Another for the What-If pile: A Larp Convention

[quote=“Anna K”]So Motu Moana doesn’t hire out for a single day :imp:

So either we hold a weekend event or finding a venue. I’m trying the latter option first.[/quote]

If its the only affordable venue you can get, see if you can glom together with another group who wants to use it for the second day.

You know, this really sucks. I had my heart set on Motu Moana. :frowning:

Book the weekend. Surely one of these fantasy larps in the making can use the Sunday? Or Serenity, Stargate, etc?

This is fine, even if we only use it for one day.

But I’m sure something will fill Sunday. And this way people have the option of staying over.

[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]
But I’m sure something will fill Sunday. And this way people have the option of staying over.[/quote]

Which might help attract out of towners…

You could plan a one-day St Wolfgang’s Vampire Hunters for Sunday. That way you can be sure of a good turnout (because it’s a popular campaign), and you don’t have to ask around and rely on another organiser to put on a day game.

On the downside, you’d be organising both a con and a day game on the same weekend which might threaten burnout.

Or you could see if someone can put together a seperate one-day tabletop RPG event on the second day, just to help cover the costs.

What is it with per-head venue costs? Can’t they just charge a fixed fee?

Whilst doing Honours at uni, so yeah, burnout/nervous breakdown is a distinct possibility. Unless I farmed the work out to the other three GMs and just did logistics (“just” logisitics, lol)

Hmmm. I’ll talk to Tigger tonight, see what he thinks.

[quote=“IdiotSavant”]Or you could see if someone can put together a seperate one-day tabletop RPG event on the second day, just to help cover the costs.

What is it with per-head venue costs? Can’t they just charge a fixed fee?[/quote]

Ah, the hilarity of scout camps in the AUckland region. It’s a per head cost with a minimum of 35 people (so if less then 35 people turn up, you’re still paying for 35). Over and above 35 people, you’re paying the per head cost per head.

Then again, I think Motu Moana charge per head that sleeps at the camp. I’m not sure how they’d treat a whole troupe of daytrippers. I’ll ring them up tomorrow and have a long chat on how this can be worked. Once I have a forecasted cost for the venue hire, I should be able to see whether a con alone could fund it (unlikely) and how much of a success the Sunday event is going to have to be. Or we could run a Friday evening event too - IdiotSavant linked me to the game materials for “Breakout Day” which is another successful KapCon larp, also known as “The Call Centre of Cthulhu” and there’s a dedicated Cthulhu gaming sect in Auckland, so that might score us some income as well.

Motu Moana is still my first choice, especially since if we do end up having to take it for the entire weekend, we are able to offer cheap/free accomodation for out of towners which might lure us some new faces to game with.

I’ll post again tomorrow after I’ve chatted to Motu Moana, since then we’ll have numbers and be able to make choices as opposed to just speculation.

Thanks to everyone who has given me advice or input on this, I really do appreciate it, especially Ryan and IdiotSavant.

Depedning on date, day 2 of this larp con (what was the name again?) might be a good Orkland launch for Sundereth.
Sundereth is already undergoing it’s first version change but should be play testing by March, tweaked & ready for deployment in by April.
What do you think Anna? That would probably solve the burnout issues for organisers, & solve my gear logistics issues…

I am sure I could help if you want Jared. Would make it easier if I could Convert Karina to the Darklside of LARP it would be easier though…

The News:

I’ve had a long conversation with Motu Moana, and they’re letting us have the place for the weekend for $800. That’s from Friday evening to Sunday 4pm. They only charge per head that sleeps there with a minimum of 35, but they said we could have as many people there during the day as we want.

It’s a strange, strange system, but it is what it is. So the upshot is, I had us pencilled in for 22nd-24th August.

(Motu Moana Lady: “En-Zed-El-Ay-Ar-Pee-Es? We had you guys here not long ago, didn’t we?” Me: “We go there a lot.” MM Lady: “And you do this…live improv thing?” Me: “We’re a strange but harmless bunch.”)

The Larp Convention is happening. It is happening this August, and it needs to be organised!

At this stage, no help is required beyond advising but we might need two or three volunteers on the day to help with things running smoothly.

Details, such as costs and games will be announced soon, along with a call for games.

HELP WANTED

We’re looking for a good graphics designer to make a few graphics for the webpage, design a colour poster and an A5 black and white flier.

If you’re any good at graphics and have some time, please do consider helping out. We’d really appreciate it.

Anna: Katrina got in touch to say that all the writers are happy for The Honour of the Family to be run at the convention. (And also that your email inbox is full.)

:question: :question:

That’s really weird. I’ve got a good 6gigs free…could you ask her to try contact me on silver.owl at gmail?

EDIT: Never mind, I’ll email her again, I need to ask her for the game materials anyway. Thanks for playing messenger, Steph! :slight_smile:

Wow, cool. I was about to post stuff during the 1st page or so but glad I held off.

I’m more than willing to spread the word, let me know and I’ll post to all my piles of lists that I use for BattleCry. I know there will be America members keen to be part of this.

Do you want to run any non-larp activities in the sessions in case people want a break? I was thinking that this would be a great opportunity for running a demo class on costuming, or make-up and body paint, or prop making design etc. If you wanted to have something like one of these topics running at the same time as one of the sessions I could talk to the Top Mark Products people. I’m sure there are many experts out there that might jump at the chance to catch a big pile of larpers together. Just a thought.

Also, if this works outside of a convention, maybe you might like to also run something like this along side BattleCry. I know there will be some cross-overs, however I think there will be people who will just plan their weekend so they can play some of this, take part in this mini-larp, have some wandering around and looking time etc.

BattleCry is looking at a bigger venue as we are pretty full to the max at Freeman’s Bay. The venue we are seriously looking at is the ASB stadium near Selwyn College. It’s big, it has lots of outside, a variety of rooms and different spaces in and around the venue, and the school is really close and has bookable areas as well… a possible future thought anyway…

So, we could have three streams? One for action-adventure style larps, one for theatre style larps, and one for unusual larps and/or craft workshops?

By the by, I think this has the potential to lure some Wellingtonians up, but that it would be good to have some theatre style games that they’ve never seen before, in addition to the prewritten games that have already been run at Wellington conventions.

[quote=“MissMenolly”]
I’m more than willing to spread the word, let me know and I’ll post to all my piles of lists that I use for BattleCry. I know there will be America members keen to be part of this.[/quote]

Awesome! I was going to contact the you and a couple of the others in the AMERICA club (namely, your president Vanya, your larp officer Peter and the generally useful and organised Muppet) when we had a few more details sorted (we’re getting there) because I’m very keen to lure a lot of your folks along.

[quote=“MissMenolly”]
BattleCry is looking at a bigger venue as we are pretty full to the max at Freeman’s Bay. The venue we are seriously looking at is the ASB stadium near Selwyn College. It’s big, it has lots of outside, a variety of rooms and different spaces in and around the venue, and the school is really close and has bookable areas as well… a possible future thought anyway…[/quote]

Ahaha, ASB Stadium! I went to Selwyn College (it’s a high school that breeds larpers, I swear) so that’s a kickass venue. Would love to run amock larping in there (either school or Stadium) so I’ll definitely talk to you about developing a larping wing of Battlecry for 09.

Yep. Definitely.

Not quite the plan, but there will be a huge mix of games and I’m hoping to schedule workshops and seminars (larpy discussions) if there’s interest.

Maybe you could run a Write Your Own Larp session (like this one home.comcast.net/~diewald/byog/home.html) on the Saturday, and run it on the Sunday.