What's Veeky Forums's opinion on 7th sea...

What's Veeky Forums's opinion on 7th sea? I've been considering giving it a try because I'm a sucker for some swashbuckling heroes, but I've heard the gameplay can be a little wonky.

Are there any other systems that support that style of play?

SHUT THE FUCK UP AND PLAY IT MOTHER FUCKER!

Classic, not 2e. It's better, and has the superior roll-keep system. Get you some Three Musketeers or Errol Flynn. Get you some Fuego or Porte. Go to Cathay or Vestenmjinjaginjar.

What's the difference between 1st and 2nd edition? I'm using pdfs so I can use whichever, I'm just curious.

>John Wick

Dropped.

The setting is cliche as fuck, the core mechanics are kind of okay but the rest is just retarded. The game is dumb-ass wankery overall. Could be done just as well with a Dungeon World hack which I know some people on Reddit were working on.

I thought the setting was pretty good. Familiar enough so the players don't get lost in it, alien enough so there's new worlds to explore.

>Dumb-ass wankery
Yeah, but why? You just said the core mechanics were alright, so what part of the game drags it down that far? (I've got a few ideas but I'm interested to hear what you think)

Namely the dice rolling. 1e uses the d10 roll-keep of L5R but the 2e uses a different system closer to the Shadowrun. They had to change due to copyright reasons since White Wolf owns the roll-keep apparently.
The cool thing about the roll-keep system is it allows for more roleplay opportunities. Say you are in an honor duel and your rolling 6k3 and you roll some low numbers and two tens. You can chose to take the lower numbers just to nick the fucker because you want to embarrass him more than kill him. That sort of thing.
You missed the point then. The setting is supposed to be "cliche". It's an omage to things like Errol Flynn, Zorro, and the Three Musketeers. The bygone age of High Seas Adventure, Swashbuckling, and old pulpy Exploration and Dark Continent stuff with some Lovecraft tossed in for good measure. It's only as cliche as you let it be.

That does make a lot of sense. Is that the main difference between the two? I'm comparing the pdfs as we speak, but its kinda hard to compare two things you know nothing about.

2e makes some minor tweaks to the fluff, adds a couple countries. Nothing super major. 2e is also way more suited for narrative games, if that's your thing. It's kind of hard to fail and/or die, but your not supposed to since you're badass heroes. I like it, others don't.

I really like the roll and keep system, but 1e doesn't do it as well as 4e L5R, so I don't overly miss it anyway. Also, 1e has a little more John Wick-ness in it, as in adversarial gming and "double edged swords". But he has gotten better lately and 2e doesn't have the stink of John Wick on it as much as 1e

So basically decide if you like crunch and danger, or something very light and super heroic. Neither is inherently better.

>You missed the point then. The setting is supposed to be "cliche".

Oh what was I thinking? Obviously if the game is shit, it was MEANT to be shit. Good one, you sure put one over my head, I'm such a pleb. Obviously you can make a game shit if that was the entire point. That way no one can criticize it, because it was SUPPOSED to be that way.

Fuck off.

For the most part. As with all older stuff, there is more to work with in the 1e too, but that come with it's own problems... Like Drexel.

That said there's alot of cool stuff, too, you just need to have a DM with a head for the source material and a good plan. Most will tell you to start with an idea with one of the countries in mind and make sure everybody is from it or at least from near it, but our first campaign had a Vodacce, a Ussaran, a Eisen, two Cressents, and a Cathayan.

You fuck off. If you don't have an appreciation for the source material that's fine but if your too stupid to figure out that "I don't like/understand something" doesn't equal "It's shit" you can go crawl back to the dirt mound you live in and die of some easily curable disease, you fucking troglodyte.

The setting: Fantasy Age of Sail.

- No New World, no Carribbean
- Just one continent surrounded by ocean
- Anachronistic vikings... "because"
- Ancient hi-tech alien insect race (srsly)

(at least it does have interesting characters and plotlines, tho)

It has the Carribbean. I forget what it's called though. Like "Midnight Archepelago" or summat.

Right, and it's small and totally peripheral to the main setting. Almost as if John Wick has no understanding of how real-world geography facilitated his source material.

The 2nd edition massively changed the setting. The vikings are still there for some reason but now there are a Caribbean, a New World, an Africa (you forgot to mention the previous setting didn't have that either), no more aliens and also the Polish and the Greek which didn't exist in the previous one. As if to recompense somehow, the Dutch are gone.

Meh. I'll be honest with you; The core European stuff was dense and rich enough that it didn't need it. DESU the eastern stuff was nice but I don't think it was all that necessary either. Middle east sure. Could have included Greece though.

...
. . .
Did Veeky Forums just turn T.B.H. into DESU?

If there is only one continent, with fairly regular coastlines (a few tiny islands don't count), then there is no reason for prominent maritime traditions and piracy to develop- which is supposed to be the primary focus of the entire setting.

I can't say anything about the 2nd edition, but that sounds like a move in the right direction.

I think it's been that way for a while, desu.

If you care about that kind of thing. I'm more Rule of Cool.

Vendel weren't Dutch; they were post-Reform Sweden, with Vesten being pre-Reform Sweden.
And seriously, if you can't into Original 7th Sea, you're too boring to live. (Which makes Veeky Forums a pretty good home for you, honestly.)

>t. John Wick

>post-Reform Sweden
Who just so happened to all have Dutch names and a capital city based on Amsterdam and sail around in fluyts being the premier sea merchants of Western not-Europe (effectively) ruled by businesspeople.

If none of that convinces you, there's also, you know, the fact that it's explicitly mentioned in the books.

Nobody thought making the vikings and the Dutch the same people was SMART, but saying they weren't is pretty damn delusional.

DMing a 7th Sea (1E) campaign right now and have before. Not a fan of 2E. It's honestly a pretty fun time if you enjoy the source material it's referencing and can handle a bit of handwaving on your part. Basic rules are easy to come by and roll+keep is fun, but infrequent rules that you'd like to have but won't need all the time are scattered across like 30 PDFs. Honestly though, if you just houserule about half of it you'd probably be in the ballpark anyway because John Wick is a dipshit that gets hyperautistic about crunch at times and leaves it to the DM's discretion at others. The lore's a bit weird because at first glance it's swashbuckling adventure, then you look a little deeper it's cutthroat political intrigue, then you sift further and it turns into eldritch horror. There's a retarded number of plot hooks you can get into and tiptoe over. You might like it or you might not, I don't know what you're into, but I'd recommend it either way, if only because it's something you don't see every day and if you have a group willing to try it then you've got a rare opportunity to try something different.

damn, the bait is weak in here

2e is a better setting because it is more cohesive. Fight me, nerds.

Avoid unarmed combat and grapples if 1e.

>I'm using pdfs
can we get some DL links for these?

How do I fix 1st edition?

How do I then combined it with the new geography and cultures of 2nd edition to produce a non-shit 7th sea?

I honestly prefer 2e quite a bit over 1e.

2e's a little strange as a system, but it's wonderful at conveying the fast-paced swashbuckling high adventure kind of style of narrative that 7th Sea is all about.

Meanwhile, 1e's just a super broken version of L5R with awful character creation rules and a skill list that was designed by a madman.

t.b.h
f.a.m
s.m.h

desu
senpai
baka

>Say you are in an honor duel and your rolling 6k3 and you roll some low numbers and two tens. You can chose to take the lower numbers just to nick the fucker because you want to embarrass him more than kill him

Wouldn't you do that by picking the higher numbers, and using Raises for the extra effects?

>a skill list that was designed by a madman.

This, so much this. I was excited when I started reading it and thought that I could just pick up 'Spy' and do spy stuff as a skill; it seemed totally fitting for a swashbuckling game to be a broad archetype. But it's all subcategorized into basic knacks and advanced knacks, and practically nobody has any skill in anything nautical because the game absolutely does not want you to do anything on the ocean, it wants you to be barbers and courtiers. On that note, the naval combat is a pile of hot garbage.

What IS the seventh sea anyway?

Opalescent jizz of the gods as far as the eye can see.