The AI continued, "For now, think about opening your status screen. There's no specific keyword, just the desire to see your stats is enough."

Darren nodded and did as instructed. Immediately a screen popped up in front of him displaying his character sheet. It was surprisingly... small.

Name: Unnamed Experience Gained: 0 Experience Spent: 0 Experience Remaining: 0 Power: 3 (+) 40XP Endurance: 3 (+) 40XP Agility: 7 (+) 80XP Magic: 1 (+) 20XP Innate Abilities:

* Transmutation ( A )

* Quick Learner ( C )

* All Seeing Eyes ( S )

Skills

* None

Abilities

* None

There was shockingly little information displayed on his character sheet. No race, no class, and no level. Just his lack of a name, various experience displays, his actual attributes, and his lack of anything but his innate abilities. He tried focusing on his first attribute to get a tutorial on what it represented. Though 'Power' seemed pretty obvious on the surface, his experience so far said that nothing about this game was obvious. After a few moments, nothing happened so he turned to the AI, "Are you allowed to explain the character sheet to me?"

The AI laughed and started to explain, "You will name your character when you first load into the world, this will make sense once you get there. For your experience, it should be pretty obvious. As you perform tasks, defeat monsters and so on you will gain experience points, which you can only spend on increasing your attributes. As for those attributes, let's start with Power."

The AI took a deep breath, which was odd since the AI should have had no need to actually breathe, it was just a sign of an infodump incoming, "Power represents the ability of the player to cause damage. All kinds of damage, not just physical but magical and otherwise. Once power starts to enter the super-human realm it becomes possible to do things no normal human would be capable of, such as causing shock waves with a simple punch. Power also increases the might of magic spells and affects how powerful things like buffs, and debuffs, are. One point in Power can be approximately equated to 500 newtons of punching force and around 45 kilograms of lifting force when using your whole body."

The AI took another breath and continued, "Endurance represents a players toughness, stamina, and ability to mitigate damage from blows. The higher someone's Endurance the more damage they can allow to bypass them and enter the environment, leaving them less affected, the longer they can run and the less rest they need. One Endurance point can be approximately equated to all-out sprinting for about 40 meters non-stop."

"Agility represents speed, flexibility, and dexterity. The higher Agility a player has the faster they move and react, the more flexible their body becomes, the more accurate their ranged attacks become and the better they are able to perform minute dexterous tasks. One Agility point approximately represents being able to run at 2 miles-per-hour, for now. Going beyond, with an Agility of 150 you would be able to run at approximately the speed of sound.", the AI continued.

"Magic represents not just a persons total available mana, but their ability to learn and cast higher tier spells. For someone attempting to be a spellcaster Magic is of paramount importance, but do not forget to increase power as well, just being able to cast a top tier spell isn't enough if it lacks Power to deal damage. Unfortunately, there is no real-world comparison that can be made to represent Magic in Age of Gods. As a final note I should point out that an attribute level of ten in Power, Endurance or Agility is meant to represent the 'peak' of human ability in the real world. Go beyond ten in any stat and you step into the realm of superhumans.", the AI finished and smiled at Darren.

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Darren rubbed his temple for a moment as he processed the information he had received. Power was pretty straightforward, more power, more damage or effectiveness of whatever is being done. Endurance though, he looked at the AI, "So Endurance basically just affects hit points?"

The AI gave a somewhat playful smirk, "There are no hit points in Age of Gods. There are also no Stamina or Mana points in Age of Gods either. Age of Gods strives for a more 'realistic' gaming experience. Things like damage values from attacks or effectiveness of healing spells or debuffs have to be felt and experienced. You will have to deduce how close you are to death by the damage your body has sustained and how you feel. The same goes for Stamina as you move about. As for your mana you will have to feel how much mana you have remaining and judge for yourself if you have enough to do whatever you want to do with it."

Darren frowned deeply. AoG was definitely entirely different from any VRMMO he had played in the past. On the bright side, at least his vision wouldn't be cluttered with a whole lot of different displays for all his various stats. As the AI said, he would just have to experience it for himself. He was still curious about Endurance so he clarified his previous question, "What did you mean by damage bypassing me and entering the environment?"

The AI explained, "It's just as it sounds. I'm sure you've seen movies or videos where a character gets hit so hard into a surface that the surface concaves into a crater or something similar and the individual who was hit isn't smashed into meat paste? It's that kind of concept. If you have a high enough endurance then when you are slammed with an attack you can redirect some of the force through your body down to your feet and have the ground take in the kinetic force and reduce the damage you take."

Darren couldn't help but blink and think that that sounded rather badass to him. "Is there no upper limit for increasing my attributes?"

The AI shook her head, "The attributes can be increased indefinitely. Though, good luck hunting down enough experience points to level them up once they get high." The AI grinned playfully.

"So why are there no classes?", Darren asked.

"The developers of Age of Gods felt that there was no need for them with the system they have created. Just by setting your stats appropriately and learning the proper skills or abilities you can become any 'class' that you desire. For example, if you wanted to emulate a 'tank' type of class and fight on the frontlines you would focus primarily on Endurance and spend some points in your Power with a lesser focus on Agility and Magic. If you wanted to be a spellcaster you could focus primarily on your Magic stat with a secondary focus on power, or split it evenly between the two, with some points placed in Endurance for survivability and Agility to make sure you can move properly in combat. If you wanted to emulate a Thief or Rogue type class you would focus on Agility with some points placed into Power for damage and fewer points left over to place into Endurance and Magic. The possibilities are only limited by your desire and creativity, well aside from getting enough experience to level your attributes." The AI grined teasingly after her last sentence.

"Okay. What about skills and abilities?"

The AI explained once more, "Skills and Abilities are different things but are also similar. The difference between the two is almost arbitrary. Skills could include things like woodcarving, herbalism, alchemy, blacksmithing and so on. Abilities are things like spells or special attacks. Both skills and abilities level up as you use them, you do not spend your experience points to increase them."

Darren pondered for a while. Essentially AoG just let players decide for themselves how they would distribute their attributes to create their own custom 'class' that they wanted to play. He had to honestly admit to himself that it was a pretty novel and interesting concept. He studied his character sheet and did a little math. His Power gave him a punching force of about 120 psi and lifting force of about 300 pounds. That seemed pretty accurate. The same went for his other two stats. His Endurance implied he could run a 100-meter sprint full out, and his agility said he could do so at about 14 miles-per-hour. Given the current shape he was in, yeah that seemed about right given his current physique.

As for the last attribute, Magic, having only one point made perfect sense to him considering that his starting stats were based on his real-life parameters. After all, there's no magic in the real world. Darren clapped his hands together and smiled at the AI, "Is there anything else I need to know before I enter the game?"

The AI shook its head, "No. Just be sure to remember not to reveal that you, and others like you, are players in a game. As long as you do that everything will be fine. Just enjoy exploring the world and meeting the people within it! Are you ready to begin your journey?"

Darren nodded and smiled broadly, he was starting to get rather excited. The AI snapped its fingers and the whole world goes dark, "Welcome to Age of Gods!"