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7th Sea Core Rulebook
7th Sea is a tabletop roleplaying game of swashbuckling and intrigue, exploration and adventure, taking place on the continent of Theah, a land of magic and mystery inspired by our own Europe. Players take the roles of heroes thrown into global conspiracies and sinister plots, exploring ancient ruins of a race long vanished and protecting the rightful kings and queens of Theah from murderous villains.
Save the Queen of Avalon from treacherous blackmail!
Thwart a dastardly assassination attempt on the Cardinal of Castille!
Raid the villainous fleets of Vodacce Merchant Princes!
Free the Prince of the Sarmatian Commonwealth from a mysterious curse!
Make decisions that alter the very course of Thean history!
In 7th Sea, you are a Hero, an icon of Theah ready to live and die for causes that matter. You bravely take on a dozen thugs with swords, knives and guns all on your own. You are the trusted knight, a loyal bodyguard or even an adventuring queen herself.
In other words—you are d’Artagnan, Milady de Winter, the Dread Pirate Roberts, Jack Sparrow, Julie d’Aubigney, and the Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled up in one!
This is a game of high adventure, mystery and action. This is a game of intrigue and romance.
This is 7th Sea.
Save the Queen of Avalon from treacherous blackmail!
Thwart a dastardly assassination attempt on the Cardinal of Castille!
Raid the villainous fleets of Vodacce Merchant Princes!
Free the Prince of the Sarmatian Commonwealth from a mysterious curse!
Make decisions that alter the very course of Thean history!
In 7th Sea, you are a Hero, an icon of Theah ready to live and die for causes that matter. You bravely take on a dozen thugs with swords, knives and guns all on your own. You are the trusted knight, a loyal bodyguard or even an adventuring queen herself.
In other words—you are d’Artagnan, Milady de Winter, the Dread Pirate Roberts, Jack Sparrow, Julie d’Aubigney, and the Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled up in one!
This is a game of high adventure, mystery and action. This is a game of intrigue and romance.
This is 7th Sea.
304 pages, ebook
First published April 5, 2016
12 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
John Wick
158 books48 followersJohn Wick is an award-winning role-playing game designer best known for his creative contributions to the games Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea. He self-published smaller games through his the Wicked Dead Brewing Company, and later created the John Wick Presents gaming company.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
May 17, 2017
I was a big fan of the original 7th Sea. I got into it thanks to my wife, then my girlfriend, who owned a bunch of the books and ran a few games when she was in university. Then it went out of print, and other games occupied our time, but when I heard that John Wick was planning to kickstart a second edition, I told her and she was ecstatic. I was a little leery of the new game based on what I read on the kickstarter page, but we jumped in--her for second edition, and me for the complete collection of first edition PDFs. And now she's decided to run another game and so I'm reading the whole book cover to cover, and, well...
I kind of don't like it.
Setting
The setting changes are my favorite part. Most of the new edition is the same as the old edition, with all the same countries we know and love based on literary version of European countries with some light fantasy elements sprinkled in. Avalon is still Elizabethan England mixed with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Montaigne is still Ancien Regime France under the rule of the Sun King. Eisen is still The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales just after the Thirty Years' War. And Vodacce is still Italy, but where everyone sleeps with a copy of The Prince under their pillow.
But there are a lot of changes for the better. The largest is the addition of an entirely new country--the Sarmatian Commonwealth, Théah's first major democracy. The sejm, a parliament of sixteen nobles, was paralyzed by overuse of the liberum veto, crippling the country, so on his deathbed the king used one of his few remaining powers and granted nobility to every adult in the country. In a panic, the sejm unanimously eliminated the liberum veto before any unwashed peasant garbage could use it to overturn legislation, and now a democracy is forming, with professional politicians and people paid to sit in the sejm and run out to ring bells in case anyone tries to sneak a vote in the middle of the night. It's fantastic and helps remedy the complete lack of Eastern European countries with Théan analogues.
There are several minor changes as well. Castille is less Mexico and more Spain, with fewer rancheros and Zorro. Ussura, the Russia expy, now has two rulers, versions of Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great, who are both fighting to be acknowledged, though it has not quite progressed into civil war. Vestenmannavnjar is no longer two nations--two generations ago they were raiders who went a-viking, and then they discovered that it was easier to steal people's money through buying cheap and selling dear, so they founded the Vendel League and became master merchants, though they sometime still go a-viking for old times' sake. And Avalon is now more explicitly separate countries with one crown, with Inishmore and the Highland Marches getting their own separate sections.
I also liked how there's more religious diversity. The Church of the Prophets is still highly important, but places like Inishmore and Ussura and Vestenmannavnjar or the Sarmatian Commonwealth have their own faiths that exist either alongside or mostly in place of the Vacitine Church. And Sorcery changed as well, with some sorcery expanded--Pyeryem is now "Dar Matushki," which includes turning into animals but isn't solely defined by it--and others limited. Eisen gets hexenwerk, the art of making poultices out of dead bodies with which to fight monsters. The Sarmatian Commonwealth has losejas making deals to trick power from demonic spirits called dievas. And rune magic still exists, though it's not defined.
Which gets to a major problem I have with the new edition. There's a lot more ambiguity and empty spaces, and I'm not sure if I should bring my old assumptions in or what new players are supposed to think. I know that Numa is Rome, and the references to the Old Empire and Old Republic are referring to it, but would a new player? In the first edition, some forms of magic were based on Numan senators striking a bargain with inhuman entities, and in the section on Sorte, Vodacce's female-only fate magic, reference is made to a "bargain." But is it the same bargain? The Syrneth exist, left ruins behind, and went extinct (or maybe they didn't), but that's everything that the book explains about them. I understand the dislike for the old Syrneth, which put a lot of cosmic horror into people's swashbuckling and sorcery game, but I would have preferred at least some mention of major ruins other than the catacombs under Charouse and the Thalusian isles in the west.
References are made to other continents--the New World, which is obvious, and Ifri, the analogue to Africa--and these are good additions, but there isn't even enough information to answer player questions about what is there. If the PCs are sailors and want to go to Ifri, all the GM has to draw on are that it exists and whatever they know about African history. Returning to the religious diversity, Vestenmannavnjar has a pantheon that's clearly supposed to be the Norse pantheon, with the "Allfather" at the head and his two sons, the trickster and the somewhat-dumb warrior, but no names are provided. No names of Inish gods are provided. No Vacitine saints are named and barely anything is mentioned about the prophets.
7th Sea is interesting because it allows a Europe-like (and later in the line, Africa-like, East Asia-like, and Americas-like) experience without actually being bound by real history, but without a more explicit enumeration of the differences, the place that GMs have to draw on is...real history, removing one of the benefits of the setting. There's obviously only so many pages in the book, but I really would have preferred more information about the rest of the world. There isn't even a "the rest of the world" section!
The changes are mostly good. The omissions are not.
System
7th Sea First Edition used the same dice system as Legend of the Five Rings, though with different traits and skills. The second edition keeps those traits but changes the dice system and underlying assumptions completely.
Tasks that can't automatically be accomplished are called Risks, and the GM sets out the Risk, the Consequences that result from it, like taking damage or attracting attention, the Opportunities that the PC can gain, such as extra information or an advantage later, and then the player rolls Trait + Skill, trying to make sets of 10. Every 10 is one Raise, and each Raise past the first avoids one Consequence or achieves one Risk. I'm not a huge fan of this, but it's mostly a personal preference. Some people like this explicit enumeration of the results of their rolls, and that's fine, but it earns an immediate side-eye from me. And I'm also not fond of how all actions are equally difficult to do, they're just more or less dangerous. Except, for some reason, reloading a gun during an action scene, which has a flat surcharge of five Raises.
The major problem I have is that changing the Skill one is using in the middle costs one Raise, explained as the cognitive load of changing one's mind. Okay, sure. But the example of play has the player picking their approach first, using the Convince skill, before hearing more than a cursory description of the scene. Once the GM lays the situation out and she decides that using Hide or Theft would be better, she's penalized for wanting to change her mind in response to new information. I think this is complete garbage, and I wouldn't be so annoyed except its in the example, so screwing the players by not telling them everything before they decide how to deal with it is apparently the expected mode of play! The GM is the player's window into the world, and barring mechanics that allow them to change it, the GM is the way they learn information about what is around them. Unless the PC's senses are explicitly lying to them, they should always have all the information that would be available to allow them to make informed decisions.
I mean, I can already see a player saying they want to fight their way in using Weaponry and then, when confronted with a hostage situation, having to spend a Raise not to charge the hostage-taker with sword raised. It's true this is handed by the combat system, but that's the kind of circumstances that rule creates. Yuck.
I mentioned mechanics for changing the world, and there are a lot of them. Most of them are Advantages powered by Hero Points, a metacurrency that allows players to add bonuses to their rolls, triple that bonus to other player's rolls--this is a great mechanic, encouraging in-game cooperation--power sorcery, and activate Advantages. Like Disarming Smile, which allows a PC to prevent someone else from resorting to violence, or Friend At Court, through which a PC reveals that they know someone else at a high society event. Each session starts with one Hero Point, and players can earn more through falling prey to their Hubris, through the GM "buying back" extra Raises that aren't used on their rolls--though this also gives the GM Danger Points they can use against the PCs--and through the player saying "I fail" when confronted with a Risk. Since PCs only start with one Hero Point and are unlikely to have many Risks with a lot of extra Raises, the main way they are supposed to gain Hero Points is through failure.
I'm ambivalent on this. It's set up to allow players to fail when they want so they have the resources to succeed when it matters, and in fact requiring it by limiting player resources at the beginning. It's heavily dependent on how the GM determines Risks and how much they're willing to buy extra Raises, but every RPG is heavily dependent on GM input. It could go either way.
I like that Villains have their own system that doesn't require a full character sheet, but I couldn't help but notice the best way to stop a Villain is to shoot them. Players have a standardized health track, with four Wounds then a Dramatic Wound, until at the fourth Dramatic Wound they become helpless. Villains have four Dramatic Wounds, but a number of Wounds between them equal to their Strength, which is probably 3-8 or so but can be up to 20. But firearms 1) always cause a Dramatic Wound and 2) can't be bought off by the opponent's Raises, so the best thing to do in battle is for the PCs to carry a brace of pistols and just keep drawing and firing when faced with a Villain to bypass the larger-than-normal number of Wounds completely. This only fails if the Villain has minions with the Guard subtype, allowing the GM to spend a Danger Point and take the damage intended for the Villain. Otherwise, swashbuckling falls before firearms.
Which is true to life, I suppose.
And finally, one the parts of the new system I like the least is the experience system. Called Stories, each is a freeform goal that the character wants to accomplish--get revenge on a hated villain, achieve some life goal, and so on. The player writes the ultimate goal and the first Step, and each Story is a series of Steps that are checked off as they are accomplished. Gaining new abilities often has a minimum number of steps--a new skill requires a Story with a number of Steps equal to the new skill's rating, for example. On top of this, the GM has their own Story that applies to all of the players.
This is one of the worst experience systems I've seen. The subjectivity means that a mechanically-minded player can easily optimize their Stories in order to gain the maximum possible amount of new traits and pull past the other players. Sure, the GM can police it, but it adds a one extra group of pitfalls they have to watch out for. And again, the examples aren't helpful. One example story has as its final goal that the character be married for two years, so I hope that player likes no character improvement that whole time while other characters pull ahead. Another example goal is "My Hero is happily married and retires from his life of adventure," so I hope that Convince 4 is helpful in his new life as a farmer. If 7th Sea characters were supposed to be seasoned heroes and mechanical growth wasn't the focus then I wouldn't mind so much, but the inability to start with skills higher than 4 implies that there is, if not a zero-to-hero progression implied, at least a four- or five-to-hero.
I admit, I'm guilty of this in the game my wife is running. I could have picked "Fulfill Matushka's plan for me" as my Story, but since I had already established that my character wasn't sure what Matushka wanted of him, why do that when I can have "Discover Matushka's plan for me" as the start and get another Story out of it?
Edit: And having played a bit, the GM-chosen Stories are not a balm on this, since they have a GM-determined number of steps that may or may not match anything you want to buy. It's possible that you'll have to buy some random advance to avoid losing XP, as I did in the last session we played. This entire system is awful and even the old turn-Drama-Dice-in-for-XP system would be better, which is quite a feat.
There's more, like how I disagree with most of the GM advice chapter and don't like how all the conflict is personified in the forms of specific Villains the Heroes can buckle swashes with, but I've already written enough. I love the setting updates, even if they're a bit sparse, but I'd much rather run it using a conversion to Chronicles of Darkness or some other system that doesn't have much cognitive load for me and is still a bit narrative-focused while without trying to completely emulate swashbuckling fiction. I'm looking forward to future releases in the line, but only for the new setting info. As a game, I'm not at all a fan.
I kind of don't like it.
Setting
The setting changes are my favorite part. Most of the new edition is the same as the old edition, with all the same countries we know and love based on literary version of European countries with some light fantasy elements sprinkled in. Avalon is still Elizabethan England mixed with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Montaigne is still Ancien Regime France under the rule of the Sun King. Eisen is still The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales just after the Thirty Years' War. And Vodacce is still Italy, but where everyone sleeps with a copy of The Prince under their pillow.
But there are a lot of changes for the better. The largest is the addition of an entirely new country--the Sarmatian Commonwealth, Théah's first major democracy. The sejm, a parliament of sixteen nobles, was paralyzed by overuse of the liberum veto, crippling the country, so on his deathbed the king used one of his few remaining powers and granted nobility to every adult in the country. In a panic, the sejm unanimously eliminated the liberum veto before any unwashed peasant garbage could use it to overturn legislation, and now a democracy is forming, with professional politicians and people paid to sit in the sejm and run out to ring bells in case anyone tries to sneak a vote in the middle of the night. It's fantastic and helps remedy the complete lack of Eastern European countries with Théan analogues.
There are several minor changes as well. Castille is less Mexico and more Spain, with fewer rancheros and Zorro. Ussura, the Russia expy, now has two rulers, versions of Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great, who are both fighting to be acknowledged, though it has not quite progressed into civil war. Vestenmannavnjar is no longer two nations--two generations ago they were raiders who went a-viking, and then they discovered that it was easier to steal people's money through buying cheap and selling dear, so they founded the Vendel League and became master merchants, though they sometime still go a-viking for old times' sake. And Avalon is now more explicitly separate countries with one crown, with Inishmore and the Highland Marches getting their own separate sections.
I also liked how there's more religious diversity. The Church of the Prophets is still highly important, but places like Inishmore and Ussura and Vestenmannavnjar or the Sarmatian Commonwealth have their own faiths that exist either alongside or mostly in place of the Vacitine Church. And Sorcery changed as well, with some sorcery expanded--Pyeryem is now "Dar Matushki," which includes turning into animals but isn't solely defined by it--and others limited. Eisen gets hexenwerk, the art of making poultices out of dead bodies with which to fight monsters. The Sarmatian Commonwealth has losejas making deals to trick power from demonic spirits called dievas. And rune magic still exists, though it's not defined.
Which gets to a major problem I have with the new edition. There's a lot more ambiguity and empty spaces, and I'm not sure if I should bring my old assumptions in or what new players are supposed to think. I know that Numa is Rome, and the references to the Old Empire and Old Republic are referring to it, but would a new player? In the first edition, some forms of magic were based on Numan senators striking a bargain with inhuman entities, and in the section on Sorte, Vodacce's female-only fate magic, reference is made to a "bargain." But is it the same bargain? The Syrneth exist, left ruins behind, and went extinct (or maybe they didn't), but that's everything that the book explains about them. I understand the dislike for the old Syrneth, which put a lot of cosmic horror into people's swashbuckling and sorcery game, but I would have preferred at least some mention of major ruins other than the catacombs under Charouse and the Thalusian isles in the west.
References are made to other continents--the New World, which is obvious, and Ifri, the analogue to Africa--and these are good additions, but there isn't even enough information to answer player questions about what is there. If the PCs are sailors and want to go to Ifri, all the GM has to draw on are that it exists and whatever they know about African history. Returning to the religious diversity, Vestenmannavnjar has a pantheon that's clearly supposed to be the Norse pantheon, with the "Allfather" at the head and his two sons, the trickster and the somewhat-dumb warrior, but no names are provided. No names of Inish gods are provided. No Vacitine saints are named and barely anything is mentioned about the prophets.
7th Sea is interesting because it allows a Europe-like (and later in the line, Africa-like, East Asia-like, and Americas-like) experience without actually being bound by real history, but without a more explicit enumeration of the differences, the place that GMs have to draw on is...real history, removing one of the benefits of the setting. There's obviously only so many pages in the book, but I really would have preferred more information about the rest of the world. There isn't even a "the rest of the world" section!
The changes are mostly good. The omissions are not.
System
7th Sea First Edition used the same dice system as Legend of the Five Rings, though with different traits and skills. The second edition keeps those traits but changes the dice system and underlying assumptions completely.
Tasks that can't automatically be accomplished are called Risks, and the GM sets out the Risk, the Consequences that result from it, like taking damage or attracting attention, the Opportunities that the PC can gain, such as extra information or an advantage later, and then the player rolls Trait + Skill, trying to make sets of 10. Every 10 is one Raise, and each Raise past the first avoids one Consequence or achieves one Risk. I'm not a huge fan of this, but it's mostly a personal preference. Some people like this explicit enumeration of the results of their rolls, and that's fine, but it earns an immediate side-eye from me. And I'm also not fond of how all actions are equally difficult to do, they're just more or less dangerous. Except, for some reason, reloading a gun during an action scene, which has a flat surcharge of five Raises.
The major problem I have is that changing the Skill one is using in the middle costs one Raise, explained as the cognitive load of changing one's mind. Okay, sure. But the example of play has the player picking their approach first, using the Convince skill, before hearing more than a cursory description of the scene. Once the GM lays the situation out and she decides that using Hide or Theft would be better, she's penalized for wanting to change her mind in response to new information. I think this is complete garbage, and I wouldn't be so annoyed except its in the example, so screwing the players by not telling them everything before they decide how to deal with it is apparently the expected mode of play! The GM is the player's window into the world, and barring mechanics that allow them to change it, the GM is the way they learn information about what is around them. Unless the PC's senses are explicitly lying to them, they should always have all the information that would be available to allow them to make informed decisions.
I mean, I can already see a player saying they want to fight their way in using Weaponry and then, when confronted with a hostage situation, having to spend a Raise not to charge the hostage-taker with sword raised. It's true this is handed by the combat system, but that's the kind of circumstances that rule creates. Yuck.
I mentioned mechanics for changing the world, and there are a lot of them. Most of them are Advantages powered by Hero Points, a metacurrency that allows players to add bonuses to their rolls, triple that bonus to other player's rolls--this is a great mechanic, encouraging in-game cooperation--power sorcery, and activate Advantages. Like Disarming Smile, which allows a PC to prevent someone else from resorting to violence, or Friend At Court, through which a PC reveals that they know someone else at a high society event. Each session starts with one Hero Point, and players can earn more through falling prey to their Hubris, through the GM "buying back" extra Raises that aren't used on their rolls--though this also gives the GM Danger Points they can use against the PCs--and through the player saying "I fail" when confronted with a Risk. Since PCs only start with one Hero Point and are unlikely to have many Risks with a lot of extra Raises, the main way they are supposed to gain Hero Points is through failure.
I'm ambivalent on this. It's set up to allow players to fail when they want so they have the resources to succeed when it matters, and in fact requiring it by limiting player resources at the beginning. It's heavily dependent on how the GM determines Risks and how much they're willing to buy extra Raises, but every RPG is heavily dependent on GM input. It could go either way.
I like that Villains have their own system that doesn't require a full character sheet, but I couldn't help but notice the best way to stop a Villain is to shoot them. Players have a standardized health track, with four Wounds then a Dramatic Wound, until at the fourth Dramatic Wound they become helpless. Villains have four Dramatic Wounds, but a number of Wounds between them equal to their Strength, which is probably 3-8 or so but can be up to 20. But firearms 1) always cause a Dramatic Wound and 2) can't be bought off by the opponent's Raises, so the best thing to do in battle is for the PCs to carry a brace of pistols and just keep drawing and firing when faced with a Villain to bypass the larger-than-normal number of Wounds completely. This only fails if the Villain has minions with the Guard subtype, allowing the GM to spend a Danger Point and take the damage intended for the Villain. Otherwise, swashbuckling falls before firearms.
Which is true to life, I suppose.
And finally, one the parts of the new system I like the least is the experience system. Called Stories, each is a freeform goal that the character wants to accomplish--get revenge on a hated villain, achieve some life goal, and so on. The player writes the ultimate goal and the first Step, and each Story is a series of Steps that are checked off as they are accomplished. Gaining new abilities often has a minimum number of steps--a new skill requires a Story with a number of Steps equal to the new skill's rating, for example. On top of this, the GM has their own Story that applies to all of the players.
This is one of the worst experience systems I've seen. The subjectivity means that a mechanically-minded player can easily optimize their Stories in order to gain the maximum possible amount of new traits and pull past the other players. Sure, the GM can police it, but it adds a one extra group of pitfalls they have to watch out for. And again, the examples aren't helpful. One example story has as its final goal that the character be married for two years, so I hope that player likes no character improvement that whole time while other characters pull ahead. Another example goal is "My Hero is happily married and retires from his life of adventure," so I hope that Convince 4 is helpful in his new life as a farmer. If 7th Sea characters were supposed to be seasoned heroes and mechanical growth wasn't the focus then I wouldn't mind so much, but the inability to start with skills higher than 4 implies that there is, if not a zero-to-hero progression implied, at least a four- or five-to-hero.
I admit, I'm guilty of this in the game my wife is running. I could have picked "Fulfill Matushka's plan for me" as my Story, but since I had already established that my character wasn't sure what Matushka wanted of him, why do that when I can have "Discover Matushka's plan for me" as the start and get another Story out of it?
Edit: And having played a bit, the GM-chosen Stories are not a balm on this, since they have a GM-determined number of steps that may or may not match anything you want to buy. It's possible that you'll have to buy some random advance to avoid losing XP, as I did in the last session we played. This entire system is awful and even the old turn-Drama-Dice-in-for-XP system would be better, which is quite a feat.
There's more, like how I disagree with most of the GM advice chapter and don't like how all the conflict is personified in the forms of specific Villains the Heroes can buckle swashes with, but I've already written enough. I love the setting updates, even if they're a bit sparse, but I'd much rather run it using a conversion to Chronicles of Darkness or some other system that doesn't have much cognitive load for me and is still a bit narrative-focused while without trying to completely emulate swashbuckling fiction. I'm looking forward to future releases in the line, but only for the new setting info. As a game, I'm not at all a fan.
September 19, 2016
The Tricky:
- The setting needs more sea and sand. I know that's coming in a supplement, but I don't think they needed to stick with a map that mimics Europe, too much land.
-- We must sail, not ride!
-- That being said, the map is amazing.
- I'm not sure it needs a corruption system. Its sole purpose seems to ensure heroes behave and nothing else. It's not really intrinsic to the world to have this sort of good vs evil morality.
-- The setting's not black and white, the characters needn't be either.
-- On the other hand, seeing torture on the list of something PCs shouldn't do was very refreshing.
- The Church of the Prophets is a huge deal in the setting, yet very little detail about it is given.
The Great
- Very rich and interesting setting.
- Their new story-driven system drives descriptive action rather than a roll and count slog.
- They've gone to great pains to make the setting inclusive. I feel gamers of any stripe will feel comfortable in Thea.
- The art and layout are absolutely gorgeous.
- I love the story driven reward system.
In Conclusion
- I really, really want to run or play in a few games.
- They've done an excellent job in peaking my interest.
- The setting needs more sea and sand. I know that's coming in a supplement, but I don't think they needed to stick with a map that mimics Europe, too much land.
-- We must sail, not ride!
-- That being said, the map is amazing.
- I'm not sure it needs a corruption system. Its sole purpose seems to ensure heroes behave and nothing else. It's not really intrinsic to the world to have this sort of good vs evil morality.
-- The setting's not black and white, the characters needn't be either.
-- On the other hand, seeing torture on the list of something PCs shouldn't do was very refreshing.
- The Church of the Prophets is a huge deal in the setting, yet very little detail about it is given.
The Great
- Very rich and interesting setting.
- Their new story-driven system drives descriptive action rather than a roll and count slog.
- They've gone to great pains to make the setting inclusive. I feel gamers of any stripe will feel comfortable in Thea.
- The art and layout are absolutely gorgeous.
- I love the story driven reward system.
In Conclusion
- I really, really want to run or play in a few games.
- They've done an excellent job in peaking my interest.
November 12, 2021
Who didn't want to be a pirate growing up !? Sailing the high seas and doing daring deeds. Well now we can all live our childhood fantasies with this excellent role playing game. Very nicely written and laid out with some beautiful art. Recommended
January 27, 2018
MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Me gusta un montón y al mismo tiempo echo de menos la primera edición.
Me gusta un montón y al mismo tiempo echo de menos la primera edición.
December 10, 2020
Le daría cuatro estrellas, pero se va a quedar en tres debido a cuestiones como la organización del libro que es mejorable (porque es la típica de un juego de rol, especialmente de un juego de los 90). Y esta valoración es, así mismo, provisional hasta que probemos las reglas a fondo, porque hay cosas que me dejan con dudas.
A nivel de presentación el libro es bellísimo y difícil de mejorar. Está bien escrito, y en general, encontramos claridad en las explicaciones. La descripción del mundo es evocadora, aunque se hace pesado tener ciento y pico páginas de explicación del mundo antes de empezar con las reglas, y a continuación te vuelve a repetir un montón de esa información en la sección de creación de personajes, que es además la primera sección de las reglas. Se hace indigesto, pero es cierto que las reglas se han simplificado y alineado muchísimo en comparación con la primera. Sin embargo, como ocurre a menudo con los juegos indie, hay muchos aspectos que son un poco vagos y algunas cosas que pueden causar problemas a medio - largo plazo: por ejemplo, en principio es muy improbable que un personaje pueda fallar una tirada salvo que el jugador lo decida (para ganar un Punto de Héroe). Las reglas de moral de la tripulación implican que si tienes un barco mejor dedícate en cada sesión al saqueo, o la tripulación se amotina en 0,2. Cosillas así. Pero esto me lo reservo hasta que probemos en detalle el juego.
La ambientación sí ha salido reforzada y mejorada en todos los niveles. No sólo tenemos por fin un mapa con más sentido, sino que las islas y continentes más allá del inicial están mejor explicadas (aunque hay que leer los suplementos oportunos), y es más consistente. La mayoría de cosas son muy reconocibles, y los cambios son universalmente a mejor. Se nota que han aprendido de los aciertos y errores de las ediciones anteriores (la 1ª y la d20).
Aunque es una lectura muy agradable e inspiradora, y de ahí las 4 estrellas, me reservo el derecho de modificar la valoración hasta que pasen unos meses y llevemos un tiempo jugando. Pero si no conoces este juego, o si te gustan mucho los juegos de espadachines, es una excelente introducción.
A nivel de presentación el libro es bellísimo y difícil de mejorar. Está bien escrito, y en general, encontramos claridad en las explicaciones. La descripción del mundo es evocadora, aunque se hace pesado tener ciento y pico páginas de explicación del mundo antes de empezar con las reglas, y a continuación te vuelve a repetir un montón de esa información en la sección de creación de personajes, que es además la primera sección de las reglas. Se hace indigesto, pero es cierto que las reglas se han simplificado y alineado muchísimo en comparación con la primera. Sin embargo, como ocurre a menudo con los juegos indie, hay muchos aspectos que son un poco vagos y algunas cosas que pueden causar problemas a medio - largo plazo: por ejemplo, en principio es muy improbable que un personaje pueda fallar una tirada salvo que el jugador lo decida (para ganar un Punto de Héroe). Las reglas de moral de la tripulación implican que si tienes un barco mejor dedícate en cada sesión al saqueo, o la tripulación se amotina en 0,2. Cosillas así. Pero esto me lo reservo hasta que probemos en detalle el juego.
La ambientación sí ha salido reforzada y mejorada en todos los niveles. No sólo tenemos por fin un mapa con más sentido, sino que las islas y continentes más allá del inicial están mejor explicadas (aunque hay que leer los suplementos oportunos), y es más consistente. La mayoría de cosas son muy reconocibles, y los cambios son universalmente a mejor. Se nota que han aprendido de los aciertos y errores de las ediciones anteriores (la 1ª y la d20).
Aunque es una lectura muy agradable e inspiradora, y de ahí las 4 estrellas, me reservo el derecho de modificar la valoración hasta que pasen unos meses y llevemos un tiempo jugando. Pero si no conoces este juego, o si te gustan mucho los juegos de espadachines, es una excelente introducción.
May 21, 2018
The second edition of 7th Sea sits comfortably (and profitably) at the intersection of traditional RPGs and indie RPGs.
I have been so deep down the well of indie RPGs that I found the sheer size of the book to be offputting. And then as I waded through the first 5 pages of fiction and into the details about the world of Theah, I had to put the book down . . . a lot. I really like to say I read everything in a book in order to write reviews and mark the book as “read,” but for the sake of getting to the good stuff, I skipped the stuff about the nations of Theah—which, mind you, is a full third of the book.
Nations are important to the game because they take the place of “races” or other similar short cuts to characters. Instead of having Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings, you have Avalonians, Eiseners, and Castillians. The national origin of your hero determines which traits might be stronger, what backgrounds you can choose, what type of magic you can access, etc. Beyond that, nations are important because each nation offers a different type of story to be told. If you want to hunt monsters, you’ll likely be in the woods of Eisen. If you want a game of political intrigue, you will want to set your story in Vodacce or possibly Montaigne. It’s a very clever design, and I can see why people react positively to it. John Wick has long been talented with story seeds, and there are tons in this text as well. I’m not crazy about the idea of essentializing national origins, which you need to embrace to a certain extent to enjoy this world. Even if I was down with the essentializing, the fact that the details of each national trait are important to play which means that players will have to absorb quite a bit of information at the table (or before play) to be equal participants in the game.
Character creation is rife with indie RPG magic, and my notes are filled with all the various games 7th Sea draws upon. It combines the different techniques beautifully to create characters with lightly fleshed out pasts with clear narrative handles that point out what you want to be able to do in the story and what kind of story you want to be able to tell with your character. Your character’s hubris raises a flag for the GM who can tempt you to go against your character’s momentary interest in order to get a hero point to do great things with later. In some RPGs you play to discover who your character is by seeing the kinds of choices they make when faced with dilemmas. On other RPGs, your character is pretty well defined before the dice ever hit the table, and part of the play is imagining in advance all your characters quirks and habits and reactions so that you are excited to show them off once the game starts. 7th Sea, from what I read in the text, is anchored pretty firmly in the latter style. If you have a talented GM that lets your character do all the cool things you want, then you’ll have a good time showing them off.
For me, the coolest part of the characters in 7th Sea is the reward system. There are no experience points or rewards for just doing stuff. Instead, if you want to improve some aspect of your character, you need to create a “story” for her. Each story has “steps,” minor things to accomplish on the way to accomplishing your major goal. The more steps you put into your story, the longer it will take to accomplish your goal, but the more your character will grow in return. It’s an elegant system that puts the players in the driver seat. And if you don’t care about character growth in that sense, then you don’t need to create a story arc for your character, simple as that.
The main resolution mechanic is to roll a pool of 10-sided dice (determined by your stat and skill that apply to what you’re doing and how you’re doing it) and count sets of dice that add up to 10. For each set that adds up to 10, you have a “raise.” You can then spend raises to accomplish your goal, avoid negative effects, and gain advantages. I’m a fan of systems that let you spend successes and choose where you excel and where you fall short, and I think this one is solid. Even though this is the only type of roll you will be making in the game, it doesn’t seem like you’ll be in danger of it feeling to same-y as you play since the details of the risks and rewards are fresh for each roll, but that is just speculation on my part (because I haven’t played the game). If someone said that it got old for them by the third session of a game, I would readily believe them. The only variation comes in when several PCs are acting simultaneously so they all roll together and play jumps between the PCs.
From the GM side, the game makes it very easy to cook up brutes and villains quickly in play, which is a lovely feature. You do not need to halt play to create stats for this or that random baddie. Villains take a little more work, but you will seldom be throwing in a complex villain without prep, so that seems alright. Villains have two stats: strength and influence. Influence tracks the social reach of the villain, and players can whittle away at the villain’s influence in order to defeat them in the game. I love the influence technique in the abstract, but it looks like it could quickly become fiddly as you have to track how the villain spends her influence and what return she makes on those investments. My guess is that in play the GM ends up just guessing at a few numbers and rolling on ahead. Unfortunately, the game gives not shortcut for working with influence.
The game has a strong vision of magic, and I appreciate that they made each countries magic feel unique and flavorful. Moreover, the designers use the details of magic to create a lot of in-game narrative drive, such as when an Avalonian knight becomes in need of seeking atonement.
There is also a subsystem for dueling, which I found to be rather uninteresting, but I suppose some sword-heads might get into the details of dueling.
My main concern with the game (again, not having played it) is how the sessions play out. There is a tension within the text between the narrative being built and determined by the players—through the choices that they make for their characters—and an adventure being brought to the table by the GM. There is plenty of advice in the GM section, but no tools for navigating this line that the game seems to advocate. The result, I suspect, is that mileage will vary widely with the skill and generosity of individual GMs. The same goes for the energy put into your characters before play. The main downside to this technique is how often you get to the table and realize the character that is so alive in your head seems rather flat in play, and all the cool things you imagined doing aren’t really available for you to do. If the GM is attuned to your character and your desires and skilled at bringing those things to bear on the game, you are in for a great time. If not, well, better luck next time. The game doesn’t give any tools to the GM to help a mediocre GM create a great game.
So there are a lot of cool things about the game and a couple of things about which I am wary. I’m glad the game has done so well for the designers and has been so loved by so many players.
I have been so deep down the well of indie RPGs that I found the sheer size of the book to be offputting. And then as I waded through the first 5 pages of fiction and into the details about the world of Theah, I had to put the book down . . . a lot. I really like to say I read everything in a book in order to write reviews and mark the book as “read,” but for the sake of getting to the good stuff, I skipped the stuff about the nations of Theah—which, mind you, is a full third of the book.
Nations are important to the game because they take the place of “races” or other similar short cuts to characters. Instead of having Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings, you have Avalonians, Eiseners, and Castillians. The national origin of your hero determines which traits might be stronger, what backgrounds you can choose, what type of magic you can access, etc. Beyond that, nations are important because each nation offers a different type of story to be told. If you want to hunt monsters, you’ll likely be in the woods of Eisen. If you want a game of political intrigue, you will want to set your story in Vodacce or possibly Montaigne. It’s a very clever design, and I can see why people react positively to it. John Wick has long been talented with story seeds, and there are tons in this text as well. I’m not crazy about the idea of essentializing national origins, which you need to embrace to a certain extent to enjoy this world. Even if I was down with the essentializing, the fact that the details of each national trait are important to play which means that players will have to absorb quite a bit of information at the table (or before play) to be equal participants in the game.
Character creation is rife with indie RPG magic, and my notes are filled with all the various games 7th Sea draws upon. It combines the different techniques beautifully to create characters with lightly fleshed out pasts with clear narrative handles that point out what you want to be able to do in the story and what kind of story you want to be able to tell with your character. Your character’s hubris raises a flag for the GM who can tempt you to go against your character’s momentary interest in order to get a hero point to do great things with later. In some RPGs you play to discover who your character is by seeing the kinds of choices they make when faced with dilemmas. On other RPGs, your character is pretty well defined before the dice ever hit the table, and part of the play is imagining in advance all your characters quirks and habits and reactions so that you are excited to show them off once the game starts. 7th Sea, from what I read in the text, is anchored pretty firmly in the latter style. If you have a talented GM that lets your character do all the cool things you want, then you’ll have a good time showing them off.
For me, the coolest part of the characters in 7th Sea is the reward system. There are no experience points or rewards for just doing stuff. Instead, if you want to improve some aspect of your character, you need to create a “story” for her. Each story has “steps,” minor things to accomplish on the way to accomplishing your major goal. The more steps you put into your story, the longer it will take to accomplish your goal, but the more your character will grow in return. It’s an elegant system that puts the players in the driver seat. And if you don’t care about character growth in that sense, then you don’t need to create a story arc for your character, simple as that.
The main resolution mechanic is to roll a pool of 10-sided dice (determined by your stat and skill that apply to what you’re doing and how you’re doing it) and count sets of dice that add up to 10. For each set that adds up to 10, you have a “raise.” You can then spend raises to accomplish your goal, avoid negative effects, and gain advantages. I’m a fan of systems that let you spend successes and choose where you excel and where you fall short, and I think this one is solid. Even though this is the only type of roll you will be making in the game, it doesn’t seem like you’ll be in danger of it feeling to same-y as you play since the details of the risks and rewards are fresh for each roll, but that is just speculation on my part (because I haven’t played the game). If someone said that it got old for them by the third session of a game, I would readily believe them. The only variation comes in when several PCs are acting simultaneously so they all roll together and play jumps between the PCs.
From the GM side, the game makes it very easy to cook up brutes and villains quickly in play, which is a lovely feature. You do not need to halt play to create stats for this or that random baddie. Villains take a little more work, but you will seldom be throwing in a complex villain without prep, so that seems alright. Villains have two stats: strength and influence. Influence tracks the social reach of the villain, and players can whittle away at the villain’s influence in order to defeat them in the game. I love the influence technique in the abstract, but it looks like it could quickly become fiddly as you have to track how the villain spends her influence and what return she makes on those investments. My guess is that in play the GM ends up just guessing at a few numbers and rolling on ahead. Unfortunately, the game gives not shortcut for working with influence.
The game has a strong vision of magic, and I appreciate that they made each countries magic feel unique and flavorful. Moreover, the designers use the details of magic to create a lot of in-game narrative drive, such as when an Avalonian knight becomes in need of seeking atonement.
There is also a subsystem for dueling, which I found to be rather uninteresting, but I suppose some sword-heads might get into the details of dueling.
My main concern with the game (again, not having played it) is how the sessions play out. There is a tension within the text between the narrative being built and determined by the players—through the choices that they make for their characters—and an adventure being brought to the table by the GM. There is plenty of advice in the GM section, but no tools for navigating this line that the game seems to advocate. The result, I suspect, is that mileage will vary widely with the skill and generosity of individual GMs. The same goes for the energy put into your characters before play. The main downside to this technique is how often you get to the table and realize the character that is so alive in your head seems rather flat in play, and all the cool things you imagined doing aren’t really available for you to do. If the GM is attuned to your character and your desires and skilled at bringing those things to bear on the game, you are in for a great time. If not, well, better luck next time. The game doesn’t give any tools to the GM to help a mediocre GM create a great game.
So there are a lot of cool things about the game and a couple of things about which I am wary. I’m glad the game has done so well for the designers and has been so loved by so many players.
Read
July 28, 2019Ring Side Report- 7th Sea
Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!
Product- 7th Sea
System-7th Sea 2nd Edition
Producer-Chaosium
Price- $18 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/185462/7th-Sea-Core-Rulebook-Second-Edition?src=hottest_filtered&filters=10101_0_0_0_0?affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR-Great if you like story, bad if you need hard rules. 90%
Basics-It’s a Pirate's life for me! 7th Sea is an RPG set in a world on the cusp of the age of exploration after a massive civil war in fantasy not-Europe. Also key to this game is its unique approach to combat and mechanics. Let’s dive into this one.
Base mechanics and rounds-Each scene in the game is divided into action and dramatic scenes. Action scenes are high octane events where characters fight to the death against other humans or monsters! Dramatic scenes are slower time periods where players may try to sway the king in a debate or sail a ship across the sea. But, unlike most games where you choose an action, know your dice, and roll to see if it happens, in both scenes, you say exactly what you want to do. THEN the GM says what attributes and skill you must use. You then take a total of 10-sided dice equal to the sum of that attribute and skill and roll them. This is where the game becomes interesting and extremely different. you can use one or more dice that add up to 10 and that counts as a raise. Each raise is one action you can do in the scene. Then, the GM will describe the scene where the main goals are, side goals are, possible hazards, and if any timed events are. You can can do exactly what you said you were going to do each turn with the person with the most raises going once first and continuing until his or her raises equal another player. If you want to do something you didn’t ask the GM to do at the start, it uses two raises. Want to hurt a guy? One raise does one damage. Want to rifle through the desk? One raise. It very simple and very fast. Base monsters and humans are part of brute squads that do damage equal to the number left in a brute squad with numbers ranging from 1 to 10 numbers per squad. Named monsters and NPCs are treated just like characters and rolling dice just the same.
Advancement-Characters advance via completing story steps. These are amazingly subjective, but that’s an integral part of this RPG. Every story step is one advancement and different things like skills and advantages require different advancement costs.
Magic-It wouldn’t be fantasy if the game didn’t have magic. Magic is an advantage you can take like any other, but the different flavors of magic color your use. Some are things that require a sacrifice. Some require a code of conduct, and some require you to build up a pool of tokens that counter your ability to do things but hurt the enemy. It's an interesting take on the use of magic, providing a diverse set of subsystems that don't break the game in their implementation.
Mechanics or Crunch-Overall, 7th age plays quickly, but it's VERY loose. That’s its goal, but it's so loose my players had major trouble with the game. One player couldn’t comprehend that he could just see the hidden stuff by spending a raise. Upon being told he already rolled he rolled again and asked what it meant. It's a HARD shift for a murderhobo to join a story RPG. I like it, but even I would like some more explanation to some of the more fluffy rules built into the system. Nothing here is bad, but it is a game that needs more than just a few quick half page explanations to show how it works. 4.25/5
Theme or Fluff-7th Sea is an amazing world. It's fully filled out and well developed. It's a place with lots of stories to tell as well as a lot of places to explore. It’s got everything the age of exploration needs and all the fantasy that your average Pirates of the Carabean movie needs to tell epic high seas fantasies. 5/5
Execution- PDF? Check! Hyperlinked? CHECK! Great layout and ease of readability? CHECK! What do I want? Well, honestly more. It's a pretty short PDF and the fluff part of the story is well defined. That fills my soul with happy. What isn’t well defined is how to play. It took me way too long to see that your raises were your initiative and how you spent them one to one. I’ve read a few of these books, so I feel that's a bit on this book. But then again, this is a solid paradigm shift. This ISN’T just reskinned DnD, so your traditional frame of reference if you came in as a solid d20 player isn’t as useful as you may think. If you get used to thinking outside the box, you will be fine, but if you need hand holding like I do during my transition from DnD to story RPG, you might get lost a bit in this book's flow. 4.25/5
Summary- 7th Sea is a fun story game with less crunch than I’m used to. My wife loved it and gravitated to it easily. My other gaming friends couldn’t handle the story based shift. That’s the major take away-if you want more baked in story, this is the game for you. If you need more solid crunch in your game, then maybe give this one a pass. The book is solid, if you can handle the stuff it leaves out because it's not important. If you need those pieces, then maybe just play DnD on a pirate ship. But if you can get into the flow of a story game and handle most of the game being hand-waved away because those parts are honestly not part of the story, this is a fantastic take on the pirate fantasy RPG. 90%
Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!
Product- 7th Sea
System-7th Sea 2nd Edition
Producer-Chaosium
Price- $18 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/185462/7th-Sea-Core-Rulebook-Second-Edition?src=hottest_filtered&filters=10101_0_0_0_0?affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR-Great if you like story, bad if you need hard rules. 90%
Basics-It’s a Pirate's life for me! 7th Sea is an RPG set in a world on the cusp of the age of exploration after a massive civil war in fantasy not-Europe. Also key to this game is its unique approach to combat and mechanics. Let’s dive into this one.
Base mechanics and rounds-Each scene in the game is divided into action and dramatic scenes. Action scenes are high octane events where characters fight to the death against other humans or monsters! Dramatic scenes are slower time periods where players may try to sway the king in a debate or sail a ship across the sea. But, unlike most games where you choose an action, know your dice, and roll to see if it happens, in both scenes, you say exactly what you want to do. THEN the GM says what attributes and skill you must use. You then take a total of 10-sided dice equal to the sum of that attribute and skill and roll them. This is where the game becomes interesting and extremely different. you can use one or more dice that add up to 10 and that counts as a raise. Each raise is one action you can do in the scene. Then, the GM will describe the scene where the main goals are, side goals are, possible hazards, and if any timed events are. You can can do exactly what you said you were going to do each turn with the person with the most raises going once first and continuing until his or her raises equal another player. If you want to do something you didn’t ask the GM to do at the start, it uses two raises. Want to hurt a guy? One raise does one damage. Want to rifle through the desk? One raise. It very simple and very fast. Base monsters and humans are part of brute squads that do damage equal to the number left in a brute squad with numbers ranging from 1 to 10 numbers per squad. Named monsters and NPCs are treated just like characters and rolling dice just the same.
Advancement-Characters advance via completing story steps. These are amazingly subjective, but that’s an integral part of this RPG. Every story step is one advancement and different things like skills and advantages require different advancement costs.
Magic-It wouldn’t be fantasy if the game didn’t have magic. Magic is an advantage you can take like any other, but the different flavors of magic color your use. Some are things that require a sacrifice. Some require a code of conduct, and some require you to build up a pool of tokens that counter your ability to do things but hurt the enemy. It's an interesting take on the use of magic, providing a diverse set of subsystems that don't break the game in their implementation.
Mechanics or Crunch-Overall, 7th age plays quickly, but it's VERY loose. That’s its goal, but it's so loose my players had major trouble with the game. One player couldn’t comprehend that he could just see the hidden stuff by spending a raise. Upon being told he already rolled he rolled again and asked what it meant. It's a HARD shift for a murderhobo to join a story RPG. I like it, but even I would like some more explanation to some of the more fluffy rules built into the system. Nothing here is bad, but it is a game that needs more than just a few quick half page explanations to show how it works. 4.25/5
Theme or Fluff-7th Sea is an amazing world. It's fully filled out and well developed. It's a place with lots of stories to tell as well as a lot of places to explore. It’s got everything the age of exploration needs and all the fantasy that your average Pirates of the Carabean movie needs to tell epic high seas fantasies. 5/5
Execution- PDF? Check! Hyperlinked? CHECK! Great layout and ease of readability? CHECK! What do I want? Well, honestly more. It's a pretty short PDF and the fluff part of the story is well defined. That fills my soul with happy. What isn’t well defined is how to play. It took me way too long to see that your raises were your initiative and how you spent them one to one. I’ve read a few of these books, so I feel that's a bit on this book. But then again, this is a solid paradigm shift. This ISN’T just reskinned DnD, so your traditional frame of reference if you came in as a solid d20 player isn’t as useful as you may think. If you get used to thinking outside the box, you will be fine, but if you need hand holding like I do during my transition from DnD to story RPG, you might get lost a bit in this book's flow. 4.25/5
Summary- 7th Sea is a fun story game with less crunch than I’m used to. My wife loved it and gravitated to it easily. My other gaming friends couldn’t handle the story based shift. That’s the major take away-if you want more baked in story, this is the game for you. If you need more solid crunch in your game, then maybe give this one a pass. The book is solid, if you can handle the stuff it leaves out because it's not important. If you need those pieces, then maybe just play DnD on a pirate ship. But if you can get into the flow of a story game and handle most of the game being hand-waved away because those parts are honestly not part of the story, this is a fantastic take on the pirate fantasy RPG. 90%
July 28, 2017
Traduzione di qualità, grafica impeccabile, materiale cartaceo e cartonato di pregio. Queste le caratteristiche principali della versione italiana curata da Need Games! di questo gioco di ruolo ormai molto famoso in tutto il mondo. Per chi vuole provare qualcosa di diverso da D&D pur mantenendosi in zona fantasy in un mondo più barocco che medievale, è il vostro gioco!
August 25, 2016
If the 1st edition was good (It's one of my favourites RPGs), this 2nd one is even better! I really like the new mechanics and how they encourage players to be creative and have their characters act like heroes, with a lot of panache! Can't wait for the next books...
June 13, 2023
Dropped to 2 stars after actually playing a session of the game. A ton of dubious design choices and a very unintuitive system that makes houseruling or adding and taking out things very tricky. The setting is very cool but the rules seem almost designed in such a way as to get in the way
November 24, 2025
Setting is great. It's familiar because it's based on our "Old Europe" but it's also full of twists, both magical and political. It's also very versatile, every country featuring distinctive elements for different kinds of stories. You can have monster hunts à la The Witcher in Eisen, pirates battles on the seas, explorations à la Indiana Jones in alien ruins deep undergrounds, and other mixed things. As long as you play as a Hero, the world of Thèa has places and characters for your adventures.
What I dislike is how the setting is presented: while other pieces are unfortunately postponed until later in the book.
Alas, the system is my main concern.
I understand (and approve of) author's idea of ruling vs rules, but this book is not a little and flexible set of suggestions like OD&D, an OSR game or a free-form one: it has a lot of rules, powers, mechanics and other elements that can be used or not but which, as presented, don't make a good mixed bag.
For example, it's PC focused, like a pale PbtA, but also with plots written by the GM. And when things don't go together, the GM discards or changes their plans, making me wonder why have GM's plots with various mechanics and suggestions in the first place.
It's a game suggested to me fast, without pause to think about the best choice, but also one where you have to use pools and negotiations during the Action Sequences, rolling dice and allocating their scores afterward.
It has a great (and large) setting, but the core of the rules are not setting related.
Reading about Thèa, I often imagined playing in the world with Savage Worlds or Basic RPG, but also with more specific games in specific sub-setting, like Last Sabbath for the women of Vodacce.
Waiting to replay it as GM to see again how it works at the table.
What I dislike is how the setting is presented: while other pieces are unfortunately postponed until later in the book.
Alas, the system is my main concern.
I understand (and approve of) author's idea of ruling vs rules, but this book is not a little and flexible set of suggestions like OD&D, an OSR game or a free-form one: it has a lot of rules, powers, mechanics and other elements that can be used or not but which, as presented, don't make a good mixed bag.
For example, it's PC focused, like a pale PbtA, but also with plots written by the GM. And when things don't go together, the GM discards or changes their plans, making me wonder why have GM's plots with various mechanics and suggestions in the first place.
It's a game suggested to me fast, without pause to think about the best choice, but also one where you have to use pools and negotiations during the Action Sequences, rolling dice and allocating their scores afterward.
It has a great (and large) setting, but the core of the rules are not setting related.
Reading about Thèa, I often imagined playing in the world with Savage Worlds or Basic RPG, but also with more specific games in specific sub-setting, like Last Sabbath for the women of Vodacce.
Waiting to replay it as GM to see again how it works at the table.
October 16, 2017
I am torn about this book and the process that brought it and its several supplements to me. On the one hand, the revision and expansion of Theah has been, almost entirely, to the good - Pirate games are now far more viable than they were in 1st edition, and many of the revisions shed the 90's metaplot-heavy trappings, making the game far more about the players.
When the system follows that pattern, however, it makes the game one where you not only have to teach the players the rules (which are few), but, if their RPG initiation came from more plot-driven games (like D&D), you have to teach them an entirely different way of playing. 7th Sea 2e teeters on the brink of being a straight-up Story Game. John doesn't bother to hide this, and he and many of the 2e fans no doubt consider this a feature, and not a bug. The more I have to coerce my players to A) write their own story, and B) look for ways for their characters to fail in interesting ways, the more the game, for me, moves from an entertainment to a chore. Additionally, my players reacted very negatively to the Story advancement mechanic, which, like my own gripe, is largely a matter of taste, but it definitely affected whether I'd consider running it again.
In the end, I'll probably look for a way to use the new lore with the old rules to keep me and my players happy when we inevitably return to this amazing setting.
When the system follows that pattern, however, it makes the game one where you not only have to teach the players the rules (which are few), but, if their RPG initiation came from more plot-driven games (like D&D), you have to teach them an entirely different way of playing. 7th Sea 2e teeters on the brink of being a straight-up Story Game. John doesn't bother to hide this, and he and many of the 2e fans no doubt consider this a feature, and not a bug. The more I have to coerce my players to A) write their own story, and B) look for ways for their characters to fail in interesting ways, the more the game, for me, moves from an entertainment to a chore. Additionally, my players reacted very negatively to the Story advancement mechanic, which, like my own gripe, is largely a matter of taste, but it definitely affected whether I'd consider running it again.
In the end, I'll probably look for a way to use the new lore with the old rules to keep me and my players happy when we inevitably return to this amazing setting.
May 16, 2017
Ever since reading "Quicksilver" by Neal Stephenson and "The Masked Empire" by Patrick Weekes, I have been longing for a roleplaying game set in a Baroque setting. Well, my wait is finally over! "7th Sea" delivers all I could ever hope for, and more.
Each quasi-European country feels distinct and unique, right down to their "metaphysical identity", and a story-driven reward system is simply the best thing that could happen to encourage more exciting plots than "slay monster, collect treasure" (although you can do that as well if that rocks your boat).
Even while reading it, I could already feel dozens of characters and scenarios form in my mind - and that is a VERY good sign.
Already a favourite, and I am very much looking forward to actually playing it.
Each quasi-European country feels distinct and unique, right down to their "metaphysical identity", and a story-driven reward system is simply the best thing that could happen to encourage more exciting plots than "slay monster, collect treasure" (although you can do that as well if that rocks your boat).
Even while reading it, I could already feel dozens of characters and scenarios form in my mind - and that is a VERY good sign.
Already a favourite, and I am very much looking forward to actually playing it.
December 29, 2022
LOVE the worldbuilding. Illustrations are fantastic. The game mechanics make me pause a tiny bit. They're very cool, and I'm sure some groups will handle them fine, though it will require people really good at both GMing and playing RPGs for the full experience. I may adapt the world to another ruleset. ):
July 26, 2022
Lore and setting is amazing but rules are unusual. Don't go in treating this as a dungeon crawler rpg like 5E. It's definitely more of a storytelling game, so forget everything you know and do things as the book tells you, not how you think you should.
October 7, 2020
There's a lot of really excellent world building and compelling plot hooks and tools, but the very abstract mechanics makes actually playing the game often cumbersome and underdeveloped.
April 26, 2021
Bellissimo manuale. Scritto molto bene, molto chiaro ed esaustivo. Gioco bellissimo, di conseguenza.
April 14, 2023
Che figata
January 15, 2024
Running a campaign soon. Read the book. What up?
September 8, 2025
2E of 7th Sea. They took out the aliens (good) and revamped the system (good but also bad). It plays better but worse. A typical Wick game so to speak.
February 1, 2017
I finished this book a good bit back but forgot to update here. This is the new edition of the popular 7th Sea roleplaying game. It is one of the few truly swashbuckling adventure, pen and paper rpgs out there, and man is it a doozy!
John Wick and crew have produced a magnificent game here, and in truth the original was as well. They have streamlined the rules here and made everything more "piratey" and filled with crunchy goodness. There are things missing here that I believe the original edition did better. Magic in this book is much better than the original and the player driven story that is told here is a direct import of Mr. Wick's vision. He has had for many years railed against the way games have been done, preferring story and player involvement much more over dice rolls and murder hobo type game play.
This is a good book and if you are a gamer, you should get this and run or play it, or both! Is it as good as the original version? I am going to say no, but only by a miniscule bit. Only by a hair, even less than that, a few atoms possibly.
Honestly, this brings 7th Sea to the newer and younger gamers out there and it is a welcoming place to rattle your sabers, run up the missen sail, and do your best to never cross a Vodacce Witch.
You have been warned...... hehehe
Danny
John Wick and crew have produced a magnificent game here, and in truth the original was as well. They have streamlined the rules here and made everything more "piratey" and filled with crunchy goodness. There are things missing here that I believe the original edition did better. Magic in this book is much better than the original and the player driven story that is told here is a direct import of Mr. Wick's vision. He has had for many years railed against the way games have been done, preferring story and player involvement much more over dice rolls and murder hobo type game play.
This is a good book and if you are a gamer, you should get this and run or play it, or both! Is it as good as the original version? I am going to say no, but only by a miniscule bit. Only by a hair, even less than that, a few atoms possibly.
Honestly, this brings 7th Sea to the newer and younger gamers out there and it is a welcoming place to rattle your sabers, run up the missen sail, and do your best to never cross a Vodacce Witch.
You have been warned...... hehehe
Danny
August 29, 2016
7th Sea was one of my favorite RPGs of the late nineties, with a rich fantasy version of Renaissance Europe as its settling and a commendable commitment to swashbuckling and sorcery. The only real weak point was the rules, which encouraged stunts and creative play but could get clunky at resolving what happens next.
This new edition of the game addresses that flaw, providing the same rich setting and a lighter rules system that does away with success rolls (you're going to succeed) and replacing it with an initiative system (but can you get it done in time, and what price will you pay to do it?). The setting is vivid, the writing rewards sitting down and reading straight through the book, hence this review, and I've already got a pile of notes for a future campaign. I don't know how it'll actually play until I sit down at a table with some friends, but with the right group of people this should be a lot of fun.
This new edition of the game addresses that flaw, providing the same rich setting and a lighter rules system that does away with success rolls (you're going to succeed) and replacing it with an initiative system (but can you get it done in time, and what price will you pay to do it?). The setting is vivid, the writing rewards sitting down and reading straight through the book, hence this review, and I've already got a pile of notes for a future campaign. I don't know how it'll actually play until I sit down at a table with some friends, but with the right group of people this should be a lot of fun.
July 28, 2016
The 7th Sea roleplaying system is set in a fantasy world that is analogous to Europe of the 1600s. This system allows you to run a wide variety of stories including piracy, palace intrigue, swashbuckling musketeers, gothic horror, and more. The system focuses on story over mechanics, which means that it is easy to learn. The art is some of the best that I've seen in an RPG book. I highly recommend this for those who are looking for a change of pace from the typical fantasy setting.
January 9, 2019
Pretty good. Doubt I'll ever get a chance to play though
April 13, 2017
Reads well. Plays okay.
I mean, who doesn't love swashbuckling and pirates?
The way the mechanics work though seem to conspire to make a lot of activities feel meaningless and/or riskless. Maybe we're playing wrong, but it all seems a little inconsequential to me.
I mean, who doesn't love swashbuckling and pirates?
The way the mechanics work though seem to conspire to make a lot of activities feel meaningless and/or riskless. Maybe we're playing wrong, but it all seems a little inconsequential to me.
Read
August 2, 2018Another Bundle of Holding -- those things are dangerous -- including
2nd ed core,
Nations of Theah, vol 1 and 2,
Pirate Nations, and
Heroes and Villains
Since I don't have time to play (and frankly, have more ideas than I need about stories to write), I don't read these books for anything more than a general sense of what it might be like to play. And this got my attention.
It's Earth with the serial numbers filed off and all the best literary and historical bits thrown in. So France is Three Musketeers, but England is Elizabethan England plus Avalon and Camelot, and Germany is grim fairy tales (with hints of Dracula and Frankenstein, because why not make it totally Gothic). This approach felt silly at first, but had me nodding along by the end.
Because the point of this game is big heroes doing swashbuckling deeds, and the world should be familiar to set off their heroism. And I'm curious enough about the narrative-focused game play (experience is won through completing stories) that I almost want to see it in action.
2nd ed core,
Nations of Theah, vol 1 and 2,
Pirate Nations, and
Heroes and Villains
Since I don't have time to play (and frankly, have more ideas than I need about stories to write), I don't read these books for anything more than a general sense of what it might be like to play. And this got my attention.
It's Earth with the serial numbers filed off and all the best literary and historical bits thrown in. So France is Three Musketeers, but England is Elizabethan England plus Avalon and Camelot, and Germany is grim fairy tales (with hints of Dracula and Frankenstein, because why not make it totally Gothic). This approach felt silly at first, but had me nodding along by the end.
Because the point of this game is big heroes doing swashbuckling deeds, and the world should be familiar to set off their heroism. And I'm curious enough about the narrative-focused game play (experience is won through completing stories) that I almost want to see it in action.
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