GenCon 2012: Why “Spouse Activities” is the Worst Thing

This is my first-ever guest column. The young lady who wrote it doesn’t have a blog of her own, but expressed her concern regarding GenCon’s off-putting programming for non-gamers, and I agreed to share her thoughts on my little corner of the web. I hope you find it as interesting and thought-provoking as I do.

So I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Natalie, I am 20 years old, a child and youth care worker and a nerd. I’ve attended Gen Con once, had an absolute blast and I just bought my badge for this August. There is, however, one thing that still sets me off in a red-faced rage: the “spouse activities” (SPA). Seriously, I’ve screamed in the faces of strangers about this, something I’m not too proud off. What enrages me even more is that in my courtesy Google search I found a few bloggers who were displeased by the issues, frustrated even. But not pissed off. I saw a gap and I plan on filling it.

Gen Con is amazingly diverse in its attendees and from what meager programing I attended out of the 2+ inch activity book it’s clear to me that the organizers did a damn fine job of providing for every kind of nerd. From table top gamers of all breeds to zombie lovers, anime freaks and LARPers; you name it there was a seminar, class, tournament or show about it. There was also a good selection for maturity/age level. Hit up the hentai cafe or chill with your younglings at the training grounds. No matter who you are or what you like, pull-ups to Depends Gen Con has something for you. Unless you’re female. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is good stuff for the nerd ladies, please refer to the 2+ inch program book. I’m referring to the Con Widow, the poor chick that gets dragged along by their boyfriend/husband to the biggest tabletop geekfest in North America. Upon arriving these ladies aren’t directed to Gen Con, instead they are provided with spouse activities. And what do the organizers think a non-nerd lady wants? Knitting.

The section for those, mostly female, who are not at the con for the con is full of activities like scrapbooking, beadwork, belly dancing and self-defense. Oh, and then there is “Crochet for Your Gamer” where you can “learn to crochet… so you can make fun little things for the gamer in your life.” The D 20 Girls project is running this event. They are also running “The Red Light District” and “Killer Bunnies: Quest for the Golden Carrot” among others. But not for the Widows. Rather than learning about a Dr. Who RPG (a free event, no experience required) or playing a Killer Bunnies game (always a recipe for fun times) the Widows get to crochet things for their gamer partners. Some, if not most of these events are things I can see being worked into the regular programming. They may not be inherently nerdy but as a family focused con it makes sense to have non-gamer activities for people to attend. And with some creativity any nerd can integrate their new self-defense knowledge into a RPG experience. But nope! Instead the randoms are labeled For Spouses Only and gifted to the partners of nerds in assurance that there is a space for them. A nice, safe and quite space away from all the hustle and bustle of the unwashed masses, not to mention their partners, where non-nerds can pass the days until they go back home. Which is just dumb.

So, ladies, if you’re at the con with your nerdy lad and you don’t want to game at all, have no fear for there are many other things to do. Into making or watching films? Maybe you could check out a seminar like “Film Budget and Finance” or “Trailer Park Jesus”, one of many featured films. Like anime? Learn with “The Guide to Anime Tropes” or watch with a room full of fellow fans with “Epic Battles of Amine”. Like crafty things? There are classes like “learn to make chainmail” and “21 days to a novel”. Have kids? Take them to the “Peter Pan Dress Parade” or “Create a Game” which as you may have guessed will teach your young geek how to create their very own game. Not to mention a whole butt load of child care giving you the freedom to check out all these events. And then there is the Misfit events section which has “Spot the Geek” a cosplay photo scavenger hunt and “BattleTech: Firestorm Tesla 11 Virtual Reality Cockpits”. That’s right ladies and gents, for 7 minutes you can command a battle mech on a 31st century battlefield. These are all event sections that require no playing of games and many of the events themselves involve less then nerdy things like watching movies or writing a novel. Yet none of them are marketed to Con Widows. So why have a completely different section for Widows full of non-gaming programing when there are already a few non-gaming activity sections?

If SPA was just another non-gaming category I think it would be pretty damn cool. Learning how to make your own yarn, taking a haunted walking tour of the city and learning the Thriller dance are all fun things that nerds and non-nerds can enjoy. The problem is this: the SPA is girlfriend daycare. Not to be left alone in the con to find the many non-gaming options the lowly Con Widow is dropped off at the SPA center to be entertained until the men folk return home. It is an unnecessary segregation of a group who could be having just as much if not more fun without the penned-in safe zone. There is no need for this category. It perpetuates the misconception that women lack ability or interest in gaming, and more annoyingly that they lack interest in peripheral nerdly pursuits. The insistence that women who do not want to game will be soothed by traditionally feminine hobbies is both condescending and rooted in a strange sort of sexism. For a convention that encourages families to attend it should be reaching out to those with less experience or exposure to the world of geekdom not shutting them up with zumba classes. One massively simple way to fix this would be eliminating the SPA.

It’s an easy solution; all they have to do is integrate the programming. Have an icon for non-gaming activities instead of activities for non-gamers, any overflow can go towards filling out the Misfit section. Design the programming so that gamers are invited to take part in knitting just as much as non-gamers are invited to take part in a D&D game. Don’t make it so that a person coming into the scene for the first time is shown the door to their roped in section of the party while their partner is off riding in a mech suite simulator.

Pinning Down the Art Form

In response to my post about muggles, Erin brought up an interesting point:

I'm confused, I loathe improv theater, both as a spectator and a participant, but I love table top role playing. - Erin

Part of the problem with communicating what exactly a role-playing game is, is that role-playing games aren't really like anything else. They're an artistic goulash that borrows from a wide range of arts. When I'm talking to new or potential players, I usually fall back on high school drama class, and the improv theater games we played there; in a role-playing game, you make up your character, speak for him or her, act out his or her actions (either through description or through demonstration), and create something that is very much like an impromptu play. 

But role-playing games aren't actually improv theater. For one thing, theater assumes an outside audience, a group of people who are not active participants but who are instead passively entertained by the action on stage. Role-playing games don't typically have an audience that is separate from the people who are involved (there are exceptions of course; sometimes someone "Just wants to watch," and then the theater analogue gets it a little closer). Moreover, the director of an improv play has a much smaller role in the direction of the narrative than does your average Game Master (again, with the exceptions, though: GM-light games or games that don't have a GM at all, exist, and those games are definitely role-playing games. I suppose the closest a role-playing game could be to improv theater would be a game with an outside audience in which the GM plays an ancillary role). 

Role-playing games are often compared to traditional storytelling, as well. If you've never met a professional storyteller, you're missing out; they're intense, and it is my personal belief that they would make both the best and worst Game Masters on he planet. In the best tellings of a story, the storyteller is both a performer and an improv artist. The storyteller has a story more or less memorized, but will include the audience in coming up with the details as the story is told. This adds a personal element to the telling of the story, and makes each telling a unique and interesting experience. Depending on the story (and the teller) the same tale can be told in wildly different ways when the audience changes. But storytelling, too, is not role-playing. For one thing, the audience is invited to invent details, plot twists, small things that can effect the flow of the story, but they do not play the protagonists. The storyteller controls all of the characters when weaving his or her tale. There is no question of authorship in traditional storytelling; the storyteller has all the control, a perfect railroad to the end game.

In some ways, that may seem like very bad role-playing. In fact, sometimes it is. When GM fiat gets completely out of control, it stops being a role-playing game and starts being a storytelling session in which the players have little or no control over what their characters do or how their characters act. And that is an integral difference between traditional storytelling and role-playing games. In the former, the storyteller is the performer, and the audience is a (mostly) passive force in the story. In role-playing games, the entire group make up both performers and audience, and the story belongs to the party. 

Others have drawn similarities to the production of a television series, or a comic book, or a collaborative novel, or a shared world series of stories, or a million other things.

Not to mention the fact that many role-playing games include a tactical miniatures game. While the role-playing bits are all great and good, when the dice start flying, the art of the thing is replaced by a half hour of rolling dice, checking stats, doing some quick arithmetic, moving little toy soldiers around the table, and snacking on Cheetoes. This is a phenomenon you won't find in either improv theater or traditional storytelling; it has more in common with chess.

Not to mention the random element of dice.

Or the role of out-of-character table talk in fleshing out the narrative.

Or the novel-like quality of attempting to quantify reality within a system.

Or... Well, there are a lot of ways role-playing games differ from damned near everything else. 

So maybe that's what role-playing games are. They're improv theater about traditional storytelling in which the teller weaves an elaborate plot around the pieces of a randomized chess game, to an audience that participates in the creation of the story by providing the protagonists' personalities (and moving their corresponding piece about the table). Or, maybe they're something completely different. It's been over thirty years and no one has managed to really pin down what the hell it is we're doing when we sit around and toss dice. 

But I can't tell new or potential players that. It's too big, it's too much to try and understand. When I'm talking to a potential player about role-playing games, and they ask me what it's like, I always say "It's like improv theater, with rules and dice." Sometimes, the person that I'm talking to cringes when I say "improv theater." It's happened. I just have to trust myself as a salesman to pick up on that and find a way to explain that is both unintimidating and intriguing. I'll save "how to sell role-playing games" for a different blog post, though.

How to Deal with Muggles

I see this all the time. I work behind the counter at a store that sells role-playing games. The situation plays out like this.

A person who has not yet been indoctrinated into the realm of role-playing games (in the store, I call them "muggles") is standing somewhere near the Vampire: The Requiem shelf, and begins to look at the books. Usually, if someone has been standing there for a while, I'll ask them what I can grab for them (far better sales technique than "Is there anything I can help you find?" for the retail people out there). If they tell me they're browsing, I suggest that they should "Feel free to buy everything you browse past!" and leave them alone. If they ask me about the game, or role-playing games in general, I give them the briefest possible explanation I can.

Muggle: So, I've never really played one of these games before... What's it like?
Me: You ever take drama, or seen Whose Line is it Anyway?
Muggle: Sure.
Me: Cool. It's like improv theater with rules and dice.

For some people, this is enough. They get an idea of what it is the hobby is about, enough to make a choice on whether or not this is something they want to be a part of. It's an improvised storytelling medium that involves some rules, and a system for determining arbitrary outcomes in a fair way. Cool. Moving on.

Others begin to ask more questions, and that's when I'll start getting into a bit more detail. You have a "character" who you portray, describing his or her actions and speaking for them. There is a "director" who tells you the situations in which your character finds him- or herself, and who controls the supporting cast. The rules are there to give you an idea of the sorts of things your character is good at, and to handle any situations that might come up; for instance in a Vampire game, the rules tell you how sunlight will hurt your character, and how strong your character is.

For some people, this is enough. They get an idea of what the hobby is about, enough to make a choice on whether or not this is something they want to be a part of. Others will ask more questions, and I'll answer them, and the process continues until the person I'm talking to has enough information.

I know I've said enough when the person I'm talking to has stopped asking questions.

This is a technique that I've used to describe role-playing to an insane number of people. I've been playing these games for coming on twenty years, and I've played with hundreds of different people in that time. Most of the time, I didn't meet those players; I made new players. I told them what the hobby was, I answered their questions enough to give them an idea of whether or not it was something they'd like, and if it was, I'd run a session or fifty for them. This is part of what makes me a successful salesperson in the games industry (and it's why I've played D&D with as many women as men).

The only time I see problems with this approach is when there is another gamer standing around the same shelves. I'll ask the muggles what I can get for them, and they'll ask questions. I'll answer them briefly, and if they don't ask further questions, I'll leave them to their choice. Almost without fail, the gamer customer will feel the need to chime in, and it is almost always in a way that is unwelcome and intimidating.

Gamer: That game is awesome.
Muggle: Yeah?
Gamer: Yeah, man. You can be like, twelve different kinds of vampire, and they each get special powers. Like my guy has Protean, which means he can sleep in the earth without getting hit by the sun. And this one time, a bunch of werewolves were coming after him, so he had to sleep there for three days and he almost went into torpor.
Muggle: (putting down the book) Okay...

The problem here is oversharing. The reason the game is cool to you is not the reason that someone who has never played a role-playing game is going to want to try it. A person who is going to pick up a role-playing game for the first time is interested in only a few things: is it fun? is it easy enough for me to learn? will I get enough use out of it for the cost that I pay? and is it fun?

Fun is a different thing for different people. Some of us honestly don't like improv theater with rules and dice. Some of us don't want to hang out and make up stories about people who don't exist and tell them to eachother. And that's okay. But keeping it simple, and telling people only as much as they need to hear to make a choice, is the easiest way to get new people into the hobby. There is a lot of information out there, and much of it is intimidating and strange. Just because you and I know what Auspex does (or Sneak Attack, or Glitterboy armor, or a wireless netjack, or whatever), doesn't mean that a person who hasn't played wants to. Sharing your own experience with the game might help someone who is on the fence decide to get into the hobby, but unless you're invited to share, you could just as easily be turning someone off from something they would have really enjoyed had you remembered a few simple rules.

1. Basic is better: Give someone only the information they need to know first. Role-playing games are like improv theater with rules and dice. This is my standard, go-to line when telling muggles what the hobby's about.
2. If they're not asking questions, it's better to let them make the choice on their own: People who ask questions are interested. People who want more information will request it. If you're offering information that hasn't been asked for, you're probably sharing a bit too much.
3. Only answer the question they've asked: Examples are not needed. Specific rules from the books are not needed. Telling muggles the rules of the game is not telling them about role-playing games. Telling muggles about your character is not telling them about role-playing. Telling muggles which edition of Dungeons & Dragons you prefer, and why is not telling them about role-playing. If they ask "So, okay, you have a director and some characters, but how do you know what to say?" just answer the question.
4. If you think you can't handle that, let the person behind the counter deal with it: Get his or her attention if you need to. Getting people into this hobby is my job. I've been doing this for a long time, and I'm good at it. My bet is that the person standing behind the counter at your Friendly Local Game Store is probably pretty good at it, too.