Review of 7th Sea

The 7th Sea RPG is hands-down my favorite RPG setting. An old friend (Hunter Gough) once said that 7th Sea "is set in the 100 year span between the fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of the Industrial Revolution." It's like all of European History were crammed into one moment, and then spiced up with some supernatural elements. Pirates feature heavily in the brand's marketing, but there's also Knights, Vikings, Courtiers, Musketeers, Revolutionaries, and Archaeologists. The major powers of Europe are reflected in the nations of 7th Sea: Avalon, Montaigne, Castille, Vestenmannavanjar (sp?), Vodacce and Ussura. Each nation has it's own swordsman's school, and it's own breed of magic. It's instantly familiar, yet full of promise and surprises. And sorcery is scary, creepy, awful business.

Man, I love that setting. Too bad the mechanics tork me off.

7th Sea uses a d10 die pool, with several innovative twists. There's a gambling element, where you can put "raises" on your difficulty to pull off extra effects. There's drama dice, which are an in-game reward to give your players when they do something cool. Arcana are basically a tarot card that grants a power triggered by your drama dice, each PC can have exactly one, chosen at creation. Swordsman's schools grant cool special manuevers and powers without the complexity of 3rd Ed's feats. On first read through, the mechanics sound beautiful and fun.

Truth is, the "Roll and Keep" system of 7th Sea is broken in many small ways that add up to incredible aggregate frustration. Character creation is filled with little twists that a veteran player can milk, but which will elude newbies. A starting character can have between one and five actions per round. Combat really drags when the other players act 4 or 5 times as often as you do. Raises sound awesome, but they often backfire and make you fail at a simple task. Combat involves too much die-rolling and math - there's basically two types of hit points, one of which is rerolled every time you're hit and resets whenever the second type gets damaged. The best tactic for your drama dice is to just sit on them and get the xp they grant if left unused at the end of the session - which sucks for the sorceries that are powered by Drama. The GM's book repeatedly says Arcana are terribly rare and NPCs shouldn't really have them, no matter how cool they are. The Vodacce sorcery does absolutely nothing at the starting level if your GM follows that tidbit of advice on Arcana.

I've never been so let-down by a rule system. I've never wanted a game to work more than I wish 7th Sea did. And despite all that, I love the setting enough to try running the game again sometime...