PoRtaL 2014 convention announced

If you've been a regular on this site, you probably remember the PoRtaL convention that we did in March 2013 in Zagreb, Croatia. I was proud to be one of its' main organizers, together with Ana Rajner and Božo Špoljarić. It was the first larp convention in the region, drawing in larpers who traveled to the convention from Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria, taking part in the program and doing presentations of their own. You can read the entire review in these three articles, written for different days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For various reasons, we decided that this convention would be a regional one and that it will travel to different organizers, in a way similar to Knutepunkt conventions. So the second convention will be organized March 8-9 in Budapest, Hungary by Tamás Obreczán and Sándor Mesterházi, experienced larpers who also had a large presentation on PoRtaL in Croatia.

The second PoRtaL convention will be slightly shorter (no Friday program), but it will keep a similar structure, including free entrance, a variety of subjects on presentations and debates (including group and larp presentation, larp research and theory), workshops, playing chamber larps, and of course good old networking and hanging out together.

Here's an introduction that organizers wrote:

We are proud to announce that the second event of the international larp convention series which started out in Zagreb last year will be held in Budapest this year. Everyone who is interested somehow in the larping scene of our region - be it participation, organizing or research - is welcome. The name PoRtaL comes from our goal to connect larpers of the region regardless of preferences in genre or playstyle - P for Play, R for RPG, L for Larp

- An opportunity to introduce yourselves to the scene. If you are a researcher, presenter or organize an international larp, you will have an opportunity to introduce and promote what you are doing.

- Presentations about larp and roleplay theory, larping in education, reports about the current status of the larp and ARG scene in the region, workshops about tools and techniques which aid organizing larps, and much more - program submissions are open until 28th of February.

- Moderated debates about topics which arise during the event.
As we have confirmed visitors from multiple countries, working language of the convention will be English.

Participation is free, although contributions to the event supplies in the form of soft drinks and snacks are encouraged and welcome.

For more info about the event, keep your eye on the website at http://portal2014.larp.hu/ or Facebook event here. Of course, I'll be writing about it too. And if you're planning to come - see you there! :)

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...

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...

Discord is up

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 .

Diary of a Croatian larper

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