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.”

 

[aramis erak]

Legend of the Five Rings to Fantasy Flight, White Wolf to Paradox, Chaosium to Moon Design, and now this. It has definitely been a busy second half of the year in the RPG business.

Lots of money changing hands...

It will be interesting to see what happens. Especailly 7th Sea - and its Gnostic church setting. I wonder also what John's going to do to the mechanics.

 

[wunderwerks]

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.

I'm working on the new system and game. It's going to be a reboot. The original countries, but re-worked to be a bit more not so aliens or Mexico in Spain.

So no d20, no aliens, Castille will not be Mexico, but more like Spain.

Eisen, Avalon, Montaigne, Castille, Vodacce, Vendal/Vesten, Ussura, and more will be in the new edition.

And for those excited about pirates there will more pirates and a New World.

Those that want a deeper focus on Swashbuckling Errol Flynn action that is our goal. Highly competent characters in cinematic adventures.

Ben Woerner
WunderWerks

 

[tangleknot]

That sounds like the 2nd edition I'd want to play (I had 2 year long game ruined by the aliens... they sounded cool...)! I hope you can get the rules under control. Out of the box 7th sea was awesome, but as time went on it required at least a half a dozen house rules to fix issues that made the game less enjoyable to play.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I am also a huge 7th Sea fan, having participated in like four or five different campaigns, all by different friends, because we all were enamored by the game.

I absolutely love the Roll & Keep mechanic as well, while also acknowledging the huge issues that Ovinomancer brings up. If you thought 4E combats were long... try having worthwhile swordfights between a PC and a BBEG when both of them have Resolves around 4 or 5 (or even 6!). 10 dramatic wounds before someone gets knocked out? That's a good two hour battle between the GM and a single player while everyone else sits around with their thumbs up their butts. The massive advantage of raising stats over skills issue was also huge for us, but at least we figured out a way to get around that.

I am also a big fan of the off-center European history / mythology, because I love those kinds of clever "alternate history" ideas and concepts, plus it makes it much easier to actually remember the basics of the settings history (if you have any knowledge of actual European history.)

As far as the Syrneth are concerned? They were cool in my very first campaign when I knew nothing about any of that, because our GM made sure none of us read any of the GM material in any of the books. So everything was a surprise. After that though, in all the campaigns that followed... I could take them or leave them. If the reboot doesn't include the Syrneth (or at least doesn't actually specify who the Syrneth are)... I won't have an issue with it.

Looking forward to seeing what comes about!

 

[wunderwerks]

Yeah, we thought long and hard about R&K and realized it works for L5R and that system of samurai deadliness, but cinematic swashbuckling, not so much. Resolve battles were a key point as well as how to handle whiffs and locked door problems that pushed us in a new dice mechanic direction.

As for Meta-plot we're going a more here are the various legends of origin that people believe about various fantastic things in the setting and letting the GM decide what is real or not.