Diary of a Croatian larper

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...

Dear readers. For the next two weeks I'm on my holidays and I will not update my blog. Reason for this is that I'll spend those two weeks on largest fantasy larps in Europe - Drachenfest and ConQuest of Mythodea. Remember what I said about getting ready for events ? Well, preparation for two weeks of larping is certainly more complex than preparation for weekend events. This time, my wife Jasminka did a huge amount of prep this week while I was at work - and during this weekend as I was out there working (in fact, I was finished with my work about an hour before publishing this, and it's when my vacation was cleared). Same as last year, we're going family style and we won't be traveling alone. Our traveling companion this year will be Marko (aka Erlin) from Serbia. That's us on Drachenfest last year, with our son Damjan If you're coming to Drachenfest, you can find us in the Copper camp, as last year. Unser Blut fur Kupfer! Try to find us before la...

Crolarp 2013 is the national, central storyline event of all medieval fantasy larps in Croatia running under Amtgard rules or some derivative of it - for more info, check out my last year's article . The first Crolarp was held in the same place (Gornja Kupčina, the usual terrain of Jaska larp) last year, and it was the largest larp of 2012. This year's Crolarp started yesterday and will last for the remainder of the weekend. Due to my work, I was only able to attend yesterday evening, for some four hours - so this review is just a short slice of what was going on on Crolarp. I snapped two photos (which I'm gonna post here as first photos from this year's Crolarp), however they don't look so good since I snapped them when I could, and that was in dusk and from some distance... A tavern (terrace) is visible to the left. First, some logistics. The camp layout didn't sit so well with me. There were two small camps, one huge camp next to the tavern, an org...

After a couple of years of inactivity, the Vampire larp in Croatia restarts - in Zagreb. There are two projects being designed and built. One of them is the classic Vampire: The Masquerade larp as it had been known - but this time run under new ruleset being developed by By Night Studios . There will be two phases in Zagreb games, called "Camarilla Agram" - three limited events will be run this year (short evening events of a few hours) as an intro, mirroring the Alpha playtest release of the ruleset. Next year it will start full-on. Check out the first intro event - scheduled for September 6th - here . It will feature a GM system (or storyteller, to use World of Darkness term) where there is a four-member team with a rotating primacy - one is in charge of the event, while other teammembers are assisting. The second larp will be a non-World of Darkness larp, with much simpler ruleset and a higher degree of pervasivity. It will be run by Tatjana Štimac as a one-shot eve...

Last week I've been interviewed by +Iva Tatić  for Croatian Radio 3. The show's name is "Prozor u digitalno", or "A window into digital". The show aired today at 1 PM (Central European time), for those of you who didn't get to tune in the show is now available here , it's in Croatian and lasts for about 30 minutes. A short summary of the subjects I covered on the interview: What is larp? Croatian larp scene (also a few tidbits about European larp scene and worldwide larp scene) How are larps organized Specific info about Izgon Specific info about Terra Nova

One online discussion about larp got me thinking - can we truly review and meter our larps to one universal and objective standard? The answer is: hardly. Larp can be so many different things, and the experience will always be subjective. However, we can come close if we manage to describe context clearly enough. For that purpose, I built a comprehensive survey called  Larp Analysis, Classification and Review Tool . It has public analytics and raw data which enables you to build your own analytics, so it makes it useful for several purposes. It's gone viral before I managed to write this post, so it's possible you've already seen it :) I plan to keep it open forever, so feel free to use it. In another news, my copy of the Nordic Larp book finally arrived - yay! Despite the fact I'm a fast reader, it might be a while for me to review it (my previous and so far only larp book review had been Leaving Mundania ) as next week I'll be preparing for my two-week t...

Labuđa Rijeka site - swim & fight! As I announced yesterday , there will be three larps this weekend - and Labuđa Rijeka 3, the water battlegame, has been postponed (again!) for two weeks due to weather forecast. There will be a regular battlegame day on Krvomeđe instead (starting later, from 4 PM so it's a good chance I'll be able to attend), and Labuđa Rijeka has been announced for July 27th which means I'll miss it (that day, the battle I'm gonna be on will be the end battle of Drachenfest).