Official early warning: National Larp Writing Month (NalaWriMo) is in November. So you’ve got three months to clear your calendar so you can write a larp.
Rules, FAQ, and signup (if you want a reminder of when to start) are on the website here:
https://sites.google.com/view/nalawrimo/
The basic idea is to write a larp - any type of larp, any size - in a month. I’ve done it a few times: last year I wrote Longmuir Hall, and the year before Persephone’s Choice. Anyone else want to do it this year?
Yuss I can actually do NaLaWriMo this year!
It’s a definite maybe from me; I don’t have The Next Great Idea™ but I have a few things rattling around.
However, I don’t have a lot of free time and I’m heading over to Ireland in December for four weeks so November is likely to be busy both in work and free time.
On the other other hand, if I don’t make time to write a larp, I probably never will, soooo…
Write a small one? After all, there’s a 6-8 player space at Cerberus which needs to be filled every round…
For those who facebook, @Tevinterium has set up a facebook group for this. Contact her or comment on the post int he NZLARPS facebook group for an invite.
Edit to add: Or you can just join it here
6 people in the facebook group so far, plus a few international participants signed up on the website. This is looking quite promising.
This starts on Thursday. There’s now 11 people in the NZ facebook group, and international participants from Australia, Israel, Canada, the USA and the Czech Republic.
Now I just need to work out what I’m going to write…
Day 1: Pulled my one-page list of ideas for “Longmuir Hall 2” out of the slushpile. Wondered why I couldn’t find the plot spreadsheet for the first game, before realising that there wasn’t one - I plotted it out on little bits of paper. Started throwing character concepts at the castlist: Mr Wentworth’s great aunt, of course, and a wealthy gentleman who has moved into the district. Threw in a third character from someone’s backstory, and suddenly I have a title: Property & Propriety.
Next step: work out if my continuing characters have enough to do.
Dunedin NaLaWriMo is go!
@Carla has gathered 9 people to split into teams for a larp-write-a-thon. Hopefully by meeting up regularly we can keep each other on track. Our aim is to end up with four 8-person larps that we can all play at the end of the month.
Our first meeting was mostly pitching ideas and then deciding which to write and who would write them. The resulting game ideas are:
We will be meeting up once to twice a week to check in and have set-aside writing time. I’ll try to post updates as it goes.
May not be a stage production; front runners at the moment are a TV show or a political rally. We’ll post updates here as well 
Update: Second gathering successful. Seems like most teams have worked out the basic structure of their games.
Day 3: More plot development, throwing ideas at the spreadsheet and fleshing out people’s agendas. I also took a closer look at the historical context and when the game is actually set - Longmuir Hall was explicitly set in 1802, after the Treaty of Amiens, to take advantage of the narrow window of peace between Britain and France. Throw in the constraint of fox-hunting season (November through March), and it probably happened in November. Which means if I go for 3-6 months later, Property & Propriety is set sometime between February and May 1803, during the Treaty’s collapse.
So far I have taken a a vague concept that started out as the name of the game and have some vague ideas and names for characters.
Day 6: I have a blurb. Yes, I’ve changed the date.
Day 19: First character sheet written. 14 more to go.
Day 24: 6 character sheets (of 15) done. I’m going to have to write more than one a day to get it done by the end of the month, and we’ll see how that goes, but if I go over, I go over. I’d already been thinking of adding two more characters anyway, and so that would be a great excuse.
Day 27: 12/14 characters done (yes, I’ve cut someone. But I also have 3 extras lying around if the mood takes me). So now I just have the difficult two characters to do.
Day 30 (plus a few hours): I did it! 14/14 characters, though the last needs a bit of polish and maybe another plot. But the core is done.
How did everyone else do?
Turns out larp writing and 50 hour work weeks don’t mesh super well, so I’m nowhere near done. I have a detailed outline, a few puzzles, and about half of three character sheets, and I’ll try again next year when work calms down.
been doing 50+ hour weeks this month, have not had motivation to get past character concepts and initial plot hook