The Odraz 2012 Book.

The Czech larp conference, Odraz, managed to catch me by surprise with their latest book in more ways than one. Truhlář, S. M. (Ed., 2012). Odraž se dokud můžeš, has done something most clever, and included short content descriptions in English or Czech, depending on in which other language the article itself was published. This is of course common in academic theses, but not at all in other works. So kudos. The book contains an inroduction and nine essays, two of which are in English.

Of the Czech language ones, I cannot make much sense. Some are just short comments, others far longer works that either deal on a personal-view level with subjects relevant to larping (e.g. problems of developing a communicating larper sub-culture, educational larp, promotion, and so forth). The reference bases of all are rather limited, but the main approach very solid: Native-language texts relevant for the local community, yet with short descriptions for foreign audiences too, so that if someone gets interested, they can ask for more details. (Given the importance of the subjects, I really hope people do ask.)

One of the two English-language articles is mine, "Experiences with Emergent Plot", which expands on my 2009 "Notes" and 2011 "Games for testing". Short, not very deep, but I do like it myself. The other one is on larp promotion in Croatia, by Ivan Žalac. Elementary, down-to-earth, based on his own group's experiences. In summary: Really interesting, as between the lines one gets many new glances to larps in Croatia, in somewhat of a continuation with the Rajner & Špoljarić article in Larp Graffiti (2010).

All in all, I found the 2012 Odraz book to be intriguing, to say the least. Furthermore, some of the articles produced in the Czech Republic between the books have also been interesting, as far as I can understand from the list of references that I saw online. This book is a sign of a vibrant community, one that seems to desire communication with scenes abroad, even if its contents can't, due to language barriers, contribute much to international larp theory discussions. I hope the coming years will see the excellent summaries develop into wider abstracts, and the essays themselves to start including relevant references. The scent of high potential is very much in the air with the Odraz series of books.