The Steampunk event from "Para pokreće svijet" series this Saturday was something special. Unlike previous ones it was not held in its usual location at Eko selo Žumberak - instead it was held at the indoor climbing facility SPK Fothia west in Zagreb. It was divided into two parts.
The expedition getting ready
First part lasted for 2 hours and it simulated an expedition into the heart of Africa: entering illegally into Congo and raiding a cave that belonged to an ancient ruler for treasures. In how the story was created, it succeeded in being both a wonderful "Indiana Jones"-esque story with a heavy pulp feel, and a social commentary of colonial practices of the era.
Climbers on the wall going horizontally from one edge side to the other
Of course, the challenges at the climbing facility represented rock faces and cave walls that needed to be scaled in-character. For most of us it was a new experience - and we eagerly went on and did it, in our Steampunk gear (or a variant that would not get damaged during climbing). This part of the larp - which included climbing, exploration and some conflict - lasted for about two hours.
Me scaling the wall to the top
The second part of the larp was in the same place, but otherwise pretty much worked like one of the other larps in the Para pokreće svijet - diplomacy, spiced up with some trouble and pulp action. Unique technology and invention - something that's usually a part of the Para pokreće svijet setting - was not present here as usual, and the rock climbing hall provided less than ideal mood for the second part - but despite some elements missing (probably due to the fact this event drew in fewer players than regular Steampunk events, and these players are usually a large part of that feeling), it was still a good experience. A central part of it was the public viewing (a "premiere" in the larp setting) of a hand-colored version of A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune). If you haven't seen this classic 1902 movie (the first sci-fi movie ever), here it is:
The larp started slightly after 9 PM - latest start of all larps I've ever been to - and ended up about half past 2 AM. All in all it was a very interesting evening and I'm glad I did some rock climbing which is a fun activity (I still feel it in my forearms, but the adrenaline was worth it) that I probably would have never tried otherwise.
It was not the only new experience for that weekend. We're preparing a Vampire larp this Friday, and apart from the Steampunk, the rest of my weekend was largely filled preparing for that. We had an organizers' meeting on Friday, but a much larger thing this weekend is when we did a vampire teeth lab yesterday at my home.
All the ingredients are ready
Two girls - Romana and Josipa - decided to make loads of custom-made vampire fangs. Each set would be custom-made for its owner to ensure the best possible fit. To do that, we did some dental impressions upon which they will model our teeth.
Demo run and the expected end result
Measuring the materials
Hold it in until it sets...
Voila! Here's a negative mould
Some people took a couple of tries to get their teeth molded without an error, and there were plenty of people getting their teeth done so it took a couple of hours. Afterwards, plaster was cast into negative mould, and we got ourselves some positive dental impressions of our upper teeth. They will be built over the next week. We ended the evening by hanging out together.
Positive dental impressions to be used for building vampire fangs on top of them
Two more larp-related things happened this weekend - a Fallout weekend larp (next one has been scheduled in a month) and a Krvomeđe battlegame day on Sunday, making this one of the busiest weekends in Croatian larp this year. The coming weeks are quite busy and it will be exciting to see how it all works out.
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...
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...
More stuff from my PoRtaL XII talk, Larps and Information Technology , seem to be coming true. In particular, the part about technology becoming old. And so it is with this blog. The technology it's built on is getting old and starts to not play as nice with modern browsers, plugins and smartphones as it used to. Specifically, the comment section doesn't seem to work for anyone. So I decided to open a discord to help us all connect in an easier way. If you are interested, join the Crolarper discord server here .
Comments
Post a Comment