I just feel like bellyaching over 7th Sea with anyone here who's had experience with it.

My 14 session campaign came to a satisfying conclusion, but the players enjoyed it a lot more than I did. I poured hours into fixing that flimsy Roll and Keep system because I thought it had promise and loved the setting. What a waste of time.

I wonder what lesson I should learn from this. Don't bother fixing systems when there are other perfectly good ones waiting to be used? Even a bad system can still make players happy though the artistic perfectionist side of the GM is cringing over it?

Whatever, now I'm ready to plunge into D&D 5th ed I guess... assuming THAT math isn't borked too.

As a player, I really hated the 7th sea system.

Far too many pointless, badly described skills.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756272Even a bad system can still make players happy though the artistic perfectionist side of the GM is cringing over it?

That's the lesson I learned from RIFTS.

JG

(shrugs)  I figured out something a long time ago, when I first started playing GURPS: I'd found a system I liked, so I stuck with it.

Doing Revolutionary Paris?  No problem, I'll use the system I am familiar with and like.  Decided to do a Firefly run?  To heck with the official system, I'll use the system I am familiar with and like.

Screw clunky systems.  If I see a setting I want to play, I'll do it with a system I am familiar with and like.  

No reason why other folks shouldn't use the same principle with game systems with which they're familiar and like.

Quote from: Ravenswing;756406(shrugs)  I figured out something a long time ago, when I first started playing GURPS: I'd found a system I liked, so I stuck with it.

It's fortunate if you find a generic system that works for you, but I have yet to find one that works for me and that players have been willing to invest time in.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756272Don't bother fixing systems when there are other perfectly good ones waiting to be used?

This.  Take it from me.  This.

I'll also add, if the people you play with are insisting you use a system you don't like, then find different people to play with.

As for 7th Sea...

I bought the corebooks sometime back in 1999 (?) or so.  I initially really liked it.  I had two players make up characters.  I ran a barfight, and...

I never ran the game again.

It wasn't horrible.  In fact, as I was coming off 10 years of nearly exclusively using an absolutely horrible and broken mess of a system, 7th Sea seemed like fucking heaven with how clear and concise it was written and how quickly it flowed.  I intended to run a campaign, but I never did.

When I looked at it again last year, it was clear that 7th Sea was far too clunky for me to like it now.  I mentioned to my partner and regular gaming companion that I was thinking about getting rid of it.  The response I got was, "Well, it's not like it was anything special.  If we want to do something like that we can just use some other system and make up all our own shit."

And that sums it up.  The metaplot of 7th Sea was one of the more insipid ones I've seen in RPG products.  The NPCs were almost entirely uninspired archetypes which could easily be developed by anyone without the benefit of the published books.  The setting itself was randomly chucked together and seemed to actively work against the kind of adventure ideas the material presented itself as wanting to promote.  The mechanics, while spiffy to me when it was new, were actually quite clunky and could easily be replaced by something else for a superior experience.  Take all that out and there wasn't anything left to the books.

I got rid of the books.  I thank 7th Sea for helping free me from the gaming prison I was in by showing me there were other things out there.  But in terms of actual gaming utility?  It didn't do much for me.

I'm a big fan of 7th Sea as a comic book swashbuckling RPG. I really like the broad strokes of Faux Europe because the archetypes / stereotypes are easily recognizable to players.

It's "authentic" from the perspective of "hey I remember that from high school history class", with worldbuilding based on a visit to Epcot Center at Disneyworld, but  that's enough history to make the EuroFaux work for me as a GM.

BTW, here's a story for you 7th Sea fans...and non-fans:

Long time ago, about half year or so before 7th Sea is published by AEG, me and my friends were at this awesome little convention in Orange County (yup, The OC)  called Games University. Sadly, GU is dead now, but it was con devoted to teaching and learning new games and you earned prizes by doing and playing demos.

John Wick (one of the 7th Sea authors) was doing a demo of 7th Sea. Whatever you may think of John Wick based on his later games or his online presence, let me tell you that Wick is a damn fine presenter and his excitement and joy about L5R, 7th Sea and RPGs was electric.

He brought all these gorgeous art panels for 7th Sea and talked all about the various factions, he busted out the character sheets and showed us all the cool bits we were gonna use to make cool characters and do cool stuff. We were super jazzed, and he kept talking and talking and we kept being jazzed, but started wondering "hey, when do we actually start playing the demo", so we asked Wick, "hey when do we actually start playing???"  and that's when the "demo" ended.

Wick was totally confused.  He thought we had showed up for a presentation only, he had no idea we thought we were going to actually play and we would have never spent a prime Saturday slot and our con tickets on just a presentation!!!

Wick was bummed and we were bummed because there was nothing he could do since he was going from our "demo" to do another one for another group in a few minutes. But in Wick's defense, the dude set up a 1 hour playtest / tavern fight the next day and he went around the con that morning inviting everybody who had been disappointed the day before. Unfortunately, I was running a WFRP demo at the same time, but I give Wick credit for trying to make it up to us.

Quote from: James Gillen;756307That's the lesson I learned from RIFTS.

RIFTS is such a weirdo. Its just a mess, but hot damn is it fun to play. I have played lots of Palladium RPGs and run them, and I cringe just thinking about the math/system issues, but at the same moment, I am flooded by memories of tremendous fun.

Quote from: Gabriel2;756457The metaplot of 7th Sea was one of the more insipid ones I've seen in RPG products.  The NPCs were almost entirely uninspired archetypes which could easily be developed by anyone without the benefit of the published books.  The setting itself was randomly chucked together and seemed to actively work against the kind of adventure ideas the material presented itself as wanting to promote.

I fully agree with these points, but for me the Roll & Keep mechanic works just awesome. I run both L5R 1e and 7th Sea and I've never run into mechanical problems that really bothered me.

The metaplot is easily ignored thankfully, but the bigger pain in the ass is the relation between the CCG and the RPG. The CCG is all about Kickass Pirates and the core RPG...doesn't have pirates.

Quote from: Spinachcat;756469The metaplot is easily ignored thankfully, but the bigger pain in the ass is the relation between the CCG and the RPG. The CCG is all about Kickass Pirates and the core RPG...doesn't have pirates.

Well, there's a problem right there.

JG

Between the lack of pirates, the contrived ersatz-Earth and the gimmicky mechanics, I've steered clear of 7th Sea for some time now.

Quote from: James Gillen;756307That's the lesson I learned from RIFTS.

JG

Rifts features a workmanlike system and crap writing and organization. The system itself is not nearly as bad as RPGnet often makes it out to be.

Thanks for the Wick story Spinachcat. There's something so very perfectly "late 90s gaming industry" about it.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756272Even a bad system can still make players happy though the artistic perfectionist side of the GM is cringing over it?

This.  A thousand times this.  Spin a good yarn and the system is fairly irrelevant.

How in the world do you make a game called 7th Sea and not have pirates???

Quote from: Scott Anderson;756545How in the world do you make a game called 7th Sea and not have pirates???

I know! You had to get the Pirate Supplement for that. The core game assumed you were roaming heroes from various different countries who were together for adventure! And roaming!

Quote from: Old One Eye;756541This.  A thousand times this.  Spin a good yarn and the system is fairly irrelevant.

By my reckoning system is, at best, the fifth most important thing in a game.

Quote from: Ravenswing;756406(shrugs)  I figured out something a long time ago, when I first started playing GURPS: I'd found a system I liked, so I stuck with it.

Doing Revolutionary Paris?  No problem, I'll use the system I am familiar with and like.  Decided to do a Firefly run?  To heck with the official system, I'll use the system I am familiar with and like.

Screw clunky systems.  If I see a setting I want to play, I'll do it with a system I am familiar with and like.  

No reason why other folks shouldn't use the same principle with game systems with which they're familiar and like.

I do exactly the same with my homebrew... well with either homebrew or an Amber diceless engine homebrew.

Because its "my" game I can make it non generic very easily design a space dogfight system, add a magic system a Psyker toolkit etc etc easy .

So I can play any setting I like.

However.... after my current Fables diceless game finishes (1 session left) I am goign to play a SHIELD supers game using Mutants and masterminds. Now I could run this with my system or a diceless engine but I have decided spcifically to use M&M because the players were lal new to RPGs and have only played my systems and so a system with an actual rule book and rules that are written down will be good for them to try.