Okay, so I'm in this gaming group and since the 6 initial people that started playing joined a game that I ran in a local comic/gaming store about 3 years ago, I've had lots of other people come and go from what I now call my gaming group (as in, the people that I game with).
Of course, gamers in a group tend to have other related interests, and sone of these is sometimes LARPing.
And now, while LARPing is probably the most scoffed at form of gaming among most P&P gamers, it does have it's somewhat dubious attractions; an excuse to go camping and game and use big foam swords all at once seems to be the big ones.
Now, the particular selection LARPing flavours that occur near where I live seem to be quite large (apparently there is NERO canada, NERO aeon and Epoch).
Now, NERO is the 'big' one, but it seems a bit boring, and I've heard things about Epoch that sound more promising.
One such thing is this:
1. You start 'in-game' with any amount of gear that you first enter with.
Yes, this is seriously all sorts of broken. Why? Easy, b/c you don't have to spend 'in-game' time and real-life money to 'aquire' the item in game.
You can seriously start the game with 3 amazingly well built weapons, a full suite of armours and back up sheilds and they'll allow you to have them. While the player who has been playing for a year has to spend potentially a year to be able to build up the in-game funds to get those items, especially if they bought them after they started playing.
You can also layer armour to stack up in a bizarre fashion to get massive 'armour' values. So, if you wear cloth, then chain on top of that, then leather on top of that, and finally plate on top of that, you get the 'armour' values that all those layers would provide you. You can also do stuff like layer mroe than one layer of an armour type, so you could wear 2 chain shirts and three leather jackets to have them all add up to be some sort of modular armour system.
Note: 'armour' in most LARPing games counts more like 'extra' repairable hit points. So, having 10 'Body' and 40 'armour' is like saying you got 40 extra hit points. So, the advantage to starting with a hundred or so potential 'armour' can be really huge to a 'new' character.
Really, what this does is it means that buying or making gear before you start is the 'better' option.
2. Humans and Orcs are the two best races
Sort of.
To play most races you have to spend 'build-points' to 'buy' your race.
Since you start of with 40 + Flaws*, it's usually a bad idea to be something like an Elf Wizard, since they have to pay 20 points for their race, and then whenever you want bonus hit points (since this is a classless and leveless game, you have to 'buy' body) they pay double.
So, as a result, most power-gamers play humans (no build points to spend on a racial package) or orcs (20 points, to get combat skills and double starting body now your body costs half; so they're the uber-combat race).
3. There are no classes, so anyone can buy combat skills and magic skills
Now, of course, to really break any game, you have to use magic.
Of course, the magic system here is also, really breakable.
Now, the magic system has 6 elements. 4 Prime (Fire, Earth, Water, Air) and 2 Main (?) elements (Essense (white) and Void (Black).
To cast magic of any of those 6 you need to 'buy' Tiers of magic.
Now, the Prime magics have a max of 5 tiers each
which cost:
1 for tier 1,
2 for tier 2,
4 for tier 3,
8 for tier 4 and
16 for tier 5.
The 'Mains' (I've got the wrong word here, but whatever) have a max of Ten Tiers on the same scale:
1 for T1,
2 for T2,
4 for T3,
8 for T4,
16 for T5,
32 for T6,
64 for T7,
128 for T8,
256 for T9 and
512 for T10.
Now, here's a bit of a loop that I'm gonna throw you.
A. If you want to cast an 'elemental' spell, you get to add your Essense and Void Tiers to the Tiers you already have in that element; so if you have Tier 1 Essense, Tier 1 Void and Tier 2 Earth, you count as if you had Tier 4 Earth for casting Earth spells (although, you actually need Tier 4 Earth to cast Tier 4 Earth spells).
So 'boosting' spells by picking up Essense/Void is a pretty cheap way to boost your normal casting
B. You can't have Essense and Void at different levels.
Yeah, that's a bit of a pain. If you have a pile of essense (say, Tier 6 Essense), you can't pick up 1 tier of Void, you need to save up enough build points to get Tiers in Void that same level.
So, there are very, very few essense/void casters. usually they're one or the other.
Of course, you could do some cheap shit by spending 30 build points on getting 4 tiers in Essense and Void, and then having a ridiculous +8 Tiers on any other elemental spell that you cast (plus having access to Tier 4 Void and Essense spells).
4. Apparently, there are amazing combat buff spells
The funny thing is that they're self only.
I might seriously build a caster who turns into a rock-man or water-man and fights with the weapons that the form grants. I'm not sure though.
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The only down-side to being a human caster is that you have a teacher to teach you new spells. Which can be a hassle. Since you have to find one in game. If not you have to pay double to buy anything that normally requires a teacher.
If it's spells, you could be an elf since they don't need magic teachers.
Now, apparently in Epoch you can have mulitple 'characters' per player (none of which can know each other).
Since I'm going to be going on a regular basis with a friend of mine, we could very well play Elf alternate characters that teach our human main characters the spells that we want to learn and thus have a guaranteed teacher. Saving a pile of points.
Since the humans could then teach each other spells that they now know, you could very well learn piles of spells on the cheap using that method.
*Flaws:You only can get one flaw's bonus points, but you can have several flaws if you wish; only the greatest one still gives you bonus points) .
Now, I'm only going by what I've remembered and the book itself is so badly layed out that I could shoot myself over the book and the blood and brains splattered onto the pages would not make the mixed up layout any less worse. So, this entire post could all be garbage, but I needed to get it written down so that I don't keep thinking about the same stuff over and over.
And that's not taking into account the fact that whole sections are missing or seem to be misplaced in the book.
