Can we now admit the new 7th Sea is floundering?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I'll believe gaming publishers willing to drop out of the edition treadmill when civilization collapses, or books are outlawed or something. Until then? I have my doubts.

Oh, thought you were criticizing the rule set. Obviously mill is going to tread, and I'm going to be wary.
 
rh1n8.jpg
IIRC FFG is going to be doing a new edition of L5R... Not kidding.
 
So, there's people actually bothering giving that a try? Even as a storygame it seems incredibly fiddly.

I've been considering it, if only because I spent money on the damn thing.
 
AEG sold L5R to FFG, Gencon FFG is releasing the L5R LCG or demoing it or somewhere between that.
 
They just launched a new 7th Sea board game Kickstarter with a $150,000 goal. Be interesting to see how that pans out in light of the video game Kickstarter failing.
 
I stopped reading after 2e combat... It looks like a clusterfuck of a Perpetually Awesome Engine! :eek:
perpetually awesome... how does that work exactly?
 
perpetually awesome... how does that work exactly?

The regular Roll & Keep system is add Trait & Skill d10s to dice pool, roll, allow for d10 explosions, keep d10s equal to Trait. Instead the new system Rolls and Keeps all d10s in said pool, still allowing for exploding d10s, against an assumed Target Number 10 (or 15, as per GM prerogative,) and count how many increments of 5 (a Raise) you are over. Then these Raises are used as currency to "buy more awesome!" during the same task. Some powers and functions already have defined Raise Costs, but others are extensions of imagination.

Which now totally explains why in this topic, and others Shipyard linked to, people are asking "WTF do I do with all these Raises!?" Seems like "No," is not an answer. Instead of Pass/Fail, it's more Pass Plus!, where (barring disasterous rolling) you are merely checking for By How Much of a Degree You Succeed. And there seems to be ways to pass on some of your Raises, in case you are undecided...

It gets rid of too many basic boolean functions in favor of one and ends up looking exhausting. And it's not like you can just wave away Degree of Success once tired of it, because it is not so much about Task resolution where you can be told "No," but more about comparing one's yardstick of Awesome! Basically, the comparative measurement of one's awesomeness is the system. The resolution is mostly assumed (barring cataclysmic dice rolling), and the singular degree of success measurement: Success! is the system currency to forward the game's pyrotechnics. Without counting up the awesome, you disempower the PCs from engaging the system.

I can understand leaning hard towards more assumed successes in a Swashbuckling genre, but this is a bit much for me. And floating the Target Number higher than normal (ten or fifteen) then gets into weird inflationary territory, and chokes off the system's desired Raise Currency Economy... Which by then, it seems like a conflict of one's Task Resolution expectations versus a Narrative Resolution economy. It'd be fighting the game's baseline, which gets into issues of diminishing returns and sunk cost analysis.

I don't think I'm ready to adjudicate again such a gathering momentum of exploding awesome! I mean, I could comb with a fine toothed comb where the basics of the system can be mitigated against its standard paradigm. But, I just am not that invested in finding out how. Until someone house ruled this into something more tepid and filled with risk, I'd rather play a different game.
 
The regular Roll & Keep system is add Trait & Skill d10s to dice pool, roll, allow for d10 explosions, keep d10s equal to Trait. Instead the new system Rolls and Keeps all d10s in said pool, still allowing for exploding d10s, against an assumed Target Number 10 (or 15, as per GM prerogative,) and count how many increments of 5 (a Raise) you are over. Then these Raises are used as currency to "buy more awesome!" during the same task. Some powers and functions already have defined Raise Costs, but others are extensions of imagination.
That's not how it works. You have a dice pool. You roll all dice. 10s don't explode unless you have an ability. You then make sets of dice that add up to 10 or more (or 15 if you have an ability). Each set of 10 is a raise (a set of 15 is two raises). The raises are then applied to the task. One raise is a success. Extra raises allow for extra stuff such as inflicting wounds, activating abilities plus narrative stuff.

You can check out the free basic rules here: http://johnwickpresents.com/7th-sea-basic-rules/
 
Last edited:
That's not how it works. You have a dice pool. You roll all dice. 10s don't explode unless you have an ability. You then make sets of dice that add up to 10 or more (or 15 if you have an ability). Each set of 10 is a raise (a set of 15 is two raises). The raises are then applied to the task. One raise is a success. Extra raises allow for extra stuff such as inflicting wounds, activating abilities plus narrative stuff.

You can check out the free basic rules here: http://johnwickpresents.com/7th-sea-basic-rules/

Meh, OK, just restricted explosions and a different raise value. Same basic concept, differing details. Again, too much leaning onto one side of dice expressions for me to even bother.
 
The problem is: you cannot fail. You say "I want to do this", and you only roll to see what happens when you do it. You can do it and suffer some consequences, or do it and get away with it perfectly. But you will do it. The only way you can fail is if you do not get any Raise, which is almost impossible unless you have a very low Attribute and no skill. Most times you will roll at least 4 dice, which is nearly a 99% chance of getting at least a Raise.

It is very very disappointing.
 
The problem is: you cannot fail. You say "I want to do this", and you only roll to see what happens when you do it. You can do it and suffer some consequences, or do it and get away with it perfectly. But you will do it. The only way you can fail is if you do not get any Raise, which is almost impossible unless you have a very low Attribute and no skill. Most times you will roll at least 4 dice, which is nearly a 99% chance of getting at least a Raise.

It is very very disappointing.

I agree with you. The probability of success is too high so you are never likely to fail a task. Clearly not well playtested.

My advice, ditch the system and use Honor + Intrigue instead.
 
Oh godammit. Just what I need another KS. :grin:
 
Now when it comes to Tom Clancy I'm more of a Jack Ryan guy than a Rainbow Six or Splinter Cell guy, but I'm starved enough for modern-day action-adventure RPG material that I might pledge to this Kickstarter I just got wind of via the Savage Worlds FB community.

Though I'd probably use it for something less like Tom Clancy military power projection porn, and more like The Expendables.

Did this end up in the wrong thread?
 
Damn. That KS was cancelled. It looked really cool. I would absolutely play a Savage Worlds Counterstrike RPG-minis hybrid.
 
Damn. That KS was cancelled. It looked really cool. I would absolutely play a Savage Worlds Counterstrike RPG-minis hybrid.

Link to the failed kickstarter for the boardgame:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwickpresents/7th-sea-war-of-the-cross/rewards

This isn't necessarily due to ambivalence about the RPG, but I'm willing to add it to the log of indirect evidence we've gathered so far.

Here's a link to the reddit discussion about the failure:
https://www.reddit.com/r/7thSea/comments/6l0pnn/war_of_the_cross_kickstarter_canceled_after_10/

Here's an interesting snippet from that discussion:

Ghost_Ranger said:
Actually, FFG are making a generic RPG system called Genesys, and there's mention of Rokugan as a setting in that book (along with their Android setting). It uses the same ruleset as their Star Wars games (Edge of the Empire et al).
 
Damn. That KS was cancelled. It looked really cool. I would absolutely play a Savage Worlds Counterstrike RPG-minis hybrid.
They relaunched, I guess they wanted to change something about the KS you can't change once made, like the pledge levels. They're funded again.
 
Butcher posted the Ghost Ops KS here.
Spinachcat was talking about it.
I saw it had been relaunched and is funded already.
I don't think any of the three of us were talking about the 7S boardgame. :grin:
 
Butcher posted the Ghost Ops KS here.
Spinachcat was talking about it.
I saw it had been relaunched and is funded already.
I don't think any of the three of us were talking about the 7S boardgame. :grin:

Right, you can understand my confusion given that the 7th Sea boardgame was also canceled for 're-evaluation'. :oops:
 
This fuckup's on me, sorry everyone. First beer's on me when we meet in person.
 
Ghost Ops looks sort of interesting. Savage Worlds is not an option for me, but I'm not convinced about the other system they're offering either.
 
I pledged for the kickstarter for 7th Sea, based on friends recommending the previous edition, which I never played.

After reading the book I was... well, disappointed. I was expecting a pretty traditional system; and while I don't mind narrative systems (I really love Houses of the Blooded), this just read as How awesome is my character? Super awesome. It's far too far down that path for my tastes.

I kinda regret backing it. I strongly doubt it will hit the table.
 
The 'Super awesome.' response should have more exclamation points and rich text flair, y'know. It's in the protagonized sparrow bylaws. :p
 
What I've seen of the 7th Sea setting also doesn't appeal to me that much but that's just a general impression. We've been criticising the system and there's a general consensus here that it is... not great. Can anyone give me a run-down of the setting? And what do you think of it?
 
What I've seen of the 7th Sea setting also doesn't appeal to me that much but that's just a general impression. We've been criticising the system and there's a general consensus here that it is... not great. Can anyone give me a run-down of the setting? And what do you think of it?

Take 1600s Europe, mostly as is but with some weird mash-ups (e.g. the Netherlands + Hanseatic League + Scandinavia), only the nobility is made up of (hereditary) wizards.

And of course each country's nobility practices a different school of magic. :rolleyes:

Except the Germans ("Eisen"), they have the setting's mithril/adamantium/Valyrian steel thing.

Also the Church is in Spain and pro-reason and pro-science to act as a foil to the magic-using aristocracy.

There's also a weaksauce New World stand-in and a bunch of Atlantean/ancient aliens ruins and artifacts.

For me it's a bit like Deadlands in that it deviates from history (sure, it's "not Earth" only it really is Earth) but not in an interesting or genre-appropriate way. If I was going for a swashbuckling fantasy game I'd gladly riff off of C17 Europe, just... not like this.
 
So my impression was correct, the setting also is... not great. I really dislike the magical nobility thing and the pro-reason pro-science Spanish church... Why are so many people waxing lyrical about this?

I do not like Deadlands and from what you posted this indeed sounds like it has similar issues.

I dread knowing more of the "weaksauce New World" you mention. Dare I ask?
 
I do not like Deadlands and from what you posted this indeed sounds like it has similar issues.

Deadlands' alt-history is crap but at least I can see what they were going for: allowing PCs to play Confederate good guys (I'm super iffy on this but whatever), ignoring/bypassing slavery and doubling up on the steampunk.

7th Sea's, well, it's technically not an alt-history but it's calqued enough on actual history that one gets to wonder what exactly were the setting creation goals. Assuming there were any beyond "hey Spain is cool, let's have Spain. No, fuck Portugal. Netherlands, Hansa, Scandinavia, is there even a difference*?"

* I'm all for a good mash-up but that's just silly. All those nations were kind of a big deal in the 17th Century but for fairly distinct reasons — the Dutch were a republic, a naval power and a financial hub; the Hansa a local mercantile shipping oligopoly; and Sweden had Gustavus Motherfucking Adolphus, the Lion of the Motherfucking North.

I dread knowing more of the "weaksauce New World" you mention. Dare I ask?

See for yourself. Superficially it ticks some of the right boxes but... it's just kind of sitting there. Feels like an afterthought, "oh yeah, I gotta have some islands for the pirates and shit." Where are the myriad colonies and their greedy viceroys, the squabbles over real estate between powers, the trade routes busy with silver-laden galleons?
 
I was afraid there'd be Evil Aztecs™. I'm so tired of Evil Aztecs™.
 
I was afraid there'd be Evil Aztecs™. I'm so tired of Evil Aztecs™.

I suspect they'll be present in the forthcoming 2nd edition book for that region.

Personally, I was fine with 1st edition having a vaguely detailed legion of islands to the west rather than an ersatz new world, the same way I was fine with old D&D modules having room descriptions left blank for the GM to insert their own.

The whole point of having a mashup pseudo-Europe is to tap into that familiarity while still getting away with things that wouldn't fly in full blown historical gaming. Players liked having musketeers and vikings as character options simultaneously, and as a GM I appreciated the freedom to have Shakespeare-in-all-but-name matching wits against a sorcerous version of young Robespierre on an island like Haiti but without the slavery angle.

All those nations were kind of a big deal in the 17th Century but for fairly distinct reasons...

They were aiming for something like the preceding game, Legend of the Five Rings: 7 to 8 very distinct character origin choices rather than 20 complex and blurry ones that require genuine research to even understand, let alone play. Real history is fun for a minority of us, but an intimidating wall of facts for most.
 
Last edited:
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top