A New Community Magazine?

nzLARPS
#1

Adam (Xcerus) raised an interesting question at the AGM, of how many balls Anna can juggle at once. Although he may not have used that exact phrase.

And I think I know the answer: three.

Assuming the balls are quite large, that is.

About when Anna started planning for Chimera, the NZLARPS magazine Immersion was put on hold. Immersion was a big chunk of work, probably larger than most people realised. Being president is a fair amount of work too, and so is Chimera. Not to mention St Wolfgang’s.

Is there anyone who would want to pick up the ball of editing a larp publication? I know that some people had concerns over Immersion being a cost with no income, and it’s certinaly true that it was mostly an in-house work for the amusement of community members, but I can’t help wondering whether we have fully explored print as a medium for larp advocacy.

If Immersion was to rise from the ashes in a slightly different form, what would it be? Here’s my take:

  • It might only be published once or twice a year. The main edition would come out a month or two before Chimera, so as to maximise advertising for the national convention.
  • It would be primarily targetted at new larpers. It would contain info useful to experienced larpers, but no in-jokes or articles that are only of interest to people who were at an event.
  • It would be printed on mass and placed in shops.
  • Each edition would start with a primer on larp.
  • The content would primarily be a series of in-depth advertisements for currently running or upcoming larps. Each event would get maybe four pages, outlining everything a new larper might want to know about it.
  • Chimera would get an especially long writeup, detailing all of the larps in it.

So basically, what I’m envisioning it more like the advertising booklets that are put out for Armageddon, and less like a member-only thing. Ideally, like other such advertisments, it would be full colour on thin glossy paper with lots of photos and in a small pocket-sized portable format.

The main purpose of it would be marketing to new larpers, but it would be great for existing larpers to decide whether they want to attend a particular larp. Funding could come from all the larps advertised in it.

#2

Immersion was huge work, and as whiney as it sounds, the reason it got put on hold was because nobody helped :frowning: I gave up halfway through the December 2008 issue because I couldn’t get any content. I’d already written half the magazine, but I had no cover photo, nobody to design the cover and only one or two people had contributed to it (thanks Moo, for those costuming articles that never saw the light of day :slight_smile: ) and there was no way it was getting done before the deadline. I really needed help, but while I had a dozen people volunteering to proofread, I had few-to-none people volunteering for the actual writing.

I got frustrated, and in light of the fact my honours degree was suffering, I put Immersion on hiatus.

I had every intention of restarting it, because like Ryan, I still believe in the value of the print medium, and there was something nice about having a physical issue in your hands - but that might be my bibliophilic English major talking. One of the reasons I didn’t restart was because nobody appeared to miss it, which is not to say I expected throngs of weeping mourners holding a candlelit vigil outside my house for Immersion, but in the year since the last issue, I’ve had two, maybe three, people ask after it. I came to the conclusion that nobody missed it :slight_smile:

But Ryan’s right, my hands are pretty full with presidenting, Wolfgang, and Chimera (and the little known fourth ball, which is whatever theatreform larp I’m working on in the background, Fleet St’s done so I’m working on two new ones) so I can’t take up Immersion again. I mean, I could, but I’d have to quit my job, then my half of the rent wouldn’t get paid and Tigger would have some very cross words with me :laughing:

The only thing I’d have to throw into Ryan’s pile of ideas is sections on costuming how-to, since “I don’t know how to get a costume” is about the most common excuses thrown out by newbies :slight_smile:

#3

I enjoyed Immersion. What’s not to like about seeing your own name in print? :wink:

But I think it could serve a different purpose by being totally targeted at attracting more players. Then it would pay for itself, being more like advertising and less like vanity press. By being an annual publication it would be less ongoing work. And doing advertising for a set of games, and most especially for Chimera, is also less work than getting a group of writers to write original pieces. It would be less like a labour of love, and more like a practical tool.

I really see it as an entirely different animal, a pamphlet-booklet that a stranger picks up somewhere like Tank juice bar, looks at the pretty pictures, goes “huh… cool” and takes it home to peruse and hopefully follows up on something. Less of a magazine, more of a throwaway piece of pretty advertising with some suitable words.

I would be happy to help with conceptualising and writing for such a yearly project as I think it’s very worthwhile, but not to lead it as I won’t have time.

Costuming advice… maybe. If it can look cool.

Theory articles on larp? No. They’re best on the web, where anyone in the world can learn from our genius.

#4

I’m a writer by trade and would love to help out with this.

However, I’d like to see Immersion become 100% digital. I’ve so many ideas for information on LARPing that I’d like to see centralized, and I’ve rather lofty goals of seeing NZLARPS become something of an international authority. No, really! Having Immersion online, with a database of information and awesome might be something LARPers round the world start to pick up and take notice of. Honestly, I’ve spent so many hours looking for basic first-time LARP tips, or basic costuming tips, or what not… the info is out there, but so scattershot.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. Not that you have cents in NZ anymore… :smiley:

#5

Perhaps the thing I’m describing is not Immersion then. Perhaps it’s a yearly Chimera advertising pamphlet that also covers all the ongoing larps and is primarily aimed at attracting new players. Then perhaps Immersion could live on, online, as a thought-leading publication for experienced larpers?

#6

Wouldn’t the immersion/pamphleet thing be the realm of the marketing officer(s)?

#7

Probably, but I don’t see why both ideas can’t be persued.

For my 2c, I think the challenge with Immersion is that it was effectively preaching to the converted. The articles were always interesting, but by the time they were seen in print the content was likely already spread around the community. The reviews of games were fun, but for most people a recap on something already experienced.

Ryan’s concept certainly has merit. Even as a yearly or twice yearly publication, a printed booklet geared more at advertising LARP in NZ and what’s on offer, particularly Chimera, is likely to be more valuable in the grand scheme right now (not saying that Immersion wasn’t valuable!). It would still be good though to retain some more informative pieces (particulary about what LARP is for those that don’t really know) to pad it a little - pieces that can be garnered from the other avenue…

Take immersion online. We have a website that I don’t think is being used to it’s full potential, and with the advent of more national-based organisation is a card we should be playing. nzlarps.org should be the nz portal for all things larp, like some other websites are portals to all things geek and gaming. News updates, game reviews, interest articles, advertising, links to related sites for costumes/costume and prop guides/game development guides… you name it, let’s have it. Diatribe itself is a huge resource for this already - as Jackie says, the info is there already but very “shotgun” in it’s location. There’s some great articles waiting to happen amongst the populace too.

#8

I wasn’t shooting down the idea I was mearly that the pres shouldn’t have to be responsible for it, that its more the area of the marketing officer to make sure it comes out…After all pamphletes and Immersion from what I see are up there as 2 or the 3 primary jobs of that role (the other is dealing with external media coverage such as 20/20 and news papers).

#9

It’s the marketing officer’s job to organise and promote marketing opportunities but they are by no means the only people who can work on marketing ventures. The illusion that only the committee can do stuff to effect the community needs to be dispelled :slight_smile:

I’m really digging Ryan’s idea for an advertising booklet. I’m keen to be involved (because I think I’m physically incapable of saying no to being involved in a larp project) and pass on everything I learned from Immersion to whoever decides to head this project.

I’ve been contemplating an online version of Immersion for people who are already converted, a community e-zine/interactive website. Because I like keeping a record of stuff, and it’d be nice to showcase our stuff.

#10

Yes, anyone could do it, probably as a project of the society. And the marketing officer could assist them. The key skill that would be needed is producing a very graphically attractive publication with lots of photos artfully included and some nice text to go with. So whoever wanted to do this would be organising photo shoots in nice settings, wrangling copy writers, seeking advertising funds from projects, spending ages on layout and graphic design, etc. I imagine that an advertising price would be set per page, so smaller projects could book one page and larger ones could have several.

Just say no. Or say “I’d help a bit with the writing part” or something.

The only thing with the booklet idea is, are we ready for a chunk of new, inexperienced players? If 20 extra inexperienced players turned up to the next Chimera, would we cope? What about more? If not, we might be better to stick with the organic approach to growth we have now. No point advertising if we don’t want a bunch of new people.

Personally I would drop the “community” aspect. We have such a strong online community here on Diatribe, that anything “community” related published online will be old hat. Instead, I’d imagine just a small set of 3 or 4 high-quality articles published online in each edition that are mostly applicable to larpers anywhere, perhaps with an occasional NZ-focused article. I used to quite enjoy reading Places to Go, People to Be (a tabletop roleplaying ezine) because every edition had at least one well-considered article that I could learn something from. Could be game design theory, GMing advice, history of roleplay, etc. For a larp mag, I’d be interested in reading “how to costume Victorian” perhaps, but not “general costuming advice”. Something that directly addresses a specific larp concern, however narrow, done well.

#11

I’m intending to contribute to this hypothetical publication, but yes, I’m learning the limits of capabilities. Cursed limitations. Why must I sleep?

I think I articulated myself badly in the last post. I like reading, writing, recording, archiving, theory…I’m an English major, it comes with the territory, I can’t help it :slight_smile: One of the things I liked about Immersion was the fact that it did have our own theory articles in it, and that it documented the history of our larping community, game by game. Diatribe does that but to a lesser extent, far less well written and harder to search. I like the idea of a shiney website where we post our theory articles and our more professional write ups of larps so in ten years time we can go “Oh of course yes that was epic!” And what you say, about learning things from other articles, writing the theory - I remember I learned so much from those articles you linked me to on writing theatreforms, it’s one of the things that helped me with Fleet St (ah, the public face vs. the private face!) and let’s face it, one day larping will be the topic in academia and it’ll be good to get a headstart (I live in hope one day I will find someone to supervise me writing a research paper on comparing larping as a a storytelling form to literature)

#12

I’d enjoy articles that documented NZ games if they were more analytical, less recaps.

Steve Hatherley’s freeform writing articles were a lot of use to me, too. I made a little booklet out of them and carried it around with me when I was conceptualising Camelot. It could be more concise, though.

#13

This publication idea of Ryan’s sounds vaguely similar to Anna’s idea last year of the promotional CD. Getting together the articles and photos (and now documentaries) and What-is-larp stuff to give out to people. In this day and age I do wonder how much print medium will give as opposed to the electronic.

My opinion (which I’ve stated before) on a way forward is a wiki. The advantages of this is
-we can all contribute to the resource - no one person has to write it all

  • kick start with copy & paste from diatribe discussions / articles
  • useful information is kept in one easy to find place, and searchable
  • easy kept up to date - links to other pages can be edited easily etc
  • a non-threatening way for people to add their experience (I find it easier to just add a sentence or two to a broad idea, rather than having to sit down and write a whole article.
  • separate sections for recounts of games that have happened, for archival purposes (and whet other people’s appetites).

Bulletin boards are great for discussions and creating a community, but are very hard to sift through to find resources. Web pages (in my naivete of how they are created) seem harder to update, and rely more on one or two people. (BTW Ryan the Chimera website was awesome - intuitively laid out, easy to use and looked brilliant)

NZlarps was/is in the process to moving to independant website, board hosting etc, rather than being hosted by Craig, and I think this is an option that should be investigated.

#14

Not really. What I’m suggesting is a very shiny flyer booklet of the type often left in cafes to advertise upcoming events like concerts, conventions, markets, festivals, etc. Extremely simple and focussed on presenting the coolness visually. Only a couple of pages introducing larp, and the rest aimed entirely at enticing new people to attend specific events that are coming up through the year, but most especially to attend Chimera because it’s a great intro for new players. We leave just a few copies (say 5) in a whole lot of cafes and juice shops. People will probably only take them away if they are actually interested by what they see by flipping through in the shop, so we don’t need big piles in each shop.

#15

On the subject of a wiki, I’d say it has a very different function to a flyer pamphlet.

A wiki’s function would be to provide commonly-used information for local larpers.

A flyer pamphlet’s function would be to entice new players to specific upcoming events.

The function of the online edition of Immersion that Jackie & Anna suggested would probably be to provide carefully-written and highly-edited and possibly peer-reviewed magazine/journal type articles of articles of interest to the wider larping community.

The questions in regards to the flyer pamphlet are:

  1. how many new players do we want to entice to attend events?
  2. how much are we willing to spend for each new player?

Personally I’d guess that each new player might be worth about $100 to the society on average, in terms of increased revenue from events. Some will only play one game, but some will carry on for years playing lots.

Only 3% or so of pamplets produced will probably turn into a new player. So then it’s a matter of doing the maths to see how many to produce to achieve the number of new players we want, and how much to spend on them.

#16

Guessing at say a 4% conversion rate for ease of math (the conversion rate is quite unguessable anyway), we might need to print 500 pamphlets to attract 20 new people to events. If they increase revenue by $100 each, then it might be worth spending up to $2000 on it. But I think it could be done a lot cheaper, and that new players are probably worth more than $100. We might even be able to get colour toner for the society’s laser printer and use that. If it was 16 pages (- 4 for cover, back and intro) = 12 pages of event ads, and we could do it for $600 say, then it would be a $50 cost per page for events to advertise. And half the event pages would probably be Chimera.

Can we have a “Chimera pamphlet” private forum where people interested in helping can design and write the pamphlet? Once it’s more developed it could be put to the committee with a budget. I don’t think it would be published until June 1010 or so. Around two months before Chimera would give interested new players enough time to prepare, while not being so far in advance that we don’t know what games are on at Chimera yet.

#17

[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]The questions in regards to the flyer pamphlet are:

  1. how many new players do we want to entice to attend events?[/quote]

As many as we can cope with? The more the merrier etc…

This shifts the question to one of whether there are regular events running (and whether the schedule can be ramped up easily if demand increases), and what proportion of new players the games can cope with.

[quote]2) how much are we willing to spend for each new player?

Personally I’d guess that each new player might be worth about $100 to the society on average, in terms of increased revenue from events. Some will only play one game, but some will carry on for years playing lots.

Only 3% or so of pamplets produced will probably turn into a new player. So then it’s a matter of doing the maths to see how many to produce to achieve the number of new players we want, and how much to spend on them.[/quote]

Well, at that maths, its pretty easy: until you reach saturation, a pamphlet is worth $3 less your desired profit margin (or $2 if the hit rate is 2%, or $1 if its 1%).

#18

I agree with many of the points raised in this discussion. There are a number of publications that we could publish, and these could include a mix of hard and soft copy.

However, what I think is needed first is a marketing plan. This is a document that identifies what our goals are, how we are going to achieve them, what the steps are, when each step needs to be taken, and what skills and other resources we need to successfully achieve each step.

A community magazine fits into our communications strategy (a key component of the marketing plan). However, I believe we need to have our strategic objectives clearly identified so we can then determine the correct configuration for our publications.

The main concept is to identify long, medium and short term objectives, and then develop a plan with specified milestones. I would expect that the committee (eithe regional or national, depending on the scope of the plan) would review progress at each meeting.

#19

I’ve put my hand up to lead a team to put together a yearly promo booklet for Chimera and other larp events, intended to help grow the community by attracting new players to upcoming events.

Anna has created a forum for the team putting it together. If you’re keen to help with writing, conceptualising, graphic design, modelling for photos, doing makeup, setting up photo shoots, crafting costumes and gear for photos, set dressing, and so forth then please go to the page below and apply for membership to the team, then you’ll get access to the forum:

www.diatribe.co.nz/ucp.php?i=167

On that page click the “Chimera Promo Booklet Team” option and then click Submit at the bottom.

The plan is to put together an advertising booklet for larp events, highlighting Chimera, to be released in about June 2010. All going well it will become an annual fixture.

It is likely to be funded largely from the advertising budgets of the larp events it features. If you will be running a larp event after mid-next-year and want them to be advertised in the booklet, please apply for membership of the team as above so that we can discuss how your larp will be presented in the booklet.

#20

im looking into mate rates at a professional printing company…ttyl