Supporting those that support Shroud of the Avatar is not only one of the Caverns mottos, but I walk the talk and ive made many purchases I was so/so on, simply because it was a Shroud supporter which finalized thee deal for me.

A while back I did a piece about Shard. Shard is a Role Play Game made by Scott Jones. As you know, Scott Jones is a Portalarium Dev and one of our own!

This piece is a follow up, so if you want the details do a search in the upper right hand corner of the site *points up* and find the original post! Heres a bit of it though, and you can find Shard’s home site over this way: http://www.shardrpg.com – Note that a couple of links on the site arent working but if you play with it a bit youll figure those few exceptions out (and I do know that its being adressed as soon as possible!). As I said in my last piece, great web site, very sharp!! Outside of my skill level for sure!

Ok – this piece continues where the last one left off, and there will be more in the future.

I recently met with a couple of people who I am starting a new monthly RPG campaign with. One is a veteran player like myself, and has played with me for years. The other one is completely new to RPG Pen and Paper but does have extensive expierence in Video games (including RPG), table top, card, and board. In short – easy to corrup!

We had dinner out, broke the ice as the new guy doesnt know my vetran. This may seem like a small group.. yes it is, we want one more yet but are being particular about play style and group dynamics. The gorup forming this is one in which we are all extremely busy and so making time to do pen and paper is very hard.. As such the quality msut be top notch!

So eventually we ended up back at my game room where we got serious! It was not long before the tales and chairs where covered with gameing books as I went through options for a campaign.

With a new group forming, quality being important, etc.. there where certain things we where looking for in our system choice.
-Something none of has ever played. With having someone new to pen and paper, and two Vetrans, this evens the fuild a bit so we can help guide the new guy.
-Something without to much crunch (rules, mechanics, numebrs, hard to level, complex magic system, to many books, etc)
-Something that would facilitate RP. With a new player we wanted something to HELP them learn.
-Soemthing that doesnt teach bad habbits (dont’ get me started on examples).

We spent many an hour doing this as I discussed and talked about different systems, pros and cons, and why it would be a good chioce for us at this stage or a bad choice. I covered games I KNEW we wouldnt be playing simply because I wanted the new guy to hae a wider understanding.

This is not a full list, but a few:
-Dragonlance Saga
-D&D
-World of Darkness
-Thiefs Wrold
-Black Company

After looking though many many systems, discussing them and as it was getting late we started narrowing down the choices. We had it down to just a few when we felt that both Black Company and Shard met all our primary requirements (one of the hard ones being something none of us had played yet).World of Darkness’s Mage was in third position, but what knocked that one out is if im going to run mage, with someone who has never played it, I prfer we start with second for a few sessions and then move to 4th. In my opinon 4th is a more solid system for mage then 2nd, but its presentation of all the rotes give the players a crutch and they loose out of the free-from magic system that 1st, 2nd, and 3rd offers. So I like to make them learn without the cruth and then they can have it once I know they don’t have to use it all the time :)…. but, this just seemed like to much hassle for what our current goals are.

Finally Shard was choosen on the basis that Im the only one that has read the Black Company Novels and being familiar with the novels I think would add a lot to the game. Shard not having that, meeting all the other requirements, was the choice.

I presented all other options as equally as Shard. Now I was honest in that out the gate I wanted to go with Shard, but this was a group decision and my oppisite vetran wsnt going to just go with that unless he agreed with my assesments!

So.. in a small blind study, Shard was accpected as being a good RPG to play choice! So if your a pen and paper player thats on the fence about this one, check it ouy some more!

Ill give you a couple more updates in the future, as well as feedback from my players – once we start playing!