Post Transparency Meeting.
Thank you to everyone who attended our public DR CT transparent meeting. Basically, what we are doing as a gaming group is not only providing information to anyone who wants to know about our business operations, but also allowing our players and the general public to join and listen into our business / operations meetings. Using the Discord Stage function, people can listen in and type questions that they would like to ask the operations team.
The key focuses that we had for the meeting summed up were:
1. Why we are doing this, and who we are doing it for.
2. The one-year agreement.
3. Our current financial status and our investments.
4. Plans for the next event.
Summary of these points.
1. We are doing this for a few different reasons. The first is that we just want to do cool things with people and do cool creative events. We all agreed that we would not make this a monthly deal, and that our focus on event and community management would follow the general guideline of “The Bar”. Basically, we are going to make a very cool place that you go to a few times a year, but when you are not at the bar, you actively -aren’t at the bar-. We aren’t going to build a local community that people use as a surrogate for living out in the real world, and we aren’t going to hesitate about asking people not to attend any more if they are problematic. This includes not just the broken stairs, but also super negative or abusive acting people. General idea is “If I was at a local townies bar, would I get tossed out for acting this way? If so, don’t do it here.” The second main reason for us doing this is because there are a lot of people who want to play but due to health or location restrictions they just can’t play anymore.
2. The one-year agreement is this: no matter how well or how bad we do, we run this for one year. At the end of the one year in December we have a meeting where we decide if we want to do it for another year. The fact is there are many people who stick in with running events even when they are burnt out due to a sense of responsibility. It is a requirement for us to opt back in at the end of the year instead of assumed ongoing involvement.
3. We went through all of the expenses, the percent income taken by license and national network, the volume of pay and costs for our staff as well as the material and shipping costs for the crystals. We outlined how much we pay in taxes and processing fees line by line and in the end have roughly $5,000 that we are rolling forward into funding for the next event (and business expenses).
4. We are going to be doing our next online event in May, and the goal is to create a full splat-book for the area that will be made available for TTRPG and LARP source. This will include definition of our play space (new area, not something already existing in core lore), introduction of our financial groups, tying in what criminal organizations are in the area, providing sample cultures from the different regions, and providing our theme and history content.
Questions asked:
1. What are you looking for in writers? People who want to write and run for 2-day events with a focus on virtual TTRPG skills instead of assuming larp runners. Virtual space has unique nuances and we think it would be good to start reaching out to people we think can be new additions to the narrative instead of just farming existing people. We also want first time runners, people with a passion for narrative but haven’t been trained, additional casted characters, as well as people who are directors for other branches who want to either network together or learn how we operate while assisting (and getting paid for) working an event.
Can characters be based out of DR-CT? Yes. We are effectively another DR branch, but we have special licenses to do the weird shit because the people who created the original books for DR are the people overseeing this branch. This way we can do the experimental and artsy and different formats of play while still staying within the structure of the intellectual property and being woven into the ongoing LARP network narrative.
