Diary of a Croatian larper

There have been several new improvements on this blog. It's been a long time coming, but there was Izgon to be done. I still have some catching up to do, such as announcing Terra Nova 2013, and reviewing Krvomeđe of April 21 and Maksimir 66 of April 27... But first things first: technology updates on this blog. Here we go. New commenting system has now been enabled. It's the one integrated with Google+, and from now on it will require a Google account to comment. However, it will allow you to control visibility and sharing of your comments, it will display much more, it will be more lively and usable, and it will integrate with Google+ activity of this post - in fact it already has. Check older posts, Google+ activity is now shown on them and they're all much more lively and fully interactive! New posts will now be (once again) primarily shared from my personal Google+ profile , as I found the separate Crolarper page to be counterproductive. The static pages (link...

You might have noticed I haven't been writing on this blog as actively as usual. The reason for that is Izgon larp which I've been running (or "The Exile" as its name would be translated to English). It had been running for 32 days in total (March 24th - April 25th 2013) - cut off three days before its planned 35 day duration - and it was... well, it was an experience so deep it is hard to describe. 23 participants, 32 days of almost full in-character play, loads of "firsts" in Croatian larp (and possibly a few in the worldwide scene). Tons of bleed. Tons of immersion. Traveling to other countries as a part of the larp. Car chase in Zagreb with unknown cars mistaken for players. In-character art being produced. And much much more. New friendships forged between players. Very intensive larp, intensive debriefings and the biggest recovery time I've ever seen. High secrecy was one of the key elements of Izgon - not knowing who is part of the larp...

As announced, here's a third Hangout panel by The Larp Group: Larp and other Drugs. In it, we talked about use of alcohol, smoking and drugs on larps. Enjoy!

Yup, it's that time of the month again. Time for the third Larp Group Hangout! This time it will be about a touchy subject: drugs and alcohol. Which is quite fitting as April 20th is a cannabis day in North America. Also, in a very interesting turn of events, this has just recently been discussed in some larp circles here in Croatia. It should be quite interesting. And as always, there's a live chat on Youtube to answer any questions you might have. It will be streamed live on Larping.org channel this Saturday at 5 PM central european time (11 AM for east coast Americans). Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get our regular larper, Callie. So we've got another person as a fourth member of our panel for this month. His name is Tom Miller. The rest of the crew is familiar - Kaza Marie, the Larp Girl who's organizing this Hangout, Martin Straarup (Larp Forge/Lazy Larper), and yours truly. If you missed our first two panels, here they are: On Sunday, th...

Larp Factory Trieste was founded not long ago. The first time I heard about it opening was three weeks ago. Larp Factory is a very specific sort of group - it all started with Laivfabrikken in Oslo, Norway and from there it spread through Nordic countries, so there are also larp factories in Trondheim, Göteborg, Stockholm, Umeå, Turku and even the one in Minsk, Belarus. Larp Factory Trieste is the only one in Italy and a large part of Europe in general. Larp factories are aimed at producing high-quality, low-threshold, regular monthly larps presented as an alternative to e.g. going to cinema. You can read more about the concept here . For its first larp, Larp Factory Trieste chose "La porta chiusa" (The closed door), a murder mystery by Antonello Lotronto for nine players and run by Andrea Castellani. A suitable location was found - an abandoned house in San Giovanni di Duino, some 20-ish kilometers northwest of Trieste. ...and it did not happen, as not enough pla...

If you haven't heard of Chronicles of Demgard, you must be new to this blog. It's a Hungarian fantasy larp series organized as a campaign of connected one-shots. It's organized in Tatabánya, Hungary and it's GMed by Mesterházi Sándor - you had the opportunity of meeting him on Terra Nova 2012, Terra Nova: Zimograd and PoRtaL larp convention. This specific Chronicles of Demgard will be called "The Sternn Pass Incident", and it will be organized on September 20-22 this year. It will be the second Chronicles of Demgard larp this year. The first Chronicles of Demgard event of this year, "Zsiványok Menedéke", will be held July 5-7 and it will be an event fully in Hungarian. In a stark contrast, "The Sternn Pass Incident" is built from the ground up as an international event. It will not only support play in English as well as other languages - it will be built specifically to take advantage of that, to take advantage of different culture...

The fourth larp in the "Para pokreće svijet" steampunk series, "Vrste", announced over 6 months ago took place last night. All in all, a total of 30 people took part in it (the number was capped). I haven't been on the first larp in the series, but I've been on the second and third one - I helped to organize this one, together with Vjeko, Ksenija, Marko and of course Sven who's the head GM of the Para pokreće svijet series. The rulebook , which gets slight updates now features a photo of me under "diplomat" class, which is very flattering :) Vrste (Species) was also quite international - apart from Croats, we also had visitors from three other countries. One from Austria (she's a Croat though - it was her first larp), one from Serbia (who previously visited us on Crolarp), and two from Bosnia (who previously visited us on Tragači zore). Unfortunately, no good pics are up, so I'll just upload a few that I managed to snap with m...

For the last couple of years, VLARP has been the biggest fantasy larp in the Southeastern Europe, with over a hundred participants. Apart from being the biggest larp in Serbia, it also draws in players from Bulgaria and Croatia. Traditionally held on the weekend around May 1st in Vladimirovac, and for the past couple of years organized by Green Banner, this year it will be held on May 2nd - May 7th. VLARP features a simple ruleset, which will be updated soon, and more information will be coming up - keep an eye out on its Facebook event . The second event which has been announced in May - this one on the last weekend, May 25-26, is the Celtic Highland games. You can see the event on Facebook here . I'm posting the official announcement below: We invite you all to the Celtic highland games, larp organized by the Lateralus group. The Celtic company of heroes that has appeared on several Croatian larps invites you to a banquet where he will turn meat on the spit and ...

Me and my new tattoo - for Terra Nova larp There are many different tattoo styles. Some could be very appropriate in-game. You may actually consider doing a temporary tattoo for in-character purposes, or it might be even dictated by your culture - like Tauron characters on The Monitor Celestra. Some of the existing tattoos (and piercings too) which are not period or culture-accurate can be incorporated into your character with some . There was a good article on larping.org detailing this in February. Of course, there are always tattoos (and possibly larps) where a tattoo would be out-of-character. However, long, covering clothes are in-character almost everywhere. Do you have examples of good larp tattoos? Share them below.