Another post made for Facebook, a bit of a stream of consciousness from UK larp orga Pixie Noir, who helps Susannah Noir run her Pieces of Eight larp. Any remaining spelling mistakes my own. There’s a lot here that’s UK-specific, or at least UK leaning, but I had to repeat this (which in his original was at the end.)
Choose being anxious and imposter syndrome at dumb o’clock in the morning.
Choose the weather gods against you or sometimes in your favour.
Choose your caterer breaking down en route.
Choose dealing with interesting customer service issues.
Choose crying yourself asleep convinced it’s all going wrong.
Choose the late night singing of people having a great time round a nice fire.
Choose your toilets blocked or frozen pipelines.
Choose that moment of welcoming someone to their adventure.
Choose the random radio screeches deafening in your ear.
Choose worrying over people having a good time, no one’s bored, and a big fuck off party vibe.
Choose staying up stupid hours typing encounters and briefs in the dark, illuminated only by the lap top or pc screen.
Choose coffee or tea via intravenous.
Choose the phrase “the players have done what? “
Choose larpers that don’t read or listen.
Choose those refreshing early morning walks through your sleeping tent town, in dawn’s early sun.
Choose flopping on your sofa with that takeaway when it’s all said and done.
Choose drying out canvas somehow, pitched in a garden or park or hung over bannisters days after the event.
Choose those long plot and game talks on car journeys.
Choose the count down of ticket sales with the hope of being able to go “Sold out!”
Choose trudging through the cold and rain with a new issue every hour.
Choose watching photo streams of talented people who capture magical moments.
Choose unique npcs, stories, and cool set and monster builds.
Choose living life with open spreadsheets, trello and word docs.
Choose praying to the printer gods to keep on going.
Choose, friends don’t give other friends radios unless they have to.
Choose walking away at the end and seeing all the fun and thank you posts on social media.
Most of all choose community.
So this mornings musings And massive wall of text that I hope people can find insightful, useful even helpful, or just straight relate to “yup that!” *especially the adlib at the end.
*disclaimer the following is solely my view and what i am noticing not the view of any events I am involved with.
So its becoming more and more apparent its becoming harder and harder to be an event organiser in the uk. The following is more an insight to issues most who attend larp dont see or will even experince until they put on a weekend long event themselves. With start of my golden rules *editors notes i think i am at number 47 of my golden rules of event organising since embarking on it last year and it keeps getting bigger.
To qoute Wesley Snipes in 1991s New Jack City “Lets kick the ballistics here”
Golden Rule Number 1: “You a Buisness or non profit club? because this decides and affects eveything going forward”
Sites:
Golden Rule Number 2: “the ideal loction is the mythical goldenbelt that is the midlands.
This gives everyone from south to north the most equal chance in traveling to your event”
Golden Rule Number 3: “Power, Toilets/showers inc accessible ones, water, adequate sercure parking, are the first things you should be looking for in a site. Bunks and buildings for ops are the ideal brucey bonus.”
sites are becoming far and few in between these days especially. Scout camps are becoming harder to aquire with some that only can cater to larpers, having restrictions on site facilities use, acess times this includes one site only running from nov-may and only 1 larp a month.
We have also discovered a universal phrase being used by most scout sites “sorry we no longer accommodate for larpers” i have seen email after email with that same reply. Meaning someone done gone and fucked it up for us all somewhere, this same behaviour is the reason why we have no smoking signs in petrol stations.
Most sites are run by volunteers or the even rarer paid employees. Owned and governed by a board of trustees, who as a staple you always expect to give priority to scout bookings. But they also say yae or nae to whether your game/event can run there. The all important site price. So no matter how good of a working relationship you have with the wardens *something strongly i recommend anyone running on same site works towards. who you also will working with, but are the ones who handle your bookings and site coms 90% of the time.
They can only do what is within thier power, acting more like a foreign ambassador or defence lawyer. Fighting your case for you at meetings that happen behind close doors and you won’t get an invite too.
Then theres booking portals, which can be a right pain in the arse. *they should really pregen a seprate code for these for non scout hire events ifykyk.
But things happen, coms become sketchy, as we found out recently sometimes its not even you, but rl shit happens to rl people, who are invested in keeping a site open. But this can lead to anxious months of 0 contact.
Yet scout camps are screaming for funding so you would think 7-10k+ extra revenue for two weekends would be welcomed with open arms.
There is some sites that have some really extreme rules and can make running an event harder, to a solid logistical nightmare.
I will state for the record There is some truly amazing scout sites ran by some amazing human beings being the wardens from my personal experince.
This leaves private land owners, including ex runways, rent a field *think air bnb but for events, wedding venues, shit even heritage sites to a degree. There are few soul deadicated sites for larp within the uk. Even with Unknown Worlds new site in Cambridgeshire that will still needs to be developed and get up and running before it opens up to other larps.
From chats of recent with a dear friend and larp site owner “we’ve been here for 18 years now” and its truly amazing what they have achieved in those years, but we fall back to time again. Time is a constant factor in all of this we can’t avoid, becomes a reaccuring theme.
Clashes and competition.
Golden Rule Number 5: “your biggest competition is people’s time, money and Holiday, the latter being the biggest”
Golden Rule Number 6: “theres only 52 weekends a year, you are always going to clash with someone”
Golden Rule Number 11: “Real life happens to everyone, on all levels”
Golden Rule Number 12: “its eveyones hollibobs from players to staff, some are working holidays some can be a busmans holiday”
So rule 5 and 6 gives a nice insight into clashing. We actively try to avoid clashing with events the best we can.
Its only 2 months removed from our first ever event, from what i can see we only clash with 3 games, and it’s mainly our may one, than anything else, but we had to take the only available bookings for the months we required to limit that impact the best we could.
But again theres only so many weekends in a year, which means you need to have your following year now ready to go before you have finished your last event of current year.
This can realistically now put you in a difficult position, especially if you are running your first game. Cause sites require deposits, for booking your weekend. Tickets cant go on sale until site and dates are confirmed, its becomes vicious circle a little.
You can lose people and services to clashes, which then need a work around, but more importantly missing those people, especially those volunteers. To qoute one of my larp mentors “no one person makes a larp”
From sites to dates other games aren’t your only competitors and realistically not even a main contenter in all this, which really throws out the whole tribalism that the community is rife with. The main contender is people’s time and holiday, weddings and the newly emerging ren faires in the uk now following up closely, again rule 6 applies along with rule 11.
So where you can strive for your product to be amazing with an experince you dream to deliver and a ever living rule book. larp fundelmently is still a product, as it requires sales to run. Marketing to get out there, with hopes of a deadicated playerbase and crew, invested in your product on a range of levels, and what can become a magical feeling of our subcultures host of communities.
Money and pricing.
Golden Rule Number 9: “Bigger the event, prepare to upscale, this includes your issues & Logistics”
Golden Rule Number 10: “The Budget only goes so far”
Golden Rule Number 11: “Be fair, but remember your overheads and limits”
Its the big one that affects all of us in some way, including those that are customers.
This is a subject i could go on and on about especially the discussion of Buiness vs non profit for a while but i will contain myself. Even though i have never ran an event as a business, i have experience in running a business but also have involvement as a volunteer in a business in this nature. So when you have these conversations especially my new fave phrase “Organiser to Organiser”
You get massive insight into that world, and certain level of skin in the game.
Again with the larger money margin and event size these financial issues also become upscaled.
Your 4-5k in site fee per event can becomes 10-15k alone. Then there’s storage fees, keeping the lights on, van rentals, the thing we all need INSURANCE *and a shit ton more other things. You seen the price of ink and paper alone?
All this then try and run it at a profit? Pay wages?
I made a joke on the way up to our first event of getting us a coffee each out of my own money “consider this our wages” and that was before a player was an angel friday morning taking £40 of me to go buy a trolly load of toilet rolls for the site.
Ive noticed comments online being harsh to organisers over ticket pricing, or fees ect. Some i can see merit and that persons pov, but most of the time it comes from a place of not understanding overheads. Hell even a cake of snazz is a fiver these days.
I am half an organiser of a non profit, this gives alot of freedom espeically being able to give back a little to the community. We dont charge our traders tickets or pitch fees, we only ask they are in the ic area, they play npcs while they run thier stalls, and help build our world with their own little artistic licensing. Same goes with the position we can be in currently with offering Thursdays as a free optional included in our ticket price.
This leads to a lack in potential revenue. I also have to be clear I’m not saying those that do it is a bad thing, because those that do are running a buiness so need that extra revenue,again until you see overheads you can’t truly understand.
But organisers really are not the Scrooge McDucks diving into a pool of endless money that people think they are. Most are average peeps working full time, wanting to create these magical worlds for a few days, investing a stupid amount of time around rl into it. Embracing that of oldest human things, play.
Even though this is really just the tiniest tip of the iceberg that goes into running events, and doesn’t even cover the in field itself. would i still keep doing what we’re doing with our little game. Categorically yes! Knowing what we have started, knowing the learning curve its all being. Knowing the vibes we get from our players and crew as a whole, yes,yes,yes
So
Choose community.
LARP experience 
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