Diary of a Croatian larper

After almost two years , I was talking about larp on national TV again, together with a larper colleague, +Ana Rajner   :) This time we got slightly under four minutes of programming. Here's our story - and a couple of larp trailers played along: If you don't understand Croatian, it's basically a general description of what larp is. It was shown this Friday afternoon on HRT2, and it had a rerun today around noon on HRT3. In better resolution than what they released for online viewing, but I digress. You can watch the entire show here  if you're interested. Just select the 8.3.2013. date. Also, a digression - a friend of mine dug up some old photos. Including the photo of me from the first larp I was ever on. A 17-year old me playing a young barbarian on Kutina Summer Session 2001... My first larp Which was really cool. I thought there was no surviving photos from that era. Here's another from the old Motovun larp (after it was done and before we went ...

It's true that most Croatian fantasy LARP is either Amtgard or using Amtgard rules , or some variant thereof. And that has been the case for the last 15 years, since the beginning of Croatian LARP until Terra Nova started this year. That's why the question of rules is a big one to most Croatian players. But there have been other ideas in the early years that made attempts to change the scene. Today's article is guest-written by one of the insiders in the early Croatian LARP scene, Tomislav Šimat. He's been there since the first Summer Session, and his vision of LARP was different - some would say ahead of the times. Nine years ago, a new croatian system (NeCroSys in short) was created. This is its story - as well as an insight into an early age of Croatian LARP  and how it came to be at all... In mid-'90s a group of Croatian role-players gathered in the ruins of an old fort near Kutina for a game in a (more or less) authentic environment. They liked the game b...

If we look at the history of Croatian LARP and how it developed, we could divide it into several distinct time periods, eras, ages, or however you want to call it. This is not an "official" division or anything - I will explain the criteria which I used to divide the periods further below. The First Age (1997 - 2001) The first age was about one larp only - Summer Session (also known as Kutina LARP), a fantasy LARP organized in Katoličke Čaire near Kutina. It was organized once a year, and it was the game which unified pretty much all Croatian LARPers - a game which was basically synonymous with Croatian LARP, and pretty much defined what mainstream LARP looks like in Croatia now. LARP was spreading around and getting more popular, and events were getting better and better. Summer Session 2001 had a population of 60-ish players. The Second Age (2002 - 2006) I put the start of the second age in 2002, the year first non-Summer Session LARP (Motovun LARP) appeared in C...