Maybe the greatest questions to plague male tabletops fans....

*raises an eyebrow* Step 1: You get a S.O. of the geeky/gamer/nerdy persuasion. Step 2: Invite them to play in your games. The End.

I come from a community where the female to male ratio of gamers is pretty close to 50/50. Our entire lot met at a fantasy boffer LARP for the most part. If you want my opinion, I think a lot of the gender gap has to do with exposure. For a very long time (and perhaps still is), tabletop RPGs were never really the "cool" thing to do. Even less of a game that woman were shown to participate in. Before the convenience of virtual tabletops, the means of getting introduced (as a male or female) to gaming was pretty slim - a high school club, a college dorm, a gaming store, like minded friends, etc. The tricky part about being female and going with some of these options is you get a lot of unwanted attention. You stick out. A lot. And you might get hounded for it. This doesn't really help get yourself acclimated to the community and might scare you off entirely. I was introduced to tabletoping via the gateway drug of LARPing. Fantasy combat and costumes? Oh snap! Hell yeah! Get me some of that! I love fantasy. I love costumes. Met like-minded people there (and my husband) who roped me into White Wolf's Mind's Eye Theater. Then eventually into tabletop games. There's also something to be said about rules systems. I love to roleplay, but dear gawd do I find D&D/PF/d20 systems really overwhelming! Back in the day, that's what my husband and friends were trying to get me to play and admittedly it was a struggle for me. If you're trying to acclimate a female friend/girlfriend to tabletop gaming, keep in mind they might be getting lost in the rules. Honestly, scratch that, this isn't gender specific advice. If you're trying to get anyone into gaming, be mindful of the ruleset and if it's causing a stumbling block for enjoyment. Not all rulesets are meant for everyone. I'd recommend starting out on one shots too. Trying to bring in a newbie blind on a long running campaign might feel off putting because they're going to be reeling by the catch up needed to figure out what's going on. Not to mention they'll be lost when the in-jokes inevitably crop up of past misadventures. If you were to ask me, just adding women to the table doesn't change the dynamic of it. The table is directed by the individual idiosyncrasies of the players sitting at it and doesn't have anything to do with their gender.

LochaberAxe said: Does it count if some of your currently all male group choose to play as young female characters? And are just a bit too convincing at role playing :-D I'm only GM... I don't judge! ;-)> This is a puzzling thing to me. I RP male characters all the time. My spouse RPs female characters. Yet this is considered weird by a lot of people. I actually confused a couple members in my guild on Guild Wars 2 when they realized that I, as a player, was female when my main toon was male. "I thought you were a bro!" They make it sound like gender swapping is so hard to roleplay. Kristin's guide to RPing a Character of the Opposite Gender Come up with a character concept, personality, etcetera using your own gender Swap the character's gender Play the character as if the gender swap never happened That's really all there is to it. Gender doesn't mean diddly to Randy or Rosella the Barbarian. They're both equally as likely to swig booze, throw caution to the wind, fly into rages, and beat stuff down into bloody smears on the cobblestones. The only difference between the two is who they hit on at the tavern... maybe. The only time gender really has any forced elements on your character's action is if you're going with a game that's historically accurate and you have to RP a woman who's dealing with all the social oppressions of the previous eras.

Stmpeng MK.1 tankman, I think you're confused. Sexism isn't what you think it means. As for your current predicument. I think the inability to talk to members of the opposite sex in your school is probably going to be a bigger problem than anything else we'd recommend.

Doesn't really explain your overreaction to G G's comment and taking it waaaayyyy out of context. I figured you didn't know the definition. *shrug* Edit: I also don't see how your OP was really tongue in cheek either. It's a valid question which has serious answers to it above.

Stmpeng MK.1 tankman said: ok, thank you, I wasn't saying there WEREN'T female table top gamers, but you don't see them to often, part of it for good reason, the other part, not so much. That reason being?

Tankman, you need to calm down. The only one who's been getting out of line in this thread is you. No one is giving you guff in the thread as I can see it. You can't craft a game to be liked by a gender. Us female gamers sit on the whole spectrum of what we don't or do like when looking for games. We're identical with our male counterparts in that regard and our gender is just happenstance. Instead of trying to craft a game catering to women, cater to a single person. Figure out what sort of game your female friend/love-interest would like to play and go from there.