Diary of a Croatian larper

Last year, Carmen larp was played in Croatia. A generic space opera sci-fi game set in the distant future, a mishmash of a lot of possible SF settings which could be implemented in the larp. It was said there would be sequels, though none were created yet. But Carmen also created a ruleset. As it was created to work with multiple SF settings, it also enabled it to be used in those settings. The Star Wars larp that's just been announced for Zagreb is going to use Carmen larp's rules in a basically unchanged form (you can read them here - in Croatian). One of the major differences will be the fact that prewritten characters are gonna be used. Set in a bar on a remote world after Episode 6, it will portray a crucial time when society changes - and what consequences will it take, with various factions trying to maintain the influence they had. Sign ups are available from January 12 to 19, and the event will be played on Saturday, February 22nd in Kino klub Zagreb. Entrance...

Yesterday was the first Croatian SF larp - well, second if you count Fallout  (and there were some Battlestar Galactica investigation committee games), but this is what most people think about when they refer to SF: space opera. Space travel, aliens, laser guns (read: nerf), humanity (and other races) spread across the universe, etc. Carmen is a space station (in orbit around Mimas) for life extension which had been abandoned for a long time, in a distant, dying-universe future in which you could bring any races or cultures, new - which you just invented - or from existing sci-fi universes and works. I decided to play a mercenary - a space Russian character from a colony around Barnard's Star, with a messed up childhood, converted to Islam, and of questionable morality and sanity. Fun! The larp had a grouping concept - a group of people could arrive on the station by the same ship. Our ship, Kverc Šomerc , had the crew/passanger list of four. I was, of course, muscles (an...

Christmas holidays are over - unless you're celebrating them using Julian calendar, in which case merry Christmas to you - and the 2013 larp season starts strong. January - which has in years so far been a quiet month with maybe a couple of hours of fighting - will feature something every weekend now. This weekend is, of course, Terra Nova: Zimograd. I took a week off to finish all the necessary preparations for it, and to be honest I'm getting pretty hyped about it. The weekend after will be Krvomeđe. With renewed interest in pure battlegame format that we've seen on the last larp of 2012, it will be fun. The weekend after, on Saturday, January 26th there will be - it was just announced - the first Carmen SF larp. "Carmen - because you deserve to live longer" As I have mentioned before , Carmen is a SF larp. The rulebook is available here (in Croatian), it's 17 short pages containing the ruleset, and some basics of the setting and what is expected, ...

The development of the upcoming Carmen distant-future Sci-Fi larp is coming along nicely. The early logo version has been revealed, as well as the early version of the rulebook  (in Croatian only). It lists skills, items, game mechanics and it's written as much as possible from the in-character perspective as a welcome brochure, giving away some flavor of the game in 17 A5 pages. One interesting mechanic: any in-game items you bring (including weapons and energy shields, but not armor) are considered stealable in game unless you "biochip" them (you have 2 or more biochips available). Apart from Carmen, Chronicles of Demgard is still getting actively discussed. I might have written my review a bit too early. It's only yesterday that I actually heard the full story (which not everyone found out in game), and suddenly everything clicked into place and made sense and I have to say that this ranks among the best and most complex larp stories I've experienced ...

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...