[b]NZLARPS Auckland Committee Meeting 9-12-2013
Present: Philip Brown, Nikki Brown, James Cooper, Prema Cottingham, Hannah Jackson, Clare, Dave Luxton, Dave Agnew
Start: 7:26pm
Note: These minutes are a record of the discussions and decisions that took place at the meeting. Discussions are not word for word.
Previous Minutes:[/b]
Motion: Do we accept the minutes from the last meeting? Prema – 1st, Nikki 2nd
Motion carried unanimously. Dave Agnew and Clare abstain.
Crucible meeting: following last months meeting, Hannah Jackson, Prema Cottingham, James Cooper, Patrick Cummuskey, Vanya Essin, Mark Wilson, Ellen Boucher and Anna Klein had a meeting. The purpose was to discuss the decreased number of GMs, game planning, and what needs to be done to get the project on track.
More people have joined the Crucible team – Anna Klein is managing the NPCs, and Linda Cormack is managing logistics. The Crucible team have announced a series of day games.
The GM team seemed to want support from the committee -> Hannah Jackson, Prema Cottingham and James Cooper drafted a support document afterwards.
The GM team indicated they wanted a project manager -> the committee has suggested some names.
Nikki caught up with Patrick later, she was concerned that committee was coming on too strong. This was resolved by email Hannah sent later to discuss support.
-> Communication about what sort of support Crucible would like from NZLARPs has been resolved.
- Would be good to have the day games advertised on Diatribe.
Bubblewrap for weapons storage: Nikki has purchased this, was used at Teonn. - Muppet – not sure how weapons in bubblewrap will react to heat when stored for awhile.
-> We do have some silicon gear protection spray in the gear shed.
End of year summary: Anna has not yet posted the report she wrote for the AGM to Diatribe.
Action Point: James to follow up re Anna posting report.
Cashflow card: James has received this from the bank. Can’t give out the card details. Ants has “customer” access to the account, needs signatory access. Ants and James may be able to co-ordinate to arrange this when Ants comes up to Auckland.
The National Committee should decide whether anyone else should have access to the accounts.
Action Point: James to prod National Committee to make a decision.
Witch House:All witch house non-payees have been followed up and all have paid. The Witch house game made a profit of around $300-$400 dollars.
Sabbat: game info all in, made a loss of $400, in addition to venue change loss. - Crucible venue invoice deposit received and paid
- Trailer Insurance: Nikki has purchased this. Has obtained comprehensive cover.
- Padlock – Nikki/Muppet – don’t think we need more keys. Nikki has key to trailer padlock, Muppet may also have one.
- Padlock on gear shed is really rusty. We need a new one, there may be a spare one inside the gear shed.
- Marketing gear for Armageddon – Dave A to get off Vanya – still to be done.
Action Point: Dave A to retrieve marketing gear from Vanya. - Access cards – James has 3, Clare has 1.
Finance report: (James)
- Trailer insurance paid for.
Crucible: The Crucible venue deposit for the weekend game, plus the venue cost for the first day game paid for.
The committee was not aware that the Lands End day game would have a venue cost, and the cost is around $500, which is quite significant. This cost was not included in the budget agreed to last meeting. We need a separate budget for that day game.
Action Point: Nikki to talk to GMs about submitting budget for day games that have costs. They need to be treated as separate events for budgeting purposes. - Auckland account funds in good condition, but down a lot due to paying for Crucible deposit.
- Some day game payments have already come in.
- James is in contact with Jon Ball (Crucible treasurer) – good communication, good to work with.
Teonn: Outgoings for Teonns (Koha for cooks paid, plus most receipts from Derek reimbursed). - Teonn to transfer excess from Props budget back to NZLARPs, as they didn’t spend it all.
Gear report
- Nikki planning a gear rationalization for before the Crucible day games.
- New golem added to gear library!!!
- About $100 required to make it a bit more future proof (for special foam glue and waterproof overalls.) Should be some left over glue from this.
- The golem may need more ventilation in the head, as it is prone to making the person inside overheat.
- Less players and crew than expected at Teonn– about 80-90 people at game. This teonn game is likely to make a small loss.
- Muppet suggests that we have an auction to sell off plot related items – for example Champion amulets, Cormere sign. We had a similar auction following Mordavia. We could auction items that are unlikely to be useful for other games.
- Need to find out from Crucible whether the Teonn fountain might be useful to them.
Action Point: Nikki to follow up with Crucible re. fountain. - Patrick purchased some Seeker sale items – for example, suits of chain mail. The chain mail is good quality, Teonn used some of this at the last game. Currently the chain belongs to Patrick, not to NZLARPs.
Action Point: Nikki to follow up with Patrick, to see if he got all the chain mail back
Motion: Should we approve a budget of up to $150 to future proof Boris? Nikki - 1st, Dave Luxton 2nd.
Motion carried unanimously. - $500 koha for Hannah’s Mum needs to be paid.
Action Point: Hannah to pass her mother’s bank acct details to James. James to pay koha into Hannah’s Mum’s bank account.
Marketing
- Several Facebook groups have been created by people in the community, including the NZLARPs newcomers page. Dave A has been made an administrator, has been answering questions.
- There were a few new people at Teonn – a few crew, one player. – Nikki.
Action Point: Nikki to provide Dave Agnew with Teonn email list. - NZLARPs newsletters – Muppet used to make them. They are a fair amount of work. Muppet happy to prettify them if Dave A creates the text.
Action Point: Dave A to talk to Ryan to see if he has info to go in newsletter. - Dave A has made some changes to What is Larp website, via Ryan.
Action Point: Dave A – to follow up with Nick to find out when we are getting the new, easier to edit website.
Teonn:
The game went well. The after larp and big debrief well received.
Logistically things went well, apart from the car accident before the start of game.
The curfew was not a problem at all. Neighbours had a big noisy party, noisier than the larpers.
No drinking problems. Did have a couple of random people from outside party crash at the fire pit, were asked to leave but refused to leave initially.
Several people got sick over the weekend.
People were taking more responsibility for themselves and others - this is good to see. The community stepped up to be responsible.
Upcoming LARPs
- Crucible – Beta rules have been released, as has a codex describing the world. No website released as of the committee meeting.
- Muppet and Nikki will be meeting with the GMs on Wednesday, for a Teonn/Crucible catch up.
- Diatribe is our main communication method for NZLARPs. Rules and other documents do need to be added as they come out – need to be added to Facebook, Google +, Diatribe at same time. This is up to Crucible to do.
- A lot of the community spirit has gone off Diatribe and onto Facebook. This is possibly because Diatribe can be a bit confusing to navigate and find information on. Diatribe is more organized now though, that it’s organized by centre.
- Less favourite moment posts on Diatribe - people are posting these on Facebook instead.
- Diatribe has the benefit of exposing people to other NZLARPs events, Facebook does not do this.
- Sabbat- Ostara has been announced. A budget has not been provided yet. A budget should really be submitted to the committee before announcing a game.
Action Point: Put a post on Diatribe about the correct process for submitting budgets and announcing games.
Action Point: Hannah to discuss budget requirement with Cheryl. We need a budget for the next meeting and need venue details. We don’t want big venue costs.
Further Discussion
- We will have a January meeting, on 13th of Jan.
- Derek wants to make 1001 Nights as an affiliate, so he can access gear library. Will need to fill out affiliate form.
Gear Charges
- We need to start charging a gear costs to affiliates. Wellington is going to start charging affiliates, they will discuss their cost levels at their committee meeting during weekend. Lending to affiliates creates more work for gear officer, who has to go to gear shed and ensure affiliate has access.
Options around gear charges for affiliates: - Charge affiliates a flat fee? The projects are more difficult, as they make profit which goes to society.
- Charge a percentage of profit?
Discussion: - Do we ask projects to budget in a certain amount of profit? Do we charge a percentage of total game cost as gear storage fee? Won’t work for small cash games, as the numbers will not add up round, and change will be difficult to disperse.
- Expecting a profit is different to asking games to provide a buffer to avoid running at a loss.
- Need community buy in if expecting projects to make a profit, as attendees will have to pay slightly more for games.
- Should we be keeping a gear library? Need to discuss with community. Should we disseminate the gear? Not having a gear library would create a barrier for new people participating.
- We should put a proposal forward on the committee forums for discussion.
- We need to be transparent and get community buy in.
- Some people might be opposed to charging for gear storage, and some may not be able to afford an increase in game costs.
- We should charge the same amount for projects and affiliates.
-> We need to put together a proposal for discussing gear to outline what we think the solution should be and issues. Hold a special meeting to discuss gear, and post proposals to community for online discussions leading up to the meeting. - Nikki – prefers flat fee for games. Easy to understand, and reduces per head cost for small games.
- Dave L – flat fee easier to hide among profit.
- Prema – suggest it is covered by raising game fee.
- Prema – per head charge? Discuss it with GMs when looking at and approving budgets.
- Hannah – have a separate account for gear charges, and shift the charge from game fees into account every month?
Action Point: Nikki to make post in backstage forum, for committee to discuss.
Action Point: James has prepared a document as well, to post on backstage forums. - Post the proposal to the wider community once the committee is happy with it.
- Need to discuss with Anna and Crucible team first, before posting.
- Vote and make decision at Feb meeting. Invite the community along to meeting to discuss.
Put up a poll to find out how many people might come along.
We’ll bring up and discuss everything brought up on Diatribe. - No charges yet for gear. No charges for 1001 Nights until we vote in our decision on charges.
- Create “How to” info for affiliates/projects – Eg. Budget process, notifications regarding gear.
Matters arising
- Diatribe discussion on morally black/grey characters.
- Welfare – potential for bullying around player/faction conflicts
- Bleed from character into real life does happen – real emotion felt by players –take a step back, be careful, don’t break friendships
Action Point: Prema to start welfare/conflict discussion on Diatribe. - Maybe include in How to Guide.
Next meeting – Nikki can’t make the 13th, so may shift the meeting.
Gear rationalization – Sat 11th? 10am – 4pm. Earmark things for sewing, bring a couple of machines for repairing jobs. Find out whether we need more storage boxes.
Closed: 9:43pm.