Swashbuckling Adventures

[The Great Sun Jester]

If you ask me, I'd use AEG's 7th Sea every time. The setting, a mythic early-modern Europe, is rich, detailed, and, in general, very cool indeed, and the system is highly cinematic, enough to handle all you swashbuckling needs, from duelling, to swinging from chandeliers, to naval combat with easy panache. The game also has a fairly complex and substantial metaplot, but one flexible enough to be used in play or kept in the background as the game, and the desires of the players, demand. It's simply a very good game, set in a reasonable approximation of the buccaneering era, with good support and a lot of possibilities. The D20 version, Swashbuckling Adventures, is a reasonable conversion from what I've seen, but, to my mind at least, rather leaden and slow compared with the original thing. Just my thoughts, mind you.

 

[The Great Sun Jester]

Oh yes, and Pinnacle Entertainment Group are promising a game called 50 Fathoms, based upon the Savage Worlds system, which looks like it should be good piratical fun. There was also something from aeons ago called Flashing Blades, it's probably been out-of-print for more than a decade now, but a friend of mine who has some of the books speaks highly of it. Surely there must be some more pirate roleplaying games than those already mentioned on this thread though?

 

[Pagan priest]

I got SA to add swashbuckling to my D&D game. For this, it is broken. There are feats, weapons and prestige classes that cannot fit into "standard" D&D without seriously unbalancing the game.

On the other hand, I believe that if played as a stand alone game, where all characters and NPC's are part of Theah, it is balanced, just at a higher power level for the non-magic types. Since I don't have the magic source book at this time, I don't know how that fits into the grand scheme of things.

As far as carrying on the storyline, I think it does okay... not great but okay. If you are very familiar with the original roll & keep system and its storyline then you probably have the old books...just use them for the storyline and Bob's your uncle.

 

[Dextolen]

I played 3 SA adventures at Gencon and had a blast - and we never set foot on a ship!

I've since picked up the SA book and several expansion books and have been looking for resources on the web, as I am selling my players on the idea of putting our D&D campaign on hold and going with SA for a while.

I've noticed that 7th Sea fans are not very friendly to SA players, even though the game is based on 7th sea. I was told that my kind wasn't wanted on one bulletin board. Man, STFU. It's a game, can't we agree that it's the world that's most important, not how you determine success and failure in actions?

I thought Storyteller fanatics were rude!

 

[jonrog1]

Gotta throw in for Savage Adventures here, but be aware you're basically building from the ground up until 50 Fathoms shows up. But hell, on a day's notice I threw together a Neo-Tokyo game with a vampire, a robot, a mecha-girl, Speed Racer and a forty year old Guy with the powers (and wardrobe) of Sailor Moon. It's fiendishly flexible and a great tonal match for Pirate-y adventure.

7th Sea is fine (I actually let a PC use one of the prestige classes in my Scarred Lands game) but more technical. Unless you really want to get into the fine nuances of individual sword styles, it may be overwhelming. Also, more of the magic and classes are world-based than many people admit.

Both great games, but SA gets out with an edge.

 

[Wombat]

I rather like the 7th Sea system, but I cannot STAND Theah. The world makes no sense whatsoever and converting it to D20 didn't change matters.

With no North Africa, with no New World, with no Spice Islands (or equivalents thereof) there is no reason for a Golden Age of Piracy, as there is nothing new, exotic, and expensive to assualt.

Individually each of the countries makes a modicum of sense (but only a modicum); the world does not hang together as an organic whole, however -- the tech and cultural levels range all over the board, from the Long-V-Named-Pseudo-Vikings (8th century) to Montaigne's Court of Louis the Sun King (early 18th century). There is no way that any of the states in Eisen would be viable political or social units and none of them could support the number of troops they proportedly have on call.

And I could get into the whole currency-thing, but that's enough for right now

The D20 conversion lost the charm of the AEG system, but kept the horror of the world -- sort of a "worst of both worlds" package. Most of the PrCs in SA are a joke -- Morale Officer??

Personally I trust Green Ronin to do a much better job -- Testament is a fantastic supplement and if they put half the care into S&B it will be a huge hit!

 

[Dextolen]

Wow, I completely disagree about the world of Theah. I think it's a great setting and part of its fun is the pseudo-European nature of it. No Africa or New World? If you are not happy with the lack of these places in any of the existing supplements, why not simply write it in?

 

[CarlZog]

SA seems to be more about musketeers than pirates.

If it's pirates you want, I throw my vote in for Living Imagination's books, Broadsides! and Pirates.

CZ

 

[Frostmarrow]

We use SA d20 in Théa and it works very well. Currently it is a city campaign of mostly home brewed material and we all love it. It's a far cry from "Back to the dungeon". Also I really like that it's low magic. I mean, there are some magical stuff... but it's mystical. You don't know what it does, where it's from or anything like that. I would trust my pistols any day rather than touch any of that Syrneth stuff.

 

[redknight]

I have started a campaign using the SA d20 rules. The players are loving it. I have started logging their chronicals in the Story hour Boards under "Redknights - Tales of the Azure Sea"

The addition of the new feats presented in SA as well as the hubris and virtue rules add much to the game. As most of the players do not own the SA book, it has added much mystery and style back into the game that was missing using the too familiar core rules.

As far as adding it to a standard DnD campaign, it could work but the GM should keep a stict eye out to ensure balance and that powergaming does not run wild.