If you looked around the convention and thought, “Wow, there’s an awful lot more people here than there were last year!” then you’d be right. Here are the convention numbers, broken down by round:
(2008 vs 2009 vs 2010)
Friday Night: 33 vs 55 vs 77
Saturday Morning: 43 vs 53 vs 83
Saturday Afternoon: 39 vs 45 vs 71
Saturday Night: 69 vs 81 vs (final number still to come in)
Sunday Morning: 35 vs 41 vs 66
Sunday Afternoon: 35 vs 46 vs 70
Holy Guacamole, Batman! We’ve pretty much doubled our numbers in two years.
So, hiring the whole camp next year? :mrgreen:
The big building at the far end of the site is a really long way away, as people will remember from tramping up and down the road at Mordavia and other weekend games. But there is a cool hall right in the middle of the site, which is nice and close and provides 3 more spaces (a big hall downstairs and large & small meeting rooms joined by a corridor upstairs), which I think is where Anna is planning to expand to. The other hall is an easy walk from the main hall, just past the carpark, will be awesome.
What Ryan said. The longer I can put off having to incorporate the Inn-to-Keep slog into Chimera, the better.
While it would give us extra sleeping areas, they are less ideal than the ones down at Puketane because if I remember correctly, they have curtains rather than doors. But they would be good for two extra indoor spaces, and we could keep the dining hall at Puketane as a dedicated dining hall.
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(You know, it’s been almost five years and I still have to fight the urge to call them “The Keep”, “The Inn” and “The War Room”)[/size]
Wow that’s some pretty dramatic growth. At some point we probably will have to have more games instead of just bigger or else we’ll end up with “small” games of 50+
Theres also the potential maybe to run a stream of longer games (30+), say over 4-6 hours. (Refuge probably could have run for another hour at least, maybe more, who knows, I still had lots to do when it ended).
Now I know that Chimera is all about a taste of many larps but a good few of them could benefit from a longer time period.
Some of the older Flagship games could easily be re-run in a longer day time slot. Assuming further growth, 50 people going into a full “morning/afternnon” game instead of 2 smaller games in 2 time slots might also work for some people.
Live combat games for instance also feel a bit cramped in 3 hours, by the time you’ve included pack up and pack down, game briefs (which to be honest can be longer than some) then you’re really only looking at 2 hours of play. These games are part social, part treasure hunt, part running around whacking the crap out of each other, so time pressures are high.
The problem I do see however is that while 3 hours might be too short, 6 hours might be too long, so having a background of “workshops” might also work.
Or maybe not even workshops, just say a semi organised combat practice.
The other option is to petition the Government for a longer weekend for Chimera. That way we can roll on through to Monday. So many games, so little time.
(Above points are part humour but they are things that have passed through my twisted Neurons)
That’s because we started late. If we started on time, we would have had four hours for Refuge.
[quote]Now I know that Chimera is all about a taste of many larps but a good few of them could benefit from a longer time period.
Some of the older Flagship games could easily be re-run in a longer day time slot. Assuming further growth, 50 people going into a full “morning/afternnon” game instead of 2 smaller games in 2 time slots might also work for some people.
Live combat games for instance also feel a bit cramped in 3 hours, by the time you’ve included pack up and pack down, game briefs (which to be honest can be longer than some) then you’re really only looking at 2 hours of play. These games are part social, part treasure hunt, part running around whacking the crap out of each other, so time pressures are high.[/quote]
Yes, but that’s like going to an ordinary day game of something. Chimera is all about trying something new and interesting. If you want to go spend a whole day at a live action combat game, then that’s what a KS/Teonn game/Jade Empire day game is for. The very point behind Chimera is that you turn up and you play, say, a White Wolf Mage game in the morning, then beat the crap out of people in the afternoon with a sword, then you go into a massive theatreform game for the evening, then the next day you do some Nordic experimental larping and then you round it off a murder mystery. This is also why campaign games are invitational only - it’s not meant to be a weekend where you just turn up and do the thing you always do, it’s to promote different things. And if it doesn’t work, you’ve only “lost” a round, instead of a whole day.
Further, it gets difficult with timetabling. If we have some games which are longer than others, (say taking up both the morning and afternoon slot) then what happens when someone wants to play it for the morning but not the afternoon? What about a lunch break? The idea of a game that only goes partway into a round is positively nightmarish for me, in terms of scheduling things. Not only that, but people have enough trouble remembering where they are meant to be at what time when everyone is doing everything at the same time, it’s going to get exponentially worse if people are doing things at different times. (“Okay, so if you are in Game A and B, then lunch is at 12:30, but if you’re in Game C you have lunch at 1:30, Game D doesn’t wrap till 3pm so there’s an afternoon tea for them then, but Game F will start at 3pm so if you’re in Game D and Game F…”) People just won’t remember, and if the numbers grow, it’s going to outstrip my cat herding abilities.
Edited to add: if you think I’m selling people short, you should be aware that despite the fact that Saturday and Sunday have exactly the same timetable up to the evening (obviously Sunday doesn’t have the flagship) and that muster always starts at 10 minutes to the hour, people had no idea what time things happened. Admittedly, part of that was my own fail, I forgot to get the whiteboard to write it all up on, but if people can’t a) remember a schedule that doesn’t change and hasn’t changed in two years and b) remember what games they’re playing in, then I don’t think we’ll manage anything more complicated and certainly not on a bigger scale.
The short version is, I am not terribly likely to introduce longer game slots or different lengthed game slots into the mix because I don’t think it fits with what Chimera is, and it becomes a logistical nightmare for me.
Valid points Anna. And expected responses to be fair.
BUT if I was to have a full “day” slot it would run 10 to 5 and include lunch as part of the outing…
edit: But I agree that really is what a day game is for.
2c to this discussion; bigger numbers can only be dealt with by having a larger max player number, more games, and more space to host these extra games (or refusing to let people attend, heaven forbid). Making longer games doesn’t deal with the increase in player numbers, it just means people will be involved in fewer games.
Totally agreed. But it would allow for longer games other than the flagship. This was more of a “if we have huge numbers we could maybe do this” kind of out loud mind dump.
I think that 5 games per round is about the most you’d want. Any more than that, and you’d need too many venues and players would feel like no matter what they chose they’re missing out on something else they want to play even more than at present.
We still want the option of small games, as they have their own flavour and they’re a good experience for new GMs. I reckon 10 players is probably about the smallest game that Chimera will be able to cope with now that it’s getting big.
Let’s say there were 100 people in a round. You could have, say:
Two 30 person games, one 20 person game, and two 10 person games.
OR
A 30 person game, a 25 person game, a 20 person game, a 15 person game, and a 10 person game.
A few years down the road when we have 200 people in a round:
Two 55 person games, two 30 person games, a 20 person game, and a 10 person game.
OR
A 60 person game, a 50 person game, a 40 person game, a 30 person game, and a 20 person game.
At that point we’ll need the capacity to run several “biggish” games, simultaneously. That could put quite a strain on writers. Games like The Flight of the Hindenburg and other big larps from Wellington and abroad could then make an appearance as normal games, not as the flagship, and those who’ve attended them and don’t want to replay them would still have plenty of other options.
Hell knows what we’ll do if Chimera grows over 300. Unless we’ve grown some serious mass-writing jujus by then, we’ll be in trouble, because games the size of A Town Called Refuge will need to be run in most rounds. Most likely, more than five games would need to be run per round too, as there are probably only so many big games you can run. And we’d be booking the whole venue, and using the accomodation at both ends.
Motu Moana can sleep 90, more if some camp. Would be interesting to know what proportion of attendees stayed at the camp this year, would give us an idea of the maximum con size potential without camping.
It’s hella exciting. Got to say, the kind of larp community and capabilities that Chimera shows off is what I always hoped we’d have, but I wasn’t sure NZ would ever get there. But here we are.
I’m setting next year aside for writing theatreform games. Seriously. For this eventuality.
I’m aiming to rerun Fleet St in 2012 (hopefully will have a big enough batch of new people that haven’t played to make it an option, if not, put back on the shelf till 2013), and I think the rewritten Breakout Day has fun con potential in 2012 or 2013 again (Fleet St is 40-ish characters, I might lose some in a rewrite. Breakout Day is about 35)
Setting the year aside, as in writing larps full-time? 
If only. I meant my larp-time. I was considering starting a new campaign, but there’s kind of a glut at the moment, and I’ve had my turn with Wolfgang 
Welcome to KapCon’s world. Of course, you can get around it with reruns (as seems to be happening a bit this year - Betrothals and Betrayals will be sent to Auckland to be rerun, while we in Wellington are hoping to steal The Discarded (and Vox and Dead Man’s Chest, but they’re from the net).
I think we definitely need to plan for 100-person rounds eventually. If we have to plan for 200-person rounds, then I think a lot of people will be running around with their hair on fire.
I was under the impression that this year had put a strain on them, with several games rashly promised last year failing to eventuate. Some of that is inevitable, of course - but it looked like it was posing problems early on with getting enough games. Fortunately, there’s the internet, but all too often their games have serious gender imbalances.
(On the plus side, Auckland got a bunch of big theatre-style games instead. It was just a question of where the writing effort went).
Theoretically, only out-of-towners without other accomodation need to sleep over. Its convenient for everyone else, but not stricly necessary.
I made a lot of changes to Vox, so I’ll upload the revised version for re-use sometime. I reduced it from 20 players to 16, it could be expanded back out again with some re-writing effort.
Actually, the problem this year was me underestimating how many people were turning up. I can cajole the necessary number of games to meet the numbers, given enough time, but that week I spent twisting arms, calling in favours, begging, pleading, blackmailing etc. to get enough games to handle the overflow, that was what made it seem like there was a strain.
While technically not an out of towner, it’s still a 45-60 min drive, each way. So not keen
While technically not an out of towner, it’s still a 45-60 min drive, each way. So not keen[/quote]
Yeah, my ‘alternate’ accommodation is in Howick. All the way over in East Auckland. And I’d be relying on public transport, which means the fastest journey would be 1 hour 39 minutes.
I’m from out in Howick, and, yeah, returning home every night is kind of a bitch (I did it for Chimera last year). Staying out at Motu Moana made things so much easier and more enjoyable.