So what kind of game is 7th Sea? Set in a swashbuckling mishmash of Renaissance Europe with a healthy dose of fantasy, it tries to emulate the action and excitement of movies like the Three Musketeers or Pirates of the Caribbean. Tales of derring-do, strange sorcery, and courtly intrigue are the order of the day. As the name implies there is a slight focus on shipboard activity but there is nothing to prevent one from running a more grounded game.
Mechanics
The dice system consists of rolling a number of 10-sided dice (d10s) equal your knack level and the relevant attribute. Knacks are basically equivalent to other systems skills. Thus far it is very similar to World of Darkness. There is even 'exploding' rolls when a 10 is rolled on a die where you reroll the die and add the result to the previous total.Where it differs is that you only keep a number of dice equal to your attribute and then total the result. For example, if your attribute is 2 and your knack is 2, you roll 4 dice. You might get 2, 3,8, and 10. You would reroll the 10, perhaps getting a 7 for a final set of results of: 2, 3, 8, and 17. You would keep two dice (the 8 and 17) and add them for a total of 25. This would then be compared to the Target Number for your action.
Most Target Numbers will be 15 or higher so this method strongly favors higher attributes over skill. If you had an attribute of 3 (generally the highest you can start with) you can keep 3 dice and will generally have an easy time of succeeding. Oddly in character creation Attributes come off as cheaper than I would expect, costing 8 points per level while Knacks can cost 1 per level or even 3 in the cases of Advanced Knacks. After character creation it is often cheaper to buy up skills than the now more expensive attributes.
The attributes themselves are: Brawn, Finesse, Resolve, Wits, and Panache.
Brawn covers physical strength, improves melee damage and most importantly how well you deal with flesh wounds. Flesh wounds are the basic damage type of the game. As you accumulate them you must roll Brawn (with no Knacks) against a target number equal to the current total. If you succeed you are fine for now. After combat all flesh wounds vanish. But if you fail you suffer a Dramatic Wound which is more serious.
Finesse covers manual and physical dexterity and is one of the two most important attributes in the game. Most of your active rolls will use this attribute.
Resolve is a character's willpower and also their force of will. It is used to intimidate someone but more importantly it determines how much damage you can absorb. As you accumulate Dramatic Wounds equal to your Resolve your dice stop exploding and if you reach double your Resolve you are knocked out.
Wits is the other key attribute covering mental skills, charm, and your active defense. Characters have a passive defense based on their defensive Knacks that sets their target number to be hit. But if someone succeeds at getting past it and the character has an action readied they can try to beat the enemy's result in an opposed roll of Wits + their defensive Knack.
The final attribute Panache covers style and flair but also how many actions one has in combat. Each die of Panache allows one another action each turn. The way initiative is handled is interesting. Each combatant rolls Panache and the value of the die is when the character acts. So you start with 1 then 2, and so one. Higher totals win ties and actions can be delayed to later (for an active defense). You can even sacrifice two later dice for an interrupt in order to act right now.
All in all I think Panache might be a little weak of an attribute and Finesse a bit strong but I no real problems with the system as far of as that. More troubling to me is the difficulty of making a "skilled" character over one with higher attributes. The grizzled soldier concept is one that finds little traction here.
Target Numbers are usually your opponents Attribute times 5 or their Knack times 5 + 5. So they start low but can be quite high. A player can voluntarily raise the Target Number for their action by declaring a Raise. This increases the difficulty by 5 (or more) but also allows them to do more fantastic stunts like striking at an opponents arm, taking out two Brutes or mooks at once, or adding an unkept die to damage.
I've mentioned 7th Sea's contested rolls before but it bears repeating. When two character are actively contesting each other they both roll against a static difficulty based on their opponents resistance. If both fail then the struggle continues. Otherwise either the winner or if both succeed then the one with the higher result wins. While I found it interesting, I think the additional complication was probably not worth the extra complexity.
One edge characters get in 7th Sea are Drama Dice. Each character starts with a pool of dice equal to their lowest attribute (further discouraging low attributes) and they can gain more as a reward for acting in the style of the game or generally adding to the enjoyment of the session. Players can spend these dice to add to a roll. These are kept dice which means the result is added directly to the result and can be quite handy in changing a failure into a success. One thing I dislike about the system is that they also double as a form of experience with any unspent dice for a given adventure turning into experience. I find people tend to hoard these kinds of bonuses anyway as a way of staving off a character's death and I would rather not give them additional reasons.
Character Creation
- I'll play the second guy from the right.
Sword school are probably worthwhile bundling a host of advantages and skills along with access to a distinctive fencing style and otherwise unobtainable Knacks. To be fully useful however, I think they need the Game-Master to remain aware of the advantage and provide opportunities for some of the abilities to be used such as the ability to (legally) challenge someone to a duel or see through the tricks of a fellow duelist of the school.
I mentioned Knack which are like Skills in other systems. The term Skill in 7th Sea refers a group of related Knacks. You buy Skills which grant an automatic rank of 1 in each of its constituent basic knacks. So Fencing gives Attack (Fencing) and Parry (Fencing) at level 1. These can then be raised with more of your initial character points. Some Skills also include Advanced Knacks. For example, Courtier includes advanced Knack of Diplomacy, Politics, and Scheming. These start at level 0 and you must spend 3 character points (as opposed to the normal 1) to raise them a level.
This strongly discourages one from playing any skilled character like a Politician, Scientist, or even Wrestler. After character creation it is much cheaper to just use experience to buy up those skills (which are then treated like normal skills). This is fairly frustrating if you don't want to play d'Artagnan but one of the other Musketeers.
Given my relatively limited time for gaming (every other week per system), I favor game systems that let you start as skilled characters at the beginning rather than have you spend time as an unskilled neophyte (unless the action of the game is supposed to be unskilled people in dangerous situations). So a system that encourages unskilled high attribute characters seems poorly designed for me.
Subsystems
7th Sea includes a number of subsystems. some of them we got to play with to a greater or lesser extent.The big one was ship combat. We tried three systems in my wife's game but never found one we liked. The first presented in the book a very tactical but suffered the downsides of war gaming (which is to say it took a long time) and failed to maintain our naval expert disbelief. The second system was a very simplified chase mechanic which as most chases devolved into repetitive dice rolling with little excitement.
The third system we tried was actually a homebrew that tried to abstract combat while keeping it simple. It seemed to work better but that was probably helped by the fact that we were seeking to board the ship rather than disable it.
I think to a certain extent no realistic system would satisfy all of our players. In our particular game, we had a player more focused on her character with seafaring and combat a distant concern, my character whose interest in taking ships was more on the boarding side, and a player who was ex-navy and likely would have enjoyed a super realistic portrayal of the combats. So we had two players whose only care for the combat was to see what shape we ended up in when we stormed the ship and another who wanted to pound the ship into submission.
Moving to the magic system, we did get to encounter two types of sorcery in my wife's game and I encountered another at GenCon. The magic systems are fairly flavorful. They rarely seemed to be game changers though which was strange given their high costs. For the character points spent a player could get an extra die on all of their attributes. The big issue for me was half sorcery vs. full sorcery. Half sorcery seems to give most of the advantages at onset for half the cost. Full sorcery only reaches its full potential after a dozen or more sessions. I don't like front loading costs.
The reputation system was amusing. Basically as you do daring deeds, save people, and demonstrate you are a hero you gain reputation points. These can eventually generate dice you can use like Drama Dice in social situations. All in all it was pretty fun especially if you are playing something of a scoundrel where you want to keep a negative reputation. I constantly found myself having to do dark deeds to maintain a low reputation against my otherwise heroic activities. I consider that a feature and not a flaw.
Setting
The default setting is the thing I probably have the least experience with. It appears to be a strange mixture Europe from the 1500s to the 1700s with some added magic and the serial numbers filed off. England, called Avalon, still has a Queen on the throne. Castille, covering what should be Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy is a very religious country. France, called Montaigne, has its Musketeers while Russia or Ussura is full of snow and shape shifters. Venice or Vodacce is still a merchant empire though Eisen or Germany has splintered into feuding nations. A little oddly the Hanseatic League and the Norse have been lumped together in the Vendels.
All in all the cherry picking of history is amusing and understandable. Like many fantasy settings it doesn't stand up to logical prodding but this is a game that focuses more on action than historical accuracy or realism.
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