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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 299219" data-attributes="member: 6533">Want more Churchly GoodnessI thought the book brought a lot to any gamemaster interested in swashbuckling as a genre or early-modern europe as a setting.  Anyone could easily take the Theah out of the picture but if you then held it up to the standards of either the fictional genre or the historical context there would be a lot missing.  Specifically, the book makes a great deal out of the importance of a monotheistic hierarchical church to any sort of swashbuckling setting, and I agree, but then doesn't support it in any general way.  From Aramis and Cardinal Rich. in the Three Musketteers to the characters in the Mission to actual Jesuits, swashbuckling needs priests.  7th Sea and this book recognized and dealt with this need in a very specific way which does not translate well into a more general genre interpretation.  Specifically, there is no way to make a good priest using these rules.  You are stuck with a nasty not too social inquisitor or a way too rational/spell casty alchemist who, again, is not too social or ideological.   There are very few supportive prestige classes, and their feats system is cool but doesn't do enough to address the fact that most of the swashbuckling priest characters and actual priests are/were very different from their companions. This lack is particularly aggravating given the, I think justified but not carried far enough, subtle distinctions they draw between related character types in the genre such as courtiers and nobles.My other complaint is that the rules do not do the OA thing of supporting related but distinct genres well enough.  OA let you play samurai pulp, wuxia, and Hindu epics you could whatever you wanted and they would support you.  Swashbuckling should support everything from traditional pirate swashbuckling to gothic murder mystery stories to Indiana Jones and Robin Hood movies to the Last of the Mohicans and Cortez.  7th Seas supports many of these.  This book refuses to give you either the 7th Seas specific answers or any answers that might contradict them.  Since many of my complaints have to do with the lack of magic, the next book may solve all of my woes.  With that, and the fact that somewhere out there someone has to be writing HTML that will post answers to my complaints on their website, in mind I would say that this book and a list of erratta are a fantastic start to any swashbuckling campaign. I particularly liked the simple and accurate firearms rules.</blockquote>

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