Hello!

My Name ist Stampi - well, not really but the most people call me Stampi, even in real live. I'm a 23 year old LARP player and organiser from Austria.

I'm not used to writing english so there could be a lot of retoric errors in my posts. I promise getting better.

Playing LARP for over 6 years and visiting croatia for holidays for 22 years I thought it would be interesting to know more about the croatian LARP world. So I searched a little bit with google and finally ended up here looking for contact. I'm happy you have an international forum so I found a place to post that. I don't speak more croatian than dobar dan and hvala and i don't even know if i pronounce right.

so that's for now. I'm looking forward to hear from you.

greets
Stampi

Hi there Stampi, welcome to our forum.

At the moment, we're organizing fantasy LARP events. We've got three types of events at the moment:

Small events - half-day events in Maksimir park, Zagreb. We tend to have one every month, March to September. Next one is this Saturday (Samstag).

Large events - four day camping events (Thursday-Sunday), next one is being planned last weekend of July. The terrain we use is in the forest near Jastrebarsko, around 20 min of driving from the highway exit (should probably sound familiar to you, as I'm referring to our main seaside-direction highway). Tent and camping gear is required.

Feasts - these are purely roleplaying events, we eat, drink and have fun, all of those in-game We tend to have a few of those throughout the year.

We also have several projects currently in the works - to increase quality, quantity and diversity of the Croatian LARP scene.

We always accepted and welcomed all the international visitors to our events So, if you find yourself nearby, you are invited to attend our events, we have cookies

How's LARP scene in Austria looking?

Feel free to ask any questions you might have

Most respected Stampi,

I present you my sincere greetings on behalf of all recognized Croatian Fantasy LARP nobility 

I hold dear wishes that we shall witness your presence in person, along with your presence on this Forum.

Grof Vilijam od Bergamota



And now the informal part 

Hello and thanks for coming.

We are currently mostly based on Fantasy LARP, although there are plans to increase the types of LARP we play in near future.

At the moment, our world in fantasy LARP consists out of two independent provinces - Bergamot and Zmajevdvor (Drakescourt) whose locations are based on the locations of events kindly and punctually described by Naz  with small events being based in village in Zmajevdvor called Lepinje Donje and large events being based in Bergamot. However, we are always looking to add new locations and civilizations on our map of the world.    In these provinces usual practices undertaken by adventurers include fighting small mammals (e.g. goblins), large mammals (e.g. bears and giants) and human-sized mammals (each others). In short, all fun and games 

Feel free to post here when you will be in or around Zagreb so we can arrange to meet

Wow! Thanks for the warm welcome and the informations. It's good to know there are more crazy people fighting each other with foam weapons out there.

Unfortunatly my way through croatia never lead me to Zagreb, but I'm positive I could take another route now and then. I usually head for Umag so the fastest route is Marlboro - Ljubliana - Koper.

I tried using google-translate to read your site and forums and it seems to work - well in most cases. Lines like "dark beginns forced yearly" doesn't make much sense ^^, but I eventually can find out what a thread is about. I also found your image gallery (this is far less complicated, if you can read the links ^^).

So let's try to explain how LARP does in Austria. After looking through your gallery it seems we do LARP more ... well, i don't find a word so let's just explain. Some years ago, when I joined the styrian community, we looked quite simmilar to you now. Today, after making connections to many other groups all over Austria and Germany, we made an impressive way to more realistic weapons and more intime-stuff. So we don't use tape-weapons any more. In most cases only intime-tents are allowed (unfortunatly that changed shortly after i bought a new outtime tent). No one should wear visible outtime stuff and so on. I have to say, that there are more than this type of larping in Austria and not every type is as strict intime. There are many different styles and sometimes they don't really fit together. So many players would never visit our LARPs, cause they just want another way of larp. Others would never miss them.

We formed a cooperation with some clubs and many groups of LARPers in eastern Austria, who all share the same favourits of larping. One of the clubs is the one where I am in the leadership, called "Mythos Live". We are the most known styrian LARP group, as far as I am informed. The cooperation is called "Weltensammler" which means something like "collector of worlds". This step made a great project we are currently working on, bringing Austrian larpers together.

While there are many groups in Weltensammler creating events (and many groups not being at Weltensammler), there are many LARPs to visit. My club does two events each year, each 3 to 4 days long. the last one was whitsun and had about 90 players. If someone is interested in pictures, just follow this Link.

How popular is LARP in Croatia? Are there many groups or are you flying alone? Is it hard for you to find good locations? Do you have castles to play on?

I'm looking forward to meet you some day, but I just came back from a trip to croatia (Umag, Pomer, Pula, Porec), so I don't know when I will travel the 400 km again. If someone is interested in IM contact, feel free to add my ICQ, MSN(stampi.mail@gmx.at) or Skype (Doomooday) account to your contact list, but remember, I don't speak a word croatian.

so long
Stampi - or a more intime name - Jehanan who saw the time

Instead of going for Ljubljana from Maribor, you can go to seaside using the route to Zagreb, then Rijeka, then go towards Pula until you see the sign for Umag. It's somewhat longer, but they finally finished Zagreb - Rijeka motorway properly.

Google translate doesn't always work as it should

Anyways... In our LARPs, period (or period look-alike) clothing is required except from first time players. Tents are not. Croatian LARP scene is rather small compared to Austrian or German, so we don't have any stores specialized in LARP gear, therefore we make most of our stuff ourselves (clothing, armor, weapons, inns... ).

Don't worry too much about not speaking Croatian. Pretty much everyone in our group speaks at least some English, and even those who are not fluent in it do understand a lot more than they speak. Also, a lot of people can speak at least some basic German.

We have a few available terrains that we're very satisfied with. Although neither of those includes a castle. Also, I forgot to mention: almost every Wednesday and Saturday we tend to hold meetings and/or workshops.

Oh and... Styria is nice I've been to Graz and Leibnitz a couple of times.

Greetings,
Maksimilijan pl. Vurnovečki od Banovog Brijega

Sorry for taking so much time to reply. I was on an event two weekends before. Very wet due heavy rain on friday and saturday. Sunday was a little time of sun, so fortunatly most of the tents got dry. After cleaning up and preparing for the way home it started again. Since then it rains nearly every day. There are many rivers flooding the towns especially near vienna, where the game took place.

Oh, the game itself was wonderful. I was a NPC so I had a place in the building too sleep and get dry. Bringing nearly my whole LARP gear with me, I had plenty of things to play many different looking roles. It was really fun. The group who made the event is more fun oriented than most of the other groups, so there were many funny roles to play. For instance my financial assistant, beeing nearly 2 meters tall, wearing a fur cloak, a heavy chain as belt, a big sword and a really big two handed hammer with spikes on it. The wet and soft ground allowed me some cool stunts while beeing on the run. unfortunatly this stunt was when i got catched ^^

I'm part of a group of LARPers who also build nearly everything - except plate armor - for LARP. Latex-weapons, leather armor, clothings, bags... Maybe we are able to help you in some ways?

Oh and I'm going to come to croatia this weekend. Unfortunatly I won't have time to visit Zagreb, cause I'm going with my parents. We are buying a new boat down in Pomer and will transfer it to our home port Umag.

Funny you were in Graz and Leibnitz. I spend most of my time in Graz, where we have the headquarter of our club and I studied in a little town next to Leibnitz.

Graz and Leibnitz are two places which are rather popular shopping destinations here, mostly because they are rather close to Croatia

We do all our stuff ourselves - weapons, armor, etc. Plate armor is rare here - no one has a set of full knightly shiny plate armor - however, there are loads of skilled people doing leather armor, chain mail, splint armor, brigandine, etc. as well as a few plate parts (like greaves).

You can find pictures of how it looks here:
http://picasaweb.google.hr/ognjenimac

Short info on galleries:
SFeraKon albums are from the largest sci-fi convention in Croatia
Jaska 2007 album is from a LARP presentation
All other albums are directly from our events

Any information about your gear creation - weapons and armor included - would be more than welcome

We have a subforum for crafting here - Umjetnost i obrt - so you can find some pictures there. If you find something that interests you, feel free to post a question even in English - someone will reply
We have several weapon creation tutorials on our site. You can find it on the following link:

http://www.larp.hr/novi/node/80

There are several flash tutorials linked right on that page, and several non-flash tutorials with diagrams in the subtree below. Since everything is in Croatian, here's a short dictionary of the terms used:

Karimat - sort of a cheap foam beach/camping mat, you can google image search it. Used as a main weapon material.
Bambus - Bamboo, most common weapon core
PVC cijev - PVC tube, sometimes used as a weapon core
Siva spužva/izolir spužva - grey insulation foam, used as core padding
Žuta spužva - standard yellow foam, sometimes used as main weapon material instead of karimat
Izolir traka - insulation tape
Ljepilo - glue
Mač - sword
Štap - staff
Oružje na motci - polearm
Sjekira - axe
Mlat - flail

Hope this helps you to understand our tutorials

It was rainy here last week as well. Fortunately, on our large camping events, rain tends to be a rather uncommon occurrence - mostly it's dry and warm. Although, we've seen some hard rainfalls as well

Have fun with your new boat.