Hah! Thanks Sam!

And, yeah, learning a language purely by reading would probably lead to some pretty embarrassing attempts to speak/understand the language

Amphigori,

As you asked for general advice, I just remembered something that you may need to know beforehand: the way german people manage in-game money.

At ConQuest (and I guess in other garman LARPs too?) in-game money is made of copper/silver/gold colored coins, which are very realistic.
The downside is that in-game money has a "real" value of ~0.30€ per coins. As far as I remember you get a couple coins when you start the event, but that's about it.

If you plan to play a wealthy character, you may want to buy your own in-game money before the game start. There's also shops that will sell them in the merchant town (on top of my head, I remember the "McOnis" shop selling some).
Depending of the size and occupation of your group, you may also want to buy a couple copper coins to get things started. For example I played in a large mercenary group (~80+ people depending of the years), and most of our contracts where paid in gold pieces.
However it was really hard to find people willing to change gold pieces to copper, and thus individual pay was really hard to manage.

I don't know how kiwi LARP, but for example in Welschland (French-speaking Switzerland) it's really unusual to play LARPs in campaign, we usually do one-shots.
In those games in-game money is usually provided by the organizers, we don't keep it at the end of the event; Thus we where quite surprised when we found out you have to "bring your own money".

(That's a foreigner point of view, if there's something wrong feel free to correct me )

Thanks Bomber!

In-game money over here is usually supplied by the game organisers and is given back at the end of each game. There isn't much to spend the money on, to be honest, and I think the use of it may be fairly new.

Our major game is set in something of a frontier town, and at the moment people are encouraged to come and settle by receiving a small stipend from the government. Nobles get considerably more money as part of their character package. You can earn coin any of number of ways through IC - guards or mercenaries are popular (an for the less savoury, so is prostitution - but that's mostly been done for humour).

I'm assuming you use the IC money to pay for goods at the markets in Mythodea, and that the merchants trade their fake money for real money at the end of the event?

Ah-ha!

Fantastic. Thanks for the very detailed and clear explanation.

I've another unrelated question if you don't mind.

From reading the rules, and other forum posts, it appears that you can bring a character from -any- LARP, and get XP based on how long you've played them.

For example, if I bring over my current LARP character, who I've played for 8 days total, I would get the 10 starting XP points, plus 4 additional ones. Is that correct? That seems very generous to me - so naturally I'm suspicious!

Wow. Thanks Orophil

What keeps people from abusing that and showing up with a character they've played for 10 years or something?

I'm assuming it's that Mythodea fosters a culture of trust, and people who obviously abuse that a) are noted pretty fast and b) most players would avoid them?

Yes. It might look that way.

And especially when you think of the fact that we do not control you on Check-in, we just believe you when you tell us that your character has 100 days played, or 500 (ok, but then you should be older than 25 years or so... ^^).

But always keep in mind: The "power" that you get with buying all the spells and abilities is just on your character sheet, and really is absolutely useless if you can't act and play like you have it.

Unlike most US Systems where most abilities are just pure calls - here you have to act it out. Its all in the theatre.

And in most times, the only difference to someone having a far lower skill than you in abilities is in the time needed until the effect comes in, like in disabling traps, pick locks and whatnot.

And then there is always the thing: You could be the most powerful mage alive - but you still have to cling to the rules and you still fumble the spell when getting hit. It doesn't matter how much points you have, you're still vulnerable to get beaten up by 3 drunk wrenches in front of the tavern.

Thanks very much, Robert!

The idea of your character only being able to do what you can actually do is something I'm working with here in a game I'm helping co-develop, so it's very cool to see it in practice.

Appreciate your reply

One thing about folks at german larps, lots of people are friendly and willing to help. Thats what keeps me coming back.