10/01/2007 NZLARPS Committee Meeting
10th January, 7.12-9.05pm
Agenda:
- Previous minutes and Apologies
- Financial Update
- Previous larps
- Upcoming larps update
- Ravenholme presentation
- Easter Camp – Cat’s game
- Newsletter – feedback
- Wiki site for venues; Craig
- Nikki: keep working on venues catalogue
- The trailer – update
- Diatribe – how is Nikki going
- Project or just another game? What happens when a day game is run for an existing project?
- Contacting other larps?
- Other Business
Eight members present (Adam, Rhiannon, AJ, Craig, Nikki, Anna, Mike, Ryan). Also Brian to talk about Ravenholme. Apologies from Steve.
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Previous minutes and actions were reviewed and accepted.
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Financial statement – Steve sends two comments:
a) He found an extra $400 petty cash.
b) Steve wants Nikki to send him a list of people with outstanding fees from last Mordavia. -
Previous larps.
Ravenholme (9/01/07) – Some people who didn’t go complained about the costuming. The venue was free – and good prices for food. We need to approach such venues to become affiliates. One way that Ravenholme worked well was that there was a marketing emphasis on no combat needed – and this may have had more appeal for many people. -
Upcoming larps.
Unity – looking for a venue that can be trusted, ideally an empty warehouse, but so far can’t find the people who currently own the lease.
OG – looking for someone else to run it.
Nibelungen – Date set 23-25 February. Episode 1 is going to determine what kind of game it will become later – whether daygame, weekend, or online-based. This depends on the actions of players and characters. Craig has been working on making everything work properly.
Stargate – this will be run by the 3 co-GM’s, probably on the 10th February, which clashes with BattleCry. It may be changed to (for example) the 3rd instead.
Skirmish – Sat 13 Jan, Sat 3 Feb at the moment.
No Mans Land – Looking to change the name as there is an Auckland company who make miniatures terrain. Some more cultural items have been assigned, and texts written. There is no deadlines and a lot of people are working on it.
Nightmare Circle – next game to be run by Kane and Porl. The date is not known yet but one idea is the 2nd weekend in March.
One World By Night (Auckland) – this weekend. Possibly get affiliation.
Wee Larp Monthly and Mystery Larp are both on the back bench.
There are another 4 games in development.
Battle Day – need materials from shops that were closed over Christmas-New Year. Probably needs a separate account with NZLARPS. Also needs someone in Tamaki to buy and pick up materials – Nikki volunteered. -
Ravenholme.
Apparently the name Ravenshome (or something similar) is used by a large group of vampire larpers somewhere. This will probably not be a problem.
Ravenholme will be a good platform to run other games on, in many time frames.
Weekend game coming up: expected costs $920, overall expected cashflow $995, expected profit $75. Initial float needed $480 to cover deposit on venue, food, materials.
Proposal to accept costs and approve project submitted by Nikki, seconded by Craig, passed unanimously. -
Easter Camp – Cat says she wants to affiliate with NZLARPS. She’ll be charging $20 a head. The committee is of the opinion that this qualifies as a full project, considering we are asked to provide and transport gear, and will be asking her to consider this.
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Newsletter – Feedback. Nich was more impressed with this one than the last. The outline for the next issue has been done and they would like articles about larping, including what people learned from games. Craig’s idea is that the magazine becomes our main flyer – but as is would be too expensive as the cover alone costs $1.13 to print colour on 130gsm paper. A good possibility is getting a set printed cheaper (less good quality) for places like the Medieval Shop and distribution by members.
It appears we may be eligible for ‘free postage’ though that may only apply to normal-sized 45c envelopes. -
Wiki site: Craig needs more space, about a gig. He is going to need a new host. The venues catalogue has been sent in.
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Nikki has two new venues to add – Shakespeare Lodge and Battlehaven, a gaming shop on the corner of Bond St, which may be a free venue (big room, lots of tables, but shelves covered and stuff under tables). Café at the back for buying food and drink (NOT BYO.)
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Trailer: There may be a good one about the same size as the S$S trailer. We can get a really good one made to order by Julianne’s father who is an engineer and has been making them for many years. The materials cost a lot but they are built to last. The Lion Foundation website says they don’t do vehicles, but in an email they said they will as long as we can tell them exact details of its size, where it will be stored, who its insurance will be done under, and how it will benefit the community.
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Diatribe. Craig is teaching Nikki how to use it.
Website feedback: the NZLARPS website is technical but has no fun stuff. Diatribe on the other hand has fun stuff but is very hard to get around. -
Daygame for existing projects? Do they need to do project documents for every event, or is one project document enough and just need financial forecasts for each event? Do they even need those? So far each event hosted by NZLARPS has put together these documents each time and it is voted on by the Committee. However most larps are EVENTS within an ongoing project. The Committee needs to know about them because they need to request gear, they need to be advertised, and they need people to commit to a time on the Calendar. Perhaps there should be a price cap over which the Committee has to vote on the event – and otherwise game masters can decide to not submit a forecast, in which case they will not be given money if they unexpectedly make a loss. Projects are usually financially dependent on NZLARPS – affiliates are not. One way we can help is to make the financial forecast forms easier to fill out and able to be emailed to the Committee instead of proposed in person at a Committee meeting, which may be difficult for some.
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Contacting other larps
-One World By Night
-A couple of games in Hamilton
-Quest Waikato
-KAPCON. Hand people cars, find out about larps down there, invite them to Diatribe -
Other Business.
Advertising: Ryan wants some flashier business cards, in colour, with 2 sides. Nikki knows a place where we could get such cards for $135/1000.
Battlecry: Anna may run a Robin Hood adventure game during the afternoon slot we’ve been given. A Pirates game using Lucy’s rules is being run by Karen and endorsed by NZLARPS which may be enough. We should put flyers/cheap magazines/business cards in the promotional bags given to all entrants. A game must be designed to scale for more/less people due to gaming.
Joust in Taupo, first weekend February, want us to do a larp in between their jousting. This is a good idea as it can introduce the idea to the 10,000 people that come to see the jousting, a large section of the public. The story may be announced by the MC. We can’t interfere or upstage the actual jousting. Anna’s idea is to have another Robin Hood theme with scenes staged during joust downtimes, with characters going through the crowd talking to people and handing out flyers (or other promotional material, see above). There could be a box of simple costumes (tabards etc) for people to throw on and join in.
Gear acquisition form has been made.
We may need to change the description of ‘Project Officer’ to include giving updates on affiliates that run games as well as projects. AJ has been doing that anyway and it is working well so we will probably make it official at the next AGM.
A question was raised by Anna as in how GMs know players’ fees have been paid when they have gone into the NZLARPS account. Nikki suggested that event managers should be encouraged to make a checklist of who paid online and who paid in cash, to later be checked with the Treasurer and the accounts.
Action points:
AJ – get Adam email contact with One World By Night for affiliation discussions.
Craig – bring camera to all events!
Craig – get Mike magazine PDF file
Mike – print cheap NZLARPS magazines for distribution
Nikki – look after Battle Day materials for Ryan
Ryan – simplify financial form
Adam – check trailer price quote from Derek
Julianne – check price of custom made trailers
Nikki – contact State Insurance for trailer insurance details
Next meeting – work on new business cards
It’s Ravenloft.