My role playing groups have been, almost exclusively, male. What are some ideas/options for making the group and the experience more likely to attract, and retain, female players?
[RPG] How to make the role playing group a not exclusively male one
gendergroup-dynamicssocial
Related Solutions
"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?" The Pirates of Ersatz, Murray Leinster
From your question I noticed a few things. Nominally, I completely agree with @mxyzplk's answer, so this should be in the way of an addendum.
It sucks to be the leader
In a RPG, it just completely sucks to be the leader. Most players when confronted with a plan, remember about fifteen percent of it for the first fifteen minutes. But they'll certainly remember when you deviate. Leaders get no additional responsibility and no perquisites, but they get all the blame.
In the military this is mitigated with the clear distinction between commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Not least because the isolation provides both support structures and necessary emotional distance (to a degree, of course). Being "elected" leader, especially with the pack dynamics of typical werewolf games is an extremely dubious honour that I'd flatly reject.
The fact that while you may be leader in character but not dominant over the player group makes things even stickier. You need to assert authority within the realm of the narrative without actually having that authority in reality. Again, something that will cause friction and resentment any way you cut it.
Depressing environments bleed emotions into play
The world of darkness does what it says on the tin. Having played in a horror game myself recently, the iconic themes of the world of darkness do not make for "happy" or, for that matter, validating game experiences in the main. (And, if they do, it's a violation of genre.) When you are faced with the stresses of being "leader" which are compounded by the stressors of the philosophies baked into the setting, no wonder you're having a rough time.
Some solutions:
On leadership:
Fundamentally, a gaming group is a relationship. Bad relationships that do not provide validation are a drain on mental and emotional resources. When they don't work, cut them off or change them. In your case, I'd play a game that's a bit lighter in tone and focus: a nice traditional dungeon crawl or similar heroic fantasy.
I'd also reject the leader role for all the reasons I outlined above. Or, if they force it upon you, demand the perquisites and authority that is concomitant with it: they can't have it both ways.
On the group:
I've found that group character creation creates a far more cohesive group. By having entangled backstories, the group can draw upon a deeper understanding of each others' characters, creating the basis for empathy and respect within the characters, instead of the necessary simulacrum imposed by players.
By articulating desired tropes, a "palette" (as Microscope) calls it, before the game begins, you'll be able to shape the narrative of the group in directions that you want to play. This allows you to avoid the nominally depressive tropes that come default with the setting (not limited to world of darkness) and describe a source for future characters to connect with the current group. Replacement characters, if they tie into the shared narrative, will continue to maintain the tropes and social trust.
Be practical:
As players, we shape our narratives to an amazing degree. Emulate Bron Hoddan in the Pirates of Ersatz. While playing, you will be aware of the desired practical outcome that will provide validation and satisfy your personal goals. With that outcome in mind, you then frame it in terms that suit both your character's narrative and the expected narratives of the other players such that they will act to reinforce your framing and thereby your outcome. If you fight their narrative control by "being a loner," it is difficult to achieve your own goals. If you help them work as a team and appear to sacrifice nobly on their behalf while executing your own goals... the entire process is smoother and more effective.
Note that I am not saying to lie. Instead, consider the causal constructions of your actions, the explanations for those actions to be an aspect of the role * separate* from the actions themselves. By manipulating the framing as well as the actions, you can provide the necessary hooks for the other players to support your version of reality, rather than rejecting it and, by extension, you.
Postscript
Looking at your comments to other questions, you should absolutely give this group two last tries. In the first trial (of one or two games), try a heroic romp where you can be "Big Damn Heroes." Require the players who need the spotlight be leader. In the second trial (again of one or two games), try a game where players can intrigue against each other (I'd recommend Ars Magica, but then again I recommend it for most things. Most games support PvP intrigue quite ably.) If neither game provides the validation you need and the spotlight the other players need, move on. Before you do anything, take a month break, sit down, relax, and try to game with some strangers. I'm pretty sure that if you go looking for games in the chat section of this site... someone will oblige. For more on the framing problem, I'd quite recommend Rule 34 by Stross, as it describes it in a delicious narrative context.
Get A Spokesman
Have someone come to town who wants to speak to a spokesman for the area. You could use a few different things, such as a merchant wanting to speak to someone about setting up trade, or a leader of a nearby tribe who just saw these Elves and wants to negotiate with them, or even a bad guy coming in to issue threats.
No matter what you use, the NPC in question should make it clear that talking to an entire committee is too cumbersome or beneath him (depending on who it is). He is only interested in speaking to a representative who can talk for the entire PC settlement. If they want to deal with the NPC at all, the PCs will have to pick someone to speak for them.
From there, you can let the situation organically grow and see if that turns into a leadership position. If it does, your job is done. If not...
Force The Issue
If you can't coax them, you can act more forcefully. You can try this a couple of different ways:
- Have random attacks start happening with increasing frequency. See if the PCs wind up with a defacto leader organizing them in combat (assuming your LARP has combat, you weren't specific on that). If they do, then you're done.
- If they don't organize themselves, have someone come in from a group that's also being attacked by whatever is attacking them and want to team up to fight against them. That person is going to want to talk to a leader.
- If that doesn't work either, simply have an authority figure come in and appoint someone. Maybe the land they moved into actually belongs to some kingdom but is generally unused. When the king hears some people moved in, he wants them under his authority so he appoints an official of the crown, who becomes the leader.
But Do You Really Want To?
Is this actually a problem for the PCs, or is it just a problem for you? I mean, if they enjoy doing things by committee and the disagreements that come from that, why do you want to force them out of it?
In my experience LARPing, leaders would appear naturally in groups when they were wanted/needed. If one never did, it was usually because the people involved were pretty content not having one, and trying to impose a leader on them was a great way to create resentment. That can be fine itself, if you want them to try to undermine that leader. But it doesn't sound like you want to create more infighting.
In the worst case scenario, this can cross boundaries and turn into out of character hostility. I've seen it happen: the people running a game pick a PC as leader who the other PCs don't think deserves it, and that leadership position comes with some kind of in game power. The next thing you know, rumors are flying about that person being the favorite of someone that runs the game, and that's why they were chosen. That's the kind of stuff that can lead to people quitting a LARP, even if there's no truth to it at all. On this stuff, perception is reality.
It's really best to just run the game and let the leadership issue sort itself out amongst the players. If they start failing to complete plot lines due to disorganization, you can point out that the problem was disorganization and that leadership would help them, but you should leave the actual appointing of leaders up to them whenever possible. When it's the group deciding to follow someone, the group is a lot more likely to accept it.
In the end, they're really the only ones who can make a leadership position work. It doesn't matter how much you want there to be a leader if there is nobody they're willing to follow.
Best Answer
I think it boils down mainly to the winning two step formula of
Step one should be fairly self explanatory, but for some reason many people worrying about this topic skip it. Try it, it works. My roommate was talking to a manager lady at work about an unexpectedly shared interest in Babylon 5, and said "Hey, we roleplay, if you want to give it a try come over one Sunday," and, despite never having gamed before, she became the most avid member of the group for a five year long campaign. We didn't do anything else complicated to attract her, we just invited her and she decided it/we were fun and thus kept coming back. Many people, female or not, feel reticent about inviting themselves along to something, so reach out.
Step two should also be self explanatory but my experience says it's not, so I'll elaborate. Here's your rule of thumb. If you act towards a new female player in any way that, if they were a large muscular male player, you would reasonably expect them to beat your ass in the parking lot after the game as a result, then you are behaving inappropriately. This includes overt hostility like character rape, continued references to sexual characteristics of the player or player's character, being overly pushy with someone else's character, being domineering and condescending, telling jokes at their expense, continually interrupting them, etc. No really, it works. Are you saying the equivalent of "Hey man, does your character have a big dong? Huh huh huh! No, don't do that - he doesn't cast that, he attacks with his dagger instead! There you go, now you're getting it, little buddy!" Obviously you know you'd be formally requesting a beat down were you to act like that to a guy. Women tend to take that kind of thing more quietly just because they get it so much that it becomes sadly routine, but in their minds they are giving you a beat down too.
Everything else people generally say on this topic ends up being false as much as it is true. People will say "Oh don't just focus on combat, have loads of role-playing," or "don't have use games with all those rules and math and stuff," or "make sure things are clean," but there are women that are hack monsters and rules wonks and slobs too - making gender generalizations is unhelpful and you should tune your game to the individuals involved regardless of race, gender, age, etc. I have yet to see any game preference or irritating personal habit not shared by members of both genders.