The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Playtester: Joshua Kronengold

Grade: B

The sourcebook for Castille does what all the other sourcebooks, not to mention the core rulebooks, for 7th Sea should have been doing all along: It allows players to create powerful heroes, not mere sidekicks. With this in mind, it is a shame that the author's name is nigh invisible on the front cover.

The first part of the book gives an overview of Castille. It covers the major noble families and several minor ones. As in the Montaigne sourcebook, a PC from a major noble family gains both an advantage and a disadvantage. However, in keeping with the Castillian tradition of respecting both matrilineal and patrilineal lines of descent, players get to choose two sets of advantages and disadvantages, one for each lime of descent. In addition to the major families, several minor families are mentioned, and while their areas of influence are given, so that GMs have a better idea of how to create minor families, the ancestral gifts and burdens are not listed for any of the minor families. This is a shame because there is no indication of whether these should be less than or equal to those of major families.

Also, as Joshua, my loyal playtester pointed out, the Ochoa family disadvantage is more problematic than it might seem. It was a member of this family that allowed the Montaigne invasion of the Castillian port Barcino to succeed. Because of this, all members of Ochoa family are reviled as traitors, and Ochoa PCs may not have the Nobility Advantage. The problem is that noble families tend to intermarry. If a PC's father is a member of the respected Soldano family, and her mother a member of the reviled Ochoa family, is the PC truly considered a non-noble traitor? Has her father disowned her and her siblings and her mother, his wife for twenty years? What if she has married a Torres nobleman? Will her husband now cast off his wife and children? If not, will he be persecuted?

Joshua raised a related question. Let us say that you are playing a male noble with a Gallegos father and a Soldano mother. He marries a woman whose father was a Torres and whose mother was an Orduno. Another gamer decides to play the eldest son of this union. Does he get the advantages and disadvantages of having a Gallegos father or a Soldano father? Does he get the advantages and disadvantages of having a Torres mother or an Orduno mother? Is it the same or different for his sisters?

After the families, the land of Castille is described. As usual, there is no map of the country. The Castille book needs a map badly, given the complicated tactical situation the war with Montaigane created.

Next comes a section on the cultural life of Castille, including the arts of dancing and generally non-lethal--to the bull, that is--bullfighting. I enjoyed all of this, although I did wonder how so many Castillian women know how to dance. Castille has two basic dancing styles, one extremely difficult, the other generally forbidden to girls by their mothers.

There is practically no information on El Vago, who will get an entire book at some point. On the other hand, there is much new material on the Vaticine Church and its relationship with Castille. After all of this material comes the descriptions of the major NPCs. My only complaint here is that I want more--more NPCs, that is. The descriptions are not skimpy. But I would have liked to see, for example, the daughter of the Emperor of Montaigne, who married into a Castillian family before the war between the two countries began, and her husband and his family.

After the NPCs comes the mechanics section. This includes a section on using tarot cards as an aid in character creation. Each nation book has such a section, and each uses a different subset of the deck and modifies the meanings to suit the culture. For Castille, appropriately, swords and cups are used.

There are new swordsman schools, some of which show that the author has clearly seen the recent Mask of Zorro. (Not a bad film, but do check out the Powers/Rathbone Mark of Zorro, which is even better and has an excellent saber duel.) His Gallegos school is -not- how the Spanish fencing on which it is based ever worked, although it is nicely cinematic. (For those interested in the real thing, check out http://www.martinez-destreza.com/articles/) Also, as Joshua pointed out, it is no wonder the Torres swordsmen, who fight with cloaks, make such lousy guerrillas. They only know how to use their cloaks defensively. They cannot bind a blade with a cloak, nor can they execute a riposte. This is not how anyone who ever expects to fight a human being is trained. Cloaks can most certainly be used offensively, as well as defensively. The idea is to use it to get your opponent's blade out of the way, creating an opening for your own blade, as Joshua, who has been training in fencing with a cloak for nearly a year, reminded me. Still, I can buy that the Torres swordsmen and women expected to fight bulls, not Montaigne soldiers, and never really learned normal cloak fighting.

A more serious matter is the interpretation of the journeyman ability. On page 97, it says: "When performing an Active Defense, lower your Action dice a number of phases equal to twice your Mastery Level."

Josh asked, "Is this the ability to make an active defense with an action die that reads a later number than the current phase? Or is does it lower your other action dice when you make an Active Defense, just as Sidestep does?" If the latter, the ability supplements the Apprentice ability nicely; otherwise, it duplicates it, robbing Torres of the chance to get three cool abilities. Also, mechanically speaking, it is redundant to give the Torres both tag and double parry.

The Zepeda school is another one that shows the influence of The Mask of Zorro. Joshua liked this one, saying that it includes "pretty much every ability one could imagine "expertise with a whip" granting." He pointed out the weaknesses of the school, which follow logically from the fact that one is holding, well, a whip, not a sword. It does less damage and does not give you something to hit your opponent with when you bind his blade.

The Soldano school involves fighting with two rapiers. Players are offered a nice incentive to roleplay the recklessness of this school and to use drama dice in battle: Soldano swordsmen and women gain extra drama dice in battle that are only good for that battle.

If the author chooses cinematism over realism, he has the good sense to go all the way with his choice. With the exception of Torres, these schools are effective, allowing heroes to be, well, heroes. Surprisingly often, 7th Sea reserves larger than life heroism for NPCs, while the mechanics force players to make do with Henchman level power for their PCs. This is the first 7th Sea product I've seen where the author gets it, where he understands that gamers want to -be- Zorro, not merely have the privilege of having their PCs associate with an NPC Zorro. Players are given cool abilities that their PCs -can- use, instead of a list of things they can't do because it isn't Heroic.

El Fuego Adentro, the beautifully named hidden Castillian fire sorcery is also designed with this basic principal in mind. It is both powerful and flexible in application, although Joshua noted that the mechanics have an odd rigidity in places, making one pay for things that are chrome, special effects rather than game-affecting abilities. For example, masters of Castillian sorcery can create creatures of living fire, but must purchase the Knack (skill) to do so separately for each creature and increase each knack separately. That's an awful lot of points. Nor does this set up curtail a sorcerer's power. For the same investment of experience points, your PC can learn how to create either a cloud of fireflies that do minimal damage to an enemy, but make a pretty light, or a firebird which can carry her on its back. The bird's Traits "are considered Rank 3". The bird does not do fire damage with its touch, but I imagine its beak and claws do quite a bit of damage, and I would look askance at any GM insisting that the bird couldn't attack that way. Did I mention that the bird can only be harmed by "immersion in water"? Or that its creator can cause it to explode, destroying itself and doing the damage of a Rank 4 fire Explosion? Which would you take for your PC, some nifty fireflies or a hard to destroy, mentally controllable magical bird that will carry you through the air and that can also be used as a bomb? If you want players to buy chrome for their PCs, you can't price it as dearly as the powerful mcguffin.

Despite my problems with some of the mechanical details, I like the over-the-top power and sparkle of Castilian sorcery. While it should be extremely rare, the author has the good sense to leave the decision of just how rare it is to individual GMs and their gaming groups. There is a refreshing absence of preaching about game balance, leaving more space for useful material. GMs are told that they are within their rights to require practitioners of Castillian sorcery to take a Hunted background, but I find this to be a light-the-candle approach as opposed the a curse-the-darkness approach of "Don't let the PCs have the powerful goodies."

The light-the-candle approach used with the new Miracle Worker advantage, which allows PCs to benefit from miracle dice. Miracle dice allow wonderful cinematic effects. The author deals with the potential game balance problem in two sentences: "The GM controls when, and if these dice are activated....These miracles can be anything the GM desires."

Now, this is pretty basic. I should not have to bother pointing it out as a feature. Nevertheless, the tendency in 7th Sea is to put great limits on what PCs can do and explain why they should not do much of what they can do, and it is good to see someone bucking that trend, and recognizing that individual gaming groups can decide for themselves how to play the game.

I was also delighted to see a hint of moral complexity. One can purchase the Traitor background. This is quite appropriate for Castille, due to the recent invasion. The motive for treason? Money. The mercantile streak that afflicts even the best of heroes is quite in keeping with the genre 7th Sea strives to emulate and has hitherto been rigidly ignored.

The mechanics section finishes with rules for building fortifications. The next section includes a very brief section of advice for players of Castillian PCs. This is followed NPC secrets and statistics for new monsters, both of which are intended for the GM's eyes only. As always, I think a lot of information officially open to players should also be for the GM's eyes only.

A city map, ship blueprints, and character templates follow. As always, there is no index. The fiction vignettes are enjoyable, and the art is well done and not bimbo art. The layout is clean.

Castille is a good, solid addition to the 7th Sea line. There are places where the mechanics could be better, but it allows PCs to be the larger than life heroes that should populate a swashbuckling game while recognizing that such heroes are not immune to flaws, even flaws that the modern reader is trained to consider most unheroic.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Nations of Theah: Book Five: Castille
Author: Patrick Kapera Category: game Company/Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group Line: 7th Sea Cost: 19.95 Page count: 128 Playtest Review by Lisa Padol on 08/26/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Historical Conspiracy	Playtester: Joshua Kronengold Grade: B The sourcebook for Castille does what all the other sourcebooks, not to mention the core rulebooks, for 7th Sea should have been doing all along: It allows players to create powerful heroes, not mere sidekicks. With this in mind, it is a shame that the author's name is nigh invisible on the front cover. The first part of the book gives an overview of Castille. It covers the major noble families and several minor ones. As in the Montaigne sourcebook, a PC from a major noble family gains both an advantage and a disadvantage. However, in keeping with the Castillian tradition of respecting both matrilineal and patrilineal lines of descent, players get to choose two sets of advantages and disadvantages, one for each lime of descent. In addition to the major families, several minor families are mentioned, and while their areas of influence are given, so that GMs have a better idea of how to create minor families, the ancestral gifts and burdens are not listed for any of the minor families. This is a shame because there is no indication of whether these should be less than or equal to those of major families. Also, as Joshua, my loyal playtester pointed out, the Ochoa family disadvantage is more problematic than it might seem. It was a member of this family that allowed the Montaigne invasion of the Castillian port Barcino to succeed. Because of this, all members of Ochoa family are reviled as traitors, and Ochoa PCs may not have the Nobility Advantage. The problem is that noble families tend to intermarry. If a PC's father is a member of the respected Soldano family, and her mother a member of the reviled Ochoa family, is the PC truly considered a non-noble traitor? Has her father disowned her and her siblings and her mother, his wife for twenty years? What if she has married a Torres nobleman? Will her husband now cast off his wife and children? If not, will he be persecuted? Joshua raised a related question. Let us say that you are playing a male noble with a Gallegos father and a Soldano mother. He marries a woman whose father was a Torres and whose mother was an Orduno. Another gamer decides to play the eldest son of this union. Does he get the advantages and disadvantages of having a Gallegos father or a Soldano father? Does he get the advantages and disadvantages of having a Torres mother or an Orduno mother? Is it the same or different for his sisters? After the families, the land of Castille is described. As usual, there is no map of the country. The Castille book needs a map badly, given the complicated tactical situation the war with Montaigane created. Next comes a section on the cultural life of Castille, including the arts of dancing and generally non-lethal--to the bull, that is--bullfighting. I enjoyed all of this, although I did wonder how so many Castillian women know how to dance. Castille has two basic dancing styles, one extremely difficult, the other generally forbidden to girls by their mothers. There is practically no information on El Vago, who will get an entire book at some point. On the other hand, there is much new material on the Vaticine Church and its relationship with Castille. After all of this material comes the descriptions of the major NPCs. My only complaint here is that I want more--more NPCs, that is. The descriptions are not skimpy. But I would have liked to see, for example, the daughter of the Emperor of Montaigne, who married into a Castillian family before the war between the two countries began, and her husband and his family. After the NPCs comes the mechanics section. This includes a section on using tarot cards as an aid in character creation. Each nation book has such a section, and each uses a different subset of the deck and modifies the meanings to suit the culture. For Castille, appropriately, swords and cups are used. There are new swordsman schools, some of which show that the author has clearly seen the recent Mask of Zorro. (Not a bad film, but do check out the Powers/Rathbone Mark of Zorro, which is even better and has an excellent saber duel.) His Gallegos school is -not- how the Spanish fencing on which it is based ever worked, although it is nicely cinematic. (For those interested in the real thing, check out http://www.martinez-destreza.com/articles/) Also, as Joshua pointed out, it is no wonder the Torres swordsmen, who fight with cloaks, make such lousy guerrillas. They only know how to use their cloaks defensively. They cannot bind a blade with a cloak, nor can they execute a riposte. This is not how anyone who ever expects to fight a human being is trained. Cloaks can most certainly be used offensively, as well as defensively. The idea is to use it to get your opponent's blade out of the way, creating an opening for your own blade, as Joshua, who has been training in fencing with a cloak for nearly a year, reminded me. Still, I can buy that the Torres swordsmen and women expected to fight bulls, not Montaigne soldiers, and never really learned normal cloak fighting. A more serious matter is the interpretation of the journeyman ability. On page 97, it says: "When performing an Active Defense, lower your Action dice a number of phases equal to twice your Mastery Level." Josh asked, "Is this the ability to make an active defense with an action die that reads a later number than the current phase? Or is does it lower your other action dice when you make an Active Defense, just as Sidestep does?" If the latter, the ability supplements the Apprentice ability nicely; otherwise, it duplicates it, robbing Torres of the chance to get three cool abilities. Also, mechanically speaking, it is redundant to give the Torres both tag and double parry. The Zepeda school is another one that shows the influence of The Mask of Zorro. Joshua liked this one, saying that it includes "pretty much every ability one could imagine "expertise with a whip" granting." He pointed out the weaknesses of the school, which follow logically from the fact that one is holding, well, a whip, not a sword. It does less damage and does not give you something to hit your opponent with when you bind his blade. The Soldano school involves fighting with two rapiers. Players are offered a nice incentive to roleplay the recklessness of this school and to use drama dice in battle: Soldano swordsmen and women gain extra drama dice in battle that are only good for that battle. If the author chooses cinematism over realism, he has the good sense to go all the way with his choice. With the exception of Torres, these schools are effective, allowing heroes to be, well, heroes. Surprisingly often, 7th Sea reserves larger than life heroism for NPCs, while the mechanics force players to make do with Henchman level power for their PCs. This is the first 7th Sea product I've seen where the author gets it, where he understands that gamers want to -be- Zorro, not merely have the privilege of having their PCs associate with an NPC Zorro. Players are given cool abilities that their PCs -can- use, instead of a list of things they can't do because it isn't Heroic. El Fuego Adentro, the beautifully named hidden Castillian fire sorcery is also designed with this basic principal in mind. It is both powerful and flexible in application, although Joshua noted that the mechanics have an odd rigidity in places, making one pay for things that are chrome, special effects rather than game-affecting abilities. For example, masters of Castillian sorcery can create creatures of living fire, but must purchase the Knack (skill) to do so separately for each creature and increase each knack separately. That's an awful lot of points. Nor does this set up curtail a sorcerer's power. For the same investment of experience points, your PC can learn how to create either a cloud of fireflies that do minimal damage to an enemy, but make a pretty light, or a firebird which can carry her on its back. The bird's Traits "are considered Rank 3". The bird does not do fire damage with its touch, but I imagine its beak and claws do quite a bit of damage, and I would look askance at any GM insisting that the bird couldn't attack that way. Did I mention that the bird can only be harmed by "immersion in water"? Or that its creator can cause it to explode, destroying itself and doing the damage of a Rank 4 fire Explosion? Which would you take for your PC, some nifty fireflies or a hard to destroy, mentally controllable magical bird that will carry you through the air and that can also be used as a bomb? If you want players to buy chrome for their PCs, you can't price it as dearly as the powerful mcguffin. Despite my problems with some of the mechanical details, I like the over-the-top power and sparkle of Castilian sorcery. While it should be extremely rare, the author has the good sense to leave the decision of just how rare it is to individual GMs and their gaming groups. There is a refreshing absence of preaching about game balance, leaving more space for useful material. GMs are told that they are within their rights to require practitioners of Castillian sorcery to take a Hunted background, but I find this to be a light-the-candle approach as opposed the a curse-the-darkness approach of "Don't let the PCs have the powerful goodies." The light-the-candle approach used with the new Miracle Worker advantage, which allows PCs to benefit from miracle dice. Miracle dice allow wonderful cinematic effects. The author deals with the potential game balance problem in two sentences: "The GM controls when, and if these dice are activated....These miracles can be anything the GM desires." Now, this is pretty basic. I should not have to bother pointing it out as a feature. Nevertheless, the tendency in 7th Sea is to put great limits on what PCs can do and explain why they should not do much of what they can do, and it is good to see someone bucking that trend, and recognizing that individual gaming groups can decide for themselves how to play the game. I was also delighted to see a hint of moral complexity. One can purchase the Traitor background. This is quite appropriate for Castille, due to the recent invasion. The motive for treason? Money. The mercantile streak that afflicts even the best of heroes is quite in keeping with the genre 7th Sea strives to emulate and has hitherto been rigidly ignored. The mechanics section finishes with rules for building fortifications. The next section includes a very brief section of advice for players of Castillian PCs. This is followed NPC secrets and statistics for new monsters, both of which are intended for the GM's eyes only. As always, I think a lot of information officially open to players should also be for the GM's eyes only. A city map, ship blueprints, and character templates follow. As always, there is no index. The fiction vignettes are enjoyable, and the art is well done and not bimbo art. The layout is clean. Castille is a good, solid addition to the 7th Sea line. There are places where the mechanics could be better, but it allows PCs to be the larger than life heroes that should populate a swashbuckling game while recognizing that such heroes are not immune to flaws, even flaws that the modern reader is trained to consider most unheroic. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Nations of Theah: Book Five: Castille