John Wick Sells 7th Sea to Chaosium

A couple of years ago, game designer John Wick acquired the rights to his 1999 roleplaying game, 7th Sea from publisher AEG, and launched a record-breaking Kickstarter for a 2nd Edition which sailed past a million dollars. Last year, the company ran into financial difficulties and laid off most of its staff. Now, Wick has sold the property to Chaosium, who will be fulfilling the remainder of the struggling Kickstarter. Here’s the press release.

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Chaosium, publishers of the award-winning tabletop roleplaying games Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and King Arthur Pendragon, has acquired John Wick’s acclaimed 7th Sea RPG , it was announced today.

7th Sea is John’s Wick’s swashbuckling and sorcery roleplaying game set set in the fictional world of Théah. The second edition of 7th Sea was crowdfunded by John Wick’s own company, John Wick Presents in 2016, setting a then-record on Kickstarter for a tabletop RPG, raising over $1.3 million dollars.

John Wick himself will be joining Chaosium as creative director for 7th Sea. He will continue to have creative oversight of his game, and will remain a principal author of 7th Sea material going forward. Beyond that, John Wick will also write for other Chaosium game lines, for which he has great affection.

“John is an extraordinarily talented designer and highly regarded figure in the world of tabletop rpgs. We are delighted to have him join our team”, said Chaosium President Rick Meints.

Following the death of Chaosium founder Greg Stafford in November last year, John’s memorial piece about Greg's titanic influence on the landscape of tabletop games was shared and quoted widely (The Gray Crane).

John Wick said,"My first RPG was a Chaosium game. My second RPG was a Chaosium game. My third RPG was a Chaosium game. Saying 'I'm excited to be joining the Chaosium team' just doesn't do it. I've respected and admired the company for over thirty years. I'm joining the same company who started me on this journey and I couldn't be prouder."

Upon acquiring this new game line, Chaosium’s paramount objective for 7th Sea is the fulfilment of the outstanding rewards from the 7th Sea Second Edition and 7th Sea Khitai Kickstarters. Coinciding with this announcement, John Wick has updated all Kickstarter backers with the new arrangements, which will see Chaosium overseeing the remaining fulfilment of the campaigns.

Over coming weeks, 7th Sea products and content will begin to be migrated to Chaosium.com and Chaosium’s page at DriveThruRPG. A 7th Sea discussion board will also be set up at BRP Central, Chaosium’s forums.

For media enquires about John Wick and 7th Sea contact: Michael O'Brien.

 

[Queer Venger]

I wish Wick a lot of success; he is a great game designer; however, based on my experience with CoC7 KS, I will never do another one with them; Im a big fan of CoC, I will wait to buy the published product much later. I do commend the new Chaosium management team for doing their best to fulfill the KS backers, but I won't put myself through that again. Wyrmwood is another one I will not back again; (the DM's screen) took forever to deliver and they were so behind on it that I think they have just finished delivering them. They even offered most backers $25 dollar gift certificates because they were so behind on fulfillment.

I will only pledge KS's from companies that have a solid reputation for delivering relatively on time: Dwarvenforge

 

[Akodoken]

Now that I am fully aware of the situation I also wish JW and Chaosium the best of luck. Looking forward to the finished fulfilment of the Kickstarters and whatever awesome products follow.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Yeah, I have to agree. In its current iteration, Chaosium is not only good at fulfilling Kickstarters, they have a reputation for saving and fulfilling other company’s Kickstarters.

I agree that they have fulfilled the one Runequest KS that they took over, but even the third parties they have a license too had a bad rep for finishing. There was an article on this site about that. For the Runequest one they took over, they provided the books but said the other stretch goals were not going to happen.

I cannot find any KS the new group has started and run successfully, so I can’t see how they could have a good reputation there. I provided a link to the one I am aware of and it is years late.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Best case scenario for me:

Chaosium fulfills its obligation to 7th Sea 2e and Khitai backers. Then a year or two later, as at this point both lines would be more or less complete given the amount of books already printed/to be printed, we get a proper new edition of 7th Sea with real proper rules.

The narrative direction the rules took, is fine I suppose, though it seems not even up to date with current narrative/indy thought. Basically, the rules read like a narrative game from 15 years ago. Just give us roll and keep.

 

[Jonathan Tweet]

I hadn't heard about delays with RQ2, so I'm glad to have that piece of data. As someone who's run two Kickstarters and worked on others, I think I can tell you that all my projects ended up behind schedule. If RQ2 was a troubled Kickstarter, it's in a different category from the previous Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter or the 7th Sea Kickstarter.

The nice thing is, we don't have to agree. In a year or two, we will all see how well Chaosium has handled 7th Sea.

PS: I'm all for RPG designers Kickstarter to relaunch their 90s-era games as new editions.

 

[Traveler Farlander]

While this is good news for the KS backers (and I am one), I hope JW does something to recognize the efforts of the staff of JWP that he had to lay off prior to selling the license to Chaosium.

 

[LordEntrails]

I take this as another object lesson that folks that are great at something are not necessarily any good at the business of doing that thing or managing others who do that thing.

Just because you are a great writer does not mean you any good at running a publishing company. Just because you are a great software developer, engineer, artist, etc, doesn't mean you are going to be able to manage a company that sells those things etc.

KS has allowed a lot of creatives to put projects forth directly to their customers. But forgetting that management is a skill and a necessity is, imo, why so many of these KSs fail. I don
t care how good a creative is, if the KS doesn't have a solid management structure, I won't back it.

I'm glad for the backers of this and hope they get enough out of the KS to be happy with it.

 

[BluSponge]

I take this as another object lesson that folks that are great at something are not necessarily any good at the business of doing that thing or managing others who do that thing.

Just because you are a great writer does not mean you any good at running a publishing company. Just because you are a great software developer, engineer, artist, etc, doesn't mean you are going to be able to manage a company that sells those things etc.

Actually, Mark Diaz Truman has/had an excellent reputation as a business manager and has run several kickstarters. He was the financial side of JWP and managed all the 7th Sea kickstarters (including the War of the Cross boardgame). So it's not just writers who need to beware.

Tom

 

[Morrus]

I take this as another object lesson that folks that are great at something are not necessarily any good at the business of doing that thing or managing others who do that thing.

Just because you are a great writer does not mean you any good at running a publishing company. Just because you are a great software developer, engineer, artist, etc, doesn't mean you are going to be able to manage a company that sells those things etc.

KS has allowed a lot of creatives to put projects forth directly to their customers. But forgetting that management is a skill and a necessity is, imo, why so many of these KSs fail. I don
t care how good a creative is, if the KS doesn't have a solid management structure, I won't back it.

I'm glad for the backers of this and hope they get enough out of the KS to be happy with it.

Thing is, that's exactly what Kickstarter was meant for - creators, not businesspeople.

 

[MGibster]

Wick had experience publishing several books including Orkworld, Houses of the Blooded, and Deadly Gods. I don't know what went wrong with this particular KS but I don't think he just blundered into it without a plan or any idea what he was doing.