Never Cross a Woman with a Big Axe!

 

My Generic Universal Role Playing Daughter once walked into a game store looking for some GURPS books to add to our collection and encountered a store clerk who treated her dismissively and took her to the D&D books. Rankled she decided to flex her gamer muscles and let him know that while she had no problem with the d20 system of D&D, Steve Jackson’s skill centric d6 system was a better fit for her more realistic gaming style. When he admitted that he didn’t really have any GURPS book and wasn’t familiar with the system she pressed on. She needed some new models for her Necromunda gang. Her favorite infiltrating pit fighter had developed a niggling injury and was missing too many fights to be as effective as he once was.

No? Don’t know that one either.

How about Blood Bowl? Her Mourning Side Maulers had lost a ghoul on a match with an greenskin team.

No? Okay, thank you. Goodbye.

That young man had made the mistake of judging her a gamer barbie and talked down to her. That was not a safe assumption to make.

My daughter can discuss the benefits of impaling weapons vs. cutting weapons and explain why nearly every dwarf she plays has a spike on the reverse side of his or her axe. She knows more about Warhammer Quest’s dwarf runic system than I do. And she should. She cut her teeth cutting up orcs, goblins, skaven, rats, bats, spiders, ogres and minotaurs while still learning to read. She has played axe wielding stunties in tabletop and computer games for two decades.

She knows dwarves and how to kill things with big axes.

She has shifted her focus in the last few years to less combat intensive roles, playing a thief in her Uncle Mutt’s fantasy based RPG campaign, a gray wizard in our new WH Quest campaign and a combat medic in my Doom/Wolfenstein inspired demonic apocalypse campaign. Her signature PC in my Call of Cthulhu campaign is Dr. Jane Hopkins, alienist and scholar of the bizarre.

But most of the time she goes back to what she knows, to what she loves.

She is at heart a dwarf with a rune emblazoned axe.

So if you run into her at a game store or online playing World of Warcraft or Overwatch, don’t talk down to her. Just talk to her. She’s bright, funny and like all gamer loves to tell stories about the many adventures she had in the many diverse and fantastic worlds of tabletop games.

See you here soon,

First Edition Dad

 

For a look at one of Beth’s favorite games, Warhammer Quest, click below.