Swashbuckling Adventures: 7th Sea d20 review

[Xeriar]

Having reread the arcana feats (flaws/advantages) for a fourth time, LOL, they seem extraordinarily hard to properly implement--being dependent on RPing rather than game mechanics.

L5R (Rokugan) suffered from this, but this stuff was the bread and butter of the 7th Sea system.

How exactly does a DM or player activate another PC or NPCs hubris/flaw? Under what conditions? Must this be RPed (and I assume it should)?

In 7th Sea, players would get Drama Dice for doing cool things. GMs also started with a set number of Drama Dice to spend on activating Hubris's and such... Look up Spycraft's Action dice for the d20 mechanic, probably.

And again, constant nagging references to 7th Sea mechanics really confuse things (Presence, Knack, Bull, etc.). These rules are just sloppy and poorly defined. AEG dropped the ball here, though the section certainly has potential. But I don't like spending $35 for something I have to majorly tweak to get to work right. Fortunately, the rest of the feats and other sections of the book (classes, PrCs, etc) more than make up for this bummer.

A knack is a specific skill. The way 7th Sea dealt with skills is that a 'skill' bought a set of basic knacks, and granted access to advanced knacks.

So, 'sailor' would be a skill, 'rope use' would be a basic knack under it, and 'swimming' would be an advanced knack.

For d20, just replace 'knack' with 'specific skill' and you should be fine. No idea what Bull and Presence refer to - been awhile since I've played...

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Well, sounds like a mixed review. I was looking forward to seeing this book, but for 35.00 i'm not sure it will be worth it just for the stealable stuff.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

After a 6th read-through, I've found entire 7th Sea mechanics intact (not converted to d20) in some arcana feats. A large chunk of the Arcana feats are either essentially useless or unplayable as written. Some of the regular feats suffer from this as well. What I did to solve two of my problems with these was

1) To use Spycraft's Action Dice to activate Arcana feats/flaws, which I already use in my D&D game.

2) To make up a complete astrological sun sign chart (roll 1d12 to get your sign), and each sign grants a preselected (by me based on astrological profile for those born under that sign) arcana feat AND flaw. That way, we can use arcana feats and flaws I know will work without the players bugging me about the broken ones, plus, the sun sign info will help players get an insight into how to play their characters (curious, loyal, hedonistic, etc.). Neat-o!

The element (fire, earth, air, water) associated with a sign also grants a +1 ability score bonus. Fire +1 Cha, Earth+1 Con, Air +1 Intelligence, Water +1 Wisdom.

So, that seems to resolve my problem with the arcana feats for now, but it took a long time to figure out how to do all this, LOL.

QUESTION: Panache is now a feat and grants a 1d4 bonus to any roll a number of times per day equal to your Cha mod. Doesn't this conflict with Action Dice if I am using them? I think I should disallow Panache and retain the Action Dice, or maybe I should just grant all PCs Panache for free, thus making Charisma less of a dump stat...

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Well, sounds like a mixed review. I was looking forward to seeing this book, but for 35.00 i'm not sure it will be worth it just for the stealable stuff.

It is a mixed review. I feel I got $35 worth of "yoinkable" stuff from it, and enough material to run a 7th Sea style d20 game, if I wanted. But it's still ridiculous how rushed and abysmally edited the book is. Shame on AEG for this; given a bit more time and editing, the book would have kicked major ass like Spycraft did.

The artwork is also generic and bland, and furthermore is all in a strange "sepia tone" color (reddish-brown) like an old cowboy movie. The book is not even in full color: black, white, and sepia tone only (outside of the inside and outside covers, which have the Theah political and geographical maps but these aren't all that detailed).

 

[Derulbaskul]

(snip)And again, constant nagging references to 7th Sea mechanics really confuse things (Presence, Knack, Bull, etc.). These rules are just sloppy and poorly defined. AEG dropped the ball here, though the section certainly has potential. (snip)

And this is precisely why I don't buy AEG products any more.

Cheers
NPP

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

And this is precisely why I don't buy AEG products any more.

Cheers
NPP

LOL. I would stop buying them too, but I keep finding a bunch of goodies that makes putting up with the other crap (mostly) worthwhile. Their Spycraft and Rokugan d20 products have been top notch. What is making me mad is that their one word books, always poorly edited and with sloppy rule mechanics, are slowly increasing in price and page count (and quality, but that should have been there from the start!). Gods and Monster were $24.95, and Mercenary will be $29.95 (softcover! argh!).

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

AEG's website is tough to navigate and rarely updated as well. Swashbuckling Adventures isn't even listed! Where's the errata, damn it?

 

[Gonster]

Disappointment

KK, you are handing bad news here...

...but on the upside, you are saving me money!

Not really looking for stealable "crunchy bits" on this one. I wanted a solid 7th Sea d20 game. And it looks like AEG failed to provide.

Sorry to hear it, but it's not like there aren't tons of games to buy in the next couple of months.

Gonster

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Re: Disappointment

KK, you are handing bad news here...

...but on the upside, you are saving me money!

Not really looking for stealable "crunchy bits" on this one. I wanted a solid 7th Sea d20 game. And it looks like AEG failed to provide.

Well, I would still take a look at the book before writing it off. There is a lot of good stuff in between the screw-ups, LOL. I think that the book provides maybe a 65-75% decent translation of the 7th Sea rules to d20. There are way too many glaring errors, however, significantly more than any other d20 book AEG has put out, including the notorious "one word" ones or boosters. As I've said before, I still think the book has a lot to offer for 7th Sea or D&D games, but you have to keep a careful eye out for dozens of faulty rules, omissions, etc.
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NEW GOOF FOUND!
I just noticed that the various fighting style PrC's mention the school's weakness, but then utterly fail to translate how to take advantage of this using d20 rules. In other words, the weaknesses are merely "flavor text" with no rules mechanics to back them up whatsoever. That doesn't make the PrC's unusable by any stretch, but it does set the DM and players up for lots of confusion and house rulings if they want to implement the weaknesses mechanically. You could just ignore the flavor text and play them "as is."
____

Come to think of it, IMO, this book wins the prize for WORST edited d20 RPG ever from a major company, and AEG wins the prize for WORST editing of d20 products three years in a row. Editor Jim Pinto needs to be spanked... either that, or start writing his name in all caps instead of all lower case.

This is really ridiculous, because we all KNOW that AEG is capable of kicking ass with their Rokugan and Spycraft d20 lines. So why can't they do their other d20 releases right? It frustrates me no end having to house rule a bunch of stuff because they can't be bothered to release a polished, properly edited product! I mean, if I have to go to all that trouble, what am I paying them for?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Has anyone else seen this book? Just got back from Games Plus and they didn't have it. Are you reading a hardcopy or ?