Diary of a Croatian larper

The flooded village of Gunja The first news for today's article is... well, the kind you hope you never hear. Floods. Large parts of Eastern Croatia (as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia) have been flooded in the worst floods in over a century. Lots of people lost their homes, and there's been great loss of property and even life. Tens of thousands evacuated from their hometowns. Thankfully, my family's been safe. This is an appeal for humanitarian aid. For details on how to donate via Croatian Red Cross, click here . If you're in Croatia, you can also click here to see different ways how you can help. And now for some brighter news. I got a daughter yesterday! On May 18th, which was also dubbed International larp pride day in 2014. Coincidence? Anyway, she's 3700 grams, beautiful, 53 cm tall and called Leona. Myself and Goran doing a presentation (photo by Boris Kasavica) Also, this weekend was SFeraKon weekend! Due to expecting a baby on ...

This Tuesday's Elysium 14 had 12 people playing. Unfortunately, I wasn't present and nobody else took a photo so you won't see any photos from the gathering but I've heard it described as quite lively. But there are some upcoming changes in our Vampire larp . Camarilla Agram 4 , the fourth big event of this year (set for May 31st) is going to be played on the new location: Kinoklub Zagreb. Even the next small Elysium event - Elysium 15 on Wednesday 21st - will change place from Zlatni Medo to the Caffe bar Luxor, where we got the basement available (and there's free parking that can be found nearby at that time). The last change is that Ivan Kalinić entered the GM team more fully, and is now coordinator for Ventrue and Tremere clans (though he's not involved in the story we're writing). I also had a walk with him yesterday. We were scouting around Maksimir park, finding new and unused locations for larp, as a place to run LarpCraft events (and the U ...

Sven Nemet's Bizzaro larp has been played... I couldn't attend it, but the players there returned with positive comments. The concept for the event was to bring characters from any setting - as long as they were somewhat bizzare in concept. Played on the terrain slightly southwest from Zagreb, it was limited to the low number of players due to location requirements. It was described to me as very sandbox-ey in execution, and sequels were tentatively announced... This weekend is SFeraKon, Croatia's biggest Sci-fi/Fantasy convention. And I just realized, I've been writing about it in over 3 years this blog's been active. So yes, you can read articles about SFeraKon 2011 , SFeraKon 2012  (which was also Eurocon) and SFeraKon 2013 . (Some of the old articles' photo links are broken) Compared to the last year's schedule, this SFeraKon appears less larpy - there's less hands-on stuff such as games and workshops. There will be an increase in presentati...

Olive oil has been the lifeblood of Mediterranean for millenia, and its' trade has been one of the most important economic activities in the region since forever. That's not because people of this region had a particular thing for salads - olive oil was one of the most versatile and useful substances known to ancient man (that's why it was dubbed liquid gold), and it remains as useful for an average larper - especially of the fantasy, camping kind. It might seem expensive, but using it properly you will actually save money, packing space, you'll be more authentic and possibly engage other players and enjoy yourself more. The obvious uses for olive oil are for cooking and putting it on your food - these are the ones you probably heard about. It's healthy. It's good for you. And it's highly caloric and also sates you for quite a while. If you have good bread, you can also dunk it into olive oil and eat it with some salt. Authentic, quick, simple, tasty, f...

Yesterday's Elysium 13  Vampire game was slightly smaller than usual - a total of 10 players took part in it. I blame the fact on my lack of marketing on Facebook - even though the date was known for over a month (it's visible on larp website ) and I announced it at the end of Elysium 12 , I was otherwise preoccupied so I didn't create a Facebook event until... yesterday. I think it's a good pointer on how much people rely on Facebook for their larp info lately. The event, however, gave us opportunity to do what we can't do with the higher population - after playing a regular social larp for about an hour, we switched to the tabletop mode (for the first time since Elysium 4 ) for some cross-media gaming, and for the last hour of the game we played an investigation and a big battle as tabletop - though transparently using the same rules. 9 players (playing Camarilla vampires) vs 20 weaker Sabbat showelheads - it took about an hour to play out due to the turn-...