It's not larping if we're girls, right?

Let's talk about some stereotypes about girls:

1. They dress up
2. They accessorize
3. They like pink
4. They talk about boys

Now, the last time I was a girly girl was when I was in kindergarten. I had a Barbie Emporium in my room, and I wore dresses or skirts every single day. My favorite color was most definitely pink.

Then there was a time in my life when I wouldn't be caught dead with a skirt or a dress. And of course, my favorite colors changed from year to year, until I came back around to pink. Still, I'm not much of a girly girl. I don't wear make-up. I don't really know how to style my hair. The only skirts I own are for work, and it's only in the past couple of years that I've started buying dresses again.

Yet I managed to get girly with my gaming gals.

Before I get into how I met each girly stereotype, let me introduce you to the group. Here's our dramatis personae:

• GameMaster - the only male in the group
• Mercy, the Wise Human Barbarian
• Slip (short for a really long Elvish name), The Honorable Halfling Rogue
• Niniveh, the Human Con Artist Witch
• Trig, the Gem-cutting Gnome Cleric
• Hoodie Ninja (a.k.a. Samuel Kim), the Teenage Human Hoodie Ninja
• Ni Hao, the Dancing Human Monk (that's me!)

Stereotype #1: Girls dress up

I decided that dressing up would help me get into character, so I arrived decked out in character garb for our character creation session. I knew I wanted to play a monk, so I wore my sparkly pink harem pants with a white Chinese coat. Mercy (player) taught me how to put my hair up in a bun with chopsticks.

Having set an expectation for dressing up, I arrived at our first session sporting a purple Chinese traditional dress (for approximate visual aid, click here), black leggings, black TOMS wrap boots, and had my hair up in two buns. That's right - I was dressed in my own personal version of Chun Li.

I hosted our second session and wore black, flowy pants and a pink Chinese jacket. I greeted everyone with cat ears so I could be Ni Hao Kitty :)

And no, I wasn't the only one dressing up.

Slip has been arriving at our games with a blue beret. In fact, she takes it off when she wants to say stuff out of character! Slip is actually the one who told our guy friends, "It's not larping because we're girls. Girls dress up."

At our first game, Mercy draped a fluffy blanket over her shoulder, like a shawl. It looked like she'd just slaughtered a timberwolf and was carrying it home.

The Hoodie Ninja wore a hoodie, obviously, and brought a shuriken to throw at people.

Niniveh is not into this dressing up idea at all, and Trig is struggling to get to know her character, so she wasn't dressed up, but Mercy brought out some gems for Trig to use as props.

Stereotypes #2 & #3: Girls accessorize, and they like pink

No adventuring ensemble is complete without The Mead's latest invention: a D&D lunchbox. The lunchbox - which is sure to revolutionize D&D, as it's hard not to imagine how many girls would be more into it if they knew they could accesorize - contains the following items:

• Pink mechanical pencil
• Blue retractable eraser
• 5 sets of pink pyramids (originally created for the treehouse game)
• 2 complete sets of dice (one is pink and sparkly; the other is pink, white, and black)
• My 2 minis - Ni Hao for the all-girl game; Suheyl for the co-ed game

I've already mentioned my pink, sparkly harem pants, as well as my pink Chinese jacket, so I'm pretty sure we've got stereotype #3 covered.

My lunchbox is so great, though, that Mercy (player) has commissioned The Mead to make her one, too. She gave him a Hello Kitty "I love nerds" lunchbox for the project, which is fantastic in it of itself, but is made even better when you know that her iPhone case matches the lunchbox.

My lunchbox shows an old-school Hershey's Kisses ad - which is perfect for me.

If these lunchboxes catch on, The Mead might actually try making more and selling them online. I think he's got a good product :)

Stereotype #4: Girls talk about boys

The group of girls I play came together because of the boys, so it's only natural that we make reference to them. The Mead is the reason I know any of them to begin with, and he's the reason I'm playing.

Mercy is engaged to our GameMaster, and he's tougher on her than he is on anyone else - mostly because she's the one who's played the most. The other girls have known the girls for a long time. Niniveh is the little sister of one of the guys; Slip dated another one; and Hoodie Ninja came to the group through The Mead.

But what we talk about most is how different it is playing with just girls than playing with the boys.

I thoroughly enjoy the two campaigns I'm currently participating in, but there's definitely a very different feel to them. The guys know I'm a newb, so it's a little difficult to have them stop treating me like one. They don't do it in a mean way - that's not what I mean at all. They just feel the need to tell me what to do at every encounter. This irritates me because I feel like they're stealing my thunder. I feel that I've learned how to use my spells, and when in doubt, I ask very overt questions. But the guys still tell me what I should do.

The girls don't tell you what "you should do." We talk about it.

We had a skill challenge last session, and before anyone did anything, Niniveh suggested we talk about it and work collaboratively to get across a room that might cave in at any moment. The question asked was always, "What do you want to do?" So we'd chime in. For instance, I wanted to use Climb to jump onto a nearby column and jump forward from there, but I didn't know how stable the column was, so some of the other players used their Knowledge checks to assess how stable it was before I could try it out.

In this same skill challenge, there were moments when a player could decide to help themselves or help others, and before they decided one way or the other, they would discuss this with the group.

One of the reasons why I enjoy playing in the all-girl game is because I don't have The Mead there to ask questions to. I have to learn the rules. I have to stare at my character sheet and figure out how I want to proceed. In the co-ed game, I'm more likely to second guess myself because I don't want to say something stupid and justify having the boys telling me what to do.

In the girls game, when a girl tells you to do something, she does so as a suggestion. I remember Niniveh telling Slip that she recommended doing this or that, and often times Slip replied with, "Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking." And other times, one of us would feel comfortable chiming in with, "But I was thinking about doing this or that, so if you wanted to wait until I cast that spell or cleared that path ..."

So I'm really glad that I get to have both experiences.