Diary of a Croatian larper

On the pages 56-59 of the new, 12th issue of the Večernji list 's tech magazine called iQ magazin  there's a large article featuring larps written by Danijel Lijović. I have mentioned this in my recent article , and now it's finally here, in print and available at all local kiosks at the reasonable price of 9,90 kn. Article is available in print, not online (online you'll only find  this announcement ) so go and buy it, display it, show it to your friends, family and neighbors and save it for your grandchildren. Featuring a selection of five local larp campaigns (Camarilla Agram, Elder Scrolls Chronicles, Terra Nova, Rajski Vrhovi and Star Wars) and with some exclusive photos taken on Camarilla Agram 5, the article is quite comprehensive. It has a few parts which got overly edited and some typos (like mentioning inversion instead of immersion), but overall it's a very cool article, because the journalist larps with us on Camarilla Agram (which got the most lo...

We often feel safe and comfortable with our modern technology and comforts. Our modern technology and outlook on life makes us look down on how people lived in the past as something backwards, primitive and very uncomfortable. However, in most cases that's simply not true. Life of our ancestors was not a suffering, toiling experience. As a matter of fact, there's plenty of situations where they were wiser than us and had a more comfortable life. And that specially applies to fantasy larping, where in many situations (not all, since different fantasy larps have different standards of authenticity, some of them enforced by rules while others relying on peer pressure) people only emulate the look of the medieval, without proper understanding of how and why things worked for them - reenactors and living history folks have it easier, since they tend to go authentic from the start and things simply work. So yes, this is a post that will promote authentic - or close to authentic -...

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 ...

Two years ago was my first time that I went to a larp out of Croatia. It was Drachenfest 2012 . Not long after, I went to my first larp in Hungary - Chronicles of Demgard 2012/2 - The Secret of Hartwigstein . Traveling to another country to larp there? It was quite an adventure. However, time passed. Croatia joined EU , simplifying the border controls. I crossed the border again to play  Chronicles of Demgard 2013/2 - The Sternn Pass Incident , and then again in March for the second PoRtaL convention in Budapest . Going to Hungary for my third Demgard larp was... well, pretty much like a hop to the neighborhood. And due to my newborn daughter, probably my last international larp adventure this year. Unlike the previous 2 Demgard games I've been to, this one started earlier - however, this is a Demgard summer game (first one that's international), and the summer games they have are bigger. So Friday was also the playable day, and I arrived at the terrain near the city of Tatab...

It's been a while since I've last been to a Camarilla Agram Elysium event - and heck, I'm the main organizer. Having a baby daughter, I can't run around as much as I used to. But with the assistance of other organizers - and myself working behind the scenes when I could, as well as the highly-sandboxy larp design, the Elysium events continued to run normally. The last few days were rich in online role-playing which got the things moving, and so the event was quite busy. Adding to it is the fact that it brought in a lot of people - the start of a new month resets the monthly XP cap. Played in Kinoklub Zagreb, 23 players joined the event. And that's loads for a small, weekly casual event. This made me pause for a bit. Twenty three? Heck, there's weekend fantasy larps played with less people. Successfuly. It's more than usual but still. When the design of this larp started close to a year ago, I hoped for a number that was half what we have now and I ...

Terra Nova 2014  was the sixth event of the series, in just a bit over two years. How quickly the time passes. Like all Terra Nova events so far, this one was played at a different terrain. The terrain of TN2014 was owned by the family of one of our players and co-organizers, Ivan Kalinić. In total, 30 players took part in Terra Nova 2014 - 23 Croats, 5 Hungarians and 2 Bulgarians. This was the first Terra Nova event where players were separated into several camps - there were three camps in total (the colonists' camp, a camp of the tribal Tuk-u culture, and the undead camp), and in addition the colonists' camp was split in two. The terrain was bigger than on previous Terra Nova events and - due to camps being spread around - better utilized, with a large part of the larp happening in the forest between the camps. Also, this was the first camping Terra Nova event where there was a specific NPC camp, with their own goals and missions - and a significant NPC population t...

Intro speech The face of Croatian larp scene today looks way different than three years ago when this blog started. There are many more larps today, and they're way more differentiated. However, while I'm the first one that would say such shift is positive, it made larping more involved. I admit - I'm an addict of immersion, bleed and player-driven plots, but still there are mornings when I just wanna wake up, go in the woods and slay a few orcs and save the village. Last year a couple of us started Camarilla Agram Vampire larp. And it works marvelously as a common larp that can be played every week - but we have lost that option in fantasy. Few fantasy larps in the area function as the ongoing campaigns nowadays for more than two events a year. So a month and a half ago we opened a Croatian chapter of LarpCraft called Bear Mountain Colony. We found it to be a very scalable system with an awesome back-end, something that will support a continuous campaign well....