I've shown Trollbabe to a lot of people.  I've encountered a lot of negative reactions.  A lot of guys don't want to play Trollbabe because they'd be personally uncomfortable with playing a female.  Okay, I get that.  A lot of women don't want to play it because they identify *too* much with it and feel like they'd, "just be playing themselves."  Okay, I get that.  Then there's all the system level naysayers and I get all of them too.

However, I have this guy in one of my groups who has another group that I don't play with.  I have met some of them.  A lot of them favor Werewolf as a game of choice if that helps.  To my knoweldge they are all guys.  Anyway, one night my friend (who is a Trollbabe, naysayer, because of the 'uncomfortable playing a female' aspect) decides to print out Ron's "pitch page" from the website and show it to his group. 

Here is that group's consensus as described to me by my friend, "Ron must either be gay or really need to get laid."

*blink*

That's the first time I've ever heard anyone attack the game's author.  Note: I've heard a lot of people attack Ron but they are all familiar with The Forge, some of Ron's writings etc.  These guys don't know Ron or Theory or The Forge.  That was their reaction straight from Trollbabe's description.

What the hell?  Has anyone else seen this reaction or something like it?  Any idea what it's all about?

Naysayer: Hmm... I think I'll have some fun with my friends. <prints some Trollbabe material>
<session starts>
Naysayer: Look, guys! Check out this perverse game a friend of mine told me about! Isn't it queer?
<everybody reads>
Guy: <wants to reaffirm social contact> Hell, yeah! That guy must be queer or really desperate to get laid!
<everybody agrees>

So what's so strange about that? That kind of social affirmation thing happens all the time. If they had read the game, met Ron or read the Forge, then I'd find it strange, or at least conseivably requiring explanation. Now it's just friendship strenghtening exercises by dissing a total stranger.

I can attest that I, Clinton R. Nixon, love Trollbabe with all my heart and am either gay or need to get laid.

If that helps at all.

Clinton: Heh, thanks, I'll point them here if I need to.

Eero: That might be all that's going on.  But my friend is usually pretty good about presenting things without comment.  There are countless things he's just handed me and just said, "What do you make of this?"  Sometimes it's even been colder than that.  He's given me an article or website he wants feedback on and just says, "Here you go."  This even spills over into play when he'll do something or comment on someone's action and the group just stares at him because it's so plainly presented we can't read his agenda.

I don't know for sure because I wasn't there, so yeah, maybe I'm just knee-jerking or reading more into it than is really there.

I mean I've seen countless attacks on the authors of, say, Vampire but that's after people have read the game or played the game or interacted with people who have played the game.  I mean I've never walked up to a person who's never heard of Vampire and said, "Hey, here's a game about playing Vampires in a machavellian clan-based world-within-the-world."  and gotten, "damn, whoever wrote that must be a pretentious thespian" as a response.

Jesse

Clinton, did you mean 'either' or 'neither' there? Either is OK with me, but I was curious.

No going back and cheating by using your moderator privileges to edit your post if you got it wrong...I think Ron might have done that in an AP thread...

Sean wrote:
Clinton, did you mean 'either' or 'neither' there? Either is OK with me, but I was curious.

Eh,

Sounds like the usual sort of adolescent need to reaffirm one's gender identity.

Or, "Play a girl?  Yuck, cooties!"

Chris

jburneko wrote:
I mean I've never walked up to a person who's never heard of Vampire and said, "Hey, here's a game about playing Vampires in a machavellian clan-based world-within-the-world."  and gotten, "damn, whoever wrote that must be a pretentious thespian" as a response.

I don't know much about trollbabe, but the idea of a female who is assertive in the way men normally are, is probably quite disturbing to him. If you base your own masculinity around this assertiveness, then the idea of playing a woman who is assertive in just the same way challenges your pride in being male at a very personal level. Sadly some might see the challenge in such a way that either he is gay or the guy saying this is gay/needs to get laid.

No, I haven't seen anything like it - not personally. But oh yeah, I can see what it's about.

These people are making an immediate assumption about why someone would be drawn to playing Trollbabe. Either:

1.) "Troll-women are HAWT! I want to have sex with one!"

Or:

2.) "I hate my gender. I wish I was a troll-woman!"

Therefore: players of Trollbabe are either horny (ha ha) or transgendered (misidentified as "gay").

The third option, "I enjoy stories with strong female leads," does not even occur to them. I don't think that it's about feeling threatened by an assertive female (although that's certainly possible). I think that they simply do not have the cultural awareness to see that there's a third possibility.

Hiya,

Hey Jesse, I have questions. They apply specifically and only to the Werewolf group.

1. Is there a woman in that group? (not "has there been," or "would there be," or anything else - just, is there)

2. Has any of these guys ever slept with a woman that they first socialized with via the gaming group?

I'm interested enough in #2 that if you'd actually ask them, I'd appreciate it.

Best,
Ron

I had a very similar reaction when I started up my Trollbabe game, and even I re-skinned the characters as Greek Heroes, and didn’t even tell them the original premise or name of the game's system.

The conflict resolution, narrative style of gameplay and loose conceptual character design made the male players exclaim it was a ‘chick game.’

One of them even made a similar comment smearing the game’s designer.

This was also from the guy who couldn’t sit through the movie Alexander because it had too much 'man-on-man' action.

I thinking it all stems from too much gender insecurity.