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7th Sea: Players' Guide and 7th Sea: Game Masters' Guide

by Jennifer Wick, John Wick, and Kevin Wilson with additional writing by Marcelo Figueroa, Patrick Kapera, Jim Pinto, Ree Soesbee, Rob Vaux, and Dave Williams

Alderac Entertainment Group

256 pages each book, perfect bound

$29.95 for each book

Grade: C+

Review by Lisa Padol

Playtesters: Avram Grumer, Fred Herman, Joshua Kronengold, Matt Stevens

Email Consultant: Chris Murray

Other Consultants: Manny Jacobowitz, Kevin Maroney

My players and I all like this game, and I hope to run a 7th Sea campaign. Nevertheless, the game is suffers from several problems. Its saving grace is that many of the mechanics work very well. Of course, it doesn't hurt that I like the genre and the setting.

A. The Setting

One criticism launched against Legend of the Five Rings is that it plunders Japanese history and culture taking what it chooses and leaving the rest, the creators being too lazy either to be original or to do enough research to be historically accurate. I have heard it claimed that L5R's defenders might feel differently if it were their own culture that was being played fast and loose with, rather than the culture of the exotic orient.

Now, 7th Sea puts that statement to the test with a setting clearly modeled closely on Europe. On the one hand, I understand some of the reasons for the combination of the historical and the ahistorical. The authors have a default to fall back on, but need not stick slavishly to our history. On the other hand, all the near matches get annoying. Not offensive, but one wants to say, "Just call it France and make the King Louis XIV already!"

The blending of historical and ahistorical tends to produce worlds where the authors do not take into account the logical consequences of their changes. This is true of Theah, the world of 7th Sea.

It is a world of magic, a world with mostly Renaissance level technology. The history reads like someone's idea of the Good Parts strung together. It has charm; I, too, think that it would have been neat if Queen Elizabeth I had lived at the same time as the Sun King. Of course, in Theah, Elizabeth is called Elaine, and France is Montaigne. And the land is different. China, er, Cathay, is blocked by a wall of fire, and the New World has apparently not been discovered. But it's still similar to our world. There are equivalents of Christianity and Islam, but no Judaism. Except that priests can marry. Oh, and women can be priests. Women can be adventurers too. And there is magic.

The authors try to curtail the potential effects of magic, but they seem far less imaginative than my players, who came up with devastating things to do with it. True, teleporters can't simply make a bomb move into the middle of an army. But they could fight their way to the middle of the army, ignite the bomb, and teleport away. Or they could get a magical anchor planted on the enemy general, teleport to him, kill him or hand him a live grenade, and teleport out. Surely, such tactics would be used, despite priestly disapproval, changing warfare and history to something far more different than our history?

In short, the basic problem here is that, given the changes from our world, Theah is too similar to it. Moreover, some of the more important changes, like women being allowed to become priests and priests being allowed to marry, are mentioned only in passing in the GM's Guide, making it too likely that PCs will "learn" things they would logically have known for years. The material on the world needs better organization.

That said, I must admit I find Theah addictive. Matt would prefer either using our Europe or a totally different world, but the rest of us are content with Theah. Indeed, Fred reports that he likes the background much better now that he's bought and read all of the Players' Guide.

B. Character Creation

Most of the Players' Book describes character creation, a fairly lengthy process not helped by having only one copy of the rules. Fred was quickly fed up with the complexity and got Josh to do the basic character creation for him. Avram noted that there was a lot of page flipping and commented that 7th Sea's character creation was more complicated than GURPS'. I disagree, but it certainly takes some time, and parts of the character creation process are unnecessarily confusing.

For example, one does not buy what is commonly called a "skill" in other games. One buys one or more professions, each of which contains several skills. So far, so good. However, the professions are called "skills", and what is commonly considered a "skill" is called a "knack". All of us got confused by this at one point or another. Calling the "skills" "professions" and the "knacks" "skills" would have helped.

Character creation uses a points build system. Players have 100 points to spend on five Traits (stats -- Brawn, Finesse, Panache, Resolve, and Wits), skills/professions, Advantages, and Backgrounds. Backgrounds are what most RPGs would consider disadvantages, such as Nemesis, Debt, or Amnesia. In 7th Sea, you pay points for these, but gain extra experience points in any session in which your disadvantage plays a significant part. This system discourages loading a PC down with disadvantages in an attempt to minimax and makes a start on convincing players to choose disadvantages for their role-playing possibilities.

Unfortunately, this commendable goal is partly undermined by the system of Arcana. You may take either pay points for an Arcana (the Classicist within me grumbles that the singular should be "Arcanum")--a Virtue--or gain points for one--a Hubris. This may only be done once, only at character creation, and you may never change your Arcana. The only way to gain extra points for character creation is to take a Hubris.

My four players and I created two characters each. Not one single character out of ten had a Virtue. They all had a Hubris. I asked the playtesters why none of them had taken a Virtue. They said that the Virtues cost too much, essentially costing 20 points because you pay 10 and you lose 10 for the Hubris you may no longer take. I pointed out that the authors acknowledged this in the Players' Guide, but they maintained that the Virtues were still cheap for the price.

"They lie," said Josh, succinctly.

Or, at least, they have failed to convince this gaming group.

Much more experimentation was done with skills/professions. You can buy as many of these as you can afford the points for. Two areas get special attention: Swordsmanship and Sorcery. I'll get into the specifics in a minute; for now, the authors deserve praise for not saying that a character cannot be both a full-blooded sorcerer and a trained swordsman or woman. If you're willing to pay the points, you can do this. Your character will be spread very thin, and will be at a disadvantage, but, if she has friends, the character is still viable. I speak from experience: My sword-wielding Fate Witch is confident of survival so long as her back is guarded by her dear, less specialized friend, who easily defeated her in a duel despite being wounded from another duel fought immediately before.

While I can understand not being able to learn a knack separately from its skill/profession in character creation, in play, I think it should be possible to learn, say, the Balance knack without having to learn how to be a sailor. Coachmen don't have it? And one should not have to buy the Pugilism or Athlete skill/profession to get the nigh essential footwork knack. More on that below.

The Players' Guide has several character templates. These are helpful, although a couple of oddities slipped past the editors. For example, one template lists the Arcana "Star Crossed (62)." I have no idea what the number 62 is supposed to signify.

The blank character sheets have a couple of different fronts and backs which can be mixed and matched for PCs who are sorcerers, swordsmen, both, or neither. The sheets are very well organized, lacking only one thing: a space to keep track of a PC's drama dice.

C. General System

Players roll a number of d10s equal to their knack plus its controlling trait, keeping a number of dice equal to the trait. These are totaled and any die that rolls a 10 is re-rolled, and the new number is also added to the total. The final total is compared to either a fixed difficulty or an opposing roll. This is essentially the system of Legend of the Five Rings, and the major differences between the two systems are listed in the Player's Guide.

As in L5R, a player may voluntarily increase the difficulty of her roll by increments of 5, called raises. If the new difficulty is made, the character inflicts extra damage, hits the precise spot she was aiming for, and so on. The problem we all have with this is that it does not allow for an unexpected critical success. Our likely patch: Raises can be called after the roll at 10 points per raise, rather than 5.

Players have a number of Drama dice that they may spend each session to do better on rolls, use their PCs' Virtue, to prevent the GM from activating a PC's Hubris, and so on. This works like bonus dice in Over the Edge, as unused Drama Dice convert to experience points after the session. The GM also gets Drama Dice that can be used to make the PCs' lives more difficult. How many dice the GM gets depends on the number of PCs and their traits. Also, whenever a player uses a Drama Die, it goes into the GM's pool of dice. I like this system, and I suspect it lends itself to the cinematic style of play the authors intend. Avram said that the system of using a dice pool to activate characters psychological flaws could be used for the Ranma game he was considering running, especially if players can use dice to activate the flaws of other players' PCs.

As in L5R, the rules for massive battles look simple, but, as in the other game, the size of an army has absolutely no effect on the outcome of a battle. This is carrying the idea of individual heroism too far. I liked Josh's suggestion that a general gets an extra die for an army twice as large as his opponents, two for one four times as large, three for one eight times as large and so on. Interestingly, AEG seems to have had something like this in mind judging by the treatment of goblin armies in The Book of Jade for L5R.

D. Swords and Swashbuckling

Your character can, but does not have to, join one of five schools of swordsmanship, each with its own special maneuvers and weakness. Both Josh and I fence, so we tend to pick apart any game with fencing. 7th Sea goes for a swashbuckling feel rather than a realistic one. Having gotten the fencing neeping (mostly) out of my system via email, with the exception of the Aldana school weakness, I can suspend my disbelief.

After character creation, I wanted to test the combat rules, so Avram's swordswoman obligingly got into a duel with Josh's half-blooded sorceress who has the fencing skill/profession, but is not a swordswoman. Josh's PC won, then dueled my full-blooded fate witch swordswoman, and won. After that, all three characters teamed up against a dozen of the Cardinal's Men, trouncing them. On a roll, Josh had his PC take on another dozen, single-handedly, to test the rules for intimidation.

Our observations:

1. I had no trouble running the combat system. This is impressive. I have a low tolerance for complexity, and I wailed in despair when I saw that the combat system used phases in addition to rounds.

My fears were unfounded. Not only could I run the combat system correctly first time without constantly flipping pages, I could do all that while spinning. Spinning wool, that is, my new vice. I'm not very good at it: They call it a drop spindle for a reason. But there I was, running a system with phases while trying to coax my thread not to break. Okay, who acts on 4? Right, roll. Blast, my thread broke. Okay, active defense. Hm, I think I have it. Okay, damage roll. Who acts on 5? Ah, there's my thread. Whoops.

2. I like a lot of the details. You roll a number of dice equal to your Panache, acting on the phase they show. You can hold an action. You can spend two dice from a later phase to act on an earlier one.

I like the system of rolling against Brawn with a difficulty of your character's light wounds to see if she gets a Dramatic Wound. If you do, her troubles may only be beginning, but your book keeping is simplified: The light wound total is erased.

I like the idea of Brute Squads, groups of up to half a dozen thugs. They make one attack roll for the squad, they fall down if you hit them, and it is easy to attack a whole pack at once, just like in the source material. I like that Henchmen fall down after one dramatic wound, and that only Hero and Villain NPCs follow the more complicated rules for combat. 7th Sea is not the first game to distinguish between NPCs who are significant enough to merit being statted out and those who are best dealt with by generating one set of numbers for several at once. However, it builds nicely on this trend, staying true to the genre without going overboard for the sake of being New and Original. (As in web page design, in RPGs, New and Original should take a backseat to Good and Easy to Use.)

3. Resolve is an extremely powerful trait, probably too powerful. A large part of the reason Josh's character did so well was because of her Resolve of 4.

Resolve determines how many Dramatic Wounds a PC or important NPC can take before being knocked out. Resolve is used to intimidate opponents and get a serious advantage in combat, and it is used to resist intimidation. It is also used for most kinds of magic, including the magic used by Josh's PC to make her more difficult to hit. Do not get me wrong; the other traits are important. It is just that Resolve seems too broad, while Panache seems too narrow (and oddly defined, but that's a minor nit).

3. As Avram pointed out, the defense rules break the standard for Opposed Rolls. Usually, the Target Number (TN) for an Opposed Roll is equal to the Opposed Trait of one's opponent times 5. However, the TN for defense is equal to (Defending Knack x 5) + 5.

I don't think that the discrepancy is necessarily a flaw; it probably exists so that characters always have some defense. But it is an extra complexity, possibly one that could have been avoided.

4. The movement rules presume fighting in enclosed areas. Thus, it takes an action to go up a level, say jumping onto a table. But you can move anywhere on the same level or one lower down as part of another action.

There is no provision made for movement across great distances, particularly outdoors. This results in characters being capable of teleportation (even if they are not Montaigne mages). I doubt this was the authors' intent, but they never give any indication of how far one can move, on average, or on how to figure out how many rounds it will be before one can close with an opponent who is using any kind of missile weapon.

5. Joining fencing school costs a lot of points and doesn't give enough of an advantage, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it gives the wrong kind of advantage. If you are a fencer who is not a swordsman, you can only do your basic attack and parry. Nothing else: even a lunge is considered a special maneuver, learnable only in a school. You can, however, build a character as powerful as a swordsman in combat, by maxing out your stats and giving the character combat knacks other than, or in addition to, swordsmanship, for fewer points.

There is, so far as I can tell, no mechanism for learning a school of swordsmanship after play begins. This is a tremendous oversight for two reasons. First, it is an old genre tradition for a young aspirant to start off with the goal of someday proving worthy of joining to join a school. This is especially true if gamers use a suggestion in the GMs' Guide and start out with PCs who are Brutes or Henchmen. Second, it should be possible to know more than one school of swordmanship; indeed, the authors seem to encourage this.

5. The rules for defense are overly complicated and they penalize in-genre play.

If you are not a member of a swordsmanship school, there is no point in having a parry score greater than one. Members of a school have knacks which work only with parry.

If you fail to defend passively, you may use an action for an active defense. You must use the same defense knack that you used in passive defense. Additionally, 7th Sea conflates defense with maneuvering. Thus, if you are on a ship, you must use the balance knack; no other will suffice. If you are climbing, you must use the climbing knack. I am not sure which knack is used if one is climbing on a ship, but let that pass.

Think of a swashbuckling movie. Chances are that the hero can and will, in the same scene, climb a steep cliff, swing over a pit, jump onto a runaway carriage, and balance there while fighting the dastardly villain. But I suspect the typical 7th Sea character will be able to swing -or- balance -or- climb -or- leap. The rules do not encourage generalization. It is expensive to be a generalist. Therefore, I would expect few players to choose to have their PCs perform cool, complicated maneuvers, as this would call for penalties to one's roll. It does not help that the Brute Squads, intended to be easy for PCs to defeat in droves, have a much higher default in all of the accepted defense maneuvers than beginning PCs.

E. Sorcery

Sorcery is carried in the blood of the nobility of five of the seven nations of Theah. Each of these five have a different type of sorcery, and sorcerers can be full blooded, half blooded, or twice blooded. Half blooded sorcerers had one parent who was a full blooded sorcerer or two parents who were half blooded from the same nation. Twice blooded sorcerers had two parents who were half blooded sorcerers from the different nations. Full blooded sorcerers had two parents who were also full blooded sorcerers and from the same nation. However, only women can be Sorte Witches, the sorcerers of Vodacce. As Avram said: "Where do Full-Blooded Fate Witches come from?" I know, it's probably a recessive x-chromosome thing, but the text should have been edited more carefully.

Only Full-Blooded mages can progress beyond apprentice-level abilities. Full-Blooded costs the same as Twice-Blooded and is more powerful, but less versatile.

The five types of magic are interesting, but not as well thought out as they should be. In no particular order:

Usurra

Usurra is Theah's Russia, more or less, and the nobility can shapeshift. They are not limited to one shape, which I like. I also like the fact that this kind of magic gets subtler as it gets more powerful. This means that beginning PCs can do impressive feats, so the players do not feel that the goodies of shapeshifting have been hoarded. Nevertheless, as their characters progress, the gain in power will be significant. This is as it should be in a swashbuckling game: PCs start off powerful enough to be movers and shakers and shapeshifters; yet, there is an up for them to get to. I also like how the ability to speak to animals is handled. It is harder to speak to animals outside Usurra, for Usurra is far more awake than other lands. This is a logical way to limit a power without using the less than satisfactory explanation of game balance.

There is only one problem, and that is not a problem with the mechanics. Ussurrans are not supposed to shapeshift in front of non-Usurrans or for less than urgent reasons. However, this is not mentioned anywhere in the Players' Guide. So, you create your Usurran shapeshifter, and the first time she tries to shift, your GM warns you about the prohibition, as it is mentioned in the Game Masters' Guide. That's if you have a nice GM; if you have a nasty GM, she smiles, says nothing, and hits you with penalties you didn't know existed. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd feel cheated, having built the character on the assumption that she could change in front of a crowd if, for some reason, she wished to do so.

But the matter is more complicated than one omitted sentence. Magic is highly frowned on by the Church, and her ecclesiastical council is debating whether Ussuran shapeshifting counts as magic. Now, this council is mostly, if not totally, composed of non-Usurrans, so I wonder how these folks know. And how the information is kept from others, like the Vodacce Fate Witches. True, there are no Fate Witches on the council, but half of the council is Vodacce, and the priests can marry. And the Vodacce noblemen know that the Fate Witches know that there is something strange and forbidding about Ussura, but not what. Add to this the fact that the adventure in the GM Screen Pack has an optional encounter with a shapeshifting Ussurran. Guys, make up your mind what the deal is. Once you do, add it to the errata online, and make it available via mail as well.

Avalon

Reputation is important in Theah, functioning much like Honor and Glory in L5R. Avalon mages gain Glamour Dice based on their Reputation. These dice may be used as Drama Dice for the purpose of magic. Heroes who either fail to be heroic or who succumb to the temptation to act basely not only lose Reputation, but run the risk of gaining negative reputation points instead. Presumably, these too can be used to gain Glamour Dice.

Avalon magic involves identifying with figures out of legend. This seems appropriate to me, both because of my English Lit background gave me a personal appreciation for that sort of thing and because it fits with how 7th Sea treats Avalon. The magic fits the country. I don't know if the authors have read Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood, but it's worth checking out as source material.

Each legendary figure is associated with one of the five Traits. An Avalon mage may only have the power to call on the abilities of one legendary figure per Trait, and she may not ever change her choice. Presumably, three figures associated with one Trait would supply different abilities.

Only five legendary figures are supplied, one per Trait. Avalon mages--and their players--are screwed. This might not be the case if 7th Sea gave GMs guidelines for creating new figures, but it doesn't. If you want to play an Avalon mage, you must either commit to using all five (male) figures and no others, or wait for the Avalon sourcebook. This is not cool. Excuse me? I heard someone say, "But you don't -really- need that; just use your imagination."

Stand very still. I am going to throw the rulebooks at you.

Understand, this is -not- a response to John Wick's recent column. I'm working on one, but the issue he addresses does not apply here. I am not talking about the tradition of making gamers buy a never-ending stream of supplements that expand the rules and the background. Yes, 7th Sea suffers from this tradition, and no, I don't like it, but that also is not the issue I am addressing. I am examining the game I was given and finding something missing, not merely something that will, no doubt, be expanded.

The Avalon mages are limited in a way that none of the other mages are. They are -broken-. The Avalon sourcebook is needed to make them viable. I am not arguing about having to buy two $30 books to have a playable game. I am arguing about the fact that part of the game is not playable without buying something else.

Nor is this an inevitable flaw. Twenty-four runes are described in the section on rune magic. If space was a factor, some could have been cut in favor of more possibilities for Avalon mages. Three per Trait would have fixed the problem. At the very least, guidelines for creating more possibilities should have appeared in the Game Masters' Guide. However, the Game Masters' Guide focuses on how to prevent players from abusing magic, with too little attention on how to help them use it.

Saying that GMs can make up anything they need to fill the gaps in the rules is missing the point. GMs can make up the entire game, saving themselves the trouble of buying it. I wonder if it could be said of any other type of game, "Oh, you can just make that up"?

Vendal/Vestenmannavnjar

Rune magic is well-described, matching better than I had expected what little I know of runes. Some of the cooler things I've learned were left out, possibly for game balance reasons, or possibly because the authors didn't have the opportunity or desire to do the research. That's fine; the system works. My problem is that this magic is used to affect the weather, and, at most, five runes do this. Nor can I figure out how one can cause an earthquake with rune magic, even though it is supposed to be capable of this.

Vodacce

My favorite magic is the Fate Magic. Fate Witches can perceive the strands of fate representing a person's most important relationships. As they grow more powerful, they can increase, decrease, or even snap the strands of fate. They can curse or bless, but at the cost of being cursed themselves. The greatest powers of fate magic are well balanced.

The lesser powers are either ill-defined or limited by authors not taking them into account. Now, strands are associated with tarot cards. A 7 of Cups indicates a strong romantic relationship, an 8 of Cups a stronger one. Avram, who created a half-blooded Fate Witch said:

The strands are rated numerically for strength: 1 through 10. That's a wide range given that there's no numerical effect mechanic that these numbers play into. From the player's point of view, what's the difference between tugging a 10 strand down to 8 and getting it down to 7? How many GMs will actually make a distinction between the effects of those two cases?

In addition to numerical values, strands may have a court card attached. Among other things, this means that a strand may not be strengthened or weakened by a Fate Witch. Avram's comment:

It -sounds- like the sort of thing one would write if cards were being randomly drawn to determine the strands. Is it just GM fiat?

Apparently so. Since there are no guidelines for the GM, I suspect one quick method of quashing fate magic is a lot of strands just happening to have court cards on them.

As for the most basic power, looking at a strand, GMs are given advice on dealing with players who insist on their PCs looking at the strongest strand of every NPC. When I ran the adventure in the GM Screen Pack, Avram's Fate Witch looked at the most important strand of three, count them, three, NPCs, at widely spaced intervals. Hardly abuse of the power. Alas, I had no guidance as to what the most important strands for these NPCs were. They were all important characters. If you are going to create a system that allows characters to learn significant personality information--free of charge, as this does not cost a drama die--it behooves you to make sure scenario authors put this information in for the most important NPCs. It also behooves you to spend some space telling the GM how to generate such information in addition to telling her how to shaft her players for having the nerve to want their PCs to use the cool powers they've paid for.

Indeed, as Josh pointed out, the authors missed an opportunity. They could have added some system for players to choose the three most important strands for their PCs. This gets everyone used to the system and allows for greater character development.

Montaigne

The final type of magic involves teleportation. Matt and Josh both commented that Montaigne magic seemed oddly out of place among the magic systems. Matt used the term "anachronistic". Josh said it felt more like "fantasy" magic, by which I believe he means magic as portrayed in twentieth century fantasy novels and RPGs, as opposed to the kind of magic one finds in stories and folktales from the seventeenth century and earlier. I do not necessarily consider this a problem, but it may explain the trouble the authors have defining Montaigne magic.

They take such care to limit it that I wonder why they ever included it. Despite its limitations, Josh pointed out several potentially devastating ways to use this kind of magic. The authors should either have been much more specific or should have given far more thought to the consequences of the existence of this magic than they apparently did. Josh also pointed out that beginning and half-blooded Porte mages are limited in a way no other mages are. All other mages start out powerful and become even more powerful, more subtle, or both as they progress. Porte mages are in the opposite situation. Their first ability is the subtle one, the ability to bring a specially prepared object to you. Only experienced full-blooded mages can teleport themselves. No half-blooded mage ever can.

One cannot teleport anywhere, just to a specially prepared object. Avram pointed out that this means that "any random object could be the anchor for a teleporting assassin", adding that the logical consequence would be a certain paranoia on the part of the rich and powerful about taking objects. The authors do not seem to have thought of this, and the first scenario published for 7th Sea involves a Montaigne general accepting a letter the PCs, whom he does not know. Now, a mage is generally incapacitated for a few rounds immediately after teleporting, and Avram conceded that this helped, but I agree that there would be a significant change in the world and in world politics given the potential of any object to be an anchor for an assassin or spy.

F. Some General Comments

Both books suffer from the usual editing problems that plague the industry, the Game Masters' Guide moreso. The art is decent. It never reaches the level of excellence found in L5R, but, as in that other game, there is no bimbo art. Both men and women are dressed appropriately for the situations in which they are depicted, and both are shown in a wide range of activities including fighting, spell-casting, and politicking.

Someone at AEG finally got the idea that an index is a Good Thing. The next step is to design one that is actually useful. Not only is finding information in the index of each volume tricky; finding the index is a challenge. It is not the last thing in the book, being followed not just by ads, but also by maps and gaming aids. This makes it hard simply to open the book to the index.

The authors clearly enjoy the swashbuckling genre, and 7th Sea is intended to mimic genre conventions. In most cases, I like this, but there are places where I disagree with the authors' choices.

It is true, as the authors say, that, in today's movies, heroes can survive being in close proximity to an explosion. I find this convention stupid, and I consider it bad art. Another convention I dislike has to do with the nit in the swordsman schools I find myself unable to refrain from picking: The Aldanan school teaches their students to fight to a tune hummed in their head, and they become briefly predictable while humming the chorus. Fencing is about broken rhythms, and fencing to music, even is the music is inside your head, is a good way to lose a bout, or to get yourself skewered if the stakes are higher.

But I'm biased, so I did a bit of polling. My brief survey of my playtesters plus three outside sources reveal about an equal split between "That's really stupid," "Oh, get over yourself," and "That's stupid, but get over yourself." The response is not determined by whether one fences or not; it either bothers you or does not.

Why, then, I asked, of all the possible things to object to in a game that makes no claim to mimic reality, does this one detail bother me so much? Kevin suggested that it was because this is one of the few details that flat out contradicts how reality works. "It's like saying American cars get better mileage because they use less gas," he said. I'd agree with this.

The authors are clearly in favor of having the PCs be Heroes. They define Heroes as perfectly honorable gentlemen and women. Sure, they might have a weakness for wine and women; they might be arrogant or reckless, but there is no doubt of their essential goodness. And, to a point, I agree with the authors. 7th Sea should be about larger than life Heroes, and the source material is an excellent place to find models for characters. But I cannot help wondering how carefully the authors read and viewed the source material.

Take Dumas' Three Musketeers, an excellent book. As Avram pointed out, D'Artagnan and his three companions all beat their servants to keep them in their proper place. D'Artagnan sells the horse his father gave him, despite having made a solemn vow to his father never to sell that horse. Honorable behavior? Furthermore, a man he and his friends are trying to save has deliberately started a war with France so that, when the fighting is over, he can attend the negotiations for peace and try to seduce the Queen of France. This is glorious stuff, larger than life, but hardly a model of honorable behavior.

Or take Captain Blood (which has a great sea battle). The authors of 7th Sea explain that Peter Blood learns that his lust for vengeance must take a back seat to his responsibility to his crew. As far as I can tell, he learned no such thing. He manipulated his crew into endorsing his mission of vengeance with a mastery of which Machiavelli would have approved.

Part of what I object to is the preaching. I do not like being told that I am supposed to play a certain kind of character. Part of it is that the setting is more complex than a simple black-and-white world filled with pure heroes and pure villains. For this, I applaud the authors. But to then turn around and say that the essence of being a hero is sticking to a code that may not apply in such a world leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Dumas' heroes were heroes despite their failings, and I found Captain Blood's ruthless manipulation was a welcome relief from his earlier idiocy. Insisting that the PCs always prioritize pure goodness over intelligence -- we are told that heroes do not always do what is smart, but always do what is right -- will eventually force the GM to choose between a tragic ending for the PCs in a world where we are told chivalry is dying or making the villains unaccountable stupid so that the PCs can somehow triumph.

Sure, I recognize that others might want to play a game where virtue always triumphs because it is virtuous, and 7th Sea can be played that way, but it does not intrinsically lend itself to that kind of game, whatever the authors may have intended. And it would have been nice if they had recognized that some of us out there like a Babylon 5-esque game where the heroes are still heroes, even if they make difficult, ruthless choices--and even if they do not always make the correct choices -- and where the villains do not always revel in villainy.

When the authors ignore the question of what defines a hero and settle down to giving advice to players and GMs about making the game enjoyable, they are generally right on target. There is good advice about the problems of playing lone wolf characters and about how insisting on staying in character to the point of forcing the other players to choose between warping their PCs or having their PCs turn against another PC can ruin everyone's fun. Some of John Wick's excellent advice to GMs from the L5R GM Screen Pack is reprinted.

I do not agree with all of the advice, naturally. A couple of the dirty GM tricks suggested seem too dirty to me, such as penalizing all of the players if one person has the temerity to break the mood of the game. Mood breaking players bug me too, but this isn't grade school. There is probably no universal solution, but group penalties just don't work for me.

I agree with the author's decision to make it impossible to kill a PC by accident. However, I think they're missing a point when they suggest that the GM do other things to PCs, such as blinding them or imprisoning them in tiny cells for 20 years. The latter is killing the PC, as far as I'm concerned. I do not want to play out those 20 years. I'll just roll up a new PC, if you please. Unless a GM has told me ahead of time that we're using the Monte Cristo premise, I do not even want to be told, "Okay, now we're fast forwarding twenty years into the future." Similarly, if I have not agreed to play a blind character, I would just as soon drop my current, blind PC in favor of a new one who can see. If I have stopped playing a character because I feel that she is no longer viable, effectively, the GM -has- killed the PC. I do not necessarily object to that, but I do object to advising the GM that anything goes short of killing the PC because you can always tell the player, "Hey, don't complain. I could have killed the PC."

Both The Players' Guide and The GM's Guide are needed to play the game, even if you are not using the setting, given how the rules are split up. While I like the idea of one book the players can read cover to cover and another the GMs can keep out of their players' hands without depriving them of the knowledge necessary to play the game, I wish the material had been divided better. Players need to know some of the information about the Church and the magic that is found only in the GM's book. I would also have preferred all of the rules to be in the players' book. That they were not is, no doubt, partly a way of ensuring that even GMs who use a different setting have to buy the GM's book. However, it is also an attempt to cut down on rules lawyering. If the players don't see the rules, they can't argue that the GM is interpreting them incorrectly. I suspect that this is an idea that works better in theory than in practice, however. This is certainly true for me, as I handed the book over to my players several times to ask if I were interpreting the rules correctly. (And a damn good thing I did, too! It turned out that I completely mis-read the chase rules.) So, the idea of the division of material is sound, but the organization of material needs work.

G. Conclusions

This is a game with many good features, but one that does not quite click. However, I intend to slap a few patches on the rules and hopefully start a campaign. My players, despite their criticisms of the game, are eager for another session, and they are waiting impatiently for me to finish this review so that I can schedule one. I've even bought more wool for the occasion.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)