Pay versus Play: Women in TTRPGs

Fighting through crowds in the shopping halls was not the only thing I did at UK Games Expo 2025; I went to the only female-led live entertainment show, Juliette Burton’s Going Rogue, and I went to seminars. The panel discussion “A Seat at the Table: Women in TTRPGs”, hosted by Slovenly Trulls Lyssa, was a noteworthy one.

The panel’s guests consisted of Dr Rachel of Science and Sorcery, Chelsea, the co-owner of publisher The Wanderer’s Tome, Aida from Euphoria and Jess Jewel of the production company 12 Sided Studio.

“A Seat at the Table” was a lively Q&A session that touched on the experiences of the four guests in the tabletop scene. There was only one notable pause. Lyssa asked, “How can you tell if a community is safe?” and no one had a ready answer. That was telling and sombre. The most direct response was to suggest that communities tend to reflect the gamers within them, and gamers tend to reflect the ethics and beliefs of the games and publishers they’ve chosen to invest in, so it is advisable to look for communities around friendly and diverse games. Other answers encouraged women just to leave a gaming community if it didn’t seem safe and suggested ways to make communities safer.

What does that mean for grimdark or horror TTRPGs? Does that mean those games are likely to always be male-dominated? I don’t think so. A setting game be dark and yet still written in a way that makes it clear inclusion is welcome. You only need to look at the original Vampire: The Masquerade, written decades ago, to see an example. You could also look at the demographics of true crime podcasts.

A second compelling argument raised in the “Women in TTRPGs” by Aida was the extra, sometimes unseen, often unthanked work women tend to do behind the scenes to make communities (and even podcasts or streams) work. It’s women who often remember, for example, the thank you emails or reminder notes. It’s an anecdote, of course, but it seemed to ring true with the audience. Women, argued Aida, would spend more on art and become bigger and better advocates for the game.

It struck me that we were scratching at something compelling – a commercial argument to run your TTRPG company or community in a welcome, diverse and female-friendly way.

Women in TTRPGs myth-busting

It’s long been known, even by the 2000s Wizards of the Coast, that women play tabletop RPGs. It no longer feels like a myth that needs debunking. During the boom, a 2020 study suggested that 39% of all D&D players are female.

The myth that needs busting is that women play but do not pay for TTRPGs. A commonly cited but now 25-year-old stat comes from Wizards of the Coast 2000, and when Ryan Darcey was President. At that time, Wizards of the Coast’s market research concluded that women spent less on the hobby compared to men.

Importantly, it does not claim that on a one-to-one ratio, women spend less than men on tabletop games. Yet, that’s the story that persists.

Mind you, this was the same report that discussed “Wintel versus Mac” and reported that fewer than a third of D&D players used the internet for gaming on a monthly basis.

One way to address the myth that women spend less per person than men is to examine where buying attribution might be obscured or misappropriated.

A 2024 report from Global Growth Insights said that 72% of TTRPG buyers are parents and educators. Surveys on which purse buys the TTRPG may well not look here for the power behind the purse.

Another way to debunk the Pay versus Play myth is for direct sales information. However, this is rare. During “Women in TTRPGs” Chelsea of The Wanderer’s Tome revealed that 50% of the people who bought Flabbergasted, their flagship game, identified as female.

A larger sample comes from Compare the Market AU. It’s a mixed picture here, which suggests it’s close, but there are markets like Canada where female fans spend substantially more on tabletop games than their male counterparts. The report said;

Interestingly, while Australian and American male gamers were more likely to spend $200-$499 than female gamers (in their local currency), in Canada it was the other way around with female gamers more likely to spend CA$200-$499, while men were more likely to spend CA$100-$199.

When academic researchers go out to recruit tabletop gamers for studies, the majority of responders are women. Not only does this suggest women are more involved in the hobby than some men might expect, but it also supports the observations from Dr Rachel, Chelsea, Aida and Jess Jewel that women are powerfully important advocates for the hobby and the games they like.

Lastly, research shows that female superfans spend more than male superfans. Sure, this research applies to sport but do you think female geeks are less geeky than sports fans?

Of course, the idea of a superfan takes us straight back to the concept of community.

Are communities worth it?

The commercial arguments for community are, unlike gender sales splits from tabletop commerce, a slam dunk.

Research by the powerhouse MiKnsey confirms that brands with a strong sense of community experience a 5% to 10% lower churn rate than competitors. There is confirmation from the other side as well, as the Bond Brand Loyalty report said that where loyalty program members did not engage, they were 2.3 times more likely to defect.

Harvest Business Review records that companies with an engaged community have a customer retention boost of over 20%.

A powerful and oft-quoted fact comes from Bain & Company, which found that a 5% increase in customer retention resulted in anything from a 25% to 95% boost in profits.

It’s not all about the cash. As “Women in TTRPGs” argued, it’s also about the unspoken emotional weight. There’s evidence for that as well. Brand communities that function as effective channels for information help recruit new customers.

Conclusions

Next year, I hope a woman is selecting UKGE’s entertainment shows, and I hope she doesn’t opt for a “Seat at the Table” panel. It seems redundant and misleading to have a session which skirts justifying or reflecting a new or odd development. I want there to be more women-led panels, and I don’t want Juliette Burton joking about her sex life as the only female act in the live entertainment.

The UK Games Expo should be commended for its successes in inclusion. The number of people wearing beards and skirts in the halls during this week exceeds that of even Edinburgh during the festival fringe. Mobility scooters are common, and we had games from all around the world. With this position of power and success, UK Games Expo could help spearhead progress.

Next year, what about seminars like;

• Designing for a Wider World: Weaving Diverse Cultures into Your TTRPGs
• The Next Chapter: Innovative Storytelling in TTRPGs.
• Levelling Up Together: Mentorship and Sponsorship in the TTRPG Industry.
• The Business of Imagination: Building a Successful TTRPG Brand
• Women Forging the Next Wave of TTRPGs
• Worldbuilding with Her: Crafting Societies Where Women Lead

Imagine also being able to poll TTRPG retailers and publishers attending UKGE to gather the statistics necessary to once and for all debunk the 2000-year-old misdirection that Women play but don’t pay in TTRPG.