Murder Inc event done, looking back at some of the hurdles
This is being written before our Sunday public meeting, but it’s probably good to put some details regarding the hurdles for the event that we had. This is intended to be a transparency from before the event up to the event itself, not counting the actual operation of the event and the feedback that came from it. So, everything at this point and going forward will be the hurdles coming into the event. This way people have a better understanding of the process of running something like this, can learn from our experiences, and have a better scope of what what an event like this requires.
The first and in my opinion the largest hurdle we had going into the event was how burned out so many of the existing DR event runners were coming into the event. Prior to the event we opened communication with the Directors of the branches across the network seeing if we could help weave their local stories into our event, see if there were team members (or them) we could hire to be a part of the event and run portions, and to start the communication. We also reached out to, and hired on, staff and Directors from a few branches.
After two months of reaching out, connecting, and working with other branches we had multiple paid Directors back out because they needed to focus on their branch. There were a few writers who couldn’t invest the time because personal items came up (sickness, moving, and other items that happen). We also had several branches that responded they were interested but couldn’t make the time to have a quick meeting or to be actively involved. Can’t lie, was surprised how many branches just “wing it” or have a meeting right before game.
Overall, our plan was to have 3-4 branches very actively involved in the production of the event. While we got close to that in the literally two weeks before the event, we were fighting uphill. People were mentally and emotionally tired because of covid, because they haven’t been able to fully engage with other people, because it takes a lot of work keeping a community together during a crisis, and because many people were tired of being online for discord events.
The second big hurdle we needed to address was that we wanted to tell a story for a section of the game that was either underserved, used in strange (not always genre) ways, or just had no documentation for what had been done. So, in addition to writing the overall event we needed to create a documentation kit for our staff to be able to work from so that they had a common return point for the narratives they were writing. Story arcs, themes, focuses, and design documents had to be cranked out at a -at least- 80% completion so that they were functional to work from.
This was a lot of labor and more hands-on work by the same people who should have been more focused on organization and project managing the event. While still doable, and we did a really great job with it, there was a lot of extra up-front deadline priority work that needed to be done. We needed to set the foundation and materials that the event would be based on, make it into transparent but non-spoiler content for the public as well. Most of this needed to be done before we could launch the webpage. Add in having to finalize the test revisions for the Most Improbable larpletop system, and you have almost two books of writing.
In the top three of hurdles, the last one was a very complex item and is still in review post event. Dystopia Rising has been around for well over a decade now. With that, we have multiple generations of players who have very different expectations and desires from a gaming experience. Combine the generational difference with local community culture and local game preferences, the gap becomes much wider. We knew going into the event that we were going to ionize the people who attended into either LOVED or HATED categories. What was worse is going into the event we *knew* that whichever direction we leaned towards was going to have the non-served respond with negativity and accusations of “doing it wrong”.
The duration of the event, the duration of modules, the volume of modules, and the system to be used all had to be very carefully decided on. We thought for a very long time and had several meetings internal and external about this issue.
In the end we had to just say “FUCK IT” and we decided to run the event for the kind of story we wanted to run for the kind of player that we wanted to tell a story for. We provided webpage transparency about it not being crafting or gear focused, we provided transparency that it would be an event of many shorter modules (which people predictably either LOVED or HATED), and we put all the details up on the page for people to have. We also did a few public event Q&A’s on our discord and opened the boards for support prior to the event.
Not to go into the during and post event too much, but we were dead on when it came to our predictions about who and what focus player would love our event, and which would hate it. In my mundane job I create marketing and business plans based on demographic and psychographic projects, and in this instance, it hit with a 95% accuracy (which is gold for most companies).
Last hurdle to go into today was startup cost and projected expenses. Originally, we had designed this event to be a Premier event instead of a National event. When running a Premier event, you pay the same percent of income to the national network as you do for running a normal game. When you are running a National event, the national network takes a larger percentage of income in exchange for being able to support the game with higher XP sales and larger resource access. While the additional XP sales helped us pay for the event and forward income for the next one, it didn’t really provide us much with additional resource access (spoiler, when there is a national event, often Most Improbable is the people who assist with that resource development for national kits). So, we were able to get an adjustment on the percent paid, but at the same time, we needed to project our bookkeeping/income/costs to pay for a large percent to processing fees and national. While it ended up (mostly) working out in the end, it was a hurdle to get over.
Next update will be next week after we have had our transparency and planning meeting. If any of this interested you, you want to hear the casual conversation regarding feedback and future events, or if you have questions please join us and tune in this Sunday on our discord.
