Hmm. Are you talking about 7th Sea 2e? That's the one with the kickstarter; 1e was published by AEG 15ish years ago?Bear in mind I didn't (as the title of the thread says) actually play it, and I had to go get it off the shelf and page through it to remember what the turn-offs were. In a nutshell it felt like you couldn't play the game without having a pretty thorough understanding of the setting, but the setting itself required too much work to grok. I paged through it and there's a bewildering array of nationalities, each of which is supposed to have a certain flavor. Honestly it would have been a ton easier if each one just had a real country after it, to help give it context. (E.g., "This is like Greece, ok?")
The genre really appealed to me so I backed the KS, but the book turned me off. You don't even see any rules for dozens of pages (or maybe I missed them), and when I tried to get a sense of "how does this game work?" it doesn't seem like that's in one place.
It may still be a great game: I didn't really give it a chance because it didn't grab me.
Hmm. Are you talking about 7th Sea 2e? That's the one with the kickstarter; 1e was published by AEG 15ish years ago?
If so, I get you. I lurve 7Sea 1e and have kitbashed it and houseruled it for soecial applications. Also played it without knowing the setting much at all. But, 2e? Wasn't impressed and be much more likely to use a 1e bash than 2e.
If you mean 1e, then you are a soulless monster, but I'm okay with that.
Agreed. 7th Sea 2e felt kinda "meh." My gaming group in Austria loved 7th Sea 1e, but 2e left them feeling flat and uninspired to run it.
Alternity
Dungeons & Dragons 4e (TSR)
I read through one example, which (IIRC) was about a player spending some sort of resource to make it so an enemy in the next room did not have a weapon on them, and I knew that it wasn't for me. Which is unfortunate, because the setting and core dice mechanics from 1E seemed pretty interesting, so I was looking forward to a straight update of that.I've never read 7th Sea but I see others gushing about it, enough that it's on my list of "want to try" games. I'll take this as a warning though. Any specifics you can share about why it didn't work?
Absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Maybe one of the sorcery knacks? Those are powered by drama die, which usually are used as floating extra dice for rolls, or for a heroic effort to ignore the nasty death spiral penalties for a round. Unless it's something I haven't heard, drama dice can't be spent for any narrative control outsude of a few sorcery knacks (which are magic).I read through one example, which (IIRC) was about a player spending some sort of resource to make it so an enemy in the next room did not have a weapon on them, and I knew that it wasn't for me. Which is unfortunate, because the setting and core dice mechanics from 1E seemed pretty interesting, so I was looking forward to a straight update of that.