Chimera 2015 - Call for Games

We’re going to need 30 awesome games for Chimera 2015, and we need to have them in by March 22nd. Please see below for HOW TO SUBMIT, and CRITERIA for games. Please make sure you read what we need before submitting a game.

How do I submit a game?
To formally submit a game, please email the following details through to chimera@nzlarps.org, and we will be in touch to discuss:

Public Information
Title:
Authors:
Blurb: (to interest potential players, so no spoilers)
Cast List: (if available, otherwise character numbers and gender ratio. Please indicate what the minimum number for the game to run is.)
Costuming Requirements:
GM Contact Info: (to go on the website)

For the Organisers
Are there any timing restrictions on your game?
What level of roleplayers is your game pitched at? How many brand new people is your game able to handle?
Will there be any difficult gear requirements?
What sort of playing space will you need?

What are the basic criteria for games?

  • Characters must be pre-written by the game writer (i.e. players do not create own characters), and mechanics must be reasonably simple.
  • The game must take no more than three hours to run, including set up time, briefings, debriefings and pack down. You are realistically looking at 2-2.5 hours of actual play time. PLEASE pay attention to this one.
  • One-off games heavily preferred, campaign games are may submit concepts, on the following conditions: Campaign games may not include any player characters from their normal campaign, and must not require any previous knowledge of the setting.
  • Your game must be able to function with only 80% of player spaces filled.
  • Your game must have at least 12 characters, and no more than 30. We recommend in the 16-25 region as most optimal.

How many games will you need? How do you pick which games to run?
How many games we need depends on how many characters the games have. We will probably be needing four or five games per round, so somewhere between 25-30 games for the convention. We try to fit in all the games we are offered but we may have concerns. New GMs should try to work with a more experienced GM to make sure a high quality game is produced.

How many games can I run?
It’s actually a fair amount of work to write a game for Chimera and we try to spread the workload across more people rather than less, so you may run, at most, two games and have your name down for one back up game.

What sort of help can Chimera give me with my game?
We want to make the game running process as easy for you as possible. The Chimera team will be in touch and available to support you through the process. We will help you source gear, help you liaise with players and be on hand to help pull things together when things go pear shaped. There is a fair amount of backstage chat between the GMs in the months leading up to the convention, so there is a good sense of community with the other game masters and the organisers. While we do our best to get you the gear you require, being realistic is really helpful as well - try to use what we already have in the gear shed, and if you require something truly esoteric, we may not be able to help. Then again, we’ve sourced a cauldron before, so who knows.

For whatever reason, I am not able to write a new game but would like to run something at Chimera. Can I do this?
Not a worry. Any game that has been made available to run, or you have acquired permission from the original writers, can be run at Chimera. If you’d like to run something but not sure what, email us and we can help you find something fun!

My game needs to run at a specific time, and needs 2 buildings and a helicopter!
We will do our best to schedule your game at a time most optimal to its success, but we need you to be flexible with us as well - not everybody can run on Friday night! Scheduling is determined by a lot of factors, and the chief aim of the schedule juggling act is to make sure that each round has enough player spaces to meet expected demanded, each round has a suitable variety of genres and styles, and that each round has enough playing spaces to accommodate all the games. It’s not half-tricky to get it to work, so it helps if there is no fixed time that your game must run. The same applies for where you would like to run your game - while we will endeavour to give you the location that best fits your game, flexibility is helpful.

I have a question you haven’t answered here.
I’m happy to answer it

And remember, if you haven’t written a larp yourself, you can always run a pre-written game from the list here:

wiki.rpg.net/index.php/LARP_Scenarios

Recent additions in the right size range which looked good:

  • What to Do About Tam Lin? - fairy tales
  • Diamonds and Coal - Steampunk, apparently with a plague
  • Papers - Nordic bureaucratic farce (its safe to read this one because its Nordic)
  • Two Houses Alike in Indignity - some fantasy Stephen Brust thing
  • All In - Shadowrun.
  • Remedia Amoris - Nobilis, about the Crime of Love.

I haven’t read these (except Papers, which has no secrets, so it doesn’t matter, and RA, because I hope to run it in Wellington), but they all looked good from their blurbs. They’d be strong games to add to the list.

(People might also want to fidn the thread for “games they want to see again” to encourage re-runs)

Hey Anna,

Rowena and I would like to register our interest in running the following:

The Shattered Circle
By Reuben Strom & Rowena Knill
16-20 players

Based in Bioware’s Dragon Age setting, this game explores the dynamics between Knights of the Templar order and the Mages of the Circle. All is not well between the two groups, as Mages chafe against circle restrictions, and Templars note increased use of forbidden, dangerous magic amongst their charges. Will an accord be reached? Or are the Circle’s days numbered?

Costume requirements are medieval fantasy, with iconography and style pulled from the Dragon Age games.

Hey Reuben, that looks great - if you guys haven’t already, could you email it through the the adress as per the original post? (Disregard if you have already done so, I can’t check from where I am at the moment)

Those seeking historical inspirations should look here:

There’s some great potential historically resonant larps for 2015:
[ul]
[li] Dune (50th anniversary of publication)[/li]
[li] Wodehouse (the first Blandings and Jeeves and Wooster stories were publishe din 1915, and he died in 1975)[/li]
[li] Alice in Wonderland[/li]
[li] The Hundred days and the Congress of Vienna[/li]
[li] Assassination of Lincoln (a shorter version of “All Quiet on the Potomac”, perhaps?)[/li][/ul]

Dear Anna

I would like to run two games this year at Chimera…

The first will be…
"Blood and Iron: Renaissance"
20-30 players

The year of our Lord 1450 has come to pass and strife spreads across Northern Italy… Nestled between beautiful snow capped Alps and the Po river valley, the industrious Duchy of Milan churns out all manner of tools for war. South of the river growing along the coast lies the Republic of Genoa, its war fleets ever expanding driven by their wars across the Mediterranean, none in Italy would dare challenge them in the open sea. Across the peninsula where the Po river empties into the Adriatic Sea, in the marshes and among its small islands grows the most Serene Republic of Venice, who’s ports hold the gate way to the East and all the wealth it entails. South of the the Po Delta rise the Imperial city of Bologna, the home to the greatest university in Europe and the hold of the Holy Roman Emperor himself. And last but not least, between the rolling hills of Tuscany stands the great Republic of Florence, center of all commerce in Europe, a city who’s merchants decide the fortunes of every monarch in the known world.

War is brewing, calls to arms are being sound, from all corners mercenaries come to answer the call of gold. To take up arms for who ever will pay them most, for gold is sweeter that honey, it is more quenching than water, and the cities of Northern Italy have much gold, someone will have to claim it all…

The second will be…
"The Job"
20-30 players

A multi-million dollar diamond heist pulled off in broad daylight… A shipment of munitions jacked right out from under the Fed’s noses… A shootout in a diner where no one knows what happened… A massacre at a drug deal… And a blind man who saw it all…

Seems like every criminal in New York is locked in the 85th’s holding cells, none of them charged, none of them talking, but every one of them knowing that someone is going down today; be it them, the dirty cops or the Feds. But one things for certain, and that’s when the dust settles someone is going to walk out into the dark streets of New York, and the Underworld will be theirs for the taking…

Hey Kirk, those look awesome! Could you please email your submission through to the official email? :slight_smile: Otherwise I may forget!

Thanks heaps to the people sending games in, we have a slow trickle of games coming in :smiley:

Am looking to run . . .

Title: Class of '83 (R18, warning contains violence, horror and sexual themes)
Authors: Nick Huggins
Blurb: Hair spray, legwarmers, Boy George, John Hughes - The time you spent before hitting real life or university was great. Sure, there were cliques and gangs. The beautiful people preyed on the nerds. The jocks preyed… well… on the nerds.
But everyone forgave everyone else in the end. Romances blossomed, life was lived between the pressures of exams, and trying to be popular with peers and the opposite sex. All of those things came clearly into focus as you drove to the school reunion. Now you’re trapped, and strange things have started to happen around you. All the evidence points to the fact that someone isn’t happy with the way things happened in school. They plan to get revenge, and their target is you. A Live Action Role-Playing Game Based on “Call of Cthulhu”

:slight_smile: Email submitted Anna!

(teaser for players)

Title: Break Room 3-Basilisk-Green
GMs/Writers: Catherine and Stephanie Pegg
Players: 16-20
Genre: Fantasy Humour (Cartoonish; Black comedy of the life-is-cheap flavour)
Costuming: Cartoonish fantasy, lots of goblins and things.
Cast List: not yet available
Blurb:

In the massive dungeon network of Invidius the Indifferently Coloured, adventurers are questing - and dying - as per normal. In Break Room 3-Basilisk-Green, however, things aren’t so rosy. The Sewage Crawlers’ Union is complaining that all the gelatinous cubes are cutting into their hours and agitating while on break; the kobold tribes and skeleton archers are fighting over ammunition; a young hobgoblin in Torture and Reclamation is trying to get married to Sherril from Supplies (and the HR Guy is furious, because that would mean neither could be vivisected without a special permission slip); two surface fairies aren’t sure what they’re doing here; Thog the Bloody and Carnatia’s long-standing feud has evolved into hurtful language and the calling of names; and… someone brought… cake.

I love the sound of that one.

Another publicly available one that people might want to look at running: AE’s “Resonance”

aegames.org/larps/originals/resonance/

Its a combined Amnesia / tale-telling game about the world ending in a memory-apocalypse. I’m not sure though if it would fit in a 3-hour slot (I think its normally gets 4 hours on the New England circuit)

OK, so “Resonance” won’t work - too long - but “I Pray God Will Curse the Writer” (a group of indie film-makers make a film based on “The King In Yellow”. Hilarity ensues) probably would. Though reading it to find out could be dangerous.

So, how is the game situation for Chimera looking?

The question on everyone’s lips. I guess we’ll find out from how hard Anna leans on GMs at Hydra.

We’re almost there for games! There’s a fair bit of guesswork in trying to determine how many people want to come to Chimera this year (last year, numbers were down significantly from previous years - will this trend continue? Will we rise? If so, how much?) so it’s tricky, is all :slight_smile:

It’s all the competitors! (Pesky tribute conventions… :wink: )

How many more do you need?

And if anyone wants to try their hand at GMing, running a prewritten game at Chimera is as easy as it gets. They handle venue, they supply props, they organise players. All you have to do is cast, print, stuff, and run.

(If you need a prewritten game, I have a large stash, and can make some recommendations)

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make Chimera this year: it’s falling right on the deadline weekend for one of the university assignments in the course I’m teaching (curse you, Godard, you will be the death of me!) Absolutely no event this year seems to sync up with the university timetable here :stuck_out_tongue:
That said, if you need more games at any point, I can probably write one of my pre-writtens up and offer it - if there is a GM that’s willing to run it, that is.