Meanwhile, Waypoint has a huge shortage of crew, enough to threaten the next event's viability.

So is it incredibly selfish of me not to crew sometimes? Should all LRPers crew sometimes? After all, there cant be events without crew.

So, am I a selfish bitch?

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It is not a competition. It is a web forum.

Well, if you hate crewing, you hate crewing.  I don't mind it myself and in some cases want to to help people out and see what new events are like but in the end it is sort of working and you're not being paid for it.

It would depend really.  If I had a character die completely unexpectedly without warning, then I'd probably not have a backup ready.  At some games that have been, (I'm thinking Grand Design particularly) getting a new character up and running straight away would be near impossible without preparation, however, I have _paid_ to attend the event, so I'd expect to play, but if I was invited to crew and could be provided with a bit of not-my-character kit then I probably would crew. 

Essentially it's up to the organisers of an event to make sure that their crew want to come along and pretty much the only way they can do that effectively, as far as I've seen, is to froth and be passionate about it and to be so great to their crew that people actually want to do it.

I don't think there is an obligation, instead there should be enough of an incentive to crew. Discounts for future play sometimes work (not that I have ever had anyone claim one before) but often cannot work in cases where some of your crew cannot play at all due to 'knowing too much'. Feeding your crew or offering decent beds (giving them preference for bunks over players) also works. Making sure that all crew get the chance to play the sort of roles they prefer to play is also a good plan.

I have been wondering if it is feasible to offer the chance to 'part crew' an event. The idea being that you can come along to an event, play some and crew some and maybe be allowed to pay less for the event. We did it for one event which was really 2 seperate one night events - charged £20 per event and offered players the chance to play one, the other or both and crew when not playing. Logistically it was a little awkward to set up but it went smoothly in the end. Extending this to normal weekend long events may be plausible. For example, if you say that the event is split into several sections. i.e.

 - Friday evening

 - Saturday morning

 - Saturday afternoon

 - Saturday evening

 - Sunday Morning

This gives you 5 sections, 4 if you count saturday daytime instead of morning and afternoon, in a typical event. If you divide the event cost by 5 (or 4) then you get the cost per section. If someone volunteers to crew for part of the event and tells you when they wish to do this in advance you can charge them less based on how long they crew for. What do people think about this sort of plan?

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

Thats what Bladelands does.  They charge £60 for players to 'play only'.  They charge £30 for people to 'crew and assist'.  If you 'crew and assist' you get allocated either a morning, afternoon or evening 'crewing' slot each day.  The organisers actively encourage people to 'play and assist' as it makes for good fun large scale melees.  I always 'play and assist' and I really enjoy it.

Matt J

If I wanted to listen to an arsehole, I'd fart!

Nope, if yer pays to play you can play if yer wants!

Just don't feel that you have to- I made that mistake with LT and last summer it felt as if people were taking the piss, when in fact the person taking the piss was me, for not saying no.

There are always things that need to be done at an event and rarely enough people who will do them (even less who can) so it's easy to convince yourself that you'll let people down if you don't crew. In your case it's even easier- you'd paid to play, so go ahead and enjoy it.

Im always of the opinion if your character dies and you crew your entitled to a refund of sorts!

If you can bring another character along then thats your choice.

I think if I were there and in that situation I'd crew ( personally) but thats cause Im a sucker for the " but were short on crew" line though saying when my character died and was raised as an undead I turned on the party (teehee)

Meda Spirit Talker of the ...... Tribe

"Guns don't kill people poisons do"