Shard RPG

[Whill]

I stopped to find myself at the Studio 2 booths featuring Hollow Earth Expidition and the game with the animals, Shard. For some probably deep psychological reason, I am fascinated with anthropomorphic animals (except big green bunnies). So much that I am including some as PC races in my Star Wars game. Shard is a fantasy game of sorts in an original world where all of the sentient species are, you guessed it, anthropomorphic animals. There are no humans (or elves or dwarves) in this world, and the game is actually mostly based on eastern cuture as opposed to western. There are literally dozens and dozens of player character races to choose from. As cool as the art and everything was, I still doubt I would ever actually play the game if I bought it. Then I saw they were selling an inexpensive full-color paperpack book "The Art of Shard", and so I bought that. Scott Jones (co-creator/admin of the official forum/main artist/art director of the Shard gameline) was there, and I spoke to him while he signed my book. He reminded me how humans have always anthopomorphized the animal world since prehistoric cave art, in mankind's attempt to assimilate himself with the world of nature. He spoke of the use of anthropomorphic animals in ancient mythologies (which I am well-versed in), and I realized that is probably the source of my fascination. He even spoke about Spider-man, Batman, Wolverine, etc.

The book is nice, and there are even more images available online. If you have any interest in checking it out, here's the main Shard RPG website (http://www.shardrpg.com/) (flash), and you can check out the Galleries there. A string of art is posted in this page of the game's forum (http://www.dardunah.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=111&page=3), and here is a 72-page quickstart PDF (http://www.shardrpg.com/pdf/Welcome_Booklet_low_res.pdf) of the game itself.

I finally got the core Shard RPG book ("Basic Compendium"), mostly for more art but also for inspiration in statting Star Wars D6 alien species based on anthropomorphic animals. I like it even more than I thought I would.

I thought I'd also provide a little summary about the game for anyone interested. I haven't read the entire book but I think I've read enough to give you guys a general overview. This one book is all that is absolutely required to play and run the game.

[Whill]

This game is heroic fantasy, but there are no dragons, elves, dwarves, or even humans. The completely new game world is not an alternate version of Earth. There is hardly any metal in the world, but rather an abundance of crystal. The technology is largely medieval but there are some more advanced things like some basic gunpowder weapons. But there is a lot of magic in the world. This game has skyships powered by magic crystals.

The culture of the world is is eastern rather than western, and the tone of this game is "fantasy with a strong cloak-and-dagger influence". Mix the swashbuckling "adventure and romance of The Three Musketeers, the Byzantine political intrigue of Dune, the martial arts combat of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the sets and costumes of Tales of the Arabian Nights, and the world visuals of The Dark Crystal". The game claims to be cinematic in spirit, and the creators of the game insist that the focus is on character-driven stories and not complex game mechanics.

Shard has a sci-fi-ish premise for a fantasy game. A human man and women are on a "Noah's Ark"-like spaceship with a lot of Earth animals. These animal look normal but their intelligence has been "uplifted" to sentient level. For some reason the ark is attacked by another ship, and the only way to escape is to fire an experimental drive. Doing so rips a tear the space-time continuim (or something like that) and they end up on a "planet" that is literally a fractured sphere, but the shards are held into proximity with each other by some mysterious force. At the surface, the segments are separated by chasms over 1000 miles wide and filled with mist.

This magical world, "Dardunah", seems to be in a different dimension of existance that was either achieved by the ship's drive or created by it. The uplifted animals now find themselves anthropomorphized into humanoid form, and inhabit the world. They become gods for the three major racial types that they procreate, and leave the surface to live in the sky (or something). The man and woman are remembered as the Great Father and Great Mother, progenitors of the gods, and they are depicted as cosmic beings with humanoid star-fillled outlines with bright stars as faces.

The sentient people of this world are called "Janah". The three racial types of Janah are further classified into specific animal types called "Zoics". The Zoics that exist in the world are all based on modern, living Earth species, but any animal type that exists in this world are playable as player characters. The three racial types correspond to the four living tetrapod animal classes of Earth:

Vajrah (land mammals)
Paksin (birds)
Sarpah (reptiles and amphibians)
Janah of different Zoics can still interbreed with members of their own racial class, but the offspring is always a specfic Janu in that Janah's direct ancestry, So there are no wierd animal hybrids. For example, a bat can mate with a wolverine and the offsping will usually either be a bat or a wolverine, but can also rarely be another animal type of one of the parent's ancestors. But a bat cannot interbreed with a penguin or a gecko.

Other animal classes exist in the world (insects, etc.) but they are not sentient (and not playable). To contrast the Earlth-species basis of sentient beings, these non-sentient creatures are alien in comparison, and unique to the setting.

Each animal template has a sepia-toned picture of the anthro, plus the core book is loaded with excellent full-color artwork of the world's inhabitants throughout. The rich world history and details are extremely well-developed. There's a lot here! The core book has a $35.00 retail price, which is pretty good for a full-color hardback with 350 pages.

This game has two primary creators and writers of the core book. One one of them is also the lead artist and website administrator whom I met and talked with. They actively support the game's fan community. One or both of them have personally replied in just about every thread on their site's forum.

[Whill]

A cool thing in this game is that you can play any bird, land mammal, reptile or amphibian animal type you can think of. The core book provides a whopping 90 animal templates (30 for each animal racial class) and rules to make your own. More templates will periodically become available for free on the official website, and a whopping 90 more will be available in the next supplement to be released.

This game uses multiple d6 dice. Character creation is a point-buy system.

"Attrbutes" is their word for the various types/catagories of stats each character has. The Shard Attributes are Animal Abilities, Characteristics, Talents, Skills, Advantages, and Drawbacks. Characteristics are what we call attrbutes in D6. They are: Stength, Vigor, Agility, Dexterity, Essense, Perception, Wit, Will and Presence.

At first glance the game seems to run a little like D6 Legend. But for each die rolled here, 4, 5 and 6 results each equal 1 success. But there is no specific difficulty number or target number of successes to roll. The difficulty and circumstances of the action instead only modify the number of dice rolled, and the number of successes determine a static success level. It's pretty simple.

The "Modifier" number below is the number of d6's subtracted or added to your base number of dice determined by the Attribute you are attempting an action of.

Modifier, Difficulty Rating
+5 or more, Child's Play
+3 to 4, Very Easy
+1 to 2, Easy
0, Standard
-1, Challenging
-2, Difficult
-3, Very Difficult
-4, Extremely Difficult
-5 or more, Almost Impossible

# Successes rolled, Success Level
0, Failed
1, Partial Success
2 or 3, Adequate Success
4 or 5, Good Success
6 or 7, Excellent
8 or 9, Astounding
10 or 11, Incredible
12+, Legendary

There is an optional mechanic similar to Wild Die explosion that says if you get two or more 6 results in your roll, those count as successes like normal but you also get to roll the second and subsequent 6 result dice again, and those dice explodes on 6's from there. Conversely, if you fail your action and roll one or more 1 result, then you "Fumble", which means a complication may occur, and may be worse based on the number of 1's roilled. Fumbles are also determined by the GM.

I haven't delved too deeply into the combat and magic sections, but the combat section states the goal is to create what would be cool movie action scenes.