Alshard

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Alshard
image:alsff01.jpg
Alshard fortissimo cover
Designer(s) Jun'ichi Inoue, F.E.A.R.
Publisher(s) Enterbrain, Game Field
Publication date 2002 (1st Edition)
2005 fortissimo (2nd Edition)
Genre(s) techno-fantasy
System Standard RPG System

Alshard (アルシャード?) is a Japanese role-playing game designed by Jun'ichi Inoue and FarEast Amusement Research. It was released in July 2002. The current, 2nd edition, known as Alshard fortissimo or Alshard ff (アルシャードフォルティッシモ,アルシャードff?) was published in July 2005. It is a fantasy role-playing game with mechanical items like as Final Fantasy. Alshard's game system is named Standard RPG System (SRS). Alshard series is one of the largest role-playing game systems published in Japan.

Contents

[edit] Setting

Alshard's world is named Midgard, and the setting includes many deities from Norse mythology (for example 'Odin' and 'Thor'), but most of the deities died in Ragnarök, the ancient war of the gods. Midgard is a fantasy world, but guns, motorcycles, robots, androids, airships, tanks, and other mechanical items are present in the setting.

Player characters are called Questers and possess a crystal (called a Shard) of ancient gods, and can use supreme divine powers by using it. Questers seek an ideal world, Asgard, and stand against the world's enemy, the abyss, and the evil empire Wahres Reich (German for the Authentic Empire).

[edit] Nations in Midgard

  • Wahres Reich - A theocratic empire which worships the god of machinery, Deus Ex Machina. Reich's army possesses many modern weapons, and is the strongest military force in Midgard.
  • Westri - A kingdom that was ruined by the invasion of Wahres Reich and the riot of hundreds of mad robots. The crown princess is missing.
  • Silvestri - A republic that was built after a revolution, like the French First Republic.
  • Kirsche - A former principality under the Westri. It is an armed neutral country.
  • Yashima - An eastern empire of samurai and ninja. Yashima is one of the names used to describe ancient Japan. (See also Names of Japan)
  • Zoanesheim - The kingdom of the catlike Lynx people in the Golden Forest.
  • Vanaheim - The maritime kingdom of the merrow, a legal entity of Wahres Reich. The king is treated as a president of the company under Reich's law.
  • Amung - The lizard-folk's subterranean empire.

[edit] Organizations in Midgard

  • Excalibur - The knights of the round table whose foe is the abyss. The airship named Avalon is their movable military base.
  • Primrose - The resistance against Wahres Reich. The leaders are Hans Wilmar and his sister Sophie. They are named after Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, the leaders of the actual White Rose resistance.
  • Norn - A guild of monster hunters. There are three sections named Urd, Verdandi and Skuld.
  • Academy - A magic academy built by ancient race known as the Alf on floating islands. The alumni are called Wizards and respected as elite magicians.
  • General Material (G=M) - The transport company which helps the resistance movement and prevents Reich's invasion. Jormungand is G=M's rival company.
  • Aegis - The defenders of the world. The members wear metal armor, and are called Runeknights. Aegis and Excalibur are rivals.
  • Silber Kreuz (SK) - One of the special forces of Wahres Reich. SK is the Imperial Guard. Schwarz Kreuz (Agents of the Cardinal), Virtues (Militia of the religious order), Kaiser Schwert (Kaiser's military police) and others are also imperial special forces.
  • Wincaster Fortune Service (WFS) - The information company that sells "the future". WFS helps adventurers and stands against the abyss. WFS is in fact a sect of Excalibur.

[edit] Races in Midgard

  • Alf - An ancient race that had great technology and created deities and Valkyries. The crystals named receptor are buried on their foreheads. They can control ancient scientific devices called relics including orbital weaponry, laser sword and deflector shield by using receptors.
    • Fomor - A race of dark Alf polluted by the abyss.
  • Valkyrie - Armored gynoids made by Alfs are also considered one of the intelligent races. Every Valkyrie has weapon system called the Weapons Administration Retractability System (W.A.R.S. for short) including railgun, gatling gun and particle projection cannon. They can transform into various mode, for example: Delta form and Artillery form such as Fighter mode and GERWALK mode of VF-1 Valkyrie. It's exactly play on words.
    • Battleship Valkyrie - A kind of Valkyrie, they are movable terminal of flying battleships and can use strong weapons of battleships.
  • Lynx - A race of bipedal catpeople have cat-like ears, eyes and a tail. Despite their capriciousness, they are good hunters. They have skills of arcane archery, tribal magic or martial arts.
    • Wolf-ear Lynx - The female Lynxes have wolf-ears instead of cat-ears. They are the seventh daughters of the mothers who gave birth to only six female Lynxes. They are abandoned by their mothers, because it is believed that they are brutal and ominous.
  • Dvergr - Dwarves live as air raiders and good blacksmiths. They love alcohol and Rock'n Roll music very much. Some Dvergr's class abilities are named after musics, for example: Rock'n Roll, Rolling stones, Heavy metal and Touch the Sky.
  • Sirius - A race of shapeshifter change into wolves. They live as nomad. Their culture is similar to Tibetan's one. All of them are both strong martial artists and judicious philosophers.

This section is a stub.

[edit] Peculiar settings

  • Alshard - The game title, Alshard is coined terms that means Shard with complete power. Every Shard has ego and tries to guide the owner to Asgard. If quester becomes confidential with his Shard, Shard becomes Alshard and quester becomes successor of the deity. Alshard sometimes creates the incarnation who have the appearance of the person that is called avatar. The mysterious lady, Nimue is typical avatar of Alshard.
  • Arcology cities - The arcology city of structured complex skyscraper is in the frontier of Reich's science power. Future scientific equipment, including air cars can exist only in the cities where the power of Shard was applied. These city's civilization is very different from the outside fantasy world, and it is possible to play cyberpunk adventures in there. Gladsheim (Imperial Capital), Bartholomaios and Alphaeus Jacob are one of the largest arcology cities. Judas Iscariot is a failed experiment arcology city.
  • Kaiser and Pope - The Kaiser and the Pope are the same person in the theocratic empire, Wahres Reich. The present Kaiser Gustav Joseph II is a very taciturn and incredibly old man at 412 years old, and it will be a big incident if he say just one word. The line of Kaisers born in the monogenesis from the women who were called Blessed Virgin. To prevent the accident, several clones of Blessed Virgin are made, but subjects of Reich are not told the truth. Some propagandas tell that these clones are twins. These tragic Blessed Virgins appear in early scenarios as beautiful and innocent heroines whom questers should help.
  • Yggdrasil - Cosmology of Alshard is compared to the world tree Yggdrasil. Many worlds are connected by Yggdrasil like as branches and leaves of the tree. Several major worlds (including Midgard and Blue Sphere) are called root worlds. Minor worlds and the parallel universe of root worlds are called leaf worlds. The abyss that try to change everything into void is similar to the disease of the tree that blights leaves and roots. Utgard is also treated as one of the root worlds although in fact, it is Alf's flying battleship as large as a continent that is traveling across another dimensions.

[edit] System

Standard RPG System uses only 6 sided dice. To determine whether the action is successful or not the player rolls only 2d6, if the total of the dice rolled by the player and ability/class adjustments is more than or equal to difficulty score the action succeeds. To determine damage the player rolls a number of 6 sided dice. The number of dice that are rolled increases with various class abilities.

Players choose up to three classes during character creation -- for example, fighter/fighter/fighter (a 3rd-level fighter), valkyrie/valkyrie/scout (a 2nd-level valkyrie/1st-level scout), or black magician/white mage/wizard (a 1st-level black magician/1st-level white mage/1st-level wizard).

There are peculiar character classes: for example, valkyrie is a female-type battle android (gynoid) similar to KOS-MOS (of Xenosaga). Panzer ritter is a knight that rides a motorcycle (called Panzer in Midgard) instead of a horse. Players can choose also character classes related to Wahres Reich: Soldat (Cyborg soldier of Reich's army), Sorcerer aka Zauberer (User of techno-sorcery by operating Kabbalistic computer named Sephirot), Alias (Human clone made by divine powers of Deus Ex Machina. He/She serves the aristocrat and acts as an espionage agent with military uniform of the butler/housemaid style.) and etc.

The characters' ability scores are decided by the selection of classes almost automatically. Moreover, characters possess supreme divine powers according to their classes. For example, fighters possess the power of 'Thor', which adds extra damage to damage rolls, while white mages possess the power of 'Idun', which can raise the dead. Supreme divine powers are named Kago (加護? lit. divine protection), and work much like hero points. Each character can use Kago three times every a session, according to three classes was chosen during character creation.

A peculiar option system is a random scenario generator that prepare many scenario templates. It is possible to generate various stories by rolling dice and using event charts.

Standard RPG System is very simple and comprehensible, but its power of expression isn't poor because of about 50 character classes and 1,500 class abilities (In SRS, all spells and skills are comprised in class abilities).

In addition, special life-path charts for each character class are prepared, and special ability named Gift gives a character an unique and special background: for example, god slayer who has Caliburn, crown princess of Westri Kingdom and activist of Primrose resistance.

[edit] Alshard GAIA

Alshard GAIA (アルシャードガイア?) is a contemporary fantasy role-playing game using the Standard RPG System which was released in August 2006. Alshard GAIA has high degree of compatibility with Alshard, it is possible to use classes of two games together.

GAIA's world is named Blue Sphere. It is an alternate Earth. There is magic, but it is concealed from public knowledge; it is united magic with science in Alchemy, a highly developed process; for instance, the magic device named Chamber staff strengthens magic with magical bullets. Its function is similar to metamagic rod in Dungeons and Dragons. The game presents a starting character with the choice of various classes: time traveler, artificial humanoid, psychic, plane-shifter, dhampir, intelligent weapon (including Chamber staff) and etc. The setting is inspired by recent Japanese games, novels and animations, including Fate/stay night, Lyrical Nanoha and Suzumiya Haruhi.

This section is a stub.

Alshard GAIA

Alshard GAIA cover
Designer(s) Jun'ichi Inoue, Takeshi Kikuchi, F.E.A.R.
Publisher(s) Enterbrain
Publication date 2006
Genre(s) contemporary fantasy
System Standard RPG System

[edit] References

The rule books are only released in Japanese language. Translations of some of the book titles are noted in brackets. In addition, it was announced that 8 related products at least will be published in 2007.

[edit] 1st edition

[edit] Fortissimo edition & Alshard Gaia

[edit] External links

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In other languages