https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwickpresents/7th-sea-second-edition/comments
It's the last few days of what has now become, by a vast margin, the most successful tabletop game related kickstarter of all time.
Topics for discussion:
*The quickstart rules, attached.
*Consensus on the Kickstarter page itself is slowly turning towards "the 2nd edition rules are bad, we're going to ignore them". Appropriately enough, Wick ignores the numerous complaints while graciously thanking for the few compliments.
*The final sourcebook type stretch goal has been revealed: the Secret Societies Sourcebook, at 1,000,000 dollars. It is unknown what stretch goals would follow, though it seems almost certain some would since it is almost guaranteed that 1,000,000 dollars would be reached and Wick would want people to be at their absolutely most motivated for the last day, which is traditionally among the most profitable in a kickstarter.
* There would not be a Cathay/Far East sourcebook. Instead, in 2017 Wick will open another kickstarter, this time for a whole new "7th Sea: Far East" line with its own core book and nation supplements. You got to love his reasoning for this: the far east just has too many cultures, and they're all too deep and interesting to do justice with just one book! Africa and both Americas? Bah! what's even there? Brown people? They didn't even invent samurais!
* For shit and giggles, here are two links to John Wick's blog, in which he talks (in his usual, overly verbose fashion) about what he claims are the best and worst RPG adventures of all time, showing the same old lack of self-awareness and rabid self-aggrandizement we've come to love to hate:
http://johnwickpresents.com/updates/the-worst-adventure-of-all-times/
http://johnwickpresents.com/updates/the-best-adventure-of-all-times/
It will be most interresting to see if the rules change before the final version (presumably, Wick isn't the only one listening). Not that it really matters, I'm increasingly in this only for the lore (and the maps).
>>45877467
It's likely they will, but not to the degree most people would like. However Wick goes about this it's virtually certain by now that the final rules would still be a narrative, overly abstract mess supported by shaky mathematics.
>>45877902
Right, then. Might as well start thinking about what system to chop up and use instead when it's released... Tempted to do something d100.
>>45877922
Personally I'm very surprised there's never been a really solid Savage Worlds convention, it seems like such a no brainer.
>>45877937
Care to sell it to me? I might be tempted to do a conversion, but I've never played (or even looked at) Savage Worlds.
>>45877973
In my opinion it's the game that offers the best balance on the market between enough crunch to model a fictional world and have mechanically interesting battles, and a system that runs fast and easy enough not to drag the game down. It uses what is technically a dice pool system with different types of dice, but you only read the highest showing and from there on it's a simple TN system. It's actually got a lot of interesting similarities to R&K, such as distinguishing what are essentially Dramatic Wounds from just regular ones (although there aren't any "Flesh Wounds" or something like that to track) and what are essentially Drama Dice (called "Bennies" in Savage Worlds) being a significant part of gameplay. In terms of character creation it's fast and simple, although it might be a little too simplistic for some of the interesting bits of 7th Sea creation not to get lost (like the whole deal with your social rank, nobility, commendations and staff like that. Savage Worlds would just treat each of those as a fairly simplistic "Edge" with little mechanical effect). There's a fairly flexible system for special powers which is intended to be reflavorable to cover a wide variety of situations, but I suspect that the unique magic systems of 7th Sea would take some tweaking to introduce because they're just so out there compared to a generic system of effects ("damage", "armor boost", "costs X energy", etc.). The thing I'll be saddest about having to ditch (or rebuild from scratch, which is in many ways the same thing) are the swordfighting mechanics and the Swordsman Schools, which I think were really the highlight of the 7th Sea mechanics (then again, it also seems like they'll be ditched for the 2nd edition of 7th Sea anyway since John's method is to remove everything good and replace it with bad).
It helpes that Savage Worlds is a generic system with many of established settings and books, several with a pirate theme that might be worth giving a look.
>>45878038
How well does the system differentiate different weapons? I can't help but find it wrong when a Knife, a Rapier and a Claymore are equally dangerous in the same way.
>>45878106
Definitely more than 1st ed 7th Sea, though not so much as GURPS or D&D and not counting Swordsman Schools (which were the real meat of the system). Different damage dice, parry bonuses/penalties, reach, and sometimes special qualities, off the top of my head.
>>45878106
>>45878174
Which does bear mentioning that the first edition of 7th Sea didn't exactly have a page long weapons list either. The different melee weapons were literally almost all divided into one of "knife", "fencing weapon" or "heavy weapon", and that's it.
>>45877050
Is it the most successful when Kingdom Death earned double the cash?
>>45877050
All right, John Wick is such a douche that he think tomb of horrors is shit with its insta kills when I have read his GMing style before. The guy kills constantly by ignoring the rules of the game and along it happen with custom made super Evil Mary Sues.
No wonder he bashes tomb of horrors so openly while loving castle Ravenloft.
Goddamn everything he says annoys me.
>>45878354
This is one of those cases where the use of an inaccurate term in the OP is meaningful. OP calls it the most successful tabletop game related kickstarter whereas what he should be calling it is the most successful tabletop ROLEPLAYING GAME related kickstarter. It's a subtle different but as you showed yourself, it's significant.
>>45878354
Kingdom Death is a Tabletop Miniature Game, not an RPG, right? I Think OP means most successful RPG game, not Tabletop Game. Its just words, but there is a diference.
>>45878400
Yet he's clearly very good at running a kickstarter. I hate him as much as most guys on /tg/ but I got to give it to him, the way he ran everything was flawless. Yes, 7th Sea was a popular game back at the time but you can't really compare it to stuff like Exalted, and they never did so well. Wick knew exactly how much information to reveal and to whom and when, how to go about it, what to promise, what to turn into stretch goals, etc.
It's actually quite admirable. If nothing else, I hope game designers learn from this incident so that we can have more successful kickstarters like this in the future.
>>45878174
Sounds good. I always thought of 7th sea armoury as being the very least acceptable, while DnD meanwhile seems almost too cluttered. I think I will at the very least investigate Savage Worlds, and if I do make something out of it, I will post it here (after the Kickstarter is finished and I've gotten at least a few of the books, of course)
>>45877050
>There would not be a Cathay/Far East sourcebook. Instead, in 2017 Wick will open another kickstarter, this time for a whole new "7th Sea: Far East" line with its own core book and nation supplements. You got to love his reasoning for this: the far east just has too many cultures, and they're all too deep and interesting to do justice with just one book! Africa and both Americas? Bah! what's even there? Brown people? They didn't even invent samurais!
In all fairness to Wick (can't believe I'm saying that), colonialism practically annihilated the New World, and Europe actually traded with the Asian nations during the 17th Century, rather than just going over there and taking their shit like what they did with the Americas. I don't know enough about the African empires of that era to comment on them.
That, and I'm hoping we actually get full treatments for Not-India and Not-Thailand, as well as Not-China.
>>45878921
That still doesn't excuse the flagrant dismissal of all non-European/East Asian cultures by implication by a modern days writer.
Is not Rokugan in the east?
>>45879878
Never been the case, and now impossible for it to be as different people hold the rights to the franchises.
>There would not be a Cathay/Far East sourcebook. Instead, in 2017 Wick will open another kickstarter, this time for a whole new "7th Sea: Far East" line with its own core book and nation supplements. You got to love his reasoning for this: the far east just has too many cultures, and they're all too deep and interesting to do justice with just one book! Africa and both Americas? Bah! what's even there? Brown people? They didn't even invent samurais!
And there I was thinking it was because he just earned a million dollar off a kickstarter and wanted to see how much more he could
>>45881281
It may be related.
>>45877050
The quickstart feels a lot like if they crossed 7th Sea with Dungeon World.
Not big fan of Dungeon World, but this could be decent.
>>45882741
How about an Apocalypse World conversion, really? Wouldn't it work nicely? Different Schools, Nations, Roles and types of Sorcery could each be "mini-playbooks" you mix and match.
>>45885166
Sorcery could be a move in the Nation playbooks, since it's so intimately tied to the concept.
>>45879878
Repeat after me, "Rokugan and Theah are not in the same fucking world. They never have been and never will be."
>>45885166
What would be each nation's super sex move be?
Anyone have any good reading to recommend for getting into a good 7th sea mood?
>>45886722
> They never have been
Sssort of. It was implied they were in the earliest drafts of the editions but that got abandoned about as quickly as Exalted dropped from being oWoD's past.
>>45888228
Yeah, no. Early gaijin personalities in L5R, notably Alhundro Cornejo (first printed in Imperial aka the first base set), was from Merenae a non-Thean country. Since Imperial edition predated the first 7th Sea base set by 4 years it would have been easy to place Merenae on Theah if they ever intended to make them set in the same universe. Not to mention Theah's far eastern analog Cathay is vastly different Rokugan.
I loved the fist edition lore, and the R&K system was easy to fix.
My group also specializes in doing interesting tricks with sorceries. I managed to turn Sorte into a powerhouse of manipulation.
I just want the lore, everything else can be fixed into a reasonable system.
>>45878629
We don't know if it's "successful" yet, we won't until the book is actually delivered.
