Larpercalia concluded

After organization efforts spanning over the last year, at last the first con I was ever charged with putting on has come to a close. I am very pleased with how it went on, given how many good events occurred and how many attendees enjoyed themselves. Before getting into any review of my own experiences, I will go over the various goals I set for myself and review to what degree I feel I achieved them.

1. Ensure a high attendance.

Handily accomplished, as this Festival had a real attendance of about 120 people, give or take a couple that didn't show up, which is a bit higher than the previous year's of 112. We recently have only been growing by a little bit, but it seems we are still actually growing. I credit this year's numbers to early advertising and early solicitation, so I advise all future con chairs to start recruiting well in advance. 

2. Ensure that every game gets a full roster of players.

This I think I did pretty damn well on. Nearly ever game ended up running with a full complement, which was due to a combination of getting enough signups before the run and by filling the handful of drops that occurred at the last minute. Of the very few that did not, I only know of one game that was missing so many that it was hurt by it. This is closely related to my next goal, which was...

3. Choose the appropriate number of player openings in each available timeslot.
This one I wasn't totally sure about. I know last year's Festival had lots of games that didn't fill, which after some analysis seemed to be because there was a significant increase in the number of player openings per timeslot from the year before without a corresponding growth in attendance. Since Festival attendance has at least mostly leveled off, I decided to go with slightly fewer openings per timeslot than we had last year in an effort to encourage full games. I became unsure of this choice around the time signups first opened, because we had some fairly significant waitlists, so I worried maybed we had too few. To borrow some data kindly compiled by bronzite*, and using my knowledge of how games were actually attended despite the website data, here is how the numbers compared to the previous years'.

Larpercalia:
Friday: 74 (2 waitlisted)
Saturday Morning: 65 (13 open)
Saturday Afternoon: 66 (1 open, 5 waitlisted, 3 pinch-hitters)
Saturday Evening: 77 (3 waitlisted, 1 pinch-hitter)
Sunday: 54 (2 open, 4 waitlisted)

Which is adjusted to actual player counts of:
76  52  73  81  56

As compared to Vestival:
Friday: 83 (10 open)
Saturday Morning: 69 (5 open)
Saturday Afternoon: 83 (13 open)
Saturday Evening: 78 (3 open)
Sunday: 57 (2 Waitlisted)

We can adjust this total to actual player counts of:
73 74 70 75 59

As compared to FestEvil:
Friday: 58 (2 open, 2 waitlisted)
Saturday Morning: 36 (5 open, 3 waitlisted)
Saturday Afternoon: 68 (6 open, 1 waitlisted)
Saturday Evening: 46 (3 waitlisted)
Sunday: 45 (4 open)

We can adjust these totals to:
58 34 63 49 41

Which is actually not to bad for us this year. We had minimal failures to fill, and the only serious discrepency in required players versus available players was in the morning, which I believe is due to the nature of a particular game rather than a failure of my estimate. There are a handful of players who were shut out of all games in a slot, but by the time of the Festival there were not many who still wanted in, and I don't thnk they were enough to justify putting more games on the schedule-- at that point, we probably would have had more failures to fill. So I am satisfied with my schedule balancing abilities.

4. Have as many new games as possible on the schedule

This is the goal that I feel was best achieved. We had nearly every game there be a first or second run, which meant as many options as possible for even experienced larpers to play. Completely avoided the problem of "But I've already played everything in this slot." As natbudin* once mentioned to me, an intention of Festival's that has never really become a reality before is to encourage the writing of new games, particularly by new writers. Several games were written specifically for this year's Festival, including a couple by writers who have never produced larps before. I think I am proudest for encouraging this of everything I did for this con. Again, I attribute it to soliciting games from people early.

5. Get things done in advance

This helped enormously to make this con as successful as it was. Start bugging people to sign up early, ask them for games early, release the schedule early, allow signups early. Have the schedule finished and full by no later than the beginning of January. I also sent out lots of reminder and explanatory e-mails to keep people aware and understanding what was going on. Future con chairs, take note!

6. Institute the pinch-hitter system.

This one I was kind of displeased with, if only because I don't think it got a good enough test to consider it a success or failure. Not a lot of people signed up to pinch-hit, which made it tough to whether or not it was actually helpful for GMs to fill drops. There was also the question of whether not the workings of the system were clear enough in the minds of the people who were being asked to sign up for it. I would like to try and work the kinks out of it and try it again next year. If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, please let me know.

So overall, a real success, I think. Again, I am interested in everyone's feedback on your experience, so please don't hesistate to contact me or ninja_report*, to whom I have passed the chalice and will be chairing next year's Festival. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this amazing con a reality, and made it so damn much fun.