Diary of a Croatian larper

Dear readers. For the next two weeks I'm on my holidays and I will not update my blog. Reason for this is that I'll spend those two weeks on largest fantasy larps in Europe - Drachenfest and ConQuest of Mythodea. Remember what I said about getting ready for events ? Well, preparation for two weeks of larping is certainly more complex than preparation for weekend events. This time, my wife Jasminka did a huge amount of prep this week while I was at work - and during this weekend as I was out there working (in fact, I was finished with my work about an hour before publishing this, and it's when my vacation was cleared). Same as last year, we're going family style and we won't be traveling alone. Our traveling companion this year will be Marko (aka Erlin) from Serbia. That's us on Drachenfest last year, with our son Damjan If you're coming to Drachenfest, you can find us in the Copper camp, as last year. Unser Blut fur Kupfer! Try to find us before la

Crolarp 2013 is the national, central storyline event of all medieval fantasy larps in Croatia running under Amtgard rules or some derivative of it - for more info, check out my last year's article . The first Crolarp was held in the same place (Gornja Kupčina, the usual terrain of Jaska larp) last year, and it was the largest larp of 2012. This year's Crolarp started yesterday and will last for the remainder of the weekend. Due to my work, I was only able to attend yesterday evening, for some four hours - so this review is just a short slice of what was going on on Crolarp. I snapped two photos (which I'm gonna post here as first photos from this year's Crolarp), however they don't look so good since I snapped them when I could, and that was in dusk and from some distance... A tavern (terrace) is visible to the left. First, some logistics. The camp layout didn't sit so well with me. There were two small camps, one huge camp next to the tavern, an org

After a couple of years of inactivity, the Vampire larp in Croatia restarts - in Zagreb. There are two projects being designed and built. One of them is the classic Vampire: The Masquerade larp as it had been known - but this time run under new ruleset being developed by By Night Studios . There will be two phases in Zagreb games, called "Camarilla Agram" - three limited events will be run this year (short evening events of a few hours) as an intro, mirroring the Alpha playtest release of the ruleset. Next year it will start full-on. Check out the first intro event - scheduled for September 6th - here . It will feature a GM system (or storyteller, to use World of Darkness term) where there is a four-member team with a rotating primacy - one is in charge of the event, while other teammembers are assisting. The second larp will be a non-World of Darkness larp, with much simpler ruleset and a higher degree of pervasivity. It will be run by Tatjana Štimac as a one-shot eve

Last week I've been interviewed by +Iva Tatić  for Croatian Radio 3. The show's name is "Prozor u digitalno", or "A window into digital". The show aired today at 1 PM (Central European time), for those of you who didn't get to tune in the show is now available here , it's in Croatian and lasts for about 30 minutes. A short summary of the subjects I covered on the interview: What is larp? Croatian larp scene (also a few tidbits about European larp scene and worldwide larp scene) How are larps organized Specific info about Izgon Specific info about Terra Nova

One online discussion about larp got me thinking - can we truly review and meter our larps to one universal and objective standard? The answer is: hardly. Larp can be so many different things, and the experience will always be subjective. However, we can come close if we manage to describe context clearly enough. For that purpose, I built a comprehensive survey called  Larp Analysis, Classification and Review Tool . It has public analytics and raw data which enables you to build your own analytics, so it makes it useful for several purposes. It's gone viral before I managed to write this post, so it's possible you've already seen it :) I plan to keep it open forever, so feel free to use it. In another news, my copy of the Nordic Larp book finally arrived - yay! Despite the fact I'm a fast reader, it might be a while for me to review it (my previous and so far only larp book review had been Leaving Mundania ) as next week I'll be preparing for my two-week t

Labuđa Rijeka site - swim & fight! As I announced yesterday , there will be three larps this weekend - and Labuđa Rijeka 3, the water battlegame, has been postponed (again!) for two weeks due to weather forecast. There will be a regular battlegame day on Krvomeđe instead (starting later, from 4 PM so it's a good chance I'll be able to attend), and Labuđa Rijeka has been announced for July 27th which means I'll miss it (that day, the battle I'm gonna be on will be the end battle of Drachenfest).

The first larp of the Elder Scrolls Chronicles has been announced! It will happen on one of the weekends in the second half of March 2014. I guess it will mostly depend on the Istrakon schedule. The background for it is as following: "A tradehouse in Skyrim during the signing of White-Gold Concordat (Fourth Era) - an insight to the lives of common people in Skyrim, and the tensions that rised up after the Great War." Its' GM,  Marko , is issuing a call to everyone - the project needs your assistance. It needs: People who can help with the translation of lore into Croatian People who are willing to  check the rules , do some theorycrafting and offer their comments People who'd like to test the rules in field (I did that BTW, it was fun!) If you have any more ideas on how you could help the project, go right ahead and offer your thoughts and opinions! You can follow the development blog  here  (which is getting nicely filled, so I'm really posting

Three short larps (so far, unless something new pops up) will be held on the weekend July 13th and 14th. All of them fantasy. Saturday will bring us Maksimir 69 by Ognjeni Mač - starting and ending later than usual. At the same time, another larp will start in Ivanovac, near Osijek - the Korogyvar fortress that's a regular location of the Utvrda Svijetlosti larp. This will be an overnight larp adventure called "Nasljeđe" (Inheritance), and the sign up is here . It will finish at Sunday morning - when cars from Zagreb will head to Jarče Polje where a water battlegame "Labuđa Rijeka 3" will be held. If weather's gonna be cold, it will be canceled in favor of regular Krvomeđe battlegames later in the afternoon. I'll be at the wedding, so I'd probably skip all these.

Second episode of the podcast is up, available here . Not the first thing I recorded this evening - also did a radio interview for Croatian Radio which will be next Tuesday on HR3 on the "Prozor u digitalno" show at 1PM and available online  after it's shot. Anyway, in the  podcast  I talk about larp promotion and how accessible our larps are - including some tips for everyone in how to improve larp promotion. Check it out, and don't forget to subscribe !

Me as Luc in front of my tent, ready for action Rajski Vrhovi XVIII - the longest series of weekend larps in Croatia. Only four so far have been without any rain. This was not one of them - but it wasn't nearly as bad as Rajski Vrhovi XVII. However, the fear of rain caused this larp to be first shortened, and then delayed for a week. It ran its full length this weekend, and yes - there was rain. A bit of rain on Saturday cooled things up and made it very comfortable to play, however later at night there was a heavy downpour. Fortunately, my tent held. Me as Kain the Wizard I was one of the organizers and GMs, and I really changed a lot of outfits during the course of larp as I was portraying various characters. The main story revolved around a big green monster who was controlling the undead, and he was banished by finding some magical orbs in one of the best rituals I've seen done in Croatia. I can't reveal more without spoiling the storyline of some other lar

I started a new project - Podcast of a Croatian Larper ! You can subscribe to it using a feed , or listen to the first episode here . It's about getting ready for events - a fitting subject since that's exactly what I'm doing right now (minus setting up the podcast of course) in preparation of Rajski Vrhovi XVIII tomorrow. The first episode is just over 10 minutes long. So tell me - how do you like the idea? What would you like me to cover?

It's been only a week since The Elder Scrolls Chronicles larp had been announced. In the meanwhile it's been worked on, a lot. In that week  Marko  wrote the rules, inspired by the game mechanics and lore used in the computer game series, ConQuest ruleset and Chronicles of Demgard ruleset. A couple of us helped out with the rules - with the suggestions, balancing etc. - and the rules were considered ready for some initial playtesting for some combat balance. A couple of combinations were tried today at my place, and they worked out reasonably well. Mechanics which were present in the system really made it feel like Elder Scrolls to me due to how they worked. A newer version of the rules was produced afterwards, with few kinks ironed out. It's deemed good enough to go public - and open itself to outside comments, and perhaps a public playtest? Rules (currently in the version 1.0.4) are split into three parts. The first one is Core rules , which are basic rules tha

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