I think that drama people (largely) wont be keen. I told my drama class about Mordavia and the first thing that was said was “Do we get paid?” That’s the thing, they do this as a job. Dungeon and dragoners on the other hand, may have the energy and mind set that we are looking for. Where is that discussion?
It’s kind of “everywhere” and not formally in one place. Want to make a thread here? Would be worthwhile.
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It’s where Live Role Play originally came from. Ignore them at your peril.
Exactly. I can’t help but feel like trying to appeal to the drama people and the sports people is like the geeks approaching the cool kids in high school. Geeks will like this. It is geeky, we are geeks, who are we trying to fool here?
Ourselves.
What do you mean? A business has owners and the primary purpose of the business is to create wealth and distribute it to the owners.
NZLARPS is a non-profit society and has no owners. It happily supports larps whether they make money or not. It avoids losing money, but only because nobody benefits from that.
I don’t think NZLARPS is unduly money-focused. Some larps (but not all) need money to run, and if NZLARPS can’t help by lending funding then the organisers have to pay themselves. That’s why NZLARPS like to have money in its account, to lend to games and buy re-usable assets.
Do you mean spending money to grow the community through advertisements makes it like a business? I don’t see this. I mean, Mordavia printed posters and distributed flyers and rulebooks to grow attendance. That all cost money, which came from event fees. But it didn’t make Mordavia a business, because Mordavia didn’t make me or anyone else any money.
A non-profit organisation needs to keep track of its money just as much as a business does. Some techniques used in business, like advertising, apply to both. But a non-profit organisation doesn’t make money to put in people’s pockets.
There’s nothing wrong with businesses, we all need money to eat. But NZLARPS isn’t one, and doesn’t behave like one.
Perhaps some people they misunderstand the society. What NZLARPS is doing is entirely intended to benefit the community, if some people aren’t seeing that then it’s a failure in communication but it doesn’t change what’s actually being done.
I think your idea of running some free larps is good. But not all larps can be run for nothing. Larps with food or venue costs must pay for them.
Someone could run a large fantasy one-day larp in a park for free, using the NZLARPS gear (although a slight loss would be made in the form of wear and tear on the equipment and makeup being used up) and gear that people bring themselves. That would seem to fit what you’re suggesting. That person would need to run a good larp in order to attract members, which is not as easy as it sounds.
I’ve tried convincing a group of five D&D players, all friends of mine who I was playing D&D with, to play Mordavia. They weren’t interested. Does that mean that all D&D players aren’t interested and we should give up on them? No, just not those people at that time with that sales pitch. Same with your drama class.
Craig is not a tabletop roleplayer so it’s only natural that he should see non-roleplayers as a good potential audience. A lot of tabletop roleplayers have already heard of larp but chosen not to get involved. They are in some ways a harder audience than people who have never heard of it, because many of them already have strong opinions on it.
I’m not sure what further steps we could take to talk to “dungeons and dragoners” in Auckland. We’ve been talking to that group for about a decade and might have exhausted it completely. In other words, we can’t grow any more in that direction and if it’s our only direction then we are at maximum size.
I think there’s room to recruit on all fronts, including tabletop roleplayers. I don’t think we’ve tried terribly hard to include them yet. Our efforts have mostly been through societies like America, which are only a tiny fraction of all live roleplayers. I suspect the vast majority of tabletop roleplayers just play with their mates and don’t get involved in societies and conventions. Some will have prejudices about larp, but some won’t and just need encouragement to give it a try.
When I advertised Portal Games at gaming shops I got a flood of young teens, a lot of whom were tabletop gamers. That wasn’t the demographic I was after so I stopped, but NZLARPS shouldn’t be so ageist as I was on that specific project.
I think this is overly negative and exaggerated.
NZLARPs with its multitude of different genre larps hasn’t existed for a decade.
How have you been talking with “That group”? - Having been a gamer for 19 years I can say I’ve never seen any recruiting through a gaming group that I’ve been a part of.
I’ve mentioned in other threads about targetting advertising better, and tabletop gamers is a worthy target despite your personal feelings and lack of results so far.
I have recently converted three of my tabletop playing friends from Tabletop Vampire to One World By Night. I consider this the first step before drawing them forward into the wider larping community. Certain styles of larps inherently attract specific types of gamers. So maybe if advertisement is to be done it could be specified to attract to the different ranges of tabletop gamers.
Sorry, “about a decade” isn’t clear. I mean that we’ve been in touch with AMERICA in some shape or form (even before Mordavia?) for a long time (hrm, it might be nearly ten years) and often had a presence at roleplaying conventions (ok, mostly the ones run by AMERICA). I don’t know, I just don’t see swarms of TT roleplayers that don’t already know about us today (but then, I’m not a TT roleplayer).
Mancus Perfectio - nice way of achieving your larp conversion agenda on your tabletoppin’ friends 
Yeah. Specifically, there are some groups that are very interested in a certain thing. Like how Mordavia had a good relationship with the Medieval Shop and other medieval interests. Well I wonder if we should go talking to special interest groups specific to each game.
[quote=“Exquire”]Sorry, “about a decade” isn’t clear. I mean that we’ve been in touch with AMERICA in some shape or form (even before Mordavia?) for a long time (hrm, it might be nearly ten years) and often had a presence at roleplaying conventions (ok, mostly the ones run by AMERICA). I don’t know, I just don’t see swarms of TT roleplayers that don’t already know about us today (but then, I’m not a TT roleplayer).
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A couple of points,
Isn’t AMERICA the Auckland University Role Play Club? They therefore represent a small portion of the paper role play community.
Doesn’t AMERICA hold its own Live Role Plays from time to time. They have been responsable for a number or LuRPers, have they joined you, if not, why not?
When Hamilton was running with 140+ Live Role Players and LARPers it was very rare to find one that had not played some paper role play. If you want some expansion up there, then the paper role players are one of your target groups.
There are swarms of them. You not seeing them doesn’t mean anything, they’re in the woodwork.
Tabletop roleplaying is like book clubbing. Any random bunch of people can do it with no reference to central organisations, and most do. If there aren’t masses of unseen roleplayers out there then why does Borders have a roleplaying section?
My point on my lack of success with recruiting tabletoppers isn’t that it’s hard. Just that it’s no easier than recruiting drama people in the current climate. But social climates can change - in Denmark fantasy larp is played by something like 15% of all teens and is the fastest-growing youth hobby. 10 years ago it was as small as it is here. In Finland these days half the larpers are drama people and arty types.
All this absolutist talk about “drama people not being interested” or what the limitations of recruitment are and “who our demographic is” is tosh in my opinion. Tosh, I tell you! I hate to use such strong language on a public forum that minors may read, but it had to be said. Things change, public opinion can change.
Yes
Yes the have associated with NZLARPS.
The first joint larp, a pirate larp was run at battlecry a few weeks back.
Watch it, Paddy.
[quote=“Exquire”]I don’t know, I just don’t see swarms of TT roleplayers that don’t already know about us today (but then, I’m not a TT roleplayer).
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There are new ones each year and the LARPs people in America, KAOS and The University Medieval Guild are herding them this way each year…and they usualy show up to a couple of games…
There is a good little bunch of first years this year…
I would say it’s a good portion of the TT gaming up here…people that were members in uni tend to stick around forever or at least keep contact with it.
[quote=“Cameron”]…
I would say it’s a good portion of the TT gaming up here…people that were members in uni tend to stick around forever or at least keep contact with it.[/quote]
Most paper players I know don’t belong to a club, have never belonged to a club and won’t join a club. It is nice the AMERICA crew keep in touch but they will only a small proportion of all the players out there.
Anyone got any ideas on how we can talk to non-club members?
You go to where they get their fix. As someone has pointed out earlier, put ads in the shops where they buy their supplies from. That is the most cost effective way. After that clubs days and such like at the universities and then poach them from affiliated groups such as actors and their like.
The best way of course is word of mouth, but Live Role Play groups tend to get a little ingrown. You know you are a redneck when your family tree has no branches.
Some tabletoppers visit RPG shops like Vagabond and Heroes for Sale. We could advertise in places like that, but we have to be ready for more young players than old. Do we have a place for a horde of 12-15 year olds? These shops cater to wargamers, cardgamers, and comic readers and that’s a youth-biased demographic. The D&D players who frequent shops are probably younger than the average too.
I’m not sure about other venues. Older TT players often just play with their own group of mates. For example, a bunch of people I used to work with play D&D together. The DM reads RPG forums, the rest just play.
There are TT websites that some TT players visit, but probably some groups don’t visit them at all.
The Medieval Shop probably attracts a lot of fantasy TT fans with a wide age range, and specifically ones that have a vague interest in dress-up. That’s what made them such a good advertising partner for Mordavia.
I suppose some sort of viral marketing might work. Like leaflets to be handed between TT groups, which are somewhat networked by players who play in multiple groups? Don’t know how effectively they would spread though. Some sort of friend-get-friend signup reward system could help.
General-public marketing would probably pick up some people who were interested, some of whom would be tabletoppers. Advertising in papers, radio, TV, etc.