Traveling LARP Group

I had a suggestion from a reader about an interesting topic. Sean writes:

I have an idea for a discussion topic for the blog. It's a theoretical idea of a new kind of NERO (or general larp, but mostly pertains to NERO)

I was thinking about ways that a chapter could set itself apart from all the others, but without taking attendance from the other local chapters. That's how I came upon the idea of a mobile NERO chapter. It will be an actual chapter in all the classical means: XP gained, tags and production, plot, roleplay, etc. However the catch is that instead of hosting weekend events averaging once a month, they will provide a traveling mod day service.

In the perfect plan of the chapter, groups of players will "hire" the chapter to drive to them and provide X amount of hours of official NERO mods. This system would not be to detract from weekend events, but to supplement current players who might want to play more NERO when there otherwise would be none.

The cost of this service would be determined by the amount of gas money required to transport plot and props to the location, and the fees for the players to partake in the mods. It would only be in the tri-state area, and could have the minumum of 6 players registered for example. The plot team would drive to the "event host's" preferred location. This would also not be a private event, but it would allow a group of people to go on a mod day on their own terms.

*Obviously this is a long shot of a service, but with the right business plan and general planning it might be something players would like.*

This is just a theoretical discussion, all opinions are welcome.

This is a great topic. Sean hits most of the big points on the discussion, including whether or not something like this would be totally viable on it's own, due to costs.

I'm not going to go into details on how one would run something like this - I think Sean covered it. But what I will talk about is the way a group like this could possibly mitigate some of the costs of doing something like this.

You see, a group like this has to be focused on private roleplaying events, of which NERO is one of them.

A company like this should be as open to running any kind of game as possible. This might be a tough pill to swallow for large, competing, national organizations (Alliance/NERO), but as long as they're getting the royalties and the visibility, they shouldn't be too concerned.

Additionally, a group like this could run private events for non-boffer and even non-LARPer activities. I'm basing this model around a group called 5th Wall Gaming, who I met with at Origins a few years back.

You see, they get the bulk of their work doing murder mystery dinners and team building activities for businesses - not for LARPers. Truth is, businesses are much more willing to shill out some serious dough than poor college students.

For anyone contemplating running private NERO mods, I would suggest checking through the 5WG and seeing some of the offerings that they have. That would be the best way to make an endeavor like this more sustainable.

Thanks Sean!