Writing for Chimera 2013

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 heavily 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.
  • Your game must have at least 16 characters.

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 - while we will endevaour to give you the location that best fits your game, flexibility is helpful.

How many characters can my game have?
We’re continuing to aim for the stars and beyond. Because of the size of Chimera, we’re need to accommodate between 130-150 people each round so larger games are preferred.

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

Chimera 2013 is now accepting game submissions via the following form:

docs.google.com/spreadsheet/vie … E6MQ#gid=0

Please make sure you READ THE GUIDELINES before submitting your game, and that seeing as the convention is getting large, your game must have NO LESS THAN 16 PLAYERS. Games in the 20-30 region are heavily preferred.

There’s just over two weeks until we need all game submissions for Chimera in, and we’re still short of games. We need another 11 or so for the weekend. If you’re interested in running something but aren’t quite sure, or would like to discuss it, please feel free to contact us at chimera@nzlarps.org with your ideas and questions :slight_smile:

Hi all,

Thank you very much to all the kind people who submitted one or more games for Chimera. Having gone through and collated all the submissions, it seems we are still short of what we need to meet this year’s expected demanded, by approximately six games. Our shortage this year is due to a large number of very experienced GMs moving into the flagship team, as well as a couple of long-time GMs taking a break. We really need people, particularly new GMs, to step up and take on the adventure of running a game :slight_smile: I understand it can be an intimidating prospect, but send us an email and we can work out your concerns. We have the lovely Stephanie Pegg as our GM liaison again this year, as well as a community of experienced GMs and eager players to help you out. You do not by any means need to run an original game of your writing, there are plenty of games prewritten (both local and overseas) that would suit. We can help you find something!

If we aren’t able to get the games we need, Chimera will still go ahead, but it will be smaller than the last couple of years and we will have to turn people away.

Please consider stepping up.

Thanks,
Anna

Cheers everyone that stepped up, we should be all good now!