Re: The role of the GM
 

Which is sort of my point, it is pointless arguing whether GM's or players are the more disruptive element because at the end of the day the problem is usually caused by the same people whichever side of the screen they are sitting on.

A more interesting question is why they do it? And how do you spot them?

Re: The role of the GM
 

I think that there is a lot to be said for this. Having moved through quite a few groups over the years I think that the atmosphere is often better in mixed groups. Like a lot of people I still think that you are very lucky with your players, but mixed groups do seem to have less distasteful behaviour and (usually) lower tolerance for dyed in the wool misfits.

Re: The role of the GM
 

I've only had problems once. I had one player who twice made all the other players in campaigns he was in unhappy enough to talk about dropping out. Both times I explained the situation to him, asked him to sit down and talk with the other players about what they saw as problematic and modify his characters, and offered to mediate. Both times he resigned rather than do so. After the second time, so few of my players were willing to play with him in the campaign that I couldn't fit him into any new campaigns.

What struck me about this was that both times, he was playing in a mission-oriented team led by a strong female character whose player was also a strong woman. That's not enough evidence to be conclusive, but it made me wonder.

Re: The role of the GM
 

I've run two campaigns, now, which had significant numbers of women. In my current campaign, there are actually more women than men, in the party. While they're all different (see the funny comments in the Facets campaign write-ups, over in the GURPS forum), their willingness to assert themselves mean the men are pretty well-behaved, usually.

It's much less of a sausage-fest, that's for sure.

(In my experience, a "significant number" of women is, "more than one." I've played in campaigns with only one woman, before, and unless the GM wants her, or one of the other players is acting creepy, she doesn't change the group dynamics all that much. Two women, on the other hand, tend to support and reinforce one another, especially if they're already friends, and that changes the dynamics, significantly. My friend, Christopher Denney once observed that, if the party has two women, the men always seem outnumbered. I'm not sure that's entirely true, but it had enough validity to qualify as pretty darn funny.)

Re: The role of the GM
 

I don't think I've even seen a group that was less than 40% women since early high school. And I can only think of one group, that lasted for only a couple of months, before that that was all male. I'm used to the ratio of male to female being almost always 50/50 averaged out over time.

It also helps that for most of the last 35 years, a "normal" sized group was 8-12 players. I'm still getting used to the concept of a 4 player group being normal.

Re: The role of the GM
 

I've run campaigns with only one female player. But the men in those have almost always previously played in campaigns with two or more female players. I expect the experience has left impressions that continue when there's only one woman. . . .

Re: The role of the GM
 

Just like sailors swore less when the captain brought his wife along.

Re: The role of the GM
 

When I was growing up my siblings always called D&D and related hobbies "girl games" and I'm still not sure if they were just trying to be extra-insulting to people who preferred fantasy make-believe adventures to getting sweaty and grabbing balls out in the grass or if they though the general demographics skewed female.

Seeing the stereotype skewed in reverse later initially baffled me to no end.

Re: The role of the GM
 

I tend to see some of that. Especially if there's beer involved.
If the requested bring along is beer, I bow out.

Re: The role of the GM
 

This explains the behavior of members of Goon Fleet, in EVE. The guys from Something Awful forthrightly acknowledge that one of the reasons they play lots of different MMOs is because they want to indulge in anti-social behavior as a form of personal freedom (and as a break from tedious jobs or difficult lives, or whatever), in a medium that causes no actual harm to anyone.

I flew with Goons, briefly, before I took a break from EVE, about four years ago. I can't say they were the best bunch to fly with (stupid, profane commentary in local, etc.), and frequently acted like jerks, and they're one of the reasons I took such a long break. That said, they were honest about why they played as they did.

Moreover, something fun came out of it. They attacked and defeated the largest, and most annoying (to that date) alliance in EVE (Band of Brothers, or BOB), and in so doing threw 0.0 space into chaos -- which opened up lots of opportunities, for other players.

I started to play EVE again, this past spring, and just re-activated my old character. I joined a 0.0 Alliance in what used to be Goonfleet space. They're a great bunch, really, and they took their region by ganging up and destroying Goons (an effort which Goons didn't particularly like, but did respect).

Now, the key difference between a computer MMO and a table top game is that, if someone acts like an ass-hat in a PvP MMO, the other players can impose consequences pretty freely. As the Something Awful guys note, that doesn't cause any actual harm to anybody, except (possibly) some hurt feelings in someone you don't really know and will likely never meet.

That's totally different in a table-top game, of course. The group needs to establish a set of behavioral norms all agree to follow, I think. If everybody wants to act like an ass-hat, and they all enjoy it, that's fine. It could even be a bit therapeutic.

But if not everyone agrees, then people need to make some hard decisions -- which basically come down to, "Alter behavior, or leave the group."