May Meeting of the nzLARPS Committee

It’s that time again. Come, gather and discuss how we’ll make larp the hottest thing since sliced bread.

When: May 14th, 6pm
Where: Mike’s place, 26 Malvern Street, Morningside. (You know, where are all the gear lives! ) Please note the change in venue!

Agenda
-> Apologies
-> Last Meetings Minutes
-> Matters Arising
-> Financial Update
-> Past Larps

  • Multiverse: Warp and Weft of Time
  • Proof of Life
  • St. Wolfgang’s
    -> Upcoming Larps
  • None?
    -> Financial Forecast Applications: St. Wolfgang’s: Trinity
    -> Gear Update - new storage, Hamilton
    -> Immersion
  • Toner
    -> Next Meeting Date
    -> Other Business

Wanted to come to this meeting, but I realise now that I’ve got a clashing appointment.

Here’s what I wanted to say in short:

New gear storage is extremely important. It’s hard to get across just how big a deal it is to store all that gear at a private house. I stored about half that amount for several years. Unlike Mike I didn’t have to put up with such frequent pick ups and drop offs, but it was still one of the hardest aspects of my time running Mordavia. Mike’s made an enormous and hugely undervalued contribution to the society doing the storage, all kudos to him.

Mike has declined the delightful opportunity to store gear for another year, so getting storage right should be at the top of NZLARPS’ priority list. It’s time to move to a sustainable approach. Unless someone has available a free large lockable space to store gear, where projects can pick up and drop off equipment at any time, we need to pay for storage. I understand that Mike and/or Scotty have hunted down a place where we can store gear in a shipping container for one or two grand a year. This is extremely good value for money, and a sustainable ongoing approach. Ideally the trailor would be stored at the same place, although I don’t know if this is possible.

The cost of storage can be paid for by amounts budgetted into the events that use the gear. If some belt-tighting can be done on society use of membership fees, those could help contribute too.

It’s not that we need to be “professional” about everything. It’s just that when operations get to a certain size, using private houses becomes a nightmare. Our free storage for all these years has been a pleasant aberration. I don’t think it can go on.

For the above reasons I propose a motion that NZLARPS seeks out and budgets for professional storage for all its gear (including room to grow), ready to take over when Mike finishes doing the storage.

EDIT: I haven’t read the constituton recently, but I seem to recall that society members can make motions even though only committee members can vote on them. Could be wrong, in which case perhaps some folk on the committee may wish to make the motion or something similar.

I’m all in favour of having a permanent gear store; I just dont see how we can afford an additional $2000 outlay each year to pay for it. We’d need to run far more games at a larger profit margin - most games are barely breaking even these days, with the notable exception of Wolfgang

We’d afford it the same way we afford other necessary costs: by charging slightly more for all events. The events are very cheap for the value given, and it’s because people like Mike are absorbing the real costs.

As an example…

Rebeccah picked up our cat from the vet’s yesterday with instructions to keep her indoors for 3 days. So she rang me and asked where the kitty litter is. It’s in the shed, behind a literally heaps of larp gear/materials and therefore quite inaccessible. It’s a real pain.

The gear library keeps growing. People turn up (sometimes unannounced) and drop stuff off, game organisers create props and costumes and these all need to be stored somewhere. I’m even storing stuff under my house.

I’m storing the trailer at my Mum’s. Thanks to efforts of a few diligent nzLARPers and circa $700 of my own money, we have a permanent place to store our trailer.

But, as Ryan says, this is not a sustainable situation. I have a shed that is so full that it is impractical the get at a lot of the stuff I store in there.

This year is going to get busier for me, in part because I am standing for the Greens in the election. I need to stand down as Equipment Officer, and that means we need to find a sustainable solution to housing the gear.

There are two viable solutions:

  1. Get funding to purchase a 20 foot container and store it on private land. We have yet to find a suitable permanent home for a container.

  2. Pay for retail storage.

Sure it costs money, but perhaps we could get creative with our fundraising ideas ? Not all funds need to be generated by larps. We have previously discussed ways to make money from corporate social clubs and similar, and these ideas are still valid.

Ryan’s right, this issue needs to be a top priority for the committee.

Could we use multiple locations to spread out the bother? Maybe store all the sci fi equipment in one place and the fantasy gear in another?

We’re currently doing that. The scifi gear is split between Craig and Brian. The real issue is that we need to store a huge amount of fantasy/medieval gear.

Splitting the fantasy gear amongst multiple locations would inevitably lead to problems locating and returning gear.

Sorry guys, stuff’s closing in on me and it doesn’t look like I can make it tonight. My apologies.