Hi everybody.
I received a LARP called Queen of Spade, was run in Belgium with 80 players. It is a 1930’s LARP lasting for 2 days. Do you guys think it is realistic to organise it in Auckland ?
If yes : Is there someone interested in organising it with me ?
I’ll have to translate it into English to be able to run it so if uyou think it is realistic and I can get a Kiwi insider to help me I’ll probably go for it ! Otherwise… I’ll go for something else…
I think you’ll have trouble getting 80 players for a 2-day 1930s game that was written by someone that NZ players don’t know.
We don’t have a culture of multi-day one-off games here yet. Most 2-day games in Auckland are part of campaigns, and I think people commit a whole weekend to playing partly because they’ll be able to play their character again, or at least play in the setting again. It’s a kind of investment.
1930s is only a moderately popular genre here. It’s easiest to attract large crowds to fantasy games, followed by horror.
80 players is a very large game here. Sure, Chimera and Teonn get well over 100 people but they are the exceptions, and they have built up to it (Teonn built on the fan base of other fantasy campaigns run here).
There’s also the excitement factor. Large number of players like that only come to games with lots of buzz and excitement. The thing that generates the most excitement is when original games or events from organisers with a good local track record are run, and they’re preceded by exciting pregame material.
If you’re keen to run a one-off larp here, I’d recommend running one that goes for 3-4 hours or so on an evening, with 10-30 characters or so. That’s more the format that attracts players to pregen larps here, and the size of game that’s more achievable. It helps if it’s your own game, and people have gotten a feel for who you are - but those aren’t absolute requirements, especially if the game info seems appealing.
EDIT: Not wanting to seem negative or anything, I just wouldn’t want you to spend a lot of time translating and organising only to find out what I’ve said the hard way.
Yup, this is very true, and the Western larp ran a few months ago is a good example. The settings that make people go “ooooh, this sounds interesting” is the first thing to provide, because just saying “1930s” doesn’t really say anything. I’m being curious (I like 1930s generally) so I’ll finish this post and go google that game to see what it is about, but usually if you give a bit of idea on what the game is about it really helps us, potential players.
If you transalte stuff - please give yourself enough time for proper translation 
The aforementioned Western larp got us all rolling on the floor when discussing the things we didn’t understand in character sheets. It’s really cool to be getting games translated from other languages and cultures
Ryan makes a lot of good points. We’re used to shorter larps here, and people may not be willing to commit to such a long game outside of a campaign. You could eventually build a market for longer games, but it would be safer to start small and work up. An 80-player game is a major undertaking (you only tend to see a couple of them a year outside of campaigns), without the added disadvantage of being a new format.
Does the game absolutely need two days? Can it be condensed to fit in a more normal (for NZ) 3-4 hour time slot? If so, then I think its probably doable somehow (e.g. as part of a convention).
(I’m not sure how you’d make such a game last for two days anyway. Is it a lot more plot? GM-initiated external events? Or a lot of downtime?)
Yes. And I’d love to see more of them.
This is definitely worth looking into. The French Western larp that Aiwe mentions in the post above ran for 9 hours and change in how it was played meant that this was too long a time frame for the game, and people were losing steam towards the end. In its original setting, the players had a whole western town to ‘live in’ for the day so the game was closer to something like a Saturday of our weekend games, while in the Auckland run we had only two rooms to play in which changed the dynamic of the game.
I think the interwar years (1920s-1930s) is actually reasonably popular in New Zealand as a gaming time period, but as Lucy says, we need a bit more of an indication of the genre - are we looking at a gritty historical game about the lead up to the second world war? Lovecraft’s 1930s? Indiana Jones?
Weekend games can be tough sells - we already have a reasonable amount of them in the calendar, and people will put their campaign games ahead of a one-off. That said, I don’t think it’s impossible to pull off, but I don’t see it as viable in the immediate (i.e. next 12 months) future. 80 people is a lot of people to get to a weekend game in Auckland.
Would it work as a series of day games? 3-5hr blocks speard over a a month or two
"Adaptation: Adaptation of an existing story. 6-8 players, gender specific characters.
Queen of Spades
Classification: Discovery, Relationships. Dark 2. NPC 5. DIR 1. NC.
Genre: Mystery
Marissa Islington is a powerful and ruthless woman with almost as many enemies as criminal connections. A group of these enemies wake to find themselves trapped on a boat in the middle of nowhere with each other, a suspicious letter, and Marissa herself. Nobody knows how they got there or what will become of them when morning comes.
As the night goes on, murder will be committed and secrets revealed. Everybody has a motive and a past they thought they’d left behind. "
Ok, this is definitely not the one mentioned above as it has ten times less characters, but the blurb sounds cool! I am sure a blurb like this will attract a lot of players, so it’s a good example of a blurby thingy. (Blurb nicked from here digitalchangeling.com/gaming … _of_Spades)
Well the title was translated from French of Course so it was tricky to find but to give you a taste of the topic.
The World war is over and everyone hope it will be the last one. However tensions are rising within European nations. The queen of Spade is known as an aristocratic and seductive woman with a taste for art science and foreign cultures, she has an extensive network of “friends” in the whole world. And as she mysteriously disappears (understand dies), her friends are gathering to participate to the auction of her belongings.
I suppose this is a good base to think about…
Considering the adaptation in terms of number of players and duration, I can have a look (just had a quick diagonal reading of the scenario so far). If it is not realistic, I have other shorter scenarios that I can propose if you are into it
Regarding the translation, I thought I would translate it and then have it reviewed (I always do that, even in French to be sure nothing is ambiguous as I often understand myself perfectly but it might be foggy for the player who don’t have a complete picture of the story)
Basically the non fantasy LARPS are usually starting with extensive descriptions of the characters, their relationships, the habits of the period, and an historical background (I remember once, I had 24 pages to read for my character for a 20 hours LARP… But it is not always that extreme), and to keep people “steamed” as you say. their is additional events or NPC infos coming, or investigation systems.
Considering the foreign LARPS, in France usually short LARPS lasting less than 4 hours are usually organised with 10 to 20 players.
Lol, blond moment
No worries