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Croatian larper communities on Internet



Croatia is a small country, and we don't have a large larp population. Most of our players are in Zagreb, which despite being a capital of Croatia is still a rather small city by world standards. Despite that, Croatian larp community is quite active on the Internet, and there are plenty of discussions going around.

Long, long time ago everything was done the old-fashioned way. Meetings, usually over a coffee and beer, word-of-mouth (with plenty of misinformation going around), commonly involving travel and large phone bills. But it all changed with the arrival of a younger, more technical generation over 10 years ago, skilled in their usage of e-mail and Usenet. We wanted something more than just hear-say. And so zglarp mailing list was born in the May of 2002.

Created on Yahoo groups, it was the main active place of Croatian larp for several years. It was eventually replaced by the zglarp forum which I created in January 2005, but eventually both communities died due to all the fights and bad blood which plagued the Croatian larp around that time. Instead, two new active online communities appeared: Ognjeni Mač forum and old Krvomeđe forum. There was some larp activity on Gaia forum, but it went down, and old Krvomeđe forum also went inactive in 2009.

Ognjeni Mač forum remained a dominant online larp community for quite some time, until new media started appearing, and now they're here to stay. Here's the current situation.

Facebook is certainly the communications giant - nearly everything in Croatian larp is announced there, but it can be pretty widespread. LARP Hrvatska group is certainly the most "neutral" place to be, and the most active one. Croatian groups, associations and larps also make their presence on Facebook, so there are pages from Ognjeni Mač, Lateralus, Terra Nova larp, Gaia, the USEL initiative, Steampunk etc. On other social networks, there's some activity on Twitter and Google Plus, but with the exception of several individuals our larp communities there are not really active.

Ognjeni Mač forum is still the most active single place about Croatian larp, and although not everything can be found there, Ognjeni Mač events and other events (including Krvomeđe, Rajski Vrhovi, Majčin Gaj, Utvrda Svjetlosti, Terra Nova, foreign larps and others) are commonly announced and discussed on the forum. It also hosts the sub-sections for Fallout LARP and Battlestar Galactica LRP, though they're not overly active.

SRP forum is the second most active larp forum. It's way less active than Ognjeni Mač forum, but it's not entirely focused on larp. It also features a sub-section for Para Pokreće Svijet Steampunk larp, which is fairly active.

Krvomeđe / Rajski Vrhovi and Terra Nova larps feature Google Groups, which can be used either as forums or as mailing lists, which allows them to remain useful despite somewhat smaller activity. You can subscribe to them by writing an e-mail to: krvomedje+subscribe@googlegroups.com and terra-nova-larp+subscribe@googlegroups.com

There are two blogs writing about Croatian larp. You're reading one of them now, the other one is (in Croatian) LARP Hrvatska by Petra Sabljar. They usually provide one-way information, but sometimes there are comments. (hint: give more comments ;))

These are currently the places where Croatian larpers are, which are discussing Croatian larp, and where the future of Croatian larp is discussed and created, in all its forms. Be there. Write stuff. Give suggestions. Contribute. Get involved.

The best time to do so is always now.
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