to Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic (http://yafgc.shipsinker.com/)! I'd never heard of it, but read the Jone arc you linked to, and then went back and read the whole thing from the start. 2 days well spent!

Keychain of Creation (http://keychain.patternspider.net/) is like Order of the Stick but for Exalted, and has 2 females and 2 males in the party. Everyone has tons of agency, and all wear skimpy clothing (it's Exalted, after all). The major female opponent has even more agency, but isn't presented as evil, she just wants different things than the party.

I'm still mulling over the notion of Evil female agency in D&D, but got sidetracked by thinking about the notion that maybe only good characters are considered to have Experience (not XP, but roughly, the capacity to feel things). That could explain why it's OK to slaughter evil creatures, because they don't feel pain like good characters do. But that's probably a different discussion.