Should NZLarps invest in a lightsabre

Numbers average 10 with 20 players registered

Core group of 7 attend every game.

Minimum attendance was 8

Max Attendance was 15

The game will run till the gm’s are dead or we run out of plot (Have you seen the extended universe by the way?)

At the moment we don’t hire venue’s we run at free / cheep locations so eventually we will stop having to spend money on props (As our gun stock is starting to look quite healthy we are looking at masks / prosthetics now and a few nice things that I can’t go into publicly due to spoiling the surprise)

[quote=“Xcerus”]Numbers average 10 with 20 players registered

Core group of 7 attend every game.

Minimum attendance was 8

Max Attendance was 15[/quote]
That’s…not actualy that bad…

I think attendance this weekend will be its lowest yet - Exam season has killed some of the player base but I know there are at least 6 confirmed players Possibly 7.

Some of the other players are crewing instead - so will be in attendance - but won’t be there for the full game due to exams in the morning or just not wanting to fret over a character when they are busy but still want to larp :slight_smile:

The world would be a dull place if we could all do the same things. I’m not sure which of my innumerable skills you’re suggesting other people lack, you’ve lost me completely.

I only jumped into this thread because you seemed to be heading down the wrong road to successfully getting some light sabers. I offered to help people design and build some light sabers, because I just couldn’t see purchasing a single $200 light saber from overseas as being a sensible option. One man light saber duels not being all that cool…

I’m really not even that interested in playing in a Star Wars game, I just enjoy building props. I’m happy to sit around some evening or sunny weekend with a few friends and make stuff. It may not be quite as pretty as the Eldrich stuff, but at least it won’t be pricing most of the players out of obtaining one.

So, good luck with the light sabers. If you do decide at some point that you want to look at making some locally, I’m happy to assist people with planning / designing / building. But until then, I’ll leave this with you.

The fiddly bit is the handle. And if you need a template, you could just splash out for a plastic one from the warehouse to use as a model. Much cheaper.[/quote]
And yet not larp safe…[/quote]

I’m sorry - weren’t people talking about using it as a template - a model from which to build more - rather than sticking larp blades on plastic handles? There’s no need to spend $200 on foam for that when $60 on plastic (less if you buy a non-branded knockoff) will do.

And specifically (to cross threads): will it attract two new people into the community?

That’s not actually a lot.

And OTOH, the key to getting those people would be the demonstration(s) you would presumably use it for; it does not necessarily require the particular piece of kit.

Starwars without the promo of a lightsabre and advertising at events has attracted at least one new player (Blair) to larping thus by those calculations increased revenue by $100 alone.

That was from Battle Cry last year where I ran two games - the second of which was requested at the last second when requiem was cancelled.

I would therefore suggest that the appeal of starwars when applied with marketing will easily recoup a $200 investment if not more when advertised at events such as Armageddon, capcon, battle cry etc etc

Just as a slight interjection, this raises an interesting point. Yes, NZLARPS is supposed to support all LARP in NZ, but does that really mean to the point of spending money on specific kit for a game that is not a project? Are you an affiliate? What are the legal ramifications, if any, on spending money on an entity outside the society? When did you let Jedi/Sith into the game?

Don’t get me wrong, I want to see you have the swooshy toys. But as has been thrashed by others I don’t think $200 for a single lightsabre in itself is a sensible way to go. Especially considering it will most likely be used only by a single game that is currently not actually supported financially by NZLARPS (maybe something to reconsider?), and given the circumstances could be viewed as a very cheeky request.

That said, following our chat the other day I’m going to build one over here to show how it can be done, and try emulate Derek’s boken tutorial. The net result will hopefully be that instead of one fairly impressive guy at Armageddon, you have a small army of people waging a pitch battle for the entertainment of the masses :stuck_out_tongue:

That would be good Dave.

We are an affiliate and have been for some time now - thats why we have a forum on Diatribe…

The prop would be NZ Larps - it would be used in the same way that we use all NZ Larps props - with due care and attention.

Perhaps it is worth moving to being a project I don’t know - Some thing I can bring up with the other committee members and find out if its worth it for both of us. To be honest I didn’t apply to be a project at the beginning not because I wanted to keep all the money to myself but because I knew we would not run into any profit for a long time due to the prop requirements of the game.

An army of Sith V Jedi ala knights of the old republic would be great and definatly somthing people would remember if they saw it.

At the moment there are several players who are becomming force sensitive however any dark jedi/ jedi / sith / insert other force user with light saber here they come across at the moment do not have a light saber to fight the players with - which results in them having a lot of force powers to make up the difference.

when it comes down to what we play with - I am happy with the suggestion of making them but for show’s unless they are tip top its just not going to be worth taking them along without making it look like ‘a bunch of kids in parks with foam bats’.

The way to counter act this is to change the focus of what you are showing. If for instance you just had so many people with weapons that looked like foam bats and then you had a large battle in front of the spectators it becomes less of ‘a bunch of kids in parks with foam parks’ then ‘an awesome jedi battle that no long gets hurt because its foam and not plastic’

I would like to remind you that the turn out for Armageddon this year was not “lots” it was barely “some”

It was a good turn out given that we only planned it over one week. Given more time and a more thought out plan of what we are doing of terms of performance on the day more people may be able to come.

Even as a project, you still need to build new weapon costs into your greater game costs.
There are very rare occasions when NZLARPS have made exceptions to this.
One is around Halloween when cheap masks have been brought up (potentially benefitting ALL nzlarps games) and had a total cost of $100 and they got a sawg of masks which see a lot of use.
The other was $100 I secured to buy costumes from a garage sale at a costume shop in which I got around 30 pieces of costume. And these are open available as part of the Hamilton gear library and owned by nzlarps.

And I think, if you were careful, that a home made LARP safe lightsabre would be pretty safe and pretty effective and not baseball bat-like at all. And cheap.
I’d say you could make maybe 5-10 for the same money as a professional one.

Any larp can get a forum here. While NZLARPS owns Diatribe, the forum is for all larps and larpers.

With a project the society pays the costs up front, and owns any proceeds including equipment purchased with the funding provided. I think the main reason to become a project is to “communitise” any profits and gear coming from a larp, so it can be used for the benefit of all local larps.

The society requires projects to forecast their costs and discourages losses. But I think there are two approaches you could take to doing project budgets while still being able to afford big investments:

  1. Approximately forecast all your games for the next one or two years now, to show that the costs will come back. The committee may be happy for the project to make a loss at first if forecasts show there will eventually be an overall profit. You would need to report after each event on the debt still owed by the project, until it gets into the black.

  2. Buy the expensive stuff as your personal property, don’t include it in the project budgets, and don’t give that gear to the society as proceeds of the project. Then include those items one at a time in your event budgets, having the project/society buy them off you over the course of numerous events. This will be easier to get through the committee, because it’s more business-as-usual for the society in terms of funding each event.

In terms of the lightsabres, the society can make any sort of purchases outside the usual project budgetting process if the committee thinks it’s justified. We’ve bought a generator, a printer, masks, and some latex weapons that way. Projects have also bought latex weapons using their event budgets. Mordavia did this to aquire some latex shortswords, although they were a lot cheaper than those lightsabres and the events were a lot bigger, so the same approach might not work for you. To date, these ad hoc purchases have tended to be things that would be used by a lot of projects or affiliates.

Personally I reckon the best approach would be to become a project and use one of the financial approaches above to justify the lightsabre purchase. The lightsabres will be worth more to the society if the society also accumulates a bunch of other Star Wars stuff to be used with them, which is what would happen if you were a project.

News every one!

Star Wars made its first Profit this game despite the games lowest attendance with only 6 players attending. One washed his passport and so could not leave the country he currently resides in (yes we do have players that fly in just to play) and the other had uni work that was important.

Uni crippled our crew numbers as well how ever the game ran very well and I am pleased with how the Black power armor looked on Porl - hopefully there will be pictures of this soon we had Judit the ninja around… somewhere :slight_smile:

The up side of this is now I have money to spend before the next game on stuff rather than having to pay back costs after :slight_smile:

I hope attendance will be up for the next game in December so that we can start putting money aside for Light Sabers

At this rate you could be right Ryan - perhaps we will be able to borrow the funds from NZ Larps and write it off over time so that Star wars eventually own the weapons themselves.

That isn’t at all what Ryan suggested. That is the exact opposite of what Ryan suggested.

Anna’s right. I was suggesting Star Wars become a project and then NZLARPS find a way to buy the gear, either by allowing the project to be in debt at first or by gradual accumulation of the gear.

There’s no way that the society should lend people money for personal equipment.

It won’t be personal equipment it will belong to the Star Wars Club - why is it whenever any one suggests something perfectly normal for a society that supports clubs to do with its funds its assumed they want the item at the end for personal use 0-o

That was not what I said.

I wasn’t assuming you want it for personal use. But legally speaking, unless you incorporate as an entity like a company or a society anything you possess is a personal possession.

In any case, I don’t think NZLARPS should be lending other larp clubs money either. It would rather defeat its core purpose of centralising funds and equipment for anyone to use.

I was trying to make a helpful suggestion about suitable ways to work with NZLARPS on Star Wars equipment, if Star Wars was a project.

And specifically (to cross threads): will it attract two new people into the community?

.[/quote]

for my two cents, i wouldn’t give the light saber as an example of a good way of getting new members.

at armageddon, yes, totally, i bet people would would marvel at it.

but i think that base of people is an easy/ripe please to poach members from and to break into no matter what we throw at them (not at all to dimish what u guys did at Arma this year, awesome stuff!!).

for introducing people to larp outside of comic conventions (which is a way bigger base) it would probs put people off.

don worry though, one day all your base are belong to me.