Today’s prompt has been jamming me up a bit. How to address Promise /prŏm′ĭs/, which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a noun that is 1. A declaration assuring that one will or will not do something; a vow, 2. Indication of something favorable to come; expectation, “a promise of spring in the air.”, 3. Indication of future excellence or success, “a player of great promise.” I think I’m going to focus on the second definition.

One of the greatest feelings is that expectation, that excitement that comes with a new purchase or gift. Is it going to be awesome? Man, I hope this will be awesome! Then you open the wrapping and get into it. Every roleplaying game I’ve bought brings that same moment of antici…pation. There are a few that have seriously disappointed; some have been much better than I hoped. There are a few that the layout and artwork have really sold the promise of an experience. Others, it was the franchise they were modeling.

Back in the ‘80s, that antediluvian era of gaming, the disappointments were more frequent than the promise delivered. I remember being sold on the game Universe due to the tremendous star map that was included. The system..? Meh. After playing D&D, I was hopeful for Top Secret and Gangbusters — only to be disappointed that the mechanics couldn’t capture the flavor of spy-fi. James Bond’s art and presentation were decently professional for the era, with excellent graphics for the cars and guns, and the system caught the feel of the movies — it was a game so good, we used it for decades. Likewise, the rules-lite d6 system of Star Wars pushed the feel of the movies that the very pretty, but ultimately less effective d20 version of the 2000s — a disappointment.

So what recent games have promised a lot and delivered? 

Probably the most delightful surprise was the Alien and Blade Runner games. The layout and artwork is beautiful — Free League excels at the game book as table art piece. I was surprised to find that the rule-lite approach worked well for the sci-fi horror genre, particularly the fear aspect that is hard for a lot of gamers to allow themselves to roll into. The improved die mechanic of Blade Runner (also used in Twilight: 2000) maintained the rule-lite flavor of Alien, but allowed the joy of rolling different types of math rocks. Another delight was the recent Legend in the Mist, which is getting accolades for a reason. In addition to being gorgeous, with high production values for the physical product, the system is rules-lite and dispensed with a lot of the math and rules limitations that Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder place on a GM or player. The sheer volume of rules is enough that I have avoided running D&D for a long time. LitM, on the other hand, spends a lot of its page count providing examples of adversaries, events, and challenges that make running a quick session a simple matter of finding something in the vein of what you wanted to run and stringing them together with only a few tweaks. I was running games off of the PDFs with no issues and very little prep time. There’s a wealth of player options that are never overwhelming, but provide guidance to making a character quickly and tailored well to what you want to play. The comic book style primer to playing is based on the create-your-own-story style of book and works well for getting the basics fast.

There have been a lot of games I’ve bought that have not disappointed, this is the first in a long time that genuinely felt like it was worth every penny. It was enough I bought their City in Mist — another game where the presentation is good, the system is loose enough to do what you want…but it’s not quite as pretty as LitM.

The Kickstarter for the Cowboy Bebop RPG was very promising. They had obviously leaned into the music as a theme for the game — too much, I think. The character attributes are based on different musical styles, and while they can be serviceable, there’s a heavy learning curve that was a turn off. When the base mechanic is something to overcome — promise not fulfilled. Similarly, the look of John Carter of Mars that Modiphius put out a few years back looked great. My game group was one of the playtesters on the early rules and the writing was so execrable as to make the base mechanics impenetrable. It was bad enough I avoided 2d20 for a long time. After a few sessions of my friend running Fallout, I gave 2d20 another chance for a Star Trek campaign. The layout and writing, again, worked against the player and the index was utterly useless; not good. The second edition has cleaned much of the issues, the artwork has improved, and the general presentation of the new products is excellent. 2e of the game has rehabilitated it for me.

Probably the most disappointing example of beautiful presentation brought down by the ruleset is Jovian Chronicles an anime-inspired hardish-science RPG by Dream Pod 9 that hit at the end of the ‘80s. The spaceship designs are gorgeous enough they did artbooks of them. The background material is plentiful and there is a lot of room for playing in their universe. The overarching meta-story I thought was potentially restrictive unless a GM ignored some of it, and the rules set was a hot mess. I’ve wanted to run JC for decades, but I haven’t made the jump to a more workable system.