Carmen: Act One review

Yesterday was the first Croatian SF larp - well, second if you count Fallout (and there were some Battlestar Galactica investigation committee games), but this is what most people think about when they refer to SF: space opera. Space travel, aliens, laser guns (read: nerf), humanity (and other races) spread across the universe, etc. Carmen is a space station (in orbit around Mimas) for life extension which had been abandoned for a long time, in a distant, dying-universe future in which you could bring any races or cultures, new - which you just invented - or from existing sci-fi universes and works.

I decided to play a mercenary - a space Russian character from a colony around Barnard's Star, with a messed up childhood, converted to Islam, and of questionable morality and sanity. Fun!

The larp had a grouping concept - a group of people could arrive on the station by the same ship. Our ship, Kverc Šomerc, had the crew/passanger list of four. I was, of course, muscles (and a pilot... wheeee!).

Crew and passangers of Kverc Šomerc

Another shot - with an alien symbiote named Tito.

I was the only human character on the ship, while other three characters aboard had masks pretty much inspired by the 60's alien make-up style of Star Trek (the original series). Of course, some other universes were pretty easy to spot.

A Sith Lord, who had a nice bottle of Chateau Korriban with him...

Two Chaos worshippers

Sith Lord made the Star Wars influence, while two Chaos guys (Noel and Matija) heralded the first appearance of any Warhammer universe in a Croatian larp. There were also a few ideas about Farscape characters... but they didn't get realized. Perhaps if more SF associations join us in the future in making of this larp... :)

Anyways. The larp was played at Centar za kulturu Trešnjevka in Zagreb. It cost us a bit - 30 kn per person - which was a very decent price for the larp (though it was announced on the day of larp itself...). There were 13 players in total. Zvonimir, who was the GM of this larp, made the intro speech which I recorded in full (in Croatian):

And then the larp started. Similar to Zimograd, the players started one group after another - they were led into two different "waiting rooms". They were later joined (the forcefields between them removed), and players gained access to their ships. A couple of "wanted" lists appeared, people traded, there was some xenophobia, violence and dirty deals, as well as prayer, religious discussion, and attempts to communicate with a completely alien life form. GM was playing a very annoying robot - somehow he avoided getting shot at. He opened a very nice shop, selling some items for the in-character money. At 6, we all teleported to the higher floor of the station - mirrored by us actually moving to the higher floor of the area due to the fact that our venue needed those rooms we used for the show they were doing...

After a short out-of-character break we continued the game upstairs. There was very little GM content by that time - but fortunately, there was a lot player conflict which caused some serious issues. There was theft, swindling, a drug called Gyrum, and explosions which played a large part of what ended up as the most intense moments of the larp. I don't know who caused the most trouble - our dysfunctional group with two girls at each other's throats all the time, and my character protecting Marko's Shar in his dealings. Two Chaos worshipers who'd like to see the universe burn. A xenophobic warrior-monk woman in conflict with all the aliens. A weird alien symbiote, and underneath it my character's long lost brother with a serious issue about which of us is less sane. A hacker, a sith lord, an engineering trader and his companion... And an useless and annoying servitor robot. All of it worked to create a crazy environment, and showed us a very interesting fact: people were very interested in playing a SF larp, and excited to prepare themselves for the opportunity to play in one. And I'll be looking forward to the Act Two...

The 15 rules of larp

The following 15 rules (warning: strong language) were written some years ago in Great Britain, and have been pretty much generally accepted on the British larp scene. Especially popular is rule 7 - widely known by its number and commonly considered to be the most imortant rule of all (and I agree). Even the biggest British larp forum has taken Rule7 as its name. The rules have been originally created by the Drunken Monkeys and edited by Rick Wynne who added some extra stuff in the explanations to make them more understandable to international audience (it still contains some British larp lingo though), more work-safe and to throw in his two cents. (copy of the original wording is available here ) 1. Don’t play a mighty warrior; play a warrior and be mighty. Don’t label your character. As soon as you say that you are the best swordsman in the land someone will come along and kick your ass. Just get into the mindset of the person and role-play it out. 2. No one cares about you

Mind's Eye Theatre: Werewolf The Apocalypse rulebook review

Available on DriveThruRPG Just under three years ago I wrote a review for Mind’s Eye Theatre: Vampire the Masquerade rulebook . It was the first book published by By Nights Studio, and a year later I reviewed one of its supplements - Storyteller Secrets . Now, after a long period of work, after the success of their kickstarter campaign, By Night Studios finally released the full version of the new larp rules for Werewolf the Apocalypse setting. This was preceded by various alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omega slices - each containing a different playtest version of the rules, slowly released from September last year until July this year. First impressions were that the artwork is very cool, and that the book is HUGE. Numbering at 762 pages, that's over 200 pages more than Vampire the Masquerade. But before I start going in-depth, I'd like to mention that this blog's readers come from various backgrounds - and I'll adjust my review accordingly. I assume I'

Larps in EU

Today Croatia has acceeded into the European Union as its 28th state. EU has loads of diverse and different larp scenes and cultures in them. Some of them are local, some are national, some encompass all speakers of a certain language, some are regional, and some are world-famous. Here's a short window into a couple of EU larps and larp scenes, carefully selected and profiled by the criteria of "those I actually visited myself" and "those who bothered to answer my survey on facebook on a short notice", with a dash of "this is like elementary culture you should know". So this is not a full list - not even close - and not even the fully representative one, despite it being the largest post on this blog ever. Even keeping track of the Croatian scene is quite a job and there are still many language barriers around. But hopefully you'll find plenty of new and interesting material here. If you want your larp represented - whether it's battle

AnonymousJanuary 27, 2013 at 6:56 PM
Looks like a lot of fun- cool costumes! I watched some of the intro speech, though I don't understand a word, just to see what it looked like. Looks a lot like the introductions to our LARPs.
Ivan ŽalacJanuary 28, 2013 at 9:30 AM
Yup, it was a pretty standard introduction. Going through some mechanics, explaining some in-character forms, bulletins and contracts (some of them were used instead of the dedicated computer system, which wasn't ready for this larp), defining game area etc. I was also stunned by the quality of some costumes and make-up - this was easily some of the best make-up I've ever seen on a Croatian larp.

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