I started playing Role Playing Games (RPGs) in 1980 or '81. Like many of my generation, my gateway was Dungeons and Dragons. At that time, trying to convince my friends to play with me, I described the game as being "like playing Barbies, but with rules for settling disputed outcomes." It rarely succeeded in winning converts, though I still think it an apt description.
In the late '80s and early '90s, I was a teetotaling sailor stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Not being interested in bars, but still being interested in RPGs, I spent a great deal of time in a friendly local game shop called Campaign Headquarters. There, I played a great many different game systems, with a fair number of people, many of whom were also sailors stationed in Norfolk.
Nor did I give up on table-top RPGs after I became a civilian again. I lived here, there, and everywhere, and in most cases, found people with whom I could play. Most of them were good folk, with whom I became friendly outside the game environment. Some of them were jerks I barely tolerated at the table.
I remember one particular night with a group I often attended: the Game Manager (GM) was my uncle, Thomas (who lived in a trailer early in life, but never, so far as I can tell, a cabin). We were having one of the periodic spats and disputes to which geek packs are prone, and Tom went around the table, saying what he thought each of us got out of the gaming experience. This fellow used it as a substitute for tactical wargames, and was unhappy if the GM played fast and / or loose with the rules. That fellow's wife was mostly there for companionship and connection to other Humans. This fellow wanted to be able to make mistakes without real life consequences. And Jenny? Jenny just wanted to be someone else for a couple of hours each week.
And he wasn't wrong. But over time, I came to realize that there's a fundamental split in gamers, and what we want out of the games. Because of our social roles and expectations, I'm going to label this split as masculine / feminine.
The masculine gamer (who may not always be male) wants Action and Adventure. This gamer is there to get the dice on, to have a Walter Mitty moment of being an action hero doing daring deeds with a smile while never spilling a drop of their martini. Anything which does more than linking those scenes of action and adventure together is superfluous, boring, and wasted.
The feminine gamer (who may not always be female) is looking for connection, community, and belonging. Scenes of conflict are fine, if they serve the purpose of establishing camaraderie, but kicking in the door, slaying the monster, and adjudicating the treasure is not their style. Storytelling is never wasted; emotions are involved in play.
And like most dichotomies, this split is exaggerated here. Most people fall on a spectrum somewhere between these extremes. As a GM, you have to know your players, know what they want out of gaming, and strive to provide each person what they want -- which can be a tricky balancing act, and is part of why the aforementioned group had regular flare-ups and spats.
Why was I thinking about this, enough to sit down and use energy to put it all into words, and freeze it into web-published words? Because, since I became disabled, the majority of my role playing experience has been through coöperative fan fiction writing in the Star Trek universe. In such circles, each person has a primary character for whom they write. They work with other writers to produce scenes in which their characters interact, and over the course of time, the scenes create an overall narrative.
I got involved a few years ago with Starbase 109, one of those coöperative writing games, because my oldest and dearest friend mentioned that it was starting up, and it would be nice to have someplace to write together. After about a year, the founding GM dropped out, and my friend and I, along with a third woman, ended up accepting the GM role as a triumvirate. For the last couple of years, we've been cruising along, telling our stories and having a good time.
Every once in a while (twice in the last year) we get a new writer who is very much a masculine gamer. They're there to be Jim Kirk or Johnny Rico, to get in fights with bug eyed monsters and seduce their women. At best, these guys only skim other writers' posts. They don't really care about all that touchy-feely stuff, or about the plotlines. They just want to shoot something, gorram it!
And that's really not the kind of game Starbase 109 is. Everything is more complicated than that; problems can't generally be solved at the point of a phaser, or in a burst of torpedo fire. Espionage happens, but it's not the James Bond type of thing; it's quieter, subtler. Conflict happens, but it's on a personal level. Coming in and insisting that you can solve everything by waving your, er, gun around is Just Not On. But they want to.
Which stresses me out, because as a gamer, I want to provide everyone in the group with the kind of experience they want. As a writer, I want continuity. But as previously mentioned, these guys (and it usually is guys) don't care about your storyline. They think it's boring and superfluous. They know everything about Star Trek, and you, silly little girl, are wrong -- just go over there and play with your Barbies, and let the Mens charge their light brigades into the torpedos!
And I'm burned out with dealing with those conflicts. I don't think I want to be the personnel GM anymore. Currently, I'm on hiatus, with the other two members of the triumvirate guiding the game and taking care of administration. I'm not sure I intend to go back. It's been a while since I felt much joy from writing there.
I get the impression that the three of us are the only ones who care about the overall story. I get the impression that many... perhaps most... of my posts get skimmed, or skipped altogether. I get the impression that most of our players aren't really involved in the game. And I wonder... why am I doing all this, again?
