What are the basic criteria for games?
- Characters must be prewritten, 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.
- One-off games are 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.
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 - we will endevaour to give you the location that best fits your game, flexibility is helpful.
How many characters can my game have?
Next year, we’re aiming for the stars, so each round, on average, will want to accomodate up to 120 players (with some variation - for example, Sunday morning is expected to be closer to 100) therefore games need to of a reasonable size. No game is to have more than 30 people (this includes GMs and crew) and we can only accept limited numbers of games with ~10 characters. If your game has only ~10 characters, consider writing your game so two simultaenous runs can be done at the same time (therefore, you only lose one round to GMing but two lots of people get to play your game!)
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. If for some reason we cannot host your game, we will come discuss our reasons with you, but this should be pretty rare.
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.
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?
I have a question you haven’t answered here.
I’m happy to answer it
If you’re keen to run something, here’s how to do it:
) If you have any special requirements, let us know in your game submission, but all the inside spaces have got electrical outlets. The biggest complexes of attached rooms is a hall with two reasonable sized spaces with a deck out the side; and a bigger hall with an upstairs area (although the upstairs was full of office stuff and we had to clear it out last year).