John Wick Presents
Years ago at a con, my husband and I got to play 7th Sea right after it came out. We had a great time. Swashbuckling with just a touch of magic. Unfortunately, we never had another chance to play. (Too many games, not enough free time. The story of most gamers’ lives. Alas…) Fast forward to now. Two or three of my Friday Night Skype group got in on the 7th Sea Kickstarter and just got their early downloads. And Donovan Morningfire was only too happy to create a scenario and pregens. So I finally got to play it again–with the brand new second edition rules!
How was it? It was great! For starters, since Dono knows us well, the pregens were tailored to us. One was requested by Empty Bacta Tank, the pirate Sharktooth Conroy. And Dono designed the others with an eye to what each of us would enjoy playing. For example, he recalled that I’d had lots of fun playing Priska the Bothan archaeologist in an EotE campaign. So he made Rose Dorleen of Avalon, part rogue/part amateur archaeologist. With a whip! How cool is that? The rest of the cast was Cedric Bissett du Verre, Montaine dilettante and duelist, and Mikhail Petronov, Ussuran strongman.
Cedric had employed Conroy and Rose to obtain a MacGuffin and we were in an inn about to turn it over when a “lackey” and a bunch of thugs barged in and accused Rose of stealing MacGuffin from a Count (of no account, I am sure. Too bad I didn’t come up with that line at the time…) Instant Tavern Brawl! A classic way to introduce the mechanics of Risks (checks) in 7th Sea.
I discovered an interesting quirk of the mechanic–the dice roll doesn’t determine IF you succeed. You get to do what you want, IF you have enough Raises on your roll. In 7th Sea, you roll a number of D10’s and then group the dice, so that each group adds to at least 10. Each of these 10+ sums is 1 Raise. The GM decides how many Raises you need to do what you want. (This is the TL;DR version.) It worked well.
I got a kick out of using a whip–starting with snapping it around Lackey’s ankles and jerking him off his feet and onto his derriere! All for only three Raises. Conroy played to his Hot-Headed Hubris (which gained him a Hero Point) by throwing a mug at a thug. This was followed by one of the baddies leading a wild chase through town by Mikhail–who left via window–and Rose.
Eventually, we got the MacGuffin back for Cedric and decided to take him up on his offer to go back to Montaigne. But of course, the Count just couldn’t leave things alone. He showed up at the hotel Cedric had engaged to demand his MacGuffin and insult Rose’s virtue. So Cedric challenged him to a duel, while suggesting the Count wasn’t nearly as honorable as the pirate and the foreign Ussuran, an accurate assessment as Conroy and Mikhail discovered all the extra minions trying to sneak up on us!
After Cedric dispatched the dishonorable Count, the party was more than ready to get a good night’s rest before embarking on the ship to Montaigne. But Cedric’s player had one more bit of roleplaying up his sleeve. There was a knock at Rose’s door. She answered it to be presented with “a single red rose, a bottle of wine and cups.” Naturally, she invited Cedric in. Which is where we ended it, with just a touch of romance.
We will definitely be playing more 7th Sea on Friday nights. Not only has Dono mentioned having a few ideas for scenarios, but a second member of the group is already set to GM another one-shot, and a third is talking about GMing–and even doing a Star Wars hack. So it sounds like our group has another keeper of an RPG! Until we swashbuckle again, Rose will press her rose as a keepsake and not get out of practice with that whip!
Linda Whitson
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