Wellington LARP

Community Larp discussion
#1

Hello all,

I’m in a mind to run a one off Live Action Role-playing Game (LARP) in Wellington in the near future, if successful we’d run others, perhaps moving to a club based system, running regular events. Now what I’d like to know is

Would anyone be interested?
What style or genre would people be interested in playing?
Would anyone be interested on being one of the development team?

Let me tell you a bit about myself I’ve been LARPing for nearly 23 years, yeap that’s correct 23 years. I started when I was 14 at Treasure Trap; one of the first UK based LARP systems.
I’ve played, run, and designed many LARPs from small (UK standards) 20 people events, to full fest systems 6000+ players. I’ve been a Faction leader for the Bears in the Gathering system (6000 players) as well as a temporary Vampire herald, for the camarilla in Bristol UK.

I’ve played full contact LARPs, as well as full immersion events, in horror, fantasy, modern, sci-fi and alternative history styles.

So please send me a email webmaster@greyveil.com, or post here.

Thanks for your time

Mat Gritt

#2

n00b :smiley:

#3

Oh cough and welcome to diatribe. Don’t mind me I left my manners in my other persona!

#4

Oh Derek you card!

But seriously, post this in the Wellington subforum as well. Diatribe is almost exclusively frequented by people from the Auckland scene, so you may have difficulty rallying people here.

#5

Thanks for popping in here, while we’re predominantly Auckland at the moment we’re keen to rep larps from all over the country. nzrag.com/ has some larp boards full of Wellingtonians.

Keep us abreast of goings-on 'cos we have a few members that like to travel for larps.

#6

I’d defintely be keen on a Wellington larp - but I’m only there during uni holidays, and can’t really do weekend events either

#7

I think I speak for the Diatribe community when I say that we’d love to see a big larp campaign in Wellington. I think there’d be heaps of enthusiasm for it if you could do it well and there’s a real niche to be filled there.

I don’t think Wellington is a larp wasteland at all. Big ongoing larps don’t happen on their own, they take people with vision and commitment to knuckle down and run them and it just happens that no-one in Wellington is filling that role at the moment.

Build it and they will come. You may not get a lot of Welly larpers enthusiastic immediately because they’re used to a specific style of larp (one-off “freeform” larps), and they may have heard people promise to build something before and then not follow through. You’ll have to build from scratch to some degree. But it’s totally possible.

Don’t expect to just talk people into it, and don’t be put off if the initial reception is lukewarm. Create nice larp materials and distribute them wholesale (including to living history people if you’re doing live combat, a lot of them are nascent larpers), run awesome larps (even if they are small at first), and word will spread to the people who would be interested and it will grow into something big, even if it has to create a new community to do so.

Diatribe would support your effort in any way we can, and be more than happy to support the community that forms around it. Go for it!

In terms of preferences, mine probably don’t count for much because I’m in the wrong city to play very often. Personally I’m a fan of live-combat larps, I like the immediacy and adrenaline. I’m betting there are a lot of people who would like that stuff in Wellington, it’s just that they’re a bit invisible at the moment because there’s nothing catering for those tastes at the moment. Having read your ideas in the past (around having a player-led campaign with a dynamic reactive environment), I think you’re totally on the right path already and just need to start running events.