Skip to main content

Maksimir 63 review and The Cabin playtest


Maksimir 63 was highly anticipated - being the first Ognjeni Mač larp by it's new OzOI (plot team), and after a long break where there haven't been any Ognjeni Mač larps - Maksimir is back, and with its new monthly spring schedule (64 is announced for March 9th, and 65 for April 13th). Yesterday's event in the Maksimir park drew in a large number of people despite the snowy weather - which made the entire park quite beautiful.


I did my best to appear the weirdest and most alien character of them all, by skulking around, eating snow (and offering it to other folks), looking broken, sniffing, being called a leper etc. This is certainly one challenging but fun character to play :)


I didn't stay for the full duration - i left after the main photo shoot - so I can't say I've seen it all. What I've seen though is this - the event seemed well integrated into the existing storylines, and while it was rather low on action (compared to what most people were expecting) it had some nice props made. There were plenty of new people, plus this OzOI's new policy of allowing alternate characters was visibly seen this larp, as many players played their new alts and the difference in the character make-up was refreshing enough that it felt distinctively different from what was going on the last year, and it certainly looks like a start of an interesting Ognjeni Mač season.


The reason I left early is another larp. It was actually a playtest of the new one-shot larp by Ivana Delač and Vesna Kurilić - it's interesting that it had one thing in common with Maksimir 63, both were larps which were run by two women (as Maksimir was ran by Ines and Tijana, since Petar is off to Czech Republic) - it's probably a first in Croatia. Anyways, this larp had the working name of "Koliba" or "The Cabin" - we liked the name, so it's possible that it will remain the final, production name. It was held in their apartment and they did their best to set the mood, by blocking the passageways and running under low light conditions (which is why my photos didn't turn out well). We only had a vague description of it as something between Love is Blue and Death of the Japanese Emperor.


This was a modern chamber larp for a fixed number of players, with pre-written characters, lasting just over an hour. I got to play a character which was quite younger than me, which required some adjusting but in the end worked out quite well. I can't share much details of the story, as this larp is not really replayable and can be spoiled easily. But it had some things which were uniquely new.


First of all was the slow take-off with the "shared fantasy" intro. After reading our characters, we sat down in places where we'd start, closed our eyes and one of the GMs would read us a 10 minute introduction (since she's a published novelist, it was really well written) after which we'd end up in game. The larp turned out to be very intense, immersive and powerful. Much stronger than I expected and I was pleasantly surprised.


One of the things which particularly surprised me was the fact that most characters were gender-neutral, and the authors took the time to write different character descriptions for all permutations of the character's all the related characters' sexes. Which was something really awesome and detailed. I highly recommend this larp - you'll get your chances to participate in it on the upcoming conventions, such as PoRtaL and Istrakon.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
6 comments
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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'...
Post a Comment
Read more