Diary of a Croatian larper

Terra Nova starts tomorrow! Whew. The last few days of preparation have gone really fast, and I'm somewhat amazed and stunned that it's actually happening tomorrow. We planned a lot of things, and I can't wait to see how they'll work out. If you're coming, you might find this document useful. It's not as finished as I hoped it would be, but this means only that when I do the next version it will be after the player input and RP on LARP itself :) That's not all news. Ana and Božo from SRP are giving a lesson tonight about nordic LARP, and new LARP association, Lateralus, that they founded. It will be tonight at 7PM in D5 at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.

In Croatian LARP so far, Jaska LARPs have been the biggest brand name. Named after the nearby town of Jastrebarsko (or Jaska, as it's commonly called), two a year, highest-budget Croatian LARPs with also the longest duration of four days (apart from last year's Jaska 9 which was different). This year, Jaska will humbly handle the crown to the big national event in July, which will be organized instead of regular Jaska and with other organizers joining the party. Nevertheless, May's Jaska is and will remain Jaska. And this year it just became the place for Ognjeni Mač association to showcase the best that we can do by ourselves. As it was the last year, most of the tasks about making this Jaska great was on OzOI (Odbor za Organizaciju Igre - Board for Game Organization), who are elected yearly to GM all the Ognjeni Mač events. Attendance on Jaska 10 was slightly lower compared to last year. 30 players in total made this event smaller than last year's Jaska event...

The big LARP season in Croatia is typically opened with a four-day Jaska LARP by Ognjeni Mač, and so it will be this year as well. Jaska 10 starts today. Two photos from last year's Jaska 8 Situated in Gornja Kupčina location, the story for this year appears to be grim, as usual. There's a "shade" questline that has been started some time ago by our organizers, and developed across the Ognjeni Mač short LARPs. Not just Maksimir LARPs, but also Sljeme LARP two weeks ago and last week's feast at Robert's place. The feast was organized in a very similar fashion to my Terra Nova intro feast - single-day event, people brought only drinks, and the food was covered by the people who were otherwise celebrating. It was barbecue, and it was really nicely done. Apart from the good food and drink, the feast presented some action (these things never seem to go peaceful), large area of play (whole house with back and front yards - which was under-utilized by pl...

There's no doubt about it - Croatian LARP scene is growing, and this weekend we were - again - blessed with two excellent LARPs we could attend, though both of them happened yesterday and there was some clash between them. One of them was Ognjeni Mač's "Sljeme 2" LARP, combining standard fantasy LARP with mountain climbing. I was not on it, however, from peoples' comments it was great, very cool and well-worth visiting. If you were on it, you're welcome to provide more info in the comment section. The one I was on, however, was Sven Nemet's second Steampunk LARP "Para pokreće svijet". This one was called "Automaton", and for a good reason - but more about that later. I managed to get my parents to take care of our son that afternoon/evening, so I headed there with my wife. We played complimentary roles, which was quite fun. I did miss the first Sven's Steampunk event nearly two months ago (that weekend was a bit crowded)...