Throwback Thursday: NERO 3rd Edition Rulebook

markusdark

Knight
This comes before there was an Alliance. And I know "Throwback Thursday" is a Facebook thing but thought it would get a larger audience at the home of the game run by the guy who's name is at the top of the title page.

In 1991, I was working at a company called Costume Armour in Hudson Valley, NY. The place created realistic looking armor out of plastic to be used on stage and screen. I was hired thanks to a sample of my chain mail knitting work.

A gentleman came to the shop to get a breast plate custom fitted. When I asked him what it was for, he handed me the book in the link below. This was the first exposure to LARP - when the term LARP wasn't even known in the US.

To this day, I still have this book. It's held together with twine. Every time I pick it up, see the color of the pages, smell the age of the paper and remember back to those first days playing the game when I moved to CA in 1992, I can't help but smile and remember the magic.

It's also interesting to see how the game has evolved in the 20+ years.

http://www.larping.net/Nero/Nero3ed.pdf
 
Is this PDF supposed to be pink and green?
 

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Yea, it's called "flavor".
 
The book was tan with dark brown letters, not pink and green. :)

Wow, it's hard to believe my "Stop, thief!" story is 25 years old now.

And, oh look! The BP chart goes all the way up to an unimaginable 15th level.
 
I have no idea why, but my work MacBook makes it pink and green like my previous screenshot while my home PC displays it as tan and dark brown.
 
And, oh look! The BP chart goes all the way up to an unimaginable 15th level.

I know, right? The hand written numbers on the right side of the chart was me trying to figure out how many XP it would take to get there. And after thinking about what I'd have to do to get all of that XP, I would constantly say, "Who'd ever play a game that long?" :)

This is always one of the things I like to point out to people when they design their own systems. That they should imagine what they'd like a character's power level to be at start, in six months, in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years and 50 years of play and design a power structure/level system around that - assuming they don't want to just run a game for a few years then retire it of course.
 
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