Official Call for Games - Chimera 2014

We’re going to need 30 awesome games for Chimera 2014, and we need to have them in by April 3rd. Please see below for HOW TO SUBMIT, and CRITERIA for games. Please make sure you read what we need before submitting a game.

How do I submit a game?
To formally submit a game, please email the following details through to chimera@nzlarps.org, and we will be in touch to discuss:

Public Information
Title:
Authors:
Blurb: (to interest potential players, so no spoilers)
Cast List: (if available, otherwise character numbers and gender ratio. Please indicate what the minimum number for the game to run is.)
Costuming Requirements:
GM Contact Info: (to go on the website)

For the Organisers
Are there any timing restrictions on your game?
What level of roleplayers is your game pitched at? How many brand new people is your game able to handle?
Will there be any difficult gear requirements?
What sort of playing space will you need?

What are the basic criteria for games?

  • Characters must be pre-written by the game writer (i.e. players do not create own characters), and mechanics must be reasonably simple.
  • The game must take no more than three hours to run, including set up time, briefings, debriefings and pack down. You are realistically looking at 2-2.5 hours of actual play time. PLEASE pay attention to this one.
  • One-off games heavily preferred, campaign games are invitational only. Campaign games may not include player characters from their normal campaign, and must not require any previous knowledge of the setting.
  • Your game must be able to function with only 80% of player spaces filled.
  • Your game must have at least 12 characters, and no more than 30.

How many characters can my game have?
We’re continuing to aim for the stars and beyond. Because of the size of Chimera, we’re need to accommodate between 130-150 people each round.

How many games will you need? How do you pick which games to run?
How many games we need depends on how many characters the games have. We will probably be needing at least five games per round, so somewhere between 25-30 games for the convention. We try to fit in all the games we are offered but we may have concerns. New GMs should try to work with a more experienced GM to make sure a high quality game is produced.

How many games can I run?
It’s actually a fair amount of work to write a game for Chimera and we try to spread the workload across more people rather than less, so you may run, at most, two games and have your name down for one back up game.

What sort of help can Chimera give me with my game?
We want to make the game running process as easy for you as possible. From early next year, the Chimera team will be in touch and available to support you through the process. We will help you source gear, help you liaise with players and be on hand to help pull things together when things go pear shaped. There is a fair amount of backstage chat between the GMs in the months leading up to the convention, so there is a good sense of community with the other game masters and the organisers. While we do our best to get you the gear you require, being realistic is really helpful as well - try to use what we already have in the gear shed, and if you require something truly esoteric, we may not be able to help. Then again, we’ve sourced a cauldron before, so who knows.

For whatever reason, I am not able to write a new game but would like to run something at Chimera. Can I do this?
Not a worry. Any game that has been made available to run, or you have acquired permission from the original writers, can be run at Chimera.

My game needs to run at a specific time, and needs 2 buildings and a helicopter!
We will do our best to schedule your game at a time most optimal to its success, but we need you to be flexible with us as well - not everybody can run on Friday night! Scheduling is determined by a lot of factors, and the chief aim of the schedule juggling act is to make sure that each round has enough player spaces to meet expected demanded, each round has a suitable variety of genres and styles, and that each round has enough playing spaces to accommodate all the games. It’s not half-tricky to get it to work, so it helps if there is no fixed time that your game must run. The same applies for where you would like to run your game - while we will endeavour to give you the location that best fits your game, flexibility is helpful.

I have a question you haven’t answered here.
I’m happy to answer it

LAST CALL FOR GAMES

Hi all,

Thank you so much to the great GMs that have already stepped up to offer games for Chimera 2014! We’ve got some cool things lined up!

Unfortunately, we’re still well below where we need to be with game numbers. Currently, we have enough games to host 70 people per round. Last year, we had about 130 people per round.

This is our last push for games. If you are intending to run a game and haven’t submitted it yet, or if you’d like to run a game to help boost our timetable, please get in touch before Wednesday 9th April on our usual contact chimera@nzlarps.org

If you are keen to run something but don’t feel confident/don’t have the time to write something, there’s heaps of great pre-written scenarios. Get in touch and we’ll help you find something awesome to run.

Looking forward to hearing from people soon!
Anna

Just to stress this, I have an enormous stash of games acquired from public sites and by personally grovelling at authors (usually with a specific mention of Chimera in the grovel, so we have permission to run it there). In addition to many of the games here, I can also provide:
[ul]
[li] Nobilis: Torn From Glory (Jessica Hammer and Chris Hall; 20 players, prop heavy)[/li]
[li] Nobilis: Remedia Amoris (ditto)[/li]
[li] Dance and the Dawn / Dreams of Ice and Ash (complete alternative cast)[/li]
[li] Space Shuttle Diplomacy (Sam Lee)[/li]
[li] The Tribunal (J. Tuomas Harviainen)[/li][/ul]

Plus everything in the Larps from the Factory book. And of course I have a backacatalogue if anyone wants to run “Delicious Friends” or “Down and out in Middenburg” again.

If you want to run any of these games at Chimera this year, please get in touch and I’ll sort out a copy.

(Meanwhile, looks like I’ll need to offer a 2nd game to help make this thing happen…)

Thanks to everyone that has submitted a game in the last couple of days! Our numbers are looking a lot less anemic, we are up to about 96 spaces per round.

If we could get another four games of about 20 or so people, and one larger one of 25-30ish, that would get us to a comfortable place of just on 120 spaces per round.

Thank you to everyone that’s stepped up.

I reckon that The soap and the opera can hold as many as you throw at us, I should confirm this with my fellow GMs but I reckon we are up to it!

Hi Dan,

Thank you very much for the offer - we’ll keep you in mind as a flexi-number game, but it’s also important to us to have a lot of variety in our con line up :slight_smile:

I was going to run a KiL Quest, then I thought nah, let someone else have a go, I want to play. If needed I will run a KiL Quest, in the main forest on Saturday or Sunday. The adventure is pre-written so no problems there. PM me if you need me, and I will submit a blurb, etc. :mrgreen:

THANK YOU

We had a last minute surge of games, and with some awesome new and experienced GMs stepping up, we’ve got a really cool line up again this year!

I will be getting in touch with GMs again this weekend to get all the details for the website. Our official Chimera graphics ninja, Judit, is at work on the site which were hoping to have online in a few weeks for a mid-late May Hungry Shark Week!

Huzzah!