benlehman | Comics about RPGs and the One Girl

Comics about RPGs and the One Girl

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?

Threaded | Flat

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Threaded | Flat

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

KoDT...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Thanks for pointing out YAFGC