Diary of a Croatian larper

After a short part of the program in the hotel International, like on Thursday, Eurocon's program continued in its traditional venue, on FER. This year though, they put a stargate on the entrance. (Why did they have to use the one from Atlantis?) Eurocon 2012 convention entrance Anyways, FER is a big improvement over hotel International. Bigger, more roomy, with plenty of space for sellers, associations, etc. and their stalls. It was like a regular SFeraKon on steroids - bigger, better, with more rooms open, international associations and their stalls, and more people. The attendance changed drastically from Thursday (as expected, since Thursday was free for everyone in masks). LARPers no longer visually owned the convention. As conventions go, SFeraKon is usually overwhelming. And how wouldn't it be? If you were to see everything, you'd have to be on 20 places at the same time - so everyone's experience is rather unique. And as Eurocon, this simply grew bigg...

So there it was, the first day of Eurocon. Free for everyone wearing a costume, so I went there with my wife in our Terra Nova costumes - and we brought our son along. Costume-wise, us fantasy LARPers pretty much owned the place: All of us running Terra Nova LARP were there in our NPC costumes Full Ognjeni Mač setup was there - everyone from Management Board (myself included), Game Organization Board, and plenty of other members and regular players too. In the best gear they could find. Ivo, who runs Krvomeđe / Rajski Vrhovi was there as his regular character Zlatko Kramparić. Most of the rest of his group was also here (again including myself there... I gave myself plenty of work this year). Siro, who runs Lubena LARP. Though he portrayed a Team Fortress 2 character. SRP folk, playing various characters Other costumes also appeared. Apart from the Team Fortress 2 team, there were plenty of Steampunk characters, some anime cosplayers, Pikachu, Wolverine, a ...

The next week is going to have two events - both awesome as in "you can't miss them" until you realize they're held at the same time. April 26th - 29th brings us Eurocon in Zagreb, in place of this year's regular SFeraKon. It will be the biggest and most significant SF/Fantasy event in Croatia since 1986. (which is the last time it was held in Zagreb). While the tickets are more expensive than for regular SFeraKon, Thursday is free for anyone in costume - that would be all LARPers as well. Ognjeni Mač will have a stand there - and there will be other LARPers too. Krvomeđe tournament will also be held outside on Sunday at 2. Overall, there will be a very decent LARP presence. It goes without saying that it will be awesome. April 27th - May 2nd brings us VLarp in Serbia, organized by Green Banner it'll be quite possibly the biggest Serbian LARP of the year, drawing in Bulgarian players as well. For Croatian standards, travel there + stay + food is ve...

So, this Thursday I held a Terra Nova presentation for SRP. It went really well, and those people were great. Asking the right sort of questions and stuff. Thanks to Vjeko and Ksenija for assisting me with the class. There were plenty new people who were interested in both Terra Nova LARP and LARP itself. Some of them are going to have their first LARP experience really soon - a few hours after writing this, in fact. Because today is Maksimir 57 LARP. And it's going to be the last Maksimir LARP before the big LARP season starts off with Jaska X. Though not the last OM short LARP - on this year's Eurocon  there's gonna be a  LARP stand which will include Ognjeni Mač's program, and it will have other LARPers there as well. On Sunday there's gonna be a Krvomeđe tournament at convention grounds. And later, at May 5th, there's gonna be another short OM LARP combined with mountaineering activity on Medvednica. It will clash a bit with Sven's Steampunk LARP ...

It was a weekend before Jaska LARP, but it was not filled with preparations for it as usual - instead, lots of us LARPers went to SFeraKon, largest & oldest sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention in Croatia. Next years' SFeraKon will also be Eurocon . Yes, we had a quite attractive stand there. Guys from Ognjeni Mač, Croatian LARP association (which I'm a part of) who were keeping the stand did a good job in getting the visitors interested in LARPing. It's probably our most successful con presentation ever. Reason 1 is purely a great job they did. Reason 2 is... we just re-started our convention attendance. Until last year, we were regulars on every SFeraKon and Istrakon (second largest convention in Croatia, but considered by many to be more fun), but for various reasons we missed last year's SFeraKon and Istrakon, as well as this year's Istrakon, which is kind of a shame - but probably a reason we were so successful this year, we gave some people chance to rota...