From the article archive
7th Sea Players Guide
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.
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.