What should NZLARPs do in 2018?

nzLARPS
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#1

Greetings!

Thus far in the current committee term, I’ve been trying to get an idea of what the general membership of NZLARPs is interesting in having happen, and then getting it done. So far, we’ve ended up tackling some of the easy stuff: portable defibrillator for NZLARPs (http://www.diatribe.co.nz/t/psa-where-to-find-a-defibrillator-near-your-larp/21830)? And the New Health & Safety Legislation (http://www.diatribe.co.nz/t/larps-and-the-health-and-safety-at-work-act-2015/21854). Now it’s time to tackle the tricky stuff, and the things have been on the community to-do list for far too long.

I’d like you all to vote for the top five things that you’d like the committees (National & Regional) get sorted out in 2018. That’s the first poll. It’s anonymous, and you can only vote for five things. The projects that get the highest votes here are the ones I will be pushing to get done.

The second poll is the same list, but it’s for you to ask to be involved in a project. This one is public, and you can offer to help on as many projects as you like. If we get too many cooks for any given broth, current NZLARPs members will be asked to take the lead, and some projects that specifically relate to NZLARPs management and administration will be restricted to NZLARPs members (marked with a *). But everything else, a current membership is not required, just a willingness to get involved.

If you’d like to add a project to the list, it’s not too late! Please send it to nzlarps@gmail.com and I’ll add it to the list. As new projects get added (and hopefully, completed!), you should be able to redistribute your votes to your next-most-important projects. If you want to ask questions about projects, then either in the thread or through to my shiny presidential email nzlarps@gmail.com is great.

Non-NZLARPs members are allowed to get involved in both polls. If you have alt accounts though, please don’t use them to double-vote.

And so: The List! (Insert Y2J joke…)
Poll 1: What should we do?

  • Register of safety and welfare issues, with anonymous reporting and confidentialised summaries being publicly posted
  • Emulating the NZ Health & Safety at work act for our health-and-safety administration (incident and near-miss register, risk assessment and mitigation paperwork etc)
  • Guidance for GMs on # of first aiders and first aid kits at games
  • Sorting out the affiliation status of the FB group
  • Guidance for GMs on feeding people with dietary restrictions
  • Guidance for GMs on emergency contact details
  • NZLARPs official alcohol policy*
  • NZLARPs complaints policy up and running*
  • NZLARPs constitution rewrite*
  • Improving accessibility to and diversity in larping (Often cited issues in this space: children/minors, bathrooms, sleeping spaces for snorers and insomniacs, non-coms at boffer games, old farts with knee problems at venues with hills)
  • How to get more people running games
  • How to get more people running the committees
  • Online voting for the elections
  • “Yes please tell us if you have a problem” workshops
  • Guidance for GMs on bullying prevention tools
  • National standardisation on project requirements
    *Regional Safety Statistics (a la Wellington’s annual survey)
  • An official “Do not speak to me” notice, backed by NZLARPS and GMs, for use when ban-hammer may not be called for but something clearly needs to be done and keeping two people apart is clearly to the benefit of all, also produces a record of bad behaviour, accompanied by a comprehensive list of ways to electronically block someone

0 voters

Show results
NZLARPS National Committee quarterly summary January 2018
#2

Oh bugger, adding things into the “i’d like to help” poll wont work, because it’s a public poll, and you can’t edit a public poll, apparently. New plan: Poll #2 is deleted. This post is wiki’d. Tag yourself next to things you’d like to help with. Sorry to people who already volunteered :frowning:

Poll 2: What do you want to help with?

  • Register of safety and welfare issues, with anonymous reporting and confidentialised summaries being publicly posted @u_ne_korn @Evie @lesbiancobra
  • Emulating the NZ Health & Safety at work act for our health-and-safety administration (incident and near-miss register, risk assessment and mitigation paperwork etc)
  • Guidance for GMs on # of first aiders and first aid kits at games
  • Sorting out the affiliation status of the FB group
  • Guidance for GMs on feeding people with dietary restrictions @u_ne_korn @Evie @lesbiancobra
  • Guidance for GMs on emergency contact details
  • NZLARPs official alcohol policy* @lesbiancobra
  • NZLARPs complaints policy up and running* @Evie @IdiotSavant @lesbiancobra
  • NZLARPs constitution rewrite* @IdiotSavant @lesbiancobra
  • Improving accessibility to and diversity in larping (Often cited issues in this space: children/minors, bathrooms, sleeping spaces for snorers and insomniacs, non-coms at boffer games, old farts with knee problems at venues with hills) @Evie @lesbiancobra
  • How to get more people running games @u_ne_korn @Evie @IdiotSavant @lesbiancobra
  • How to get more people running the committees @u_ne_korn @IdiotSavant @lesbiancobra
  • Online voting for the elections @IdiotSavant
  • “Yes please tell us if you have a problem” workshops @u_ne_korn @lesbiancobra
  • Guidance for GMs on bullying prevention tools @Evie
  • Regional Safety Statistics (a la Wellington’s annual survey) @Evie @IdiotSavant @lesbiancobra
  • National standardisation on project requirements @lesbiancobra
  • An official “Do not speak to me” notice, backed by NZLARPS and GMs, for use when ban-hammer may not be called for but something clearly needs to be done and keeping two people apart is clearly to the benefit of all, also produces a record of bad behaviour, accompanied by a comprehensive list of ways to electronically block someone @u_ne_korn
#3

Blep Bloop: New item on the poll bot has added:

*Regional Safety Statistics (a la Wellington’s annual survey)

#4

And editing a non-public poll seems to have made votes disappear.

#5

Son of a… no new additions the polls now. New ideas will be incorporated some other way

#6

And people who voted last night will probably want to do it again.

#7

Quick question on the “Do not speak to me” notice. I may be missing something but I’m struggling to think of a situation were something like this would be appropriate but a warning for harassment or breaching code of conduct wouldn’t. Also, would it possibly be more efficient to do an more general overhaul of the warning/banning procedures rather than introduce something that, at least to me, seems rather narrow.

3 Likes
#8

Its apparently a common solution for interaction problems beneath the threshold of (or without sufficient evidence for) harassment / code of conduct stuff in (much larger) UK larps. An example of such a policy is here: https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Must_avoid_policy

I can see some ways in which it would be useful. I can also see some problems. If people want the committee to look at it, then we’d have to see if it can be made to work.

I think that’s covered by “NZLARPs complaints policy up and running”.

1 Like
#9

Yeah, it’s that ‘much larger’ that’s the catch really, isn’t it? It feels very much like a solution designed for very big weekend or longer games. It’s really up to those that play that kind of game up to the size we get in NZ, I guess, to decide if it’s a useful tool for in that context. I feel like it wouldn’t do much for someone habitually playing in smaller games.

1 Like
#10

Yeah. When you have a thousand people in a field, separate faction encampments, and self-catering it is both easy and reasonable to avoid people. Its much harder in an event a tenth that size and with shared catering and only a limited amount of plot.

For small theatre-style, pre-casting gives some ability to seperate players who would prefer not to interact, and there’s a good culture among GMs of enabling this.

1 Like
#11

Thanks for your input! So happy to see people talking about these suggestions I have! :smiley:

As a GM, I have used an unofficial version of this. It seemed to solve the problem that I was dealing with. I suggested it as one tool, not as “THE” solution to problems.
Also, I have in the past seen people act as if they were very uncomfortable in using FB’s block function to avoid people who make them unhappy, and also act as if they were very uncomfortable about choosing to simply actively avoid people who make them unhappy. Because they don’t want to cause drama, or be rude, or “spoil the hobby for other people”. I wanted to give people a way of feeling OK about finding a way to do that.

1 Like
#12

OK, I’m pretty late to this conversation, but this would have been helpful to me in a difficult situation some years ago.

I had a private fight with someone that bled over into con and larp attendance because, well, we were both in the same social group. I would have been happy to just avoid the person until everyone had a chance to calm down, but it worked out that they just ‘happened’ to make an abusive phone call to my partner (or in person) in the couple of weeks after we’d both attended the same event, multiple times. They weren’t doing anything specifically objectionable at the cons themselves (it felt a bit like they were hanging out in my peripheral vision a lot but that’s.a difficult thing to complain about), but all up I spent a year and a half having to grit my teeth and look over my shoulder and refuse to be chased out of a hobby I loved.

Having the knowledge that I could actually ask for some help from the organisers to just put a bit of weight behind “leave Steph alone” would have helped a lot. Before you ask, my partner didn’t want to call the police and he was the primary target so I respected his wishes, and there’s a certain degree of feeling that making a public fuss would make me feel more of a victim/give me a reputation for being “overly sensitive”. Here’s the more significant problem: I found out later that the same person had followed a similar pattern of harassment against someone else I know, and again, she wasn’t quite willing to take out a nuisance suit, but she was getting pretty close before the behaviour knocked off. If everybody keeps quiet about this stuff because they fear the social consequences, it’s reasonable to assume that it will keep on happening.

The other side of it: keeping a formal register of people’s negative behaviour has it’s own consequences. It’s the hobby equivalent of the verbal warning/written warning used in businesses and that stuff stays on peoples’ records forever. I’m also aware that some people are less popular than others, and in other organisations I’ve seen the line “I’m going to report you for a Code of Conduct violation” used as a threat by people who have a bullying disposition and will use any tool at their disposal. So I think that any kind of formal system would need to give the person who’s been complained about a right of reply, and preferably involve an agreed plan of action between them, the organiser, and the complainant to make things right.

3 Likes
#13

Thanks for your input! It’s not even a little too late for it.

As for the thought that there would be negative consequences to tracking bad behavuour , how could we alleviate that? Scrub the records after a year of no complaints? Any other ideas? (I’ve started Xmas eating and drinking and my brain is shutting down…)

I won’t tolerate these tools being used as a bullying tool, though I absolutely see why there could be worry about that, and risk of it happening if the people administering them aren’t onto it.

#14

I wouldn’t scrub the record, because documented patterns of behaviour show the difference between someone having a one-off bad day/being a bit clueless, and a systemic problem. But I wouldn’t make it public either, and I’d write into the complaints policy best practice from the HR world, like documenting every interaction, face to face conversations where possible, try to have a witness in mediation conversations who isn’t going to take sides (cool headed and not close friends with either party), let both parties have a chance to speak - but strongly encourage them to stick to “I statements” eg “When you did X, I felt Y” rather than speculating about the other person’s intentions.

And document agreed actions from the mediation, make them SMART type actions that are concrete, specific, and it’s testable whether they happened or not. eg instead of “Be nicer to this person” use “make a written apology to this person” or “do not approach this person”. What I liked about that “Do not approach” document from Odyssey is that it detailed specific examples of what was or was not OK, and that included what the complainant should and should not do (they couldn’t for instance, go into the camp of the person they complained about and expect them to leave.)

Then 6 months later, review what happened with the agreed actions and note that on the record. Someone who messed up but wants to make things right will probably be upset about being complained about at the time, but will make an effort in the months following. The few individuals who aren’t willing to change when they know there is a problem will need to have the consequences escalated.

And also, everybody needs to be kind to themselves. It’s really stressful being involved in a serious fight, and it’s hard work being an outsider to the fight trying to make things work out. Empathy takes work, you know?

2 Likes
#15

Thank you! All splendid ideas. It’s about 400 degrees where I am right now so I will not be having a productive cristmas break, but I’ll know where to look when I cool off a bit!

#16

I’ll just add something to the list a bit late. I had an email from a Polish larper asking for game recommendations. This made me realise that there isn’t actually a webpage listing all the LARPs written by kiwis that are publicly available (with links). Would NZLARPs be able to host such a page?

2 Likes
#17

Maybe an “NZ scenarios” box on the website’s resources page? Fortunately, I already have a list (though it clearly isn’t well known):

#18

As of this morning, the complaints policy was winning the poll on what I should do next. While the poll will keep running, I’ve started work on that.
First step is general gathering of suggestions and feedback from members and non-members, and accumulating volunteers to help do the work of this project. Because I like to keep using what works, I’ve made a google form: https://goo.gl/forms/bREYWpLJa7R6qpzn2
Suggestions can be anonymous if you’d like. I’m also taking any suggestions about any other topic you’d care to talk to me about.

2 Likes