RPG

Liz Bauman is the creator and moderator of the Twitter community #rpgchat, and co-writer of the blog Character Generation, with Lyndsay Peters. She’s also the woman behind the first publishing endeavor for The Illuminerdy, Adventure Begins at Bedtime.

How does being a wife and mother influence your engagement with the hobby, and the gaming community?

Early on in my time in the gaming community (and early on in my marriage), being a wife meant I was constantly on the defensive. I needed everyone to know that I was a gamer, not the WIFE of a gamer. I wasn't gaming because it was something my husband did. I wasn't gaming to be the weird nag of a wife who wouldn't let her husband have his own hobbies. I gamed because I loved it. 

But, no matter how hard I tried, I'd have some dude come up to be at a convention and ask me point blank, "Did you write these characters? Or did your husband?" To this day, I'm never sure if those guys were actually asking me if I actually wrote my characters, or if they just trying to have me confirm that I was, in fact married. But it created an inherent self-consciousness about my identity as a gamer and drove me, in many ways, to separate myself from my husband to prove that I was, in fact a gamer. 

As for being a mother? It makes gaming so much more amazing. There's nothing like spending time with a child to ignite your sense of wonder.