Post originally by Benjamin (BBRACK) at 2003-07-19 17:20:55
Converted from Phorums BB System

The setting for <b>Promised Sands</b> is certainly desert/wasteland--but that's just the tip of the ice-berg.

When we sat down and started developing <b>Promised Sands</b>, we wanted it to be able to accomodate any genre of play desired. It is strongly fantasy--and we call it a "dark desert fantasy" for that nice, three-word description the marketplace is so fond of. We also tack on that it has "a twist of arabian renaissance with a dash of post-apocalypse for flavor".

Can you play horror? Oh yeah! In fact, if you can't see how to use <b>Promised Sands</b> as a horror vehicle, then you have to be deliberately ignoring whole sections!

Traditional dungeon experiences? While there are caves, dungeons and loads of below-ground territory to host a "dungeon-crawl", <b>Promised Sands</b> is not focused on this type of adventuring. It's there, but not the focus.

Intrigue is the name of the game. There are plots and sub-plots and undercurrents enmeshed throughout the world. Secret societies, ancient secrets, dark and menacing threats, remanants of ancient conflicts that are completely out of control... The whole setting of T'nah is a world of secrets and legends overlaying the entire world.

You can dungeon crawl--and ignore the depth and details we've provided. You can even have an enjoyable and meaningful adventure using creatures and threats that your players haven't known all the stats and details about for the last 25-30 years. You can even use <b>Promised Sands</b> to grab creature and threat ideas to use in other games.

Since all the stats are based on a 3-dice attribute system, it's easily converted to the 3-18 system of d20. Since we use percentiles to determine skills, it's easy to simply devide the number by 5 for an appropriate number for the d20 mechanic (as one example, you could also do Palladium or nearly anything else...)

Combat is a large focus of the game--but it's designed to be cinematic in application and realistic in effect. Combat is <i>deadly</i>. And since we set the world in a desert/wasteland environment, armor is seldom worn. I'm sure you can see how seriously nasty that can be...

When we designed <b>Promised Sands</b>, we wanted to be as open to as many different playing styles as possible while telling the stories that we enjoyed. One of our developers found the "dark desert fantasy" too dark for his preference, so he developed an area of the world that was lush and verdent, teeming with life. We, naturally, had to develop something seriously dangerous to dominate and control this area of the world--and thus was born the Sylvan culture. We call them the "dark, cold heart of the woods". They'd just as soon kill you to prevent you from sharing the knowledge of the wealth they possess.

We designed the system to play as dark, desert fantasy, traditional fantasy, post-apocalypse, low-level sci-fi, horror (everything from "people being horrible to each other" to "things man was not meant to know", including "dark, evil from the ancient past").

Let me once more redress the difficulty of character generation: It's complex. It's deliberately complex. We believe that strong characters with developed histories and backgrounds make for the best stories.

Some people do not like detailed character generation, they like quick and dirty chargen. If that's the case, you can still enjoy the setting, world and mechanic of <b>Promised Sands</b>--but you'll probably want to use (and slightly modify) the existing archetypes (or download some new ones from web--we'll be posting more to the website soon).

We will also be posting a point-based chargen system for those who don't like randomization.

The extensive chargen was also developed as a means to create extremely detailed NPCs. It was designed so that your characters (PCs or NPCs) could be much more than just "numbers on a page". So you could bring them alive with a complete history and background.

Our next product, <b>Rumors of War</b>, to be released just after GenCon will outline the Wet Denizens and their technology, the Ch'ak, Aij'ak and Jaan (the drachenriders), and will detail more of the Dry Denizens. There will be a meta-plot, but it is easily removed if you don't want to embroil your version of T'nah war.

Hope this has helped to give you some more information.

Benjamin

P.S. I should point out that Butch Miller is the one who deserves the credit for bringing out the feel of each of the cities. He used my skeletal notes and fleshed them out beautifully. Butch did a <i>great</i> job making the world of T'nah come alive.