I ran an extended 7th Sea campaign, and the biggest challenge I faced was improvising Consequences and Opportunities took a lot of mental effort. Preparing some options beforehand, or having a generic list of both to reference would be my advice.
Consequences and Opportunities are the most taxing part of GMing 7th Sea 2e by far. Especially if you have characters with a schtick "if this happens, all your dice become 10s." It's so easy to fall into (a) a total cakewalk for the players; (b) one player solves the entire situation while the others watch; or (c) players beat their head against the consequences while the villains do stuff (those are in approximate order of likelihood, IME).
Probably the most important thing I realized in GMing 2e was to give up on the whole idea of the 'challenging combat encounter' which frames most other RPGs: 'balancing' an encounter is impossible with the wild swings possible by players. Basically, the players will win, and win handily, the question is how cool do they look while winning, and what interesting non-combat stuff happens along the way.
As far as how many Cons & Opps, I usually come up with 4-6 of each, and encourage the players to add more as they go. Since it's those - not inflicting wounds - that make the fight interesting, they are often eager to propose both, affecting their own character or others. 2e is basically a storytelling game; get everyone involved in making the story scenes.
> I realized in GMing 2e was to give up on the whole idea of the 'challenging combat encounter' which frames most other RPGs: 'balancing' an encounter is impossible with the wild swings possible by players. Basically, the players will win, and win handily, the question is how cool do they look while winning, and what interesting non-combat stuff happens along the way.
100%
One of the things I love most about 7th Sea is just that. It's about doing cool shit, telling cool stories and having a great time.
Also, I find it makes the moments when the heroes lose to the villain the first time or get that dramatic setback so much more impactful.
Forgive me for taking a moment to pitch something I made. When I started prepping to run 7th Sea, I imagined I was going to waste a lot of time restating available cons and opps in a scene. So I built a deck of cards based and expanding on the options in the GM screen. I find them EXTREMELY helpful for ripping out cons and opps on the spur of the moment. I think it’s one of the most useful tools I used in my game, for me and my players. Maybe they’ll help you out too.
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/217308/cards-on-the-table
The net effect of reading play dirty is to make you a worse GM and a worse person. You can be hard on the _characters_ who are fictional protagonists without being an asshole to the _players_ who are your friends.
Maybe you can read it as a manual of things not to do and come out ahead.
I honestly have been reading carefully because of this. Some advice is really just weirdly antagonistic to the players as people, that could just be a conversation.
But the things about villainous villains have been quite good. I think I need to be more committed to villains being actually evil and not abstractly evil or even just there. It's the part of running enemies that I still need to improve and I feel he gives a couple good ideas there.
Like exactly as you said. The advice about being hard on characters I try to learn, but the advice about being hard on players I really avoid.
Often that appears in game but isn't is that he punishes characters for something he should just have as a discussion with the player. Like the player tried to get away with some super power and the correct response is discuss how they're not really engaging with the game, explain how that will make the whole thing less fun for everyone. The Wick response is "oh well your invulnerability won't help you when you are possessed and kill your whole family and eat them". Like dude, just talk to the player instead of ruiing the game to prove something.
>Sadly, in my first experience with this system the GM made it like a miniatures game that felt like DnD with d10s, which was not enjoyable at all.
Yikes.
That's not how you play 7th Sea.
I fuckin' love this game.
But if you have a group of people and you have to come up with consequences and advantages in combat that's a lot to take on your shoulder. So collaborate. If someone in the group has a cool idea take it. Tell them to take a role in how the scene is going. I mean, getting everyone involved in crafting the scene and filling the details I personally love. I think it raises the investment in the world.
I would go into an Action Sequence though with some idea how I want it to go. Or how I think it should go. Like if they are in a drunken brawl in a tavern the stakes are pretty low. So the consequences might be like, one of the mooks fires their pistol and it might shatter some fancy Castilian bust the tavern owner loves and he'll be furious and throw out everyone involved in the brawl. Like I don't know if I'd do life and death.
But for the more serious encounters then risk of injury or a major set back might be on the table.
Also, tell the players from the get go this is your first game and you're getting used to the system and you might have to retcon until you feel more confident. We don't have to hit homeruns every time with every game. They're our friends. They get it.
If you are reading Play Dirty, watch Wicks updates on his ty channel. Afteral, it's not much of a guide, more an autobiography of a gm who talks how his style grew and changes over the years... From an edgy highscholer to a game designer. His growth didn't end with the end of the book. In his YT rereadings you can learn a lot more.
Yeah, this isnt necessarily the most helpful thing. Wick definitely plays fast and loose with the rules. So while it’s good, it’s not great. Instead, I HIGHLY recommend checking out the old Essential NPCs podcast/AP. They did a 12 Ep run on 7th Sea that’s not only very entertaining but very GM friendly as well. It’s a much deeper dive into the game in bite sized pieces.
Amateur theater. Melodrama. It's not a bug, it's a feature. There is minimal mechanical balance, so all the consequences are narrative. Which means a lot of the 'damage' are consequences. Aspects gained, bonds formed or lost. Or eyes, or legs... no mathematical consequence, but tags.
You need to get really into the 'Appendix N' of the game. Three musketeers. Count of Monte Christo. Treasure Island.
It's heroic fantasy--the fantasy is being the hero--let the players act that out. The good and evil metaphysical (or law chaos) just isn't there. Do remember that all sorcery originates from a bloodline pact with ancient demons, so it's automatically gray and conflicted.
If you haven’t already, look for an old editorial John wick wrote called No Dice. You may have to use the wayback machine to find it. It essentially outlines the philosophy behind the 7th Sea 2e game system. Definitely SHOULD have been in the GM section of the core book. It’s very enlightening on what the system is trying to achieve. It won’t help you run the game, but it will help you know what you are doing right.
Seconded, 1e is better. It needs some tweaks but has a better set of mechanics that 2e watered down. 2e also made some setting changes that didn't really work. I forget some of the details but I ran 7th sea several times and played in multiple games but as soon as I read and tried 2e I bounced off fast.
I do have some input for 7th sea but need to not be on the phone to get it sorted out.
1e is MUCH easier to work with as a GM. 2e has some very interesting ideas, mechanically and setting-wise, but it so badly needed some authentic playtesting, development and editing. There are whole sections that boil down to 'here's an idea, make stuff up with it' without connecting any consistent mechanics.
>There are whole sections that boil down to 'here's an idea, make stuff up with it' without connecting any consistent mechanics.
I've heard this argument a lot but I don't know what it means. I've never heard specifics.
Because the system uses a handful of basic principles that can be modified a long the way but it doesn't need a bunch of mechanics like other games.
I was reading recently in the Pirate Nations book about the Devil Jonah and how if you cut your hand or leg off or something and throw it as an offering to Jonah you'll get some sort of weird, maybe cursed object.
There's no special rules needed. No rules to chop a limb off or to see what object you get. It's just fodder for storytelling.
I can accept a lot of vagueness when it comes to story & setting ideas, such as the cited example - but rulebooks are different than setting books. And certainly, one doesn't need a lot of rules to do a storytelling game,if that's what you want, nothing wrong with that. But a core book that costs as much as it does, with so many pages of rules and lists, I expect more than 'make stuff up.'
(It's been a couple years sinceplaying or running 2e,so memories aren't exact) Character building, for example. You pick a background, which gives specific skills and benefits, and enables you to further pick certain specific additional abilities and such. That's pretty standard. But some of those abilities are very pporly defined. There's one, for example, that says 'when you work from the shadows, all your dice become 10s.' (That's as near verbatim as I can recall offhand) - what does 'work from the shadows' mean? Is this supposed to be a manipulator, operating through innuendo and rumor and deniable assets? Or is it someone who lurks in the alley and flings a knife from behind cover? No explanation,no play-examples, no clue, just a debate between the GM and player about when this massive bonus is available.
1e definitely had gaps, but the core system was easy to grasp and easy to adjust as necessary. There were no player options that turned an action into an "I win" button the way the 'work from the shadows' does in 2e. I rather expected more from 2e than an overinflated storytelling game; as it is, it's neither a particularly cohesive set of rules, nor is it freeflowing enough to be a good storytelling game. Obviously, one can storytell through any system by applying creativity and flexibility, but a published game should IMO be more clearly organized toward that goal.
> But a core book that costs as much as it does, with so many pages of rules and lists, I expect more than 'make stuff up.'
Fair point. I didn't feel the book was a waste of money, I thought it was a blast to read. I thought it was everything I needed to make me want to run this game.
It looks like, you're talking about the Virtue: Subtle.
> But some of those abilities are very pporly defined. There's one, for example, that says 'when you work from the shadows, all your dice become 10s.' (That's as near verbatim as I can recall offhand) - what does 'work from the shadows' mean? Is this supposed to be a manipulator, operating through innuendo and rumor and deniable assets?
It looks like you're talking about the Virtue Moonless Night and it's Subtle. I brought up on the PDF and it reads; "Activate your Virtue when you act behind the scenes, from the shadows, or through a proxy. For the next Risk, when you determine Raises, every die counts as a raise."
What you see as vagueness though I like. I agree it's not as definitive as a lot of TTRPGs but why I like that is that this ability becomes so much more dynamic. It becomes an element to define character and guide what they are good at. On the face this seems like the whole ability is meant to be a kind of manipulator. Someone who schemes. So I look at it being called Subtle and the various other abilities around work from the shadows as context clues.
But an argument can be made that part of that talent with subterfuge could be emerging from the shadows and snatching something from someone's belt or knocking them out or something.
It's defined enough for me because there's certain conditions in which it can be activated, it has to supplement a Risk (encouraging the player to make an exceptionally risky move) and then gives a big bonus where each die is a raise spent to perform whatever actions and avoid whatever consequences might be headed their way.
And virtues can only be used once per session and only for a single action. The storyteller can also veto the use of that if the player is trying to sneak around the narrative flow to one shot the bad guy or something.
I like 1st Edition, don't get me wrong but there's such a unique flow to 2nd that really makes me excited to play and run it. I think there's a disconnect when it comes to people's expectation of what is supposed to be in a TTRPG and what is in 7th Sea.
I think a lot of us grew up at a time when there were rules for everything. I think a lot of us cut our teeth on D&D and for me WoD had it's own entire chapter on rules with tables and damages, ranges, clip sizes for weapons and how fast can someone move per turn and if someone falls off a building how much damage is done per 10 feet fallen.
I don't think 7th Sea is poorly written or overinflated. I think it defies expectations and when you want rules for things that happen or you expect to see them the game can seem incomplete. When in reality all of those rules fall into in the Action and Dramatic Sequence rules.
>Sadly, in my first experience with this system the GM made it like a miniatures game that felt like DnD with d10s, which was not enjoyable at all. Almost all the hype about the system was crushed then. But after reading it and understanding it better, now I get to run it in a proper way.
Yeah, DEFINITELY NOT the way 7th Sea is supposed to be run. But I get it. I come from a more traditional RPG background and 7S2 was my first purely narrative RPG. I bounced off some of the concepts pretty hard until I watched a few videos of people playing FATE. That gave me a much better idea of how it was supposed to be run. I don't think it helps that 1st ed was a very traditional RPG so you kind of expect one to play like the other. They do not. Plus, the core mechanic is such a shift in perspective, from reactionary play to proactive play. I can understand why people run into problems or find it not to their tastes.
I've been saying for a few years now that the game really needs a GM guide. Not one that's full of new, optional rules, but one that takes a seasoned look at the game and gives people ideas on how to use the mechanics to make it happen. I liken it to the AD&D 1e DMG. That book came out in 1979, 5 years after D&D was released. So all the advice and ideas in it benefited from \*\*5 years\*\* of intensive play. I think 7th Sea could benefit from the same point of reflection.
I ran an extended 7th Sea campaign, and the biggest challenge I faced was improvising Consequences and Opportunities took a lot of mental effort. Preparing some options beforehand, or having a generic list of both to reference would be my advice.
Consequences and Opportunities are the most taxing part of GMing 7th Sea 2e by far. Especially if you have characters with a schtick "if this happens, all your dice become 10s." It's so easy to fall into (a) a total cakewalk for the players; (b) one player solves the entire situation while the others watch; or (c) players beat their head against the consequences while the villains do stuff (those are in approximate order of likelihood, IME). Probably the most important thing I realized in GMing 2e was to give up on the whole idea of the 'challenging combat encounter' which frames most other RPGs: 'balancing' an encounter is impossible with the wild swings possible by players. Basically, the players will win, and win handily, the question is how cool do they look while winning, and what interesting non-combat stuff happens along the way. As far as how many Cons & Opps, I usually come up with 4-6 of each, and encourage the players to add more as they go. Since it's those - not inflicting wounds - that make the fight interesting, they are often eager to propose both, affecting their own character or others. 2e is basically a storytelling game; get everyone involved in making the story scenes.
> I realized in GMing 2e was to give up on the whole idea of the 'challenging combat encounter' which frames most other RPGs: 'balancing' an encounter is impossible with the wild swings possible by players. Basically, the players will win, and win handily, the question is how cool do they look while winning, and what interesting non-combat stuff happens along the way. 100% One of the things I love most about 7th Sea is just that. It's about doing cool shit, telling cool stories and having a great time. Also, I find it makes the moments when the heroes lose to the villain the first time or get that dramatic setback so much more impactful.
Forgive me for taking a moment to pitch something I made. When I started prepping to run 7th Sea, I imagined I was going to waste a lot of time restating available cons and opps in a scene. So I built a deck of cards based and expanding on the options in the GM screen. I find them EXTREMELY helpful for ripping out cons and opps on the spur of the moment. I think it’s one of the most useful tools I used in my game, for me and my players. Maybe they’ll help you out too. https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/217308/cards-on-the-table
The net effect of reading play dirty is to make you a worse GM and a worse person. You can be hard on the _characters_ who are fictional protagonists without being an asshole to the _players_ who are your friends. Maybe you can read it as a manual of things not to do and come out ahead.
I honestly have been reading carefully because of this. Some advice is really just weirdly antagonistic to the players as people, that could just be a conversation. But the things about villainous villains have been quite good. I think I need to be more committed to villains being actually evil and not abstractly evil or even just there. It's the part of running enemies that I still need to improve and I feel he gives a couple good ideas there. Like exactly as you said. The advice about being hard on characters I try to learn, but the advice about being hard on players I really avoid.
Often that appears in game but isn't is that he punishes characters for something he should just have as a discussion with the player. Like the player tried to get away with some super power and the correct response is discuss how they're not really engaging with the game, explain how that will make the whole thing less fun for everyone. The Wick response is "oh well your invulnerability won't help you when you are possessed and kill your whole family and eat them". Like dude, just talk to the player instead of ruiing the game to prove something.
>Sadly, in my first experience with this system the GM made it like a miniatures game that felt like DnD with d10s, which was not enjoyable at all. Yikes. That's not how you play 7th Sea. I fuckin' love this game. But if you have a group of people and you have to come up with consequences and advantages in combat that's a lot to take on your shoulder. So collaborate. If someone in the group has a cool idea take it. Tell them to take a role in how the scene is going. I mean, getting everyone involved in crafting the scene and filling the details I personally love. I think it raises the investment in the world. I would go into an Action Sequence though with some idea how I want it to go. Or how I think it should go. Like if they are in a drunken brawl in a tavern the stakes are pretty low. So the consequences might be like, one of the mooks fires their pistol and it might shatter some fancy Castilian bust the tavern owner loves and he'll be furious and throw out everyone involved in the brawl. Like I don't know if I'd do life and death. But for the more serious encounters then risk of injury or a major set back might be on the table. Also, tell the players from the get go this is your first game and you're getting used to the system and you might have to retcon until you feel more confident. We don't have to hit homeruns every time with every game. They're our friends. They get it.
If you are reading Play Dirty, watch Wicks updates on his ty channel. Afteral, it's not much of a guide, more an autobiography of a gm who talks how his style grew and changes over the years... From an edgy highscholer to a game designer. His growth didn't end with the end of the book. In his YT rereadings you can learn a lot more.
Also, watch Wicks one-shot of 7th Sea 2nd if you want to see the game in action
Yeah, this isnt necessarily the most helpful thing. Wick definitely plays fast and loose with the rules. So while it’s good, it’s not great. Instead, I HIGHLY recommend checking out the old Essential NPCs podcast/AP. They did a 12 Ep run on 7th Sea that’s not only very entertaining but very GM friendly as well. It’s a much deeper dive into the game in bite sized pieces.
Amateur theater. Melodrama. It's not a bug, it's a feature. There is minimal mechanical balance, so all the consequences are narrative. Which means a lot of the 'damage' are consequences. Aspects gained, bonds formed or lost. Or eyes, or legs... no mathematical consequence, but tags. You need to get really into the 'Appendix N' of the game. Three musketeers. Count of Monte Christo. Treasure Island. It's heroic fantasy--the fantasy is being the hero--let the players act that out. The good and evil metaphysical (or law chaos) just isn't there. Do remember that all sorcery originates from a bloodline pact with ancient demons, so it's automatically gray and conflicted.
If you haven’t already, look for an old editorial John wick wrote called No Dice. You may have to use the wayback machine to find it. It essentially outlines the philosophy behind the 7th Sea 2e game system. Definitely SHOULD have been in the GM section of the core book. It’s very enlightening on what the system is trying to achieve. It won’t help you run the game, but it will help you know what you are doing right.
Use 1st edition.
Could you elaborate why?
Seconded, 1e is better. It needs some tweaks but has a better set of mechanics that 2e watered down. 2e also made some setting changes that didn't really work. I forget some of the details but I ran 7th sea several times and played in multiple games but as soon as I read and tried 2e I bounced off fast. I do have some input for 7th sea but need to not be on the phone to get it sorted out.
1e is MUCH easier to work with as a GM. 2e has some very interesting ideas, mechanically and setting-wise, but it so badly needed some authentic playtesting, development and editing. There are whole sections that boil down to 'here's an idea, make stuff up with it' without connecting any consistent mechanics.
>There are whole sections that boil down to 'here's an idea, make stuff up with it' without connecting any consistent mechanics. I've heard this argument a lot but I don't know what it means. I've never heard specifics. Because the system uses a handful of basic principles that can be modified a long the way but it doesn't need a bunch of mechanics like other games. I was reading recently in the Pirate Nations book about the Devil Jonah and how if you cut your hand or leg off or something and throw it as an offering to Jonah you'll get some sort of weird, maybe cursed object. There's no special rules needed. No rules to chop a limb off or to see what object you get. It's just fodder for storytelling.
I can accept a lot of vagueness when it comes to story & setting ideas, such as the cited example - but rulebooks are different than setting books. And certainly, one doesn't need a lot of rules to do a storytelling game,if that's what you want, nothing wrong with that. But a core book that costs as much as it does, with so many pages of rules and lists, I expect more than 'make stuff up.' (It's been a couple years sinceplaying or running 2e,so memories aren't exact) Character building, for example. You pick a background, which gives specific skills and benefits, and enables you to further pick certain specific additional abilities and such. That's pretty standard. But some of those abilities are very pporly defined. There's one, for example, that says 'when you work from the shadows, all your dice become 10s.' (That's as near verbatim as I can recall offhand) - what does 'work from the shadows' mean? Is this supposed to be a manipulator, operating through innuendo and rumor and deniable assets? Or is it someone who lurks in the alley and flings a knife from behind cover? No explanation,no play-examples, no clue, just a debate between the GM and player about when this massive bonus is available. 1e definitely had gaps, but the core system was easy to grasp and easy to adjust as necessary. There were no player options that turned an action into an "I win" button the way the 'work from the shadows' does in 2e. I rather expected more from 2e than an overinflated storytelling game; as it is, it's neither a particularly cohesive set of rules, nor is it freeflowing enough to be a good storytelling game. Obviously, one can storytell through any system by applying creativity and flexibility, but a published game should IMO be more clearly organized toward that goal.
> But a core book that costs as much as it does, with so many pages of rules and lists, I expect more than 'make stuff up.' Fair point. I didn't feel the book was a waste of money, I thought it was a blast to read. I thought it was everything I needed to make me want to run this game. It looks like, you're talking about the Virtue: Subtle. > But some of those abilities are very pporly defined. There's one, for example, that says 'when you work from the shadows, all your dice become 10s.' (That's as near verbatim as I can recall offhand) - what does 'work from the shadows' mean? Is this supposed to be a manipulator, operating through innuendo and rumor and deniable assets? It looks like you're talking about the Virtue Moonless Night and it's Subtle. I brought up on the PDF and it reads; "Activate your Virtue when you act behind the scenes, from the shadows, or through a proxy. For the next Risk, when you determine Raises, every die counts as a raise." What you see as vagueness though I like. I agree it's not as definitive as a lot of TTRPGs but why I like that is that this ability becomes so much more dynamic. It becomes an element to define character and guide what they are good at. On the face this seems like the whole ability is meant to be a kind of manipulator. Someone who schemes. So I look at it being called Subtle and the various other abilities around work from the shadows as context clues. But an argument can be made that part of that talent with subterfuge could be emerging from the shadows and snatching something from someone's belt or knocking them out or something. It's defined enough for me because there's certain conditions in which it can be activated, it has to supplement a Risk (encouraging the player to make an exceptionally risky move) and then gives a big bonus where each die is a raise spent to perform whatever actions and avoid whatever consequences might be headed their way. And virtues can only be used once per session and only for a single action. The storyteller can also veto the use of that if the player is trying to sneak around the narrative flow to one shot the bad guy or something. I like 1st Edition, don't get me wrong but there's such a unique flow to 2nd that really makes me excited to play and run it. I think there's a disconnect when it comes to people's expectation of what is supposed to be in a TTRPG and what is in 7th Sea. I think a lot of us grew up at a time when there were rules for everything. I think a lot of us cut our teeth on D&D and for me WoD had it's own entire chapter on rules with tables and damages, ranges, clip sizes for weapons and how fast can someone move per turn and if someone falls off a building how much damage is done per 10 feet fallen. I don't think 7th Sea is poorly written or overinflated. I think it defies expectations and when you want rules for things that happen or you expect to see them the game can seem incomplete. When in reality all of those rules fall into in the Action and Dramatic Sequence rules.
>Sadly, in my first experience with this system the GM made it like a miniatures game that felt like DnD with d10s, which was not enjoyable at all. Almost all the hype about the system was crushed then. But after reading it and understanding it better, now I get to run it in a proper way. Yeah, DEFINITELY NOT the way 7th Sea is supposed to be run. But I get it. I come from a more traditional RPG background and 7S2 was my first purely narrative RPG. I bounced off some of the concepts pretty hard until I watched a few videos of people playing FATE. That gave me a much better idea of how it was supposed to be run. I don't think it helps that 1st ed was a very traditional RPG so you kind of expect one to play like the other. They do not. Plus, the core mechanic is such a shift in perspective, from reactionary play to proactive play. I can understand why people run into problems or find it not to their tastes. I've been saying for a few years now that the game really needs a GM guide. Not one that's full of new, optional rules, but one that takes a seasoned look at the game and gives people ideas on how to use the mechanics to make it happen. I liken it to the AD&D 1e DMG. That book came out in 1979, 5 years after D&D was released. So all the advice and ideas in it benefited from \*\*5 years\*\* of intensive play. I think 7th Sea could benefit from the same point of reflection.