women playing Dungeons and Dragons Barnes and Nobles

Thu Feb 22, 2024 12:15 am

I was at Barnes and Nobles, and they have a D&D section. I saw a young college age woman browsing at the D&D books. She had the typical nerdy looks.

I asked her if she played and she said she does, and not only does she, but she plays with other female college friends

I told her I was surprised.

When I played first edition AD&D back in the day,



when I played I played with 100% other boys in elementary school.

It had zero appeal to girls, except when a boy had a girlfriend and invited her over.

I knew of no girl who played D&D.

I major reason is that D&D was a game that is similar in spirit to a video game, where you may play a knight on level 1, and fight a goblin. In the original D&D the most powerful class was the cleric. Clerics could cast spells and fight almost as well as a fighter, and turn undead.

That sort of thing had no appeal to any girl I knew of.

As I got older, computer and video game technology advance, so by the 80s I was playing Bard's Tale on a Tandyy 1000



and Gauntlet in the arcade



D&D was kinda tedious, you write down hit points on a piece of paper and role dice, You look tables and then use paper and pencil to deduct from hit points every time there was damage.

So first I'm surprised D&D is popular today when you have Call of Duty to play in today's world.

And two, I'm surprised that this was a young college woman playing it and she's playing it with other young women.

the typical adventure would be a dungeon crawl. you have a knight and enter a dungeon. in one room there's a goblin. in the halls there might be a carrion crawler and then a skeleton and treasure in another room.


You get experience points from collecting gold pieces and killing monsters and when you earn enough you advance to the next level.


I don't see that appealing females at all. and it only appealed to nerdy boys like me. athletic boys played sports.

since I was in elementary school when I played with other boys of same age, I wonder what girls get out of D&D.
The young woman I met by the D&D book section in Barnes and Nobles I only talked to her about maybe 5 minutes before she excused herself and left.

I've given up on D&D and I have not read any material, though I did see the recent movie found it funny.