Here’s a trailer from one of the world’s biggest larps, Conquest of Mythodea in Germany. Around 5000 players at events.
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yZa-V6t6K … re=related
I like the medieval feel of the start. Some over-dramatic acting further in, but overall an impressive sense of scale.
Out of curiosity, was it the individual goals that each player had that would have made it unmanagable?
How do the large games in Europe work then, team/faction goals instead or such?
There were lots of factors:
managing individual goals for players, and trying to tie them into the setting and ongoing events as much as possible, gets more difficult in a non-linear fashion the more players you have. For every additional player you have, they need to be tied into all the other player’s activities.
yes, large larps overseas are more faction-based. Mordavia had some factions that typically formed around nobles. That helps because GMs can tie a whole group into ongoing events, but we preferred to also have individualised integration as well.
leaving goals and integration aside, there are logistic issues with larger events. The amount of gear required (creating it, storing it, transporting it, maintaining it), the size of venue required, catering, etc. The large European events tend to involve everyone camping out in a field (with port-a-loos), players providing most of the gear you see (because there are few NPCs), players often cooking for themselves (or third-party catering), etc. All geared towards minimising per-player effort on the part of the organisers.
also, the faster you grow the harder it is to maintain the play culture you’re aiming for. New players show up who might wanna smack monsters or integrate stuff from Everquest that doesn’t belong, that sort of thing. The more of them there are arriving, the harder it is for the existing players to maintain the vision.
sorry but LOL
300 = large?
Seriously… you guys have it good with small larps. Sure big larps are a barrel of laughs but at the end of the day you only end up socialising with your faction and a few key people from another anyway. Its no different to being in a small larp but with more crew.
Don’t cry plan a trip to europe and do a big one. Realise its alot of fun but that I am right.
Then realise it ain’t gonna happen here for a long time.
Got the t-shirt?
Cool - now get recruiting so we can have constant 40man larps. Much more fun in the long run even tho I voted big larps are better 
They are - like once a year. 40 mans once a month are alot better 
300 would be large for NZ. Even on a world scale 300 isn’t small, it’s larger than the average larp. The huge majority of larps in the world have less than 100 players. And 300 would certainly feel fairly large, in terms of not being able to know everyone and having capacity for a number of groups and sub-groups.
As for 1000+? There are only a dozen or so regular larps of that size in the world, maybe less. In the UK, the Gathering may have two or three thousand (although they claim more), but Renewal only has 1000 or so, less by some accounts. The biggest larps at the moment are in Germany, with two annual larps of 5000 people each.
I’ve been to Maelstrom in the UK, the event had around 800 players. It was nothing like a “small larp with more crew”, it was an entirely different species of larp and the size played a big role in that. From what I’ve heard about the Gathering it fits your description, and it doesn’t make much use of its size except for big battles. By many accounts it is a bit shit.
So it’s what you do with it that matters, I think.
Hey hey It has been a long time since i had a look at this forums (shame, shame on me 
)
About huge larps and lotsa people: the larp i used to attend was Vampire the Mascarade in Europe. I remember having more than 300 people… khm… sorry VAMPIRES gathering in a theatre hall. It was fun, and it was extremely hard work for the organizers. Certain towns had their larper base, and they played their own larps on weekly bases (or fortnightly, or whatever). Once in a month, or once in two months, one of the towns called out for a countrywide larp event that was hosted by them. The key to be able to play together was this: the organisers kept in contact during the year, and let each other know about the main events of every town. The main characters, e.g. Prince and the primogens of certain towns were accepted and acknowledged by other towns’ players, so names, characters, even other town’s events happened to be built into the stories sometimes. So whenever it came to the countrywide event, the players might knew other players by character name, or at least they knew the Prince of every town, and some other main characters - this basic knowledge was really handy to get along with other players, it also generated some mini stories during the big event, etc.
So I have no clue if it is possible to organise One Huge Event that gathers all the larpers of the country, but i know that its possible to manage if there are other larpers in other towns with their own idea on the same world - and you unite them by crossing the storylines from time to time.
Is there anything like that here in NZ?
The relevant population is probaly French-speaking Canadians. Wikipdia suggests that’s about 31% of the Candian population, so about 10 million people. So not too far out.
Though of course that assumes fluent speakers. How much of a language do you need for a LARP?