Assisting in Story Telling: Fun But Complicated

Last weekend at the city-wide Geist live-action roleplaying game I play in, I let Greg twist my arm into running a plot. In a game the size of ours (10-20 people, depending on sleep schedules), there almost has to be more than one person running stories–there just isn’t enough of one game master’s attention to go around.

The trouble with me getting involved in running plots is that Greg is the main game master (or “story teller”, in the Geist system). Nepotism, anyone? Eep.

I was very, very worried about accusations of such, especially since I’ve been accused by others of using my “feminine wiles” to get judgments in my favor in tabletop games.

I guess I should just be flattered that he thought I had wiles to use. Can’t say I was, really.

The Camarilla organization (the umbrella for the Geist game that keeps the game globally organized) is very political at our local level. Hell, it’s political all the way up, really. Everybody’s got some initial-laden title after their name, like VST, or ADC, or USANST: Administrative. I… don’t. Too many china plates to juggle elsewhere in my life.

Our local game, though, needs more people to run plots, especially now that everyone’s pretty familiar with the system. The kicker is that you can’t run a plot that your character is involved in (since you have all the details), but the other helpers Greg has are in Geist krewes (like mystical cliques), making it hard to separate that mini-party for running plots.

I, however, am not in a krewe (those folks are mos def crazy), making it easy for me to opt my character out of a plot completely. Plus, I’ve got a smidge of game-running experience myself. I don’t know every single rule in the system, but I do alright.

But still… I’m Greg’s SO. That’s tricky.

He pleaded with me all week, so I picked up an in-progress plot this past weekend and nervously ran it. Everything went surprisingly well, and I was lucky to have a good spectrum of gamers involved: the guy who does know every single rule in the system (that’s his position, ADST: Rules), two players new to Geist but not to roleplaying in the Camarilla, and one… free spirit. Turns out I let the free spirit get away with something he shouldn’t have (but minor), but other than that, I think I ran it pretty well. I could have hammed up the little NPC contact in the scene more, and would if I did it again.

I don’t think the players even knew how nervous I was.

Unfortunately, I liked story telling on Saturday, and I myself get frustrated at how there aren’t enough story tellers to make stuff happen. Which means I need to find some way to resolve the conflict of interest.

I don’t want to play King and Queen of Charlotte Geist. Gah.