Sell me on 7th Sea

[Blue]

The 7th Sea Kickstarter is ticking down, it's doing remarkibly well and it looks like it's a great value. I've never had the opportunity to play the original 7th Sea - tell me about the game.

I think I'm sold on the setting, though feel free to highlight coolness from that. I'm interested in how the system promotes the theme.

• How did the rules mechanically encourage swashbuckler antics?
• How well can it support the sort of crazy-creative action you see/read about, swinging from yardarms, balancing on a cannon barrel while fencing, etc.
• ^^ Does that take a lot of table time?
• What did they do to help get rid of the risk-adverse cautious play that we often see in other RPGs.
• ^^ Is a character more at risk if you play to the genre and do over-the-top swashbuckling maneuvers or are they rewarded for playing to trope?
• Does it play fast and light or crunchy and detailed?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

Thought I'd give you a quick reply.

I don't know that the rules mechanically encourage swashbuckler antics more than any other. It's similiar to L5R's rpg system - d10s, skill+trait keeping traits. Now, the GM might give you free raises/bonus damage/etc to encourage a faster looser play, but I don't feel there's anything written. Really, it's a play style and mind set I think players need to be willing to adopt.

Last campaign I played it was a cross between 7th Sea and the old cartoon Pirates of Dark Water. My character was essentially like Jack Sparrow, years before the PotC movies came out. He was both a pirate of Avalon and secretly a member of the Merchants' Guild. I remember a character being saved by another character's Synerth grappling bracer - Character 1 fell off the yardarm in the Leviathan and was falling and Aiden fired... catching the first character by the belt buckle with the grappling claw.
Doesn't take any more time at the table than anything else.
What helps with the risk-adverse cautious play is that generally speaking, you can't die. As John Wick says, you look at Count of Monte Cristo - being killed is not the worst fate a character can suffer. Capture is, imprisionment and torture is... Basically you take enough damage, you're knocked out. Yes, a villain can coup de grace you, but they 1) generally don't because they assume you're dead, 2) your crew is busy saving you etc.

Some other interesting things: Your ship has stats and traits the same as a player; your Charisma also affects how many actions you get a round (Panache ftw). There are only five traits, and there's no trait that is automatically better. There are many schools/styles from the various nations or the Pirate Nations, as well as all the secret society lore and abilities.

Definitely it's a good pick up if you like piracy. But it's also more than that. It's a world with Zorro and the Inquisition and the sidhe and Mother Russia (literally) and the French Revolution... and their version of Scandinavia is in a civil war between basically the Vikings of old and Dutch traders. So, a lot of crunch any way you want to go.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

Also, something else I thought of with 7th Sea:

You have a base TN to be hit - the defense used depends on what your situation is, for ex, Footwork most times, Balance on ships or yardarms etc, Parry is specific to your weapon. You can use your actions to actively defend/disarm foes. You can actually ALSO use some of your dice to go ahead of someone else's action in inititive.

The way initiative works is you roll your Panache in d10s. Let's say you have a 3 and roll a 1, a 3, and a 7. You have actions in those segments - yes, it also means you may have a round where you go three times in one segment (for ex three attacks in segment 4, just means it's a very frantic round). If your foe has actions those rounds, he has to choose if he's going to attack or parry ...

Anyway, it flows pretty fast especially with a good GM. There are no dump-stats.