‘Having fun is the big winner’

nicole11@unm.edu

Although live action role-playing (LARP) games are based on improvisation, there is still a storyteller who mediates the action.

Each game has an elected storyteller who holds that position for a year and is in charge of coming up with plot lines and leading players through them. But the plot is never definite — everything is improvised, which makes it interesting, Robert Cravens, former storyteller for the Mind’s Eye Society at UNM, said.

“Some people don’t like being a storyteller because it does take a lot of extra time to come up with all sorts of things and plot what’s going to be happening,” he said. “You could have this awesome plot in mind, and you start to play it out, and it goes in a different direction. If you’re not ready for that, then you can get a lot of stress.”

Cravens, a PetSmart warehouse manager, said he really enjoys storytelling because he gets satisfaction from helping to entertain others.

“My favorite part of being a storyteller is at the end of the night if everyone’s smiling and saying, ‘Oh, I did this and I did that,’” he said. “It makes you feel good about the story you created.”

But group member Evan Prieskop said people’s preference between playing a character and being a storyteller depends on the type of game.

“James is the storyteller for the other game, he’s quite happy in that role,” he said. “For this game, he wouldn’t run for that role for all the money in the emperor’s vault. No matter who you are, storyteller or player, there’s a lot of improvisation involved.

That’s largely the point: thinking on your feet.”

The storyteller is also in charge of having a basic knowledge of the rules, and Cravens said rules are rarely broken. If they are, he said it’s usually by accident.

“And very rarely do you get somebody who’s just out there to cheat and ruin somebody’s day, but if it does, it’s taken care of pretty quickly,” he said. “People come to have fun. They don’t come here to be angst about other people.”

Like most imaginative games, he said there is no winner and no goal besides creating a story.

“There might be a winner of the evening, but the next game, you’re right back on the bottom,” he said. “Everybody wins and everybody loses at some point, but having fun is the big winner.”