> Are you telling me that "girl gamer" email was not a
> joke? I thought that was a joke...
> You have got to be kidding. That wasnt real...
Well, Clark, i don't know ;) Sure, our "focus group" wasn't that serious, a
spontaneous event on a
party in my house. ( If anyone been in party in San Francisco area knows what i'm not
taking about
here ;) ) But we have good diversified group of people to ask questions. Mid-tier
professionals from
Sun, Netscape, AOL, Stanford students, VCs, stock analysts, lawyers consisted of
playing
males, playing females, aggressive non-player females, aggressive non-player males, and
uber-aggresive player host ;) What should be interesting for you as a businesmen as
that all females
on that party had yearly income ranging from 120 000$ a year to 1 000 000$+ a year.
Believe me,
if they wanted to buy some D&D stuff the liked, they more then easily could afford it.
Point is -
they don't.
As i mentioned earlier, orientation on female audience paid off big time in computer
gaming. Maybe
D&D is already mature enough to capitalize on this, may its still too "hobby". BTW
online RPG hit
EverQuest wasn't so popular for its RPG qualities (which imho he had none) as for sexy
female
outfits, which surprisingly attracted both sides! (one to watch, other to wear ). In
my old EQ days
lots of female players mentioned they would die for an option in EQ to wear different
dresses, trade
them, design them etc. Which IMHO goes perfectly well with medieval fashion and
nobility. Most of EQ
female players i knew worn armour pieces not from AC bonus perspective, but solely
from "how will it
look on me" perspective, discarding chainmail for more "sexy" looking leather.
I strongly believe that illustrated medieval fashion source book would be a blast for
all audiences.
Right now one technique i devised when i have to recruit non-player female into D&D is
that I begin
explanation not from PH or other D&D basics. I simply show the awesome (!!!)
illustration pages in
"Faith & Avatars" and simply say "You will look like this when you play". So far this
beginning
given me at least +4 circumstance bonus of the following Diplomacy check.
- Max
P.S. What cracked me up is mounting discussion of bloodthirsty wives. What wound's
people use as an
argument when they "holy beliefs" are challenged.... That's hilarious! If my loved one
would need to
kill every week and start slashing strangers throats I would consider this a sign that
emergency
visit to flower or jewelry shop is in order. ;) May ladies are simply pissed off they
husbands spend
too
much time on that silly D&D game and don't pay enough attention to them? ;))) [Just
kidding!]
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