Diary of a Croatian larper

Ognjeni Mač is the biggest larp group in Croatia. Since last year, it's games have been organized by a plot team of three, called OzOI, which is short for "Odbor za Organizaciju Igre" (Board for Game Organization) and which gets re-elected every year. The last year's OzOI was Lovro Radovčić, Andrija Urban and Pavle Pelikan (later replaced by Petar Ratković). In 2012 new (and currently active) OzOI was selected, consisting of Mladen Miletić, Andrej Mihajlović and Fran Putar. We already got four candidates who plan to run for 2013 OzOI elections: Damjan Gavran, Petar Janković, Ines Josić and Tijana Migić (in alphabetical order). Of the four candidates (at the moment of writing), three will be eventually elected. The task of the OzOI members is a demanding one - next year they'll have to co-organize Crolarp 2013, run Jaska larps (one or two), Maksimir larps, and possibly some more. They'll have to come up with the storyline, decide how larps are run and ...

Nordic larp. That term has been thrown around a lot, but it has often been misunderstood. Basically, it's an "art" style of larp created by larpers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Also, contrary to the popular thought it's not the mainstream form of larp in those countries (yes, they still play fantasy and other styles of genre larp). The central event of Nordic larp is a yearly conference, called Knutepunkt, Knutpunkt, Knudepunkt or Solmukohta, depending on the country where it's being held (it rotates from country to country - this year it was Solmukohta in Finland, next year it will be Knutepunkt in Norway). Cover of Nordic Larp book There are a few elements commonly present in a Nordic larp. The goal in Nordic larps is not having fun (though a lot of them are fun), instead main goals are exploring emotions (positive or negative), getting a political point across, criticizing the modern society in some way, or simply experimenting for the ...

Ines, no longer playing Morana. She was role-switching for the evening, she's a blacksmith here, while afterwards she played my character's daughter. And Sven Nemet - playing a mad king of three hills - photobombing us from behind. In Croatia, "feasts" are a type of indoor larps, which are usually light on story, action and theme and more about individual role-playing in the wider larp campaign. They're mostly based on food and drinks, and at some point they turn into an out-of-character party. Yet many of the politics of the campaign they're running in are usually getting decided on such feasts. With 36 people, this one surprisingly became the largest "feast" ever held, and the third largest larp of the year, after Crolarp and Tragači zore. Starting off as a wake for the recently died character of Morana, it followed with a suicide of her husband - and since they were some of the leading figures in a faction which recently came into power, ...

Do you remember our recent interview with Kaza Marie and Avegost ? That larp was changed when they adopted the Turku Manifesto , one of the provocative, but highly influential texts written by Mike Pohjola, written as a response to Dogma 99 , another manifesto of a different style. Mike is a Finnish larper, poet, playwright, screenwriter, author, politician, activist, role-playing game designer, entrepreneur, and - as he describes himself in a comic  - a godless, pacifist European liberal. And Avegost is not the only one. Plenty of larps - in Nordic larp scene and worldwide - became influenced by Mike's work, directly or indirectly. In this interview, I have asked Mike about few of the things he's doing, about Finnish larp scene, and some of his views. Read on... 1. Thank you for your time! Could you tell us a bit about yourself? I’m a Finnish novelist, playwright and game designer. I’ve played tabletop RPGs for over twenty years, and larped for over fifteen. I’...

So. Yesterday I did a presentation of Terra Nova: Zimograd on SRP. If you're interested (and can read Croatian) it's available here . I believe it went more smoothly than the last one about Terra Nova 2012  which I did in April. Tomorrow evening is the "Wake of Morana" larp by Ognjeni Mač. It's gonna be a nice break from a longer pause of not larping. In the meanwhile, check this interesting interview on www.larping.org , with Mark A. Krupa, who wrote the story of The Wild Hunt movie (it's a larp movie, check it out if you haven't already)...

Fantasy larps are typically set in the medieval-ish period, and feature recreating the atmosphere to some degree. And while few larps have requirements as strict as living history or reenactment groups (both for cost reasons and the fact that fantasy styling is not always medieval). However, looking back at how they did it in Middle Ages can teach us a lot. Digging deeper into medieval lifestyle makes for a much more immersive larp experience, since it's more different than what you do in your regular life. I'll talk about mailny two things here - clothing and diet. The reason why I chose to talk about them was that they're most visible difference - to those around us and to ourselves. And, they're easy to simulate - actually most advices here will be cheaper and healthier than what people usually do on larp. They might seem drastic, but they're actually easy to get in. Then again, most people who read this won't follow up on the advice because it's p...

Just a quick reminder to everyone who can attend: I'm holding a Terra Nova: Zimograd presentation at SRP tonight. Filozofski fakultet, 19:15, room A306. Be there if you can, I'll be glad to see you :)

There are many people who love larp, but only some decide to take an extra step to actively promote it where they can. Kaza Marie didn't just take an extra step, she took a giant leap as she's active on Tumblr , Twitter , Facebook , Flickr  and Youtube - she literally has tens of submissions every day. She quickly became recognized online under the Larp Girl pseudonym. But that's not all - there are more reasons why she gets to claim this 150th post on Crolarper. She's one of the staff members of Avegost larp (specifically, she's an event coordinator, decorum committee member, and wiki writer/editor). Avegost is not the first US larp mentioned here - we recently had interviews about Alliance and LarpCraft - but it is very unique. Avegost started as a typical US larp, until at one point owner read Mike Pohjola's Manifesto of the Turku School and the  Larper's Vow of Chastity . They used them as guidelines, and they ended up with a low-fantasy larp h...