Other Games to Play: 7th Sea Second Edition

So you are cancelling you Dullards & Dumpsterfires subscription and are wondering what to play next. If you in the mood for an entire change of pace I recommend 7th Sea Second Edition from John Wick/Chaosium (https://www.chaosium.com/7th-sea/)

Imagine a RPG where your characters are special, heroes, the center of attention. Are you tired of writing pages of backstory and getting in touch with your PC’s mind and soul only to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and roll a 1. We all love our DM/GM/Judge for running games but who hasn’t missed a plot important roll and watched the story moving a direction that wasn’t fun. Do you want more agency? Would you like a more cinematic style game? Are you sick of math?

Full disclosure time: There are three modules for sale for this system on DriveThruRPG with a fourth entering play testing in early 2023. It is my FAVORITE system of all time (over my 40 years of playing TTRPGs) I will present some of the negative aspects of this game in my recommendation, but I am biased and I don’t care. You have been warned.

7th Sea 2e creates opportunities for all the best parts of TTPRGs to happen and cuts out all the accounting, minutia, and rolling constantly for every possible activity that might incur a minor story change. Your PC is the hero. You have a story to tell and the GM paints the backgrounds for that story to unfold. You work together with other players and the GM to build a combined narrative where those oh so memorable things happen that your group talks about for years after the game’s over.

“Remember that time we were supposed to find the holy book in the library and rumor told that it would not be read by the unworthy and you put a lit cigar in your sleeve so that everyone would think you found the book, but were unworthy and the villain bought your ruse, took the wrong book, and ran away! That was awesome…”

This game is probably as far away mechanically as it gets from 5e and other d20 systems. The GM sets a scene. Describes the who, what, where, and why. Also pulls back the curtain a bit and lets the players know what’s supposed to happen at the end. Players declare “an approach” using their attributes and skills to build a dice pool. You chuck a mittfull of dice and based on how well the player rolls they change the outcome, create something new, solve a mystery, gain treasures, or any other one of the infinite possibilities that players will think up.

This is one of the biggest challenges for 5e players moving to play 7th Sea. Agency. My musketeer is at a costume ball guarding the marquess because she is wearing a priceless tiara tonight. Thieves are going to try to steal it. The player spends the night dancing with many party goers looking for people who don’t belong and when he finds the thief he twirls her over the balcony railing into the waiting patty wagon to haul her to the dungeons. Another party member is going to keep watch and help the musketeer pick the right dance partners.

The game is much closer to board games like Atlas Games Once Upon a Time or Smirk and Dagger’s Before There Were Stars. Players have to enjoy storytelling and GMs have to be comfortable with sharing the narrative. You will not like this game if you enjoy a more traditional listen, roll, react style of play.

Character progression is based on a person story with a number of steps to achieve a goal. It’s all very planned out and the player knows what needs to happen to progress. You don’t get XP for being violent and you don’t hit some magic threshold then get a menu of cool new tricks. You want your character to develop better social graces to overcome growing up on a farm so you plan to increase your Panache trait, so you and GM work out the steps you’ll need to do to accomplish it. That makes way more thematic sense versus “I’m done spearing 31 kobolds in the forest and *poof* I now can cast a new spell.”

Encumbrance, inventory, penny pinching, resting, all the game slowing mechanical stuff required in a 5e style game. Forget it. You are a musketeer in the service of the marquess. You probably have a sword, a musket, a uniform, a place to sleep, and ate a nice breakfast. There’s no requirement in 7th Sea to simulate all the mundane boring tasks associate with just being alive. You also do not need to stipulate exactly all the things you are doing to ensure you have the right equipment. Maybe for heightened drama the GM will say your musket is across the room or you forgot the key you need to enter the room. These are exceptions to enhance the game versus the oh so common “well you didn’t say you put torches in your bag so you stupidly walked 4 miles to the cave and then 200 feet into the darkness before you realized you were missing 6 torches…“

This is a narrative game with scenes like a movie. Each scene progresses the story. It plays much faster than a 5e game. You roll one handfull of dice and use raises to achieve an outcome. Combat/action scenes may let you roll two or three handfuls of dice, but that’s it. You’re not going spend 2 hours rolling the outcome of a 2 minute bar brawl. Just like in the Austin Powers movie henchmen without name tags are easily dispatched. A single raise takes them out. Other systems would have you track the AC, HP, and other stats for Nameless bar parton #2. NBP#2’s only function is to get punched out and give the PC some XP. He’s a speed bump and does not deserve all the accounting and stat track and die rolling. In 7th Sea we pick Brawn+Brawl roll our pool, make raises, spend them to dispatch goons. Done. A 2 minute bar brawl takes 2 minutes IRL. You don’t get enough raises to beat the goons you can try again (after taking wounds) or call it a scene and get tossed out of the bar.

As a GM you plan a session for a few scenes. You and your players craft the story that unfolds in the scenes. You can leave it on a cliff hanger if you like. I enjoy doing that to my group. It has an easy on/off ramp that help players acclimatize to the game. Some 5e games I’ve played we stopped in the middle of round 5 of combat with many more rounds to go. It’s harder to get back into the game and get excited about what’s happening. Try pausing the Witcher in mid-fight and return next week to press play again.

Lore and materials

7th Sea Second Edition was once the most supported Kickstarter in history. It has been sold to Chaosium and is still being sold/supported. It does not get the love it deserves on the convention scene. There is an Asian expansion that is soon to be printed and there are several hardcover/pdf splat books that offer more background material on the setting and named NPCs who do get stats (vs poor NBP#2 above)

The setting is a Western European Earth allegory in the Renaissance period with a slightly more enlightened central church, magic, and a long lost/dead advanced race as evidenced by ruins and artifacts. Fiction that will help you get into the mood/setting includes: Alexander Dumas (Three Musketeers, Man in the Iron Mask) Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) Sabatini (Captain Blood) or watch The Prince Bride and Pirates of the Caribbean.

The nations are all fairly close to their real world companion. Ireland = Innish, France = Montaigne, Italy = Vodacce. You won’t need to read thousands of pages of lore to get a feel for how to portray a Castillian (i.e. Spanish) swordsman seeking revenge for his murdered father.

There is enough material in the core rules to build and play characters. The extra books give more depth and background. You get more material to work with building your back story and planning growth stories. Some of the books open up new lands (Africa, the Caribbean and the New World) You do not need the extra books to play but they can be helpful.

The downside

I warned you that I’d be glowing and gushy and all fan-boi about 7th Sea. The down side? None! Oh okay. There is a missing element of risk in this game. That 1 you roll that kills off a character with an eleven page backstory in the first 10 minutes of play does add risk for the roll and make it more visceral. That anxiety around meaningful rolls is missing in 7th Sea. You will plan out your characters end/death with the GM during session zero. There are ways for the GM to kill you. They are not easy mechanically requiring a lot of circumstances to take place. So that’s #1, it’s a mostly risk-free game.

Player agency works well with players who want agency and wish to add to the story. If you have passive players who do listen-roll-react this game will not be fun. Those people engaged with the story will be constantly dragging the L-R-R player along because the later won’t be contributing creatively to the story. No group is 100% creative/active/engaged every session, but a few folks at the table besides the GM need to be creative and engaged. #2 L-R-R players will be unhelpful playing scenes

#3 is alpha gamers. If you have a growth story and need to sail on a ship as a step in your story and you are an alpha… You’ll spend your raises and drag the story away from a common goal or out of the GM’s planned space. This can fragment a game. It’s a task the GM has here that is not present in other games. Crafting scenes that can satisfy a few characters stories and move the overall story along.

Magic breaks the game by design. From the mouth of the maker (John Wick) he built the game that way. Magic should be this amazing culminating moment of the story. Firearms are also not mechanically correct in the game. Same situation as magic, Mr Wick said he wanted that tense moment when a pistol gets drawn and pointed to be a severe and dramatic moment.

Conclusion

Even before the OGL idiocy I was telling people about this game and I stand by my previous declaration: EVERYONE SHOULD TRY THIS GAME at least once. You can see the game played by the author on YouTube (search: Starter Kit 7th Sea) and download for free the 7th Sea quickstart from the Chaosium web site. This is the best game for creative groups who like telling stories together without becoming part time accountants and mathematicians.