Knutebooks, documentation and some more fun

Several updates, folks. First of all, the books from this year's Knutpunkt are (more or less) out! They're probably the most important works on larp theory published every year (btw, the hashtag for this year is #knutpunkt2014). There are two books available:

The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp is an anthology. The download is not working at the time of writing, it should be re-enabled soon - the version that worked when it was originally uploaded had an article missing, so be sure to redownload it once it's up again - but from the bugged version I read this book is awesome if you're trying to understand Nordic Larp, especially for those new to the subject. Keep an eye on the above link, as it should get re-enabled soon. (Edit: it's enabled!)
The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp is full of, well, cutting edge larp articles. The thing you expect from Knutebooks. And it's available at the moment of writing :)

Previously reviewed The Elder Scrolls Chronicles 1 is also getting author's review. Check it out here (it also links to the survey for players, and more). In addition, many other documents have been released which could help you give an insight in how this larp was designed:

Faction quests have been released (half of them are in Croatian, half of them in English) and available here.
Personal quest map is now available here.
Story epilogue is available here.

More TESC photo albums (like this one) have been released, but for the full list of photos check out the Facebook group. Also, Skirts'n'Wolves has an Elder Scrolls Chronicles-themed article about post-larp depression. Read it here.

For everyone interested in fantasy larp or history in general - University of Wisconsin Green Bay has managed to reconstruct a cloth armor called linothorax. Check it out here. Regarding other interesting stuff available on the Internet, Lizzie Stark has some good advice regarding building larp communities and race in larp.

Also, some of you might already know about it but last summer a larp-themed novel called LARP: The Battle for Verona came out. It appears that the Kindle edition of it is now free - though I have to admit, I'm not sure if it used to be before. To get it, click here.

A question for all the readers of this blog: if, in theory, a new larp was to emerge in your local scene, what would you like to see the most? What things are currently missing? Think about it, and then provide an answer - in comments or in the forums.

Last but not the least, here's a 9th episode of LARPs: The Series.

The 15 rules of larp

The following 15 rules (warning: strong language) were written some years ago in Great Britain, and have been pretty much generally accepted on the British larp scene. Especially popular is rule 7 - widely known by its number and commonly considered to be the most imortant rule of all (and I agree). Even the biggest British larp forum has taken Rule7 as its name. The rules have been originally created by the Drunken Monkeys and edited by Rick Wynne who added some extra stuff in the explanations to make them more understandable to international audience (it still contains some British larp lingo though), more work-safe and to throw in his two cents. (copy of the original wording is available here ) 1. Don’t play a mighty warrior; play a warrior and be mighty. Don’t label your character. As soon as you say that you are the best swordsman in the land someone will come along and kick your ass. Just get into the mindset of the person and role-play it out. 2. No one cares about you...

It's been way too long without any updates

I'm just back from PoRtaL XII, which was back in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 6 years after PoRtaL VI , which is - incidentally - only 3 posts below this one on my blog, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. And this means I failed to review the past two year's PoRtaLs, also excellent. Here's some representation for them. Back during PoRtaL 10 in Krakow, I did a presentation called Designing larps with intent . It was streamed, and can be found on Youtube. For PoRtaL 10, I also wrote and ran a larp Journey to Tau Ceti - an expanded version of the Arrival at Tau Ceti. I was a mess at documenting it, and it still remains in an unpublishable state. Both of these were run on Friday, which means I haven't really see much else on the convention that day, but I did on Saturday, when I was also able to play Ties that Bind larp by Alexandros Alexiou. I skipped Sunday, as we had to go early to drive home. For documentation purposes, full program listing is here . At next year...

Discord is up

More stuff from my PoRtaL XII talk, Larps and Information Technology , seem to be coming true. In particular, the part about technology becoming old. And so it is with this blog. The technology it's built on is getting old and starts to not play as nice with modern browsers, plugins and smartphones as it used to. Specifically, the comment section doesn't seem to work for anyone. So I decided to open a discord to help us all connect in an easier way. If you are interested, join the Crolarper discord server here .

Diary of a Croatian larper

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