Interactive storytelling is a hobby that stresses cooperation, teamwork, stimulation of the mind, competitive spirit, goal orientation, and above all, having fun. In interactive storytelling, you build friendships. Put this together with a steady source of entertainment, and you can see that interactive stories offer many benefits unavailable from more common forms of entertainment.

But what exactly is interactive storytelling? It is kind of like the Make-Believe you played as a child, when you played the doctor, teacher, soldier, or nurse. When you played Make-Believe, you put yourself in the role of those people and played out their activities as you envisioned them. The doctor and nurse took care of the sick stuffed animals. The soldier shot imaginary enemies. The teacher pretended to write on the blackboard. Whatever roles you and your friends were playing, you pretended to do the things you thought those people would do. That, in essence, was participating in an interactive story; you didn't know the entire story before you started, rather you began and interacted naturally allowing events to unfold on their own.

Here on storycrafter.com, you and your fellow literary actors tell a story. Each of you designs a character for that story. Depending on the game, your characters could be knights-in-shining-armor, superheroes, private detectives, or whatever you pull out of your imaginations. These characters become the main characters in the story. Throughout the course of the game, you spin the tale of your characters' exploits.

The trick is, you don't know where the story is going. You have some measure of control over the story; you decide what your character does and does not do. However, you do not control the consequences that result from your character's actions, nor do you control the other characters' actions. Thus, the story gradually develops with plenty of plot twists.

The person who runs the story, the Story Crafter (or SC), is much like a movie director. In an interactive story, the literary actors control the main characters, and the Story Crafter sets the stage and directs the extras. The SC plans the general challenges that the characters will face in the story. The SC cannot, however, predict the characters' reactions to these challenges because the literary actors determine how their characters will react as the situations arise. Because of this, the story's plot can take turns that surprise, delight, and mentally challenge all involved.

During the course of a story, your SC describes a situation confronting the characters. In turn, you explain your character's reaction, and the other actors relay their own characters' reactions. The SC then describes how the situation has changed as a result of the characters' actions. This is the basic process of interactive storytelling. It is a constant communication back and forth between you, your fellow actors and the Story Crafter. You take turns describing your characters' actions and reactions, talking out the interactions between characters, and occasionally using dice to randomize whether the characters succeed or fail at their activities.

Dice? Sometimes an interactive story will have rules that help you tell your story. Remember when you were a kid playing cops and robbers? When your friend pulled out a capgun and said, "Bang, you're dead," you had to either accept your fate at his word, or argue back and forth until it was decided.

A system of rules overcomes this inherent shortcoming of Make-Believe. For these reason many Story Crafters implement a system of rules to help determine random outcomes or plausibility in stories where realism is important.

Under these rule systems when you create your character, you assign number values to various areas of prowess. These number values define your character. For example, a character with an 18 in Strength is very strong, compared to a character with a 10 in Strength. During your interactive story, if you want your character to attempt a jump over a 20-foot chasm, you follow the rules procedures to determine whether your character succeeds. You roll dice, then compare the number you roll to the number value in the appropriate character statistic. This determines whether your character succeeds or not. The dice also add a relative random element to the story. The rules help you tell your story, hopefully avoiding arguments like "who shot whom."

Many new to interactive storytelling feel overwhelmed by what can appear to be complex rule systems that have been adopted from cumbersome and extensive manuals written for roleplaying games. Fortunately, interactive storytelling is a social pastime. Friends teaching friends is inherent in its nature. Story cast learn the rules together. This makes learning the basics of interactive storytelling much easier than you might expect. So, now that you are familiar with the basics of interactive storytelling, go out and find yourself a story in a genre that interests you. Many years down the road, when you look back on this time, you'll be happy you made the effort.