Hello! I'm Zlatohrbitek, an attendee of Further Confusion 2019 who learned about Shard yesterday from the Dealer's Den at Further Confusion. My partner Tserisa and I were immediately impressed enough by the mechanics, the gorgeous art, and the representatives of the game at the table to buy the two core books right away and sign up for a playtest last night.
I was the fox who played Dastánah the mockingbird, and sang "Sitar Man" for a crowded inn; Tser was the dragon who played Gramír the wolf, and unhorsed nine of ten chinti-riding bandits with one action.
We agreed the game was stupendous; I found it instantly riveting, immersive, and vivid, with quick-to-grasp but flexible mechanics which allowed all the characters huge selections of actions and freedom to affect the course of encounters. I thank all our fellow players and especially the two GMs.
Also, I noticed the GMs' Ultima IX-branded bag and instantly turned into a raving fanboy; Ultimas IV through VII in particular probably shaped me more than any other computer games (only the TSR Gold Box series could possibly contend, and I think the Ultimas win). Remarkably, I had been babbling to Tser just the day before we saw the Shard table about the intricate, interconnected system of principles, virtues, keeps, cities, dungeons, character classes, and colors (so rich, and yet so regular that they can all be recalled from their representations as three-digit binary numbers -- those Ultimas were "programmer's games" more than any others that I've ever played!), and the magic system so logically built from combining words (one for each letter of the alphabet) and reagents (again there were 8, AKA 2^3) each with their own meanings and properties into spells that exhibit those properties that I remember most of it (at least the words and reagents, and often I can reconstruct individual spells) more than twenty years after I last regularly played.
I was the fox who played Dastánah the mockingbird, and sang "Sitar Man" for a crowded inn; Tser was the dragon who played Gramír the wolf, and unhorsed nine of ten chinti-riding bandits with one action.
We agreed the game was stupendous; I found it instantly riveting, immersive, and vivid, with quick-to-grasp but flexible mechanics which allowed all the characters huge selections of actions and freedom to affect the course of encounters. I thank all our fellow players and especially the two GMs.
Also, I noticed the GMs' Ultima IX-branded bag and instantly turned into a raving fanboy; Ultimas IV through VII in particular probably shaped me more than any other computer games (only the TSR Gold Box series could possibly contend, and I think the Ultimas win). Remarkably, I had been babbling to Tser just the day before we saw the Shard table about the intricate, interconnected system of principles, virtues, keeps, cities, dungeons, character classes, and colors (so rich, and yet so regular that they can all be recalled from their representations as three-digit binary numbers -- those Ultimas were "programmer's games" more than any others that I've ever played!), and the magic system so logically built from combining words (one for each letter of the alphabet) and reagents (again there were 8, AKA 2^3) each with their own meanings and properties into spells that exhibit those properties that I remember most of it (at least the words and reagents, and often I can reconstruct individual spells) more than twenty years after I last regularly played.