Members of the Strategists and Role Players Association set aside their dice, cards and controllers to hold their first meeting of the year last Wednesday, beginning a semester of fantasy and competition.
Over the last 13 years SARPA has become one of the loudest clubs at UB - not only loud when it comes to its level of activity out on the campus, but also literally loud in its office in the Student Union.
"Often the office is very, very full," said Yvona Nestorowicz, a senior biology major and club member.
What has been a haven for some students, however, has been distracting for others. Due to the high level of noise in the office, SARPA was asked to move this year from room 316 to 308, away from rooms used for classes.
With several saggy, worn-in couches, a GameCube and plenty of card and board games to choose from, the SARPA office is commonly used as a hangout between classes for club members.
"Some people do homework," said James Jennings-Wyckoff, a sophomore math major and SARPA convention director. "It's scary."
Yet while club members chuckle at the thought of being the Student Union's rowdy tenants, it's another kind of noise entirely which has made SARPA a standout club at UB.
According to SARPA President Kris Pittman, a senior chemistry major, the club's main goal is to create a positive environment for gaming of all kinds.
"We are one of the most active clubs on campus," Pittman said. "Compared to a lot of the other clubs, we have events every weekend. Our offices are open daily. We're very interactive with our membership."
Every Saturday SARPA holds open gaming sessions at Baldy Hall, where club members can play any game as long as they can get enough people to play it. Games played at open gaming range from the ordinary, such as chess and spades, to the eccentric - Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: the Masquerade and Warhammer.
"We usually get 30 to 40 people every Saturday," says Jennings-Wyckoff. "LARPs are a large draw."
A LARP is a live action role-play in which players physically take on the role of the characters from a particular game. A LARP often involves players that dress up, use props or act the story out. Several members call it "interactive theatre."
"The game could be fantasy, set in the future, anything really," said Jennings-Wyckoff. "It's a way to use your more imaginative point of view."
LARPs and other role-playing games may seem strange in the eyes of many students, but that doesn't stop the club's 150 undergraduate members from participating in full. According to club officers, membership is steadily growing, and many among the 500 subscribers to the SARPA newsletter are enthusiasts from the surrounding community and students from nearby Sweet Home High School.
"One of my friends I was visiting (at UB) dragged me to the open gaming," said Dan Kotlewski, a freshman aerospace engineering major who has been contributing to the noise in the SARPA office this semester. "Everyone was really friendly, so I came back a few times, started hanging out. You get sucked into it."
Even greater than the Saturday draw of card games like Lunch Money and Magic: the Gathering are the crowds SARPA attracts with its two annual gaming conventions, plans for which were discussed at the meeting.
This year's fall convention on Nov. 8 will include a full day of gaming, and possible Lasertron games that night. All proceeds from the event will go to the Roswell Park Cancer Research Institute.
This year's spring convention, which will take place from April 16 to 18, will be UB's 15th gaming convention - for three days and nights the Student Union will be home to a spectacle of gamers, vendors, students and special guests.
In past years the spring convention attracted as many as 1,500 people, but recently that number has dwindled to as low as 200, a trend Pittman attributed to new online role-playing games that allow gamers to play in their rooms for hours on end without having to attend conventions.
But online games are limited when compared to the real thing, said Pittman, and slowly but surely the gamers are coming back:
"New games. New friends. We're not for a major or a religion, and I think that's in the appeal," he said. "We're just here for the games."
