Opinions on 7th Sea Second Edition Quickstart?

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tsuyoshikentsu
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Opinions on 7th Sea Second Edition Quickstart?

Post by tsuyoshikentsu »

Hey, apparently I have an account here.

So for those that haven't heard, John Wick is Kickstarting a second edition of 7th Sea. You can back it to the tune of $1 and get the quickstart rules, or--if you're like me and think that the worst possible thing you can do to the RPG industry is give John Wick money--it's readily available in all the usual places.

The system has some really cute ideas--basically, Advantages that let you spend a resource once per session to just do the cool thing instead of making a million rolls to try to do the cool thing--but I'm not so hot on some of the others. I'm also not sure what to think of the damage track: your hero actually gets stronger as he goes down the track, since the game makes a big deal about being swashbucklery instead of simulationist. (And, unlike 7S1E, actually succeeds slightly.)

So in sum: I'm inclined to like it because it has some fun ideas, and I'm inclined to dislike it because some of the mechanics seem needlessly elaborate and as far as I'm concerned John Wick is literally the devil.

Thoughts?
Last edited by tsuyoshikentsu on Tue Feb 09, 2016 9:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MGuy
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Post by MGuy »

I played 7th Sea quite some time ago and I remember really, really liking the setting but nothing else. The rules I felt were trash and one of my worst gaming experiences was with 7th Sea though that was more the fault of the guy running it than the rules.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Unfortunately, the deeper into the setting you delve the more that is revealed to be trash too.
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Post by MGuy »

That sounds unfortunate indeed. The setting's pitch is what was used to get me to try the game in the first place. Playing around in not- Europe sprinkled with a bit our magic wackiness seems like a pretty straightforward idea. I haven't looked at it in years but I don't remember anything about the fluff that struck me as out of place, but then I never got too far into it since the guy running it decided to torpedo the game right from the beginning. What comes up when you breach the surface that makes it bad?
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Looking over the Quickstart:

• The system is a *significantly* different animal from the first edition, which was necessary for it to be good at all.
• Looks like the skill list has been pared down, which is good. A bloated list of overly narrow skills was one of the things that made the game fatally non-romantic.
• Roll-and-Keep has been ditched, which is good because it was unworkable. It looks like the replacement is a weird variant of his Houses of the Blooded system, which is itself a modified Fat3. Like its predecessor, it looks like it produces mostly predictable outcomes for bell-curve reasons; I'll call that a tentative positive, for player empowerment if nothing else.
• The resolution system has a whole thing about succeeding and consequences and such which seems kind of @World-inspired, but there's also a sidebar about specifically never using consequences to turn success into failure. So that's encouraging.
• 'Flair' is genuinely good. First, you get a bonus die the first time you use a skill for the first time in each scene; a simple incentive to try all sorts of different things, increasing variety of actions. Second, it includes a basic stunting mechanic - if your description of your action is *at all* more immersive than 'I use (insert skill here) at (insert target here)' you get a bonus die; encourages light narration but not filibustering. Full marks for both parts of that.
• Drama Dice have been replaced by Hero Points, which are closer to HotB Style Points or Fat3 Fate Points. There's also a Danger pool for the MC to make things more difficult in a similar way. Seems like an okay change, but the big question re: advancement is understandably unaddressed.
• The action declaration/initiative system seems cumbersome, annoying, and ambiguous. Not the worst I've seen, but not good.
• The wounds/dramatic wounds thing is similar in some ways to the old system; lesser injuries accumulate and turn into Dramatic wounds. There's also a window where you can voluntarily accept a DW, and you might want to. The first DW gives you a 1-die bonus on everything, the second gives villains a 2-die bonus to any Villain (major adversary) messing with you, the third gives you a very small benefit on your rolls, and the fourth takes you out. I like it in abstract, but it's the sort of thing I'd have to see at the table to really judge. It *looks* like it could be padded sumo.
• On the other hand, Brute Squads (gangs of minor antagonists) hand out wounds like candy. They look a *lot* more dangerous than they used to be.
• The sample Sorcery is Sorte, which seems poorly handled. It can do blessings and curses, but blessings are obviously far superior; you have to kiss the target either way, and it's a lot easier to smooch your buddies, also curses give bonus dice to your opponents, and so have no effect if you are opposing e.g. a lock or the sea. Both also last only for the scene they are in, so there's no way to do a looming dread thing where you curse someone for their duel the next day. Basically, I hope this is a super-incomplete version for the Quickstart.
• All the Heroes have both a Virtue and a Hubris, looks like everyone having both is baked into the game. I remember recommending that some years back.
• None of the Advantages seem to be bullshit cost-break accounting flummery, but actual things you might care about. Excellent. Less excellent is how nuts the power disparity is between some of them. For example, one of the sample characters has both 'Sea Legs' (a bonus die on physical rolls while at sea) and 'Luck' (on every roll, re-roll any dice you don't like). Also, while I think a lot of the Advantages have neat effects, a lot of them have troubling details. Stuff like 'Poison Immunity' (nonlethal poisons make you kind of uncomfortable, lethal poisons make you vomit, maybe) and 'Linguist' (you speak all the languages) are great. But then there's stuff like 'Indomitable Will,' which lets you spend a Hero point to not be persuaded by someone, once per session; that's not going to feel like a dude with indomitable will, that's going to feel like a guy who just has to be asked twice. Advantages have taken a big step in the right direction, but they definitely need another editing pass.
• Setting-wise, they're introducing an actual New World so that there's a lot more opportunity for actual piracy. Also there's a new nation called Sarmatia which is a democracy with a king or something, seems incoherent, should fit right in with the other nations.

All in all, it looks like a lot of criticism has been listened to and a lot of positive change has been made. Whether that's enough to make it good or even acceptable is an open question, but it's definitely got my continuing interest.
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Post by Blicero »

Can you talk more about the Flair system, particularly in context of what the skills are supposed to be able to do?
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

I'm not sure I understand the question, but I'll try. The Flair heading covers two things which aren't really connected, one that encourages you to use a variety of skills in each scene, and one that encourages you to use more immersive language. Both grant 'a bonus die' to the action in question, which is worth about half a 'Raise.' To explain what that means, I'll have to talk about the resolution system in more detail.

See, the dice mechanic is pretty strange. When you try to do something with a chance of failure, you roll (Stat+Skill+Bonuses) in d10s, and then put them together in groups that each add up to at least 10, and each of those is one 'Raise.' That's actually not what I thought it was when I first read it. I thought you added them all up and took the total/10 (round down) as Raises, which would be much less annoying.

Anyway, when you're doing something worth rolling for, there are one or more Consequences (having more than one consequence is the MCs way of defining a task as more difficult). So, say you're using the Theft skill to pick a lock, the example Consequences are: being heard, being poisoned by a trap, and breaking your tools, and depending on how hard the MC thinks picking the lock is, you might have to deal with any or all of those. You need to spend one Raise to actually get the lock open, and then one more Raise each to avoid the Consequences. If you have any Raises left over, you can spend them on other things like taking the poison needle to use later or jamming the lock behind you or something.

So each Raise is modestly significant and getting about a half of one from either end of Flair is good enough to be worthwhile but not so good as to be mandatory. Which is I think about the level of incentive that's desirable.
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Post by Longes »

MGuy wrote:That sounds unfortunate indeed. The setting's pitch is what was used to get me to try the game in the first place. Playing around in not- Europe sprinkled with a bit our magic wackiness seems like a pretty straightforward idea. I haven't looked at it in years but I don't remember anything about the fluff that struck me as out of place, but then I never got too far into it since the guy running it decided to torpedo the game right from the beginning. What comes up when you breach the surface that makes it bad?
Every use of Sorcery other than Avalonian one and Russian one is literally destroying the world by erroding the magical barrier that keeps Cthulhu away. So if you are playing a Sorcerer - you are an asshole. Fuck you.
The good guys of the setting are... the Sidhe. Yes, the secret elves from Avalon. They are the goodest guys in the setting and if you are opposing them in any way - you are a monster. Also Avalonian monarchy is sponsored by the Sidhe so if you fight the Queen - you are a monster.
Secret Societies are all actually based around fighting sorcery. Anarchists are fighting the nobles because Sorcery. Rosecrucians hates Sorcerers and you can't join if you are a sorcerer. Daughters of Sofia are not an underground railroad fighting for women's rights in not-Italy. They are actually a cult of descendants of Sidhe that has scrying magic and is hunting down sorcerers.
not-Russia has a lot of really weird internal conflicts, but none of them matter for anyone outside of not-Russia.
The big penises on the NPCs are really, really big. The guy from the book's cover is the bestest pirate ever, is and will always be better than you, has a magic sickle-sword-on-a-stick that does infinite damage and cuts through any armor including magical not-German armor, etc.
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Post by tsuyoshikentsu »

So like... the fact that 7S1E is a bundle of neat proposals that is executed badly in literally every conceivable way is quite well-known. What I'm actually curious about is the new one. Which does not Sickles McMarysue on the front, thankfully.

(Seriously, fuck that guy.)

AfAP: Interesting analysis--thanks. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the combat round and wounds (and, to a much less extent, the raises) slightly kludgy.

I'm a little less sold on Indomitable Will guy being "ask me twice." Compare it to Psst, Over Here--which automatically just removes a dork and incidentally is now my favorite feat/advantage/edge/whatever in any system ever created. I read it a little less "I auto-pass one check" and more "I cannot be persuaded to change my mind regarding this one topic, no matter how many times I'm asked, for the duration of this scene." Or whatever length of time, IDK, I'm at a club.
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Post by Bertie Wooster »

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Also there's a new nation called Sarmatia which is a democracy with a king or something, seems incoherent, should fit right in with the other nations.
It is a Poland expy.
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Post by Longes »

Bertie Wooster wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote: Also there's a new nation called Sarmatia which is a democracy with a king or something, seems incoherent, should fit right in with the other nations.
It is a Poland expy.
Ah, yes. The Poles. The most swashbuckling of all nations.
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Post by Username17 »

Well, technically Sarmatia is an archaic name for Ruthenia, which was only part of Poland during the Grand Duchy of Poland-Lithuania period. So we're talking about Ukraine expies, which since we're talking swashbuckling pirates means that this is based on the pirate republic of Zaporizhian Sich.

I'm guessing very loosely based, because Crimean history is pretty hard to find in English.

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Post by Longes »

FrankTrollman wrote:Well, technically Sarmatia is an archaic name for Ruthenia, which was only part of Poland during the Grand Duchy of Poland-Lithuania period. So we're talking about Ukraine expies, which since we're talking swashbuckling pirates means that this is based on the pirate republic of Zaporizhian Sich.

I'm guessing very loosely based, because Crimean history is pretty hard to find in English.

-Username17
I still posit that this is a very strange party for a swashbuckling pirate adventure:

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d'Artagnan

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Taras Bulba

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Ivan the Terrible (it's tzar russia, so you don't even get Rzhevskiy)

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Eric the Red

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Ulrich von Liechtenstein (his armor is his magic power)

But, well, I don't really expect the second edition to rectify the incredible difficulty of justifying the international party and wild discrepancy in country time periods.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

I'm torn. On the one hand, I do feel like Wick is less likely to kill the sacred cows of the setting than he was the system... but with Sarmatia and the New World he kind of already has slaughtered a couple. And since the system changes look rooted in the criticism that was coming his way for years, it could be that long-established problems with setting incoherence are also been addressed.

As with the system, I'm not optimistic, but the signs are hopeful.
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Post by tsuyoshikentsu »

Longes wrote:But, well, I don't really expect the second edition to rectify the incredible difficulty of justifying the international party and wild discrepancy in country time periods.
Hilariously, you forgot to mention William Wallace and Zorro, which are two of the biggest offenders. Vikings to Zorro is literally more than 1,000 years. (Unless you count from the Norman conquest to the beginning of Zorro, in which case it's "only" 800. But then, 1066 to V for Vendetta is about 1,000 too.)
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Post by Longes »

tsuyoshikentsu wrote:
Longes wrote:But, well, I don't really expect the second edition to rectify the incredible difficulty of justifying the international party and wild discrepancy in country time periods.
Hilariously, you forgot to mention William Wallace and Zorro, which are two of the biggest offenders. Vikings to Zorro is literally more than 1,000 years. (Unless you count from the Norman conquest to the beginning of Zorro, in which case it's "only" 800. But then, 1066 to V for Vendetta is about 1,000 too.)
I didn't forget. Zorro is a decent swashbuckling hero, and even though he's not from a nautical setting, he gets ported into d'Artagnan's party very easily. not-Spain, not-France and not-Italy are all fitting. not-England, not-Germany, not-Norway and not-Russia are a crazy hodgepodge, with Germans wearing magic plate mail and zweihanders, Russians being weird shapeshifting barbarians out to the east who don't have diplomatic relationships with anyone, Norwegians being either merchant princess or tribal vikings (with slavery!) and English being arthurian knights and also Robin Hood and also magic elves.
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Post by Longes »

I mean, if you are making a swashbuckling setting of 17th century, then the countries you definitely want are British Empire (and not Kingdom of Avalon), France, Spain, Portugal and Dutch Republic. If you really want to have Russia, then it should be near-Imperial Russia with Peter the Great expy running around building up navy, making beard taxes and stealing foreign ideas
Image

The problem of course, is that real countries are not fantasy races, so you get places in europe that are relatively similar to each other in terms of aesthetics and require seeing fine details to become distinct.
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Post by Zinegata »

Longes wrote:
Bertie Wooster wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote: Also there's a new nation called Sarmatia which is a democracy with a king or something, seems incoherent, should fit right in with the other nations.
It is a Poland expy.
Ah, yes. The Poles. The most swashbuckling of all nations.
The original had included both fantasy Russia and post-Thirty Years War Germany; and some of the setting's best fluff is the inclusion of these two nations as a counter balance to fantasy France on land.

Indeed historically speaking there were quite a lot of land wars coinciding with the Age of Discovery and the swashbuckling era of piracy in the New World. The whole piracy thing could in fact be considered a historical side story compared to what was happening in the ground wars.
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Post by tsuyoshikentsu »

So apparently a second edition of the rules was released. I don't have it because I'll be damned if I give John Wick a red cent.

Anyone had a look?
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Post by ckafrica »

Well this just finished as the most successful RPG kickstarter so far with 1.3 million. 12 promised books from the stretch goals. No to see if they can deliver something that isn't a steaming pile of shit
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