February 1, 2019 • 62 mins
Tracy V. Wilson of Stuff You Missed in History Class stops by to discuss the world of tabletop games.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. Today, I'm joined by someone whose voice
you might recognize, the one Tracy V. Wilson, co host
(00:26):
of the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class. Thank
you so much for joining us. Tracy, thank you for
having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited
to have you. And today we're talking about something we
both really enjoy. Tabletop gaming. That's true, it's gonna be
really fun and peek behind the scenes. I used to
produce and edit a show that Tracy and Holly hosted
(00:47):
previously called pop Stuff. Yes, were you? Were you our
producer when we did the episode that we did about
tabletop games way back then? I was. I was, so,
we're like coming full sir. Cool. Yeah, we had some
some shifts and who did what and I couldn't remember
exactly where that fell in the timeline. Yeah, yeah, I'm
(01:07):
pretty sure as the producer of the entire time of
that show. It was really fun to work on too.
It was it was a fun deal. It was. Today,
as I mentioned, we are talking about tabletop gaming, and
I think it would probably be a good thing to
start with a definition. Um when we say tabletop games,
what do we mean? What does that encompass? I think
(01:32):
it encompasses everything that's meant to be played around a table,
So it goes from card games to role playing games,
to board games, to anything that you would get in
a group and play around a table. I also know
that some people have kind of a more exclusive definition
than that, and they only want to include the ones
(01:54):
that they think are real games. That sounds very similar
to like the whole video game debate of like the
real exactly. Yeah, it has. Sometimes you will talk to
folks that they don't want to think that Clue is
a tabletop game because you can just buy that at
the regular toy store, and I think that's a silly argument.
(02:15):
I agree that is very silly. We are a big
tabletop game playing office here. Um we have a tabletop
gaming night once a month at work and a group
of us in office. As you've heard me mentioned before
on the show, I think we are in a Dungeons
and Dragons campaign and I'm about to dungeon master for
the first time. Very nervous, very excited. Both that is,
(02:42):
that's one of the things I'm envious about and not
not working locally to the rest of you, is that
that is the thing that I don't get to participate in. Yeah, well,
if you're ever like next time you're in town, we
should move the date and make it happen. Have Tracy's
sort of one shot expendable character showing up in the campaign.
(03:02):
We can make this happen, Tracy. Um. Yeah, and I
one thing I wanted to note here because we are
going to be looking at diversity and women in tabletop gaming,
but the crew that I play with is about even
in terms of male to female. In fact, I think
it's more female. Generally, we do get a you know,
one shot player come in sometimes it shifts the ratio,
but on on average it's even. It's even. Yeah. I
(03:28):
have three role playing games that I'm playing in right now.
None of them are playing every week, once every two weeks,
and the other two are usually once a month. And
one of the games sometimes I'm the only woman at
the table. It depends a little bit on who's available
that day. One of the others is about a fifty
fifty and my favorite of the games. Not to diss
(03:51):
any of the gms running these games, but my favorite
of the game has four players. Only one is a
man and the guy running the campaign as a man.
But the fact that the men are in the minority
is a nice change of pace in that world for me. Yeah. Um,
and I I'm pretty new to the whole thing. This
(04:12):
This campaign I'm playing with co workers is the first
time I've ever played, so I haven't experienced much outside
of that. I have played online since I started this
in person campaign, So that is an option that it's
a thing. Yeah. My husband runs several campaigns that he
does exclusively online, and he used to run a local
(04:33):
campaign that had mostly local people but a couple of
people who had moved out of state and they were
looped in on Google Hangout or Skype or something similar.
So that is a thing that can be done. There
are whole tools to let people do that more efficiently
and have you know, little figurines on the screen of
where people's characters are and that kind of thing. Cool. Yeah,
(04:56):
we were doing it um on Google Hangouts and I
must slow typer And that was my biggest problem I
encountered was people would get there before me and I'd
have to retype something else. Um. But if if you
don't if you want to play and maybe doing it
in person isn't an option that is something that you
(05:16):
could look into. Yeah, um, what is your history Tracy
and tabletop gaming? How did you get into it? Well,
when I was a kid, we had some of the
standard games that folks often have when their children at home,
like candy Land and Shoots and Ladders and that kind
of thing. But it was really my grandmother had two games.
(05:41):
They were Monopoly and Battleship. And so my brother and
my cousin and I we were the only three cousins
on that side of the family, and every time we
went to visit my grandmother, we would play one of
those games. Although normally, for some reason, it was me
and my cousin gagging up on my brother until he
would get so mad he would throw the board, which
(06:03):
is not a productive way to play a game. No,
it set the stage maybe for later rivalry, but that
was the real starting point. I kind of went on
a journey from there that that was not so much
about tormenting my brother just a little bit. Maybe sometimes. Yeah,
(06:28):
I our work game night, we've banned Monopoly, and uh,
I remember distinctly as a child, I've never wont to
gave Monopoly ever, and I even cheated more than once
and still lost. Monopoly is one of the most maligned games,
I think, and one of the interesting things about it
(06:51):
is that it's based on a game called the Landlords Game,
which was developed by a woman who was developing this
game because she wanted to show the dangers of capitalism.
So it actually had two different sets of rules. One
set of rules was based on this proposed tax change
that was going to be way more equal in the
distribution of wealth, and the other was like the monopolists
(07:14):
rules set, and those rules made meant that, you know,
one person became really really rich and everybody else lost
their money, and the whole idea was to show everybody
that that was but you know, the danger of capitalism.
But when later on first someone stole her idea and
then bought her patent for a tiny amount of money,
(07:35):
they kept only the rules for the capitalists because it's
uh more fun. I guess to play that way. Her
name was Lizzie McGee. There's a whole story there. Yeah, um,
I want to play her version of Monopoly. Yeah. I
like the idea of having a version of Monopoly where
(07:56):
the whole purpose is that everyone winds up with enough money, right,
that's almost difficult for me to imagine. Um. I also
got into tabletop gaming when I was pretty young, although
similar to video games, which I also got into when
I was young, I didn't I wouldn't have called myself
(08:17):
a tabletop gamer until recently, even though it was something
I was doing. UM, I just didn't think of it
in that way. But when I was little, we had
a whole board game closet and I used to semi
look forward to um when the power would go out,
because it meant that my whole family would gather in
(08:38):
the living room and we would usually have a fire,
candles and we would play board games. And there was
something I loved about. There's no TV, no video games.
This is what we're gonna do, And it was one
of the rare times that we would do something together. Yeah.
I think that's one of the coolest things about most
of these games is that I only play them with
(09:01):
people I would also just hang out with. Like, I'm
not going to go play some tabletop games with people
who I actively dislike. Uh, It's it's all about spending
time together and actually having fun, which you're you're wanting
the power to go out story reminds me of and
and kind of going off of that. There are some
(09:23):
benefits of tabletop gaming. Um, it has a couple of
help benefits. It can be a therapeutic activity that is
beneficial for teens or children or adults to learn how
to socialize. I personally got into D and D last
year as a way to help manage my c PTSD,
and I also used it to help me figure out
(09:43):
the ending of the book I was writing. And I
absolutely figured out the ending right away after the first session.
I think because I was playing the main character of
the book and I knew what she would do right away. Yeah,
that's awesome. I didn't ever, I didn't get into gay
mean as a way to deal with my anxiety. But universally,
(10:05):
if I show up at game night and I am
just a ball of anxiety, I feel better by the end. Yeah. Sometimes,
I mean, sometimes it's just that when we are in
this fantasy world, there are predictable rules that govern the world,
and being there is kind of comforting. And then sometimes
it's more like I got to take out my aggression
(10:27):
by lighting some evil things on fire. Yeah, that surprisingly
does help release some aggression I've found. Yeah, another thing
that it does is playing these games can help promote empathy.
It can help kids in the development of memory and
cognitive skills like problem solving. I would also say, especially
(10:50):
in role playing games, creativity, storytelling, teamwork, improvisation, adaptability, and confidence.
I can say confidence. That was a big one for
me playing D and D in the beginning, because I
was so nervous about it. Yeah, I guess my character
does this. But it's been like a year and a
half now, and my I'm very much more like she
(11:13):
throws a bomb at that person. Yeah. Yeah, that just
reminded me of hearing Temple grand In talk about UM.
Temple Grandon is an animal husbandry expert who was also autistic,
and she talked about one of the ways that she
really learned to interact with people was that she and
(11:34):
her family played games when she was little. UM that
involved a lot of rules and a lot of taking
turns and a lot of having sort of predictable actions
that we're supposed to happen, and that really helped her
learn ways to interact with other people. Yeah, Um, I
could see that. Another thing is if you're running the game,
which is sometimes called like GM gamemastering or d M.
(11:58):
In the case of D and D dungeon master, you
can add project management and organizational skills to the mix.
I can say, as I'm preparing to do this right
now so much, yes, and just trying to predict what
a group of very different people is going to do,
and then knowing in the back of my head that
really I can't predict it, try my best. Yeah, it
(12:21):
is like I feel like I'm running a project right now. Yeah.
One of the worst UM tabletop gaming experiences I've ever
had was way back in college where it was everybody's
early time, Like none of us had a lot of
experience either playing the game or running the game. It
was a whole group of very inexperienced people, but the
(12:42):
d M expected us to do something and we just
did not do that thing, and he was completely unprepared
for that eventuality, and then we all died, and then
everyone was mad at everyone, and just that we just
didn't play that again for a while. Yeah, I had
to take a step back. We had a similar experience
(13:03):
happened recently where UM we it was kind of like
the trolley car problem. We were faced with the fact
that either the entire party was going to die or
we were going to fail our mission, and the town
we were supposed to be saving, they were all going
to die, and uh, we chose to save ourselves. And
(13:24):
afterwards we kept kind of mentioning and passing. I can't
stop thinking about that village. And it's an imaginary village,
but you feel it, you get invested in it. Yeah.
We had a really similar thing in one of the
games that I'm playing, which is based on a system
called Fate, And in Fate, your characters have different aspects
and you figure out what they are kind of collaboratively,
(13:47):
and then you your actions in the game a lot
of times are connected to them. And we are in
this sort of post apocalyptic world where we have just
had a series of we show up somewhere a bad
things happening. We fix the bad thing, but at what cost.
And there was one time when the options were we
(14:07):
fail at doing this, or we burn this place down,
and without hesitation, we were like, We're just gonna have
to burn it down. It's the only thing that's gonna work.
I think maybe, um, just in case anyone listening is
unsure of what is involved in playing like D and
d R role playing game. It's essentially somebody designs a
(14:30):
game or you can find pre design games online, and
then you all the players have a character that they
can role play. Some people don't like the actual role
playing bit, but you can act as much as you
want on there. And then you're in a group and
you sort of it's, I don't know, like a board game,
(14:51):
but you're the you're the pieces moving around and talk
with each other and um trying to figure out what
your character would do. And you get missions save a
town from a dragon that sometimes you fail and the
whole town gets burned. It's kind of like when you're
a kid and you are playing Make believe when with
your friends, but there's a structure to kind of guide
(15:14):
your collaborative make believe. Yes, yeah, there there's a lot
of um rules, rule books. Uh, there is some you know,
calculation of of health points and math involved um And
that's one thing which we'll get into more later. But
that's one thing that kept me from it for a
(15:35):
while is because I thought it looked so complicated. Yeah. Yeah,
there are there can be not necessarily, there can be
many different types of dice. Yeah. Oh, Yeah. I asked
for dice for my mom last year for Christmas and
she got me. I must have hundreds of dice she
got me way to I'm very thankful, but it kind
(15:59):
of cracks me up every time. No shortage of dice choices. Nope.
But if we go back to the possible health benefits,
why talking about this matters at all? Another thing it
can do is reduce stress, sort of what we're talking
about before, unless you're playing something like Monopoly or I
would add risk a risk was a very stressful endeavor
for me and my siblings growing up. Yeah. Yeah. My
(16:22):
husband likes to play a game called Spirit Island, and
I love the idea of the game because a lot
of games have this setting where it's sort of like
you're the colonizers and the goal is to colonize this place,
and Spirit Island is the opposite, like you are the
spirits of this island and you're working with its indigenous
inhabitants to drive the colonizer's away. And I'm like, I'm
(16:44):
on board. I'm on board with that, but it's a
game that has so many layers of things going on
that I'm also like, this is a little more complex
that I want to spend my my fun time on. Yeah,
and that's something that I think people who aren't involved
in tabletop gaming might not realize that there are so
many options out there for you. And I have friends
(17:05):
who don't or haven't previously liked tabletop gaming because they're
they don't like competition, they're not competitive stresses them out.
But there are so many games that aren't that way.
And um, we're gonna give some recommendations at the end,
and one of the ones that I'm going to recommend
is it's like more cooperative. Yeah, there's a whole genre
(17:27):
of cooperative games. And if people watch Parks and Wreck
and they've seen that episode about the Cones of dun
Shire and they think that's what all these games are like, Like,
there are games that are kind of like the Cones
of Dunshire. A lot of them are way more chill
and are more like an elegant but challenging, simple system. Right,
(17:49):
I forgot about the Cones of don't dun Shire. I
recently reminded of the thirty Rock version, which is like
colonizers of I don't know, but it's it's sellers of Catan. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
a two thous and three study out of the New
England Journal of Medicine linked playing board games with decreased
(18:10):
risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And I just wanted to
throw this in there in here because I thought it
was so interesting. Students at Gettysburg College use clue as
a way to practice creating an AI. Yeah, that's really cool.
While while we were getting ready for this episode, a
thing that I meant to mention earlier was that there's
also a study about ma jong and older people and
(18:33):
um like people in retirement communities and it helping both
with hand eye coordination and with basically having less stress
and more social activity, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. Yeah,
if we look at numbers, it seems that more and
more people are getting into tabletop gaming. If you look
(18:54):
at the hobby gaming market, which includes collectibles like Pokemon
cards and dice, board games, role playing games, and miniatures,
between sales doubled money wise, that's an increase from eight
hundred million to one point four billion. And I do
want to mention about miniatures here. So if you're playing
(19:14):
something like D and D, you can get these um miniatures.
They're little figurines and you can use that to represent
your character to move around, and that is another area
where you can be I've seen people do amazing artistic
creative stuff. I have my own little miniature. I've painted it.
It's not good, but I had fun doing it. I
have I have my one, uh, sort of adequately painted miniature.
(19:38):
My husband plays some games that are totally based in miniatures,
so he has these whole armies of painted miniatures. He
finds the painting part really relaxing, and he hasn't been
playing them as much recently. And I'm like, there's a
whole we have a whole shelf full of man's over here,
like you're gonna play with that? They're ready to go.
(19:59):
Um And because sort of a way I think to
to see the growth of tabletop gaming is through these
board game cafes and bars, which I have seen more
and more of. Um. There's gin Con, which is the
largest gaming convention in the United States. It's over fifty
years old and attendance broke records. I've never been, Have
(20:24):
you been, Tracy, I have not been. I have been
to other conventions that have tabletop gaming, like it's a
big component. But at about the same time that I
had enough interest and enough different types of games that
I wanted to go to an event just for that.
I also had become way less enamored with giant conventions
(20:46):
and a lot happier at smaller events. One of my favorite,
not even one of my my absolute favorite vacation every
year is that a bunch of friends rents a big
old house out in the poke knows and we go
out there for a long weekend and play a bunch
of games and like hang out and it's awesome. It's
(21:09):
like thirty five people, not thousand people, much more manageable crowdside.
And then also, if you just want to read a book,
nobody's gonna bother you. It's fine, right you can. You
can step away more easily should you so desire. If
we look at the number of female tabletop gamers, data
(21:31):
is difficult to come by, we can safely assume that
more women are playing now than previously, as more people
are playing in general. At gen Con, over half the
speakers were women, and that's huge considering that only one
of the speakers was female. It's not enough, oh no,
(21:51):
And I bet some of you will remember this from
your social media feeds. A panel at gen Con called
writing Women Friendly Comics at first had no women on
the panel. Yeah. Yeah, since I know several game developers,
many of them are women, and they've been doing this
thing where they go and submit a bunch of panels
(22:12):
to conventions and they don't really announce that they are
submitting a whole bunch of panels that only have women
and non binary people on them, just sneaking in there.
And then people show up and it's a panel that
is all women and non binary folks, and they're like, oh,
this is awesome. This is a bunch of women, and
they're talking about something besides being women in this space, right,
(22:33):
because we can talk about other things. It's true, yes,
but that is at least in my head, and I
would guess a lot of people's heads. That's the stereotype.
If you think of a tabletop gamer, it's a youngish
white male. Yeah, And the conventions I have been to
(22:54):
are like, youngish white males are the largest demographic, like
not only demographic, but for sure the biggest one. And
there are a few informal surveys out there that suggest
people who identify as women make up only ten of
board game players and that the majority of the respondents
(23:15):
in these surveys UM are white. Yeah. I always wonder
sort of what we were talking about at the beginning
with video games is how people are defining what counts
as a board game player, because a lot of the
studies that suggest that men are overwhelmingly the people playing
video games are just disregarding the games that are most
(23:38):
popular among women. And so I kind of wonder if
if these definitions are including things like party games that
women might be playing more than they might be playing
you know, Settlers of Ten right there, and maybe so
maybe it might be a little closer. I mean, I know,
as kids, games are for everyone, and then it's it's
(24:00):
an adulthood that suddenly it seems like there is a
world of specialty game stores that um have a largely
often male demographic. Yeah. And while I was looking into
the research for this episode there it's kind of a
new area of academic study. UM. But a lot of
(24:21):
people have been writing about it and are writing about it,
and from what I read, several women said, I know
that this is the stereotype, but that's not been my experience. UM.
I've always had women, people of color playing in my group. Yeah,
which is interesting. Yeah, when it comes to the people
(24:44):
that I personally know and hang out with. UM. But
it's not just an overwhelmingly male scene. It's it's when
I get into a gigantic group of people at something
like a convention, and I just I don't think that's
totally reflective of who's really playing games, right, And I
always think in surveys like the one we're discussing, a
(25:07):
lot of times they're self selecting who's right answer that survey,
it might more likely be this type of like white, young,
white male. UM. But we do have some more concrete
numbers on the development side. Be selling board games in
sixteen were all designed by men, and the nineteen nominees
for Game of the Year awards between of those, none
(25:29):
of them identified as women. And you, Tracy, have put
me in touch with some amazing women in the space,
and we're going to do a whole follow up episode
on the development side of tabletop gaming. I'm very excited
about that. Those are some of my favorite people. I mean,
I'm just gonna go ahead and say thank you. Two
of them are people I talked to literally every day
of my life. Yes, so excited. UM, so so we'll
(25:54):
we'll come back to we'll follow up with that. UM.
For me, when I first got into tabletop gaming, especially
something like D and D, I was very intimidated by it.
I remember distinctly being at dragon Con a couple of
years ago, and UM, me and some new friends were
discussing what kind of games we enjoyed, and when these
(26:16):
new friends of mine, who were all men, asked if
I liked tabletop games like D and D. Before before
he had even finished asking the question, I was frantically
shaking my head. Um. And I have looked back at
that moment. I tried to get to the bottom of
why I felt that way and why I felt so intimidated,
And I do think it's because I thought it was
(26:37):
something for mostly dudes who wouldn't have the patience to
teach me, who wouldn't want to play with me, who
might be sexist or me, and if I did play
with them, and then kind of expect me to just well,
this is the game, it's fun. Um. And like I said,
I also thought I'd be really complicated to get into
and it sort of stressed me out the thought of
(27:00):
acting or improving even though I'm somebody who does that,
like I act and I do improv. For some reason,
the idea of having to do it with a group
of people really made me nervous. But you don't have to.
That is one thing you can do that stuff, uh
to the level of your comfort, right right? Yeah. I
think I had a related but slightly different response to
(27:24):
the same, not exactly the same perception, because in my
college years in early twenties, my gaming life was sort
of rooted in some internalized misogyny because I had that
whole idea that a lot of things that were typically
feminine were bad and that there was some kind of
(27:44):
value in being in quotation marks not like the other girls.
So I was mostly hanging out with men, and I
was mostly hanging out with men because I sort of
felt like somehow women weren't as fun to hang out with.
All of this was incorrect. I'm used out onto like
some amazing friendships because of this like internal baggage, But
(28:05):
that meant that I was mostly hanging out with guys,
and I was mostly hanging out with guys who were
playing a very particular style of of board gaming and
and role playing games specifically, and it wasn't until I
got probably into my thirties that I was like, oh wait,
there is a whole world of games beyond that that
(28:26):
is more welcoming to more types of people than what
was back there before. And you know, then I also
started working on my whole internal life problem, you know,
on step at a time. I had a similar thing
with video games where I felt like it somehow made
me like I wore like a badge of honor that
(28:49):
I was playing these video games with with all men um.
But for me to get into the tabletop gaming, I
do owe a lot of people, some men, some women,
But it's sort of felt like it happened all at
once that everybody was telling me, You've got to play
this board game that I've never heard of, and you
gotta play this board game that I've never heard of.
I don't know if there was just some surge of
(29:10):
popularity somewhere, but I owe a lot of friends for
introducing me to all of these amazing games and and
sort of to this whole world that was yeah, yeah,
And you and I are not the only ones who
have felt that tabletop games were not for us. And
(29:30):
we'll get into some reasons why after a quick break
for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
Like a lot of our media, tabletop games do not
have the best track record with positive female portrayals and
(29:55):
providing diverse characters games that have a les her amount
of female characters, if any. UM. We mentioned in our
episode around female action figures that Asboro gotten some hot
water for leaving the female character ray out of the
newest version of Star Wars Monopoly, and my favorite part
of that was their response, She'll be another games. It's
(30:18):
not a great answer, We'll put her in a future game.
She's not here now. And it was they replaced her
with a stormtrooper. It was a character. She's a she's
a big character for those that don't know. UM. For
her not to be included was a pretty big deal.
Perhaps there are female characters, but they are overly sexualized
(30:42):
or they are relegated to traditionally female less active roles. Yeah,
it's like you'll have a game that's based on cards
with characters drawn on them, and for some reason the
women are all teachers and secretaries. Right would that be?
I can't imagine or um. I always love the critique
(31:04):
of when armors so sexualized and clearly that's not going
to help you in the fighting situation. Um, it's kind
of a running joke, and yet we still continue to
see it. And I will say, I got no problem.
If you wanna, in a game like D and D
create a sexy character, I'm I'm all for it. But
if if that's like we're seeing this in the official
(31:25):
media of the game, then that is a problem. Instruction
manuals have been called out to for using he to
refer to all players. And this is improving, but slowly,
and we have got a long way, though, because some
of the first articles written by playtesters about D and
D in the seventies came with gems like this one.
(31:49):
There will be four major groups in which women may enter.
They may be fighters, magic users, thieves, and clerics. They
may progress to the level of men in the area
of magic and in some ways surpass men as thieves.
Elvin women may arise especially to high levels, and clerics
to the elves only as fighters are women clearly behind
(32:09):
men in all cases, but even they have attributes that
their male characters do not. And this article goes on
to say that female characters true strength lies with the
beauty part of their Christmas score. So D and D
your character has these six ability scores. One of them
is charisma. As far as I know, the beauty thing
(32:29):
isn't there anymore. No. Well, and also now women don't
or female characters don't innately get one less strength because
they are female, right, which is a positive. But this,
this beauty part of the Christmas score that is no
longer with us, gave women female characters abilities such as
(32:50):
charm men, seduction, horrid beauty, and worship. Yeah, we don't
need that. No. There were also campaign settings. I mean,
you can still go and buy copies of old campaign
settings from earlier versions of D and D, and sometimes
there are guidelines on how to adapt them to the
newest rules system. And you can find some where it's like, okay,
(33:14):
all of the characters who are all presumed to me
to be male, walk into this room where there is
a siren who is going to charm any but everybody,
and like it's now the bad the bad guy is
a woman, and the woman's power is that she's just
way too sexy, and oh yeah, the newest version did
(33:37):
come up as an example of a positive improvement when
I was researching this and that it suggests that players
should think outside of the binary box. Essentially, um, you
can be you can create whatever character you want to create. Um,
it doesn't have to be human, it could be all
kinds of things. In the kickstarter for one deck dungeon
(34:00):
and made dollars, it's starting goal was twenty dollars, so
way surpast that. End of note, all of the images
of playable characters were of strong, diverse women. But of
course not everyone was excited about this Summer of yours
on Amazon called the game sexist or labeled it as
(34:22):
miss injury. It looks cool, yes, well, and we keep
seeing that same basic thing play out where uh, something
will come along that has an all female cast and
it will break box office records or become a best
seller or whatever, and then there will be this whole
(34:42):
conversation of can women really dominate at the box office?
Why we keep having this conversation? I know, I that
is a pet peeve of mine. Back to the tabletop
gaming pasco host Kristen and I went to this women
in Gaming event at the Museum of Design Atlanta a
couple of years ago. You can find the video online
(35:04):
on YouTube, and it was one of my favorite. One
of my favorite parts of this whole exhibit was a
section on old board games and of the games that
included women, so many of them were women in domestic roles.
Are women trying to find a husband before the other players?
That was how you won as you found a husband first.
(35:25):
One in particular, featured all the jobs that a woman
could have in this board game's mind at the time,
and they were secretary, teacher, flight attendant, nurse, princess, or ballerina.
All right, then, yeah, nothing wrong with any of those occupations.
(35:45):
But I feel that women perhaps can do other types
of things. I think possibly, like design games. Possibly. And
we've said it time and time again on this show,
but seeing yourself represented is important. That's not even just
me saying it. There have been studies that show that
(36:09):
bear that out. Um, not seeing yourself can lead to
feelings of disempowerment, invisibility, or insignificance on an individual level,
on a community level, and it can lead to decisions
made based on who we see or don't see on
a societal level, like people in power will make decisions
based on perceived like representation, how they think that must
(36:33):
be the truth in society. So if all you're seeing
our white men, then you're going to make decisions based
on the fact that there are way more white men
than there actually are. Yeah. Yeah, And plus, think of
all the cool and diverse media that we're missing out on.
There's a lot of it. There is, there is. And
(36:55):
there was this study that you found Tracy looking into
gender and racial representation and when it comes to the
illustrators and designers of the top two hundred board games
as ranked by Board Game Geek. And it came out
like this month, December twenty so it's pretty recent. Yeah.
You and I had scheduled this recording and I saw it.
(37:15):
I saw people talking about it on Twitter and said, Okay,
need to bring this up for that episode. Excellent timing. Yeah,
And what it found is probably what you might expect.
The dime designers and illustrators were overwhelmingly white men of
these two hundred games, and that this was reflected in
the artwork, which disproportionately is of white men. The numbers
(37:40):
on this very depending on the source, but it also
found a majority of the players were also white men.
The author does acknowledge the limitation of this work and
calls for more research, but it's definitely worth checking out
if this is something that is at all of interest
to you. Yeah, because it's one of those things that's
drawing from board game geek as a resource. If you're
(38:01):
not familiar with that. It's sort of like if you
were trying to look at trends in movies based on
their where they were ranked on IMDb. Um, it's like
that would be sort of like a comparable thing. So
there are a whole lot of movies out in the
world that for whatever reason, are not up at the
top of IMDb. So it gets a little bit of
a skewed data set to start with, but still super interesting. Yeah,
(38:28):
and it it references a study that came out a
couple of years ago that found that board games are
more likely to feature a sheep on the cover than
a woman. And this study found that, at least according
to to the data um the study author was looking at,
that is true, aliens and barnyard animals like sheep grace
(38:51):
the cover art of board games at a higher rate
than women do. Yeah, some of those games are great, Like,
no criticizing over those games as a thing, but it
is a pattern a little disturbing a little bit, just
a little bit. Something else I found a lot of
accounts of online but have never personally run into myself
(39:13):
is women running into a lot of misogyny when playing
an RPG game like D and D. Male players over
sexualizing the female character that the female player is playing.
Are are maybe themselves playing a female character and then
over sexualizing her or making her do stupid things things
like that. UM, And I know I do know people
(39:34):
personally who have lost friends over things like this. I've
never experienced it personally, but I do know people that have. UM.
There are a couple of bars in Atlanta that do
D and D nights where you can drop in and play,
and I've done it once, so it's more likely to
be strangers that you're playing with, and I had a
good time when I did it, but I generally avoid
(39:56):
them because I do have this suspicion that I would
run into something like that. Are people who will pick
fights over the rules or um. Like you said, it's
a fun thing, and I think with friends it's much
more relaxed. But I have noticed I've gone out of
(40:17):
my way to avoid going to them, even if I
think they I want to play, and I think they
could be fun, because I do have this fear that
I would run into this thing that we're describing right now. Yeah, yeah,
especially since I know so many women who develop games.
A lot of them go to game conventions all the
time and are running games for a ton of people
(40:39):
all the time because they're they're demonstrating their game, and
so I've heard a lot of stories about that kind
of you know, either comments that are inappropriate or sexualizing
encounters between characters in a game when that's not really necessary.
And I think because I play almost exclusively with people
(40:59):
that I'm already ends with and want to hang out with,
I don't really have that experience the thing that I
do have sometimes, even though, like most of the guys
I know, try really hard to be self aware and
to to not just steamroll over everyone in the room,
especially when I'm at a game where I'm either the
only woman at the table or there's only one other
(41:21):
woman at the table, sometimes it does feel like the
guys are dominating the situation. Um and and normally if
we're like, hey, guys, they're also here. We also can
help make the decision of what we're gonna do against
this monster. Uh, they'll be like, all right, So that's
the thing. It's a process though. Yeah, and that's a
(41:42):
good point because I have definitely encountered being talked over
interrupted by dudes when I'm playing UM, and I think
it is a combination of me not having the confidence
to speak up as loudly as they do, but also yeah,
just kind of a lack of awareness. But I think
if you're playing with someone who is new, then maybe
(42:05):
keep that in mind, especially if you're running the game,
just checking in to see maybe this person just needs
a little more encouragement or needs sort of as a push,
because I'm a quiet person in general, and a lot
of times I'm I'm happy to um let other people
be the loud ones. But at the same time, if
(42:29):
I am trying to say something, I should like to
be heard, right. Several articles I read encouraged dungeon masters.
So again, these folks that are running the D and
D campaigns to make sure that they are putting female
characters and positions of power in the game that they're designing,
instead of relegating them to things like barmaid. I've also
(42:52):
read plenty of accounts of female d M s facing
constant questioning by male players, which does not surprise me
at all. I've never seen it, but I believe it completely. Similarly,
several women I was reading accounts about online with it.
They would go into gaming stores and almost immediately would
(43:12):
be asked if they were shopping for their boyfriend, if
they need any help, the assumption that a woman couldn't
possibly be there for herself. Yeah, when I lived in Nashville,
there was a place that I went. There was a
combination games, comics, and music store, and the first few
times that I went in there, the assumption was that
(43:32):
I was there for the music, which sometimes I was
there for the music, but I was also there for
the comics and the games. And I remember and went
walking in. I mean, this has been well over a
decade ago, so like, don't go find that place and
yell at them. But I remember walking in at one
point and somebody being like, the music's over there, and
I was there to pick up my weekly pulls of
(43:55):
my comic books. It's like, just not no, um, I've
I've definitely experienced that in the realm of comics too,
and I've spoke about on this show before. But what
really bothers me is once you've sort of passed this
test and proved that, oh, yes, I do read these things,
(44:18):
then I almost always would get asked out, is this
your only series comic books? Ah? Sometimes I would just
start pretending like, no, this isn't for being be left alone.
Another thing we have to talk about, unfortunately, is sexual harassment.
(44:42):
In A Canadian tabletop gamer named Emily Garland posted a
piece on Tumbler called tabletop Gaming has a white male
terrorist problem. As you can imagine from the title, it
got a lot of attention. I remember when this came out.
Do you not remember it? Yeah? Well, and I remember,
(45:02):
in a good way a lot of the men in
my life passing it around amongst themselves, like, guys, this
is a problem that we need to proactively be handling.
So go on, Yeah, that's great, um. She wrote in
this Tumbler post, white male terrorism is the white underbelly
of the gaming community, meant to terrify and disrupt the
(45:22):
lives of those who threaten the status quo by race, gender,
or sexuality. And you can find the article online if
you want to read it. It's pretty upsetting, but it
is worth a read. She identifies three main concerns sexual harassment,
exclusion of women who are vocal about marginalization and unfair treatment,
and a failure of the tabletop gaming industry as a
(45:44):
whole to speak out about things like gamer gates and
she won a sexual harassment lawsuit against a gaming store
that she worked in that same year. Yeah. Yeah, it's
not a pleasant read at all. It is not um.
Definitely know that going in, but it's it's worth reading,
(46:04):
especially if you're somebody that is a part of the
tabletop gaming community. I would say check it out. And
something I saw in a lot of places that so
often the response to all of this everything we're talking about,
UM is but from people who don't want the community
(46:25):
to change. UM, go play something else if it bothers.
You don't make this fun hobby political. But it's about
making this fun hobby uh and beneficial activity more inclusive
and better for everybody. And in light of that, we
have some recommendations and resources for you. But first one
(46:47):
more quick break for word from our sponsor. H we're back,
Thank you sponsor, and we're back with some game recommendations.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love
(47:09):
pandemic and this is so good. It is so good UM,
and it's hard and I love it. There's like eight
ways to lose, an only one way to win. And
it's cooperative too, like we were staying in the beginning. Um.
Some people who don't like competition, you are competing against
the game. It's pretty tense. I'm not gonna like sugarcoat it.
But you aren't competing against your friends, right. Your friends
(47:29):
are working with you to try to stop the illness.
One thing I love about this game is UM. A
lot of times when I'll have people over and we
have all this entertainment available to us, friends of mine
who aren't that in two tabletop gaming in general will
request that we play Pandemic. It is like a fun
(47:51):
crowd pleaser. It has an equal number of male to
female characters who aren't sexualized. They're dressed appropriately for their job. UM,
and the jobs are things like scientists and quarantine specialists.
It's so fun. You can play it with just two
players too. That's another thing I love about it. I
have lost it spectacularly. I have two by once. Um,
(48:14):
like we were doing fine, UM, and I don't want
to go too much in the mechanics here. But basically
we drew one card and we went from fine too
we lost. Yeah. I think this was like three turns
into the game and we just had really bad luck
and it was like this, this outbreak has spread and
the world is over. I think. I think one of
(48:34):
the mechanics is you have these little black cubes that
represent the the illness, and if you run out of them,
game over. And we ran out of them and just
an amazingly short amount of time. Yeah, and I am
have lost these like little tiny cubes, and I've lost
one in the game. The difficulty level is such that
(48:56):
it comes close enough that I made a note saying
I am missing one of these cubes. One. So if
that's what it comes down to, I want everyone to
know that you have one cube that is not there. Yeah,
I gotta have a couple of caveats with the one
that I'm going to recommend next. Because it is based
(49:18):
on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, it's called Marrying Mr Darcy.
It's a card game. Since it is based on Pride
and Prejudice. All the characters are white and the goal
of the game is to marry the right person. So like,
let's just get that out on the table. However, it
has the same sense of humor that Jane Austen's writing does,
(49:41):
so the it's a card game, and the cards have
just these very rye witty instructions of of what's going
on in the game. Um, you also do not have
to get married in order to win the game. It
is completely possible to win the game by not getting married,
and it is it's accessible to people even if they
(50:05):
have no familiarity with Jane Austen. So when I very
first moved to Massachusetts, my husband, who at that time
was my boyfriend, had gone out of town and I
didn't really know many people here very well yet, and
this friend of his said, come over and play games
with us. And I was like, I'm gonna take marrying
Mr Darcy, because I thought when he said us, he
meant me and my wife, but what he really meant
(50:28):
was me and these two other dudes. So it became
me and these three dudes playing a game based on
pride and prejudice, and everybody had a great time. So
that sounds wonderful. It was great. My friends would love
that game for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean if if
(50:48):
I totally get why, like people might not be into
the idea of playing a game where all the characters
are white and the goal is to get married. Like
I get like that might not be for you. But
if that's for you, and it's probably really for you.
I have another one that UM is a lot more
diverse in its representation, and it is called The T
(51:09):
Dragon Society Card Game, and it's based on a graphic
novel by Katie O'Neill that is called The T Dragon Society,
and that graphic novel is full of LGBTQ characters and
characters of color. And this is another card game where
your goal is to raise these little T dragons. And
the dragons are adorable and the art is adorable, and
(51:29):
the characters the more humanoid characters. One of them is
not strictly human, but they are also adorable. UM. And
even if you're not playing with little kids, I think
the age range is ten and up. UM. If if
you are into the idea of taking care of some
adorable little dragons, you can be a room for like
a table full of adults, and it will still be great. UM.
(51:54):
One that my friends love UM is called Dixit, which
I describe as apples apples but with to full art.
And again, this is this group of friends particularly that
loves it. They don't really like tabletop games in general,
they don't like the competitive aspect of it, but they
love this one and they love the art of it.
And it's really I find it really funny because I
(52:14):
get frustrated playing with them. I I also get frustrated
playing Apple Sapples because I'm very I'm very competitive, and
I I'll get angry if I can't see what you're seeing, Like,
explain to me how that represents being lost, please, yeum.
But they all love it, and both dixit and Apples
(52:37):
to Apples can be really interesting to play when you
when you either know everyone at the table really really
well or when you don't know everyone at the table
really really well, because if you know too people and
you don't know everyone else, then like you might know
enough about how that person thinks to to figure out
what they're doing a lot more easily. Yeah, it's one
(53:00):
of this thing. I've known this this group of friends
since elementary school, and for some reason, I can't get
a beat what they're seeing when they're looking at these
beautifully the art is really beautiful with that it is.
It's beautiful and kind of abstract. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
also love Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which
is a game where your your group explores a haunted
(53:22):
house together and about halfway through you trigger a haunt,
and depending on a couple of circumstances, one of the
players becomes a trader and you're sort of working against
that player and then whatever demon, haunt, whatever it is
that they're working with um and there's something like sixty scenarios. So, Annie,
do you know about Betrayal Legacy? I do, but only
(53:47):
a little bit. Tell me about it. I can tell
you about it because I play tested that game. Did
you really? I did? I am listed in the credits.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I am really sided to.
I had actually been like, should I talk about betrayal
talk about Betrayal Legacy you and then you win and
put it on the list. I'm so excited. Okay, So
(54:08):
what Annie just said, Like, that's that's still the basic mechanics.
You have a haunted house that you're exploring, and something
happens that triggers a haunt, and somebody who is playing
with you becomes a trader, and the betrayal legacy works
the same way that other legacy games do, which is
that as you play, the game itself changes, so you
might have like the first time you play, this is
(54:32):
made up. I'm not spoiling anything in the game, but
like the first time you play, a particular character dies
in a particular room, Well, that room might now the
next time you play have something different about it because
that happened in that room the last time. And so
it is I think thirteen chapters. Each chapter takes place
(54:52):
in a different year, so you're in this haunted house
through time, and then once you get all through those
Third Team sort of found National Games, there is a
free play mode where you can play all of these
other scenarios in the same game. So, because it's a
horror game, it does have some you know, some of
the same horror tropes that I think some people might
(55:14):
not enjoy. Like if you're not going to enjoy a
game that has a bunch of murder in it, then right, um,
maybe not this one for you. But if you are
into horror movies and horrors books and settings that are
full of ghosts and monsters and scary things, then yeah,
I highly recommend it. Yeah, I have to check out
Legacy now. I've been wanting to, but now I've got to.
(55:36):
I've go our rotation at game night here and it
that is the perfect launching point for our next section,
which is resources, because recently we did play Betrayal at
the House on the Hill and it's kind of a
rule here. And it also just kind of makes sense
that if it's your game, then you're the one that's
(55:56):
sort of explains it. Make sure it runs smoothly. It's
my game, um, and people voted to play it, but
I hadn't played it in a while, so I wanted
to brush up on the rules. And one of the
first things I did was I got online and watched
the Tabletop with Will Wheaton episode on playing Betrayal at
the House on the Hill to refresh my memory. And
(56:17):
this is an online video series. I watch it on
YouTube where people play tabletop games. A lot of times
there are celebrities and it sounds boring, I know, but
it's usually pretty entertaining and it's it's just good to
see people actually playing it because reading the instructions can
feel really dense, especially on a game like the trail
at the House on the Hill um and seeing it
kind of play out for me at least is very helpful. Yeah.
(56:41):
I have found that very helpful for seeing how the
game is played when there's not somebody experienced around to
tell you how the game is played, and then it
can be super entertaining. Sometimes the things that happen as
they are playing are hilarious. Yeah, I seem to recall
when they were playing a Ticket to the story I
(57:01):
was gonna tell's. I guess it's well known among the
tabletop but I remember it vividly as I think it's
one of those like this disaster happens in the middle
of the game, and then there is a slow motion
replay of the disaster. We'll go check out the episode
on Ticket to Ride if you want to find out
(57:22):
what that disaster was. On top of that, there's so
many things out There's so many things. There's podcast, Twitch channels,
YouTube shows. You've got Becca Scott over at the Twitch
channel Game the Game, Brittany Beau or Bibo over a game,
wire board game Breakfast on the YouTube channel the Dice Tower.
The amount of content out there on D and D
alone is staggering. So there are if you're intimidated or
(57:48):
you feel like you would just you you would feel
better if you had visual examples or just hearing people
talk about playing. There there's stuff for you out there. Yeah.
And if just watching or listening to someone's role playing
campaign sounds interesting to you, there are options for that too, Yes,
(58:10):
there are. I've thought about. I don't want to turn
it into work is a thing, but I thought about
recording our D n D sessions with our office campaign
just because Yeah, they quite interest thought about. Yeah, I've
thought about pitching some kind of RPG podcast, And because
I have had too much other podcast work to do,
(58:31):
that's never been a thing that's come to fruition. I
would be so into that. Um. There's also Contesta, which
is a nonprofit founded in twelve to make the tabletop
gaming space for marginalized folks more diverse and providing a
space for them to run games. So if you're interested
in running a game, you can check them out and
(58:52):
getting involved in this at all. They have a lot
of opportunities around that. So I I feel like we're
about at the end of this exploration into tabletop gaming.
Think so, I think so to wrap things up there,
there's a lot of things going on in the world
of tabletop gaming, and there are clearly areas where the
(59:13):
industry can improve. And it makes me sad that people
have been turned away from something that can be so
fun and perhaps physically and mentally beneficial because they didn't
feel welcome. So I'm really hoping that that will change,
and that maybe maybe somebody listening to this who's been
interested in it but hasn't done it for one reason
(59:36):
or the other, maybe this episode has inspired you to
go check it out. Yeah, even if you are not
really into the idea of going to a gigantic convention
and spending the whole weekend there, a lot of times
the people that actually developed these games are working on
the dealer's floor at booths like with their games to
personally show you how to play, or somebody that they
(59:57):
know really well is is going to personally show you
how to game play the game. So at least doing
a walk through and seeing what games are rein played
and what looks fun can be really awesome. Yeah, because
as we said, there are so many games out there,
all kinds of games that you may be unaware of,
but there are options, options, options, and we will follow
(01:00:21):
up with an episode about the development aspect of gaming,
so look out for that um in the meantime. Thank
you so much Tracy for joining us. This has been
such a lovely conversation. Thank you. I've had a really
good time. Yeah, I really want to play some games.
Now we got to go back to work. The alas,
(01:00:45):
Where can people find you? Tracy Well, I co host
Stuff You Missed in History Class with Holly Fry and
so the easiest way to get me is that the
Stuff you miss in History Class email, which is history
podcast at how stuff Works dot com. And then we're
all over social media at ms in History. I'm also
(01:01:06):
personally on Twitter, but I'm often not looking at my mentions.
I'm the same. So yeah, sometimes I'll see that somebody
has said something like asked me a question or said
something nice, and I'm like, I did not that was
a week ago. Whoops. Yeah, I really have to build
myself up to go on social media. I do. I
(01:01:26):
don't want that to cheer you from contacting me, but
it's like a once a week here we go. I
spend a lot of time just scrolling to the top
of the Twitter feed and being like, what's happening right now? Okay,
putting this away right. You can also email this show
at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
(01:01:47):
can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and
on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as
always to our producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you
for listening to pay to Go on
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. Today, I'm joined by someone whose voice
you might recognize, the one Tracy V. Wilson, co host
(00:26):
of the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class. Thank
you so much for joining us. Tracy, thank you for
having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited
to have you. And today we're talking about something we
both really enjoy. Tabletop gaming. That's true, it's gonna be
really fun and peek behind the scenes. I used to
produce and edit a show that Tracy and Holly hosted
(00:47):
previously called pop Stuff. Yes, were you? Were you our
producer when we did the episode that we did about
tabletop games way back then? I was. I was, so,
we're like coming full sir. Cool. Yeah, we had some
some shifts and who did what and I couldn't remember
exactly where that fell in the timeline. Yeah, yeah, I'm
(01:07):
pretty sure as the producer of the entire time of
that show. It was really fun to work on too.
It was it was a fun deal. It was. Today,
as I mentioned, we are talking about tabletop gaming, and
I think it would probably be a good thing to
start with a definition. Um when we say tabletop games,
what do we mean? What does that encompass? I think
(01:32):
it encompasses everything that's meant to be played around a table,
So it goes from card games to role playing games,
to board games, to anything that you would get in
a group and play around a table. I also know
that some people have kind of a more exclusive definition
than that, and they only want to include the ones
(01:54):
that they think are real games. That sounds very similar
to like the whole video game debate of like the
real exactly. Yeah, it has. Sometimes you will talk to
folks that they don't want to think that Clue is
a tabletop game because you can just buy that at
the regular toy store, and I think that's a silly argument.
(02:15):
I agree that is very silly. We are a big
tabletop game playing office here. Um we have a tabletop
gaming night once a month at work and a group
of us in office. As you've heard me mentioned before
on the show, I think we are in a Dungeons
and Dragons campaign and I'm about to dungeon master for
the first time. Very nervous, very excited. Both that is,
(02:42):
that's one of the things I'm envious about and not
not working locally to the rest of you, is that
that is the thing that I don't get to participate in. Yeah, well,
if you're ever like next time you're in town, we
should move the date and make it happen. Have Tracy's
sort of one shot expendable character showing up in the campaign.
(03:02):
We can make this happen, Tracy. Um. Yeah, and I
one thing I wanted to note here because we are
going to be looking at diversity and women in tabletop gaming,
but the crew that I play with is about even
in terms of male to female. In fact, I think
it's more female. Generally, we do get a you know,
one shot player come in sometimes it shifts the ratio,
but on on average it's even. It's even. Yeah. I
(03:28):
have three role playing games that I'm playing in right now.
None of them are playing every week, once every two weeks,
and the other two are usually once a month. And
one of the games sometimes I'm the only woman at
the table. It depends a little bit on who's available
that day. One of the others is about a fifty
fifty and my favorite of the games. Not to diss
(03:51):
any of the gms running these games, but my favorite
of the game has four players. Only one is a
man and the guy running the campaign as a man.
But the fact that the men are in the minority
is a nice change of pace in that world for me. Yeah. Um,
and I I'm pretty new to the whole thing. This
(04:12):
This campaign I'm playing with co workers is the first
time I've ever played, so I haven't experienced much outside
of that. I have played online since I started this
in person campaign, So that is an option that it's
a thing. Yeah. My husband runs several campaigns that he
does exclusively online, and he used to run a local
(04:33):
campaign that had mostly local people but a couple of
people who had moved out of state and they were
looped in on Google Hangout or Skype or something similar.
So that is a thing that can be done. There
are whole tools to let people do that more efficiently
and have you know, little figurines on the screen of
where people's characters are and that kind of thing. Cool. Yeah,
(04:56):
we were doing it um on Google Hangouts and I
must slow typer And that was my biggest problem I
encountered was people would get there before me and I'd
have to retype something else. Um. But if if you
don't if you want to play and maybe doing it
in person isn't an option that is something that you
(05:16):
could look into. Yeah, um, what is your history Tracy
and tabletop gaming? How did you get into it? Well,
when I was a kid, we had some of the
standard games that folks often have when their children at home,
like candy Land and Shoots and Ladders and that kind
of thing. But it was really my grandmother had two games.
(05:41):
They were Monopoly and Battleship. And so my brother and
my cousin and I we were the only three cousins
on that side of the family, and every time we
went to visit my grandmother, we would play one of
those games. Although normally, for some reason, it was me
and my cousin gagging up on my brother until he
would get so mad he would throw the board, which
(06:03):
is not a productive way to play a game. No,
it set the stage maybe for later rivalry, but that
was the real starting point. I kind of went on
a journey from there that that was not so much
about tormenting my brother just a little bit. Maybe sometimes. Yeah,
(06:28):
I our work game night, we've banned Monopoly, and uh,
I remember distinctly as a child, I've never wont to
gave Monopoly ever, and I even cheated more than once
and still lost. Monopoly is one of the most maligned games,
I think, and one of the interesting things about it
(06:51):
is that it's based on a game called the Landlords Game,
which was developed by a woman who was developing this
game because she wanted to show the dangers of capitalism.
So it actually had two different sets of rules. One
set of rules was based on this proposed tax change
that was going to be way more equal in the
distribution of wealth, and the other was like the monopolists
(07:14):
rules set, and those rules made meant that, you know,
one person became really really rich and everybody else lost
their money, and the whole idea was to show everybody
that that was but you know, the danger of capitalism.
But when later on first someone stole her idea and
then bought her patent for a tiny amount of money,
(07:35):
they kept only the rules for the capitalists because it's
uh more fun. I guess to play that way. Her
name was Lizzie McGee. There's a whole story there. Yeah, um,
I want to play her version of Monopoly. Yeah. I
like the idea of having a version of Monopoly where
(07:56):
the whole purpose is that everyone winds up with enough money, right,
that's almost difficult for me to imagine. Um. I also
got into tabletop gaming when I was pretty young, although
similar to video games, which I also got into when
I was young, I didn't I wouldn't have called myself
(08:17):
a tabletop gamer until recently, even though it was something
I was doing. UM, I just didn't think of it
in that way. But when I was little, we had
a whole board game closet and I used to semi
look forward to um when the power would go out,
because it meant that my whole family would gather in
(08:38):
the living room and we would usually have a fire,
candles and we would play board games. And there was
something I loved about. There's no TV, no video games.
This is what we're gonna do, And it was one
of the rare times that we would do something together. Yeah.
I think that's one of the coolest things about most
of these games is that I only play them with
(09:01):
people I would also just hang out with. Like, I'm
not going to go play some tabletop games with people
who I actively dislike. Uh, It's it's all about spending
time together and actually having fun, which you're you're wanting
the power to go out story reminds me of and
and kind of going off of that. There are some
(09:23):
benefits of tabletop gaming. Um, it has a couple of
help benefits. It can be a therapeutic activity that is
beneficial for teens or children or adults to learn how
to socialize. I personally got into D and D last
year as a way to help manage my c PTSD,
and I also used it to help me figure out
(09:43):
the ending of the book I was writing. And I
absolutely figured out the ending right away after the first session.
I think because I was playing the main character of
the book and I knew what she would do right away. Yeah,
that's awesome. I didn't ever, I didn't get into gay
mean as a way to deal with my anxiety. But universally,
(10:05):
if I show up at game night and I am
just a ball of anxiety, I feel better by the end. Yeah. Sometimes,
I mean, sometimes it's just that when we are in
this fantasy world, there are predictable rules that govern the world,
and being there is kind of comforting. And then sometimes
it's more like I got to take out my aggression
(10:27):
by lighting some evil things on fire. Yeah, that surprisingly
does help release some aggression I've found. Yeah, another thing
that it does is playing these games can help promote empathy.
It can help kids in the development of memory and
cognitive skills like problem solving. I would also say, especially
(10:50):
in role playing games, creativity, storytelling, teamwork, improvisation, adaptability, and confidence.
I can say confidence. That was a big one for
me playing D and D in the beginning, because I
was so nervous about it. Yeah, I guess my character
does this. But it's been like a year and a
half now, and my I'm very much more like she
(11:13):
throws a bomb at that person. Yeah. Yeah, that just
reminded me of hearing Temple grand In talk about UM.
Temple Grandon is an animal husbandry expert who was also autistic,
and she talked about one of the ways that she
really learned to interact with people was that she and
(11:34):
her family played games when she was little. UM that
involved a lot of rules and a lot of taking
turns and a lot of having sort of predictable actions
that we're supposed to happen, and that really helped her
learn ways to interact with other people. Yeah, Um, I
could see that. Another thing is if you're running the game,
which is sometimes called like GM gamemastering or d M.
(11:58):
In the case of D and D dungeon master, you
can add project management and organizational skills to the mix.
I can say, as I'm preparing to do this right
now so much, yes, and just trying to predict what
a group of very different people is going to do,
and then knowing in the back of my head that
really I can't predict it, try my best. Yeah, it
(12:21):
is like I feel like I'm running a project right now. Yeah.
One of the worst UM tabletop gaming experiences I've ever
had was way back in college where it was everybody's
early time, Like none of us had a lot of
experience either playing the game or running the game. It
was a whole group of very inexperienced people, but the
(12:42):
d M expected us to do something and we just
did not do that thing, and he was completely unprepared
for that eventuality, and then we all died, and then
everyone was mad at everyone, and just that we just
didn't play that again for a while. Yeah, I had
to take a step back. We had a similar experience
(13:03):
happened recently where UM we it was kind of like
the trolley car problem. We were faced with the fact
that either the entire party was going to die or
we were going to fail our mission, and the town
we were supposed to be saving, they were all going
to die, and uh, we chose to save ourselves. And
(13:24):
afterwards we kept kind of mentioning and passing. I can't
stop thinking about that village. And it's an imaginary village,
but you feel it, you get invested in it. Yeah.
We had a really similar thing in one of the
games that I'm playing, which is based on a system
called Fate, And in Fate, your characters have different aspects
and you figure out what they are kind of collaboratively,
(13:47):
and then you your actions in the game a lot
of times are connected to them. And we are in
this sort of post apocalyptic world where we have just
had a series of we show up somewhere a bad
things happening. We fix the bad thing, but at what cost.
And there was one time when the options were we
(14:07):
fail at doing this, or we burn this place down,
and without hesitation, we were like, We're just gonna have
to burn it down. It's the only thing that's gonna work.
I think maybe, um, just in case anyone listening is
unsure of what is involved in playing like D and
d R role playing game. It's essentially somebody designs a
(14:30):
game or you can find pre design games online, and
then you all the players have a character that they
can role play. Some people don't like the actual role
playing bit, but you can act as much as you
want on there. And then you're in a group and
you sort of it's, I don't know, like a board game,
(14:51):
but you're the you're the pieces moving around and talk
with each other and um trying to figure out what
your character would do. And you get missions save a
town from a dragon that sometimes you fail and the
whole town gets burned. It's kind of like when you're
a kid and you are playing Make believe when with
your friends, but there's a structure to kind of guide
(15:14):
your collaborative make believe. Yes, yeah, there there's a lot
of um rules, rule books. Uh, there is some you know,
calculation of of health points and math involved um And
that's one thing which we'll get into more later. But
that's one thing that kept me from it for a
(15:35):
while is because I thought it looked so complicated. Yeah. Yeah,
there are there can be not necessarily, there can be
many different types of dice. Yeah. Oh, Yeah. I asked
for dice for my mom last year for Christmas and
she got me. I must have hundreds of dice she
got me way to I'm very thankful, but it kind
(15:59):
of cracks me up every time. No shortage of dice choices. Nope.
But if we go back to the possible health benefits,
why talking about this matters at all? Another thing it
can do is reduce stress, sort of what we're talking
about before, unless you're playing something like Monopoly or I
would add risk a risk was a very stressful endeavor
for me and my siblings growing up. Yeah. Yeah. My
(16:22):
husband likes to play a game called Spirit Island, and
I love the idea of the game because a lot
of games have this setting where it's sort of like
you're the colonizers and the goal is to colonize this place,
and Spirit Island is the opposite, like you are the
spirits of this island and you're working with its indigenous
inhabitants to drive the colonizer's away. And I'm like, I'm
(16:44):
on board. I'm on board with that, but it's a
game that has so many layers of things going on
that I'm also like, this is a little more complex
that I want to spend my my fun time on. Yeah,
and that's something that I think people who aren't involved
in tabletop gaming might not realize that there are so
many options out there for you. And I have friends
(17:05):
who don't or haven't previously liked tabletop gaming because they're
they don't like competition, they're not competitive stresses them out.
But there are so many games that aren't that way.
And um, we're gonna give some recommendations at the end,
and one of the ones that I'm going to recommend
is it's like more cooperative. Yeah, there's a whole genre
(17:27):
of cooperative games. And if people watch Parks and Wreck
and they've seen that episode about the Cones of dun
Shire and they think that's what all these games are like, Like,
there are games that are kind of like the Cones
of Dunshire. A lot of them are way more chill
and are more like an elegant but challenging, simple system. Right,
(17:49):
I forgot about the Cones of don't dun Shire. I
recently reminded of the thirty Rock version, which is like
colonizers of I don't know, but it's it's sellers of Catan. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
a two thous and three study out of the New
England Journal of Medicine linked playing board games with decreased
(18:10):
risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And I just wanted to
throw this in there in here because I thought it
was so interesting. Students at Gettysburg College use clue as
a way to practice creating an AI. Yeah, that's really cool.
While while we were getting ready for this episode, a
thing that I meant to mention earlier was that there's
also a study about ma jong and older people and
(18:33):
um like people in retirement communities and it helping both
with hand eye coordination and with basically having less stress
and more social activity, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. Yeah,
if we look at numbers, it seems that more and
more people are getting into tabletop gaming. If you look
(18:54):
at the hobby gaming market, which includes collectibles like Pokemon
cards and dice, board games, role playing games, and miniatures,
between sales doubled money wise, that's an increase from eight
hundred million to one point four billion. And I do
want to mention about miniatures here. So if you're playing
(19:14):
something like D and D, you can get these um miniatures.
They're little figurines and you can use that to represent
your character to move around, and that is another area
where you can be I've seen people do amazing artistic
creative stuff. I have my own little miniature. I've painted it.
It's not good, but I had fun doing it. I
have I have my one, uh, sort of adequately painted miniature.
(19:38):
My husband plays some games that are totally based in miniatures,
so he has these whole armies of painted miniatures. He
finds the painting part really relaxing, and he hasn't been
playing them as much recently. And I'm like, there's a
whole we have a whole shelf full of man's over here,
like you're gonna play with that? They're ready to go.
(19:59):
Um And because sort of a way I think to
to see the growth of tabletop gaming is through these
board game cafes and bars, which I have seen more
and more of. Um. There's gin Con, which is the
largest gaming convention in the United States. It's over fifty
years old and attendance broke records. I've never been, Have
(20:24):
you been, Tracy, I have not been. I have been
to other conventions that have tabletop gaming, like it's a
big component. But at about the same time that I
had enough interest and enough different types of games that
I wanted to go to an event just for that.
I also had become way less enamored with giant conventions
(20:46):
and a lot happier at smaller events. One of my favorite,
not even one of my my absolute favorite vacation every
year is that a bunch of friends rents a big
old house out in the poke knows and we go
out there for a long weekend and play a bunch
of games and like hang out and it's awesome. It's
(21:09):
like thirty five people, not thousand people, much more manageable crowdside.
And then also, if you just want to read a book,
nobody's gonna bother you. It's fine, right you can. You
can step away more easily should you so desire. If
we look at the number of female tabletop gamers, data
(21:31):
is difficult to come by, we can safely assume that
more women are playing now than previously, as more people
are playing in general. At gen Con, over half the
speakers were women, and that's huge considering that only one
of the speakers was female. It's not enough, oh no,
(21:51):
And I bet some of you will remember this from
your social media feeds. A panel at gen Con called
writing Women Friendly Comics at first had no women on
the panel. Yeah. Yeah, since I know several game developers,
many of them are women, and they've been doing this
thing where they go and submit a bunch of panels
(22:12):
to conventions and they don't really announce that they are
submitting a whole bunch of panels that only have women
and non binary people on them, just sneaking in there.
And then people show up and it's a panel that
is all women and non binary folks, and they're like, oh,
this is awesome. This is a bunch of women, and
they're talking about something besides being women in this space, right,
(22:33):
because we can talk about other things. It's true, yes,
but that is at least in my head, and I
would guess a lot of people's heads. That's the stereotype.
If you think of a tabletop gamer, it's a youngish
white male. Yeah, And the conventions I have been to
(22:54):
are like, youngish white males are the largest demographic, like
not only demographic, but for sure the biggest one. And
there are a few informal surveys out there that suggest
people who identify as women make up only ten of
board game players and that the majority of the respondents
(23:15):
in these surveys UM are white. Yeah. I always wonder
sort of what we were talking about at the beginning
with video games is how people are defining what counts
as a board game player, because a lot of the
studies that suggest that men are overwhelmingly the people playing
video games are just disregarding the games that are most
(23:38):
popular among women. And so I kind of wonder if
if these definitions are including things like party games that
women might be playing more than they might be playing
you know, Settlers of Ten right there, and maybe so
maybe it might be a little closer. I mean, I know,
as kids, games are for everyone, and then it's it's
(24:00):
an adulthood that suddenly it seems like there is a
world of specialty game stores that um have a largely
often male demographic. Yeah. And while I was looking into
the research for this episode there it's kind of a
new area of academic study. UM. But a lot of
(24:21):
people have been writing about it and are writing about it,
and from what I read, several women said, I know
that this is the stereotype, but that's not been my experience. UM.
I've always had women, people of color playing in my group. Yeah,
which is interesting. Yeah, when it comes to the people
(24:44):
that I personally know and hang out with. UM. But
it's not just an overwhelmingly male scene. It's it's when
I get into a gigantic group of people at something
like a convention, and I just I don't think that's
totally reflective of who's really playing games, right, And I
always think in surveys like the one we're discussing, a
(25:07):
lot of times they're self selecting who's right answer that survey,
it might more likely be this type of like white, young,
white male. UM. But we do have some more concrete
numbers on the development side. Be selling board games in
sixteen were all designed by men, and the nineteen nominees
for Game of the Year awards between of those, none
(25:29):
of them identified as women. And you, Tracy, have put
me in touch with some amazing women in the space,
and we're going to do a whole follow up episode
on the development side of tabletop gaming. I'm very excited
about that. Those are some of my favorite people. I mean,
I'm just gonna go ahead and say thank you. Two
of them are people I talked to literally every day
of my life. Yes, so excited. UM, so so we'll
(25:54):
we'll come back to we'll follow up with that. UM.
For me, when I first got into tabletop gaming, especially
something like D and D, I was very intimidated by it.
I remember distinctly being at dragon Con a couple of
years ago, and UM, me and some new friends were
discussing what kind of games we enjoyed, and when these
(26:16):
new friends of mine, who were all men, asked if
I liked tabletop games like D and D. Before before
he had even finished asking the question, I was frantically
shaking my head. Um. And I have looked back at
that moment. I tried to get to the bottom of
why I felt that way and why I felt so intimidated,
And I do think it's because I thought it was
(26:37):
something for mostly dudes who wouldn't have the patience to
teach me, who wouldn't want to play with me, who
might be sexist or me, and if I did play
with them, and then kind of expect me to just well,
this is the game, it's fun. Um. And like I said,
I also thought I'd be really complicated to get into
and it sort of stressed me out the thought of
(27:00):
acting or improving even though I'm somebody who does that,
like I act and I do improv. For some reason,
the idea of having to do it with a group
of people really made me nervous. But you don't have to.
That is one thing you can do that stuff, uh
to the level of your comfort, right right? Yeah. I
think I had a related but slightly different response to
(27:24):
the same, not exactly the same perception, because in my
college years in early twenties, my gaming life was sort
of rooted in some internalized misogyny because I had that
whole idea that a lot of things that were typically
feminine were bad and that there was some kind of
(27:44):
value in being in quotation marks not like the other girls.
So I was mostly hanging out with men, and I
was mostly hanging out with men because I sort of
felt like somehow women weren't as fun to hang out with.
All of this was incorrect. I'm used out onto like
some amazing friendships because of this like internal baggage, But
(28:05):
that meant that I was mostly hanging out with guys,
and I was mostly hanging out with guys who were
playing a very particular style of of board gaming and
and role playing games specifically, and it wasn't until I
got probably into my thirties that I was like, oh wait,
there is a whole world of games beyond that that
(28:26):
is more welcoming to more types of people than what
was back there before. And you know, then I also
started working on my whole internal life problem, you know,
on step at a time. I had a similar thing
with video games where I felt like it somehow made
me like I wore like a badge of honor that
(28:49):
I was playing these video games with with all men um.
But for me to get into the tabletop gaming, I
do owe a lot of people, some men, some women,
But it's sort of felt like it happened all at
once that everybody was telling me, You've got to play
this board game that I've never heard of, and you
gotta play this board game that I've never heard of.
I don't know if there was just some surge of
(29:10):
popularity somewhere, but I owe a lot of friends for
introducing me to all of these amazing games and and
sort of to this whole world that was yeah, yeah,
And you and I are not the only ones who
have felt that tabletop games were not for us. And
(29:30):
we'll get into some reasons why after a quick break
for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
Like a lot of our media, tabletop games do not
have the best track record with positive female portrayals and
(29:55):
providing diverse characters games that have a les her amount
of female characters, if any. UM. We mentioned in our
episode around female action figures that Asboro gotten some hot
water for leaving the female character ray out of the
newest version of Star Wars Monopoly, and my favorite part
of that was their response, She'll be another games. It's
(30:18):
not a great answer, We'll put her in a future game.
She's not here now. And it was they replaced her
with a stormtrooper. It was a character. She's a she's
a big character for those that don't know. UM. For
her not to be included was a pretty big deal.
Perhaps there are female characters, but they are overly sexualized
(30:42):
or they are relegated to traditionally female less active roles. Yeah,
it's like you'll have a game that's based on cards
with characters drawn on them, and for some reason the
women are all teachers and secretaries. Right would that be?
I can't imagine or um. I always love the critique
(31:04):
of when armors so sexualized and clearly that's not going
to help you in the fighting situation. Um, it's kind
of a running joke, and yet we still continue to
see it. And I will say, I got no problem.
If you wanna, in a game like D and D
create a sexy character, I'm I'm all for it. But
if if that's like we're seeing this in the official
(31:25):
media of the game, then that is a problem. Instruction
manuals have been called out to for using he to
refer to all players. And this is improving, but slowly,
and we have got a long way, though, because some
of the first articles written by playtesters about D and
D in the seventies came with gems like this one.
(31:49):
There will be four major groups in which women may enter.
They may be fighters, magic users, thieves, and clerics. They
may progress to the level of men in the area
of magic and in some ways surpass men as thieves.
Elvin women may arise especially to high levels, and clerics
to the elves only as fighters are women clearly behind
(32:09):
men in all cases, but even they have attributes that
their male characters do not. And this article goes on
to say that female characters true strength lies with the
beauty part of their Christmas score. So D and D
your character has these six ability scores. One of them
is charisma. As far as I know, the beauty thing
(32:29):
isn't there anymore. No. Well, and also now women don't
or female characters don't innately get one less strength because
they are female, right, which is a positive. But this,
this beauty part of the Christmas score that is no
longer with us, gave women female characters abilities such as
(32:50):
charm men, seduction, horrid beauty, and worship. Yeah, we don't
need that. No. There were also campaign settings. I mean,
you can still go and buy copies of old campaign
settings from earlier versions of D and D, and sometimes
there are guidelines on how to adapt them to the
newest rules system. And you can find some where it's like, okay,
(33:14):
all of the characters who are all presumed to me
to be male, walk into this room where there is
a siren who is going to charm any but everybody,
and like it's now the bad the bad guy is
a woman, and the woman's power is that she's just
way too sexy, and oh yeah, the newest version did
(33:37):
come up as an example of a positive improvement when
I was researching this and that it suggests that players
should think outside of the binary box. Essentially, um, you
can be you can create whatever character you want to create. Um,
it doesn't have to be human, it could be all
kinds of things. In the kickstarter for one deck dungeon
(34:00):
and made dollars, it's starting goal was twenty dollars, so
way surpast that. End of note, all of the images
of playable characters were of strong, diverse women. But of
course not everyone was excited about this Summer of yours
on Amazon called the game sexist or labeled it as
(34:22):
miss injury. It looks cool, yes, well, and we keep
seeing that same basic thing play out where uh, something
will come along that has an all female cast and
it will break box office records or become a best
seller or whatever, and then there will be this whole
(34:42):
conversation of can women really dominate at the box office?
Why we keep having this conversation? I know, I that
is a pet peeve of mine. Back to the tabletop
gaming pasco host Kristen and I went to this women
in Gaming event at the Museum of Design Atlanta a
couple of years ago. You can find the video online
(35:04):
on YouTube, and it was one of my favorite. One
of my favorite parts of this whole exhibit was a
section on old board games and of the games that
included women, so many of them were women in domestic roles.
Are women trying to find a husband before the other players?
That was how you won as you found a husband first.
(35:25):
One in particular, featured all the jobs that a woman
could have in this board game's mind at the time,
and they were secretary, teacher, flight attendant, nurse, princess, or ballerina.
All right, then, yeah, nothing wrong with any of those occupations.
(35:45):
But I feel that women perhaps can do other types
of things. I think possibly, like design games. Possibly. And
we've said it time and time again on this show,
but seeing yourself represented is important. That's not even just
me saying it. There have been studies that show that
(36:09):
bear that out. Um, not seeing yourself can lead to
feelings of disempowerment, invisibility, or insignificance on an individual level,
on a community level, and it can lead to decisions
made based on who we see or don't see on
a societal level, like people in power will make decisions
based on perceived like representation, how they think that must
(36:33):
be the truth in society. So if all you're seeing
our white men, then you're going to make decisions based
on the fact that there are way more white men
than there actually are. Yeah. Yeah, And plus, think of
all the cool and diverse media that we're missing out on.
There's a lot of it. There is, there is. And
(36:55):
there was this study that you found Tracy looking into
gender and racial representation and when it comes to the
illustrators and designers of the top two hundred board games
as ranked by Board Game Geek. And it came out
like this month, December twenty so it's pretty recent. Yeah.
You and I had scheduled this recording and I saw it.
(37:15):
I saw people talking about it on Twitter and said, Okay,
need to bring this up for that episode. Excellent timing. Yeah,
And what it found is probably what you might expect.
The dime designers and illustrators were overwhelmingly white men of
these two hundred games, and that this was reflected in
the artwork, which disproportionately is of white men. The numbers
(37:40):
on this very depending on the source, but it also
found a majority of the players were also white men.
The author does acknowledge the limitation of this work and
calls for more research, but it's definitely worth checking out
if this is something that is at all of interest
to you. Yeah, because it's one of those things that's
drawing from board game geek as a resource. If you're
(38:01):
not familiar with that. It's sort of like if you
were trying to look at trends in movies based on
their where they were ranked on IMDb. Um, it's like
that would be sort of like a comparable thing. So
there are a whole lot of movies out in the
world that for whatever reason, are not up at the
top of IMDb. So it gets a little bit of
a skewed data set to start with, but still super interesting. Yeah,
(38:28):
and it it references a study that came out a
couple of years ago that found that board games are
more likely to feature a sheep on the cover than
a woman. And this study found that, at least according
to to the data um the study author was looking at,
that is true, aliens and barnyard animals like sheep grace
(38:51):
the cover art of board games at a higher rate
than women do. Yeah, some of those games are great, Like,
no criticizing over those games as a thing, but it
is a pattern a little disturbing a little bit, just
a little bit. Something else I found a lot of
accounts of online but have never personally run into myself
(39:13):
is women running into a lot of misogyny when playing
an RPG game like D and D. Male players over
sexualizing the female character that the female player is playing.
Are are maybe themselves playing a female character and then
over sexualizing her or making her do stupid things things
like that. UM, And I know I do know people
(39:34):
personally who have lost friends over things like this. I've
never experienced it personally, but I do know people that have. UM.
There are a couple of bars in Atlanta that do
D and D nights where you can drop in and play,
and I've done it once, so it's more likely to
be strangers that you're playing with, and I had a
good time when I did it, but I generally avoid
(39:56):
them because I do have this suspicion that I would
run into something like that. Are people who will pick
fights over the rules or um. Like you said, it's
a fun thing, and I think with friends it's much
more relaxed. But I have noticed I've gone out of
(40:17):
my way to avoid going to them, even if I
think they I want to play, and I think they
could be fun, because I do have this fear that
I would run into this thing that we're describing right now. Yeah, yeah,
especially since I know so many women who develop games.
A lot of them go to game conventions all the
time and are running games for a ton of people
(40:39):
all the time because they're they're demonstrating their game, and
so I've heard a lot of stories about that kind
of you know, either comments that are inappropriate or sexualizing
encounters between characters in a game when that's not really necessary.
And I think because I play almost exclusively with people
(40:59):
that I'm already ends with and want to hang out with,
I don't really have that experience the thing that I
do have sometimes, even though, like most of the guys
I know, try really hard to be self aware and
to to not just steamroll over everyone in the room,
especially when I'm at a game where I'm either the
only woman at the table or there's only one other
(41:21):
woman at the table, sometimes it does feel like the
guys are dominating the situation. Um and and normally if
we're like, hey, guys, they're also here. We also can
help make the decision of what we're gonna do against
this monster. Uh, they'll be like, all right, So that's
the thing. It's a process though. Yeah, and that's a
(41:42):
good point because I have definitely encountered being talked over
interrupted by dudes when I'm playing UM, and I think
it is a combination of me not having the confidence
to speak up as loudly as they do, but also yeah,
just kind of a lack of awareness. But I think
if you're playing with someone who is new, then maybe
(42:05):
keep that in mind, especially if you're running the game,
just checking in to see maybe this person just needs
a little more encouragement or needs sort of as a push,
because I'm a quiet person in general, and a lot
of times I'm I'm happy to um let other people
be the loud ones. But at the same time, if
(42:29):
I am trying to say something, I should like to
be heard, right. Several articles I read encouraged dungeon masters.
So again, these folks that are running the D and
D campaigns to make sure that they are putting female
characters and positions of power in the game that they're designing,
instead of relegating them to things like barmaid. I've also
(42:52):
read plenty of accounts of female d M s facing
constant questioning by male players, which does not surprise me
at all. I've never seen it, but I believe it completely. Similarly,
several women I was reading accounts about online with it.
They would go into gaming stores and almost immediately would
(43:12):
be asked if they were shopping for their boyfriend, if
they need any help, the assumption that a woman couldn't
possibly be there for herself. Yeah, when I lived in Nashville,
there was a place that I went. There was a
combination games, comics, and music store, and the first few
times that I went in there, the assumption was that
(43:32):
I was there for the music, which sometimes I was
there for the music, but I was also there for
the comics and the games. And I remember and went
walking in. I mean, this has been well over a
decade ago, so like, don't go find that place and
yell at them. But I remember walking in at one
point and somebody being like, the music's over there, and
I was there to pick up my weekly pulls of
(43:55):
my comic books. It's like, just not no, um, I've
I've definitely experienced that in the realm of comics too,
and I've spoke about on this show before. But what
really bothers me is once you've sort of passed this
test and proved that, oh, yes, I do read these things,
(44:18):
then I almost always would get asked out, is this
your only series comic books? Ah? Sometimes I would just
start pretending like, no, this isn't for being be left alone.
Another thing we have to talk about, unfortunately, is sexual harassment.
(44:42):
In A Canadian tabletop gamer named Emily Garland posted a
piece on Tumbler called tabletop Gaming has a white male
terrorist problem. As you can imagine from the title, it
got a lot of attention. I remember when this came out.
Do you not remember it? Yeah? Well, and I remember,
(45:02):
in a good way a lot of the men in
my life passing it around amongst themselves, like, guys, this
is a problem that we need to proactively be handling.
So go on, Yeah, that's great, um. She wrote in
this Tumbler post, white male terrorism is the white underbelly
of the gaming community, meant to terrify and disrupt the
(45:22):
lives of those who threaten the status quo by race, gender,
or sexuality. And you can find the article online if
you want to read it. It's pretty upsetting, but it
is worth a read. She identifies three main concerns sexual harassment,
exclusion of women who are vocal about marginalization and unfair treatment,
and a failure of the tabletop gaming industry as a
(45:44):
whole to speak out about things like gamer gates and
she won a sexual harassment lawsuit against a gaming store
that she worked in that same year. Yeah. Yeah, it's
not a pleasant read at all. It is not um.
Definitely know that going in, but it's it's worth reading,
(46:04):
especially if you're somebody that is a part of the
tabletop gaming community. I would say check it out. And
something I saw in a lot of places that so
often the response to all of this everything we're talking about,
UM is but from people who don't want the community
(46:25):
to change. UM, go play something else if it bothers.
You don't make this fun hobby political. But it's about
making this fun hobby uh and beneficial activity more inclusive
and better for everybody. And in light of that, we
have some recommendations and resources for you. But first one
(46:47):
more quick break for word from our sponsor. H we're back,
Thank you sponsor, and we're back with some game recommendations.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love
(47:09):
pandemic and this is so good. It is so good UM,
and it's hard and I love it. There's like eight
ways to lose, an only one way to win. And
it's cooperative too, like we were staying in the beginning. Um.
Some people who don't like competition, you are competing against
the game. It's pretty tense. I'm not gonna like sugarcoat it.
But you aren't competing against your friends, right. Your friends
(47:29):
are working with you to try to stop the illness.
One thing I love about this game is UM. A
lot of times when I'll have people over and we
have all this entertainment available to us, friends of mine
who aren't that in two tabletop gaming in general will
request that we play Pandemic. It is like a fun
(47:51):
crowd pleaser. It has an equal number of male to
female characters who aren't sexualized. They're dressed appropriately for their job. UM,
and the jobs are things like scientists and quarantine specialists.
It's so fun. You can play it with just two
players too. That's another thing I love about it. I
have lost it spectacularly. I have two by once. Um,
(48:14):
like we were doing fine, UM, and I don't want
to go too much in the mechanics here. But basically
we drew one card and we went from fine too
we lost. Yeah. I think this was like three turns
into the game and we just had really bad luck
and it was like this, this outbreak has spread and
the world is over. I think. I think one of
(48:34):
the mechanics is you have these little black cubes that
represent the the illness, and if you run out of them,
game over. And we ran out of them and just
an amazingly short amount of time. Yeah, and I am
have lost these like little tiny cubes, and I've lost
one in the game. The difficulty level is such that
(48:56):
it comes close enough that I made a note saying
I am missing one of these cubes. One. So if
that's what it comes down to, I want everyone to
know that you have one cube that is not there. Yeah,
I gotta have a couple of caveats with the one
that I'm going to recommend next. Because it is based
(49:18):
on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, it's called Marrying Mr Darcy.
It's a card game. Since it is based on Pride
and Prejudice. All the characters are white and the goal
of the game is to marry the right person. So like,
let's just get that out on the table. However, it
has the same sense of humor that Jane Austen's writing does,
(49:41):
so the it's a card game, and the cards have
just these very rye witty instructions of of what's going
on in the game. Um, you also do not have
to get married in order to win the game. It
is completely possible to win the game by not getting married,
and it is it's accessible to people even if they
(50:05):
have no familiarity with Jane Austen. So when I very
first moved to Massachusetts, my husband, who at that time
was my boyfriend, had gone out of town and I
didn't really know many people here very well yet, and
this friend of his said, come over and play games
with us. And I was like, I'm gonna take marrying
Mr Darcy, because I thought when he said us, he
meant me and my wife, but what he really meant
(50:28):
was me and these two other dudes. So it became
me and these three dudes playing a game based on
pride and prejudice, and everybody had a great time. So
that sounds wonderful. It was great. My friends would love
that game for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean if if
(50:48):
I totally get why, like people might not be into
the idea of playing a game where all the characters
are white and the goal is to get married. Like
I get like that might not be for you. But
if that's for you, and it's probably really for you.
I have another one that UM is a lot more
diverse in its representation, and it is called The T
(51:09):
Dragon Society Card Game, and it's based on a graphic
novel by Katie O'Neill that is called The T Dragon Society,
and that graphic novel is full of LGBTQ characters and
characters of color. And this is another card game where
your goal is to raise these little T dragons. And
the dragons are adorable and the art is adorable, and
(51:29):
the characters the more humanoid characters. One of them is
not strictly human, but they are also adorable. UM. And
even if you're not playing with little kids, I think
the age range is ten and up. UM. If if
you are into the idea of taking care of some
adorable little dragons, you can be a room for like
a table full of adults, and it will still be great. UM.
(51:54):
One that my friends love UM is called Dixit, which
I describe as apples apples but with to full art.
And again, this is this group of friends particularly that
loves it. They don't really like tabletop games in general,
they don't like the competitive aspect of it, but they
love this one and they love the art of it.
And it's really I find it really funny because I
(52:14):
get frustrated playing with them. I I also get frustrated
playing Apple Sapples because I'm very I'm very competitive, and
I I'll get angry if I can't see what you're seeing, Like,
explain to me how that represents being lost, please, yeum.
But they all love it, and both dixit and Apples
(52:37):
to Apples can be really interesting to play when you
when you either know everyone at the table really really
well or when you don't know everyone at the table
really really well, because if you know too people and
you don't know everyone else, then like you might know
enough about how that person thinks to to figure out
what they're doing a lot more easily. Yeah, it's one
(53:00):
of this thing. I've known this this group of friends
since elementary school, and for some reason, I can't get
a beat what they're seeing when they're looking at these
beautifully the art is really beautiful with that it is.
It's beautiful and kind of abstract. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
also love Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which
is a game where your your group explores a haunted
(53:22):
house together and about halfway through you trigger a haunt,
and depending on a couple of circumstances, one of the
players becomes a trader and you're sort of working against
that player and then whatever demon, haunt, whatever it is
that they're working with um and there's something like sixty scenarios. So, Annie,
do you know about Betrayal Legacy? I do, but only
(53:47):
a little bit. Tell me about it. I can tell
you about it because I play tested that game. Did
you really? I did? I am listed in the credits.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I am really sided to.
I had actually been like, should I talk about betrayal
talk about Betrayal Legacy you and then you win and
put it on the list. I'm so excited. Okay, So
(54:08):
what Annie just said, Like, that's that's still the basic mechanics.
You have a haunted house that you're exploring, and something
happens that triggers a haunt, and somebody who is playing
with you becomes a trader, and the betrayal legacy works
the same way that other legacy games do, which is
that as you play, the game itself changes, so you
might have like the first time you play, this is
(54:32):
made up. I'm not spoiling anything in the game, but
like the first time you play, a particular character dies
in a particular room, Well, that room might now the
next time you play have something different about it because
that happened in that room the last time. And so
it is I think thirteen chapters. Each chapter takes place
(54:52):
in a different year, so you're in this haunted house
through time, and then once you get all through those
Third Team sort of found National Games, there is a
free play mode where you can play all of these
other scenarios in the same game. So, because it's a
horror game, it does have some you know, some of
the same horror tropes that I think some people might
(55:14):
not enjoy. Like if you're not going to enjoy a
game that has a bunch of murder in it, then right, um,
maybe not this one for you. But if you are
into horror movies and horrors books and settings that are
full of ghosts and monsters and scary things, then yeah,
I highly recommend it. Yeah, I have to check out
Legacy now. I've been wanting to, but now I've got to.
(55:36):
I've go our rotation at game night here and it
that is the perfect launching point for our next section,
which is resources, because recently we did play Betrayal at
the House on the Hill and it's kind of a
rule here. And it also just kind of makes sense
that if it's your game, then you're the one that's
(55:56):
sort of explains it. Make sure it runs smoothly. It's
my game, um, and people voted to play it, but
I hadn't played it in a while, so I wanted
to brush up on the rules. And one of the
first things I did was I got online and watched
the Tabletop with Will Wheaton episode on playing Betrayal at
the House on the Hill to refresh my memory. And
(56:17):
this is an online video series. I watch it on
YouTube where people play tabletop games. A lot of times
there are celebrities and it sounds boring, I know, but
it's usually pretty entertaining and it's it's just good to
see people actually playing it because reading the instructions can
feel really dense, especially on a game like the trail
at the House on the Hill um and seeing it
kind of play out for me at least is very helpful. Yeah.
(56:41):
I have found that very helpful for seeing how the
game is played when there's not somebody experienced around to
tell you how the game is played, and then it
can be super entertaining. Sometimes the things that happen as
they are playing are hilarious. Yeah, I seem to recall
when they were playing a Ticket to the story I
(57:01):
was gonna tell's. I guess it's well known among the
tabletop but I remember it vividly as I think it's
one of those like this disaster happens in the middle
of the game, and then there is a slow motion
replay of the disaster. We'll go check out the episode
on Ticket to Ride if you want to find out
(57:22):
what that disaster was. On top of that, there's so
many things out There's so many things. There's podcast, Twitch channels,
YouTube shows. You've got Becca Scott over at the Twitch
channel Game the Game, Brittany Beau or Bibo over a game,
wire board game Breakfast on the YouTube channel the Dice Tower.
The amount of content out there on D and D
alone is staggering. So there are if you're intimidated or
(57:48):
you feel like you would just you you would feel
better if you had visual examples or just hearing people
talk about playing. There there's stuff for you out there. Yeah.
And if just watching or listening to someone's role playing
campaign sounds interesting to you, there are options for that too, Yes,
(58:10):
there are. I've thought about. I don't want to turn
it into work is a thing, but I thought about
recording our D n D sessions with our office campaign
just because Yeah, they quite interest thought about. Yeah, I've
thought about pitching some kind of RPG podcast, And because
I have had too much other podcast work to do,
(58:31):
that's never been a thing that's come to fruition. I
would be so into that. Um. There's also Contesta, which
is a nonprofit founded in twelve to make the tabletop
gaming space for marginalized folks more diverse and providing a
space for them to run games. So if you're interested
in running a game, you can check them out and
(58:52):
getting involved in this at all. They have a lot
of opportunities around that. So I I feel like we're
about at the end of this exploration into tabletop gaming.
Think so, I think so to wrap things up there,
there's a lot of things going on in the world
of tabletop gaming, and there are clearly areas where the
(59:13):
industry can improve. And it makes me sad that people
have been turned away from something that can be so
fun and perhaps physically and mentally beneficial because they didn't
feel welcome. So I'm really hoping that that will change,
and that maybe maybe somebody listening to this who's been
interested in it but hasn't done it for one reason
(59:36):
or the other, maybe this episode has inspired you to
go check it out. Yeah, even if you are not
really into the idea of going to a gigantic convention
and spending the whole weekend there, a lot of times
the people that actually developed these games are working on
the dealer's floor at booths like with their games to
personally show you how to play, or somebody that they
(59:57):
know really well is is going to personally show you
how to game play the game. So at least doing
a walk through and seeing what games are rein played
and what looks fun can be really awesome. Yeah, because
as we said, there are so many games out there,
all kinds of games that you may be unaware of,
but there are options, options, options, and we will follow
(01:00:21):
up with an episode about the development aspect of gaming,
so look out for that um in the meantime. Thank
you so much Tracy for joining us. This has been
such a lovely conversation. Thank you. I've had a really
good time. Yeah, I really want to play some games.
Now we got to go back to work. The alas,
(01:00:45):
Where can people find you? Tracy Well, I co host
Stuff You Missed in History Class with Holly Fry and
so the easiest way to get me is that the
Stuff you miss in History Class email, which is history
podcast at how stuff Works dot com. And then we're
all over social media at ms in History. I'm also
(01:01:06):
personally on Twitter, but I'm often not looking at my mentions.
I'm the same. So yeah, sometimes I'll see that somebody
has said something like asked me a question or said
something nice, and I'm like, I did not that was
a week ago. Whoops. Yeah, I really have to build
myself up to go on social media. I do. I
(01:01:26):
don't want that to cheer you from contacting me, but
it's like a once a week here we go. I
spend a lot of time just scrolling to the top
of the Twitter feed and being like, what's happening right now? Okay,
putting this away right. You can also email this show
at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
(01:01:47):
can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and
on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as
always to our producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you
for listening to pay to Go on
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