The goal of FemCon was to create a gaming space where being a woman was normal, especially being a woman in a leadership position, as well as creating a kickass gaming convention. All of the organizers were women, and so were all the scenario writers, the game masters, the artists doing art exhibits and art workshops, and all the the seminar leaders. The drop in event Indierummet NordNordOst (The Indie-room NorthNorthEast) ran indie games designed by women. (Psi-run, Thou are But a Warrior, Kagematsu, Thousand and One Nights, Cat of Excellence and a bunch of other games.)

Players of all genders were welcome.

This was the first year FemCon was run and it was a small but intense event. There were about 50 participants and the event ran from Friday to Sunday. It was organized by the non-profit gaming club Gaia Projektet, and the main organizers where Johanna (“Jojjon”) Nyberg Hamrén, Jennie Larsson and Ewelina Lundholm. I was there to game master  ”Sagas of the Icelanders”  since it is a kickass game that addresses gender in a interesting way but also because I contributed to the game with the essay “Viking love life ” on viking gender roles, love and sexuality. I had a blast and Sagas was very well received at the event.

I’ve been to a bunch of gaming conventions, but somehow this was the nicest one so far. Cons are usually full of friendly and interesting people, but at FemCon it was super nice. Relaxed, inclusive and with a strong sense of an inviting community. I think that might been partly due to the size of the convention and partly due to the efforts the organizers taken.

All sort of small nice touches saw to create an inclusive and feminist event. The coziest armchairs and sofas were set aside for discussions corner for talking about feminism and gaming. There was free vegetarian food, coffee and cakes for game masters and volunteers. They had a Day Watch and a Night Watch, valiantly staying awake during the night to help out with any issue that might arise and create a safe environment during the night at the convention. Part of the money the Gaia Projektet earned through the event was donated to environmental charities. The scheduling saw to it that a seminar on gender stereotypes in pop culture was placed so that everyone could attend it without missing out on any of the gaming. All debates and discussion about gender and gaming was full of nuance and good listening. It was a very well designed event. Tons of small stuff like that add up to create a great atmosphere.

People came from all over Sweden to be part of this event, including the head of Sweden gaming union¹ Rebecka Prentell and people who had twenty hours train rides came out to attend.

For many of us game masters and volunteers it was a powerful event. As one of the game masters expressed it, it was the first gaming convention that she wouldn’t be judged to be a good or bad game master for a girl. It was the first time her performances as a game master would not reflect on her gender, only at her as an individual. Where her failure or success would not be seen as a sign of how good all women are at game mastering. Only how good she was. Women were allowed to first and foremost be judged as an individual and not as a woman.

What of the men then, weren’t they discriminated against? No. Not in my opinion. Umeå has a very active gaming and convention scene. There are a lot of other role-playing events during the year. Those events are usually dominated by male game-masters and scenario writers. In that context, one event where men still are very welcome as participants but not as game masters is not problematic, in my opinion. An event like FemCon is about creating safe space where a underrepresented group get a chance be part of the norm for once.

FemCon rocked, and hopefully next year’s event will be even bigger and more badass.

(FemCon – A feminist gaming convention in Sweden originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

Illustration by Kyle Latino

With convention season nearly in full swing, how to include ladies in your geeky/nerdy/gaming events is a hot topic. From Cosplay harassment retaliation to Aisha Tyler laying the smackddown on haters for appearing at conventions last year, 2013 has the difficult task ahead of it to be more gender inclusive. How do we get more women to events? What tactics do we, as organizers and attendees, employ?

As a gaming event organizer and attendee myself, I’ve been seeking out tools to use in order to create a space that is more gender inclusive. We’re all looking for answers, and so far, I’ve compiled a pretty interesting list of things that we, as a community, can take action on.

Tactics for Inclusiveness

1. Show the faces of the women in your organization.
2. Reach out to women in the community and personally invite them.
3. Recruit women from adjacent interests (cosplay, fetish, video games, board games, geeky knitting, art and design groups, comics, etc).
4. Welcome new gamers and offer games that are accessible to new players.
5. Reduce antagonism toward feminine things in your games, at your events. Have feminine coded stuff around.
6. Play games that are actively more gender inclusive.
7. Organize game nights in addition to your larger events that are women-only spaces.
8. Use the X-card, lines and veils, and other tactics to cut scenes and try another way.
9. Intervene and call people out when you see bad behavior even when it’s not directed at you. Moderate consistently.
10. GM mentoring and having women GMs at your events.
11. Highlight indie games, because they have a wider diversity of topics and female roles, and many are GMless which redistribute power relationships at the table.
12. Focus on community building. Dinners, picnics, cafe hangouts, get-togethers outside of gaming events.
13. Provide resources like child care and welcome families.
14. Have an anti-harassment policy that is visible, enforced, and have all the organizers understand how it works.
15. Run LARPs, which seem to draw overwhelming numbers of women automatically.

Some of these might seem a little silly. LARPs automatically draw women? WHY?? PROVE IT TO ME KIRA!! I have no idea! I mean, more critically, the reason why is a messy web of intersections that are difficult to parse and I leave to more academic chart making feminists than I. If it works, and it’s helping, I think the better question is, why not? If these small things can help foster a more gender inclusive community, and have proven success in the past, then we should start doing them and play to see what happens.

Sources and Communities

This list of ideas comes from a large variety of sources. I’ve quizzed many of my fellow women here at Gaming as Women who have experience with transforming communities into more gender inclusive spaces. There’s a great thread on Story Games by Ben Robbins that I’ve mined information from, and has stories of people who’ve used successful tactics at their gaming events across the country (there is a fantastic panel including Lillian Cohen-Moore, Ashley Cook, Gwen Yeh, and Mickey Schulz done on the subject at Norwescon) . These conversations are even happening worldwide, as Lizzie Stark pointed out to me on the Nordic Larp forum a discussion on the Danish Larp community being more male dominated and hierarchical. I’ve quizzed friends and academics and people in adjacent communities (tech, fetish) about how to be gender inclusive.

I see these tactics as guidelines or starting points for both attendees and organizers to use. Why do I name attendees as responsible parties as well? Communities work best when all members can work together to encourage and create more inclusive environments. It’s kind of like player responsibility in a table top game. The GM could craft a fabulous scenario, but the players are the ones who make the game amazing, collaboratively creating with the GM. It’s that spirit of collaboration that’s at the heart of our gaming community already. So consider the event organizer the GM and the attendees the players, and collaborate with policing bad behavior and encouraging openness.

I don’t think there is one, solid solution to the current gender dilemma. It will probably vary greatly depending on the particular community. With this list of successes though, we can pick and choose tactics that we might be able to successfully apply to our communities and events. I’m working on ideas from this list for Indie Games on Demand at Origins that’s happening next month. I know a yearly event inside a larger convention like that is far more difficult to control than local, contained events, but I’m hoping that in the long run the results will be visible.

How to apply these tactics to your event

So to show some examples of how to use these tactics, these are the actions I’ve taken as an organizer at Indie Games on Demand at Origins so far.

1. Made myself visible as as a woman who is organizing and running games at the event. My photo is up on various sites and social media. This is important because it makes women visible at the event.
2. Asked the GMs to consider running games designed by women, and given some examples of those games.
3. Plan to run games that are designed by women.
4. I’m also planning to run games that are actively gender and queer inclusive, like Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts.
5. Talked about how to be more inclusive at other Games on Demand events with the organizers at those events. We’re plotting ways to make these tactics more universal, and I got some great ideas from them.
6. Spread the word about the event to people I know in adjacent communities (fetish, OH Nerd, cosplay, artists).
7. Personally invited women that I know to come and play and run games, and asked other GMs to do so as well.
8. Plan to steal Aaron Brown’s rights for playing at the table and have it displayed.
9. Get excited about Evan Torner’s plans to make T-shirts that say “Fake Gamer Girl” and have his male friends wear them at the event. One of my girl friends wants to make ones that says “Fake Gamer Boy” for the ladies too!

I’d like to hear from other event organizers or attendees the successful actions you’ve taken to be more inclusive. Stuff like this, it takes the whole community to change. Organizers and attendees, women and allies, we all have to work together. In my dreamy idealistic world, we can make this happen. Let’s make 2013 better.

Thanks to everyone who shared these tactics with me! Shout out to Lizzie Stark, Avonelle Wing and Dreamation, John Stavropolous and Nerd NYC, Emily Care Boss and Jiffycon, Ben Robbins and Ashley Cook at Seattle Story Games, everyone who contributed to that Story Games thread, all the fabulous bloggers at Gaming as Women, and all the awesome people whose brains I’ve picked (you know who you are, your brain meats are insightful and delicious).

(Gender Inclusiveness at Gaming Events originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

Tell us something about yourself and your gaming experience, Manuela!

Hi, I’m Manuela, freelance illustrator, mainly for children books, eBooks and Apps.

I was born in 1979, in a small town in northern Italy, between the foggy winters and the torrid summers near the Po river.

I’m a former comic-book artist, and I’ve been playing role-playing games and videogames since 1994.

My role-playing experiences started with TSR’s D&D (an heavily house-ruled version, based on BECMI), then Steve Jackson’s GURPS 3rd edition, White Wolf’s Vampire (2nd and 3rd edition), some other games I tried only for a few sessions such as Talsorian games’ Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., then it came the tidal wave of the “indie games”: among my favourites, Matt Wilson’s Primetime Adventures, Danielle Lewon’s Kagematsu, D.Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World, Joe Mcdaldno’s Monsterhearts.

Dilemma logo

What is Dilemma? How does the game work?

Dilemma is a game about having power over other people and getting in touch with them, that is, about responsibility, relationships and hard, no-turn-back choices.

In the game, players take the role of cosmic entities, nuances from the time flow called “Wings”, lured to Earth by special souls that shine particularly to their eyes. Wings will get to know these humans and also what kind of dilemmas human beings face: they’ll try to help and shape their paths, but their power will get a bit out of control.

It’s a game about making decision for other people, having power in a very focused side of their life, and long-term commitment: at the end of the game Wings will have to face their dilemma. Will they rise and be part of the whole universe again, or live as mere mortals with their beloved humans?

So, it’s a game about feelings, and it gives back exactly what you put into it: if you put strong, sincere feelings into it, it will give you a strong experience, but it’s not mandatory. You can also play it in a more relaxed way and still have an heartwarming experience without too much drama.

How was the idea born?

Some three years ago, I wanted a game about angels and devils living on Earth, and the destiny of humanity – caught in the cross-fire of their eternal war.

Then, I realized I didn’t want a game about cosmic wars. Instead, I wanted a game about mixed feelings, about light and shadows, and I wanted to avoid the absolute-good-Vs-absolute-evil theme.

If I look back at it, I go: “Oh, my, and exactly how Dilemma comes out from this? It’s all different!”

When I spoke about it with Mattia Bulgarelli (my husband and co-designer), he suggested I think about a game where the angel and the devil were the same exact person, torn between two courses of action. I said: “it’s perfect”.

I really wanted a game where characters face dilemmas, make choices and find a place to call home.

We stopped almost immediately though, and the idea rested a couple of years until Marco Andreetto joined us. He took our ideas, he put them into good order and found a good structure to link all of these themes.

Art by Manuela Soriani

How are you handling development and testing?

After Marco gave Dilemma its first shape, we got stuck again. Again, Marco got us unstuck, saying “hey, let’s try to set it in motion”.

We started brainstorming and we tried the game without even having a full set of rules! We wrote three very crude Wings Sheet and started playing, taking notes about what kind of rules felt “right” to convey the mood we wanted. For example, we started with a list of  “hard moves” like in Apocalypse World. Most of them required the characters to express how they felt to other characters. We realized by trial-and-error that we wanted a game where characters weren’t able to cut each other out from their lives. We later dropped the “hard moves” rules, but the principle stayed.

Then, we borrowed from Kagematsu and My Life With Master the idea that every main character should have “her scene”, and we limited the ways other characters could interfere with other player’s scenes.

We also wanted Wings’ powers to be focused on opposites: using one side of the power (Light or Dark) weakens it, while the other side gets stronger. Like a “karma balance”, but on a custom line between opposites, not on a global good-evil scale.

One of the first rules was about having the main characters, the Wings, defined by one of rainbow’s seven traditional colors, and having a strong theme within a very small set of moves, plus some powers that work with no die rolls required. It was a very good game, and we told ourselves: “ok, this is amazing, we want people to experience this kind of emotion and this kind of story”.

We had a new challenge: setting rules to re-create that kind of game. In a couple of weeks, we wrote down a lot of core rules and reorganized some 20 pages of thematic notes we took earlier.

All core concepts were born in these two weeks: the colors as names of the character’s types, the light/dark sides, the rules about getting more and more human with time, the different kind of scenes, each with its own peculiar rules. After that, it was all a matter of putting the game’s backbone in a series of simple instructions to follow step-by-step and to playtest it.

A lot of playtest.

We added and removed elements to make it very different from its “fathers”: the way Wing’s colors are assigned to players, the length of the game (two to four sessions in the final release), and the option to play again the same character, in another game with other people, with no problem.

It was hard to take Apocalypse World’s elegant mathematics and use them as a starting point to get a new game with its own personality after a lot of deep hacking.

Apocalypse World has a lot of hacks, nowadays, but we wanted to go beyond that: I’m not claiming that Dilemma is better than any of all the good hacks I’ve seen and played (I love Monsterhearts in particular, I played it all summer long last year), it’s just that we wanted to do something very different, crossing it over with the aforementioned Kagematsu and PrimeTime Adventures, My Life With Master, Montsegur 1244, and many other games.

Art by Manuela Soriani

Can you talk about the relationship of the game with art? You said colors are related to the character types, and there is quite a bit of post-game art floating around.

Oh, this is very important to me in particular.

I am an artist, I do illustrations for a living.

When I play, I visualize all scenes in a very clear way. I’m very uncomfortable when I play with people who cannot describe what’s happening in the game. I feel a strong urge to “see” in my mind the characters and what they’re doing, and how.

As I said, Wings are connected each to a different color, so we added a rule about characters having same-colored details in each scene. This compels the players to give each other some visual clue about what’s their Wings’ appearance and concept.

During playtests we realized how powerful is the idea of being a color. It happened to a lot of players: they make teams, they cheer for other players who played the same color even if they never played together. That’s amazing. It came out much stronger than I’d ever expected.

I should have known it: if you’re playing the one-and-only Violet Nuance in the universe, it will be the same as another player’s, even if their human form is completely different.

I played a lot of Ages (full games) of Dilemma. Some of them got stuck into my imagination. I had to draw scenes from those Ages to remove them from my conscious mind, else they’d be still there.

It’s my way to tell other people what I felt playing the game, and I found out that even I couldn’t escape the obvious choice of using the involved Wing’s colors in those illustrations.

There was a playtester, a few months ago, that wrote me that Dilemma changed the way he looked at colorful items. My game changed his perception of red and orange items. Thanks for that, Matteo. I am an artist, being able to challenge people’s perception about the world feels like I’m making them seeing the world through my eyes.

Art by Manuela Soriani

What are the biggest challenges you are facing in the design process?

We’re currently in a very hard phase: writing the blind playtest document.

We have all rules in their final form, but we need to write them down in a clear, unique way. It’s a huge challenge. The game’s rules are simple (think Kagematsu about the complexity and amount of rules), but a lot of concepts are related to each other.

We’d also like to add a lot of comments about “Do’s” and “Dont’s” to fully enjoy the game, and this will take time.

In the immediate past, we had some difficulties shaping three people’s ideas into a complete, unique game: you have to give up some ideas and you let other take your ideas and bend them into another shape.

It wasn’t easy, but I think this process brought the three of us together as friends, too. We learned a lot about each other and the things we believe.

Thanks, Manuela!

Dear readers, remember that the blind playtest document is now available¹. The authors will certainly appreciate your reports and feedback. Here are some useful links:

G+ official community (in Italian, but comments and questions in English are welcome)

Dilemma forum on www.gentechegioca.it (again: Italian, but comments and questions in English are welcome)

Tribute video to playtesters in English and Italian

(Dilemma: an Interview with Manuela Soriani originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

Relax. Take a deep breath. Remember that everyone at the table is (hopefully) there because they want to be. Unless you’re being rude, offensive, abrasive, or selfish, you’re probably doing a pretty good job. Don’t worry so much about the perceived “quality” of your game mastery. Take your focus off yourself and turn it instead toward your players. Are they paying attention? By this, I mean the majority. It’s unfair to expect everyone to give you 100% of their attention for several hours. Are they doing things like taking notes, asking questions, or going out of their way to talk to NPCs? These are all signs of engagement, and engagement means your players are loving what you’re doing, so don’t ignore them. You do not have to weave a masterful yarn, craft a story on par with a best-seller, or toss around descriptions that make blockbuster films seem inadequate in order to have engrossed players. The only things this requires are knowing yourself, and knowing your group. Like any working relationship, this takes time to form. Unless there’s a serious issue (use your good common sense), I’d suggest you give yourself at least a half-dozen sessions of play before throwing in the towel.

But Monica, I’m no good at thinking on my feet! This may make running games very difficult for you, because spontaneity is a big part of keeping the action at the table fresh. There are lots of gaming aids out there to help you populate your game world, though. If you surf around gaming websites, you may find free or cheap pdfs containing places, plot hooks, and/or character ideas. Lots of games come with random charts so you can use the dice to help you come up with a location on the fly. I recommend any of Sine Nomine Publications’ products which cover a variety of genres and have impeccable tables for creating places. To reiterate: let someone else do the work. That someone else, in this case, just happens to be a chart. If you’re really a go-getter, you can make up your own charts ahead of time. There are lots of neat things on the internet that will help you name people and places. I am particularly fond of this one though it only pulls names from the US census, so it may not be ideal for international gamers.

Use your players as a resource. I don’t mean to harp on this point, but seriously, there’s no need to put all the weight on your shoulders. Ask leading questions during character creation. Encourage people to give depth to their characters. Heck, build the setting together, if that suits your group. As an example, ask everyone what their favorite movies or books (or video games!) in the chosen game’s genre are. For example, if I’m running D&D, I definitely want to know what everyone’s favorite fantasy media is. Did you like the Lord of the Rings films? How about Dragon Age: Origins? Maybe your players are fans of the fiction of Stephen Erikson or Brandon Sanderson. Ask them what parts of those stories appeal, and then take inspiration from that to weave a world that everyone will think is neat.
I, personally, prefer if players provide details but keep them vague or general. This leave me room to feel like I’m also invested in the creative process and therefore makes me much more interested in their plot hooks. When you choose to game, you’re choosing to spend your time with a handful of other really creative people. Doesn’t it seem like a total waste to avoid taking advantage of that? In order to use your players in this manner, you have to talk things out with them. I think this is key; your roleplaying game should be a conversation.

Reincorporate: Did someone just say something you think is awesome? Maybe take some creative license with the setting you described? Perhaps someone at the table knows a whole lot more about a particular subject matter than you do. Let them show their expertise. Take advantage of cool descriptions. Say yes, and then work it back into your narrative. Reincorporation goes a long way with people, and it makes them feel immediately more engaged with your game. As an added bonus, it’s a whole lot less work for you!

In closing, find your zen. Take a deep breath. Relax. Take a load off. Abandon the self-imposed stresses of “being up to par” or “knowing all the rules” and the burdens of feeling like you have to keep your game on perfect track. Once you lighten your intellectual load, I think you’ll find your thoughts will come more freely. Give it a try and let me know.

(Game Mastery Files: Finding Your Gaming Zen originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

This is concept art for the top of the radio tower climb. I forgot to take a screenshot at the top because I was too busy holding my breath.

I have played Tomb Raider off and on ever since I tried out the first demo. I’ve never been great at the games – the controls and view were always clunky and confusing. The only one I finished was Tomb Raider: Legend. But, I loved Lara Croft for being a cool brunette hero and for being tied to the history and myths I loved as a kid.

When the original promos for the new Tomb Raider came out, I was angry. I was upset. I was sick to my stomach in response to the promo that showed one of my video game heroes being groped and from hearing the torture-porn-esque whimpers and moans. Disappointment wasn’t the word – pissed off, wrathful. And then, the marketing people at Crystal Dynamics respond that she needed to be “broken down” to become a hero. That the main audience for Tomb Raider was white guys and they needed to make those players want to protect her, since they couldn’t identify with her. What bullshit!

Writer Rhianna Pratchett spoke out. I was intrigued by her responses to the controversy – this interpretation wasn’t what she had written the story for, the scene was badly cut, and she wasn’t sure where the audio came from. Comforting, but not enough of a reason for me to buy the game with my original feelings so deep-seated.

Right after the game launched, I heard Melody was enjoying the game. I read Gail Simone’s comments on the game. That was enough for me – I bought it. Here are my thoughts.

Seriously, this game is so pretty I kept getting distracted.

First impressions:

Holy hot damn is this game pretty. It’s beautiful. I played on PC with TressFX on. TressFX is a fancy graphic tool that makes Lara’s hair respond to light, movement, and environment by individual strand. It’s amazing and only glitched on me a few times (note: Lara looks cool with short hair.). The particulate effects are great, the third-person viewpoint works great. The introduction to the storyline is startling but encouraging. The first hour of the game had me on the edge of my seat, holding my breath, and white-knuckled on my mouse. I was impressed how the game just drew me in and had me ready to fight.

I have no idea who the blonde woman in the polo is, but otherwise, left to right – this is Jonah, Lara, Sam, and Alex.

Left to right again, Grim, Reyes, Dr. Whitman, and Conrad Roth.

Characters and cast:

I loved the characters in the game. Lara was appropriately courageous but naive in some ways. The representation of women and people of color was good, although it might be a little stereotypical and tropey. I still enjoyed them. There are two other women on main cast – Sam and Reyes. Sam has some issues (more on that later), but mostly is well written. She is Japanese and a descendant of the Storm Queen Himiko. Reyes was a badass. She is tough, kind of scary. She is black and a single mother by choice. There is one man in the story who isn’t white – Jonah – and he is kind and gentle. Mystical, yes, which is tropey, but he is one of my favorite characters. The remaining characters were Roth – the ship captain, Dr. Whitman – the incredibly egotistical jerk and head archaeologist, Alex – the ship tech who has a crush on Lara, and Grim – the old rough and tumble guy.

The Pretty Good and Great:

The graphics were beautiful. I stopped to look around and enjoy the scenery – gorgeous textures and lighting, and your interactions with the environment were pretty wonderful. TressFX is fun and actually did add to the experience. I thought Lara’s body type was well done – athletic but thin. She should have been more muscular because of how fit she obviously is, and I kind of wish they had explained a little more about how she could use a shotgun and huge rifle so well, but that’s just being picky.

Transitioning from cut scene to gameplay was virtually flawless, and I felt more like I was watching a movie than I was controlling the character – it moved so smoothly and I felt in control but not like I was in a game. This was one of my top favorite parts of the entire thing – I wish more games were this smooth transitioning. This applied to the gymnastics, too. There were times where I felt like the game was tilting to the side while I ran over falling floors and jumped from side to side. Even on PC! That was awesome, and made me feel riveted to the game.

Quick time events, while sometimes tough, are something I do prefer and appreciate. Combat can be tough for me because I get easily disoriented, especially close combat. I also felt like the regular combat was well done – I got the headshot bonus pretty rapidly, and I used the bow for most of the game. I liked the auto-cover – it worked well and only got me screwed up in close combat once or twice.

Having Lara be a real hero was exciting for me. She wasn’t just raiding tombs, she was fighting to save people. As you go through the story, the baddies call you “Outsider” – no sexist slurs. And they talk about your fighting prowess – you’re considered a major threat. You’re one young woman and there are these hardass baddies saying “It’s her, I need some help over here!” “Did you hear she took out the whole outpost?” and similar exclamations.

The weapon upgrades are sweet. I loved picking up new weapons and salvage, and seeing how the design changed. I found the UI to be relatively simple and I liked that there weren’t a ton of meters on the screen showing your health. I also liked that I didn’t need to get med packs – you automatically heal as you are resting or when you are not being hit in fights.

Lara responds to acts of violence well. You do have to hunt animals in the beginning of the game, and Lara reacts with remorse to killing deer and having to gut them (the deaths of animals are not nearly as graphic, but have depressing sound effects). The first time she kills someone, she responds with shock, obviously in distress.

I found the story enjoyable overall. Lots of fun bits of mythology in the story, multiple types of bad guys, supernatural elements – all of which I enjoyed. You had to be sneaky sometimes, brash and violent at others, and there were fights you just couldn’t win. There were also some fun call outs to the previous stories.

The Bad or Not-So-Good:

For some people, the intensity of the gore might be surprising and offputting. Obviously there is a lot of violence in the game – Tomb Raider has always been violent. There are blood spurts and finishing moves, with graphic detail. Lara’s deaths when you fail are also awful, and when I explained to my husband why I didn’t like some of them, it was basically that they were done in such “loving detail.” In a desire to show how realistic the game was and how they were treating Lara in the same way they would a man, they went a little overboard. I didn’t mind it a lot, but it might discourage others.

There were also the sounds – Lara responded to damage pretty vocally. Lots of gasping, moaning, etc. It was a little excessive and had the same kind of feeling to me of the extreme emphasis on the violence and how she was being beat down. I wish there had been less of that – I appreciated that she physically responded to pain and that she reacted realistically to causing injury to others or killing, but the sounds were a little excessive.

The Damsel in Distress trope made an appearance – it just wasn’t Lara. I loved Sam’s character, but she’s treated as kind of incompetent and weak, and she is repeatedly captured. That disappointed me because I had been hoping to not see that specific trope in the game.

There were dumb choices on Lara’s part. I know she was supposed to be naive, but like some other reviews have said, I could not understand why she just did not put on some more clothes! What the hell, Lara? You’re shivering and you just killed a dude with a sweet parka and you just wander around in your tank top. Drove me crazy! Plus, she’d run out into super dangerous situations in the cut scenes, and I hated not being in control to stop her there. But, I understand to a point that this was to tell a story about someone who was naive and who wouldn’t always be thinking straight. Still, it was stressful.

I caught a few graphics glitches (floating paper, missing hair, etc.) but nothing indicating a big problem. I did have issues with the game crashing if I had tesselation activated, which sucked. Some of the quick time events weren’t clear with what you had to do – I took multiple turns to figure out some events.

There were zero women as baddies. I was surprised by that, hoping that they would apply the gender balance to more of the NPCs, but I also was surprised that they explain it in the game. Like, whoa. Most games never bother to explain why everyone is a dude, but this did. I didn’t quite like the reasons why, but it’s something that they actually explained it.

The Controversy (minor spoilers)

The controversial scene wasn’t that bad for me at all. I would never say that anyone could watch it and have no issues, but to me, it wasn’t that bad. I felt more like the guy was being a murdery predator than a rapey predator. You have a quicktime event, and if you fail, he just strangles you. If you succeed, the fight continues, and you pick up a gun. Another quicktime comes up, and if you fail, you get shot right in the head (which was startling and gross). If you succeed, you shoot him right in the face, and it’s bloody and gory, and they linger on his face for a moment to let it sink in. It was actually well-handled, and I didn’t feel like there was going to be rape in that scene. I didn’t feel like Lara was helpless even though her hands were literally tied. After you shoot the guy, she reacts emotionally to killing him, and I was pleased to see her handle that well.

The original promo was cut badly, had unnecessary audio, and it seemed to combine two instances and slow them down for effect. It’s disappointing the marketing was played out that way. The latest promos were much better and more effective.

Lara looks like a wreck after the game, though. This is the “Survivor” Lara character model.

Final Comments

Overall, I was riveted to the game. I will probably play it again. It’s a thriller – it’s intense, and I was holding on tight every minute. It was so fun to watch and play that my husband sat with me and watched almost my whole playthrough. I beat the game at 80% in less than 4 days (that’s with work and school and tabletop gaming in-between), and played for more than 3 hours at a time each time I sat down to play. That’s huge for me – I’ve only beat a few video games, and normally I play only for an hour or two at a time. It was a lot of fun, exciting, and this is a huge step forward for games and women heroes in games.

(Tomb Raider – Casual Review originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

”Involve other people. Involve them, involve them, involve them.” – Henrik Thurfjäll

That’s it. The best larp advice I have to offer. The advice might not look like much, and I wasn’t very impressed with it when I first heard it.

”Involve other people? How about “No”? My character has some super secret secrets, and they need to be kept secret. Plus, I’m a great larper, I don’t want to involve other less-great-then-me larpers in what I do. I’m way too cool to involve other people.”

As you can see, I was a bit immature. Yet, I think some of my initial resistance might ring true on some level. There might be in character reasons why involving others can seem like a bad idea. We also want the best possible play experience, and we might not feel comfortable playing with just anyone or have some fool ruining our game.

Fear not, I will address those issues and explain why it still is the best larp advice I ever heard.

Larp is about interaction

The organizers of a larp might set up a starting point and engineer some of what will happen during a game. But the game itself is about interaction. Interaction between the players, and interaction with the framework the organizers set for the game. What is interaction? Well, this is the dictionary definition.

Interaction: a mutual or reciprocal action or influence

Actions that  affect and involve other people. During a larp a lot of things are happening, both inside you and outside you. You might have all sorts of awesome thoughts and feelings about the game, but only how you act influences other people’s game. In return only other people’s actions affect your game, no matter what awesome thoughts other people might be having.

Your game experience depends on your interactions with other players. So you better make the best of them.

Active and engaging involvement

What you want to strive for is to be active and engaged when you interact with other players. Rather than hoping for that random interaction that will turn out good, striving for being active and engaged will make the scenes better. That means involving other in what you do, and involving yourself in what they do. Either by working together with other players, or working at cross purpose. Or finding some other way to involve them in what you are doing.

You can involve the other players on multiple levels. Involve them on an out of character level in your preparations before the game, involve their characters in what your character is up to, and involve them in the actions you take during the game. Do it in an engaging way, do it with emotional investment and commitment. Both on a player level and a character level. Care about your fellow players, and see that your character gives a fuck, for good or bad, about their characters. You need feelings to play a powerful story.

Choose actions that involve other people

Let’s say that your character learns a secret. You know who killed the rebel leader.

At larps keeping secrets is easy. In real life you might notice if someone you know well is hiding something. In a larp you don’t know the other characters that well. If the players don’t decide to clearly act out that they are hiding something, it can be really hard to figure out. You can without any effort keep the secret if you want to.  By simply doing nothing.

You will know who killed the rebel leader, no one else will know that you know it, and it wont affect anyone else’s game. It will all be in your head. It will lead to no interaction or involvement whatsoever. You can chose that course of action. But it is not very interesting, for you or anyone else.

Or, you can have that knowledge affect your actions. Perhaps knowing who killed the rebel leader angers you, or perhaps it delights you. Act out that feeling. Perhaps you can begin to hatch a plot of your own because you know the truth, and manipulate the people around you to unknowingly do your bidding. Perhaps you can use the knowledge for your own gain, or to help someone.

By acting on the secret things will happen. You don’t have to reveal the secret. Just act upon it in some way. You will have to something to do, and you can interact and involve other people in what you doing. Taking action might risk exposing the secret, but it opens up a lot of interesting opportunities as well. Taking action involving others leads to more fun.

Share information

One of the easiest ways to involve other people is sharing information. Important information, trivial information, true information, false information, useless information, things you once heard from your grandma, or personal information. The content doesn’t matter. Just share it.

There is no sharing too much information at larps, just sharing the wrong information. Even if you have a secretive character, share information like crazy. Sharing useless, trivial, false, or incomplete information can be a great way to be secretive.

Pass on information, even if you don’t have a clue what it is about. For example, when someone asks you something you can pass on the information that they had been asking about it.  “I had this weird mage asking about a three eyed crow.  I don’t know anything about crows, but it is a weird question isn’t it?” Passing on that the mage has been asking questions will not only engage the listeners in a moment of conversation. It opens up a possibility that both you, the mage, or the listeners will get to know more about the three eyed crow and get involved in that plot.

You can share simple observations.  Stating that “Tiger looked pissed off earlier” is also a way to involve people and being engaged in other people’s stories. By saying that Tiger look pissed off you show that Tiger matters, but also that the listener matters and you want them to know that Tiger is pissed off for some reason.

Can involving people screw up my play experience?

Yes, it can. Five people in a scene can be amazing, but 50 people in the same scene can be cluster fuck. At other times there is this one player that you just don’t get along with and that you don’t want to involve in what you are doing. Occasionally doing something that involves other people can come back and bite you in the tail.

But usually you can improve your own and everyone’s game experience if your actions involve other people. You just have to do it in smart ways.

Perhaps there’s an opportunity for five people to sneak into the enemy camp during the night and steal the important artifact. But it would be a cluster fuck if 50 people did it. That’s not a reason you can’t involve more then five people in the theft. You can for example involve others by telling them that you will try to steal it, and tell them to come looking for you if you are not back by the morning. Or perhaps you ask someone to start a brawl at the other end of the game area to draw away the guards or that you have a greater chance of stealing the artifact.

What about that player, the one you just don’t get along with? Can you involve them? Perhaps you can avoid interacting with them directly but still involve them in your actions?  Send another player who does get along with them to carry a message to them, or to go on a mission with them. That still creates active and engaged involvement  but doesn’t force you to spend time together with someone you don’t want to spend time with.

Closing words

Involving your fellow players is great larp advice to take to heart. Adopt a mindset and attitude when you try think about how to actively engage and involve other players in what is happening, or involve yourself in what they are doing, and your larps will become even more awesome.

Involving your fellow players doesn’t have to be about grand gestures. Just simply involve them in what you are doing.

Be it sitting down to have a snack, or in slaying a dragon, or playing out the drama of your sister’s betrayal. Involve them. Often, it’s the small gestures that  matter the most in the end. The time you asked someones opinion, or ask them to tag along on some trivial errand, because the small things build the framework that gives the rest of the story meaning.

”Involve other people. Involve them, involve them, involve them.” – Henrik Thurfjäll

That is all I have to say.

(The best larp advice I ever heard originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

The Daughter

Daughters and Feminism in Tragedy

So, as I noted last time, there are five roles in tragedy. The role of Daughter is the only one called out specifically by gender, and that’s done for a reason (and not because of Game Chef’s rules that year, because I didn’t end up entering anyway). As I say in the book, daughters have a special place in Shakespeare. They are the center of the social web, the necessary source of future. Issues of inheritance, ownership, love, sexuality, progeny, wealth, honor… it’s all there, centered on the daughter. She is the tool through which alliances are forged and heirs are obtained in a patriarchal society, and the possible leader or heir in a more egalitarian (or even matriarchal) setting. Lovers want to be her partner or owner, Foils may want to help or harm her, Parents want to direct or control her, and Authority figures want to put limits on her behavior so that she remains a controlled commodity — or perhaps want to free her so she can save us all. All of that, then, is placed against any desires that she herself might have. Her very existence and any desire she might have for self-determination places her at the center of conflict, simply by being who she is.

Now, Shakespeare’s fascination with daughters is easily shown in the sheer number of plays that revolve around daughters. That alone would make it a clear choice to include them. My reason for doing so doesn’t stop there, though.

The Lover

First, and perhaps most importantly, the position of daughters in Shakespeare and the position of women in society are not very dissimilar, even in the twenty-first century. Recent efforts to restrict access to birth control, to eliminate facilities that might provide abortions, to shame women who dare to assert control over their own sexuality, and to ignore victims of rape and excuse their offenders speak eloquently about the position that women — and by women, I mean daughters, seen not as individuals but as defined by their social role — hold in the center of cultural anxiety and controversy. This isn’t rocket science — it’s only barely interpretation. The chance, then, to take on the role of Daughter with all it entails is one that I think is incredibly important, if only because in this game, Daughters have as much agency as they wish to have. If they become a tool, it is the player’s choice (and thus the character’s choice) to do so.

Sons and Daughters

One thing that I’ve found fascinating during playtesting is the resistance to playing a Daughter on the part of some players. It’s often a role that’s left over, or one that someone gets talked into. In particular, this is true for men who don’t want to play cross-gender and feel uncomfortable with the idea. I’ve been asked if the daughter can be a son in at least half the playtests, to which I say that yes, you can play the gender of the character you want. If you play a son, though, the son needs to be “daughtered.” The same questions represented by the daughter have to apply to the son. Princes are a great example, anything where there are responsibilities for the future and their bodies and choices are looked at as belonging at least in part to someone else. I’ve found that people aren’t used to playing men that way, and these efforts to apply outside controls and ownership have resulted in some of the most interesting (and rebellious) male characters in the games.

The Authority

Inclusive Art

So, nobody who publishes a finished game does it all themselves, not if they want it to come out well. Nowhere was this more true than Tragedy. I wrote the game, but Matt made sure it had a development pass. Jess Hartley edited it so I didn’t have to, because few things are sadder and less effective than a writer editing their own work on a large scale. If I’d had to, I probably could have done both those things, but the game would have suffered for it and taken longer to get done.

When it comes to art and layout, however, I would have been completely at sea. Not only am I only so-so at stick figures, but the mysteries of layout are beyond me as yet. I get publication, and rule one for that is “get a good layout/graphic design person.” In my case, I did both, using Jeremy Kostiew for cover and graphic design and Eloy Lasanta for layout. On top of that, the absurdly talented Jenna Fowler provided the art for Tragedy, and as you can see by the included work here, she’s amazing. When it comes to a range of body styles, complexions, positions, poses, crowd scenes, individual portraits, proportions, perspective… I cannot praise her highly enough.

Art is, in my opinion, a make or break point for a book. I’m of the opinion that if you can only afford a few good pieces, stick with the good ones and use graphic design and clever layout to make up the rest. Good art will sell a book, while bad art will turn a customer away. Because of her skill and flexibility, we were able to get good art, letting us edge ever closer to the diversity we wanted in terms of body types, appearances, cultural backgrounds, and sheer coolness that I’d never have been able to touch otherwise. I can accept that the game itself might only be so-so, but no matter who you are, the art is fantastic.

Fortune’s Fool, one of the Fatal Flaws in A Tragedy in Five Acts

Jenna provided all the art I’ve included in this post for the game, the topper of which, in my opinion, is the art for the Fortune’s Fool, one of the Fatal Flaws available in the game. The perspective, the shading, all of it… it’s a difficult illustration to pull off for any one of a number of reasons (but hands figure into it) and she nailed it. I couldn’t have asked for more. If you’d like to see the rest of the art she gave me, consider purchasing at least the PDF so I can hire her again in future.

It’s not every day that you get to make a game, and it’s vanishingly rare that you get to make a game that is as meaningful for you as a creator as Tragedy is for me. There are undoubtedly improvements that could be made — there always are. Nothing is ever perfect. I really think, however, that Tragedy is a pretty nice little game that gives you something to think about after you’re done having fun with it, and that’s really about the best I think I could have done no matter what.

(Design Diary: A Tragedy in Five Acts, pt. 2 originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

Obviously, Sexism in games is kind of a deal around here, and we’re always looking to up the signal, broaden the conversation, and keep talking about the issues until they improve. (And they can and DO improve!) So when GaW’s own Professor Jessica Hammer turned me on to GTFO, a documentary in the making about these very issues, I was excited. It’s currently crowdsourcing to help pay for final production and it could really use all of our help to get it funded. With that in mind, I got to interview the interviewer, and ask Shannon some questions about the film, the Kickstarter, and gaming-as-woman in general.

GAW – Talking about the issues of sexism in gaming is always always always hard, and often met with a level of resistance and push back when you even attempt to have these conversations is enormous and painful. Have you experienced any such push back? What would you say is the strangest/oddest resistance you’ve run into?

Shannon – Going into this, I realized that sexism in gaming is a very touchy subject, but it’s such an important issue that I wanted to make the film regardless. I’ve been very lucky thus far in that I haven’t received too much personal harassment. I think a big part of it may be the fact that I’m not a huge gamer myself (I’ve only ever played games casually with friends), so perhaps it is harder for trolls to attack an outsider of sorts. I did receive one hilarious message asking if I was just an attention whore and if I had heard of “Tits or GTFO” before. Yes sir, I have, thus the title of my film.

Shannon – So many of the women I’ve spoken to have had such positive responses to the project, even when I approach them out of the blue. It’s incredible what these women have to put up with on a daily basis just to pursue a career that they love. I think the video game industry may be one of the last strongholds of blatant sexism and my only hope is that we can bring these issues out into the open and make it unacceptable for people to treat others this way simply because of their gender (or race, religion, or sexual orientation, for that matter).

In addition to the women’s responses, the overwhelmingly positive feedback from men who are bothered by sexism in gaming gives me hope that, with time, the future may be bright for women in the industry. We are so lucky that people are already talking about this issue, and now it’s time for everyone else to know about it.

Shannon – Amazingly, I haven’t yet encountered any ex-gamers yet, ie women who have given up on gaming because they were being harassed. The strong, talented women I’ve talked to manage to power through every day because of their love of video games. And that is inspiring.

Shanno – This is such a huge overarching issue, so I’ll try to answer it as succinctly as possible. I’ve asked this question to all of the women I’ve interviewed and have received a variety of answers, some of which include: the problems of an isolationist “nerd” culture that disdains outsiders, the portrayal of female characters within the games themselves, young boys being encouraged to play games while girls are discouraged, the expectation that all gamers are white teenage males, the assumption that female gamers are just looking for male attention, and many more. I don’t know the full answer, but I suspect it is a combination of a variety of cultural influences. I’m hoping to explore these complex issues more in the film.

Shannon – I don’t consider myself an expert interviewer, but I try to maintain a friendly yet professional tone. It’s important that the person you’re interviewing feels comfortable, so even a few short minutes of friendly banter can go a long way – for both the interviewee and myself. Everyone I’ve interviewed has been so passionate about the subject matter and receptive to my questions that the interviews for GTFO have been a breeze. I imagine that if I were speaking to someone who didn’t want to talk to me it would be much more challenging!

Shannon – There are definitely naysayers out there who don’t think that there should be a film about women in gaming (common responses include “stop complaining” or “shut up and play”). But the mere fact that these people exist proves that this film needs to be made. Yes, there have been strides for women in gaming simply because we are talking about the issues, but the fact remains that this is still a huge problem. Regardless of the industry, people shouldn’t have to feel threatened or attacked because of their gender, it’s as simple as that. And the more people are aware of this issue, the better. It would be a travesty to lose the half of the population’s potential ideas, contributions, and skills simply because they don’t want to enter a field that is predisposed against them.

Shannon – One issue I would like to briefly address is how I got involved in this project. Because I had never experienced it myself, I first found out about the rampant sexism in gaming from my friend and game blogger Aaron Izakowitz, who referred me to this article about sexual harassment during a Cross Assault match.

I was appalled that this sort of behavior was being tolerated, so I decided to begin filming this project in hopes of getting to the bottom of why sexism is so prevalent in this field. I wanted people like myself, unaware outsiders, to know what was happening so that we can start a discourse about gender in gaming.

Shannon – I truly appreciate any and all help we can get funding the project! This subject is near and dear to my heart, as I’m sure it is to yours. Thank you so much for taking the time to interview me and I look forward to reading more enlightening articles from Gaming As Women.

(Shannon Sun-Higginson and why you should GTFO originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

What Is A Tragedy in Five Acts?

A Tragedy in Five Acts is a game that sets out to emulate Shakespearean tragedy in a quick and dirty sort of way. Fives are important in this game; there are five players, five Roles, five acts (with three scenes each), and five Fatal Flaws. It’s cooperative in the sense that there’s no GM and everyone’s working toward the same end goal — a tragic play that feels like Shakespeare without having to know Shakespeare very well (although I think it adds significantly to the game if you do). It’s competitive in that you’re all trying to get narrative control to make the story go the way you want and gain Tragedy Points. The player with the most Tragedy Points at the end wins the game and gets to name the play. The setting for the game is generated at each session by the players, so it’s different every time.

Each player has a Role: Daughter, Lover, Foil, Parent, or Authority. These roles each have something that they do or stand for in the text that you can include to the extent you want, but the focus is on these roles in terms of society and interconnectedness. They each do something for and with and to the others, and how that gets negotiated is what shapes the plot. Shakespeare was big on social quandaries and the struggle between duty and individual choice, and that’s easy to play out here. Each role also has an act they’re responsible for, particularly in trying to keep the type of change and narrative place in the story appropriate to that act. That role’s player acts as director for that act and determines scene beginning and end, who’s participating in a scene, and what if any secondary characters are in the scene.

Each character also has a Fatal Flaw, something that will drive their behavior (often to unhappy ends). Fatal Flaws start out as secret, but you can reveal them over the course of the play for varying rewards. Once a Flaw is revealed, it must be adhered to; a secret Flaw doesn’t have to affect anything. Flaws are chosen randomly.

The beginning of each scene sees a narrative auction, wherein players describe what they’d like to see happen and other players bid on which ideas they like best. You only get ten bidding tokens per act, though, so you have to ration them appropriately. You can choose to abdicate and have your character die early if you wish, which allows you to continue interacting with the narrative through influence, direction, and playing secondary characters while getting the glory of an early death when it’ll be most shocking. At the end of the play, final fates are assigned: exiled, forsworn, and dead; everyone gets at least one of these, and multiples aren’t out of the question.

Why I Did It

I did it because of the 2011 Game Chef AND because I’m an English lit grad student AND because I’m a gamer and why not? More specifically, though, I did it because of the possible required components, “Daughter” was one of them — and it was one that was rarely chosen, from the entries I saw. When it was chosen, the daughter was more often a goal or a prize than a character option. There was no agency there, no integration, and honestly… it annoyed me and made me sad. I didn’t finish my game in time to enter, so I didn’t get to submit. I did get to publish, though, so I’ll take that and be happy with it.

The other reason I did it, or at least the reason I continued on with it, is more academic in nature: I believe that Shakespeare had a method in his madness. Shakespeare is noticeably different from both his contemporaries and other playwrights since. We can recognize a Shakespearean play even when it’s almost entirely divorced from its original language and context. There is a feeling to it that sticks around despite how it gets repurposed. While we could argue about how much Shakespeare is defined by historical efforts to canonize and lionize him in the name of British Supremacy or high culture or what have you (and there are interesting arguments to be had there, don’t get me wrong), I think that even apart from his place in culture or how he got there, he was a clever sort of chap and his plays have a certain something to them that is worth returning to. There is a method, and that method gets us that Shakespeare experience, and I believe it is replicable, especially within a game — and I’m always interested in the areas where gaming and education overlap, so there we go. My path was set.

How I Did It

I did it with a lot of playtesting, for one. The core mechanic is, frankly, dirt simple. It’s simple enough that I honestly wasn’t sure it qualified as a game. There aren’t any stats to speak of, there’s no resolution roles, there’s no combat mechanic, there’s no social stuff. There’s telling a story and scoring points, and that’s pretty much it. If it weren’t for Fiasco and Our Last Best Hope and similar games, I don’t know that I would have pressed on with it, but even they have more of a structured rules base than Tragedy does. Here’s the thing, though — that’s what makes this accessible. It makes it work. People tell stories and take turns and make up dialog and, even for people who don’t generally like or feel successful at improv-style games, it works. Everybody gets betting. Everybody gets auctions. And even for people who don’t feel like they come up with stuff off-hand, the winning of the game is not really necessary in order to enjoy the game and feel fulfilled at the end of it. The hiccups in dialog or character presentation or setting get glossed over through play and the good parts are what stand out — and I have to say, for a game that deals with tragedy, I’ve never had a session that wasn’t heavily punctuated with laughter all the way through. So that kept me going.

There were a lot of refinements along the way, of course: how and when can people spend Tragedy Points, how many do you get and when, etc. But those were tweaks to the system, not changes. Once we’d run it enough times and felt like we had a handle on it, we started the process of writing the draft and commissioning art and whatnot. The benefit of having done game publishing for a while (and this being our second book) is that we knew what we were getting into and had a decent handle on what went with it. We were able to publish and pay everyone 20% above what we contracted them for with the roughly 5k we made on the Kickstarter, plus getting custom dice and tokens and even some shirts (I love the shirts). We didn’t make thousands and thousands of dollars, but it was never that kind of game and the stretch goals showed it. I am pondering going back and trying to make a version that focuses on pedagogy, as well as one that focuses on comedy, but these will be their own projects and, given where I am at in grad school, are not something I’ll be able to get to right away regardless.

To Be Continued

Next time I’ll talk more about the role of daughters in the game, how feminism comes into it and more, as well as showing off some of the art and praising my freelancers to high heaven. If you’d like a review copy of Tragedy, please email me at growlingdoorgames AT gmail.com.

(Design Diary: A Tragedy in Five Acts, pt. 1 originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

Check out the interview below!

Name, favored class, and general occupation?

Joanna: Joanna Gaskell, Multiclass Druid/Bard; actor, producer, and tech writer to pay the bills.

Vanessa: Vanessa Driveness, spellcaster or ranger, I do a variety of work for film/tv (primarily costumes and wardrobe).

Tara: Tara Pratt, Office Rogue by day, Bard by night.

Jennifer: Jennifer Lyseng; Druid (ever self-sufficient); technical writer/events administrator

Ashley: Ashley Young, Rogue Elf, Makeup Artist/Hair Stylist

What kind of games do you play?

Joanna: I currently have a Monday night Pathfinder group – we’re playing the Kingmaker adventure path. On the X-Box I’m playing Skyrim, and on the PC I’m into Guildwars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, and a bit of League of Legends. I also host a board game review show, so I test and review a lot of board and card games, and we have a lot of game nights. I’ve been enjoying Survive: Escape from Atlantis and Eclipse a lot recently, plus the Standard Action Card Game, which we’ve been testing. At PAXEast I got a chance to test D&D Next, and try my hand at a bit of Magic: the Gathering, which I’ve never really had the chance to get into.

Vanessa: I’ve gone through multiple phases of RPGs, MMOPRGs and tabletop games in the last 17 years; these days I don’t have time for much, just the occasional night of drinking and Settlers, Game of Thrones, Cards Against Humanity, etc.

Tara: Admittedly, I’m not a gamer. I’m a commitment phobe when it comes to games and nine times out of ten I’ll want to quit and do something else before the thing’s reached its natural conclusion. I fear some sort of flogging were this to happen. I miss Mario Kart, let’s put it that way.

Jennifer: Pen-and-paper RPGs, board games, card games, puzzle platformers and morpgs

Ashley: Pathfinders and the Sims because I’m cool like that.

Have you ever felt that being a woman has helped or hindered you on the way to success with Standard Action or your other gaming pursuits?

Joanna: In RPG gaming, I find I am treated a little differently than a guy when I just drop in on a game at a con or something – a lot of times, people try to explain the rules to me, but they’re never really negative experiences. Usually people are quite friendly and welcoming, they just tend to assume I’m starting from scratch. In Standard Action it’s never been a hindrance, really – Rob (our director, and partner) and I were always prepared for it when we first started out; we understood that in some business talks and meetings he would likely have to be there, in case I just wasn’t taken seriously. But it hardly ever happened – I’m not going to say never, but hardly ever.

It’s always sort of hung over my head though, as a producer, I have to say. Some people suggest we go for more revealing costumes to bring in more male viewers, because that’s what they want to watch, and suggest that we’re just being stubborn when I decide not to go that way – I mean, sex sells, right?

It’s always been a bit of a fine line for me. As our stuff is out there for everyone to see, it’s under scrutiny from people with all kinds of opinions on how women should be portrayed. I try to ignore it as much as possible, but I do feel like people are watching, for sure. I try to stay true to the story and the characters, and let that guide the writing and the feel for the show.

Vanessa: Being a woman hasn’t really affected my involvement in SA at all either way, it’s a pretty evenly split cast/crew, and everyone is respectful and supportive of everyone else. And we all have the same dirty sense of humour on set. As for the rest of my geek development, others treatment of me because I am a woman, has been a wide variety of positive and negative experiences, and so it has certainly changed and influenced the activities and areas that I have pursued or avoided.

Tara: Being a woman definitely hasn’t hurt the success I’ve enjoyed with Standard Action. Some joke is inevitably made about how having a sexy corset will attract a bigger audience and dammit, that’s true. But Joanna and I know this is more of a reflection of what people like to look at, and has nothing to do with some sort of insidiousness or creepiness in what audiences enjoy. I’m willing to bet that an equal portion of our audience likes to see women kicking ass just as much. WHILE admiring the sexy corset.

Jennifer: The Standard Action cast and crew is full of awesome women, and SA is spearheaded by truly decent human beings. It’s a special thing, and I feel fortunate to be a part of it. We’ve had the opportunity to talk gender issues off set, which has been great! On set, gender has never been an issue.

As for my other gaming pursuits, I’ve definitely experienced my share of both privilege and disadvantage as a woman. I’ve never wanted for a gaming group, for example, but I’ve also been dismissed as a strategist and had my patience tested by a lot of misogynist and sexist conversation. It’s interesting – most of the people I game with have been very open to conversations about gender and stereotypes in the stories we tell, but not everyone is quite so keen on discussing the language we use out of game, around the table.

Ashley: No not really most ppl in my industry are women so that’s pretty normal.

How did you get involved with Standard Action?

Joanna: I wrote the first couple of episode scripts as an exercise in character development for myself, as a writer. I’d never written a screenplay before, and I wanted to give it a try. I showed them to Rob, and we were just about at the right time to start on a new project, so he showed them to Edwin Perez, an actor and D&D player we’d worked with in the past. He loved them, and we started to think seriously about how to make them happen. We filmed Episode 0 (which became Episode 6.5 of Season 1) as a prototype, and things just started rolling from there.

Vanessa: I met the director, Rob, on another set. We ended up talking about fantasy books, D&D and webseries,  and he gave me a burned DVD with some of his work to watch. It had episode 0, aka episode 6.5, on it. I was hooked in the first few seconds. I told him I wanted in and he said I would have to talk to his girlfriend Joanna, that it was her project. I met Jo for coffee and somehow convinced her that she needed me. Haven’t looked back since.

Tara: The good old-fashioned way: I saw Joanna’s audition notice on Vancouver Actors Guide and I requested an audition. (I also had some coaching from my boyfriend at the time who knew way more about D&D that I’ll ever hope to know. I believe I thanked him for giving me the edge.)

Jennifer: I met Rob and Joanna IRL when I was manager of a board game store. I had worked as a photographer for many years, and when I saw how much fun they were having with this great new project, I asked if I could shoot stills for them. There was no epic “you have my sword/camera” moment, but before long I was part of the crew.

Ashley: I got called on last minute to help my friend on Robs film the Directors Project and I got along with everyone really well and then when Joanna decided to do Standard Action she was all like hey and I was all like hey and ya that was fun. 

What do you do for Standard Action?

Joanna: I’m the writer, producer, and I play the Elf Barbarian, Edda. I also assist with some of the editing, I location manage, I do camerawork sometimes, I do craft services, I make props sometimes, I manage a lot of the promotions and merchandise, I’m the accountant… yeah, I do a lot of stuff.

Vanessa: I am an associate producer and the costume designer. I’ve also been the AD, acted in a few episodes, done props, weapons, set dec and helped manage PR & marketing. We all wear a lot of hats on the show.

Tara: I act. And try not to trip over my cape. I’m generally only successful at one of these things. At a time.

Jennifer: I am a camera operator, which on our small set means I work with the other camera operator (we usually shoot with two or three cameras) to set up the shots as per Rob’s direction and make sure we get the footage we need. I shoot stills when we’re setting up and b-roll on demand. I also help with as many other things as I can – from running sandwiches on set to working conferences and contributing perks to our Kickstarter campaign.

Ashley: I do all the makeup and hair as well as the prosthetics and fun stuff.

What is your favorite part about working on Standard Action?

Joanna: My favourite part are shoot days, when I get to act. I got this project started just so we could bring the kind of show to life that we really wanted to see. This is the kind of material – intelligent fantasy/comedy, gamer stuff – that we just don’t have the ability to work on in conventional TV and film (at least, it comes around very rarely). If I were to stick to traditional avenues as an actor, I would never be able to play a barbarian elf. Now I can, and it’s soooo much fun! And at this point, when we’ve shot two seasons, Tara, Edwin, Daniel and I just slip into the characters so easily that the scenes become a real joy to shoot and play with.

I also really love the end of the post-production process, when everything comes together. That’s pretty incredible, to see the result of everyone’s hard work.

Vanessa: My favourite thing to do on SA is character building. There’s so much creative freedom, and I can make costumes and characters as lovely and magical or as ugly and badass as I want (within budgetary reason, which isn’t really saying much because I’m a shopping ninja).  I wouldn’t get to research, design and then build all these really interesting fantastical costumes without the show. The best thing I would take away from the project though, is the people that I’ve met and connections I’ve made. Because of SA, I have met the most amazing, incredibly awesome, talented people and my entire life path has changed dramatically.

Tara: It’s going to sound completely mental, but a sadistic part of me loved getting up at ungodly hours every other weekend, trotting over to Mac’s for a cup of coffee, waiting for Joanna to pick me up, and scooting away on our little drive out of town while the sun came up. It was the process behind what we actually see when an episode airs. Sitting in the makeup chair and giggling over the “that’s what she said!” jokes that NEVER got old for us. Running through the woods so as not to trip over rocks and twist our ankles. Peeling those blue contacts from my eyes when we were done and feeling like I’d done something. We were just happy doing it, and I was happy to be reunited with my friends again over sandwiches and bags of candy. And that always made me happy to come to set.

Jennifer: The same thing I truly enjoy about RPGs – working with other creative people to make some magic happen. Every shoot day is long, hard, and totally hilarious…and, a few months later, we have something quirky, engaging and enjoyable to show for it! It’s amazing to feel like we’re contributing to the community I love so much.

What is your favorite episode of Standard Action, and why?

Joanna: Hmm. I really love the final episodes of Season 1 – Episode 11 is one of my favourites. I just love the character work and the development that goes on there.

In Season 2 I’m a big fan of Episode 5 – again, it’s one of the quieter episodes, really focused on character interaction. But I also love Season 2, Episode 4, which is huge and epic, and has some very over-the-top, very ambitious performances in it, that I think work really well. Kudos to the actors on trusting the writing.

Vanessa: My favourite episode SO FAR, would be the season 1 finale.  I loved what happened with all of the characters and their story lines, the writing was good, the performances were lovely, post production was solid, it looked beautiful as always, and it was a lot of fun to shoot.

Tara: It’s actually a tie: Season 1, Episode 7 (Don’t Split the Party) is an all-around favourite, but it is for me particularly not only because it’s witty, but I feel like we started to see a real coming together of the party in this one. I’m a sucker for warm fuzzy character development where people band together to fight a common enemy. I mean, we all knew it was coming and we’d get there eventually, but we started to really see the little knots that bind us together, and how we ultimately have each others’ backs.

And I also love Season 2, Episode 3 (Watching the Watchers) because I work in an office and have often thought of my stationery as weapons of evil.

Jennifer: Finally, we get to the hard-hitting questions. Hmm…I’m partial to Season 1, Episode 9: Hero Worship. It’s pulpy, funny, and was my first day on camera for SA. Season 2, Episode 1: The Board is Set has some of my favourite footage, and is a really great episode, all around. And then there’s the mime episode…or everything filmed in the alternate plane (aka purgatory, aka my real-life workplace), and…oooh, don’t make me choose!

Ashley: I like all the episodes of standard action so it’s hard to choose but I think I’ll go with the mime episode i think we had a bit to much fun filming that one.  P.S. The mime episode is season 1, episode 7.

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Thank you to all of the Standard Action crew for their time! I’m looking forward to season 3!

(An Interview with the Ladies of Standard Action originally posted on Gaming As Women.)