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A Few Words
Promised Sands is a rather unique fantasy roleplaying game written by Benjamin Rogers and published by BBrack Productions. I'm going to divide this review up into multiple sections -- Appearance, Setting, Character Creation, Game System, and Combat.
Appearance
Let's kick this review off by discussing the layout. The text is situated in double columns, without any fancy fonts of any type. This gives it a very old school feel, which appeals to me. The font used in the main text doesn't appeal to me personally. For some reason, it strains my eyes a bit to read it. Not that it's an exotic font or anything, it just doesn't work well with me. None of my players had that problem with the font, so it's obviously just a "me" thing.
The layout itself is visually appealing and completely Conducive to the mood the game tries to capture. First of all, there is little to no white space. I'm a stickler for this and PS came through nicely. The bottom of each page features a silhouette of an Arabic styled City scape which occasionally pokes up into the text. That said, it's never intrusive. The top of each page shows fancy curtains drawn up in stylish "ties". This spills down the outside edge of the pages. And here's where a really nice touch is added: the curtain on the outside edge lowers a bit with each subsequent chapter. Subtle but neat.
The cover art is nicely rendered. While it does little to immediately draw someone into the product, it's still very striking. With it's tan colored background, the book tends to stand out from other books on the store shelf. This is a good marketing move, whether or not BBrack intended it to be. Visibility is never a bad thing.
The black and white interior art varies drastically, ranging from "not bad" to "fantastic". None of it is bad, in my opinion. Better still, every single picture fits the setting. Too many games feature artwork that doesn't quite jibe with the setting descriptions in the book. The original Dark Conspiracy RPG comes to mind, as the text described cars, phones and such as being blocky, yet they were shown as being sleek in the art. This isn't the case with PS. It's all very consistent.
My Score: B+
Setting
This, to me, is one of Promised Sands' strongest areas. As I read through the book, I was honestly amazed at how much thought went into the world of T'nah. I can honestly say I haven't been this impressed with a setting in several years. Especially a fantasy setting. The attention to detail is just astounding.
Before I get going onto the details, I'd like to go ahead and get my single complaint out of the way -- lack of organization. The setting information isn't in one spot. Or even two. Rather, it's sprinkled liberally throughout the entire book. This is all good and well, but it definitely makes it difficult to track down important setting information in a prompt fashion, regardless of the presence of an index. Now, on with the abundance of good things about T'nah.
Promised Sands lays out a very interesting world for you to play around in. It's a harsh, dry, rocky world where survival is an everyday struggle. Okay, it sounds like a standard game setting at first glance -- no great shakes, right?
Look closer. Nope, zoom in even closer. Ah, there you go. When examining T'nah up close and personal, you'll find layer after layer of intricacy that is sadly lacking in many other games. Particular (almost obsessive) attention has been paid to the deep, rich history of this setting and all its many races and cultures. Gone are the over-done fantasy races such as Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes. In their place, Promised Sands offers its own creations, such as the horse-like Loshad, the color-changing Syl and intellectually enhanced Numid. Each race is masterfully designed and actually feel "real".
My favorite setting based section of the book is where Mr. Rogers (no, not that Mr. Rogers) described each culture in extreme detail. Utterly fascinating material here. Each culture is divided into the following categories "Family Attitudes", "Death Attitudes", "Gender Attitudes", "Slavery Attitudes", "Taboos and Restrictions" and "Overall Focus and Motivation". This set-up is ideal for getting across all the subtle nuances that each culture possesses, which is crucial for a game that relies so heavily on cultural differences.
The book features a decent enough map of T'nah as well as a description of each area. Actually, there are two descriptions of each area -- a brief one in the "T'nah at a Glance" section and a more detailed treatment in the "World of T'nah" section. While the various write-ups for the general areas are intriguing, the setting really starts to shine when you start reading the descriptions of the cities. There are a lot of cities described in this book... and Mr. Rogers managed to bring each and every one of them to life with his writing. To make this even better, most of the cities come complete with a picture of its skyline which instantly depicts its "character".
My Score: A
Character Creation
Character Creation takes up 107 pages of the book's mass. And for good reason. You see, much of Promised Sands' elegance and dynamics lies within its character creation. I know, I know. Other games such as Hero can boast the same thing. I won't dispute that. But the Promised Sands character creation is tied intimately into the setting in a way which I can say I've seldom seen before. It's rich and robust and fun, but it's not without fault.
That fault is lack of clarity. Much of this would've been cleared up with the addition of examples, which were head-scratchingly not included. I'm a firm believer in examples, as they can so easily help players overcome stumbling blocks that the rules might cause. Step by step examples would have been a godsend for Promised Sands character creation. As a result it took me and my players a lot of extra time trying to figure some of the more ambiguous things out, like Qualities.
In many ways, the character creation revolves around the concept of the life path. You make certain decisions about your character (Racial Heritage, Cultural Heritage and so forth). These decisions grant your character certain characteristics.
Here's a quick run-down of the process
1) Choose Racial Heritage: The Racial Heritage you choose represents your actual race. It gives you the character's base Attribute dice (Strength, Intellect, Charisma, etc.), Qualities (advantages and disadvantages rolled into one), and other stats (Quality Dice, Quality Points, Detriments, etc.).
2) Choose Cultural Heritage: You then choose your Cultural Heritage, which reflects where anf how you were raised. This modifies the things given to you by your Racial Heritage. Additionally, it gives you your base set of Skills and Socio-Economic Category (SEC).
3) Choose Qualities, Assets and Detriments: At this point, you can select your Qualities, Assets and Detriments. You get to essentially choose a category and then roll however many of your Quality Dice to determine exactly which Quality you get. Quality Points can be spent to bolster your rolls.
4) Determine Apprenticeship: Now, you get to select an Apprenticeship, which equate to your early occupational training. This step nets you more Attribute dice, Skill Levels (to spend on Skills), equipment, contacts and more. If you want an older, more experienced character to start with, you can go for advancement.
5) Determine Attributes: Based on past choices, you'll now have a number of Attribute dice for each Attribute. Roll them and get your scores.
6) Equip the Character: By this point, your character will have a bit of equipment and money (from Step 4). Jot this down. You can go spend the money on additional gear as well.
Overall, it's fun to watch your character develop. The above summary doesn't do the process full justice though. The flavor is truly in the details.
My Score: B (would be A if it had examples)
Game System
What good is a game without solid mechanics? Luckily, Promised Sands delivers quite well in this area. Some of it may seem a bit wonky, but in Practice, the rules work splendidly. The core resolution system is percentile-based, which is an immediate turn off for some gamers. I have no problem with such systems myself, so take what I say with that in mind.
Before we begin, I want to point out that Promised Sands is an incredibly Skill-laden game. In fact, there's nearly 300 different Skills available. Some of them seem to overlap from a mechanics point of view, but the difference is in how they're applied in the roleplaying.
In order to succeed at a task, you roll a die percentage at try to get equal to or less than the character's Success Value (SV). The SV is the total of the appropriate Attribute value and Skill value.
But that's not all. When rolling the die percentage, a third d10 is thrown into the mix. This is called the Effect Die (ED). Here's where things may seem to get screwy. The ED is read separately from the percentage dice. The higher it rolls, the better the character succeeds (if indeed he succeeds at all). In order to have a basic success, the percentage dice must roll under the SV and the ED must roll at least 1 (after modifications).
The ED genuinely takes some getting used to. If you don't like it at all, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to yank out without throwing the rest of the system off balance. Still, I'd suggest giving it a whirl, at least once. When I read it, I cringed. I cringed hard. When I ran my first game, I threw caution to the wind and used the ED. In the end, I'm glad I did.
One nice application of the ED is that you can sacrifice levels of effect in order to better your failed percentage roll. I like this kind of thing, as it provides options for the players, not to mention some manner of control.
Similarly, players may choose to alter things before the roll is made. To do this, the player may cumulatively lower the SV by -10 in order to add +1 to the ED result. This reflects the character struggling to achieve a specific goal, such as getting a head shot in combat.
Last but not least, we have Dissonance (DIS). This is represented by some physical object, which is known as the DISk. At least once per scene, a player can toss his or her DISk down on the table and basically take control of the story temporarily. It can be used to interrupt actions, gain the first strike in combat, assist another character, hamper an opponent's actions through your own actions and whatever else the GM would allow. I allowed it to be used for "creative editing", but I dig that kind of thing.
The core system functions more smoothly at the table than it would seem just by reading it. I had more than a few doubts going into my first session. Those doubts quickly subsided once the action got underway.
My Score: A
Combat
For the most part, the combat system is merely an extension of the task resolution rules, which suits me just fine. I'm all about consistency in a game system. So, to hit in combat, you still need to make rolls based on your SV. Melee is handled normally (though this is pretty vague in the book) and ranged combat depends mostly upon how far away the target is. But anyway...
Initiative is, in my opinion, a bit too muddled. All participants roll against their Reflexes Attribute. If the percentile dice are more than the Reflexes score, then the ED value is subtracted from Reflexes. If the percentile dice are less than or equal to the Reflexes score, then the ED value is added to Reflexes. The character who ends up with the highest goes first. It wouldn't be so bad if it was rolled once per combat, but it's every combat turn. Even still, this doesn't cripple it for me. It just slows things down a bit more than I'd like.
Characters receive a number of combat actions equal to his or her Reflexes divided by 5 (rounding down). If an action requires the roll of the dice, it requires a combat action to perform. The different actions listed are comprehensive and cover pretty much all the bases, from attacking to moving to Skill usage. Then, of course, there are free actions (i.e., ones that don't require a roll) -- drawing a weapon, reloading, talking, and so forth.
Here's a little something that I liked a lot: Modes. During your turn, you get to choose your character's posture, which determines your focus and mode of your actions for that full turn. You can select one of the following: All Out Attack (bonus to attacks, penalty to defense), All Out Defense (bonus to defense, penalty to attacks), Concentration (bonus to actions requiring concentration, penalty to everything else) and Free (no bonuses or penalties). I thought this was a cool touch and my players got plenty of mileage out of the different Modes.
On to my favorite aspect of the PS combat rules --damage!
Time to step in here and state that there are two damage systems given in the book.
Basic damage resolution is basically a "hit point" system with provisions given for non-lethal damage. There's also a stat called Blood Capacity, though I never could find any text that explains how it's used. Maybe I'm blind.
I think the basic system was more of an afterthought, as it doesn't appear to be well-supported within the rest of the book. For example, it was written that the weapons are supposed to have damage (which is to be modified by the ED of the attack roll). Looking at the weapons, you'll quickly see that the only damages listed are for the advanced version of damage, not for the basic.
Thankfully, all the shortcomings of basic damage is made up for in the excellent advanced damage system.
The advanced system revolves around the Existence of eight injury zones: head, chest, right arm, left arm, groin, stomach, right leg and left leg. Each zone has ten levels of flesh damage, represented on the character sheet by ten little boxes called life points. When a zone receives ten life points worth of damage, it becomes crippled. Damage beyond this is considered critical damage. Critical damage can take three different forms: bone damage, nerve damage and blood damage. Each type has variable effects, but rest assured that none of them are pleasant.
Anyway, the rules also take into account such things as the damaging impairing the character's abilities, types of damage (slice, impale, crush, etc.) and even pain modifiers. Extremely realistic and equally fun to use in action, but if you don't like a decent amount of rules, you may want to cobble together the basic damage rules and use those instead.
The biggest problem with combat is that it should have had a 2-4 page "example of combat". That would have helped out immensely. Hopefully, they'll at least write one up and post it to their website. Once you figure it all out, it works like a dream. I couldn't ask for a better system for this type of low-powered, gritty roleplaying game.
My Score: B (would be A if it had examples)
In Conclusion
Despite having some flaws, Promised Sands is a keeper. It could clearly benefit from more examples and some clarifications, but I think of it as a diamond in the rough. And what a nice diamond it is.
I've Game Mastered three games of it now and I've enjoyed it a lot each time around. Both of my players had a blast too, though one of them isn't as enamored with the advanced damage system as I am. It didn't stop him from showing up with bells on each time I ran it though.
I think that Promised Sands' biggest accomplishment is demonstrating one hell of a setting and having rules that reflect it. T'nah is a hot, unforgiving place full of dangers at every turn... and the game rules reflect that adequately. Death can come pretty easy for the characters, which can be jarring to those who are used to less lethal systems (like my players). But that initial shock works to good effect and in my group's case, it made them rethink how they handle things.
Sure, Promised Sands has a few warts. What game doesn't? But I like it. It has that certain "X-Factor" that is often missing from games. It captures a bleak, desolate mood and rides it throughout the book, not just in pictures but in the writing as well.
In the end, I recommend this product to anyone looking for a unique mostly-fantasy game that comes attached to an amazingly vivid setting. It will probably never climb to the same heights as most of the D20 games in terms of popularity, but mark my words: Promised Sands will become a cult favorite. Maybe not now, maybe not even a year from now. But it will happen.
Promised Sands offers something fresh to the gaming masses. Something that, in my opinion, breathes new life into a rather tired genre.
It's safe to say that I'll be venturing back into the blasted lands of T'nah again in the near future.
Final Score: B+
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