[SnowTroll]

Not being a woman, I can't say I've ever been or felt harassed online. I often play female characters on muds (I'm not weird or anything. I'm perfectly well adjusted and not out to deceive anybody into kinky cross-gendered cybersex. I'd just say that about half my character concepts and personalities really fit a woman better than a man.) What I have noticed over the years is that female characters do get more attention as a whole. When I'm playing a female character, people help me more readily, respond to my conversations and roleplaying more often, give me stuff, and give me a lot more leeway when I say or do something confrontational in a roleplay scene. I've done things with female characters that would get male characters ostracized and thoroughly pkilled, and gotten complements from the people I'm offending. I don't really do relationship or sexual rp (with either sex of character) or give out my ooc means of contact, so there's not really an opportunity to harass me. Honestly, if you play safe and have a thick skin, it's hard to get that badly "harassed" over the internet. If a male character hits on my female character, I can react accordingly. It's roleplay, after all. If a male player asks me for my ooc contact information and tells me he wants a real life relationship, I can just ignore the guy, report him to the mud owner if he really gets unruly or sick, or tell him that I'm really male, 57 years old, 385 pounds, HIV positive and terminal, very very gay, and am currently enjoying the last few years of my life by conning young men from muds into cybersex, but I think he's too ugly so I'm just telling him the truth.

I've tried to get my wife into various games over the years, as well as various other people, woman and man alike. I think roleplaying is more of an inborn predisposition. You're either an rp geek or you're not. If you're not, you'll think roleplaying is weird and geeky and that the people who do it are strange. Being male or female doesn't affect this. Women who happen to also be rp geeks are definitely more attracted to good rp muds versus straight-up gamer muds, the same way women are more prone to having Facebook conversations through picture captions. The social aspects of the internet appeal more strongly to the more social gender.

One thing the OP's really on to is the customization. The big thing my wife really does like, about every game she's tried, is the customization. She'll spend hours playing some basketball or snowboarding game on our Playstation that I mastered 3 years ago, or mess around playing the Sims, and what she really wastes a lot of time on is her character's appearence. She'll ask my opinion what style of facial hair to give her basket ball character and what jersey looks best. I just dress my hot snowboarding chick in something casual and cool looking and kick ass, but she'll waffle between a few outfits. I can't see most women who aren't already rp geeks getting into the writing aspect of mud customization. Picking out some visual features of a character's appearence in a graphical game is easy and rewarding. Writing a five-sentence physical description, and finding the right adjectives for your custom-designed clothes for a text-based game, is more like homework. Unless you're already an rp geek.