Skip to main content

SCA Croatia


There's plenty of new things going on in LARP this year. In the first 6 months we already got the first Croatian Green Banner LARP, Robert's feast, and two Steampunk and Terra Nova events (Intro and Terra Nova 2012), as well as the new larp association. And there's more! However, the newest kid on the block is actually one of the oldest such groups in the world.


It's SCA, Society for Creative Anachronism, and its Croatian branch has just started forming. SCA takes the middle ground between medieval reenactment and LARP, although that's a pretty shallow description as not everyone has the same idea of what LARP is, or what reenactment is.

Like our fantasy LARPs, it covers a wide time range, it's done primarily for the participants themselves, not as a display to the general public, and it's designed to be fun without a lot of expensive gear. SCA usually offers arts and crafts classes such as (historically accurate) sewing, heraldry, dancing etc. One of the big appeals is SCA combat, using (unpadded) rattan swords and heavily padded armors.


Plenty of people are probably asking themselves how will SCA affect the local LARP and reenactment scene. It already has. It's big enough and it's been around long enough to affect plenty of LARPs and reenactment societies, and its members actually contributed to a lot of significant research that formed our picture of the Middle Ages. And it's doubtful that Amtgard would be around if SCA never happened.

To tell everything that SCA is would be hard. Very few LARP and reenactment groups ever come even close to covering the wide range of activities that SCA does. There's also the international appeal. There's basically SCA everywhere, and the closest groups are in Italy and Austria. Together with them, Croatia falls under the SCA branch called "Kingdom of Drachenwald", which is responsible for the new groups in the entire EMEA region.

SCA Croatia is already getting interested people from both LARP and reenactment groups. It might connect them, get them both together, and have everyone sharing their particular experiences and knowledge, learning from each other and leading them to do great stuff... It remains to be seen.



The person behind it all in Croatia is Rebecca Schoenfeld Vidas (aka Lady Grainne Inghean Diarmada), who was a member of SCA in USA, and moved to Croatia a couple of years ago. And our own Goran Magdić, who's active in reenactment scene and... well, he's pretty much everywhere. There are already great plans for the future. There will be the first meeting in Crikvenica next week during a medieval festival held there (June 23, I'll be there and let you know how it went!). And the first big event is planned for September 15-16. In the meanwhile, you can check out the Facebook page.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The 15 rules of larp

The following 15 rules (warning: strong language) were written some years ago in Great Britain, and have been pretty much generally accepted on the British larp scene. Especially popular is rule 7 - widely known by its number and commonly considered to be the most imortant rule of all (and I agree). Even the biggest British larp forum has taken Rule7 as its name. The rules have been originally created by the Drunken Monkeys and edited by Rick Wynne who added some extra stuff in the explanations to make them more understandable to international audience (it still contains some British larp lingo though), more work-safe and to throw in his two cents. (copy of the original wording is available here ) 1. Don’t play a mighty warrior; play a warrior and be mighty. Don’t label your character. As soon as you say that you are the best swordsman in the land someone will come along and kick your ass. Just get into the mindset of the person and role-play it out. 2. No one cares about you...

Mind's Eye Theatre: Werewolf The Apocalypse rulebook review

Available on DriveThruRPG Just under three years ago I wrote a review for  Mind’s Eye Theatre: Vampire the Masquerade rulebook . It was the first book published by By Nights Studio, and a year later I reviewed one of its supplements - Storyteller Secrets . Now, after a long period of work, after the success of their kickstarter campaign, By Night Studios finally released the full version of the new larp rules for Werewolf the Apocalypse setting. This was preceded by various alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omega slices - each containing a different playtest version of the rules, slowly released from September last year until July this year. First impressions were that the artwork is very cool, and that the book is HUGE. Numbering at 762 pages, that's over 200 pages more than Vampire the Masquerade. But before I start going in-depth, I'd like to mention that this blog's readers come from various backgrounds - and I'll adjust my review accordingly. I assume I'...

TESC IV: Ebonheart review

TESC is a Croatian Elder Scrolls-inspired larp, started by Marko Zadro and ran by him and his team for more than 4 years so far. During its first two years of existence, four larps were ran (the second was the one actually counted as first, as first larp was counted as playtest) which were well-received, well-visited and raised the visual level of Croatian fantasy larps. Yet TESC IV: Ebonheart was a whole different beast altogether. General ideas were formed by organizers far before the logistics to do them became available, and 2.5 years elapsed between the previous larp of the series and this one. Also, this is the first larp so far directly inspired by the organizer's (and mine) favorite game of the series, Morrowind. Inspired by the European blockbuster castle larps, TESC IV became the first Croatian blockbuster castle larp - although at the far lower entrance price (€85 as opposed to €500+ price typical of those). While this means production values weren't exact...