7TH SEA Sold To John Wick

After recent acquisitions and changes with Chaosium and White Wolf, the latest change of game rights ownership involves Alderac Entertainment Group selling the rights to the 7th Sea roleplaying game to original designer John Wick (under his John Wick Presents label). Wick was a mainstay of the original development back in 1999. 7th Sea is a kind of exaggerated 17th century Europe.

Keep an eye on sailthe7thsea.com.

[video=youtube;3qJqrSH9keI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qJqrSH9keI[/video]
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"AEG is excited to announce that we have entered into a deal with John Wick Presents to sell back the publication rights for the 7th Sea game line. AEG will still retain rights to publish a number of products within that line over the next few years and we are negotiating and planning what that will be but have no announcements at this time.

John Wick was part of the original AEG development crew and we created some awesome worlds together during our first 5 years of business but 7th Sea was his personal passion project and while it benefited from being published at AEG, it was his baby. This deal puts the game the world he loves back in his hands and gives AEG an opportunity to adventure once again on the high seas in one of the most beloved gaming worlds of the last 20 years.

John Zinser, CEO of AEG, is excited for JWP and AEG. “The world of 7th Sea is just too amazing to spend any more time sitting on a shelf and while a deal we announced a month or so ago for that other property we developed has gotten a lot of attention this deal has been in negotiation for much longer. It is just good Karma that 7Th Sea ends up back with it’s creator. We are excited that we get to keep the part of the playground we do best and let JWP start to grow the brand again from the ground up.”

“It’s the game I get asked about most,” John Wick (owner of JWP) said. “More than anything I’ve ever done. I’m very proud of the work that was done, but I’m also very excited to see the game rejuvenated with modern game design and technology.”

“I’m very glad AEG is doing card and board games,” John Wick said. “They’ve proven to be one of the best companies in the world when it comes to those kinds of games. I’m excited to see what they come up with.”

 

[Atlatl Jones]

And then he did the fabulous Houses of the Blooded. This excuses nearly any "wrong" idea he had about D&D (which later, he explained in less glaring words, in a discussion with Zak S.)

Houses of the Blooded is wonderful, but half of the rules don't even work (the domain rules and the dueling rules). He has brilliant ideas, but I don't know a game designer in more need of a developer than him. He also has a bad habit of announcing new games and then going nowhere with them. HotB 2nd edition? Blood and Shadows?

As for some of the ridiculous things he's said over the years... he's the sort of person who enjoys saying deliberately controvercial things to stir the hornet's nest and put himself into the spotlight.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

There are multiple articles about this game not just an April Fools post on his blog.

Here is the one where you can download a "69" page pdf of a preview of the game. http://johnwickpresents.com/games/galaxy-xxx-sneak-peek/

Maybe it was a joke he took to far, but it is a horrible disgusting game, for example successes on rolls are referred to as "Bangs", like you roll your dice pool and you need 4 bangs to complete that task.

It is childish and juvenile, and this guy shouldn't be in charge of anything imo.

I'll presume I agree with you that it is childish and juvenile (I literally have no interest in following up on what this game ended up looking like; not my cup of tea). However, when I read a book, game, or watch a movie that is something I don't like, what I do is dismiss that movie/game/book not the entire body of work of all entities associated with it. Since I know John Wick can produce serious stuff, I'm not going to retroactively scrub his body of work from my Okay List.

All that aside, if it's a humor game about light-hearted sex-based/thematic mechanics and situations I fail to see what is so horrible about "bangs." Probably because there's some unfortunate connotation I've missed in my sheltered life. But then again I liked Unknown Armies, where critical failures were identified as BOHICAs (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) and critical successes were OACOWAs (Open A Can Of Whoop-Ass). These in an otherwise fairly dark and serious horror game.


(Side note, so we don't get derailed fighting on this: my goal is not to convince you that you're wrong in disliking John Wick; I really don't care what you want to think about him, that's your deal. Rather, it's to convince you that if you want to make a crusade out of convincing OTHER people he is bad/wrong/yucky you need to expand your scope on your argument and assume we don't all have the same baseline assumptions as what's good/bad that you do. And right now, I feel you're setting a very, very low bar for criteria of dismissal. That's fine for you, but not me.)

 

[callinostros]

I love the original 7th Sea (and L5R of which he was the main designer). I also think he was a strong designer...was. I feel as time has gone on he has diminished as a designer...or at least moved away from my own likes and concepts of what good design is. Maybe he was just trying new designs instead of staying with what was working. Personally I want the same 7th Sea as the original. I fear his "new designs". However, I have double copies of all the original material which is more than enough to run 7th Sea as long as I want. That being said, I would check out a new design edition, though my preference is for new material that adds onto the original edition rather than a new edition.

-Side Note: I am German and have no issue with the prevalence of Nazis as the major bad guys in rpg products. It's fiction and an attempt to set things in an exciting time/exciting antagonists. I am not in any way offended by such depictions.

 

[tangleknot]

After watching John's video on Chess and RPG's I think I understand why 7th sea is still my favorite rpg. The game is built of stories and adventures. It was only afterwards did they try to attach some rules to it...
I hope John does some open play tests because there was a lot of game breaking rules in 7th sea and it required a lot of house rule tweaks to keep it balanced.

 

[Ovinomancer]

After watching John's video on Chess and RPG's I think I understand why 7th sea is still my favorite rpg. The game is built of stories and adventures. It was only afterwards did they try to attach some rules to it...
I hope John does some open play tests because there was a lot of game breaking rules in 7th sea and it required a lot of house rule tweaks to keep it balanced.

I've also played a lot of 7th Sea, and adapted the roll and keep system to many other genres. You're right that it has a tendency to break badly the longer you use it. Best and simplest house rule I've found for keeping the vast majority of excesses in check is to switch to a flat K3. You always keep 3. Only way to get more than 3 kept dice is to roll over 10 dice total, as per the normal rule, or to use a karma die. This tames most of the easily abusable swordsman schools, lessens the massive advantage of upping stats vs skills, and makes the game actually run faster, while still giving the feel of the base roll and keep gameplay. Also makes setting challenges much more consistent. Try it out.

 

[thedaringdragoon]

7sth Sea is a IP with a great potential. Some film produce could create a new "Pirates of the Caribean" with this franchise...


Almost Off-topic. (Warning: Controversy about fantasy vs real History)


But I am Spanish and I hate "Castilla", the 7thS version of my real Spain, with all the clichés of anti-Spanish black legend. Please, in the real Spanish History the worst age of terror wasn´t by the Inquisition, but by the red terror during 30's years. The comunists killed more people in only a month that executed by Inquisition in all History.


RPGs are fantasy, when you go to play you don't worry about real world matters, but please, I haven't spent my money to be offended but people who want to teach me about History but it is only cheap propaganda.


I mean I don´t want to find in fantasy fiction all the anti-Spanish predjucices I have been suffering in my real life during decades.

I understand what you mean (I'm not Spanish myself, but 6 of my 8 great-grandparents were born in Asturias, Catalunya and the Basque Country). I do like Castilla in general (most of my 7th Sea games take place in Castilla, Montaigne and Vodacce), but I always change it up, since I feel it has two major pitfalls: The excessive Mexican overtones (which I suppose feel minor to non-Iberians or non-Hispanic Americans, but to me at least are very dissonant) and the overdependency on Black Legend stuff, which causes the nation to feel shallow. Right now, the Castilla in my games feels more like a fantasy version of Capitan Alatriste's Spain, I guess.

It's understandable. You can image how Japanese people feel about many elements of L5R. I'm half Japanese and I have a BS in Asian Ethnic Studies (Japanese and Chinese primarily) so it's particularly frustrating. But like you say as the GM you have the power to shape the game world more to your ideal. I just change the elements my game to be more culturally accurate to the real Asian cultures they're based on. Especially the names...those are the worse parts of L5R.

The same goes for 7th sea. I'm also part Norwegian and Irish and as such many elements of the Avalon and Vesten nation books didn't sit too well with me. But like with L5R it was more then just for personal heritage reasons. At university I was going for a double BS (my second one would have been in Viking and Medieval Norse studies) when my brain fried and I had to drop of one program or risk failing both. So as with L5R the cultural inaccurate and stereotypes in 7th Sea were again a double irritation. Yet once again I used the power of the GM's chair to fix what I find to be off putting.

I didn't mean to ramble on about my educational background. I just meant to use it to add weight to my statement that, despite my heritage and education which, really drives home the cliches and irritating historical/cultural pastiches in each game setting, I still love both L5R and 7th sea and this news is awesome!

 

[Cristian Andreu]

It's understandable. You can image how Japanese people feel about many elements of L5R. I'm half Japanese and I have a BS in Asian Ethnic Studies (Japanese and Chinese primarily) so it's particularly frustrating. But like you say as the GM you have the power to shape the game world more to your ideal. I just change the elements my game to be more culturally accurate to the real Asian cultures they're based on. Especially the names...those are the worse parts of L5R.

The same goes for 7th sea. I'm also part Norwegian and Irish and as such many elements of the Avalon and Vesten nation books didn't sit too well with me. But like with L5R it was more then just for personal heritage reasons. At university I was going for a double BS (my second one would have been in Viking and Medieval Norse studies) when my brain fried and I had to drop of one program or risk failing both. So as with L5R the cultural inaccurate and stereotypes in 7th Sea were again a double irritation. Yet once again I used the power of the GM's chair to fix what I find to be off putting.

I didn't mean to ramble on about my educational background. I just meant to use it to add weight to my statement that, despite my heritage and education which, really drives home the cliches and irritating historical/cultural pastiches in each game setting, I still love both L5R and 7th sea and this news is awesome!

Absolutely. I'm pretty certain most of my own homebrew stuff based on cultures I'm not intimate with commit far more sins than anything in 7th Sea. The things I mentioned are very minor things that are easy to alter depending on personal preferences (on a deeper level, I often ignore the more esoteric stuff about aliens that came out in the later years. It's not that I find it necessarily bad, just that it really clashed with the 7th Sea I fell in love with at the beginning).

If anything, one of the best things about the game is that it does a pretty good job at including more Mediterranean fantasy stuff, which is usually given a very glancing pass on most Eurocentric settings.

 

[melichor]

I just change the elements my game to be more culturally accurate to the real Asian cultures they're based on. Especially the names...those are the worse parts of L5R.

I would be interested in hearing more about this. Could you pass on some of the changes you made?
I've been itching to pull out my L5R books and start a new game.

 

[SavageCole]

Roll-and-keep is such a fun mechanic, but the 7th Sea faux Europe setting ended my interest in playing the game quickly. With that said, I think it's swell that the guy who created the setting got a chance to acquire it. I get why people dislike him or the setting enough not to see this as good news. I mean, I'm not going to bake a cake to celebrate it or anything, but I'm not bitter that the inventor and his creation are reunited.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I enjoyed the hell out of 7th Sea. I hope I get the chance to play it again soon, and to partake of what Wick and Co. have to offer.