Discussion on funding professional paid Gear Storage

nzLARPS
#1

This post should be read in conjunction with the thread on what to do with the Auckland Gear Library (viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9365). This thread is for discussion on how to fund $3000 a year cost of gear storage in the event that the community decides that this is what we should do.

So it has been said in the thread mentioned above that in order to fund the cost of gear storage the community will need to start paying more for games. The question is how much more? And the even bigger question, does this mean we will expect all games to make a profit?

This may seem like an easy question, but in fact it is not, because NZLARPS is a not for profit society and our main purpose is to make it easier for people to run larps in New Zealand. Therefore NZLARPS has never expected all games to make a profit, simply to minimise financial risk. Somewhat of an exception is the “flagship” larp, which has always had a but of a responsibility to make a profit in order to fund the smaller games. However this has never been an official policy of NZLARPS, it has just sort of been a tradition since the days of Mordavia and to be honest, if it wasnt for the three weekend events in Auckland that make the big profit, the society would not have been able to grow as much as it has in my opinion.

Regardless of what option is chosen to fund the extra gear storage cost, the underlying theme will be that Auckland NZLARPS projects will now be expected to make a profit. This is something that the community will need to be okay with, because it means that there will be a lot more consideration given to financial forecasts for games, but it does also mean that we (NZLARPS) will help if any prospective event organiser needs help with setting up a financial forecast.

We (the committee) would like to make it clear that our intention is not to try and get more money out of our community. We wish there was a way to fund the gear storage without putting the extra cost on the community, but the reality is that if we would like to retain and grow our gear library, everyone is going to have to pay more. See the discussion in the other thread regarding the keeping of the gear library.
So down to the costs. Some discussion has happened around this in the backstage forum and two main suggestions have been made as follows. Please note we are happy to hear alternative options.

Flat fee for project games:

One day games:
If your game has 19 or less people, the flat fee to be added to the budget would be $30, this means at maximum you will need to charge $6 per head (for a 5 player game) and $1.5 per head at 19 players.

If your game has 20 - 49 players then the fee to be added to your budget will be $80. This means the maximum extra you will have to charge per head is $4.

If your game has 50 - 99 people the fee to add to your budget will be $200. This means the maximum extra amount you will have to charge per head is $4.

If your game has 100 people plus the fee will be $500. This means the maximum you will need to charge extra per head is $5.

For weekend games with 100 plus people the total flat fee to add to your budget will be $700. This means that the maximum extra cost per head will be $7.

If we were to use this option with the current format then we can rely on $2100 a year coming in from Chimera and two weekend games of Crucible. Plus I would like to run fundraiser Combat Practices twice a year estimating to bring in another $500 a year. Plus any extra money we make from smaller games. However the point is we can definitely rely on at least $2600 a year which goes a long way to sustainably covering the $3000. This will only work if the games keep a minimum profit margin by adding the extra cost as per head, instead of say reducing expenses to cover the fee. Hence why we need buy in from the project owners and the community.

Percentage of revenue fee:

This option involves the society “charging” an overhead fee to all project event budgets. The fee would be calculated as a percentage of the event’s revenue. The fee would be at least 5% of revenue, and may be slightly higher.

The budget for each event would include a “gear overhead fee” expense line that is calculated to be 5% of the total projected income using a formula in the spreadsheet.

In order to pay for this percentage overhead fee, events would still need to raise the prices they charge to participants. If all other things are equal, the prices would have to go up by just over 5%, so a $100 weekend event fee would become $105. Therefore this this option would still need buy in from project owners and the community in the same way as a flat fee would.

Again, we welcome comments and any further constructive suggestions about how to raise the money. There is going to be a special committee meeting (date TBA) to discuss these issues and I highly recommend that everyone attends and has their say. In the end the committee will be voting on this but none of these options will work if we don’t have community buy in.

Auckland Gear Discussion Committee Meeting - Wed 26th Feb
#2

Building this kind of cost into events is probably the most sensible option. Even considering disbanding the library is unconscionable.
As already mentioned if it comes down to it I will offer free indefinite storage in Hamilton.

#3

I am in favour of the first option of charging flat fees based on the number of participants, because it would mean nice whole number for when participants pay in cash on the day of events. As a participant I would be happy for this amount because its very much an affordable raise of the game price IMO.

#4

I’ve given a lot of thought to this over the last little while (not nearly as much as Nikki, who has done a great job of spearheading this research and discussion) and I have some suggestions for how to raise the funds to afford this gear storage.

Firstly, the goal: the Auckland branch of the committee has certain expenses it has to pay outside of project expenditure. This is paid for out of the pool of money raised by games. The gear storage fee of ~$3000 has to be raised in addition to that.

Auckland Region’s Out-of-Project Expenditure for the Last Two Financial Years
For the financial year September 1st 2011 to August 31 2012, the expenses for the Auckland region were $680 for assets purchased and $387 for operational expenses and consumables (yep, you can check).
For the financial year September 1st 2012 to August 31 2013, the expenses for the Auckland region were:
New items for the library: $1,553.81 (this means, fancy new gear - vacuum cleaner, radios, cool stuff.)
Gear Maintenance : $381.73 (boring stuff - plastic boxes, glue)
Gear Storage: $500.00 (a koha to Hannah’s mum for storing our stuff in her yard)
Trailer Maintenance: $258.00 (what it says on the tin)
Fines : $400.00 (trailer related)
Total: $3,093.54

So, as you can see, the majority of our spending, in general, is on the gear anyway. The committee doesn’t have a huge amount of expenses for itself - they are chiefly in maintaining the gear, maintaining the trailer, the occasional venue hire for a meeting, and buying new gear when we have the cash for it.

Funding the Exercise
If Chimera and The Crucible participate, then that is an annual $2100 raised.
Looking at last year’s events, we can expect to raise a further $300 from smaller events paying gear fees. That’s $2400.
We already have a $500 fee we pay for storage at our current arrangement, which is factored into the society’s running costs, so that’s essentially $500 we just repurpose. That takes us to $2900.
Nikki states in her post that she is willing to run some combat events, but that could be generically expanded out to the committee commits (pardon the pun) to fundraising $500 itself a year towards this, spreading it across various committee members, $500 could be raised with only 2 or 3 afternoon/evening events. That’s $3400.

What Makes Money in Auckland?
Auckland’s theatreform scene is not as sought after as Wellington’s, Friday Night Larps struggled to draw in around 15 people per event, unless it was a particularly sought after/well known game. Other events have performed similarly, so it is not a reliable source of income, especially when combined with high venue costs in any area of the city where it is convenient to get to. Typically, Auckland’s highest earners have been fantasy-combat events held in parks.

Tigger had the idea for a low-fantasy ‘campaign’ for raising money. “Larp in the Park” or similar. Very generic fantasy setting, very simple rules system (perhaps something like borrowing Bryn’s Kingdom system with permission or dusting off the old Mordavia ruleset) and running 3 hour afternoon/evening adventures in a park - the Domain, Western Springs, Cornwall Park, etc - around four or five times a year. In order to alleviate pressure on any one person organising, it could have a rotating wheel of five or so GMs, each doing a game a year. Sort of like having a DnD party with someone different running the adventure every week - not a lot of continuity or any sort of overarching plot, but just a bunch of adventurers doing self contained adventures. With no venue cost, no gear cost, and charging a nominal fee of $5 or $10 to attend, it could raise a lot of revenue if there were five or six people willing to band together to make it happen.

A low-cost/low-effort idea might be a game-specific raffle. Something that is low effort for the GMs but of value to players - for example, a raffle for a set of “first picks” at Chimera, or something interesting/valuable in Crucible (a gift basket of reagents?). A raffle ticket is a low cost item that people wouldn’t feel overly stretched to kick in a few dollars for a chance at something cool. And with low overheads, they’re almost pure cash in hand.

But Game Prices Will Still Go Up
Yes but not by much :slight_smile: I think it’s really important to keep in mind that nzLARPS isn’t raising prices to make a profit, it’s to cover a significant expense and increasingly necessary. We already have to raise our prices to keep pace with inflation, rising food costs, the GST increase that happened a few years back. Perhaps we can start introducing student/waged prices for larps, but that’s a separate discussion.

In Conclusion
It’s totally possible to find the money. Auckland may have to spend less on cool new gear outside of projects, and keep a closer eye on making sure it’s tracking towards it’s goals, and most importantly the community have to come to the party and initiate some of these efforts, but at the end of the day, if we get to keep playing our games by PLAYING MORE GAMES to raise money, well, there’s worse situations in life, right? :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks Anna, some excellent ideas. I love the idea of a low-fantasy game, particularly as it gives more opportunity to utilize all our personal gear that we’ve accumulated, and it may help get people even more involved in LARPing. It also would provide another cheap and easy way of introducing LARPing to people. Don’t forget the Skirmish rules as an option either, though the Mordavia or Kingdom ones are also good. Whatever gets used, it should be short and to the point.

I guess one worry is that while we can get the money for the professional storage, it may stretch our Auckland player base a little, meaning there isn’t enough money to expand our gear pool. However, if the measures taken also help increase our player base, e.g. with the low-fantasy game, then that is possibly going to offset that.

#6

Thanks Anna - that’s a really good analysis.

I love the idea of a raffle for 1st picks at Chimera (a prize which doesn’t cost anything, but which is valuable enough that people will pay a few bucks for the chance as a fundraiser to the society). And while I don’t know the Gambling Act 2003 very well, it looks like its do-able (but I’m still looking up the definition of “authorised purpose”, which looks to be the biggest potential sticking point)

Edit: Bugger. Small raffles must comply with the Lottery Game Rules 2004, one of which is that “Prizes in the lottery must be worth at least 20% of the lottery’s gross potential income”. So we can’t raffle things whose value is not measured in money.

#7

Er. Seriously? Can we say enter this raffle for a $50 paddywhack voucher AND first picks?

#8

Yes, but the maximum value of tickets sold then would be $250, and after expenses the maximum potential revenue would be $200.

Of course, if there was a “pay an extra $100 and get all your first picks” option for Chimera (possibly limited in number) then it would be legal. That might however cause other problems.

#9

Well I suppose if I sell five of those then that’s a chunk of the gear money right there.

#10

I’d be surprised (and perhaps outraged - tempered by the knowledge that its for a good cause) if anyone actually bought one, but putting a price on it would provide legal cover (and moreso if anyone actually paid it).

#11

See that’s strange I would have thought that lots of raffles raise much more money than their random assortment of food (to take a classic example), which is often donated. If the raffle doesn’t have a monetary value, does it come under those rules at all?

#12

I’ll check, but my suspicion is “yes, because its gambling”.

I was talking about class 1 gambling, which doesn’t require a licence and for which the rules are the most relaxed. The rules get tighter the more money involved.

#13

Does bingo count as gambling? Or is there some other way of doing a raffle-like effect with it being legaly distinct from a gamble?

#14

Yes, bingo is legally gambling. If there’s a valuable prize, and its a game of chance, its gambling.

#15

Cool. So we want a game where the prize is, in monetary terms, non-valuable (IC benefits or the like), and the outcome is not decided on a game of chance (e.g. through a series of challenges that require more skill than chance, over a range of different disciplines).

How about a fundraising challenge. People can enter themselves or pay for a champion to go on their behalf. There is a physical challenge (obstacle course), an intellectual challenge (riddle), a magic challenge (setting up and casting a preset ritual), and so forth, the prize going to the best competitor overall, and smaller prizes to the winners of each separate challenge. The prize is purely IC rewards, but entry is paid with a small OOC amount, and the entire competition is worked into the game (e.g. early on Saturday morning before the weekeng game has gone underway).

#16

Games of skill (e.g. fishing competitions) are also legally gambling.

And as a general thing, its a bad idea to try and rules lawyer the government, because they write the rules and have better lawyers. If we want to pursue this path, then the best way to find out what we can legally do is to straight out ask them. DIA will almost certainly have someone whose job it is to advise community groups how not to break the law.

#17

Speaking as a member of the ST team for one of NZLARP’s smaller projects (Fates Unbound, a one afternoon per month game) I would make the suggestion that rather than having a set ‘you have this many people, you pay X’ fee that each game works out with NZLARPS an appropriate and affordable amount to put towards gear storage (Or use the % revenue system, or do fundraising, or really anything that’s not a flat fee based on game size alone).

Using our own game as an example, Fates Unbound would be crippled by the introduction of a flat $80 per game fee for our game (the suggested fee for a 20-40 player 1 day game). We currently run at a budget of around $1700 per year which sees players paying $5 per game, with NPCs free. Adding $4 per head to this would almost be doubling our cost, which seems extreme for a game that has so far not made any use of the gear library. Charging NPCs would also likely decrease the amount of people willing to bring our setting to life for us. In addition, $4 per head over 12 months is an increase of $48 per player per year. Assuming 2 weekend games and 2 day games per year, Crucible players would be paying an extra $24 per year towards gear. This means Fates Unbound players would be playing $24 more per year towards gear than Crucible players, despite Fates Unbound being a much lower intensity, lower investment, lower gear use game that we have been trying to keep as affordable as possible. This would be ridiculous. We simply cannot double the price without giving our players any additional benefit. We would be forced to stop being a project, which would mean the loss of our discount on council venues and an increased cost or loss of game quality elsewhere.

I do understand the need to keep the gear and that this will mean an increase in game fees. Certainly on a personal level I am perfectly happy to pay a bit more towards the cost of events I attend if it means we keep being able to use that wonderful stock of gear. But all games are different and I don’t think having a flat, universal rate for games of certain sizes is a good idea at all, as it may cause unforeseen problems for some games. Not every game brings in revenue but they bring in players, give people a different experience and contribute to the community in other ways. I think it would be sad if any ended up breaking up or being massively disadvantaged by such a flat fee.

I think a better solution is to have each project discuss their options with the treasurer or the committee, and work out an amount that reflects the other running costs of the game (and the fee players are being charged), the frequency of games, the amount of gear used, the player base (% of students/unwaged) and any other relevant factors to come up with a fee that is reasonable for the game at hand and not going to cause major problems. Larp is a creative endeavour which can come in many shapes and sizes, and not all of these are going to fit comfortably within a rigid fee guideline.

#18

In conjunction with Pippi Longaxe’s opinion above, I’d like to suggest two amendments to the policy (which I am sure was implicit but it’s best to be explicit)

  • If a project is using no gear, or very minimal gear, the gear fee should be waived in favour of a more appropriate donation, as per the earning capability of the game in question. We still want the gear to be accessible to people running games with low overheads (and as such, low game fees)
  • Affiliates should be charged for gear at the same rates, if not more. The logic is that projects feed their profits directly back into the society as well as the gear they purchase, while affiliates don’t contribute tangible ‘things’ to the society, therefore it makes sense to hire them the gear at a higher rate. This is similar to say, a surf club loaning gear to its members (i.e. projects) at a discounted rate, versus non-members (affiliates). It is not fair if affiliates use the gear for free while projects pay.
#19

The Flat Fee seems like an excellent solution when applied to one-off, non campaign games and flagship-style games and events*. However, there’s a lot of hazy ground in the middle - especially with regard to monthly games, as with the many WoD campaigns we have around Auckland - for which it’s frankly awful and, as written, makes operating with the support of the Society infeasible. As Pippi said, applied to Fates Unbound it would practically double our per-game cost, which we couldn’t in good conscience ask people to pay.

I can’t imagine Nikki (or whoever came up with the suggestion as she posted it) intended it to apply in such a clearly absurd way; it simply was not designed with monthly WoD games in mind. The question, then, is how to amend it. At first I was going to suggest simply adding another case to deal with such projects, but the more I think about it the more I realise that LARP projects are more diverse in style and audience than such a hard-and-fast rule can hope to reasonably accommodate. The rule that works for Crucible may not work for Jade Empire** / 1001 Nights** / Fates Unbound.

On the flipside, a wishy-washy “treat each Project individually” approach is liable to just be annoying for the Committee. So I guess what I’d suggest is going with the Flat Fee as suggested, specifically applying only to one-off, non campaign day games, weekend events and day games as part of a campaign based around weekend games, with a stipulation that Projects which do not fall under those categories will be treated on a case-by-case basis depending on the nature of the Project in question.

  • Things like Chimera and Crucible, which are large-scale and based around weekend events but may in some cases have day events as well.
    ** I don’t know whether these two are Projects, but that’s not the point; I’m just noting some games which have different sorts of schedules and events.
#20

While I’m not based in Auckland, I’d like to chime in here because whatever results from this discussion will set a precedent that is likely to be applied in Wellington in some similar form.

In Wellington, some projects are affiliated because, at their inception, NZLARPS Wellington did not have the money to provide the float for the project. Thus there are at least two affiliated larp events that I know of that are ongoing (33AR and Hydra, although correct me if I’m wrong). However, both of these events contribute gear to the gear library that they purchase or create. In this way they do not match the quoted definition of an affiliate, and thus I think it is important to make that distinction when it comes to setting the amount desired in payment for gear usage. In these special cases, I think it would be fair to charge the affiliate that contributes to the gear library the same amount as an equivalently sized project.

Although, whatever you decide to do, I ask that you please keep these things in mind when setting such prices.