September 2007 LARP camp

Seriously.

Three day camp doing everything that is LARP.

All (or most) nzLARPS projects and affiliates represented and played/done for about three hours each. There’d be plenty of OOC time, social stuff, workshops, and importantly, the game factory.

The game factory:
A room full of whiteboards, big bits of paper, felt tips, computers, printers, and experienced GMs (ok, maybe one of each of the above). Their purpose: Churn out LARPs. One every three hour workshop, while another game is going on.
Into this room go a game writer and an idea, and out comes a ready-to-test game! This would happen at least three times at the camp!

At the start of the event everyone pools their resources (well, most of them) for use in any event during the weekend. This makes a big bank of stuff for players and organisers to use.

In addition to the manufactured games, established projects and affiliates would get a go.

Here’s an example of what the program could end up:

Friday night:
6:30 till 9pm: bus-game on the way… (and stop for dinner)
9:30 till 11pm: Powhiri and about-this-weekend-ness.
11:30 till 1:15am: Nightmare Circle
-or-
Nibelungen

Saturday:
10:30 till lunch: First game factory
-or-
Stargate
-or-
Tryst
Lunch: Mordavia 'Lest we remember’
2pm till 5pm: Second game factory
-or-
‘Couples’
-or-
'Executive Decision
Dinner: Masquerade
After dinner: Vampire ball. Half IC half OOC…
Midnight: Game from second factory session.

Sunday:
10:30am: Third game factory session
-or-
Fine costumes “howto”
-or-
Skirmish
Lunch: OOC and presentations from our affiliates.
1:30: Game from third factory session
5pm: OOC bus home…

Following week: committee elections/reelections

Sheesh, that’s full, and without some key games like Warhammer.
Anyway, I reckon a year and a half from now we should aim to get 100 people from around the country to this. Whadya reckon?

That sounds like a heinous amount of fun. I’d love to do something like that. It would also be a huge boost to the LARP community. I say, let’s do it.

Sep 2007 or 2006 ??

  1. This is probably a bit ambitious to be done this year. Is that your voicing of support, prez?

I’m thinking this would run at a loss, and that we’d cover all expenses for people running events (workshops or games etc) including travel for ANY affiliated partner in the country to attend. We’d charge other attendees about $70 for the weekend including five meals.

Sounds like a larp convention. Neat. A convention would be an ideal thing to run as a project of NZLARPS. Don’t see any reason for it to run at a loss though.

I think you’ve missed out WoD games like Mage and Vampire, which are quite well-suited to conventions.

[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]Sounds like a larp convention. Neat. A convention would be an ideal thing to run as a project of NZLARPS. Don’t see any reason for it to run at a loss though.

I think you’ve missed out WoD games like Mage and Vampire, which are quite well-suited to conventions.[/quote]

Speaking of conventions - do you guys do anything for the armageddon expo’s?

Haven’t done, no.

[quote=“wOOt_”][quote=“Ryan Paddy”]Sounds like a larp convention. Neat. A convention would be an ideal thing to run as a project of NZLARPS. Don’t see any reason for it to run at a loss though.

I think you’ve missed out WoD games like Mage and Vampire, which are quite well-suited to conventions.[/quote]

Speaking of conventions - do you guys do anything for the armageddon expo’s?[/quote]

It has been discussed within the committee - but nothing arranged yet.

This would probably need a fair amount of up-fromt $ to book venues etc.

However, if we charge a sensible amount for people, then there’s no reason for it to run as a loss. It’s a seriously big project, though, with many sub-games to organise. This needs a LOT of up-front planning and people committing themselves to run games before we can commit $ on it, I think…

I’m all in favour, though. If it doesnt lose money.

[quote=“Steve Shipway”]This would probably need a fair amount of up-fromt $ to book venues etc.

However, if we charge a sensible amount for people, then there’s no reason for it to run as a loss. It’s a seriously big project, though, with many sub-games to organise. This needs a LOT of up-front planning and people committing themselves to run games before we can commit $ on it, I think…

I’m all in favour, though. If it doesnt lose money.[/quote]

More importantly, it needs a community of hundreds. That’s the number one reason we couldn’t do it this year.

If you want to help fix that problem, the next event to promote is Nightmare Circle :: 19 - 21 May.

Personally, I think this is the only kind of event (aside from promotions) that can run at a loss. We have built into our financial system that games should turn a small profit, and some even turn considerable ones. That’s fine, it’s necessary.
An event like this should maximise the number of people in attendance, so I think tickets should be “cost price”. Then people that are going to run stuff should get in free and have some travelling expenses paid - even if just one-way. So if we shipped in two Wellingtonian event runners and two Christchurchians then we’d lose about $500 getting them there and in assuming we flew them up. But we’d create widely experienced go-getters in Wellington and Christchurch for it, and those people might bring more players with them, giving us more solid backing in the area. Doing it this way is far cheaper than flying down and back one of our own to run a game in an unfamiliar city. And how else do we spread nationwide with credibility?

Lots of cash would be needed up-front. I reckon we could use somewhere like Camp Adair. I couldn’t find prices… but they’re not my forte and they’ll probably be different in a year and a half anyway.

I don’t think the organisation would be too-too hard because it’s largely distributed. Someone with the organisation prowess of Rhiannon could sort out the timetable, someone to do bookings, someone to do other-admin-stuff, and the projects/ affiliates organise the rest of the event. Well, not to mention that the players would always be determining what really happens :wink:

Sounds tiring, but a highlight of the year. Please, for the sake of a fantastic sounding weekend, lets make this happen!

I would be very much up for helping to organise this for next year. Its a great idea.

I am willing to be a part of this, as long as my spawn can come too. I would even be willing to bring my own tents to sleep us all in (they have been dying to use them since I got them for the circle)

I would offer to help organise, but I have no net connection of my own, so this would slow things down to a crawl at my end.

R

Eleven months later…
We easily have the games to do this. Do we have the people? Above I speculate that we would want 100 in attendance from a community of “hundreds”. Right now that looks spectacularly ambitious and we would more likely get 20-50 tops. Can we change that before September? I would like this to occur.

Speaking of ambitious, I think it would be good to have an Australasian larp convention that wanders around the region, like the yearly Knutepunkt convention wanders between the four Nordic countries. It’s like a loose collection of organisers in different countries who pass the organisation between them.

There is a big potential market across the ditch, and if it got big enough later (thousands of people) folks would travel either way for it.

That could be a longer-term goal, but one to bear in mind for getting things started. We could ask the Knutepunkt organisers for advice. Theirs is a roleplaying convention “with a focus on larp”, but in practice it seems to be 90% larp.

Maybe it would be best to plan one for 50 people now if that’s what you think you’ll get? There is always time to grow later - the first Armageddon was tiny compared to how big it is now.

Needs some whackery I think. That would attract some Hamiltonians. Or at least Questers. What say you?

Jared

Actually, just had another look at your idea of the event at the top Craig. Sounds like a lots-of-larp-happening-convention as opposed to a lots-of-chat-about-larp-convention which is more characteristic of Knutepunkt.

Yeah, and I’m sure whackery games would find themselves in there as well.

My idea is definitely a “do lots of larp” one, but meals and a few other times are ooc. Looking at the plan I made over a year ago I think I’d keep it much the same but have a prominent dedicated “free time” patch and maybe some kind of structured discussion time too.

I was wrong about how many games we’d have - it seems our create-more-games! focus has lead to plenty of games. But we don’t have the players to pull this off yet, not without a much smaller expectation.

I’ll be away for the next two weeks but I hope to review this when I come back. A weekend away where you play half a dozen different games is still possible with 20 people, so let’s look at organising that for this year instead.