That is the obvious solution.[/quote]
So what do we do about non-pregen games? Just run it for the 5 people that paid before the cutoffdate and choke on the venue payment?
Some ideas:
- Extra XP for pre-payment (assumes long lead time from announcement to cutoff, allowing people to save up the fee)
- At the cutoff date, ring everyone who has indicated interest and ask them to commit to attending. At the end of this exercise, see whether the game is still viable.
- Perhaps consider skewing plot-hooks towards pre-paid characters in some way (not sure if this is feasible)
How about when each GM advertises their game they advertise both a pay-by date and a cancellation policy.
This would allow them to set dates that they find reasonable for their particular game/circumstances.
Game: Bob’s Burger Bonanza
Date: 23 July 2012
Venue: Bob’s Burger Shack
Cost: $50 (includes all you can eat burgers)
Payment due by: 30 June 2012
Cancellation/no show policy:
No refunds to be given in the event of a no-show
No refunds given for cancellations made after 5 July
The only extra step I’d isuggest is that the GM sends out an email to all registered players before the cancellation date to remind them of the game and ask them to get in touch ASAP if they can no longer make it. (And most GMs are already sending out a reminder email so that’s not really an extra step)
I’m not too keen on an absolutely-no-refunds after X weeks out policy; I think it’ll just place an extra barrier to playing on those of us with low incomes.
Personally, I already don’t know the names of a lot of larpers in the community, and I have no idea who tends to not show. Larpers who socialise with other larpers a lot (especially with game runners) might know who no-shows, and be able to match the name to the face. But that only describes a subset of the community.
We haven’t even tried requiring payment in advance (and/or giving early payment discounts) for days games yet. Let’s try it first, before saying it won’t work. It’s a fair system, and likely to give great improvement. Also, it won’t risk the kind of ill feeling that a name-and-shame approach clearly does.
I also agree with the idea of writing flexible larps. For example, Forgotten Gods had 10 core PCs and 6 peripheral PCs (the “soldiers”). The soldiers still had personalities and goals and backstories and were linked to the core PCs, but their presence wasn’t crucial for anyone else’s plot and they didn’t know any secrets (so they could be re-cast as anyone). On the day I had one player of a core PC who didn’t come. I just re-briefed one of the soldiers to play that role. I could have coped with up to 6 no-shows, more than half my players (depending on gender fit).
Contrary to what some might think, the role of “soldier” was very a popular choice when people were booking. A lot of players want a simple role now and then. Differentiating core and peripheral characters doesn’t have to be as crisp as calling some soldiers, but it does pay to let people know in advance that they may be recast as a core PC on the day.
More generally, overbooking is a good idea where possible. If you can have some extra people turn up, and you have something for them to do (whether as a peripheral PC, an NPC, stage crew, or whatever), but then rebrief them as a player if needed that can fill a gap.
The thing is, some gaps on the day are inevitable no matter how good the culture and the payment incentive system is. Making larps less brittle will help absorb the inevitable shock. It will also make them more re-playable with different size groups. For example, Forgotten Gods could be played without any soldiers, dropping the PC size from 16 to 10. Another important step is writing in some gender-neutral characters, so you can easily accomodate a different gender mix. This stuff doesn’t help with games written elsewhere, but it’s worth bearing in mind when writing.
Someone asked what to if you’ve paid a booking fee, but not enough people have paid in advance. First off, you estimate how many late payers you will have. This is a statistical question - some people will always pay late, maybe around 20-40% of the total attendees (you can get a better estimate after you’ve run a few games, and if you get expressions of interest for the game - a certain proportion of those who express interest will pay late). Then you work out whether that forecasted income will cover your costs. Then you make the hard call on whether to cancel and lose the booking fee, or run and potentially make a loss.
Do you mean you havn’t even tried… or are you unaware of any day games that have offered early payment discounts / payment in advance…
Are there people who are consistent no-shows? I’ve started planning for a couple of people to drop out at short notice for my games, but they’re always different people and they generally have legitimate reasons. (Although I tend not to have a lot of faith in people who sign up at the last minute actually turning up - they don’t have much buyin to the game, deposit or no deposit.)
I mean that it hasn’t been tried as a general policy. There may be some day games that have used early payment discounts/no refund policies/cutoff payment deadlines, but from memory the majority haven’t. Even some weekend games don’t, and I suspect they suffer for it.
For example, the Western game that Anna said had attendance problems had a flat rate (aside from the NZLARPS discount) and no mention of incentives/no refunds/cutoffs. But single examples of games are not great statistically, they’re just anecdotal. If we could try implementing such payment policies across a lot of day games, we would get a better idea of whether it would reduce non-attendance overall. But I’m certain it would.
As Scotty said, early payment incentives are proven to work in terms of getting people to commit to attending events, it’s why “gate prices” are higher for concerts. It also gets money into the hands of the event runners earlier, so they can use them to cover costs.
I’ve just read through this subject, and the idea that comes to mind is the trade me system, because its all about building a reputation. Happy face for good player, neutral for flaker, sad for now show. The way I see this would be a list of all players, with all the faces accumulating overtime.
This would also be an easy way to gauge experience of the player.
I think having some sort of reputation/experience gauge is important because there are new GMs, and we want to encourage more new GMs, and a lot of new players too. I think it would take away one less stress of organising a game, if I knew that all the players had a good rep.
Of course, I’m not sure how this could be incorporated into the NZLarps computing set-up, or if there is a conglomerated database of players, not just NZlarps members, or if there should be a different rating for day/weekend games.
I’m just brainstorming at this stage.
Mike, is NZLARPS planning on tracking the behaviour of all NZ LARPers, or just NZLARPS members?
Had a few more thoughts on my idea :
It could include the issue of people turning up, forgetting their wallet, or not having cash, and who promise to pay later. If they forget, the GM has the option of giving them neutral feedback until they do pay, or least to say that they can in their follow-up contact to get the payment sorted out. (Of course this would no longer be an issue if people had to pay beforehand.)
NZlarps requires final documents from the GMs following the games, and I recall that most of them have a list of players or each payment category to validate their income. Would it be an onerous task for the GM or committee member to do the player feedback, and give everyone a positive feedback, unless otherwise noted by the GM? I don’t think it would be, but then, I’m sitting on the sidelines not organising games or committees.
A couple of issues I see with having to pre-pay is that there is already work involved with the treasurer communicating payments received to the game GMs, which will be increased, and need to be able to be checked until the morning of the game.
Are there people in the larping community (and the potential new community members) that are adverse to depositing funds into bank accounts. There had been some resistance in the past, but perhaps society has moved more fully into the digital age now? Any GMs care to comment about numbers of players who do actually contact them to arrange alternative payment methods for this reason.
Since this issue is not restricted to NZLARPS members, it makes sense to keep track of anyone who triggers the critical event (no show, flaking). It wouldn’t be much info: e.g. name, game, date and no show or flake, and I’d expect it to be cleansed on a regular basis.
Maybe it’s the terminology being used (flake is not a neutral term), but this solution seems pretty horrible to me. If there is a problem here, positive reinforcement works better than negative. Get their friends to hassle them about why they weren’t at the game or something. Something that lets them know they were missed, and gives them a reason to want to show up rather than potentially creating more reasons for them not to show. 
Flake is more netural than: Slackers who ruin games.
It is however less positive than: People whom suffer from occasional disruptions to their organised daily routine. Having said that - I do not feel that a gm being forced to play 5 or 6 characters by themself is a positive thing - especially when it occures more than once. There are also several members of the community who have not paid for events they have attended - I would like to know a feeling on what should be done about NO PAY players who continue to play (5 or 6 events on) with no payment for any of them despite repeated requests.
I have a firm “no cash, no character pack” policy for every game I run. Problem solved.
(But then, we don’t seem to have this problem down in Wellington at all, because everyone understands that venues need to be paid for)
Sounds fair. For weekends there is always plenty of time to save money, and for daygames if you turn up and you didn’t think of bringing your $10 - borrow them from friends attending the same game! This will take the pressure off the GMs and you can just later solve this personal thing with the friend from whom you borrowed money. After you do it for half a dozen games your friend will get sick of it and stop lending to you, so you will start thinking more carefully about remembering your money (put it on the list of things to bring together with gear and costume).
If people are not comfortable with secret lists being made, what about public lists on the forum showing who is playing whom for the games with pre-gen characters? It’s already done for some games now. Makes it convenient to see who is turning up, who is playing characters to whom your character is connected. However, in case of no shows it also provokes a reaction of “bloody X, he was to play my husband and he didn’t show up, he ruined one of my character plots, grrrr!” with the following private conversation between player and X where the negative emotions will be exposed and explained. If you are often being told by people how much you frustrate them by your actions, there is a chance you may start acting differently. Something along the lines of
Yes.
I think this is an excellent point. We totally cannot rely on people’s memorisation of what is going on. Human memory just doesn’t work that way. Let’s make GMs life easier, they work hard for us.
Yup, yup, can’t expect everyone to do and know what they do and know, this would be associated with a fashionable word “discrimination” and will alienate (another fashionable term) new people who are trying to start organising games just now and obviously cannot easily compete with those who have been around for a while.
Bob’s Burger Bonanza is a good example of how to write the game ad.
I suggested a while ago using game signup software that allows the GM’s to easily see who has and hasn’t paid for a game. Pretty sure it had an option to display that to other signups.
Using this would allow a number of benefits from giving a printable list of people who paid/didn’t easily add something the track attendance and also from the players side it allows then to have a personal calendar of larps they are planning to attend which might stop a few people from missing ones if they have a busy schedule.
I can reset up the demo site without too much hassle if people want to look into it as an option.
Perhaps I could have chosen a better noun, but I think my definition is specific enough.
Um, getting people to hassle someone is not positive reinforcement, it is type I punishment.
The way I see it, there are two ways to deal with the issue of chronic flakes / no shows:
-
Get the money up front (and perhaps assign plot-central characters to upfront payers only). I’d like to try this and see how it goes. It will be a departure in the way payments are collected for daygames, and may reduce overall attendance, but let us try this and get some feedback from game organisers about how it works
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Provide GMs with information about who has a history of flaking/no showing so they can actively and positively manage those participants who present a risk not turning up. As Ryan and others have pointed out, it isn’t possible to grok this info by osmosis (at least, not in Auckland); the only way we can understand who regularly does not turn up is by information-sharing.
Either way, I think there is broad agreement that we need to tackle this problem.
[quote=“Mike Curtis”]1. Get the money up front…
- Provide GMs with information about who has a history of flaking/no showing…[/quote]
Given that some people find option 2 objectionable, can we try option 1 consistently first by itself? To see if it does the job alone?
Payment up front also has the advantage of solving the no-pay issue.
Yeah, maybe I wasn’t clear: I think we should try Option 1 first and see how it goes.