A trip to Trieste: Il Negoziatore

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 players signed up (and some cancelled). So instead, another larp was organized based on the number of players we had: Il Negoziatore by Angela Caputo. The Negotiator.

Left to right: Michele, Elena and Benjamin reading prologue to the larp.

The larp was played in the apartment of Michele (who's the main organizer of that upcoming Italian larp in Croatia which I wrote about - Sine Requie in Istria) and his girlfriend, Jasmine. They were great hosts (and they graciously allowed me to stay at their place for the night). The GM did not change - it was still Andrea (who visited the Croatian larp Tragači zore last autumn).

The scenario, setting (in the near future) and characters (fully pregenerated) were quite complex and loaded with information - more than usual in a similarly done Croatian larp - that we tried to memorize. We were given sufficient time for it (especially considering I needed extra time for getting the story and my character translated for me). But the prep time was enough. The larp ran for 100 minutes total in-character time and had a debriefing afterwards.

Andrea explaining stuff to Elena and Jasmine

Il Negoziatore larp was a thriller, it's setting was a hostage situation. Andrea cast us into the roles - he'd be the invisible GM. I would be the hostage, Michele my captor, Benjamin the chief of police, Jasmine the journalist and Elena the negotiator. Or at least that's what it seemed like. Some revelations in this larp were quite powerful. A lot of screaming, crying, and resentment were included too.

After the 100 minutes have passed (and neighbors did not complain about the noise), we had a debriefing after which Elena had to leave. The rest of us ordered some food, and after it we played a fun western shootout card game called Bang! which was quite fun (also simple, and had text in English). It marked the end of the evening.

Il Negoziatore was published in this book

To tell everything that happened in Trieste - such as sightseeing, great food and coffee which Italians drink quite fast - would be beyond the scope of this blog. We discussed Croatian larps, Italian scene, larp rules, Sine Requie and many other things. All in all, a great weekend.

P.S. As I was playing Il Negoziatore, at the same time there was Maksimir 65 in Zagreb. I missed this one. But having multiple larps to choose from is always good.

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'

Larps in EU

Today Croatia has acceeded into the European Union as its 28th state. EU has loads of diverse and different larp scenes and cultures in them. Some of them are local, some are national, some encompass all speakers of a certain language, some are regional, and some are world-famous. Here's a short window into a couple of EU larps and larp scenes, carefully selected and profiled by the criteria of "those I actually visited myself" and "those who bothered to answer my survey on facebook on a short notice", with a dash of "this is like elementary culture you should know". So this is not a full list - not even close - and not even the fully representative one, despite it being the largest post on this blog ever. Even keeping track of the Croatian scene is quite a job and there are still many language barriers around. But hopefully you'll find plenty of new and interesting material here. If you want your larp represented - whether it's battle

Diary of a Croatian larper

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