So, first Full session of 7th Sea was Saturday night. It went pretty well, though I’m still juggling some system mastery concern.
The characters are:
- The Captain: A large Avalonian man possessed of superhuman luck
- The Swordsman: Once a bodyguard of the Hierophant, then a failed seeker of revenge, now he is a very dangerous drunk.
- The Professor: A Vesten woman serving as axe-wielding accountant and quartermaster working on a theory of economics.
- The Acrobat: A Vodacce fate witch who hid her talents in the circus, but has been forced to flee her home.
The plot was simple and classic – they were in port at Vesten, but near broke. They approached The Professor’s Patron (Guildmaster of Usury) for a loan to take advantage of a tip she had on wood prices in Rurik. They met in a coffeehouse (of course) and the Guildmaster took the opportunity to play chess with The Captain (who lost well), and the Guildmaster made an offer: She would cut them a loan at no interest in return for them delivering unspecified cargo from Rurik back to Vendel. They, of course, agreed, took the loan, bought two shipments of Wood and set sail.
They managed to avoid trouble on the trip over, though the winds were unfavorable – what should have been a 3 or 4 day trip took 6, but that was still in bounds. They sould off their cargo, turning a very solid profit – between the tip and the Professor’s skills, they doubled their money.
Their contact for the Guildmaster’s delivery was a veiled lady, accompanied by an obvious duellist and half a ton of war dogs. They had a very civilized afternoon tea while she got a read on them (and to a lesser extent, they got a read on her) before they took possession of a mysterious chest. The Acrobat saw to it that the transportation back to the ship was well-concealed, as no one noticed one more wagon of produce going through Rurik.
All was going well, except the Acrobat had also been contacted by The Daughters of Sophia, who needed someone smuggled to Vendel. She met up with them, and arranged for the young lady to meet the crew at a bar near the docks.
Things went a little wrong there. The Acrobat paid a drunk to make some ruckus when the lady arrived, but left the details unspecified (which pinged her Hubris). When she arrived and lowered her hood, The Captain was utterly smitten (his Hubris), the Professor was distracted by a discussion of currency policy (not technically her Hubris, but close enough) and the drunk grabbed the lady and started dancing with her, forcing The Swordsman to step up to her defense.
Which meant no one was watching when a couple of guys knocked The Acrobat over the head, threw her in a sack and dragged her away. When they realized she was missing, they rushed the lady back to the ship and prepared to go looking for her. Well, everyone except THe Captain. He had to make sure she was ok. Possibly over wine.
Meanwhile, The Acrobat came too as she was tossed into a carriage. She used a hidden knife to cut free, but discovered she was under close scrutiny by two thugs and a Vodacce gentleman who was very clearly their boss. The boss seemed upset at the thugs for grabbing the wrong woman, but they protested that they had grabbed a small Vodacce woman. Dripping with false remorse, he pressed The Acrobat for information about “his wife”, but seemed to accept her denials and released her back near the bar.
And so it was that she was returning to the ship as the search party came out, and when they met, the Vodacce gentleman and his band of thugs emerged from the shadows, intent to board the ship and reclaim the woman. Naturally, this lead to violence.
The Swordsman and The Vodacce Gentleman flashed their swordsman pins and opted to fight as gentlemen while he ordered his thugs to deal with the rest of the rabble. They fought for a time, with both taking fairly severe wounds. Meanwhile, there was a reminder that while the professor may be an economist, she is a VIKING economist. One of the Brute squads was reduced to a pulpy mass in short order, and another terrified into retreating. Meanwhile The Acrobat split her attention between the brutes and manipulating the strands of fate surrounding the fight. The captain also emerged and pitched in with violence and luck.
Matters ended somewhat inconclusively, as the newly-cowardly (thanks to Sorte) Vodacce Gentleman retreated with the remainder of his men, and The Captain deemed that the number of the bodies suggested that a hasty retreat was in order. There was some resistance from the crew to a late-night departure (leading to a conflict between a crewman and The Swordsman), but The Captain made it clear this was not subject to debate, and they made a night departure.
Yet despite that, when dawn rose, there was a ship on their tail. Inconceivable! Unless they had been trailing debris, which explained the absences in the stores The Professor had noted. Rather than test a tail chase, the captain ordered the ship turn towards the dangerous and foggy shore, taking a highly risky route in hopes the pursuer would not follow.
This forced the betrayer (the same who had argued with The Swordmaster) to attempt to flee in a launch with the cargo. The Acrobat spotted him, The swordsman pursued (and resolved the matter decisively), but was now in a launch that was not attached to the ship. Thankfully, The professor lept with a rope and managed to secure the launch before they had gone to far. The pursuer, meanwhile, was not as nimble as The Gates, and fell behind. The rest of the trip to Vendel was uneventful, save for the interrogation and execution of the mutineer.
Upon returning to Vendel, they delivered their cargo and tried to sell the furs they’d bought in Rurik, but they did not get a very good price for them, and after paying back the loan, paying the crew and performing maintenance on the ship, they ended up having exactly broken even.
Notes:
- We have 2 Sorcerers, 1 Duelist and one non-of-the-above. This is proving a really interesting spread to test out the length and breadth of the game.
- Notably, the sorcerer’s are much more Hero Point hungry than the non-sorcerers. Curiously, Our Duelist probably generates the most Hero Points, but also needs them least, so he helps a lot.
- That point when The Acrobat got kidnapped may have had all the earmarks of a GM force, because it did, but it’s a little more interesting than that because I had the player’s permission going into it. She had a two point story queued up, the stages were “Get captured” and “Free myself”, so I was responding to her invitation. It made for a much nicer dynamic this way.
- When she got away, I presented the risks as follows: There’s an opportunity to distract him and dive out the door of the moving carriage, but that will come with 2 wounds that you’d also need to mitigate. Alternately, 1 raise and he’s not sure if you’re lying. 2 raises and he seems to believe you. 3 raises and he *actually* believes you. She got 2 raises.
- I am going to need to generate a *lot* of reference sheets for this. The core rules are super simple, but things like keeping track of what each sorcery does (because they all behave differently), the various dueling maneuvers, the Arcana (because we have a fate witch), plus the Hubris, Virtue, Story and Quirks of every character. Oh, and maps. Flipping through the book for all this was SUPER awkward, so I’m going to need to figure out how to condense things into a tight match.
- Holy *crap* the GM’s ability to spend a Danger Point to make raises cost 15 rather than 10? That is, SUPER nasty, and really needs to come with a warning label. Outside of a scene, it’s a good way to convey “This is hard”, and I’m ok with that, but in a fight scene? Can really hurt.
- Two duelists with similar weapon skills going at it involves a *lot* of negation. It was not hard for them to fall into an alternating slash/bash cadence, which makes the fight very nickel and dime. It only sped up when I opted for the bad guy to risk a lunge (to which the appropriate response is also a lunge).
- I frequently found myself thinking “I really want this to be a difficulty 3, and I’ll shape the response based on how close they get” but that’s on the way it should be done. I am working on ways to think about difficulty:
- One approach is very much “Success, but…”. 1 Raise gets you success with one or more consequences, and successive raises mitigate those consequences. Using the same kind of thinking that helps come up with good moves can help here.
- When the players are looking for information, my instinct is to say “One fact per raise”, and there are situations where that works ok (albeit as a little bit of a boring risk), but I’ve found it works fairly well if you use an elimination approach. That is, when The Acrobat was trying to spot the traitor, I said “Ok, there are 5 people who might look suspicious. Each raise will let you eliminate one”. That felt a lot better.
- I am not satisfied with how I offer opportunities yet, partly because they serve two sometimes conflicting rolls. On one hand, they’re bonuses, things you can pick up with an awesome roll. On the other hand, they’re temptations – reasons you might mitigate your own success to grab a cookie. A lot of time, an Opportunity that is really good in one role may not fit for the other. Not sure if that’s a structural problem or just a drawback in how I think about them, but I definitely need to chew on this a little more.
- The roll by The Acrobat in the carriage was a weird one because I explicitly offered a branching choice in that via Opportunities. I’m not sure that’s strictly legal, but I’ll probably toy with it more.
- I am tempted to prime the pump with opportunities. Figure out things that might appeal to players or take things in cool directions and just have them in my pocket, waiting for a chance to offer them as opportunities. It’s an area where light prep may save some headaches.
- We used my house rules for trading and travel and they worked pretty well. I made a very small tweak to allow for more chances to roll the dice, and I’ll probably add that in, but otherwise it held up very well.
- I spent a fair amount of time before the game trying to figure out how fast ships traveled in Theah. The real answer is: it’s complicated – wind and currents and seasons and complicated cull-to-sail math all play into this. At some point, I’m going to map the winds of Theah so I can get super nerdy, but in the meantime, I settled on a rule of thumb – 9 knots is a pretty good clip for a sailing ship, and it’s about 10mph, so it makes for easy math. So the VERY simple navigation rules are:
- Assume your ship will go 10mph under optimal conditions (and remember, it moves 24 hours a day, so ~240 miles).
- Every Journey has 3-5 risks (maybe more), which might be things like:
- Unkind Winds (-2mph, can be taken many time)
- Rough Seas (ship takes 2 hits)
- Spoilage/pilferage (lose a point of cargo)
- Sickness (lose a point of crew)
- Danger! (Catch the attention of pirates or similar)
- Interdiction (Get stopped by a patrol boat. Lose a day, possibly other consequences)
- Misdirection (End up off course by some amount)
- Each raise on the Sailing risk can mitigate one of these
- If you support the idea that different ships have different speeds, you can use these rules, just start from a different baseline than 10mph
- The Captain has invested heavily in Mad Luck, and I think that’s going to be *terrifying*.
- I need to figure out what to do with Lashes that are still in effect at the end of a session. The player can dump them relatively safely when all is done, and it seems untoward if the GM could just hold onto all those Danger Points between sessions, but seems cheap if they don’t. But the alternative seems to take some to the tooth away from Sorte. I think I need to read the chapter again, build my cheatsheet, then see if anything springs to mind.
- My players are conspiring to try to convince me to buy more dice from them, which suggests I need to spend my Danger Points more liberally. I can only remind them to be careful of what you wish for.
- I am regretting the absence of a “wildcard” skill, and may end up adding one in my game. For the unfamiliar, this is an idea stolen from Eden’s Cinematic Unisystem – the skill list included one skill that was just a blank line, with the expectation that if there was some skill that *really* mattered to a particular character but wasn’t really relevant to the game as a whole, it could just get added there. “Merchant” might be a good example in 7th Sea – not really relevant for most games, but for a character like the professor, it’s pretty relevant.
- I still need to come up with a name for this campaign.
Hi Rob,
this report/retrospective was very helpful.
I’m running my first session of 2nd Ed. 7th Sea this weekend, and your insights are great.
In particular, setting up some cheat sheets/summaries/etc. for the players and GM is a good idea.
Thanks for sharing,
-Jay
I have to say, I’m glad to know someone has been running into some similar snags that I have. To promote the general idea of open discussion, I’d like to share how I’ve handled a few of these situations and share some of my own.
Also, to be forward with this, I have to say my game has recently ended after three sessions. Three of my five players bowed out for various reasons (work, family, and medical), so I only have three sessions of game-time and the months of reading the book cover-to-cover to go on.
My group consisted of:
–Fate Witch raised by her Castillian father (Vodacce mother was not in the picture). Studied Mantovani (whip school) and now owns her late father’s ship, making her a pirate captain.
–Vodacce duelist/explorer, serving Prince Lucani as a Lord’s Hand (1st Edition reference I kept). Style: Aldana
–Sarmatian sorcerer that uses magic “illegally” (not part of The Circle), studied Sabat, and has left his ancestral home due to Golden Liberty.
–Eisen survivor of the War of the Cross; monster hunter that studied Eisenfaust and learned to be a doctor in the field.
–Inish sailor with Glamour (Knights of Avalon; did a tweak for him to be an Inish hero instead of an Avalon knight) that was out to become his own living legend.
–One of the things we all loved: you could do both magic and swordplay at the same time. We do agree that magical heroes are more Hero Point hungry than duelists, but the group was all for the “I fail” mechanic and dice buying for this reason.
–On that note: I let my players decide how many dice I’m buying from them. As we were playing online without video, I couldn’t always see the results, so I would often has “How many dice are left over?” I would then get replies with the comment of “I’ll take the Hero Point(s).” Yes, it beefed up the Danger Pool, but with nearly 3/5 of the party having magic (and players having Hero Point driven Advantages), they were loving it.
–With that in mind, Danger Points were used in the normal ways, but I would also use them similar to other games, specifically Drama Dice from the 1st Edition; bringing in more Brute squads, causing an island to sink, a storm to come in, etc. This way, the players feel like I’m paying a cost for their inconveniences and not just dishing them out, which seemed to help them in the end.
–Dueling is an interesting bag in this game. We love that it’s a bit of back and forth, but as you said, it can get a bit dull. The first one-on-one duel the party experienced, the player activated his Glorious virtue, and had a dice pool of 13 (4 Finesse, 3 Weaponry, +2 Flair, +1 from awesome party interaction, +3 from another party member using a Hero Point)…against an opponent with 4 successes. The fight ended quickly with a Bash, Feint, Aldana Ruse, and a Lunge.
Later fights were a bit closer, often a balancing act of various tactics. Sure, cancelation was a thing, but as many of my players are old hands from the 1st Edition and know that Flesh Wounds vanish after the fight (as well as the bonus die for the first Dramatic Wound), they were willing to take a few hits in exchange for dishing out the pain.
–I’m a bit on the fence with the difficulty rating of things. While I love the “Success, but…” side of Fate and other games, I think it’s a bit off here, as the Consequences seem to handle the “but” side.
To be honest, I think the way the rules are written already covers this: if the player wants more success (like someone believing them), then they should use their raises to create and activate an Opportunity.
–I do love how you are turning success options into Consequences, though. The idea of One Raise Per Fact seems to work well with “One Truth and Four Lies” sorts of scenarios, and each Raise removes a lie. The Quickstart did something similar to this, as you could find “truths” about people that could be potential allies, and I think this is staying true to the rules. Good choice!
–On that note, I agree that Opportunities are a bit risky, especially when you present one to the party. Some players will fail to get that cookie, and some may even fight over who gets it.
I’ve handled this in two ways so far.
The first is to offer “vague” Opportunities. For example, when the party set sail and had to decode a map, I told the player “There’s an opportunity to make life easier.” He decided to take it at the expense of more time, which was the Consequence), and I told him he gained the understanding how to code works, allowing him to “Read” it whenever he sees it.
This has also worked at other times, ranging from making an ally to learning of a reef. Some Opportunities are naturally unknown until they happen, and I feel it adds that sense of mystery to the event.
(Note: I’ve also done this with consequences that are NOT wounds, and the group has taken well to it for the same reason).
The second way I’ve handled this was to remind players they can make their own and not offer major Opportunities. Sure, I can have an Opportunity on every action, but at that point, I feel like it takes away from players shaping the events to their needs and desires for the story. By leaving Opportunities open, players can really push the game in the direction they want, and in a game like 7th Sea 2nd Edition, that idea seems to be ideal in my book.
–Sailing was always a pain to figure out timelines for, but I like what you have here.
Personally, I did a simpler route. For example, the group was sailing to an unknown, unexplored island using a coded map. I told them that in perfectly ideal conditions, it would take 5 days. I then had them tell me how they were serving on the ship to help move things along, with a Consequence of adding days to the travel time (let’s say 7 days; I had 3 players that session).
There was no real “success” here; I used the problems at hand (in this case, travel time) like a Brute Squad the players could use Raises against to negate, and then use their other Raises for opportunities (like finding a stable way through the reefs for later, personal use). As getting to the destination was a given, I wasn’t requiring raises for it.
Granted, this is just the easy route, but something more in-depth would be awesome to see.
–Skills in this version are a bit funky. I like the idea of a Wildcard, but at the same time, some players may feel it is lumped with something else (and argue why use Stories to up a Wildcard when they can raise the main skill). Crafting gets lumped into Scholarship (a bit annoying, as someone who is both Librarian and Blacksmith IRL), and Merchant gets factored into the other elements of various social skills and Advantages.
My only other concern is that it may make it too much like the 1st Edition; there was a Knack for EVERYTHING, to the point there were 73 different skills and 275 individual knacks (give or take), not including homebrew. That’s. . .pretty massive due to being too specific (literally, an Attack and Parry for every weapon type).
I think a better approach would be to grant “Specialties” to skills; when using it in a specific manner, gain an additional die. We don’t see much in the non-combat side like this, so the idea of granting an addition die for a Surgeon performing Surgery or a Scholar gaining a die when doing research doesn’t seem too bad for a 1-2 point advantage.
–Lashes are also a mixed bag. Yeah, there’s the wound side, but you need more oomph sometimes.
As an idea, any Lashes left over at the end of a session carry over to the next session. If there are any left over at the end of the STORY, then do something creative: additional danger points for the next story arc, next story involves a number of steps equal to Lashes caused by Fate (or, for that character, extra steps based on Lashes), opposition equal to/based around number of Lashes appears, etc. I’d personally find a way to use it to drive the story forward, as Lashes are meant to show that manipulating Fate comes at a cost.
–I’m on the fence about more dice rolling. Too much rolling cheapens the storytelling elements in my opinion (something I realized while running the DFRPG), but too little offers no chance for the heroes to show off or get into trouble.
How often were your players rolling? I was trying to stick with the “dramatically appropriate” for my sessions, so once per dramatic scene, once per Risk (like Sailing), etc.
Again, just my experiences here. I hope there’s something useful here for you!
Ok, that is all awesome, but one specific thing jumps to mind: I *love* the increased potency of 4 and 5 dots in a skill, and I wonder if that might allow space for specializations, because honestly adding extra dice is less potent than actually getting the 4th rank. Hrm.
Tough call. I mean, bonus dice seem to be a primary name of the game here for basic show of skill, as well as re-rolls and exploding 10s. Since skills cover a wide range, I’d still be wary of adding a pidgeon-holed skill.
That said, I do think having some form of specialization (outside of the “Specialist” advantage) that directly impacts rolls is appealing.
How about this: a character may only have one Specialization per skill (either as a freebie at a specific rank or via an Advantage). Mechanically, I think it’d do one of the following:
1) May re-roll one die when using that specialty (like the 3rd rank in the skill, so it’d double up).
2) The skill is always considered to be one rank higher when using the specialty.
Example: A character with Scholarship 4 (Surgery Specialization) would act as though they had Scholarship 5 when making a Surgery roll, meaning 5 dice and 10s explode.
3) Use something like Legendary Trait (remove a die, auto-Raise) when using the Specialty.
4) Add +Skill rating to one die when using your Specialization.
4a) Add +FLAT BONUS to one die when using your Specialization
5) 9s count as 10s (a nod to the Quickstart)
Just a few ideas there. Personally, I’d either go with the re-roll for specialty at Rank 2 (meaning every Rank is now worth something), or go for a 2-3 point advantage for any of the others. It shouldn’t create a balance issue from my calculations, but that’s only my opinion (and as the 7th Sea forum bounces between quiet to aggressive on rules, I don’t have any input yet).
You should check out Schema, by Levi Kornelsen. It may give you a reeeealy good insight about Consequences and Opportunities, as well as a handy way to manage them.
Oh, excellent thought! I’ve been sitting on Schema (Levi is The Man), but hadn’t thought to dust it off for this.
Side note that came up in conversation this evening: have you looked at Fate Knots from the 1st Edition? If not, you can get the full read on page 120 of the Vodacce book.
If you don’t have it, it sums up as: all Vodacce heroes who take a Destiny Spread (free skills and advantages) have a Fate Knot, which can bring a plan centuries in the making to fruition. There are options you can roll for to see what the Fate Knot is for, but the effect is what matters.
GMs spent Drama Dice (Danger Points for 2nd Edition) in accordance to the knot when bringing something relating to that knot into the campaign. When the session arrives that will close the knot (about 15 or so Drama Dice), the GM gets to use those Drama Dice during that session. In addition to usual perks of having Drama Dice, they can be used to create a Catastrophe, cancel Drama dice, or even force a roll to fail.
I’m not saying this should convert over, but I think “storing” any extra unused lashes at the end of a session/story for later use could be interesting. Yes, extra Danger Points are nice, but alternatives like raising a Villain’s Influence, implementing a consequence, or creating a behind-the-scenes fate that is coming to pass would all be nice options.
I had our first “getting to know the game” session last weekend. This was not the start of a campaign, just a chance to try out the rules and see how they work
I prepared 3 characters – a sorcerer, a duelist, and a social person:
They were:
Svetlana, an Ussuran with Touched by Matushka/Orphan
Zygmunt, a Sarmatian with Cavalryman/Duelist
Johann, an Eisen Engineer/Merchant
(I had an alternate for Johann which had Engineer/Jenny; despite not taking the Jenny character, the player ended up seducing/being seduced by the villain).
Overall, it worked really well. The game flowed a lot faster than 1st edition.
The player with the Duelist ended up using all the maneuvers, and they really kick ass.
Negating damage was not a problem.
Dramatic sequences worked splendidly.
Learnings:
– It would help to have a good way to track what skill each character has used in a scene.
– The GM does _not_ spend DP to increase the wounds a villain does; I need to spend the DP for additional dice, then spend Raises to increase damage
– The players (all experienced with 1st ed. 7th Sea) assumed that villains had a death spiral just like heroes. Looking it up afterwards, the death spiral bonuses and penalties are ONLY for heroes.
– Monsters do _NOT_ do 1/2 their Strength as their base damage (oops). This gave the Duelist a wonderful chance to use the defensive maneuvers, but a Strength 10 monster against new characters was simply overwhelming when it did 5 wounds per raise. Thank goodness the Engineer had aim and created an Opportunity to find additional guns.
– One risk was crossing a raging river, and the consequences were: Swept downstream (X2), Drenched, and Lost Time. From this we figured out:
– Players may create opportunities that effectively negate a consequence (the Ussuran changed into a Wolf, and swam across the river carrying a rope, which I ruled removed Swept downstream as a problem if another character spent a raise to use it)
– Consequences (that are not wounds) may need to be expanded or explained – why is this thing a problem? So perhaps Lost Time – Half a Day; Drenched – Lose an Hour
– Having some prepared Risks with both consequences and opportunities was very helpful
– I offered to buy every unused die the players had. Most players accepted every time.
Open Questions:
* How is ambush/surprise handled? There is nothing on the subject in the book (Theus! I love having a searchable PDF copy). Some immediate ideas:
* * For the heroes, perhaps give them a free round of action, but the appropriate skill is Hide. (Amusingly, it was only a year ago that I realized that I had mis-read the surprise rules for 1st Ed, where the ambushers get not just one unopposed action, but a full round of actions).
* * If villains/brutes are ambushing, perhaps offer a Hero Point to the players so that the PC’s can fail with a reward? Otherwise, it’s a Risk with a high number of wounds as consequences?
* How about disarm? It was useful in 1st Edition, but there is nothing about it in 2nd Ed.
* * Is it just creating an Opportunity by spending a raise? This seems too easy against anything better than a Brute Squad
* * Is it a contest of Raises? Rather than wounds, spend 2 or more raises to disarm. To retain the weapon, the target must immediately spend raises equal to the number used to disarm.
Cheers,
-Jay
Surprise is, I think, one of the useful applications of the skill-switching penalty. Forces character to roll Wits and Notice, then change skills during the first exchange when on defense. When on offense, I’d reflect it as opportunities.
Disarm is interesting because it’s trivial in 2e – spend a raise, and the person is disarmed. It’s totally within the bounds of the declaring a fact with a raise. However, it’s equally easy for them to recover their weapon, though it’s largely unnecessary unless they’re a duelist (since it costs them their signature move) because being disarmed doesn’t reduce your effectiveness, it just demands more colorful explanations of actions!
Like Rob said, Surprise can be handled with the skill-switch penalty (as things don’t go as expected). Additionally, you could just simply yell “Surprise!” and give a bonus to the surprising side (free raise, +2 raises for initiative purposes, etc). No real need to bring Hero Points into it unless you really want to do that.
As for Disarm, there’s been a number of discussions on this on the 7th Sea forum. As Rob said (again), losing a weapon just means you have to be more creative with things, and it doesn’t take much away from your effectiveness as it would have done in the 1st Edition.
One of the discussions from the forum was the make a Disarm work like Pressure; you remove your opponent’s weapon and force them to spend an additional raise to recover with it and attack again. It really has been a hot debate topic, especially since a weapon (or even weapon-like object) isn’t as vital as it was in the previous edition.