Tea/EncounterLARP

This is a rough structure of a larp system, designed primarily to support linears, but also to not entirely fail in interactives. The basic unit is, unsurprisingly, the encounter. Skills come in two flavours: a very few skills make changes to your statistics, while most of the rest are termed powers, and can be used a limited number of times per encounter. This hopefully makes statting later encounters in a linear easier, as parties don't become unpredictably weaker.

Statistics

Inherent attributes of the character are called statistics. Some statistics are always active, like the ability to call single. Others are reactive, such as hits - you spend hits when you get struck with damage. No statistics can be tapped or sacrificed, but some can be burned - this will be made clear on each statistic.

The basic capabilities of each character are:

• Can call SINGLE with any larp weapon wielded in one or two hands, but not ambidextrous fighting or shield use.
• Has four hits. A hit may be burned, see the Hits and Wounds section.
• Has three wounds. See the Hits and Wounds section.

Powers

While some skills purchased with XP make changes to your statistics, most will instead grant you powers. A power has a limited number of times it can be used per encounter. Using a power is always a conscious choice, so cannot be done while you are incapacitated, dead, stunned, or under any other such effect. Powers can be used in three ways: they can be tapped, they can be burned, or they can be sacrificed.

Tapping

The normal way to use a power is to tap it, which may require striking a target with a weapon or doing appropriate roleplay. When you have tapped a power, it is exhausted for the rest of the encounter, and so cannot be tapped again or sacrificed, although it can still be burned. All powers which have been tapped will refresh at the end of the encounter (or every 10 minutes in interactives).

Examples:

The spell "Firedart" is a power which can be tapped to call MAGIC DOUBLE at range, after chanting an appropriate vocal.

The skill "Swording" is a power which can be tapped to call DOUBLE by blow, on successfully striking your target with a larp sword physrep.

Purchasing a skill with XP will only let you use the power once, but you can buy more levels of it for progressively more XP and get more uses like that.

Burning

Once a power has been tapped, it is exhausted for the rest of that encounter. If you decide the situation is an emergency, you can however burn it. When you burn a power which has already been tapped, you get another use of whatever it gives you. However, you then become unable to use that skill until you have rebought it with more XP.

Examples:

Damian has the spell Disintegrate, which is a power that can be tapped to call MAGIC OCT by touch with a vocal. The party are fighting two statues which are quite powerful. He blows up one with his spell, and then decides he's going to expedite the fight and take out the other as well. As he has already tapped it, he instead burns Disintegrate, and calls a second MAGIC OCT. He can now not use the spell again until he pays the XP to reactivate it.

Alessandra has the normal four hits. She gets struck by a troll for QUAD, and would normally thus run out of hits. However, she elects to burn a hit in order to stay upright, but will only refresh to three hits in all later encounters.

Sacrificing

For some powers, there is also an option to sacrifice them. This essentially combines the previous two options: to sacrifice a power, it cannot have been tapped yet this encounter. If you choose to sacrifice a power, it will be permanently disabled exactly as if it was burned, and you will get a more powerful effect for it.

Examples:

The spell "Fireball" is a power which can normally be tapped to call MAGIC QUAD at range, after chanting an appropriate vocal. It can instead be sacrificed to call MASS MAGIC DOUBLE, blowing up everything in the area with a storm of destructive magic.

The skill "Disarm" is a power which can be tapped to call DISARM by blow. Instead it can be sacrificed to call STRIKEDOWN.

Hits and Wounds

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There's then some skill trees, hits and wounds, and a few other bits to go on this, which I'll add up at a later point.

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Commentary

This is currently quite sketchy, despite looking fairly definite. Main things which might change: xp or time or something else as the cost for burning or sacrificing. How many uses you get from burning.

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Suggestion from Inquisitor, dumped here from IRC: Spending xp is (to my mind) an undesirable resource. Instead, charge people risk. An example of how this might work: They start the linear with a bag of beads. One red, nine white. Each time they burn an ability, they get a single extra double-strength use of it, and add a red bead to the bag (not instantly, just before they next draw from it). Presuming the existence of some sort of 'and stay down' coup de grace mechanic, whenever someone is picked up from a CdG?, they must draw a bead from the bag. If it's red, suffer a bad effect (possibly death, possibly something ref-assigned, whatever).

You could also have "tap" or as "lose per encounter" and "burn/sacrifice" as lose per week/day/event" depending on timescale. --Jim

I strongly dislike this as a mechanic - the only reason xp adds to my enjoyment of a game (and it subtracts from it by introducing power differentials among PCs) is because it enables me to "build" something; seeing the thing I've spent ages carefully working on go away would be very unfun for me. I think the tap/sacrifice/burn idea is an interesting one that does introduce tactical decisions (but probably also severely flawed, for death-spiral reasons), but I'd much rather see it with the loss of the power only being linear-long (possibly with some incentive not to burn in the final encounter, possibly with an OOC understanding that that will happen). --Jacob

Hm, I wonder about regain one burned ability per subsequetn full encounter. So burn something, lose it next encounter, regain it for hte one after that. Burn two things, and you're missing two of them for the first encounter, one for the second. And so on. --Tea