Belegarth

So we up here in the northlands are in dire need of some recruitment help. We have only about 10 people who are actually serious about belegarth other than casual fighting once a week. Now a few of my friends and i want to try to restore the Northlands back to its former number of people, but were all quite new to belegarth and have pretty much no idea how to get people to come join us. now, my friend jorel and i have browesd through these boards for ideas, and they have been pretty helpfull, but i was just wondering if anyone had some general ideas for helping our relm back on its feet.
Thanks a bunch
ZEV

Let me preface this by saying that I have no idea if you do this currently, so don't take it as a personal attack.

NB found a few years ago that we had withered down to just a few people. We would have between 5 and 7 people on any given practice. Pretty much everyone was good friends with everyone else, and most people were pretty hardcore. Being a college realm, we'd always have that beginning of college surge and jump up to 15-20 people in a practice, but come October or so, they'd all be gone.

We finally realized that a lot of us were pretty much being elitist * and really tried to turn that around. You have to be welcoming and friendly to 99% of people who come and fight. Additionally, it helps to do things outside of fighting as well. This can start out as simple as things like weapons buildings, garb days or things like that, but it certainly doesn't have to end there.

After pretty much any practice anymore, we always go out to a restaurant and invite everyone to come, then we just hang out and * for a bit. A number of other realms do things like this and it's worked out very well for them. I would strongly consider doing something like this.

Derian, your idea should be pretty simple for us to accomplish, we are gonna petition to start a club at the local Community College (Where I will be attending) and setting up practice times there. It's right downtown so we will be very near to bars/restaurants/etc...

I'm working on a promo poster right now for posting up advertisements. Anyone else have and bizarre forms of getting people to practice?

Food?

Make sure that the place you choose for your practice area has walk-by traffic. It is really easy to get peoples attention when they can walk up ans ask questions.

You will also want to hit up every nerd hangout in your local area. Put up flyers at all of the comic shops and gaming stores. Make sure that you have an email contact on your flyers and the location and time of your practices.

Getting some girls in corsets and pretty garb will help as well. Make sure they know the basics of the rules and set them loose on any guys who are walking past. Once they come over show the person the rules and have them swing a sword for a bit.

This is the tried and true method used at Wolfpack and they have tons of new people every year.

Somehow food at practice just seems like it would be distracted, however maybe a mini-event several months into campaigning...

Also here is the poster I'm thinking of, tell me of any positive/negative things you see:

I like it.

I would take out the part about LARPing. Most people have no idea what it is. I would probably put something that explains what Belegarth is in a little bit more detail.

Sweet. Looks like we got some info enough to start things going. Please keep posting though everyone! everything .
also yeah the larping might not get people into it....

Alrighty, I fixed the quote by ripping off one of Big Jimmy's posters.



Anything else I should add/remove?

You may want to spell "safely" correctly.

A couple of the guys in our realm used to go out with the bow and randomly shoot people who looked like they'd be interested. If they smiled and laughed, they'd walk up and talk to 'em, otherwise they'd just get their arrow back and move on. We've had a few people come to practice on account of this.

One idea I've had but never got around to doing was a little more theatrical. My plan was to go to some semi crowded place (probably near our park) and have a couple guys come running around a corner with a couple swords looking pretty terrified. They'd run up to random people, hold out the swords and ask for help. Then another group would come running around the corner and attack. We really wouldn't pay too much attention to the rules there, rather we'd just make it look dramatic and let the people we handed swords to win. A lil' risky, but I think if you make a big enough scene, someone in the area will take notice.

Aslaug wrote:A couple of the guys in our realm used to go out with the bow and randomly shoot people who looked like they'd be interested. If they smiled and laughed, they'd walk up and talk to 'em, otherwise they'd just get their arrow back and move on. We've had a few people come to practice on account of this.

One idea I've had but never got around to doing was a little more theatrical. My plan was to go to some semi crowded place (probably near our park) and have a couple guys come running around a corner with a couple swords looking pretty terrified. They'd run up to random people, hold out the swords and ask for help. Then another group would come running around the corner and attack. We really wouldn't pay too much attention to the rules there, rather we'd just make it look dramatic and let the people we handed swords to win. A lil' risky, but I think if you make a big enough scene, someone in the area will take notice.

O.O
i want to do that

Zev wrote:

Aslaug wrote:A couple of the guys in our realm used to go out with the bow and randomly shoot people who looked like they'd be interested. If they smiled and laughed, they'd walk up and talk to 'em, otherwise they'd just get their arrow back and move on. We've had a few people come to practice on account of this.

One idea I've had but never got around to doing was a little more theatrical. My plan was to go to some semi crowded place (probably near our park) and have a couple guys come running around a corner with a couple swords looking pretty terrified. They'd run up to random people, hold out the swords and ask for help. Then another group would come running around the corner and attack. We really wouldn't pay too much attention to the rules there, rather we'd just make it look dramatic and let the people we handed swords to win. A lil' risky, but I think if you make a big enough scene, someone in the area will take notice.

O.O
i want to do that

You totally should.

...Yeah, that's really a terrible idea.

What happens when someone has you arrested for assault?

Derian wrote:...Yeah, that's really a terrible idea.

What happens when someone has you arrested for assault?

Then you go to jail for assault, obviously

They'd run up to random people, hold out the swords and ask for help.

If you used planted fighters in mundane clothes, it'd work better and with no assault charges.