So, what were people’s stand out games, stand out moments, one liners? I love to hear stories from the weekend, especially what people enjoyed!
Great Exhibition was the game that stood out the most for me. I had a great deal of fun playing Dr Elizabeth Anderson. The part that stood out for me most was playing Zara’s character off against Dr Hellsing. Zara’s character was trying to get me to have Hellsing committed to a mental institute, while I was trying to divert attention from myself by suggesting to Sherlock Holmes that Hellsing could be Jack the Ripper and also trying to convince Hellsing that Josephine Butler was a vampire as to get her out of my hair. Lots of political intriguing fun.
Camelot for me, hands down. I still haven’t stopped talking about it! Absolutely fantastically written! I only wish I’d gotten to see more of the plot, but I was so wrapped up in being angsty and tortured. It was great 
Extra special thanks to Ed, my knight in shining armour - you were amazing, you made the whole game for me! I’m still reeling from the emotional intensity of the roleplaying.
Me too! Did Tristan and Isolde consumate their love?
There’s probably room for players to try the game again as a different character, if it gets re-run some time from now. Several of the characters don’t overlap much.
For me, running Camelot and playing Great Exhibition were great highlights. I love physically immersive larp, and both of those games had outdoor and indoor venues that suited perfectly and amazing costuming from the players.
I think that pregen larps are the ideal format for a larp convention like Chimera, having a character handed to you that has intricate reasons to interact with the other characters means you can get straight into the meat of playing that character, and you get the challenge of playing characters that you might not write for yourself - often with less wish-fulfillment and more interesting hardship.
Awesome work by the Chimera team in making it run so smoothly.
It has to be Camelot for me as well. Without spoiling the game for those who haven’t played it, I could see that defeating Lancelot in fair combat could solve all my problems, if I did it just right.
I really do like medieval tourneys and having the chance to play Gawain fighting Lancelot in front of Arthur and other knights of the round table will always be a larping highlight for me.
I didn’t have a specific stand-out game, everything was approximately equal for me 
Although I wanna just mention now that I thought the hall was really well decorated for the Exhibition.
‘a serpent of ash’ was really fun in a deranged kind of way.
in fact, I’d probably put it somewhere in the top 3 games i have ever played.
As noted elsewhere, Camelot was my favourite game played. I had to work my butt off to stop the realm falling to barbarity. I had so many things to track.
As for the plotting of some of my vassals against me (Arthur), I was well aware of 2 main players, Leodegrance and Mark. I have a feeling I missed some other plot threads against Camelot but those 2 Kings were my major problems.
Also, keeping Nimue and Argante happy was my other major concern, in some ways far more important than thwarting anyone else. I almost blew it, I know I stepped on toes.
I would have loved another hour to have talked with Nimue to explain the meaning behind my words (rather than insulting you inadvertantly).
I also hope I made a passable King Arthur, I was nervous about getting it right and this game represented the focus of my energies as a player for the 3 games I attended.
The intensity of that combat was off the charts! Both of you being experienced sword-fighters, both heavily armoured and willing to throw your bodies into it made that trial of combat seem amazingly real.
Jared I think you made a great King Arthur, trying to measure your words and deal with impossible situations. You were put on the spot but tried to deal with it with Dignity and as a good ruler. Avalon was never going to end well for you no matter what you did.
Of course Mark and Leodegrance took all of your rulings as just and with all the respect befitting their great ruler. And the 2 kings had put all those pesky problems of desputes between them behind 
.
I didn’t play a bad game all weekend, and competition was tight, but this was really my favourite for a number of reasons. I will try and put up my other highlights of the weekend later.
Zanny was amazing in a Serpent of Ash, even if she was pretty quiet. Shows you can contribute a lot without dominating!
She was playing a woman who facilitated a sit-in-a-circle reunion of former religious cult members. And she was exactly the kind of pink hair’d cat-lady who would do such a thing!
“Now, let’s start off we’ll please go in a circle and just say your name, and maybe one sentence or two if you would like.”
(to a crying member in the circle whose wife had just killed herself) “Would you like a coffee? Would you like an Oreo?” (third time she’s mentioned the coffee and Oreos…)
It’s hard to see why this is so funny now… but it is.
Most awkward moment: host of the safe-house where a rag-tag Auckland military resistance movement met to show Chinese invaders the door… suggests we begin by standing before the flag and singing the national anthem. All three verses, Maori excluded. Characters begin hesitantly, I break out the Maori anthem half way through, a few people hum or attempt to mumble the last verse… until the whole thing peters out. Ouch.
Adam Parsons (South Africa) and his amazing use of accent in the Summers Crisis… taken with credit straight from District 9.
I loved Evicting the Dragon and I gave it a ten.
I’m pretty sure somehow that the whole anthem thing was supposed to be a touch uncomfortable - and Jason was probably the perfect person to do that. I did notice you singing the Maori verse instead (which told me quite a bit about your character without having heard you say anything else), and after the first verse of the English version (which is the only one of them I know), I sang the Maori one quietly to myself. And then at the third English verse, we’re all thinking “Just stop already!” 
All the games I played in were great, but Camelot was definitely the stand-out, both as a game and for costuming (I like medieval costumes. So sue me). And I had a great time trying to help Arthur to keep Britain together and plan for his eventual demise and return (which, since it involves “compassing the demise of the king”, is technically treason). Favourite line (repeated often): “we must all make sacrifices”.
Me too! Did Tristan and Isolde consumate their love? [/quote]
Oh boy did we! It actually turned out happily ever after. I threw myself on King Mark’s mercy and offered him everything - the armies of Ireland, the finger of St Patrick, and he allowed us to get married AND keep our honour, as long as we shut up about til we got to Cornwall so he could save face. He had some discussions with Tristan that I wasn’t party too, so I think he might have already made up his mind but I probably sweetened the deal
I personally feel that strong patriotism / nationalism is one of the great evils in the world. I’m kind of proud that kiwis can’t remember their national anthem. It shows they’re not swallowing the whole “us and them” mentality that many other countries are so proud of.
Oh, I hope so! I was so sick that afternoon but determined that I wouldn’t miss it, though I ended up nothing more really than a glorified mannequin, spending most of the afternoon trying to not collapse. Bless the chivalrous Sir Percival for suggesting we take a short walk to the nearby chapel to pray together (no, he really did mean pray!) which meant I could take a short break out of sight of the game.
Still, I achieved two of three goals (helped pressure the family into not fighting Listenoise, and married Sir Percival) so that was an unexpected bit of luck.
I’d really like to play again, as one of the bigger characters to get a little more involved in the political intrigue of it all, and actually be able to properly enjoy it I reckon Arthurian is a larp genre we need more of - it is, after all, the original larp genre
I’m curious about how Chimera is developing, it seemed bigger than last year. What are the attendance stats for the weekend? How many people attended at some point? Men vs women? How many at the Great Exhibition?
Chimera this year was bigger than last year - it was essentially filled to capacity, excluding last minute drop outs and no-shows, we had about two or three spaces left each round (not each game, each round) and some were completely full. I don’t have the numbers on me at the moment (at work) but we had something like 65 people registered for either the whole weekend or most of the weekend, about 15 registered for just one game (mostly Great Ex, but some people came in for other individual games) and Great Exhibition had 73 players, 5 GMs, 1 photographer and a 2 person camera crew from 20/20 so that weighed in as our biggest event with 81 people (compared to Hindenburg: 63 players, 3 GMs, 2 entertainment, 1 photographer = 69)
Round by Round Comparison to last year (2008 vs 2009) (approximate numbers, I can get more accurate ones when I’ve finished all the paperwork)
Friday Night: 33 vs 53
Saturday Morning: 43 vs 53
Saturday Afternoon: 39 vs 45
Saturday Night: 69 vs 81
Sunday Morning: 35 vs 41
Sunday Afternoon: 35 vs 46
We had a good rate of complete newbies to larp, as well as a quite a few people who didn’t come to Chimera last year, and some that came for a whole weekend this year after attending only Hindenburg last year. Conversely, we also had about 20 people who didn’t return after attending last year (some of those have since gone overseas though)
Perhaps I should run it again at next year’s Chimera? I wasn’t sure that I wanted to write another 20+ person larp for Chimera in 2010 (this one took me all year), but that way I could contribute to the timetable again without writing one. I talked to a few people who would have liked to play but it was booked out when they registered, and there’s definitely replay potential. And I’ll probably think of some improvements and changes that will make it a little different.
I reckon this is one of the great things about pregen larps, they can be turnkey games that can be re-run easily. With 18 games needed across the Chimera weekend, there’s room for both new games and old favourites to fill it out.
Oh, as an addendum to those numbers: This year, we did no advertising.
The reason was this: registration speed.
It completely blew us away how fast people were registering for Chimera once game selection opened. We took forty registrations in two days. We filled almost three quarters of the Great Exhibition and sold out about a quarter of the games within three days of game registration opening!
That was just with the power of the website and word of mouth about last year’s event.