Back from Drachenfest and Mythodea 2013! Local larp news update.

Me as a Black Ice rakh on ConQuest 2013

I'm back from Germany! The drive there (and back) has been exhausting mostly due to traffic jams - 16 hours of travel from Zagreb to Diemelstadt where Drachenfest was held (with a 4,5 hour jam around Regensburg!), a 2 hour drive between events, and 17 hours from Brokeloh back to Zagreb ('only' 1,5 hour jam around Regensburg, and a 20 minute one around Leipzig, but we took longer breaks). Indeed, Stau (traffic jam) and Baustelle (construction site) are some of the first words you get acquainted with on German motorways, as you wait in long lines that usually don't move (without apparent reason), and all you can do is look at the 'motivational' Wir bauen für Sie sign that you've been standing next to for the past 20 minutes... Faster border checks than last year (as Croatia is now part of EU) did help a bit, but my car not really being the fastest one on the motorway made this a long long trip...

But enough ranting about the traffic. Yesterday was a holiday in Croatia, so I took the opportunity to grab some sleep and rest - and try to catch up on what was going on on Croatian larp scene in the meanwhile. This took a decent chunk of my day, as the scene is extremely busy this summer giving us probably the busiest August (and September) so far.

Two special Amtgard water battle events - Labuđa Rijeka 3 and 4 - took place in those two weeks (photos here and here - first two events took place), 5th one is probably going to be this weekend but the time has not been decided yet at the time of the writing.

Next weekend (August 16-18) there's another big Amtgard event - Rajski Vrhovi XIX. This time, I will not be a co-organizer. Terms, pricing and location is almost the same as it had been so far (though there will be some notable differences considering the change of the main organizer). Check the event on facebook.

Weekend after, August 24, there will be a playtest run of The Elder Scrolls Chronicles larp near Bjelovar, Croatia. From a simple rules playtest, an idea evolved - and it will be a fully featured one-day event. Click here for more info. On the same weekend, August 23-24 there will be a sci-fi and fantasy convention Liburnicon in Opatija that will also feature some larp content.

The final weekend of August, August 30 - September 1st, will feature two larps. Fallout 3 and a special Para Pokreće Svijet event (steampunk larp).

On Friday, September 6th, there will be a start of a Vampire: The Masquerade larp in Zagreb - check out the first event here. It will be a limited intro chronicle in three parts. I'll be the main organizer of the first event, however main organizers will rotate between events.

A week after there will be no larp (whew) but there will be a big meeting for the upcoming short Terra Nova event, Rise of Rashalan. A week later we're off to Hungary for Demgard on September 20th. Then a week off, and then it's time for Sine Requie on October 5th.

Looks like a very busy (and yummy) rest of the summer and early autumn.

But first things first. Next I'll be writing about Drachenfest and Mythodea. Time to remember all the details...

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...

TESC IV: Ebonheart review

TESC is a Croatian Elder Scrolls-inspired larp, started by Marko Zadro and ran by him and his team for more than 4 years so far. During its first two years of existence, four larps were ran (the second was the one actually counted as first, as first larp was counted as playtest) which were well-received, well-visited and raised the visual level of Croatian fantasy larps. Yet TESC IV: Ebonheart was a whole different beast altogether. General ideas were formed by organizers far before the logistics to do them became available, and 2.5 years elapsed between the previous larp of the series and this one. Also, this is the first larp so far directly inspired by the organizer's (and mine) favorite game of the series, Morrowind. Inspired by the European blockbuster castle larps, TESC IV became the first Croatian blockbuster castle larp - although at the far lower entrance price (€85 as opposed to €500+ price typical of those). While this means production values weren't exact...

It's been way too long without any updates

I'm just back from PoRtaL XII, which was back in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 6 years after PoRtaL VI , which is - incidentally - only 3 posts below this one on my blog, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. And this means I failed to review the past two year's PoRtaLs, also excellent. Here's some representation for them. Back during PoRtaL 10 in Krakow, I did a presentation called Designing larps with intent . It was streamed, and can be found on Youtube. For PoRtaL 10, I also wrote and ran a larp Journey to Tau Ceti - an expanded version of the Arrival at Tau Ceti. I was a mess at documenting it, and it still remains in an unpublishable state. Both of these were run on Friday, which means I haven't really see much else on the convention that day, but I did on Saturday, when I was also able to play Ties that Bind larp by Alexandros Alexiou. I skipped Sunday, as we had to go early to drive home. For documentation purposes, full program listing is here . At next year...

Diary of a Croatian larper

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