Community! In! Criiisiiiiis!

Community Larp discussion
#61

Well I haven’t hit the hornets nest of late, and I usually would refuse to assist in NZLARPS issues but…

I’ve said it from the NZLARPS conception and from the announcement Mordavia will end, you’ve taken a pool of players that have gotten use to a system that ran weekends, a time they could get full immersed into the event return home and go “wow this is real life?”

History has shown us in Auckland (maybe else where too) that day games start off strong and over time the numbers dwindle to the point where it’s no longer feasible to run the event.

I strongly believe players get bored with the buffet and return to their favorite foods. Mordavia should of been used as a staging point to recruit for other larps, but hey I’m just the Mordavia Founder who believes so much in it, so of course I’m seen as bias & pig headed.

It’s one thing to run lots of day events with different backgrounds, but really where’s the familiarity and the stability? I’ve recently received an email from a LARPER in the UK who has been player in the same system for years, he’s now thinking about moving to NZ and joining in the LARP community but is very worried about the way we’ve closed our longest running larp in favour of starting lots of “what if” events.

Honestly looking in from the outside where I believe the grass is greener, all these new game systems and the ongoing quest to increase player numbers looks rather iffy to myself and to some of the CHCH mob.

THat’s just my 2 cents for what ever it’s worth, I’ve been hearing quite a few worried rumors about the way things are going, but at the end of the day I choose to be independant for my own reasons.

I suspect a rather lengthy rebuttal, but meh I’m not getting into a large discussion on it, there are bigger fish to fry with the Total Eclipse system

  • Scottie
#62

Thank you, Scotty, for essentially suggesting that we need to restart Mordavia, when there was already a huge discussion about whether or not it was going to continue when the campaign initially ended. I’m also very happy to hear that this issue doesn’t mean anything to you, which makes your contribution very worthwhile.

I’m not sure what you mean by “what if” events. What is it about these new settings that makes them less viable as games than Mordavia was? Nightmare Circle and Ravenholme both do weekend events. St. Wolfgang’s and 2014 are both setting themselves up to do this. Stargate is running a weekend game at the end of the month.

Is the solution to the problem simply to run more weekend games and/or build more farms/construct additional pylons?

edit:
What I think Scotty is primarily missing out on here is that Mordavia only ended just over half a year ago, and there hasn’t been time for a single campaign to stand up and be the “new Mordavia”. The primary issue, in fact, is that there can’t be one until we have more people regularly going to events. As I said a few pages back, there would only have been time for one more Mordavia weekend event between right now and the last one.

#63

Just to correct the “what if” comment, the longer an event has been running the more credible it is, players get use to it and feel welcome to it. Starting new events is a pain stakingly slow process, as players need to feel confident that their time invested in the game / character is not wasted.

Nightmare Circle has been around longer than Mordavia, and in doing so is considered a stable part of the Auckland Larp scene.

An example of chopping and changing:
A well known rugby club announces to it’s 40 strong rugby members that it is dropping rugby in favour of table tennis, tennis, soccer and cricket…

Membership suffers… have a think on it.

  • Scottie
#64

I like cheese. But I can’t eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

#65

Your comparison, Scotty, is fundamentally flawed. The difference is that we can’t run Mordavia forever the way a rugby club can play rugby forever. Rugby is completely static.

It would be great if another game could rise up and fill the spot that Mordavia left, but for that to happen more people need to come to the events.

In addition, we are “the LARP community”, not “the Mordavia club”. If we said we were merging with AMERICA and were now going to do nothing but tabletop games instead, there would be a greater similarity, but Mordavia is not synonymous with LARPing.

#66

Scotty is right.

I’ve noticed the same thing with SCA combat.If you run it same rules, same time, same place numbers will go up. Change anything and numbers go down.

I’d quite happily trade in all the different larps that are happening at the moment for a good fantasy campaign that ran maybe a weekend game once a month and a day game once a month.

All of them.

#67

Want to run it?

(Again, running a LARP campaign is not the same thing as running a sports club)

#68

Mordavia gave us a place to be, we knew it was there, and we could rely on it to give us what we wanted, and a large numbers of the driving forces in Larping we have right now got thier start in Mordavia.

But that campaign is over (accept it) and we need to find something that gives us the same things mordavia did, the Community is not in Crisis, it is in Hiatus, looking for new mountains to climb.

The Larps that are running at present, Ravenholme, Stargate, Nightmare Circle, attract relatively hardcore players, Mordavia was a excellent blooding for new players, and the fact that most of the ones who started in Mordavia late in the campaign are now running the NZLARPS commitee is a testament to its quality.

Allow the game creators that are making new games to get thier ideas off the ground as was done with mordavia way back in the day, and we will attract new players as Mordavia did.

remember the number of players in the second Mordavia game was close to double the numbers in the first weeknd game.

and this was done by nothing but word of mouth

create a good game that makes people want to play and that has a core of dedicated and enthusiastic players and crew that drives that enthusiasim and the same thing will happen.

I believe that Saint Wolfgang has the potential to do this.

elaborate advertising schemes will only distract from what works, Good Games.

And Scotty… Full respect to you and what you have done in the past, But Egotistical one-up-man-ship is counter productive to what we are all trying to achieve, leave it out will ya, it is beneath you.

#69

My main point relating to this thread is lost way back on page one, so I think I’ll just bring it in up here again.

The problem has not been that our numbers have dropped - they have not. They have grown. The problem is that the number of games that require players has exponentially increased while new larpers are still only joining at a slightly more accelerated speed than previously.

I still thing that a big regular fantasy campaign is a not a bad thing. I’m not saying we should start Mordavia back up again, nor am I saying every other game should pack up shop, but I think there is a demand for it and it is an excellent entry point to larp.

#70

I am still waiting for someone to come out of the woodwork and actually write and run the big, all-inclusive, world-saving fantasy campaign that seems to be the answer to the problem, if this thread is anything to go on. St. Wolfgang’s is not quite the candidate for this, being as its setting is far more rigid than many fantasy players would like (examples of trying to get around the character prerequisites-- human and at least marginally Christian-- have already occurred).

Less talk, more action?

#71

Sorry Carl, I’m not attempting to one up anyone mate, just looking in from the outside and if anyone can tell me of another time in Auckland LARP when so many groups united under one LARP banner I’d be gladly corrected.

Personally if the society wishes to leave it as finished so be it, the on going bollocks its created have caused myself enough headaches, and if you have been reading the CHCH section of Diatribe you’d see that Mordavia has taken a back seat to other new concepts in CHCH, what does that say?

Just because I support what I created does not mean I am sitting here promoting it for my own good, this is something I think the northern community needs to realise, there is no reason for my input being that I am not a NZLARPS member nor will any of my future projects be. My input is purely on behalf of the Auckland community, which I receive gripes from certain people even though I am located 1000KMs to the south.

So to sum it up, Scottie does not care if you run another Mordavia or not, but from the outside view looking in it does seem like the community is missing a Larp system to bind them together.

#72

[quote=“Anna K”]
I still thing that a big regular fantasy campaign is a not a bad thing. I’m not saying we should start Mordavia back up again, nor am I saying every other game should pack up shop, but I think there is a demand for it and it is an excellent entry point to larp.[/quote]

You’ve got my vote on that comment, every fleet has a flagship, what flagship does NZLARPS have?

#73

[quote=“Rasker”]
It’s one thing to run lots of day events with different backgrounds, but really where’s the familiarity and the stability? I’ve recently received an email from a LARPER in the UK who has been player in the same system for years, he’s now thinking about moving to NZ and joining in the LARP community but is very worried about the way we’ve closed our longest running larp in favour of starting lots of “what if” events. [/quote]

Quest Waikato in Hamilton has now been going for more than 15 years - how many decades did Mordavia run?

#74

With the Mordavia campaign completed, we are now running a number of smaller games and genres. One of these will take over the Flagship position - maybe St Wolfgang, maybe 2014, maybe something else. Maybe someone else will start another generic fantasy campaign.

Several games working on the Mordavia ruleset (or a derivative thereof) are possible and so existing players - who are familliar with the rules - can get a headstart.

I don’t think we need worry. By diversifying, we can attract more people who are interested in other genres, and hopefully there will be people who are in multiple camps. Mordavia would have ended in any case, this way nzLARPS can continue to be a central point for all games as they come and go.

And to beat the previous analogy to death, this is more like a Rugby club announcing that they will now support football and hockey in addition to rugby and not to the detriment of it.

#75

The same effect can be had by announcing dates well in advance. Maelstrom in the UK announce their four weekend event dates at the start of the year, and get a reliable turnout of around 800 people. When a big fantasy event starts here the same approach would be a good idea.

There are two monthly vampire campaigns running in Auckland on regular dates (1st and 2nd Saturday of the month). It would be interesting to hear how that is working out for them. But you can run vampire with ten people in a single room.

Running a fantasy weekend larp (presumably with involved roleplay, not just a bash-up) monthly in the same place, with 30+ people… you’d have to be bloody dedicated, which is what I think Brain is getting at. It’s possible, but it would require oodles of work which would be too time-consuming unless it has a Maelstrom-like “plot economy” setup, a committee of organisers, or is for profit. Some clubs do it in the USA (for profit), and maybe the UK (in a committee). I wonder if we have the population base to support it.

This is an interesting thread. It’s rather like hearing people debate politics or the economy, complex and open to some very contradictory opinions. And the perennial creativity vs. popularism debate bubbling away quietly makes a nice backdrop.

I’m in favour of supporting the present diverse larp approach with more recruitment, and I think Anna’s 7-point plan is the most useful thing to come out of this discussion. I hope we can pick up our tools and make that stuff happen.

I think a big fantasy campaign starting would be good, but I don’t think it’s a community action point. Some individuals have to put in the effort and do it. All the “this is what should happen” talk in the world doesn’t make any different if no-one runs it. I think St Wolfgang’s is the project closest to making this happen and has the potential to do much of what people are discussing. But forum waffling isn’t what made it happen. It was Tigger and Anna putting their collective foot on the accelerator and setting a first event date that made it happen.

#76

I also think that 2014 has the makings of a real icebreaker. It reminds me of Vampire in terms of having very low barriers to entry and clear fan appeal. Like Vampire, it’s fundamentally a modern-day superhero larp without the spandex and with a grim context. But it doesn’t look like Vampire at all, it has a completely different flavour.

When talking about how fantasy larp is “the big genre” it’s worth bearing in mind that more people actually play Vampire worldwide. I think. Don’t quote me.

And now it all comes down to effort and execution on that front.

#77

People certainly play Vampire worldwide. Oh, do they play Vampire worldwide.

#78

I seem to recall reading somewhere that there are more people playing vampire larp than playing fantasy larp. I might be mistaken though, and who knows how such a thing could be gauged anyhow.

#79

I think it’s a pretty fair claim. Vampire can have up to six chapters in a single city whereas fantasy games tend to be spread out as more like one, MAYBE two campaigns per state.

#80

At least in the USA, vampire LARPs far outnumber fantasy LARPs. In the reasonable area my family was visiting just now in the upper mid-west, I found one publicised fantasy LARP and at least a dozen vampire games.
However in other countries fantasy may outnumber vampire, I don’t know.