| Hi, Elm. I don't have any personal experience with running events, but I'm nosy enough to have some general advice. My apologies if it's all stuff you've heard already. Elm (1/4/2007)
1) My combat system is quite vigorous and allows thrusting with thrust safe weapons. I hear Dumnonni Chronicles does this also, does anyone know the Dumnonni Chronicles's thrust safty/weapon checking requirements? Or thrusing used in an other system? I think the main reason why many systems ban thrusting is the idea that an inexperienced fighter might see someone thrusting with a thrust-safe weapon and conclude that this means it's safe for everyone to thrust with all weapons. How well do you know your players? If there are relatively few of them, and you know them well enough to be confident that they aren't muppets, then I think it's possible to ensure that everyone knows the difference between thrust-safe and non thrust-safe weapons.
Elm (1/4/2007)
What would you expect as a minimum days food requirements? If you wanted to supply your players with food for a whole day, then I'd say you probably need to give them breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus leave IC drinks and snacks lying around the game area. It helps if the meals are hot- a hot breakfast, in particular, helps wake the players up a bit if they were up until 4am scheming in corners or practising their carousing. If this sounds impractical, then I don't think there's anything wrong with telling the players that they'll need to feed themselves for part of the event. Vegetarian options are often a good idea, as is checking to make sure that no one has any weird allergies. Elm (1/4/2007)
My system would work best with several hundered players, but the logistics would be to great a burden for my first event. In what way is your system best suited to several hundred players? The impression I get is that it's probably best to design a system which works best with the number of players which you realistically think you'll be able to attract and cope with. If it gets to the point where it's logistically possible for you to run really big events, then hopefully you'll by that point have a large pool of people who enjoy the events you run and won't mind the system being tweaked to support games at that scale. Elm (1/4/2007)
What kind of crew to player ratio meets your requirements? That varies quite a bit. At large events, I think it's often possible to have a lower crew to player ratio than at small events. It also depends quite a bit on what your crew are going to be doing. Do you have lots of mechanics or game effects that need direct crew supervision? For example, in some games refs/crew need to be told when a drink has been poisoned so that they can tell the person who drinks it. Some plots require someone to keep track of what's happening to an important item. Is the game likely to have lots of plot which is introduced by refs or crew? Do you need crew to play specific NPCs? For example, if your plot specifies that there are three NPC factions, then you need people to play members of all three factions. If the plot only involves one NPC faction, then if you find yourself running short of crew then you can potentially reduce the number of characters in that faction but increase their stats, or whatever, which may allow you to be more flexible. Is anything likely to happen in the game which would call for a large number of NPCs at once? For example, if it's possible for PCs to summon things, it's possible that someone may decide to try to summon several things at once in order to helpt them fight some monsters. If both the monsters and the summoned creatures are being played by crew, then this may be a significant drain on your crew supply. Do you expect the PCs to stay mostly in one big group, or is it likely that they will decide to split up? If two PC groups end up at opposite ends of the site, and then both try to do something complicated that involves ref supervision, then it's useful if you have two refs available to go and deal with them. Do you need crew with specific OC duties- e.g. cooks, first aiders, people involved in setting up or taking down props, people who help transport things to the site, etc?
Elm (1/4/2007)
One problem is buildings and set dressing (Barnswood is a great site but the buildings don't really fit with the game) I've never been to Barnswood- is the problem with the inside of the buildings or the outside? If it's the inside, then you can do a surprising amount with set dressing. If it's the outside, then you're kind of stuck, but that may or may not be a major problem. I find that a lot of larpers don't care very much if the outside of site buildings look somewhat ouit of place, because they're used to using sites with OC-looking buildings. Obviously IC-looking buildings are a bonus, but I think they're one of those things that have to be either really, really good or really, really bad before they become one of the top 5 things that players remember after the event.
WARNING: the information above may have been subjected to dangerously high levels of ignorance.
OOC (and on Pagga): Carrie
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