Diary of a Croatian larper

Who are player characters? What is their purpose? Each larp defines that differently. Or perhaps it would be better to say, early Croatian fantasy larps did not do that at all, they were designed as a blank canvas allowing (at least in theory) every player to choose that for themselves. As these larps themselves progressed, various concepts would be more or less viable and playable. Terra Nova 2012 was the first fantasy larp to cast player characters specifically as colonists of a foreign land (other factions were added later, and from this year new setting will have factions designed from various player choices in last 4 years). TESC larps were a series of one-shots, each with their own factions which generally helped form what players are. And now comes Divlja Krajina, which focuses on a very specific role: all player characters are adventurers, braving the undiscovered divlja krajina ("wild region" would be an approximate translation) in hopes of fame and fortune. ...

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....