Diary of a Croatian larper

While I'm still digesting the events of last weekend with WoD Berlin, here's two quick and important news from our neighbors in Bulgaria. First, the PoRtaL larp convention. PoRtaL 1, 3 and this year's 5 were in Zagreb. 2 and 4 were in Budapest. Yeah, I know, I failed to review the last two of them. My bad. But they were great. PoRtaL 6 has already been announced - March 2-4 2018 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. This marks the first time our Bulgarian friends are joining us as the organizers, as the convention expands to its third country. Also, the event date has never been known so early. So - save the date, and follow the PoRtaL convention news on facebook . In other news, Fog larp - the biggest fantasy larp in Bulgaria - is running a kickstarter in order to fund some improvements on their larp - check it out .

Yesterday's Elysium 43 was a fun game. While Elysiums are rather low-profile Vampire events, this one was quite eventful. Characters started feeling safe and secure - in a stark contrast to last weekend's Sabbat Agram - and events from player perspective played out. A new Harpy was selected, a character who was leaving the town soon IC tried to clean the boons he owed others, etc. But soon there was trouble. A city-wide incident. And it was interesting to see how players would react to it - things were happening fast. It was an interesting response to the situation - a situation to which a lot of players were not used to. A situation which was prophesised some time earlier by some Malkavians which started to act weirder than usual... And so, that was Elysium 43. Starting out with Kindred feeling very safe, and ending with the city that is slightly in flames. These events will continue next Tuesday on Elysium 44 , last event of the year. In other news, I announced...

Elysium 39 last week was the 50th Camarilla Agram event ever, and as such it was a bit spiced up compared to usual. Normally, the plot on Elysium events is fully player-decided social sandbox. For a change, Elysium 39 featured a Sabbat ductus who visited the Elysium in a dominated body, and the reaction by most characters was shock and fear. The situation got handled a bit clumsily, but that opened up new avenues to the story. Apart from exploring the Sabbat situation, most of the plot in Elysium 39 and 40 revolved around who will be the new prince (due to the previous events ), and around effectively organizing all the characters from the in-character perspective. Currently there's rather intense plotting and backstabbing going on. We'll see how it ends up on Camarilla Agram 8 this Saturday (reschedule: it will start at 7 PM instead of 6 PM), and how it develops further on future events . And now let's catch up with some local larp news and announcements. E...

I can't remember when was the last time when I walked onto one of our Vampire weekly events (Elysium) and NOT see some new players. Was it sometime in August, when most people were at the coast swimming? For my non-Croatian readers, we're a small country. Zagreb is 2 hours away from the coast, and most people go to the coast to spend their holidays there. We usually rent apartments, or go to friends or family down there and chill on the overcrowded pebbly beaches of the Adriatic sea for a week or two, sunbathing and swimming. Not even the crappy weather like this summer can deter us (though it certainly lowers the mood). During July and August, Zagreb seems half-deserted apart from the construction work that gets done in that time. With the arrival of September and a new school year, Zagreb springs back to life. People return to their regular lives and we get the rush hour traffic again. This September (and early October) was supposed to have several big events, but it seem...

The sixth major Camarilla Agram event of this year was played on Saturday in Kino klub Zagreb. As we're running it as a storyteller (GM) team, unfortunately this event's storyteller (Domagoj Krpan) got some work obligations - this ended in two of us running his plot. Several other players were missing due to Liburnicon and Renaissance festival in Koprivnica, so we were down to 21 players this event. Without divulging any potential spoilers, I'll just say it was a lot of fun. Social setting, personal plots and power play, pushing for certain actions, solving some details and plots (and opening new questions), intertwined with mysterious messages and visions. Almost a year has passed since our first Vampire event , and a lot has changed since then. With 3 major intro larps last year, 6 major larps this year, and 29 (together with tomorrow's Elysium 29 ) small weekly events, that would make 38 events in a year. Plenty of time for these changes to come. In thi...

Last night Camarilla Agram Elysium 25 event took place. 25 Elysium events so far, all of them this year... that's a nice number. This time, the middle of the summer, feels like an eye of the storm. There are very few larps going on right now, as nothing major is going on weekends, so there's only the weekly Elysiums - ever since mid-July's Star Wars 2 and Camarilla Agram 5 ... Which makes me wonder, when the hell did I start thinking about one larp a week for a month as a "low" amount? Must have happened this year. When I started this blog over 3 years ago, most months had 1-2 events only, and if there was more than one event from November to February it was a good year. When I started to larp back in 2001, there was only one event a year - a year later, the second one appeared, and there were people commenting how 2 larps a year are too much for the scene, even if they were on the opposite sides of the country... Back to the topic. Elysium 25 was played ...

Hello dear readers! This blog has been inactive for a while. That's because I was on vacation, swimming in the Adriatic sea, relaxing with my family, reading a few books and recharging my batteries. So what happened in these two weeks? I'll start with two larp reviews first. They were played two weeks ago and I was on them but I didn't get the chance to review them before I went to my vacation. Both were played in the same location (Kinoklub Zagreb aka KKZ) on two consecutive days (July 11 for Star Wars 2 and July 12 for Camarilla Agram 5). Star Wars larp 2 (by Ivo Turk and Matija Mihoković) continued the campaign which started in February . But just to clarify: the larp is simply called Star Wars larp, it has nothing to do with the second movie. Its' timeline is just after the end of the Return of the Jedi. Everything that was written for the first event was still pretty much true, most features - positive and negative - remained pretty much the same as in the ...

This Tuesday's Elysium 14 had 12 people playing. Unfortunately, I wasn't present and nobody else took a photo so you won't see any photos from the gathering but I've heard it described as quite lively. But there are some upcoming changes in our Vampire larp . Camarilla Agram 4 , the fourth big event of this year (set for May 31st) is going to be played on the new location: Kinoklub Zagreb. Even the next small Elysium event - Elysium 15 on Wednesday 21st - will change place from Zlatni Medo to the Caffe bar Luxor, where we got the basement available (and there's free parking that can be found nearby at that time). The last change is that Ivan Kalinić entered the GM team more fully, and is now coordinator for Ventrue and Tremere clans (though he's not involved in the story we're writing). I also had a walk with him yesterday. We were scouting around Maksimir park, finding new and unused locations for larp, as a place to run LarpCraft events (and the U ...

Yesterday's Elysium 13  Vampire game was slightly smaller than usual - a total of 10 players took part in it. I blame the fact on my lack of marketing on Facebook - even though the date was known for over a month (it's visible on larp website ) and I announced it at the end of Elysium 12 , I was otherwise preoccupied so I didn't create a Facebook event until... yesterday. I think it's a good pointer on how much people rely on Facebook for their larp info lately. The event, however, gave us opportunity to do what we can't do with the higher population - after playing a regular social larp for about an hour, we switched to the tabletop mode (for the first time since Elysium 4 ) for some cross-media gaming, and for the last hour of the game we played an investigation and a big battle as tabletop - though transparently using the same rules. 9 players (playing Camarilla vampires) vs 20 weaker Sabbat showelheads - it took about an hour to play out due to the turn-...

A total of 16 people took part in last night's Elysium 10 event. It was sort of a big deal - Elysium went to double digits, it was the 15th Camarilla Agram larp so far - and it marked the instance of the first character death in the series so far, following a period of intense drama and planning. The plot thickens - both the PC and NPC plot, from this event and the online role-play - and it's really building up towards this Saturday's major Vampire event - Camarilla Agram: Chapter 3 . I'm pretty excited about it, to be honest. It's gonna feature a lot of players - new, old and even a few visitors from other cities and countries. And it's not the only thing happening this weekend. This Sunday is a battlegame day at Krvomeđe , the Croatian Amtgard chapter. Expect it from 3 to 5 PM. You would expect next week to be off, due to Easter - but no. Thursday is the day for Elysium 11 . And Friday will feature the  meeting for the upcoming Terra Nova 2014 . ...

Hello February :) Lots of exciting stuff happening in the larp world right now. After several postponements, the Steampunk larp "Chase" from the "Para pokreće svijet" series was finally held this Sunday. The main requirement for it to happen was the snowfall, and the larp included a chase across the snowy mountain. A total of four people plus GM took part in the larp. The second thing happening was the yearly Ognjeni Mač meeting, postponed from the week before due to some heating-related issues. Six events were announced , starting from the March 1st battlegame (clashing with the Camarilla Agram 2 schedule) to the big event last weekend of July. New setting, new ruleset, new organizing structure. To start off the larping season, this Sunday (Feb 9th) - starting at 6 PM - they'll be auctioning off their extra costumes, weapons and props, with bids starting from the low amount of 1-5 kn. Two days from now (Wednesday, February 5th), the Elysium series o...

Happy Holidays from Crolarper! This painting is a Tremere art done by one of our talented players, Kristina. Hope you like it :) The next two larps in Croatia will both take place on January 5th - the special "Steampunk: Para pokreće svijet" event "Chase" and Krvomeđe battlegame event . Also, the start of the Camarilla Agram chronicle has been announced for January 25th - it will be run at my place. The dates for Rajski Vrhovi events in 2014 have also been announced . The latest project on the forum is that we started to compile local larp terminology. See the current list here and add to it if you have something to add. We're discussing other interesting topics such as morality in Croatian larp , how to build larp weapons and showing off our characters . Join us there. And have a happy holiday season with your family and friends!

I've been rather silent lately. I haven't forgotten you :) I was just busy preparing the big one. Yes, that's the upcoming Izgon 2 for which a lot of material has already been produced, and there's still a month of frentic preparation to be done, and it's a lot of work. One part of the project is expanding the background story, which I've been doing with a pen&paper group for the past 3 weeks. Besides that, I've been busy writing rules, characters etc. The first Izgon larp had been prepared in less than a month, but that one had only 16 players signing up initially. Izgon 2 has already more sign-ups than any other Croatian larp of this year, so it's a huge project - and likely with a very different feel than the first one. But there's things to do before Izgon. This weekend is Ognjeni Mač's Jaska 12 - an autumn event organized in a similar vein to Jaska 9 two years ago, it's gonna be a first Jaska I'll miss. Because I'...

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 r...

Player reactions to Zimograd so far have been quite positive. You can read most of them on Facebook event page  as they are in English. A special post which is certainly worth checking is the diary of Maverick Metzgerei , an in-character view of the events on Zimograd from a quite unique perspective... Left: Farkas Dávid aka Dregar as Maverick Metzgerei - author of the aforementioned in-character diary Right: Mesterházi Sándor aka Kildar as Johann Eckbert Hebenstreit - organizer of Chronicles of Demgard larp Another review of Zimograd has become available on Larp Hrvatska blog , by Zvonimir, who (largely) played the Or-tuk by the name of Mit-or-ya. If you don't speak Croatian, Google translated version retains enough of the original's meaning to be largely understandable... Mit-or-ya And, some non-Zimograd related news. Zagreb is full of snow. There hasn't been this much snow for as long as I can remember (and longer... apparently this is the most snow w...

Krvomeđe will be both first and the last larp of December. The next Krvomeđe battlegame is planned this Sunday (December 9th), from 2 PM until 4 PM. Sunday, December 30th in the same timeslot will be the last Krvomeđe of the year, and the last larp of 2012. On Saturday the 15th, I'll run a short larp "Death of a Japanese Emperor" as I announced in the previous post , as part of the ZaKon Dalekog Istoka convention. It's possible that the last Ognjeni Mač event of the year - Sowa's Wedding - will be held on the same day or on Sunday after - to provide closure for this year's OzOI - but I'll update you with the exact date, time and details once they're decided on. It will be set at Fran's basement like the Wake of Morana . (update, 18:00 - it will be at the regular Ognjeni Mač place instead, on a different date - either Dec 12th, 16th or 19th) Some time ago, Ognjeni Mač stopped doing Wednesday workshops, but this Wednesday (December 5th) there w...

So. Yesterday I did a presentation of Terra Nova: Zimograd on SRP. If you're interested (and can read Croatian) it's available here . I believe it went more smoothly than the last one about Terra Nova 2012  which I did in April. Tomorrow evening is the "Wake of Morana" larp by Ognjeni Mač. It's gonna be a nice break from a longer pause of not larping. In the meanwhile, check this interesting interview on www.larping.org , with Mark A. Krupa, who wrote the story of The Wild Hunt movie (it's a larp movie, check it out if you haven't already)...

If you missed the yesterday's murder mystery game which was run at Starbase Cantina (with seven people participating), it will be run once again in a few days or weeks. Probably in USS Croatia, which is the Croatian Star Trek association. The news will be published here, so you'll have another chance to participate. Until then, introduction to the game (as well as the basic info about characters) is available here (in Croatian) for everyone who wants to read it. Also, there's a few more quick news and reminders: I published a Players' guide to Terra Nova . Just a reminder - Ognjeni Mač has a clothes giveaway today. Next larp is Krvomeđe  (battlegames next to the river Sava ) next week on Sunday!

I realize it's been a while since I posted here. Sorry about that, there's actually a lot of stuff that has been going on - it's me who's been quite busy lately (and right now I'm in the middle of home redecoration week). I've attended February's Krvomeđe and Sunčev Potočić feast. Krvomeđe was a bit under-visited, and Sunčev Potočić was certainly interesting. High-security personnel (in-character) made this LARP... a bit different than most of us are used to. Some tensions were high, I'm sure things will get a bit more relaxed next time around. Sleeping was great, location was great and we filmed a promo video for Green Banner:  http://vimeo.com/38032871 Zombie LARP happened at the same time as Sunčev Potočić - and the postponed Sven's Steampunk LARP happened as well the weekend after (which would put it on last weekend). And this Saturday I'm running a Terra Nova intro - and Krvomeđe is the day after. If I were looking for the right words to...

OK, it was a large break. Over 4 months since my last post. But a lot of it has changed during this summer - and it was Croatian LARP at its highest point so far. I'll be slowly reviewing all the major events I've been to. And there have been many. Stay tuned :) Oh, and this blog got a redesign. Hope you like it.