In Wellington they have a tradition that after each KapCon everyone pitches in with ideas for what the big Saturday larp at the next con could be about. Genre, setting, that sort of thing. Then teams of writers express interest in writing & running something, and the con organisers pick a team.
I reckon this would work well for Chimera too.
So what would folks like to see in the big larp at Chimera 2009?
To kick off, I’ve been thinking for a while that a Discworld larp set in Vetinari’s audience hall during some sort of complex multi-threaded catastrophe in Ankh-Morpork would be fun, with all the favourite characters from the books being called in to help. Not so much fun for people who don’t like or know the books though.
That would be me, I have no idea what you are talking about…
But the thing with pre-gen characters who are real people or fictional ones sounds very good to me, so maybe we could have that sort of larp?
The only other one I saw of that kind was Ravenholm Ex Libris Auro, when all players were characters from 19th century books. Was fun 
The Discworld is the setting of Terry Pratchett’s comedy-fantasy books. It’s popular with genre fans, but perhaps not so great a choice for general public appeal. Although I do know a lot of non-roleplayers who love it. And people who love it often really love it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld
I agree that settings based on real-world stuff work well for general recognisability.
DISCO WORLD LARP? love it.
Dave (Indiana Jones for those of you that don’t know him) and I really liked the concept of the Flight of the Hindenburg and were talking after Chimera about how the concept could be applied to other time periods too. We were inspired to start working on a larp set at the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Victorian England. So far we’ve got rough ideas for about 40 characters (real and fictional) and 8 major plotlines.
So far we’d haven’t thought about when/where we’d run it, but it’s an option for Chimera 09. Though if we wanted to make it big enough for Chimera we might need to enlist a couple of other writers.
It’s an option for you to consider anyway.
I was wondering about Victorian. Cool to costume, and it can cross over with other stuff from the same time like Western, if you have foreign visitors.
I love the Victorian era almost as much as I love the Roaring Twenties and the thirties, my only reservation with it would be costuming. Thirties is relatively easy to costume, compared to Victorian.
Other suggestions we’ve had: Vanya has suggested doing a Shakespeare larp, where all the characters are characters from Shakespeare plays. Mike Curtis suggested a 70s larp, with hippies and stuff. Tigger suggested a 60s larp, with the cold war and espionage and the Beatles. I suggested a 50s Grease/West Side Story larp.
Yeah, Victorian costumes for women are tricky. Looks great when pulled off right though.
We were definately planning on incorporating some Wild West visitors, so the cowboy/girl look might be easier for some people to pull off if they can’t manage anything more Victorian.
The other ideas all sound cool too. I’d definately been keen to play in any of those ideas. I briefly considered the 60’s too as there is heaps that would make a cool larp, between the cold war, civil rights movement, political assasinations etc. But I’m keener on Victorian. So many cool literary characters, and real life figures too.
Are you planning on increasing numbers at Chimera next year? I’m assuming that the Sat night larp would need to be written for about 70-80 characters?
Have corset, will travel
Yay for possibly another excuse to dig out the victorian stuff. 
As well as Western, some other cross-overs could be found for Victorian that are easier to costume for those who want less costuming work.
Some people might find Oriental characters easier to costume, for example.
The more variety there is, the more chance people already have access to suitable costume for one thing or another.
I’ve got a couple of Indian characters, which costuming would be easier for. I hadn’t thought of Oriental though. Thanks for the idea, I’ll have to do some research into Asia during the period. The Opium trade was big at the time I think?
I’m kind of seriously digging this idea.
On the first Ravenholme Mike made an Oriental character, a trader, I think, was very cool 8)
Another thing that’s developed for the KapCon larp is that once the larp theme is chosen all the players pitch the writers with characters they’d like to play.
It might be a specific character, or a type (I wanted a “mad Nazi scientist” for Hindenburg and they wrote Frankenstein) or a questionnaire on the type of play you specifically enjoy (romantic, political, etc).
That approach is a nice way of ensuring a variety of characters the writers might not have thought of alone, and giving players a say in what they play.
Having looked at it, the Crystal Palace and it’s Great Exhibition of 1851 does seem like the perfect venue for that era. Would be interesting to set-dress too.
Also: French revolutionaries. Victor Hugo. Karl Marx. The world’s largest diamond. Queen Victoria (who opened the Exhibition). Trouble with the “natives” of the US, Africa, and New Zealand - some of whom could be visiting. When did that Maori chief with the suit of plate armour visit the Queen? The Taiping Rebellion.
I’m all in favour of Victorian at the great exhibition. Everything was going on then, and the UK was the centre of the world.
You can get many characters from history and literature of that era, and people know about it better than Discworld (although personally, I love discworld, I think its not such a good choice here)
Also Victorian costume rocks, particularly for the women (although the fabric folume is quite expensive I imagine)
My other idea would be to do one based around the Chinese legend of Monkey (see previous larp ideas threads) which would be good fun, but hard to make many characters people would know straight off. You’ve only got priests, animal spirits, and various feudal lords to play with.
You can see why I got enthusiastic about the idea. There’s a lot that can be included into the game from the real world alone. Plus there’s literary figures such as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Morriaty, Allan Quatermain, Van Helsing etc.
Would anyone else be interesting in writing this with us?
Now I’d definitely be interested in getting involved with the writing, since that can be done remotely (using a forum and internet) at odd times, so it fits in with my family life… I’ve always preferred the GM/Writer side of things anyway…
The structure of this sort of game is also similar (on a much larger scale) to how I wrote the Og game scripts.
I could give whoever ends up writing the big Chimera larp access to the Hindenburg documents, so you get an idea of how they put it together. While some characters could doubtless have been better tied into plots, it’s still a great model.
I’m also inclined to think that the Hindenburg rules were as near to perfect for this style of larp as you can get. I think they could just be reused wholesale.