NZLARPs Auckland Committee Meeting Minutes Feb 10 2014
Present: Prema Cottingham, Nikki Brown, James Cooper, Phillip (Muppet) Brown, Dave Agnew, Patrick Cummuskey, Hannah Jackson, Dave Luxton, Jon Ball (skype), Clare Stones
Meeting start: 7:11pm
Note: These minutes are a record of the discussions and decisions that took place at the meeting. Discussions are not word for word.
Vote to accept previous minutes: 4 ayes, 3 abstentions (Nikki and Clare because they were not at last meeting, Prema because she wrote the minutes)
Voting on the date of Gear Discussion meeting – done online. The date has been set for the 26th Feb, 7pm, at Hannah’s house
Crucible discussion:
- Crucible budgets – GM team needs to submit individual game budgets for the day games that have just been.
- Fountain from Teonn– looks like Crucible may have need for this, therefore this item of gear is still useful.
- Patrick is pretty sure he got all his chainmail and other gear back, following the gear rationalization. He may have a missing leather brace, may be lost in crew gear.
- Crucible day games – well attended. Really fun. Good for ironing out teething issues.
Crucible budget discussion
- Hannah received an email from Mike Curtis with concerns about whether Crucible can meet its budget and projected number of players/crew for the weekend game. The basic concern expressed was that the number of paid players and crew at the time of the committee meeting was approximately half of the expected number of attendees. There were also concerns expressed about whether the day games would provide the expected amount of funds.
- John Ball and Patrick have provided us with info on the day games – the land’s end one made a profit while the land fall ones (as of the date of the committee meeting) had made a loss. They essentially cancel each other out.
- Jon Ball also prepared a report on the budget for the meeting tonight.
- Sounds like there is some confusion in the community about the payment amounts for day games. Jon has put a post on Diatribe to chase up people who have not paid.
- There have been some problems with Excel spreadsheet for the Crucible day games and weekend game. These resulted from people unused to google docs making accidental edits.
Action Point: James to compare spreadsheet to accounts and fix the spreadsheet up. - The committee feels that given there is still some time until the weekend game and that there has been good attendance at the day games, that Crucible is within budget/numbers so far.
- Teonn worked on a basis of first come first paid for players, which meant that the player spots were almost always filled before the cutoff date.
Crucible is using a guaranteed player list, so this is likely why not all player slots paid up yet. - 6 people on player waitlist, 2 or 3 more keen.
- Patrick says that three fifths of the character sheets have been submitted. Most of the submitted sheets are experienced larpers.
- Nikki says that Teonn individually emailed the players and crew who hadn’t paid, to see who was coming.
- Hannah – it would be good to identify people who might drop out, and encourage them to pay for the game/submit character sheets.
- Patrick – will shoulder tap responsible people in each faction, to be out of faction representatives, to be key points of contact for out of character issues that might arise in game or associated with game. Out of character co-ordinators for groups.
- Jon Ball – Mike’s email contained out of date information about the player and crew costs for the games. Concerns around revenue were fair, given that we are just over 4 weeks out from game. However, given the enthusiasm in community for the game, would be very surprised if we didn’t get the expected number of players.
Patrick is wearing a lot of the risk for the game at the moment – he has paid for some expenses out of pocket. However Patrick is expecting to be reimbursed for some of this.
Currently day games have made about 2200 dollars (gross income, not profit). - One player has approached the GMs about paying for the game in increments; they will be paid up in full by the weekend game. If people are financially strained and want to do this, they should contact Jon directly.
- If people have not paid for the weekend game by the time the game runs, they will not be able to play in the weekend game.
Discussion points – Lands End/Land Fall day games
- Catering costs were lower than budgeted for Land’s end. Linda and Mark need to be reimbursed – need to provide receipts. – Patrick
Action Point: Patrick to follow up with council regarding bond for Lands End game. - Nikki – council sometimes takes weeks to pay bond.
- Motion by Hannah: Are the budget and expenditure for the land’s end game (first day game) well accounted for?
Unanimous yes except for Dave A, who abstained because he is a Crucible GM. - Several people accidentally overpaid for day games – James in process of checking payments and reimbursing.
Discussion points – Weekend game
- Crucible bus idea – is it going ahead?
Crucible team should conduct a survey to see if enough people are interested (Dave L)
The people who would like to catch a provided bus will need to pay soon for it (Nikki) - Catering for weekend game – this has been sorted.
Patrick read out a menu to us, sounds delicious. - Welfare – Patrick planning to post out a welfare survey to see what people are OK with regarding terrain, allergies, etc.
However people in the game need to take responsibility for themselves (Nikki, general agreement) - Archery – Linda is looking into this. Custom arrows will be assessed. People’s use of bows will also be looked at. Proceeding with consideration.
- Unsafe behavior – if any is seen or reported, the faction leaders/quartermasters will report it to the GM team.
- Gear requirements need to be notified to Nikki well in advance.
Finding someone to tow the trailer there and back, plus vehicles to take extra boxes and golem, needs to be done sooner rather than later. Otherwise, truck hire would solve these problems (Muppet) - On site container – Porl is discussing this with Taz, as Taz has contacts. The container may not be there for the first weekend game.
- More NPCs are needed.
- There are some positions on the Crucible committee/game roles which are not filled yet – gear officer, makeup co-ordinator, welfare officer.
- Full payment for venue: does it need to be paid before or after the weekend game? And what about the deposit for the next weekend game?
- Patrick – Camp Adaire is not in any rush for payments. The venue booking has only been penciled in for 2nd game, so NZLARPs does not need to pay deposit yet as not confirmed. Camp Adaire is also fine with proposed long weekend games for next year.
Treasurer report:
- James: Anna has tagged account entries as Auckland or Other. This split is harder to assess than would be expected.
- Hannah: different suffixes for different cities?
- Muppet: Could dual codes be used? Ones that cover Auckland and Hamilton for example?
- Hannah: signatories for accounts – have these been sorted out?
- James: The policy about the signatories has been sorted out with National Committee. However, there has been some issues sorting out signatories with bank.
- Money coming in for crucible.
- James has paid the koha to Hannah’s mother for gear storage.
- Teonn final accounts have been submitted to James. The final game made a $400 loss – this was because less people than expected turned up, especially crew. Also, hiring the hall for the Sun night added to the game cost, as did the Cyclops golem. However, the Teonn campaign overall has made society more than $10,000.
- Teonn website – NZLARPs needs to stop paying hosting costs (Nikki).
Action Point: Muppet to archive website and cancel website hosting payment arrangements.
Marketing report:
- Dave A – was going to follow up with Nick regarding easy to edit website. No progress has been made on this. Dave A has not spoken to or heard from Nick, has been busy with other things.
- Muppet – squarespace is easy to use – might be a good website for NZLARPs.
- Battlecry coming up soon. Dave A has had trouble getting marketing gear off Vanya, as Vanya is very busy.
- Clare – suggests talking to Vanya’s flatmates to arrange a time to go over and collect marketing gear.
- Action Point: Muppet to send the list of Teonn attendees to Dave Agnew, so Dave A can follow them up to see if they are interested in Crucible. - New larper group on Facebook – lots of new requests to join. Muppet suggests posting every 5 days or so, and posting links and providing information so they know what they need to know, and don’t have to go looking. This means info about NZLARPs will appear on their facebook feed regularly.
- Prema: Some of the people who have turned up to just a few games don’t necessarily know that they don’t have to have costume. Need to be encouraged to come crewing.
- Some new people have contacted GMs regarding Crucible.
- Orientation week at Uni - Crucible will be advertised on the America stand.
- Hannah – do we need to organize a game for just after O week? A separate game from Crucible?
- Prema – Planning to run two games of Robin Hood.
- Muppet – easily accessible larps – Zombie larp, Hunger Games…
- Prema – Advertise Robin Hood larp at O Week as well? Also ask Ryan to put it back up on What is Larp (it was taken down because first round was full)
- Discussion of whether someone else could run a second round of Robin Hood at the same time if it was oversubscribed. The game isn’t written up for someone else to run, but there is the possibility of doing a second run on the Sunday if Saturday is oversubscribed.
- Hannah would like to run Monster vs Monsters in May.
- Bit of discussion around new players and whether help is needed regarding Crucible costuming.
Gear Report:
- People need to contact Nikki in plenty of time to arrange access to gear, as she works shifts and is not always available.
- Linda is the logistics officer for Crucible, but gear officer slot still open – Patrick keen to have someone to fill it.
- Labelling system introduced – all clothes have been labelled with the number of the box they belong in.
- Will need to arrange a gear rationalization after first Crucible game.
- Gear discussion day – 8 people have said they were coming. Nikki is expecting that 8 to 15 people will come along.
- It would be a good idea to have the Project Officer role on the Committee again.
Upcoming games:
- Crucible 2nd weekend game – This is not officially an NZLARPs project until we view and approve budget; therefore, the game is only penciled in and cannot be confirmed until budget approved.
- Sabbat – game postponed, and possibly cancelled until next year.
- Chimera
- A futuristic Mage in Space LARP is being planned
- Fates Unbound (Changeling)
Other Discussion
- Incident register – The National Committee is in process of discussing this. Sounds like they might split it into 2 registers – one for injuries and one for problem behavior. We probably want to be recording incidents for the Crucible weekend game.
- LARP Newbie’s facebook page – is it worth experienced people asking questions on this page, to promote discussion? Or adding helpful larping hints to the page? (Hannah)
- James has purchased a knife sharpener which he will donate to NZLARPs, so we can have sharper knives at scout camps.
Next meeting – 10th March.
(Dave A gives his apologies in advance… He is unlikely to attend, as this is the week before Crucible)
Meeting closed – 9:09pm.
