Diary of a Croatian larper

After a short part of the program in the hotel International, like on Thursday, Eurocon's program continued in its traditional venue, on FER. This year though, they put a stargate on the entrance. (Why did they have to use the one from Atlantis?) Eurocon 2012 convention entrance Anyways, FER is a big improvement over hotel International. Bigger, more roomy, with plenty of space for sellers, associations, etc. and their stalls. It was like a regular SFeraKon on steroids - bigger, better, with more rooms open, international associations and their stalls, and more people. The attendance changed drastically from Thursday (as expected, since Thursday was free for everyone in masks). LARPers no longer visually owned the convention. As conventions go, SFeraKon is usually overwhelming. And how wouldn't it be? If you were to see everything, you'd have to be on 20 places at the same time - so everyone's experience is rather unique. And as Eurocon, this simply grew bigg...

So there it was, the first day of Eurocon. Free for everyone wearing a costume, so I went there with my wife in our Terra Nova costumes - and we brought our son along. Costume-wise, us fantasy LARPers pretty much owned the place: All of us running Terra Nova LARP were there in our NPC costumes Full Ognjeni Mač setup was there - everyone from Management Board (myself included), Game Organization Board, and plenty of other members and regular players too. In the best gear they could find. Ivo, who runs Krvomeđe / Rajski Vrhovi was there as his regular character Zlatko Kramparić. Most of the rest of his group was also here (again including myself there... I gave myself plenty of work this year). Siro, who runs Lubena LARP. Though he portrayed a Team Fortress 2 character. SRP folk, playing various characters Other costumes also appeared. Apart from the Team Fortress 2 team, there were plenty of Steampunk characters, some anime cosplayers, Pikachu, Wolverine, a ...

My guest post on larping.org  just came out. If you're not reading larping.org, you might want to check them out - it's a very interesting LARP related site with English-language LARP news, articles, stories and ideas from all around the world - and now Croatia as well. That post of mine is basically an introduction - both to what I do (within Croatian LARP scene) and the short history and current state of Croatian LARP. If you're a new reader of mine - and feel a bit lost with all the info - it might be of help, so feel free to read it here . Thanks to Jordan who runs larping.org!

The next week is going to have two events - both awesome as in "you can't miss them" until you realize they're held at the same time. April 26th - 29th brings us Eurocon in Zagreb, in place of this year's regular SFeraKon. It will be the biggest and most significant SF/Fantasy event in Croatia since 1986. (which is the last time it was held in Zagreb). While the tickets are more expensive than for regular SFeraKon, Thursday is free for anyone in costume - that would be all LARPers as well. Ognjeni Mač will have a stand there - and there will be other LARPers too. Krvomeđe tournament will also be held outside on Sunday at 2. Overall, there will be a very decent LARP presence. It goes without saying that it will be awesome. April 27th - May 2nd brings us VLarp in Serbia, organized by Green Banner it'll be quite possibly the biggest Serbian LARP of the year, drawing in Bulgarian players as well. For Croatian standards, travel there + stay + food is ve...

Last Sunday (Apr. 15) there was the first Social Games Day organized in Buena Vista club in Zagreb. There were board games, card games, roleplaying games, wargames... And LARP. In its 7 hours, it managed to attract around 600 visitors. Green Banner Croatia did some LARP promo on it. They didn't stay confined to the convention grounds however - they took a walk in full gear through the center of Zagreb. Plenty of demonstrations were given, and plenty of "civilians" were excited to take photos of themselves with LARPers - which is great, as it raises the awareness about LARP, and - sometimes - manages to introduce new people to the hobby.

Ain't time passing by quickly? It's been a year since this blog started. In that year we had plenty of things going on here: LARP articles, text and video interviews, reviews, national and international LARP coverage, TV appearances, and not to mention starting a whole new LARP. You can check out our past articles by scrolling down or if you select the top option "Archive" on the floating pop-up menu to your right. Yes, it's been an exciting year - thanks for reading this blog so far, and I hope you stay reading us - and most important of all, keep LARPing.

Maksimir LARP is on one side very limited (only couple of hours long, no camps), and on the other side quite demanding of the organizers. From the perspective of most of our players, it's a fun, short event that keeps us distracted and in-character between the big events. Yesterday was the 57th Maksimir, and it was one of the better ones. It's always great to see players putting in some effort, and yesterday was a milestone of a sort, as Lovro appeared with the first high-quality orc costume in Croatia. Together with Alastar the Elf , he wouldn't look out of place even in a decent high-budget fantasy movie. It was not only an appearance that marked this Maksimir. Roleplaying was especially good, seemed like everybody's having some sort of a new idea, and there was just something quite positive in the air. Questing involved certain shade attacks (among other things), and was in general well thought of, giving a sort of a background for upcoming Sljeme 2...

Remember Claus Raasted from Petra's interview posted here in December? Here's his new thought provoking video "Larpification" from Nordic Larp Talks. Rest of the videos could be found here . They're short, and though they don't have much to do with LARP in Croatia, they're a great and informative thing to watch for any LARPer, anywhere.

So, this Thursday I held a Terra Nova presentation for SRP. It went really well, and those people were great. Asking the right sort of questions and stuff. Thanks to Vjeko and Ksenija for assisting me with the class. There were plenty new people who were interested in both Terra Nova LARP and LARP itself. Some of them are going to have their first LARP experience really soon - a few hours after writing this, in fact. Because today is Maksimir 57 LARP. And it's going to be the last Maksimir LARP before the big LARP season starts off with Jaska X. Though not the last OM short LARP - on this year's Eurocon  there's gonna be a  LARP stand which will include Ognjeni Mač's program, and it will have other LARPers there as well. On Sunday there's gonna be a Krvomeđe tournament at convention grounds. And later, at May 5th, there's gonna be another short OM LARP combined with mountaineering activity on Medvednica. It will clash a bit with Sven's Steampunk LARP ...

One week after we filmed it, and after much effort by Vjeko, Terra Nova 2012 trailer is here. Enjoy!

Just a short tidbit of info. I'll be holding a Terra Nova presentation on next Thursday, April 12th at SRP, in classroom D5 at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. It will start at 7 PM. If you're going to be in the area, I'd be glad to see you there and answer any questions you might have.

Spring is here, and everything turned green. It's surprisingly how everything out there turned vivid in the last week or so. Anyway, I was quite busy last weekend as it was my birthday and unfortunately I missed the most recent Maksimir LARP. However, I got my fix of LARPing this weekend certainly: I was out there yesterday filming some stuff for Terra Nova (which you'll see soon, I won't spoil it at this moment), and I was on today's Krvomeđe, ready for some battle. Me posing Although I was a bit late, I was ready quite quickly. The location shifted a bit towards the river Sava (where there was shade to be found) and plenty of interesting games were run. It was a nice exercise with several (though not too many) nice people (full gallery available here ), and served to remind me that some more exercise probably wouldn't hurt me. I ran a tournament (8 people, short sword, only linear movement front-back allowed), which was won by Basil. Waiting for our ne...