Diary of a Croatian larper

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....

Larp terminology typically varies in different countries. A great deal of it comes from tabletop role-playing games, or has been invented by various larp communities around the world - and most of it is in English. However, DKWDDK is an exception to the rule - it comes from German. Du Kannst Was Du Darstellen Kannst. You can what you can show, or portray. Commonly known as "larping without rules", it's widely known under the German acronym. I briefly mentioned it in my last Start a larp article, it's now time to expand it into a full article - which I meant to do for about last 2 years or so. It's not a ruleset - indeed, no real ruleset is needed with DKWDDK (apart from safety rules, which are always needed and used). It's a philosophy that's taking over many larps around, especially in Germany where most larps are either played that way or at least heavily influenced by the playstyle (a lot of them have mechanics which they consider more of a suggestio...

The fourth chapter of Camarilla Agram Vampire larp was played last night in Kinoklub Zagreb. A total of 37 players joined the event (no visitors from other countries this time), and made this one of the smoothest and most memorable events so far. Excellent role-play, no OOC drama and plenty of memorable scenes made for a powerful evening. Our bartender is actually a V:TES player Player characters set up a high security system at the entrance of the newest Elysium, and there were two checkpoints that everyone had to go through. With everyone searched, auspex-ed, blood-tested and their info entered into prince's database. This did not go down easily and was a large source of conflict in the early game. There was a contest for a new Seneschal (since the old one was revealed to be a Setite), right hand of the Prince, which provided for a content between two main candidates, who tried to discredit each other during the course of the event in several possible ways. There w...

The flooded village of Gunja The first news for today's article is... well, the kind you hope you never hear. Floods. Large parts of Eastern Croatia (as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia) have been flooded in the worst floods in over a century. Lots of people lost their homes, and there's been great loss of property and even life. Tens of thousands evacuated from their hometowns. Thankfully, my family's been safe. This is an appeal for humanitarian aid. For details on how to donate via Croatian Red Cross, click here . If you're in Croatia, you can also click here to see different ways how you can help. And now for some brighter news. I got a daughter yesterday! On May 18th, which was also dubbed International larp pride day in 2014. Coincidence? Anyway, she's 3700 grams, beautiful, 53 cm tall and called Leona. Myself and Goran doing a presentation (photo by Boris Kasavica) Also, this weekend was SFeraKon weekend! Due to expecting a baby on ...

This Tuesday's Elysium 14 had 12 people playing. Unfortunately, I wasn't present and nobody else took a photo so you won't see any photos from the gathering but I've heard it described as quite lively. But there are some upcoming changes in our Vampire larp . Camarilla Agram 4 , the fourth big event of this year (set for May 31st) is going to be played on the new location: Kinoklub Zagreb. Even the next small Elysium event - Elysium 15 on Wednesday 21st - will change place from Zlatni Medo to the Caffe bar Luxor, where we got the basement available (and there's free parking that can be found nearby at that time). The last change is that Ivan Kalinić entered the GM team more fully, and is now coordinator for Ventrue and Tremere clans (though he's not involved in the story we're writing). I also had a walk with him yesterday. We were scouting around Maksimir park, finding new and unused locations for larp, as a place to run LarpCraft events (and the U ...

Sven Nemet's Bizzaro larp has been played... I couldn't attend it, but the players there returned with positive comments. The concept for the event was to bring characters from any setting - as long as they were somewhat bizzare in concept. Played on the terrain slightly southwest from Zagreb, it was limited to the low number of players due to location requirements. It was described to me as very sandbox-ey in execution, and sequels were tentatively announced... This weekend is SFeraKon, Croatia's biggest Sci-fi/Fantasy convention. And I just realized, I've been writing about it in over 3 years this blog's been active. So yes, you can read articles about SFeraKon 2011 , SFeraKon 2012  (which was also Eurocon) and SFeraKon 2013 . (Some of the old articles' photo links are broken) Compared to the last year's schedule, this SFeraKon appears less larpy - there's less hands-on stuff such as games and workshops. There will be an increase in presentati...