As of this blog post, I ran five sessions of 7th Sea (update: I did eleven sessions total). One of my groups wanted something historical and pirates and three musketeers seemed like the right fit. I backed the 2nd edition KS and it came with all the 1st edition books in PDF.
I found a number of online resources for 7th Sea.
I really liked the world, it's a mishmash of various historical places and periods re-envisioned and crammed together. In a time of political correctness, Théah, is mostly politically correct. Racism, sexism, religious differences, etc. have mostly been erased. People relate more to their country than their skin color. The church is more scientific than religious. As one person said, everything is like something, but NOT exactly something. So, Castille is NOT-Spain. Eisen is NOT-Germany. Montaigne is NOT-France. Ussura is NOT-Russia. Avalon is NOT-Britain. The Inquisition is NOT-the Spanish Inquisition. Charouse is NOT-Paris. Though the world is more politically correct, there is still a richness that fills the world, so it's not bland.
Each country has its own brand of magic. Hexenwerk for Eisen. Knights of Avalon. Dar Matushki for Ussura. Porté for Montaigne. Sanderis in Sarmatia. Sorte (Tarot or Fate Magic) for Vodacce.
There are various secret societies which Players can join: Brotherhood of the Coast (pirates), Die Kreuzritter (monster hunters), Explorer's Society (treasure hunters), Invisible College (forbidden science), Knights of the Rose & Cross (just knights and moose lodge), Los Vagabundos (everybody is Zorro), Močiutės Skara (widows and orphans, red cross), Rilasciare (anarchists), Sophia's Daughters (freeing Fate Witches), Novus Ordo Mundi (James Bond's Spectre).
The Duelist's Guild is interesting making any PC a combat monster giving them combat Maneuvers which does more damage than normal. They also have their own school with special styles. During combat, non-Duelists do one Wound per Raise on their attack, but Duelists can inflict multiple Wounds with each Raise. e.g. a non-Duelist with 2 Raises can only do 2 Wounds, so you just attack and do 2 Wounds. But a Duelist with 3 Ranks in Weaponry can Slash for 3 Wounds (1 Raise) and Lunge for 4 Wounds (2nd Raise). Thus dealing 7 Wounds.
Character creation is very evocative due to the richness of the world and you can really create some interesting characters.
The artwork in the books are great too. They look like action scenes painted by Vermeer.
I first played this in 2017 at a convention: The Queens Cup
But I had reservations about the system. One was Players abusing the system; it was easy to always take your highest Trait and Skill and apply it to every situation by shoehorning it. The other was the Dueling system was a mini-game in itself; if two Duelists were fighting each other, everyone else basically watched as it was taboo to interfere in a duel.
I learned that some non-emphasized lines in the core rule book was very important.
p.173, Improvising: "Whether a Hero’s Action falls within the scope of his Skill is the GM’s discretion." e.g. GM gets to veto any action that wasn't declared for the Approach. This sort of solves the problem of a Hero solving everybody's problem with a massive number of Raises.
p.177, Gaining Hero Points: "The GM buys any unused dice that aren’t part of a Raise. For each die the GM chooses to buy in this fashion, you gain 1 Hero Point and he gains 1 Danger Point." I was buying every unused die which was a mistake. There were too many Hero and Danger points hanging around and I should mostly decline buying them until I run low on my starting Danger points (1 per PC).
Action sequences go in the following order: Approach (action declarations), Consequences and Opportunities, Rolling dice, and Action resolution. Action order goes to whoever had the most Raises.
This is very much like ORE (Godlike). In ORE, everyone declares, rolls their dice, and the PCs with the widest matches go first and actions happen based on the declarations. In Godlike, most actions are shoot at X, dive for cover, throw a grenade, so most are quick short actions. ORE models the chaos of combat very well.
In 7th Sea, you roll a handful of d10s and group them into sets that total 10 (or sometimes 15) or more. e.g. you roll 4d10 and get 3, 5, 8, 10 = 2 Raises (10, 8 + 3) with a leftover die.
The problem is some PCs want to do longer actions than just I want to shoot or throw something. They may want to lure someone away or steal something which involves a longer time frame. So, as a GM, you need to juggle the shorter time frame actions and the longer time frame actions. And if there's a duel going on, that slows the pace of everything down as the dueling combat goes on for what seems like forever. For example: Abigail wants to knockdown a brute squad. George faces Jorge in a duel. Felicity wants to swing on a chandelier to steal the crown jewels. Jeff is throwing pies at guests and making them chase him through the house. After die rolls: George 7 Raises, Jorge 6 Raises, Jeff 6 Raises, Abigail gets 3 Raises, Felicity 2 Raises. George Slashes at Jorge (at 7). Jorge Slashes at George (at 6). George Ripostes (at 6). Jeff (at 6) throws pies and spends his Raises on avoiding guests and stealing some love letters. George and Jorge (at 5 to 3) exchange more dueling maneuvers until they're down to 3 Raises. Abigail (at 3) finally goes and takes down the brute squad. George and Jorge duel some more (at 3 to 2). Felicity (at 2) finally gets on the chandelier, but doesn't have enough Raises to steal the crown jewels. George and Jorge (at 2 to 0) duel some more until they're out of Raises. George and Jorge get all the action and the other Players wind up just waiting for their turn.
As a mini-game, dueling is interesting, but it breaks the pacing of the game. In my own game, there were two duelist PCs, in an action scene with two duels (in serial, a PC lost a duel, then another PC challenged the Villain), this compounded the problem even more.
Complications and Opportunities are added on the fly to help syphon off some of the Raises, so that the PCs don't get an auto-success without any type of Risk. Most complications are damage that would result in Wounds of some sort or potential for damage such as slipping and falling or dropping something. Complications and Opportunities seem like a way to balance a scene dynamically when you add additional PCs to a scene. You do have to have your improv hat on and firing on all cylinders for this to work properly.
Death is also almost impossible. Each PC has 20 wounds, every 5th wound is a Dramatic Wound where they either gain a benefit or a disadvantage. You have to get the PC down to their last Dramatic Wound. Then spend a Danger Point and declare that you are killing a PC. Then any PC can act out of turn order by spending all their Raises and save the PC, though the Villain can attack the new PC that came to the rescue. So, you can get a death spiral TPK, though unlikely. (Also all non-Dramatic Wounds vanish at the end of a scene.)
After running this with 5 Players, I feel like it would run smoother with 1-3 Players. And if I was running a single player game, a Duelist would work great. Or maybe all Duelists, like The Three Musketeers.
p.s. To make encounters challenging, I found that Pressure (p.176) should be used when possible. The PCs faced Black Beard the Pirate and due to his fierce reputation, if PCs didn't flee as their action, it cost them a Raise to do other actions. It was cheap (1 Danger point + 1 Raise). I also gave Black Beard multiple loaded pistols which gave the PCs a scare.
Also when encountering a mid-level or higher Villain, I'd purchase the +5 Raise (requiring 15 for a Raise for Heroes, p.177, 1 Danger point). This makes the encounter tougher.
Also when encountering a mid-level or higher Villain, I'd purchase the +5 Raise (requiring 15 for a Raise for Heroes, p.177, 1 Danger point). This makes the encounter tougher.
I also send multiple groups of 10 Mooks to accompany Villains. A group of 10 or 2x5 generally get taken out very fast. 2x10 survive long enough to do some damage.
I've also added vanishing Treasure. Opportunities for grabbing Treasure start decreasing over time. So there would be 5 Treasure at the start and each round that lapses with no one taking the Treasure decreases the amount available. I did this for booty from a ship they were attacking.
Monstrous Qualities really work and add nice narrative flavor to combat. Rock Trolls with Chitinous and Powerful made me wish PCs had more leftover dice for me to buy Danger Points. Suddenly, they stopped having leftovers. Funny, that.
According to various blog posts, most Heroes get about 3 Raises on any Risk, more if they get rerolls or exploding 10s.
Why all these things? Otherwise, the encounter becomes a cake walk and the Heroes generally will escape with no Wounds and at most only 1 Dramatic Wound.
p.s.s. I did something interesting. The PCs had captured a duelist assassin and was questioning him. Of course, he doesn't want to talk and is a tough nut to crack, but I let them roll Wits + Intimidate and they got 4 Raises. So, I decided the outcome was two "Yes/No" questions the interrogator could ask, and I as the GM, would answer truthfully Yes or No. This would be the result of the interrogation after lots of back and forth between the PC and the NPC. The PCs really wanted to know who the target was and who ordered the contract, but I wasn't going to automatically give them answers to open ended questions. They luckily guessed who the target was. "Was X your target?" And who put out the contract. "Did Y order the contract?" I really liked how this put the pressure on the Players to figure this out vs just roll dice and get enough Raises and the answer is automatically dropped into your lap. This way, they got to confirm their hunches. It was very rewarding.
After they let the assassin go, after he pledged to not fulfill the contract, on his duelist-to-duelist honor, he left a coded message for the duelist PCs, telling them there was still another assassin, but a non-duelist.
After they let the assassin go, after he pledged to not fulfill the contract, on his duelist-to-duelist honor, he left a coded message for the duelist PCs, telling them there was still another assassin, but a non-duelist.
p.s.s.s. John Wick and Chaosium parted ways in Nov 2023. I had supported the 7th Sea 2e 2016 KS. The KS collected $1.3M which should have paid for the development and printing of the books, but in April 2019, John Wick had to cut a deal with Chaosium to complete delivery of the promised books. I got my last 7th Sea book in Sept 2023. The original ship date for the last book was Oct 2017. So, basically 6 years late. I actually thought the aggressive ship dates, mostly 1 month between books, were because 2e was supposed to be just a rewrite of 1e material. Most of the 2e books were flavor text describing different parts of the world without much in game statistics or additional mechanics. I actually realized 7th Sea 2e was in trouble when John Wick asked people to send in writing samples for undelivered books which told me those books weren't written yet and he was trying to farm out the work. I assume that as part of the bailout deal with Chaosium, John Wick had to complete the writing for the promised books (by himself) and Chaosium would do the publishing. I have no insider knowledge, but that seems logical. Something similar happened with the Call of Cthulhu 7e 2013 KS.
It remains to be seen if Chaosium will do much more with this game line as I see various books and accessories sold at deep discount. I assume Chaosium will continue to sell the PDFs to recoup costs, but not spend further money on this game line.
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