Evolving from enthousiast to pro

Most of us larp organisers started our hobby as enthousiast. We wanted others to experience the wonderfull world we created. But we all quickly learned it's not all fun.

In order to organise an event we often have a legal organisation backing the event, we need an insurance, bank account, accounting, IT and much more. Soon the hobby takes on the aspect of a small company (packaged inside a non-profit organisation).

With this organisation comes meetings and that's what I want to talk about today.

In the professional world I'm a freelance IT consultant working for a big international company. We have our share of meetings. And like those meetings in the larp world they mostly start late, have no agenda, have discussions in between, end late and lastly no summary of the meeting is sent around.

But since a year now I've introduced the Manager Tools effective meeting guidelines in my professional meetings. And the result is remarkable. My meetings start on time, have an agenda, stick to the agenda and the time for each agenda bullet, the meetings end on time (sometimes the meetings end earlier) and in the end I sent a summary of what was discussed and agreed.

So having made my meetings in my day job more effective I'm now trying to do the same for my larp meetings. A month ago I tried it out at a board meeting of Arrowhead Events vzw and it works :-)
We started 5 mins later than expected, but in the end we ended the meeting 5 mins later than expected. This means that we actually stuck to the meeting schedule and we didn't loose hours on needless talk.

Yesterday I was attending a meeting of the Belgian Larp Fedartion, BE Larp vzw. And it was what I expected it to be: starting rather late (30mins later then announced), no clear agenda (just a document was sent about what we would discuss), people talking amongst themselves, talking about one topic for more than an hour, etc.
Now, don't misunderstand me, what was discussed was important and people made some good points. But I had set aside 3 hours for that meeting and in the end those 3 hours were not enough. When I left after 3 hours only one third of the document was discussed. Meaning I missed 2/3 of the discussion.

I really think that if we would introduce the same standards we use in our professional life into our larp organisations it will really be a great help. I truly believe that the meeting of yesterday could've been done in 3 hours max.
It would already be a great boost if all attendees would start behaving professionally in those meeting. Now a lot of people were talking amongst themselves when someone was trying to make a point, showing a lot of disrepect to the speaker. Having the meeting start on time shows also a lot of respect to those people who actually made the effort to be there on time (btw: I was late, so shame on me).

If meetings always start late and run late you have the following result:

• people arrive late, because they know the meeting will start late
• people will just not come because their fed-up with how long the meetings take
• meetings will each time start later and later and last longer and longer

I've received the proof that using the Manager Tools guidelines for effective meetings work. They work in the professional world and they work in the larp world. It all take some practice. And a little bit of courage to start those first 'effective' meetings on time, even when one 1/3 of the attendee are already present.

I'd say, check out the podcast and start using their rules into your larp meetings, you'll notice the difference.

Player organised IC get together

I was browsing the Dumnonni Chronicles forum when I saw a discussion about an IC Social get together.

Seems some people think that if players come IC together it might ruin the actual game itself.

Well I disagree. Nothing is more fun than players coming together IC to socialise IC. They may even make big plans, forge alliances, try to kill one another (without really killing someone as that should be reserved for during the actual game), ...

For Manticore we've always allowed that (we even encourage it) and most players even invite us (the crew) to attend. When we have time we gladly accept the invitation and create an NPC character for ourselves.
For players it's always nice when crew attends since we can then give them some extra background information, mostly concerning their own group. We do try to make everybody equal be making that info either group specific or publishing the given info in the IC newspaper.

One of the fears that some crew have is that people would undertake actions that might break the game. But I don't understand this fear. Players can always secretely come together (IC or OOC). At least when the crew knows about the get togethers they can invite themselves :-) and check that everything goes well.

Most notoriously of all player IC get togethers I participated in must be the annual Rafiki's Birthday party each August. In 2008 there was even a murder attempt on Rafiki, without actually killing him. Result: the players who attended it were even more anxious for the next Manticore event.

I believe that the crew should be thankfull that players want to organise IC get togethers. It proves that you have players who really enjoy your fictional world and want to spend time in that world. What better praise can there be? :-)
It also means your players want to prepare themselves for the next game, meaning better IC-ness on their part.

This makes me remember Dragonbane, the day before the game started we were already IC-ish, which helped us get to know each other better in RL (we only knew most of the other players from the internet). Get to know the IC names of everybody etc. All in all the end result is in most cases better IC moments and immersion.

The only caveat of IC get togethers and crew attending is that the crew might give those attending the get together some advantage. Here I mean that the crew can give some background info that is specific to some plot of the (next) event. Crew should take caution to make sure that (a) the info they give is solely intended for the given playergroup or (b) that the info will be distributed via an IC newspaper or such.
As it would else be unfair to those players who are unable to attend/organise IC get togethers.

Let me know if I missed something major :-)

2009 is gone

Well 2009 is forever gone and will only be kept alive in our memories.
For me 2009 had some ups and downs on the larp scene.
Main downturn was of course the fact that I resigned as a volunteer of Oneiros. I didn't like having to take that decission, but in the end I believe it was needed.
The biggest upturn was for me Calam II. After the mixed result of Calam I some people told me that Calam was lost beyond recovery. Since I'm hard-headed I went along and organised Calam II (with a whole new crew). Although there were not a much participants as at Calam I it still was a big success. Now I just have to confirm this success with Calam III.
Between my big up and down were other things of course; 2 mini Manticores, Avatar, Saga and of course the excellent Outlore.
For me Outlore gives me the closest opportunity to experience how Calam might feel to our participants. Both Outlore and Calam have self-cooking, high costume standards, quick and easy game system, etc. The story is of course different and the game areas are somewhat different, but in spirit they feel the same. Only pity is that I need to go all the way to the South-West of the UK for Outlore.
All in all 2009 was a good year for me on the larp scene.
For 2010 I have the following on my plate: Manticore (ending the current cycle), Calam III (needs to at least be as good as Calam II), trip to Sweden to check out Cinderhill for a possible Dragonbane II, Conquest of Mythodea, Saga and Dawn.
You'll notice that Avatar is missing from the list, well I'm not sure if I'll attend it this year. While I do understand why people like it, it's just not my thing.

Anyway, best wishes to all of you for 2010 and hope you'll make it a blast.

Manticore

Last weekend was the last larp of the year for me: Manticore X.VI.II - Stilte voor de storm II.

As two of the team just became fathers we made this a so called 'mini' event. This meant less plot, less time etc. This to put less pressure on the team.

In the end we delivered what we promised. But while some thought it was again a great event, others, mostly new players, thought it lacked something.

For us as a crew it was an exhaustive event as we were undermanned for this one. We even had the ill luck that one of the team had an accident the day before the event and his knee was wrecked and thus could not attend the event. Michaël, best of luck with the healing of the knee.

Given the circumstances I think the event was good, we only need to make certain that we always foresee (and use) something for the new players.

As Vincent already told most people: we can use more people in the Manticore team. We can not keep up delivering good events with the current amount of people, we need fresh blood :-)

Caege was a success

While I wasn't attending this event I've heard that it was considered a success by all who attended.
Although there were some minor moments: e.g. the dreaded Saturday afternoon dip that all Belgian Larps know.
But it seems that the overall event was well liked by those who attended.

Reports like this make me sad that I have such a busy agenda. If I could I'd attend all the larps that I want, but sadly real-life is taking more of my time meaning less time for larps.

Anyway, congrats to the Caege team.

Calam was a great success!

Well it's a long time since I last blogged so let's give you guys and girls some updates :-)

Calam was a success
This time I'll not use my own words, I'll let the participants speak:

"To say it with the words of Saturday evenging: fracking awesome
Oh ja, the demons are sissies, if I could do all that I'd dare it too "

"Calam was an enjoyable experience
from the point of view of an NPC it was a wonderfull interaction between players and npcs
it always made me more anxious to stay more IC when seeing the other participants
I really loved the quote "that's no metal sir, it's vulcanic glass, that's something completely different"
I'd say, all join for good rpg and athmosphere"

"I can only agree, Calam is so much more than other Larp's.
With the limited amount of participants it looked like a peronal LARP
I'd say, join us if you like some decent roleplaying"

"Calam II was super. I really enjoyed my time there. The location was beautiful (ok, at night "a little bit cold", but still beautifull). I really enjoyed the story, the just enough story and just enough fights
so congratulations to the crew, to the npcs and to anyone who cooked this weekend"

"Thank you, to those who organised it, for the memorable event, and all the effort being put in. And thank you to the playerbase, who made the great moments all the more fun, and with whom I had some hilarious OOC moments as well."

"First of all I would like to thank everybody for the great weekend. Special thanks to the crew that spend a lot of time in scouting for a location, preparing and organising the event. Special thanks to Jeremy, Steven and Chris for making it actually work."

"You can be sure we'll be back.
Thx to the crew, it was really great.
Special thx to Steven and his Defender (you saved us a LOT of trips)."

As you can read it was a success. I'm rather proud of my crew to help me pull it off and make Calam achieve the goal I was aiming for.

No more Caege for me
It's not that I don't like Caege, I actually LOVE the world and there are some really good roleplayers there. But for Elves there's not really much to do.
Oh, I hear ya telling me to stop playing an Elf, but if the organisation doesn't provide things to do for Elves then they just shouldn't let players allow to choose an Elf as race.
I did enjoy myself last time, but that was because I made my own game. And frankly, if I have to make my own game in order to have a great time, then I believe 105 euro's is far too high participation fee. I have nothing against a Larp asking players to make their own game, but then the price should be accordingly.
I stop with Caege with pain in my heart, as it's the only larp I'd consider playing an Elf (and no, I won't consider Poort, as Poort is too old-school for me and I only hear negative feedback from friends who play/npc there). But with my diminished time schedule for larps I need to cut somewhere and Caege had enough reason for me to send it to the chopping block.

How much money is a larp worth?
Well in the previous topic I stated that 105 euro is too much for a larp where I need to make my own game in order to enjoy it. So what are the items that make me decide if a larp is too expensive or not?
Well I'll try to set up a list of things that I take into account when I choose a larp:

• game world
• rules system
  
• food/drinks included
• rpg standards
• visual realism
• amount of scenario
• amount of fighting
• distance from my home

Game world
That's an easy one: if the game world intrigues me I'm already with half a foot in.

Rules system
Well this is more complicated. Sometimes I'm all in for a complicated system, while I personnaly prefer the free-form system (like Calam and Dragonbane has).
I think it mostly boils down that if the system is too complex or leaves the game wide open for abuse I might not participate in that larp.

Food/drinks included
If food/drinks are included in the fee I would be ok to pay a bit more for the game. But since I organise larps where we include food and drinks I know how much it all costs. So you need to provide some pretty good food/drinks to make me pay say 40 euro's more for a larp :-).

Costume&rpg standards + visual realism
I'm grouping these threee as for me they are the main deciding factor to participate in a larp.
If a larp would allow US type of weapons, I'm out. If they allow sneakers, jeans and tshirts I'm also out. If there's too much suspension of debelief needed (aka visual realism sucks) then that's not a larp for me.
I also hate the fact when people talk too much OOC. I have no problem with a little OOC talk (I'm guilty as charged), but I still remember a larp when we were in a high tense moment, ready to kill the first who would blink in the wrong way and suddenly the main person said: "Hey, 5 minutes ago, did you ask if I had object X IC or OOC", the guy said "IC of course...", and then she would reply "Oh, but then I didn't say IC that I had it, I thought you asked it OOC". I mean, that's the worst roleplay I ever encountered. Larps where such things happen on a regular basis (people dropping in and out of the game at regular intervals) I leave aside.

Amount of scenario/fighting
If there's too much brainless fighting I won't participate. Also if there's little scenario then I won't participate if the price it too high (too high is subjective to the other items here)

Distance from my home
Well this one is easy. The further away a larp is the higher quality it must have. As I need to take into account the higher traveling costs.
For example Outlore cost me around 200 euro's but it was worth every single cent. I almost believed I was really in that game world and that's already worth some extra money :-)
The price was also high because I had to do a last minute booking of the eurotunnel and that I was alone in the car. I believe I can bring the total cost of Outlore down to 120-150 euro if I book on time and have someone along in the car to share transport costs.

Till next time

Dragonbane II

While pondering about Dragonbane I posted on Facebook that I'd love to get some idea if there would ever come a Dragonbane II. One of the former team-members of Dragonbane then posted that I'd probably had to do it myself if I wanted a DBII.

Since I'm never scared to take up a challenge I'm asking you: "Would you be willing to travel all the way to the middle of Sweden to spent a week (5-6 days) in the middle of nowhere and larp like you've never larped before?"

If the answer is yes, then let me know. If I get around 50 serious commitments I'll start working on a possible Dragonbane II. BUT, be aware that it will take at least 2 to 3 years to organise such an event.

First we need to get permission to re-use existing DB material, next we'll need access to the site, then we'll need to know the state of the village is (last I heard it was rather bad), we'll need money to fix the village and most importantly: we need crazy people like you and me to go there and fix the village.

So if you're fed up with me telling you how GREAT Dragonbane was and how it's still, to this date, the BEST LARP EVER, then let yourself be heard and let me know you're committing to attending DBII (whenever it may take place).

PS: if you're not sure you'll be going to Sweden for a Larp then DON'T commit!