For the many years I have gamed, I lacked one experience that had become fairly common in the community around me, I had never gamed with a female player. Nor, for that matter, had many of my regular gamers. As males, we played a somewhat stereotypical male oriented game. Powerful male warriors, wizards, priests, and rogues wandering the kingdoms of the world defeating magnificent creatures and fell enemies alike, embroiling in the politics of princes and prelates, converting the masses through and discovering the manners and means of the streets and alleys of towns both great and small.

But lo, our game was not heavily cast with female NPCs and those few that managed their way into the game were usually exceedingly powerful political figures with whom the characters had little direct contact or weak maidens needing rescue from the clutches of some foul beast or diabolic miscreant. I was forced to assess this approach to play when a female evinced a desire to play in the game.

As an aside, I must say, that we (the gaming group) were all surprised that a women wanted to play in The Game, since wives, female friends, and girlfriends, for the most part, tend to view The Game and our playing it with a mixture of bemusement, amusement and embarrassment. Such asides aside, however, I assessed the game! The essential difficulties facing a game (not considering the considerable amount of time I spent pondering this issue) were whether or not The Game would appeal to a female and how, if necessary, to shape the game to accommodate the new player and old players alike.

As the traditional group truly enjoyed the game I ran, I decided that, in this particular instance, democracy should rule. I chose not to change the style of The Game but rather, to change its specifics and introduce the players to a new type of NPC that would anchor them to the past yet at he same time, free them from it.

I had two games in which to evolve my players to the effortless acceptance of a female player and female characters in The Game. That anchor was an NPC named Evanna Rothenheimer. She is the "damsel in distress" found in Troll Lord Games module, Vakhund, Into the Unkown. The concept was to introduce a "traditional" female NPC into The Game in a typical manner. Evanna is the elegant and hapless princess with whom the party becomes acquainted and must later rescue from the nefarious machinations of evil humans and maleficent beasts. In the following adventures and rescue, Evanna transforms from an inert plot device to a strong and willful NPC with an identity which does not reference the players or their actions. Yet, after.] rescue is realized, Evanna becomes intimately bound to the party and helps form them as much as they form her.

Evanna satisfied two initial desires of mine; the first was to cue in the players at the table that powerful female NPCs and characters would, heretofore, be a partof the game at every level, and secondly, to indicate to the players that said NPCs/characters within or without of the party would not necessarily affect the party's dynamic or nature in a way other than the manner in which other NPCs had. Further, Evanna offered a powerful female NPC with whom the new player at the table might associate.

Alas, much of the effort and time I spent fretting about the situation was for naught. Evanna, the linchpin, died within a short time after the arrival of the new player and in her first game. Evanna did not survive long enough to fulfill any of my goals in a meaningful way. But all came out well, the new player wove herself seamlessly into the fabric of the game and no rippling repercussions were felt.

This is not to say that she brought nothing new to the table, indeed she did. She and several other females have since entered The Game and have opened new avenues of playing that had yet to be explored. And the unique perspective - who am I fooling? I wiII not lie to those of you out there. From my experience, women bring a unique perspective to the game not as slaves to their gender but as individuals with their own likes, dislikes, prejudices, fantasies, and curiosities. Certainly, a personality and its constituent parts are informed by one's gender, whether male or female, but by no means is one entirely defined by ones gender. And in the RPG community, we are brought to the gaming table by a common imaginative thread .. that cares little for those boundaries we have imposed on ourselves and others in out day to day lives. We are all leaving this world and wandering through fantastical lands and exploring them in ways that most fulfill our curiosities no matter the gender.

In retrospect, I had created an issue where there probably shouldn't be one. And not only that, I have written far too much on a nonissue in this latest issue of our issue of the Seeker.