Diary of a Croatian larper

Return to Rikon after last year was nice - this year everything seemed more busy and alive, with visibly more people attending than last year. Rikon grew visibly in both visitor number and content. It also ended up being probably the most larpy convention I've been on (apart from PoRtaL , but that one was different because it was a specialized larp convention). There was truly loads of larp content (which I mentioned in the announcement ). All of it means that Rikon was - for me at least - quite a busy convention, so I didn't see much beyond the larp content. In a way, that gives me pause. Looking at the programming schedule , there was an almost full track of larp programming throughout the event, which was truly remarkable. First presentation was an introduction to larp and what larp can be by Siro (M. Wranka) - but I missed it since I was still on the road at that time. Dru five-man group I arrived just in time to run  Dru . Dru is a Norwegian freeform scenari...

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'...

The sci-fi conventions in Croatia function like central meeting points of Croatian SF, Fantasy and roleplaying fandom. This is visible even in smaller conventions like Rikon. They had no big-name guests (Eurocon and Liburnicon had them) but still the people came and had fun on various lectures, presentations, games and demos, or just hanging around with people. The new campus building - to which Rikon relocated last year, from what I've heard - is quite neat, and is probably the best looking convention space in Croatia. It was a bit underutilized, as there were several holes in schedule where a classroom was empty, and despite there being a lot of people, a few more would fit too. After Jaska 11 was canceled, I had a weekend off so I scheduled to go on a show with Red Srebrnog Zmaja on Friday. However, that show got canceled too. So around 2 PM on Friday I decided to go to Rikon with my wife and kid. We would spend the night in our apartment in Klenovica, some 50 km away f...

With Jaska 11 being canceled, the main thing happening this weekend in larp circles will be Rikon, a sci-fi and fantasy convention in Rijeka which starts today. For Croatian convention standards, Rikon is a medium-size convention - however, unlike its relatively small larp scene, Croatia is a regional leader in number of sci-fi conventions and numbers of people they draw in, so it's quite a significant convention. Larp-wise, Sven Nemet will hold a presentation about Para pokreće svijet larp today at 9 PM today on Rikon, in a room or section named "Gondor", so if you're attending Rikon be sure to see that presentation. It seems that Jaska 11 is not the only thing canceled these days. Rajski Vrhovi feast planned on December 15-16 also got canceled (before it was announced though). Not due to weather or injury, but because the venue cost has been rised nearly three times compared to last year... So unless another larp gets announced (such as last year's Gai...