7th Sea

...that second instance of L5R should have been '7th Sea'

Other things unironically said/done by john wick

>Ronin have no place in the Samurai Genre
>I'm going to make the guy immune to diseases catch a disease so I can crow that he's immune to the cure due to his immunity.
>I'm going to have a character using their Good Luck perk get in a worse situation as a result.

It's great, over all. It's one of the few games I've played that does the "job" style of class thing (the warmachine and hordes games do it too, and a few others) where I went in with an idea and not only was it possible, the game generally made it better than I first considered. (I wanted to make a scarred Eisen vet, turns out there's a background for that and it's called Krieger.) Anyway, action scene resolution looks a bit...floaty, for lack of a better word, so I'm gonna have to actually play it more to get a solid grasp on it, but over all the new setting stuff is great, the old setting stuff was always solid, the changes to existing setting are generally for the best, and over all I'm very happy with it. And it was fast too, fuck. If this was almost any other rpg kickstarter we'd still be two years away from "ok guys, the project is almost back on track and we're looking to have a first pass of the core book ready by 2020".

Apparently my go-to phrase while tired is "over all". Learn something new every day.

Is this going to be like the Starfinder thread, where it's just people going "if you have fun with this you're literally retarded"?

Sounds like it's a very narrative system. That's the impression I'm getting from skimming things. I'm seeing lots of references to roles like Hero and Villain, as well as things like Hero Points.

>“I Dodge”
>You may notice there is no “Dodge” skill. This is intentional.
>We don’t want any player to ever say, “I dodge.”
>Why? Because it’s boring.
>Instead of saying, “I don’t want to get hit,” explain how your character acts to avoid getting hit. Don’t just “dodge.” Instead, cut the rope holding the chandelier and swing up to the roof. Jump under your enemy’s blade so you are standing behind him. Kick the candelabra’s hot wax into your enemy’s eyes as he thrusts his sword toward you.
>You don’t want to say, “I dodge” because that just maintains the status quo of the scene. A success in that case means that nothing changes. Instead, use your Action to change the circumstance of the Scene. Throw a table on them. Make the other people in the room laugh at them for trying to stab you. Demoralize them. Confuse your opponent into striking someone else.
>Be creative. Don’t be passive. Don’t use your Risk to just say “No.” Use your Risk to take action.
I'm still just skimming, but that one is literally a bookmark in the table of contents. I don't necessarily disagree, either. There's also a sidebar that talks about "dodging without dodging" when your goal is just to buy time and distract someone, with examples like using a drapery to catch their sword, or climbing a scaffolding.

I've noticed that Veeky Forums seeks out shit to get butthurt about when it comes to RPGs. Maybe that's self evident, but still, it's a little weird when it happens. I suspect interpreting "don't murder helpless people if you wish to call yourself a hero" as "nobody can ever kill anybody in 7th sea even once" will stand alongside...I dunno, that thing from Reign with the horses or whatever as an example of missing an entire game for one line of misrepresented text.

>I'm still just skimming, but that one is literally a bookmark in the table of contents.

That was part of my issue with it, yes.

I'm reminded of the final duel in Rob Roy. It's a dramatic, climatic fight...but a large amount of it is parrying and dodging without changing the circumstances of the scene. A large amount of fencing is based around parrying and evading.

>Is this going to be like the Starfinder thread, where it's just people going "if you have fun with this you're literally retarded"?

No, if you have fun you have fun.

You can enjoy something made by a terrible person. A lot of music goes straight to that. I'd never be able to listen to Bein' Green if I spent all my time thinking about what Kermit did in a Taiwanese prison.

My comments were mostly about the Dev himself being a pretty terrible person and my personal issues with 2e than saying 'You can't have fun with it'

But it's saying that you shouldn't need a specific skill for that. I feel like this book wants you to Flynn it. Cut the rope and fly away and things like that, as opposed to standing there taking swings at each other and blocking. You don't really need a specific skill for that. I'm not entirely sure I agree (the book looks like it only has like, eight skills, and I really don't like that kind of almost-freeform thing; it's almost worse than games with a thousand skills like GURPS, or just loads of them like oWoD and D20 and Dark Heresy)

I think people just enjoy hating things. It's a thing that's really been pissing me off lately. I can't mention that I'm doing something without five people jumping down my throat to tell me how much it sucks and I shouldn't enjoy it. Heaven help you if you mention a remake or adaptation, those are LITERALLY the worst and will give you actual for real ass cancer if you so much as see the trailer.

Iunno. I feel like most "the Dev said something stupid" hate is overblown and out of context. Except the CthulhuTech developer. Holy shit he really is an asshole who doesn't want people to touch his precious baby. I'm surprised 2e is apparently releasing with Creative Commons.

>"don't murder helpless people if you wish to call yourself a hero"
Villains are killed all the time in Swashbuckling stories.
Only a complete jackoff like Wick would see that and think "hmm, to emulate this genre properly what we need is a corruption mechanic to turn player characters into NPCs if they act in line with the genre".

>Iunno. I feel like most "the Dev said something stupid" hate is overblown and out of context.

Behold, Context!

The book, written by John Wick himself about how to fuck over players!

Some devs do get more hate than they really deserve. John Wick is not one of them. He's gone off at people for buying only one copy of his games to play with their friends rather than each player owning a copy of the game and called it piracy.

The rule serves a number of purposes. First, it makes recurring bad guys easier, which I as a GM appreciate in this type of genre game. Second, it makes sure your PC's aren't serial killers. It's not that you CAN'T kill, but you have to be serious about it. First dig two graves and all that. Secondly, it's GM discretion. Inigo probably gets a pass for the Six Fingered Man, but The Reaper who kills every Vodacce he meets? That guy is a Villain, and will end up as such. Don't torture and don't murder aren't baffling concepts trying to ruin your fun.

I guess that should be thirdly. Whatever.

John Wick is famous for being an unlikeable asshole and for making shit up to boot.
He makes up a new lie in order to piss people off and jew money out of the controversy every time he releases a new game.
His latest spiel to gather attention before 7th Sea was when he claimed a bunch of easily disprovable bullshit about Tomb of Horrors and claimed it's (non-existent) advice destroyed his friendships as a kid and then went on to make up some bullshit interaction with Gygax where he totally had a mic drop moment according to himself.
He's pretty much the platonic ideal of the utterly retarded Dev.

But that's not remotely true. First off, emulating a genre doesn't mean emulating every single aspect of it; for instance I can't think of anyone other than Count Rugen who dies in Princess Bride. I don't think anyone but Barbossa dies on screen in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, either. Second...
I'm literally looking at the Corruption mechanic and while "four evil acts (without repenting) and you're a villain" is pretty harsh, there are literally two things that count: Causing UNNECESSARY suffering and Inaction that leads to innocents suffering. There's nothing here about killing people, except for the example where a guy becomes a highwayman and robs a carriage and kills everyone, and pushes a child out of a tower. And even after child murder, wanton slaughter, and also torture, the character in question is not a Villain.

>But that's not remotely true
The most common form of Swashbuckling stories are about revenge.

So, on the one hand you're kinda right, the corruption mechanics don't mention it, but sadly on the other there's this on page 296:
Murder in 7th Sea
In the 7th Sea game system, characters aren’t killed, they become Helpless. Even gunfire cannot kill a character without a deliberate act from a Hero or a Villain.
That act is called murder. Murder is always an Evil Act, under any and all circumstances.
Heroes do not commit murder. Ever.
Self-defense is not murder, nor is defending
someone else from murder. Heroes only kill when their hands are forced by Villains and their cronies.
Heroes do not enjoy killing, they regret it. The act haunts some Heroes to their graves.

And i'm of two minds on it. As I said in my post there, I get why the rule exists, and I mostly support it. But. If one is eager to be offended, and trying to find shit to get pissed about, rules as written Inigo might lose his character for killing the six fingered man. And that's horse shit. I mean, there is flex. There's tons of flex. The next paragraph is "But it's up to the GM seriously". However, if you ONLY run rules as written, it's a bit...weird.

Which is weird when a HEAP of people are killed in The Three Musketeers (Book). Heck, D'Artagnan nearly kills (the man barely gets away) an officer of the guard very early in the book. Yeah, the man worked for the Cardinal but he was acting properly as a member of the guard at that time as D'Artagnan was in the middle of an illegal duel in the middle of the street.

I love how you can be a member of Medieval MI6 as a member of the Avalon Knights but the game says you can't actually kill a guy while doing so.

The current version of the fencing rules make characters without a Swordsman School essentially irrelevant in combat. Their damage is capped so low they could barely hope to withstand two rounds against a brute squad, and stastically speaking need a miracle to so much as scratch a Swordsman. Swordsmen, meanwhile, get to enjoy feeling that they've paid with their character concept for the privilege of BEING ABLE TO USE THE COMBAT SYSTEM, since their "unique" advantage is a single special maneuver which, in one case, IS LITERALLY A REGULAR ONE WITH A DIFFERENT NAME. Mind you, this is after being told by the book that "not all swordsmen are Swordsmen", that non-Swordsmen characters are still supposed to be able to mow down brute squads with impunity and that Swordsmen are supposed to feel as mechanically special and dramatic as Sorcerers.

Now, you'd THINK that the logical solution would be to allow everyone to use the combat system so they aren't completely crippled the moment a sword is drawn, and to give the School Swordsmen a lot of unique special abilities - but then, that's just because you aren't a brilliant game designer like John Wick!

It's nice to know that the Polish are now getting as masturbated over as the Irish. I guess John got scared of every single fucking Revenant user ever making a hobby of shouting about how the game won't work without Poland every week and half. The only complaints about the setting more common than that were a lack of the Americas and Jewish people.

WELP, testing's closed! Three days is PLENTY of time to read the entire 300 page thing in depth, run several trial games, form an educated opinion and criticism and post it on the website! John NEEDS to release the game by GenCon! History teaches us that rushing games for some kind of marketing event at the expanse of testing, editing, and finishing them has always been the smart thing to do!

It's getting an americas with future sourcebooks though.

And it got a Poland with the corebook. The comment just said it was a common request. The complaint was that it feels like it was such a common request Wick must've misunderstood it for "all of my fans are Polish Poleboos" instead of "it'd be nice to also have a Poland equivalent", because rather than just adding them, he made them into giant Mary-Sues. Let's hope the Americas aren't the same and thank God he didn't add Jews.

It takes four Evil Acts and is up to the GM by RAW.
Also, Inigo *did* give up his character, remember?
>"You know, it's very strange. I've been in the revenge business so long now that it's over I do not know what to do with the rest of my life."
>"Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts."

Clearly they're going for the Disney movie version, not the book, which was written at a very different time period and culture.

Its only me or Hexenwerk has a lot in common with Witcher's Alchemy in the Witcher series?

So, if you want to fight, you practically have to get a Dueling school?

Non-duelists don't have access to maneuvers, right?

At least it isn't like 1e where Swordsmen Schools were so weak in general that being a Stat Monkey was always the best option for the points.

Pretty much. The difference in combat ability between Duelists and non-Duelists now is so extreme as to almost make mixed parties impossible. You either have a party of non-Duelists and everyone just plays knowing that any combat would kill them all (which is... a way of playing a swashbuckling game, I guess), a party of all-Duelists who have paid the Advantage tax and will thus have nothing else special about them, or mix and then watch as every fight becomes a dialogue between the Duelist and the GM while everyone else goes to play a video game until it's over, because giving them turns is just gonna waste time.

Witnessed.

> Yes, this means a Villain can roll as many as 10 to 20 dice for a single Risk. How do Heroes overcome such monumental foes? The same way you eat a whale: one bite at a time.

> Villainous Strength is permanent. It changes rarely (if ever) and acts as a measure of the Villain’s threat as an individual.

Wick at his best.

>The antagonist is stronger than any single PC
I'm honestly not seeing a problem with this. I get that people have a hateboner for John Wick, but making an antagonist that can be defeated one on one by any member of a five person party is a good way to have an anticlimactic fight.

>Except the CthulhuTech developer. Holy shit he really is an asshole who doesn't want people to touch his precious baby

What did he say?

Wick at his very best would've had the Villain getting a +5 strength for using a katana - despite no other weapon even having rules. Maybe in the Far East book.

Except basicly every villain in the swashbuckling genre is taken down in a climatic duel with someone with a personal stake rather than 4 people ganging up on him.

But the issue there is villains are basically insurmountable in a physical challenge.

An influence-based villain can actually be taken on multiple times and worn down. A Strength based villain is basically just a 'Are you strong enough?' challenge and generally no, you are not strong enough.

Made doubly worse by the system's minimal randomness. The vast, vast majority of the time you're gonna score exactly 1/2 as many trait+skill you have in Raises. It's so certain you can practically forgo the rolling and just treat it as a given. It also means that barring miracles, Villains with a strength higher than twice any Hero's relevant trait+skill are basically invincible.

Just a lot of "if you don't do this my way you're playing wrong". Want to be a Tager who pilots a Mech? Too bad, the game should implode if you ever get into a Mech. Want to change one of the modules so the villain doesn't get away (or maybe there's just less rape)? You're doing it wrong.

>Except basicly every villain in the swashbuckling genre is taken down in a climatic duel with someone with a personal stake rather than 4 people ganging up on him.
And in the fantasy genre the Chosen One defeats the BBEG and in action movies the lone protagonist fights off all the gangsters and bodyguards alone. Roleplaying games are group activities. I have never statted an antagonist boss character to be on the same level as a single PC.

>I have never statted an antagonist boss character to be on the same level as a single PC.

Really? I did it all the time in the first edition of 7th Sea. That's what the dueling rules were FOR. Generally the final battle came down to a couple of big duels while the non-personally invested PCs held off the mooks long enough for vengence/justice.

Even then I'd ere on the side of gobs of health, and they'd likely have more skill ranks in things like socializing or intimidating and other things besides just fighting.

>which, in one case, IS LITERALLY A REGULAR ONE WITH A DIFFERENT NAME
You mean Leegstra's Crash? I think the point is that since you can't use the same move twice in a row, a move which functions as a Slash but isn't actually a Slash can be pretty powerful. You can Slash>Leegstra's Crash>Slash with impunity to deliver an unstoppable barrage of damage.

Speaking of Leegstra...fucking dammit Wick, Leegstra was the single Heavy Weapon School, Urostifter was the two weapon school.

At least there's finally a Russian swordsman school using an actual sword. I get it that the Russians are behind with the times, but, you know, AT LEAST ONE. And the gypsy one doesn't count, they're practically their own nation if you go by the rules.

Which people are gypsies?
OP here and I have no character concept and the game is in whenever and I'm basically just trying to choose a character based on what's in my character art folder. I've got a lot of fan art of Esmeralda from Hunchback of Notre Dame and was thinking I could use that. I was thinking a Hexenwurker, but I only have two images of Gisa from MtG. Or I could make a Highlander and use art of Senua from Hellblade.

Although I should probably just give up and go play a vidya, since we're talking two hours to digest this book and make a character. I am an expert at procrastinating.

>Esmeralda
>Gypsy
Pic related are gypsies.

Your mother's a gypsy

Why is there a dogmatic and anti-scientific Inquisition in the Gnostic church?

I'm doing a one-shot with my group.
The completed version of the game is actually allaying some of my overall fears, and once I remove Danger Dice (or just use them very sparingly) I think I might be satisfied with it.

>I kinda wanna play a gross corpse eating necromancer. One of the spells is literally eating brains. It really is pretty disgusting. I'm glad there aren't any pictures
One of my PC's is playing a "good Hexe" who tries to use his gross sorceries for good purposes, and is basically the ship's Doctor and a "learned man" who tries to emotionally distance himself from it and be morally upright about using Hexe.

Because the Third Prophet was crazy.

That's what the Dueling mechanics are for.

Having a preset and specific Ending to the Story mechanic gets weird. Getting revenge or settling your obligation as an Ending makes sense but "My Hero dies at the hands of her enemy." or " My Hero’s lover is brutally murdered in front
of him." has no suspense, the twist ending is spoiled before you even hear the premise.

No . It says you can't MURDER them.
It says in that same chapter that heroes can defend themselves (which means they can kill in self-defense) but they won't just needlessly escalate shit to killing people when it's not needed.
Also, that's literally the easiest problem to fix in the entire world, no exaggerating; you just ignore that entire thing and make Corruption only a part of using dark sorcery or evil magic and then the problem is resolved.

So to fix it you just do nothing.

I disagree, but then again I'm used to games with Destiny Feats/Edges/Talents/Traits/Merits/Whatevers.
In Chronicles of Darkness for instance there's Cursed, where you know how you're going to die, so everything else that doesn't kill you just makes you stronger, and the Destiny merit, where you get a pool of bonus points that you can spend on things, but have some kind of a metaphorical bane.

Plus my ideal character story ends with them doing a noble sacrifice to let everyone else escape the final encounter.

It actually says that no one ever dies unless they're murdered, they just become Helpless, but that it's up to GM discretion.
It also takes four Evil Acts without repentance to 100% for sure become a Villain.

And the Third Prophet everyone knows was a False Prophet and probably a Thalusian in disguise. The Real Third Prophet's message was saved by the Knights of the Rose and Cross in the form of The Vow and The Secret.

And you fix the rule by saying "Nope".
It's not like I dunno, RIFTS or 3.X or a game that takes a shitload of work to make it work, the annoying gamey "Me vs Them" elements I literally just ignored and suddenly everyone had fun as remarkable as that sounds.
Admittedly, I wasn't expecting a perfect system because there won't ever be one and I don't need shit spoonfed to me to houserule a thing....it might just me that I had realistic expectations and a group that didn't have a "Written Rules Only" Buttplug permanently up it's ass.

That's how it used to be anyway.
I'm thinking some of the metaplot might have been jettisoned completely, as so far the only actual "bloodline sorcery" is Porte.
Not that I might them changing that shit.

>The first Pirate King was named Roberts
Heh

Yeah. I'm just saying that "LITERALLY ONE MURDER AND YOU BECOME A DEMON" is a massive inaccuracy.

Also I still have no concept, but it looks like the only other person with a character isn't around. One other person did make a character in the time I've been futzing around with reading the setting.

Character concepts are:
>Lady Musketeer who was encouraged by her father's legacy and wields his rapier
>Soldier turned itinerant priest who has a penchant for pugilism
I'm thinking a wizard of some sort might be a good addition to this group, especially if we're going monster hunting.

It's "Rogers" actually.
He was in 1e, the legendary first pirate.
He actually WAS "The Dread Pirate Rogers" though, and he's the reason in Theah the flag is called "The Jolly Roger".
The addition that the term "a Jonah" coming from the term of the guy who betrayed Roberts is new though, and I like it.

>The first members of Brotherhood, all victims of the Black Spots’ relentless crusade, joined forces and signed a charter of mutual protection. Under their First King—the legendary Captain Roberts—the Brotherhood defeated their enemies and reclaimed the seas from the schemes of Castillian nobles.

I guess more than the spoiling angle I'm hung up on you die or you retire being a suggested goal for a character advancement system.

Is there a PDF of the 2nd edition floating around anywhere? I'm curious to see it.

Backers got the draft of it this weekend. They wanted us to provide an extra layer of proofreading so they can get it to the printers that much quicker. They are to ship before Gen Con so they can sell there.

The SJW is strong in 2e.

...

Every time the book treat an unknown entity, it's written as a female. Just Ctrl+F 'She' and laugh.

I'm fine with that, too.

>Gay people exist in the setting
>Obviously this is the work of a shadowy cabal.
Also that's clearly someone using We're Not So Different.

>Taking the Jenny in every port into the crow's nest
>Discharging a firearm wantonly
Holy shit someone make a cat-o-nine-tails, the bosun has some discipline to mete out.

So?
Vampire the Masquerade did that over 20 years ago and people still get riled up over it? What are you, the CthulhuTech developer?

It's really just those two pictures though, plus that one Knight of the Round who was a foreign man who I think was either from the Crescent Empire or Ifri, who's foreigness was noted but ignored because he was a badass and Avalonians love a good story about badasses.
It helps that Theah's primary religion is basically one that is Humanist at heart says that everyone is awesome and learning and exploring is cool, and despite the two pieces of art it seems to me that the text itself is pretty neutral about it.
It also helps that my group is not one of the whiny shrieking frog cunts who whine about people's "triggers" but then are triggered themselves at the SLIGHTEST mention of anything that might even REMOTELY be construed as SJW-focused.
I'm still not even sure why Veeky Forums gets so upset over it, to be perfectly honest.

No problem. Treating everything as female is grammatically wrong in my language, so I get a kek when it shows up on another. Good white knighting, tho. It'll really impress the ladies (or dudes, if that's your thing).

>Vampire the Masquerade did that over 20 years ago and people still get riled up over it? What are you, the CthulhuTech developer?

Veeky Forums doesn't read or play games.
They just complain about them on here.

Well...he IS right.
It's something a couple of companies did a really long time ago, actually. White Wolf used to do that all the time, I remember it all over the place in oWoD stuff.....

What do people think about the roll-and-assemble-Raises mechanic instead of the old Roll and Keep? I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It seems like Wick wants to cram as much action into each individual roll as possible.

Those people don't really exist. They're like the stories of Jews eating children. Veeky Forums gets upset because they believe those stories, and also feel that anyone criticizing social structures they benefit from (and others suffer under) means they want to LITERALLY murder them.

Also, there's a black guy in the art about Avalon with someone who I assume is Queen Elaine... stepping on some guy's back and sneering at him as he sheathes his blade? But if I'm understanding right, Not!England had a bunch of Moors and Germans come become soldiers.

But your language isn't English, so no one cares about it.

It's got some flaws definitely, but right now my biggest problem is that my players (who are regularly descriptive and inventive enough to have 4+ dice in many rolls) often succeed way too easily and I don't give them enough Opportunities and benefits for Raises above what they need.
Basically the main problem I have right now is that I'm midjudging how many Raises they tend to get.

>But if I'm understanding right, Not!England had a bunch of Moors and Germans come become soldiers.

Actually, the German mercenary thing happened in real life to some degree.
By the American Revolution there were entire mercenary units in the British Army composed of Germans ("Hessians") who were used as light infantry. Amusingly they had more actual success against the Revolutionaries then the Regulars did because they were largely scout and ambush units that could better fight the Americans who kept fucking up supply lines and shit.
Some turned coat and fought for the Revolution because they were promised land, which is why relatively early on New England had such a decent German population.

>Don't torture and don't murder aren't baffling concepts trying to ruin your fun.
You must be new here.
Veeky Forums faps so hard to murder and torture and especially justifying these acts as not only necessary, but morally correct that any game that considers such acts unsavoury immediately becomes a target of revulsion.

You are so close to actual history it hurts.
George the 3rd was also an elector lord in the Holy Roman Empire (the area now known as Germany). Many of his soldiers were his. Not the ones from Hesse. But many others. Also, the "German" populace in "New England" were largely left over Dutch from when New York was New Amsterdam.

I know about Hessians. The Headless Horseman was a Hessian. But this is like pre-colonial era.

I just had an argument earlier today about how killing someone hurting your Wisdom in Mage 2e was a terrible game design choice and that there should be no consequences for killing a hobo and eating his soul.

I actually really like the sound of that and prefer that to 5v1 boss fight, to be honest. Everyone is included and has a role but the personally invested PC gets to feel like they "won" the encounter. That's group play.

John Wick's Hero System horror stories are pretty amazing. He basically had the main villain be the Maxwell Lord type that was backing the hero team. His power was basically "Read the character's sheets, bludgeon them with their disads" with moments like revealing a heroe's identity in front of their grandmother, making her have a heart attack and die.

Yeah, but what does everyone else do while Inigo is dueling Rugen?

What?

>The SJW is strong in 2e.

Looks like someone got triggered by gay people.

Full of pandering, virtue-signaling. It couldn't be more obvious.

Sorte got dumbfucked and made the witches less interesting. Say the name three times, while looking at the target and kiss? Only a Raise? Fuck that's dumb. In 1ed there were feared because they could fuck your luck up by just knowing your name and face. In 2ed the fear is gone - just do not cross any woman wearing black in Vodacce, which will be easy as fuck.

I like it more than 1e but that's because I only got into 1e not that long ago so I don't have this deeply entrenched love of it. The parts of it I dislike are not nearly as extensive as in 1e though there's still some wrist slittingly stupid shit.

I feel like this and some other text were written before the rest of the game. The Assassin background literally gives you hero points for killing people in defense of others.

Or the non-duelist packs a brace of pistols. But yeah, mostly what you said. Though given the way backgrounds work, you can pay the tax and probably still wind up with a mess of interesting advantages. Or just pick Duelist background and use your freed up points to personalize more. I made a duelist with this the other day, and did that and still feel like I have a bit more advantages than I want to keep in mind at all times

>Virtue signalling
This might surprise you, but sometimes people actually CAN care about things. And sometimes signalling your virtues is a way to show to other people that you care about them. It's something to do with human empathy.

What don't you like and what is stupid?

So far I feel that a lot of the stuff seems sort of tacked on, or not fully thought out. All the countries are sort of "stereotype on their sleeve", and the major conflicts don't really feel meaningful. The Inquisition especially feels weird considering it's an excuse to have the Spanish Inquisition in an otherwise Gnostic church, so they're literally part of a religion of knowledge killing people for doing science. The Schism between Objectionist and Vaticine also doesn't seem as meaningful even as Protestant and Catholic.

My main problem with the Backgrounds is that I don't really want any of them. All the ones that have Quirks I like don't have Skills or Advantages I like. I really dislike "package" character creation. It's the same problem I had with Witch Hunters and all the Warhammer systems. I'd rather just get x points to make my own. Which, thankfully unlike Witch Hunters or Warhammer, all the Backgrounds here have the same amount of skill points and Advantages. I'm also not too hot on region locked magic. Why can't someone teach me to eat brains just because I'm from a different country? What if I want to be the lost daughter of a Not!French noble's dalliance with an Avalonian woman who has Porte?

Also, OP here. I went with the gross necromancer. I didn't feel like Hexe fit (since I wanted more to be someone who studies monsters as opposed to fervently destroys the zombies) but I took it anyway. I also took Jenny because gross necromancer prostitutes. I'm also making a Sorte (who's also a Jenny) because after going through the Arcana that concept also kind of interests me.

In the first edition, they were called the Fhideli, or the Cymbar in Vodacce. I don't think they're mentioned in 2nd edition.

>This might surprise you, but sometimes people actually CAN care about things. And sometimes signalling your virtues is a way to show to other people that you care about them. It's something to do with human empathy.

There's a difference between showing people that you care about stuff and pandering, virtue signalling to smell your own fart of "how great of a person I am." We can take the ghays in the book. Why have two homosexual romance pictures? Why not one and the other straight? Wouldn't that appease both crowds? Yes, it would, but this is pandering we are talking about. In almost all the art you can see opposite sex in only two poses - "we are working together" or "I hate the other one's guts". That's it. No hint of romance even.

>Lady Musketeer who was encouraged by her father's legacy and wields his rapier
Sadly, the concept behind what may be the greatest "swashbuckler" in real world history, Julie D'Aubigny, doesn't really work in 7th Sea. Theah is a gender equal society (except in Vodacce). Lady fencers aren't all that rare. Nothing overly unique about being one.

"It's only pandering when it's not pandering to me"
Do you complain if a book has two heterosexual kisses? It's not like there aren't references to heterosexuality scattered throughout the book. I actually haven't seen an explicit homosexual relationship mentioned in the text, only those two posts. At best you've got things like "Jenny" not being gender locked.

She wasn't trying to be unique. She just wanted to be a musketeer. Also, a lot of the individual societies aren't really gender egalitarian. Vesten isn't and neither is the Highlands. I've seen at least one mention of women being looked down on for something. It seems like things are egalitarian but still Masculine-As-Default.

My bad, I think I confused Vesten with Vodacce. Still, a lot of these default to "a man must live by such and such standards".
Also fuck me I did a shitty job of cleaning up that image.

>She wasn't trying to be unique. She just wanted to be a musketeer.
Than what does it matter that she's a lady? Your character concept is "musketeer". In our own history, at times when it was unthinkable for a woman to hold a sword, the very fact that one decided to do so would've been enough to make her famous (that Julie D'Aubigny we've mentioned went on to no longer do that, but lead a life that reads like the biography of Jack Sparrow is completely aside the matter). If gender doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.