I’d been interested in RPGs (role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons) for a long time, but the few times I’d joined a group to play it didn’t really work well for me. First of all, I was almost always the only woman. Secondly, I wasn’t a very experienced player and I felt like I annoyed the other players because I had to spend a lot of time looking things up and asked a lot of questions. Thirdly, I am hugely introverted. Getting up the nerve to the play was a big deal in the first place. Actually playing drained a ton of my emotional energy.
Bummer, I thought. Maybe this just isn’t for me.
Then a new local yarn store opened up near me and everything changed. It was pretty easy to tell that Tori, the owner of Fibre, was super into “nerdy” things like I was. She has a picture of a dragon sleeping on its hoard of yarn over her point of sale. She stocks yarns with sci-fi and fantasy themes. She streams Twitch or Doctor Who on the shop TV.
In conversation, Tori mentioned how cool it would be to have a knitting and D&D group at her shop. We talked about it being more inclusive and welcoming of new players. And then I blurted out, “My husband would GM!” GM means run the game, by the way. He’s been running role playing games since high school. I probably should have asked him first, but hey.
I really, really wanted to try playing again and I thought that by adding knitting to the mix, I might find it less stressful. When I’m in awkward social situations (for me anyway) I break out my knitting because having something to do with my hands helps soothe me. Since the other players would be knitters or crocheters too, we’d automatically have something to talk about to break the ice.
We created a group by word of mouth. Aside from my hubby I knew one other person there. The group was 80% female and split between new players (or players who hadn’t played this edition of D&D) and experienced players. It worked out beautifully. The experienced players had no issue helping the newbies, whether it was looking something up or explaining a rule or asking for something to be clarified. No one was irritated if we had to pause play to help someone out.
We took breaks to admire each other’s projects, shop, help with a pattern or a dropped stitch or retrieve a ball of yarn that rolled under the table. We helped each other with our crafts and our characters, and it was wonderfully supportive and fun. I felt like I finally clicked with a group.
Around Halloween we played a one-shot of Call of Cthulhu and loved it so much that we now we’re playing two games. Tori was kind enough to let us invade her shop two Sundays a month and our role playing adventures got a little spookier and a lot weirder.
It turns out I prefer Call of Cthulhu to D&D. First of all, there’s less math. Secondly it has a lot of horror and mystery elements (both my jam). I play a librarian named Willow Giles (yes I did) and my superpower is reading. How friggin awesome is that?
Call of Cthulhu has a mystery-solving element to it that I love. Our group just got off an island in Maine where a friend of ours vanished after going to repair a lighthouse. He wrote about strange headaches and nightmares and creatures coming out of the ocean. It was such a fun adventure.
It turns out that role playing games and fiber crafts pair really well, and I’m so happy I found a group that enjoys both. It helped me get into a hobby it turns out I really enjoy but had previously felt intimidating.
Do you knit and Twitch? Have you ever played a RPG? Let me know how your “nerdery” and crafting combine.
I neither yarn nor D&D, but it’s very cool that you put this together. Finding-your-people stories are inspirational.
Haven’t had chance to play an rpg since college. (Looong time ago.)
My third completed crochet project was a pair of Totoro die bags. They turned out really well. (Found the pattern on Ravelry.)
Having the right group to play with is absolutely crucial to enjoying an RPG, as far as I can tell. I played a few times in high school that never got anywhere; then as an adult, I tried playing a campaign with some extremely dysfunctional now-former friends that I ended up rage-quitting after numerous shenanigans (somehow, one of the other players creepily trying to hit on me while using “it’s in character” as a shield was not even the last straw?).
But then my best friend and her husband (who are fairly serious RPG-ers) talked me into trying again in a group with them and a couple other guys, and it was awesome. No weird shenanigans, great sense of group humour, everyone had compatible play styles, no one took it too seriously… it was fabulous, and we played together for a couple of years until one of us got a job overseas.
I can’t say I love RPGs so much that I’d go out of my way to find one, but I like them enough that I’d totally play again with the right group.
So glad you found this, Elyse! Inspirational for anyone looking for right group to play RPGs, music, cards, crafting, etc. with regularly.
This entire thing is amazing!
If you enjoy Call of Cthulhu, you might want to try Eldritch Horror. It’s my and my husband’s favorite tabletop game to play. There’s loads of kick-ass woman characters and it’s a cooperative game which is cool as hell. You’re trying to stop the Old Ones from rising. Since the game is playing against the players, it’s wicked hard to win, but sooo much fun. And the different options means the replay value is through the roof. We’ve owned it for years and have still never tired of playing.
In fact, we’ve bought two expansions…
I like to watch people play video games on Twitch or YouTube, while I knit. I find these streams (certain streamers… ymmv, there’s a lot of streamers I can’t watch) somehow soothing. I enjoy video games but I’m not very good, so watching people who know what they’re doing is enjoyable. It also helps me unwind, where actually playing makes me tense (and my job does that enough, thanks anyways).
My husband and I play D&D! We’ve both played since high school, actually, but with the campaign that we host (playing now with the same group of his college friends for about 1.5 years) I’ve found out that I can focus on the game a lot better when I keep my hands busy crocheting! Otherwise it’s too tempting for me to just start browsing the internet. Plus, all the guys are always curious about what I’m making, haha. Even my husband has discovered that he can paint his miniatures in the downtime too.
I haven’t played D&D in a looooong time, but hooray for finding a group that is so welcoming! To combine both of these elements, I want to recommend a yarn dyer/podcaster, Hannah at The Corner of Craft. She makes adorable bead woven stitch markers, but more importantly she dyes yarn under the name Chromatic Yarns and all of her colors are inspired by, and named for, D&D characters/spells/etc! She also has a monthly mystery yarn club called Knitcal Role (after the show Critical Role).
What fun, Elyse, to be able to indulge two interests with a friendly like-minded group of people. I don’t knit but I do like to admire what others make. I played D&D for a brief time in high school back in the seventies; it’s been a while!
As a long-time GM I can tell you that having the right group to play with is super important. There are people who play just to gain points and overpower the other players and people who enjoy putting the other players off-balance to gain advantages for themselves. I had a few like that join our core group once and it was exasperating trying to keep them under control and making things work for our core group, who were less competitive. (It was fun outwitting them and putting them on the back foot, once I figured out how to do it, but it was like running two separate games at once.) You need a group that plays on the same level and with the same objectives and a certain amount of cohesiveness. I’m so glad you found a group that works for you and allows you to relax and enjoy both the game and your knitting!
I haven’t gamed in a while, due to the lack of GMs in my group. But I always knitted when we gamed to keep myself occupied.
If you want to ‘update’ CoC into the modern era, there’s something called Delta Green, where it’s a huge government cover up from the 40s.
If you want to go future tech, there’s C’thuluTech.
They’ve invaded and the humans are fighting a losing battle on the planet against them.
If you want a break from humans fighting the good fight against horrors beyond time and space, there’s Cathulu. You are a cat in Arkham. I haven’t played it, but it’s cute.
Felicitas
I’m not a gamer myself, but I accidentally became the faculty sponsor for a D&D club at my school. Now a really fun group of high schoolers meet 3x a week for an hour each and play. Three kids take turns DM-ing, and they happily help new kids who want to play.
EC Spurlock is right: no gaming is better than bad gaming. If a system or a group isn’t working for you, get out!
The new(ish) hotness in gaming is Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games. These are games that use the engine developed for D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker for their game Apocalypse World. PbtA games feature an implied setting that’s fleshed out by the players and simple, flexible rules that reflect the genre they’re emulating. My favorite – and the one that will probably be most interesting to the Bitchery – is Monsterhearts, which emulates teen monster melodramas like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, Ginger Snaps, The Vampire Diaries, etc. There’s a lot of fun rules to heighten the drama, but the one I love best is this:
Your character can take 4 points of Harm before dying. Once per session, you can heal 1 Harm by tending to your wounds. But if you get another character to tend to you “delicately and intimately, perhaps with erotic subtext,” you can heal 2 Harm.
So you see, the trope of the sexy werewolf taking off his shirt to bandage his lover’s injury isn’t just supported by the game rules, it’s mechanically incentivized!
Make sure you get the second edition, Monsterhearts 2. The original game is great, but author Avery Alder learned a lot for the second edition. There’s also a lot of content about including marginalized groups without being tokenistic or exploitative.
Yay for D&Ders! I started gaming in 1978 (yes, I am old), & in those early days was almost always the only girl/woman at the table. Life got in the way eventually, & I only recently got back to gaming, with a casual drop-in group at a local gaming store – coming full circle, as that 1978 group also met at a gaming store. We’re not at all artistic or crafty, though we do all bring snacks to share!
I’ve not tried Monsterhearts. About half of our group are role players, though, so we could have fun with that…
I always wanted to play but didn’t have anyone to game with, but then I met my (now husband) and have been playing RPGs for 20+ years and have a few regular groups in different systems (Star Wars, D&D/Pathfinder, and Call of Chtulhu). And the great thing is, in all my groups, it’s easily half female, if not more! And we do a fair amount of knitting while gaming as well. Geekery and crafting just seem to go together.
For all my play in medieval recreation, many many years ago, I never did learn to play RPGs. I still have a lot of friends who LARP, so there are crafts like sewing and cooking and armor-making to be had. But I have JUST learned to knit, so I am ready to look for crossover nerdery!
My friend started dating a guy who is a DM/GM, so he led us on my first campaign a couple of weeks ago.
I just didn’t think to bring my knitting, but when I’m going again in a few weeks I definitely will!
(so delighted to hear stories of finding your people)
This is the best! I’ve dipped in and out of RPGs over the years and yes, it’s mentally exhausting to get past the social anxiety and being the only girl, and that’s before the game’s even started! I gravitate more toward board games but enjoy listening to AP (actual play) podcasts sometimes to relax before going to sleep. Video shows like Critical Role and Twitch streamers have really done a lot to revive interest in RPGs.
This is specific enough to basically dox myself, but one of my favorite past projects was to crochet amigurumi dolls of all 5 player characters in a long-running urban fantasy game I’m in, plus a doll of the GM (=DM) as himself. I barely knew what I was doing, adapting patterns from books and making stuff up as I went. Lots of fun.
We’ve been playing this campaign since 2011; it’s based in a system called Fate that I quite like (lots of narrative, not a lot of stats).
I’m in a D&D game too, and that’s fun, but I still haven’t gotten a good sense of my character. Maybe I ought to try crafting something for that game too!
This is amazing!
I’m so happy for you that you found this.
I live in Europe, where D&D is a very obscure reference you sometimes get in movies. I’ve taken a chance on learning about it by watching this weird show on Geek and Sundry, called Critical Role.
Years later, hundreds (or is it thousands?) of hours watched, and I don’t regret a minute of it. It’s become quite famous, with an animated series in the works and whatnot, but most of all, it’s inspired me to find other people that want to play RPGs. It weirdly feels a bit like dating :).
The hardest part I think is finding the right people to do it with. I’m glad that you found your tribe. I hope everybody does.
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