Well, I just finished working my way through the IMAGINE PLAYER’S GUIDE,
and it feels like I’m being punished because now I have to review it.

If you dropped copies of the old-school Keep on The Borderlands and the
movie Dragonheart into a blender with a dash of Rolemaster supplements,
you’d end up with IMAGINE.

Yes. It’s really that bad. And the real shame is that the book has
very high publication values–very nice binding, very good cover and
excellent paper stock. The editing is passable, which is to say I only
ran into spelling and grammatical errors every few pages and not
paragraphs.

What escapes me is what Imagine Role Playing, Inc., the company who has
created the IMAGINE PLAYER’S GUIDE, thinks they are going to accomplish
with this tome other than creating a doorstop. Luckily, I have a copy
of their press kit, where they quote the CEO as saying, “We are giving
gamers what they have always wanted; a fun, flexible, creative system.
Not only do players have the ability to try anything they want in a
game, but they also have the mechanics to back it up. It marks a new
day for role playing games.”

Intrigued? Imagine also says it will “…(raise) the bar for other
companies in the gaming industry. Imagine will lead the role playing
game industry into the new millennium with a new and greater degree of
excellence.”

Now, I will quote the entirety of their entry on Dark Elves, a major
race that characters can select to play. This is *all* of the material
in the 300+ page book:

“Dark Elves are cruel and enjoy watching the downfall and pain of
others. Their haunting songs proclaim the deeds of a sullen and somber
race. They like to play mind games and dark tricks whenever they can
get away with them. Long outcast from the other Elven cultures, Dark
Elves prefer any home which hides them from the sun. They are known for
their strong innate magical abilities and their favor (sic) of slinking
about at night.

The Dark Elves are hated and despised by most other races, including
their Elven cousins. The Dark Dwarves are the exception and deal with
these Elves on occasion. These Elves shun contact with most other races
except to plunder and take slaves. As a race they tend to be of any
evil alignment.”

A Dark Elf is also illustrated next to this expansive description, who
is black and looks remarkably similar to Drow from TSR products.

I’m now going to abandon the review format entirely and just appeal to
Imagine Role Playing, Inc. Please take the huge amounts of money you
must have on hand to put out such a well-bound book and create something
worthwhile. It is the late 90’s–advertising that a game is great
because it has 12 attributes, 18 races, 26 classes, 340 skills and 450
spells is simply not enough. Rolemaster did this schtick already, and
I.C.E. still went bankrupt–IMAGINE’s 4 page index of rule charts is not
going to save it.

Players are looking for two things–shockingly cool ideas and rules that
let them best feel those ideas close to the skin. IMAGINE is all about
modeling all possible situations that could arise in dungeon crawls, and
the industry has known that doesn’t work for at least a decade. I’m
pro-dungeons, but no one needs this book–it’s all been said before.

The Verdict

I’ll cut to the chase. Don’t buy it, don’t play it, don’t encourage
this to continue. Even a munchkin game like Synnibar encourages an
interesting setting and inventiveness of some sort, and IMAGINE does
nothing. If you like your dwarves stubborn, your elves secretive and
your treasure in gold pieces, play Dungeons and Dragons or GURPS
Fantasy. Don’t play IMAGINE.

Since the dawn of RPGs, publishers have tried to produce a viable
swashbuckling-themed RPG. GDW’s En Garde was one of the first
post-D&D RPGs to hit the market. 7th Sea aims to succeed where others
have failed.

The Setting

7th Sea is set in the world of Theah, which draws heavily from real
world Europe much like Warhammer FRP. The basic archetypes of
Britain, Germany, France, etc, are there though the names are different and
the geography is slightly reworked. The setting works on a conceptual level.
There’s enough baggage associated with each nationality that beginners can
get the gist of the setting, yet there is enough room for magic, legends,
and supernatural creatures to fit into the mix.

There’s quite a lot of tension present in Theah, which translates into lots
of adventuring opportunities. No two nations are on great terms, yet after a
period of extended warfare no one is quite ready for another open conflict.
Diplomacy and privateering are the weapons of choice in Theah. In addition,
Theah is riddled with ruins left by the long dead Syrne civilization, giving
dungeon crawlers plenty of grist for the adventure mill.

My main complaint with the setting is that it lacks focus and cohesion. For
example, Theah’s dominant religion, the Vaticine Church, is opposed to magic
in all forms, yet the nobles of at least one staunchly pro-Vaticine nation
practice sorcery. Supernatural creatures are present, but we have no idea
how common they are and what role they play in the setting, outside of
cannon fodder. Also, in its attempt to cover so many different types of
adventures, 7th Sea fails to cover any one type in enough detail to
satisfy me. Sailors and the sea get the bulk of attention, yet it is
completely possible to run a 7th Sea game without your characters’
setting foot on a ship. Compounding matters, the other avenues available for
gaming receive no where near enough attention to really make them come to
life. Perhaps this is rectified in the GM’s Book, but the Player’s Guide
comes off as a sort of haphazard patchwork of setting information.

The Mechanics

7th Sea’s basic mechanics work well enough. Players roll a number of
d10s equal to a trait plus a skill, keep a number equal to their trait, and
sum the dice. Let’s say I have a finesse of 3 and a sword skill of 2. I’d
roll 5 d10s for an attack, keep the 3 highest rolls, and add them together.
The result has to beat a target number in order for the action to succeed.
Overall, a rather simple but flexible mechanic. The basic system works well
and I like it.

That being said, I had problems in three areas: character creation, drama
dice, and magic. Character creation works like GURPS. Players start with 100
points to spend on their traits (brawn, finesse, resolve, wits, panache),
skills, and advantages. The system is rather easy to use, but I believe that
a lot of options are seriously overpriced. Magic is very expensive, yet the
magical spells available are by no means impressive. Virtues are largely
useless, yet they cost 10 points. Virtues are heroic characteristics, such
as courageous or willful. The designers went so far as to include almost a
full page of text explaining why virtues are so cool. Call my cynical, but
if you have to spend that many words convincing people that something is
supposed to be an advantage, it probably isn’t. Basically, virtues give you
an extra die or some funky affect for actions related to your virtue. If you
want to get that bonus, you have to spend a drama die.

Which brings me to my next problem with the system: drama dice. Drama dice
try to do too much and end up just restricting characters too much. They’re
the latest manifestation of the dreaded god Game Balance, upon whose altar
many promising games have been dashed. Drama dice give you an extra little
boost during an adventure, usually an extra die that you can add to the
result of a skill check. You start out with a total number of drama dice
equal to your lowest trait, usually two. Now, if that was all drama dice
were used for, I wouldn’t have a problem with the system. But the designers
decided to turn drama dice into a sort of ubermechanic. Not only do you
spend drama dice to get a bonus to a skill check, but you must also spend
them to activate a virtue or cast a spell. Now, this still isn’t so bad, but
here comes the real kick in the crotch: drama dice are turned in for
experience points at the end of an adventure. Yup, that’s right. The guy who
sat in the back and snoozed during the adventure gets more XP than the mage
who slung spells and did all the work. Basically, characters that don’t try
anything really heroic get rewarded, and sorcerers completely get the shaft,
since they have to spend drama dice in order to simply use their spells
(which aren’t always guaranteed to work). The idea is to stop any one
character from playing too critical a role in a game. Unfortunately, instead
of giving everyone cool toys to even the playing field, the designers
decided to cripple everyone’s toys and leave us all with nothing. On top of
that, since drama dice are based on your lowest trait, players are quite
unsubtlely forced to waste XP improving stats. I can’t play a sickly, weak
mage with a brawn of one and hope to keep up with the rest of the party as
the campaign progresses, since everyone else gets more drama dice and thus
experience. I’m basically coerced into wasting XPs on boosting my brawn.

I admire the designers’ attempt to make a blanket mechanic to cover a lot of
different topics in one swoop, but it really fails miserably. The one cool
thing about drama dice is that the GM gets them too, and he can use them to
activate a character’s hubris, which are character flaws such as righteous
or greedy. Unfortunately, a character can’t have both a virtue and a hubris.
Some of the coolest heroes around have some sort of fault, from Fafhrd and
the Gray Mouser to the X-Men’s Wolverine.

Finally, magic. Magic is alive and kicking in the world of 7th Sea.
Only those of noble blood can use magic, and each of the five types of magic
reflects upon the nation that it originates from. The viking-esque Vendels,
for example, use a system of rune magic. The basic idea is pretty neat, but
it just isn’t well fleshed out. The magic systems just don’t come alive. I
get the sense that they were added to the game after most of the background
was worked out. For example, I have no idea how a sorcerer learns magic,
what the average person thinks of magic, and so on. For the 7th Sea
game I’m about to join, I created a sorcerer, yet I have no idea if my
character can cast a spell in public without fear of getting lynched. The
magic system is intriguing, but I feel that it could have used an extra 10
pages of background text that integrated magic into the 7th Sea
setting. And of course, drama dice mess up everything. The mage with the
most drama dice gets to cast more spells, with no relation to the levels of
his magic skills or ANYTHING else. The mage with the lower stat (no matter
what stat it is) casts fewer spells. An 80 year old archmage with a brawn of
one can cast fewer spells than an apprentice whose lowest stat is two. Of
the five systems presented only one, rune magic, is fleshed out and
playable.

I’m going to play in a 7th Sea game, and it will be interesting to see how
the GM changes things. If I were to run 7th Sea, I would:

• Work out an alternative spell point system rather than relying on drama
  dice. To make up for this, give each sorcerer only one drama die at the
  start of each game. I’d take the rules for casting rune magic and extend
  them to all five magic systems.
  
• Give each player a virtue for free and let them take a hubris for -10
  points. Instead of using drama dice to activate a virtue, let each player
  use it once per session for free, then charge them a drama die for each
  additional use.
  
• Drama dice cannot be cashed in for experience points.
  

That right there would fix 80% of my problems with the 7th Sea game.
The other 20% could be fixed by a reorganized, better structured background
text. Dump the fast start rules and give me a better picture of everyday
life in Theah, a map of a city, anything that turns it from a general
overview to a living, breathing setting.

The Verdict

I have mixed feelings about 7th Sea. Too many times, I found myself
excited about something, only to read three or four more pages and find
something that completely deflated my excitement. The rules seem a little
heavy handed in places and try too much to control and reign in character
abilities. I found myself wrestling with the character creation system,
trying to coax the character concept I wanted out of it rather than finding
cool ideas springing from the system a la Usagi Yojimbo or
Shadowrun. Still, Theah is an intriguing setting. My frustration
arises from my belief that a very cool and very playable system is here,
buried under some poor design and editing decisions. I am not about to give
up on 7th Sea, but I feel that this is an unfocused, rushed product
that needs a reedit and reorganization. There are quite a few grammatical
and logical errors throughout the text. For example, according to the book
there are 60 seconds in the Thean hour.

Overall, I can recommend 7th Sea with some reservations. The game’s
basic ideas and systems are great, but I think the execution needs some
work. If you’re looking for swashbuckling adventures mingled with magic,
check it out.