Warframe Concept

There's often been a discussion about the place for wheelchairs in fantasy games. Personally, we're all four it, but what about in science fiction? Christopher Pine (Star Trek) was wheelchair-bound. Hell, he was completely paralysed - not even having facial expressions. Could they have fixed it?  Quite probably, actually. But... not the point, now is it?

This got me to thinking about Warframe, with their space ninja. And of all the types out there, there's only one or two which could be considered 'different' - there's the one that's a composite of other Warframes. There's the one who's had her face blown through. But honestly, that's about it. Every single one of them is a super-agile killing machine.  But what about a concept for one that isn't - in the conventional sense?

See, I'm picturing a Warframe that doesn't have the ability to use her legs. She's in effect paralysed from the waist down.  And what happens is that the transference spark effectively carries her, holding her (often in a seated position, with her legs stretched out some), and guiding her around as she does her missions. The "ghost" is the one that has the mobility, bringing her along and giving her the means of travel.

What's the Warframe's power? Effectively Gravity Control.  She has a sword out? It hovers in front of her, lashing out and cutting anything in her path. She has kunai? They hover and twirl in front of her, then lash out, flinging themselves across the room at her enemies. I'd consider her passive to be a bonus to damage when using thrown / kinetic weapons (bows, crossbows, kunai, glaives, etc).

So what's her active powers?

1) Exalted Kunai.  Channelled Energy blades that hover and twirl around her that she can launch. Much like Ivara's Exalted Bow, or Excalibur's Exalted Blade, or Titania's Dex Pixia. Much as with these weapons, the exalted kunai are moddable.

2) Apportation. Pick a destination, and she gets 'flung' to that location. It's similar to a teleport, but you have to be able to cross the distance normally and you will physically move from one spot to the other.  The way I see it is that your WF hangs suspended as your apparition crosses the distance as per normal bullet jumping / wall running, etc, and when you activate the power again the WF is flung to your location. The way I'd deal with this is that your apparition doesn't have a 'cling limit' to walls and such, and can do literal wall-running to get from point to point - pretty good for some of the Corpus stages with the huge drops. You could also 'cancel' and go back to your WF body.

3) Poltergeist. Used with Exalted Kunai - you unleash a barrage of kunai against all enemies within an area, peppering them with multiple hits.

4) Haven't thought this far yet.

It'd be significantly different, but I like the idea.

SJW RPG And Other Acronyms

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness is coming out again, released by Palladium Books. You know, TMNT&OS was the first Palladium game I ever played -- even before I got into Robotech. It was a Palladium game, which means the mechanics were ... ehh, but it was fun, and really - that's all that mattered at the time.

They picked perhaps one of the worst streaming groups to announce this, however -- it's a group that's veering heavily on the Right, and is definitely not LGBT friendly. I won't go into too much detail, except to say that it's enough I'm not going to back the Kickstarter, and I won't be picking up the book.

Palladium, of course, has had a history -- between calling gays and trans folk 'sexual deviants', and being fairly racist in some of their game books (RIFTS Africa being an example), there's a lot there to keep people away from Palladium if they care about that kind of thing.

In the 80s, when I was a teen?  I didn't know better.  AIDS wasn't an epidemic yet, and there wasn't much to tell you about being gay, or trans, or anything else for that matter - sex ed wasn't still way behind, and I was pretty damn naive. I didn't really know what being 'gay' meant, and had no idea what 'trans' was - didn't know what a lesbian was, and had no idea what being bisexual meant (let alone non-binary, gender fluid, or anything else for that matter). There were the odd gay jokes - but the fact was I didn't 'get' them that much, either. All I knew was being gay meant kissing people of the same sex -- and really that's about it. Adults in this day and age really have no excuse, and there's enough out there that proper sex-ed should be taught in schools.

So what's this got to do with gaming?

Let's start with something simple: there's certain communities that make people who enjoy OSR look real bad. They the kind of people who complain about people who want to allow wheelchairs in D&D (why not? They existed as far back as ancient China). They complain when women are given positions of power in games and aren't treated as cheesecake. They complain when there's 'too many' people of colour in fantasy games, or the games focus on groups that aren't your typical European White groups. They're the people who complain when a company makes a game and says 'what if Europe failed to colonize the Americas?'

They complain about SJWs 'ruining' gaming. As if allowing for the full spectrum of the human experience in gaming is, somehow, 'bad'.

These are the people who made 'the red list' -- a list of gaming companies who 'put politics into gaming' - by, you know, making gaming about more than white guys. They come up with all these excuses as to why gaming shouldn't open its doors to other groups -- that it's checking off the list, that it's taking away from real roleplaying, that it's 'SJW nonsense' or catering or whatever.

Here's the thing. Gaming's come a long, long way from its roots in the 70s. That's not a bad thing. And you can totally go old school with dungeon crawls and whatever. I like old school gaming to a certain degree -- where you have to be on your toes, where insta-death can be a thing, where you roll your attributes and hit points and there's no 'death saves' or whatever. Where a Level 1 PC group can run into a nest of 100 goblins.... to me that's fun.

However, I also think the table should be open to everyone, and the game should reflect that diversity. A campaign setting that puts you in Africa and has you deal with the different cultures and mythologies of that continent? Sure. Not a single white guy to be seen? No issue. Oh, how about black people in middle-ages Fantasy Not-Europe? Sure, why not? That's not far-fetched. Oh, there's gays? Non-binary? There's trans folk? Sure, why not? There's people missing hands, or blind, or confined to a wheelchair, and don't want to have this simply 'fixed'? Why not?

What's wrong with running the gamut, and allowing everyone to feel welcome at the table?

"Politics has no place at the gaming table."

I'm sorry, but it's always been at the gaming table. It just happened to be politics you agreed with.

Dungeons and Dragons. Had Christian Saints and had Devils and Demons named from Christian mythology. (Yeah, Baalzebub, etc? Totally mythology). They had holy knights, and cleric spells which pulled from miracles. That is political -- it puts Christianity into the game and sets it above anything else.

The vast, vast, vast majority of characters were white, and male. The women were in chainmail bikinis or were the damsels in distress needing to be rescued. And let's not forget that in AD&D 1e, women were not allowed to have more than 17 Strength.

That's political.

And the main goal in gaming? Going into other lands, slaying the natives en masse, and taking their stuff, if not outright conquering the region and setting up shop there as a ruler. The opposition? Primitive, backwards, evil creatures that breed like rabbits and who are inherently evil and the anathema of civilization.

That's political.

And these people wonder why that's called racist? They don't see the parallels? They say 'it's just fantasy' and that people are reading too much into it?

D&D, from the get-go, was a colonial RPG. Humans were the best, the majority of the characters were white, and male, there were strong Christian symbolism in the game, and you went out and crushed other civilizations who were too barbaric to live and took over their lands.

We've come a long way from that, but too often I can still see the roots. And when a game company veers away from that baseline, people scream about the company giving into SJWs or bringing politics into gaming.

It's always been there.

Those people who 'can't identify' with non-white or non-male characters in a game? How about the people who can't identify with playing white, male characters? Aren't they allowed to feel represented too?

I had the excuse in the 1980s that I didn't know better. Palladium had less of an excuse, but again 80s, not much education out there. In the modern age? There's absolutely no excuse for dealing with a gaming mentality stuck in the 80s and 70s when it comes to representation and accepting minorities and the LGBT community. Simply acknowledging these people exist and that it's okay shouldn't produce this kind of hue and cry.

That's my beef.
And if you don't want it at your table -- fine. Don't have it at your table.
But shut the fuck up about it existing, and other people wanting representation.

Just because these people don't want it doesn't mean 1) it shouldn't exist, and 2) nobody else should have it, either.

Or, on the other hand - sure, tell us. It tells us what games we shouldn't be buying - because any company that supports that kind of mentality doesn't deserve to be in the business.

Triage

 Samantha.

Fuck my life.

There's a good thing that happened.  I have another girlfriend.  She's awesome.  I love her.  But there is a problem connected to this wonderful thing.  We want to spend a lot of time talking to one another.  This is a good thing, I think.  I mean, my boyfriend and I haven't talked much - though we're doing it more, and my talking with my other girlfriend is sporadic normally.  The problem is, however, balancing.  One of my brothers now has, count them, two girlfriends.  And our other brother now has a serious writing job, and has a lot of staff working under him.  So now we're needing to juggle.

So we kind of have a list of 'tasks' which are juggled, and we need to figure out which ones are high priority and which aren't, and which need to be 'turned off', and... it's all of a thing.

Like, here's how it works as a list:

• Brother 1 and writing.
• Brother 1 and talking business on Discord.
• Brother 1 and talking to other group on Discord.
• Brother 1 and talking to third group on Discord vis-a-vis games being run.
• Brother 1 and talking to fourth group on Discord vis-a-vis other games being run.
• Brother 1 and game he's playing in.
• Brother 1 and his wife.
• Brother 1 and his family.
• Brother 1 and his in-laws.
• Brother 1 and checking FB and making / answering posts.
• Brother 1 and checking Twitter and making / answering posts.
• Brother 1 checking e-mail and keeping caught up.
• Brother 1 and unwinding by listening to music / watching YouTube.
• Me and group on Discord.
• Me and game I'm playing in.
• Me and other game I'm playing in.
• Me and boyfriend.
• Me and best friend.
• Me and girlfriend #1
• Me and girlfriend #2
• Brother 2 and girlfriend #1
• Brother 2 and girlfriend #2
• Brother 2 and best friend.
• Brother 3 and wanting to be entertained.

I'm probably missing some.  But at any given point 5-6 of these things are happening at the same time.  And the more of us up to handle it, the more strain there is.  The question becomes 'what is given higher priority' and 'which are dropped for now'.  And this becomes 'how many of us need to pay attention' and 'how many things do we need to pay attention to', and 'how much focus is needed for any given task' and 'how many things are pulling us away from focus' and 'how much sleep have we had' and 'how much energy do we have' and 'what time of day is it', and ...

Bleah.  It's a mess.  There's a lot of good going on, but we've only got so many ways we can let ourselves be pulled one way or another, and ... it's a balancing act and we're trying to deal with it and figure out how to spin the plates without it all coming down.

Twitchy

Samantha

So, I'm on Twitch.  There's a long story about this though..

See, my brother had a Twitch account - we don't remember why, but he had it, so when Warframe started doing videos on Twitch, we decided to go hang out and watch it.  It's nice getting free things, you know?  So, recently, Warframe had a special thing, where if you watched some of their 'official' streamers, you could get extra stuff.

I decided to select a few, and watch them, and it was fun watching different people playing the game I enjoyed.  Ultimately, I wound up gravitating to one streamer more than the others - Fateful.  She made me a moderator on the first day - something I hadn't expected, and I've sat back and watched her play a variety of games - and get paid for it.

So, I decided to give this a shot.  I started streaming my games - with a few bumps along the way - and I've been slowly getting the hang of setting up the screen for people to see, adding the bells and whistles, and generally adapting to the idea of being a streamer.  I've picked my time slot - though it's stupidly late at night - and I'm trying to get into the flow of things - like talking to myself while I play.  It's hard with only one monitor though, because it's difficult to see what's going on in the stream while I'm running around, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Wish me luck!

There's Always Complications

Samantha

I've kinda stopped playing Guild Wars 2.  There was a lot of drama - not with me, but in general.  People I was hanging out with kind of went away, my guild was barely being represented, and things kind of fell apart.  The people I wanted to go run around with already did the material, so it was rehashing for them, or weren't really that interested anymore.

So it stopped being fun.  Kit's the person who's okay running around all by himself and seeing things, I'm the person who wants a group of friends to hang out with and chat with while I'm running around with them, the group of us seeing new things, and sharing the experience of exploring.  I mean, this is kinda what I did in Guild Wars 1 - I had a group, we met up once a week, and we pushed through the storylines, seeing what was going on.  When I got into GW2, it kinda fell apart, people went their own way, or stopped showing up at all.  I had to make a new group of friends for the game, and.. well, that didn't last long.

This whole thing with 'you can be in more than one guild' sucked.. because there were bigger guilds, more active guilds, guilds who had dozens and scores of members and who got all the 'good stuff', and.. left me with nothing.

Going into Warframe, we've got a bunch of new players coming in, or people who've not played in awhile and are just really getting into it again now.  Michelle's Clan had two members before I joined, and now I think we're close to 10 or so.  There's a few people on through the day, and we can team up and do stuff and chat on Discord while we're running around - and it's fun!

There's two people I was hoping would really get into it - enjoying something that I enjoy.. but.. yeah.  There's complications.  They're both pretty laconic when it comes to groups, fading into the background unless you specifically talk to them.. and one doesn't enjoy groups that much, while the other one's got.. reservations.. about the Clan because of certain dynamics.

They're both kinda important to me - I want them to have fun in something I'm enjoying.  I want to do things with them.  But it looks like that's not really going to happen.  So I'm conflicted.  I could spend less time doing something I'm enjoying to hang out with them - even if it means doing things less fun, or I can try to drag them into this.. knowing they're not having fun.. or I can spend less time with them, feeling bad about enjoying something without them.

And it all sucks.

A part of me is also worried that the 'new game' shine is going to fade for the people I'm hanging out with, leaving me abandoned again.  Typically, when this starts up, I'll be the first to bail - go find something else to do to distract me from feeling alone when things get complicated.  I don't want to do that to Michelle though, so I'll stick around.. but I'm worried I'm going to get hurt again, that I'll look around, and the people I was hanging out with have all gone to do something else.

:<

All I want is a game, and friends I care about who play the game with me, and us having fun.  Why is it so hard to find something so simple?

Warframe: A Review

Samantha
A bit over a month ago, I went to visit my friend Michelle in Montreal, and she introduced me to a game called Warframe.  For the two or three people on the planet who's never heard of it, Warframe is a third person space ninja shoot-and-stab 'em up that's free to play.

So, I had heard of the game before in passing, in that vague 'huh, it's a game I'm not interested in' sort of way, and didn't even give it a second thought, but Michelle was playing it a lot when I was over, so after a week of her nudging me, I thought I'd at least give it a half-hearted try to amuse her.. and found I kinda like the game.  A lot.  In the 'I will damn well spend money on this game' sort of way for the fashion stuff and everything.

The game has a bit of a learning curve, but during that curve, you start to feel kinda awesome very quickly.  The game's backstory makes you a legendary individual, rising from a deep sleep to try to bring balance to the universe.  You're kind of a super soldier with the ability to change 'frames', which are effectively character classes, in power armour form, that lets you slaughter hundreds of baddies and look totally awesome while doing so.

The game is mad-customizable, with different frames, which you can colour a whole slew of ways, metric ass-tonnes of weapons, with a primary, secondary, and melee weapon available, and your frames and your weapons are also customizable, with mods, which allow you to tailor your stuff to the style of play you want.  You can get animal companions (cats and dogs), and you can get mechanical floating sidekicks called sentinels, all of which have unique traits and can be, again, customizable to your style of play.

Everything levels.  You have 25 Ranks to work through, which is done by levelling your frames, weapons, companions, and sentinels.  Each can go to Level 30, and that's pretty easy to do.  But once you have it levelled, you can 'reset' it, altering one of the 'slots' for mods, and relevel it all over again.  You do this, because when you tweak one of the mod slots, you can start putting in stronger and stronger mods (since you have limited capacity for what you can add).  Each time you gain a Rank, you start your gear 'ahead' a bit - they're still starting at Level 0, but are treated like they're at your Level as far as modding is concerned.

You can play solo, with your friends, or in pick up groups, of up to four people total.  There's Clans to join, which have 'dojo' which can be customized to look awesome, and there's voice chat (though I tend to voice chat with my friends in Discord).  Most of the people are pretty cool even in pick-up-groups, and there's ample trade.

There's an optional PvP duelling arena, but I don't touch it - I much prefer going on missions with people and being awesome as a group - even though I'm normally a solo-style person.  The game makes it fun to work with others - it rewards teamwork, and if you are close to an ally, any XP they earn also benefits you, so there's the impetus to work together towards a common goal.

The backstory's interesting, and when you complete The Second Dream, everything you thought you knew about the game changes.  It adds a lot of interesting stuff, and The War Within which is the quest afterwards, turns everything on its head again.  A number of quests are to help you get additional warframes, but those two quests specifically are, I think, essential to the game, and are just amazing.

The standard style of play is sort of a 'dungeon delve' thing - you go on a mission, kill all the bad guys, accomplish the goal, and get out in about 10 to 40 minutes, depending on your skill and the type of mission, but recently they've added sandbox play with the Plains of the Eidolon.  That region's free to roam around in as you wish, and they're going to be adding a new sandbox region soon.

So yeah!  I didn't think I'd enjoy the game - I don't like third person or first person shooters, but the game play, the community, the company itself (who are awesome folks who listen to their players and interact with them regularly) and the story and background all contribute to this awesome game I can't say enough about.  I really recommend it!

No Words

Samantha

Yeah, I've got this itch to write, but I don't know how to put it down.  I'm upset, I'm a bit hurt, and it's something I've had to deal with time and again, and I'm getting kind of sick of it.  You see, I kinda like roleplaying, playing games with friends, feeling useful, and seeing people act and react to what I'm doing.  What I don't like is people getting angry at me when I do it.  What I don't like is feeling that, if I'm to be accepted, I have to basically 'play low'.

Not that it seems to make any difference.

I play games to feel good about myself.  To feel like I can accomplish things.  In my situation, I don't get to really accomplish much, and the idea of hanging around with friends, and being awesome with my friends is important.  I want to feel safe around my friends, I want to feel wanted, I want to feel that people like having me around, and a part of that is to feel like I'm contributing to the group.  I want to feel empowered.

And yeah, I build along that line.  I make characters with some weaknesses, and then I try to make them awesome in other ways.  That awesomeness could be in how they come off, it could be that they're just different, whether it's something out of left field, or maybe they're just strange, creepy, or whatever, and some of it is in what they're capable of.

Something that I wind up facing though is hostility.  When I used to play online (and note, that's used to - I stopped) I got lashback because my characters were 'omg powerful' and 'game breaking'.  The thing is, my characters were built using the same system everyone else had, and they had the same growth that everyone else had.  I just used what I had available to me, and planned out my course, and stuck to it.  But people started getting upset with me.  So, I started getting less involved.  If there was some 'danger' in the game, I waited.  I gave people the chance to kick butt and be awesome.  And when it would be unrealistic for me not to be involved, I'd get involved, and clean things up.

And people would get mad at me.

So, I weakened my character, I nerfed her hard, and tried that.

And people would still get mad at me.

So finally, I said fuck it, and I retired.

I still get requests to RP there from time to time - but not in any way that contributes to the game. No. Instead, these people want to have 'relationships' with me, So, great.  I get to be the dutiful girlfriend or something, rather than, I don't know, doing things.

Anyway.

So, I (am) in a Pathfinder game.  The GM's cool, and I liked the game.  I was having fun, trying out a new idea that I'd not had the chance to play before.  For those who are into gamespeak, let me break down what I did.

There's a class called the Hunter.  It's kind of a Ranger/Thief combination class.  This is a spellcasting class.

There's a class called the Witch.  It has an archetype called the 'White Haired Witch', which sacrifices some of the Witch's hexing ability to allow her to fight using her hair.  This is a spellcasting class.

There's a new way to multiclass, where you sacrifice every other Feat to get some seriously nerfed abilities from another Class.

So, I decided to do something different.

I got permission to move the White Haired Witch Archetype over to Hunter.  Since Hunters don't have Hexes, what I did was sacrifice my spellcasting abilities.  Then, I sacrificed every second Feat for monk abilities.  What did I get?  I got the monk ability to do unarmed damage.  I didn't get the AC bonus, I didn't get the flurry of blows, I didn't get the awesome saving throws.  I punch good.  Or, in my case, I whip hair good.

Not many avenues for my character to pursue, so I decided to go with a grappling build, which works nicely with my character's hair.  This is the one thing I'm good at - I can lock down a single target and squeeze them.  Everything else is pretty much roleplaying.

A normal White-Haired Witch has other options.  When they squeeze someone, they can throw spells at the target (or other target) and just ruin people's days.  Not me.  I don't get spells.  They could, in theory, pull out a weapon and shoot people while they're squeezing someone.  Not me, I didn't take any ranged weapons.  I made my character one trick.  They pick a single target, and they ruin that one target's day.  Once they're done with that one target, they can look at maybe dealing with another target.

Pathfinder's got a serious weakness.  This is the Feats section of the game.  You get a Feat every other level, and sometimes to get what you want to get, you have to go through 4-5 Feats.  In other words, you need to go through 10 levels to get to where you want.  If you multiclass using this optional system, you lose every other Feat.  Meaning that, in my case, it would be fifteen levels to get to where I want to go.  That takes about two years of play, and it also means that I'm not doing anything else with my character, and by the time I get there the campaign's wrapped up.

An optional thing to do is take a Feat every level.  When Pathfinder was being playtested, there was a big push for that.  Why?  Because Feats help define who you are, and there's hundreds of them. Whole reams of Feats get ignored because they.. don't do much, or it takes entirely too long to get where you want to go.  So, anyway, the Pathfinder GM allowed us to get Feats every level.

So what did I take as my two extra Feats so far?

Weapon Focus.  +1 to attack with my hair.

Animal Companion:  My fox companion is a little bit bigger.  Well, I had the companion already.  It was basically a trained fox with a series of commands I'd trained into it, not much.

Anyway.  So what happened..

We were doing an investigation, me and a cleric.  We found out the guy responsible for killing a bunch of people, and it was time to throw down.  So we did.  And I was doing what I had built my character to do.

Lock down a single opponent.  Grab, grapple, squeeze.

We were facing a single opponent.

He turned invisible.  I had my fox track him.

He hid behind cover.  I used acrobatics to get around cover.

Grab.  Grapple.  Squeeze.

Now, look.  The GM worked hard on the character to be a viable threat.  I get this.  And I get that it's frustrating to see that work go down the toilet so quickly.  But my character was designed to do one thing.  To hunt down single opponents and make their life miserable.  And I want her to be good at it.

And the GM got mad at me.  He blamed the fact we're getting Feats every level.  That +1 to hit, and the extra 1-2 points of damage my fox might inflict.  And I felt like I was back online, watching people talk shit about me because I'm good at what I do.

And it hurts.  This could have been a 'cool, my friend and I show we kick ass, and could have been a sort of team building thing'.  But it wasn't.  It was 'oh look, Samantha's ruining the game again'.

Even though I underpowered my character.

Like I've done a lot lately.

Not that it makes any difference.  Even when I underpower my characters, I get shit.  Or the people in charge try to nerf my characters more for... no real reason.

When my brother's plans get shot down, he gives kudos to the players.  A few weeks ago, he set up a boss that the PCs weren't supposed to beat.  They were completely outclassed, and nobody could hurt it.  One player figured out what to do - he single handedly one-shotted the thing.  Because he had a weapon which had a chance to instantly kill an opponent when fired at point blank range.  And he got lucky.  My brother said 'hey, good job!  You weren't supposed to win this fight, but cool!'  And the players laughed about it, and the guy who killed the boss you're not supposed to beat felt really good and they told stories about it.

You know, I have never, ever, in all my years of playing, got that kind of praise, from any game master I've been under?  Never had a 'hey, that was creative, good thinking', or 'hey, you did a good job' or 'wow, that was kind of cool'.  No, 'that was some interesting roleplay, I can see why you did that'.

No.  I've only really had one character that was really... liked.  But then, she was the 'sweet and innocent' type that people felt the need to protect, and guard.  And when she did her 'awesome', she did it away from the group, far, far away, so she could protect them, but nobody got to see it.  Oh, they knew kind of what she was up to, but it didn't involve the characters, so, yeah, there's that.

'Oh, look, we can be white knights for you, that's awesome'.

How about letting me be awesome?

And I don't know what to do.

I don't want to make non-threatening characters who have to stand on the side and let everyone else be cool.  I don't want to have to continually hold back, because - heaven forbid - I might actually be really good at something.

But.. I don't want people to keep being pissed at me.  I don't want to feel like I'm a burden.

I just want to be able to have friends, and do fun things, and feel like I'm needed, and that I'm actually accomplishing something.

I don't know what to do.

7th Sea - Thoughts on a Review

Kit Here,  I don't post often on this blog, it isn't really mine to use, but we're discussing a game that a few of us enjoy, and this is going to be lengthy.  Here we go:

There's a rather detailed review of 7th Sea that I think is worth reading.  The review, however, touches on a number of things I think we just don't see eye to eye about - and that's fine.  There's nothing saying we have to agree on everything.  However, 7th Sea is a personal favourite of mine, and I felt the need to address this review while giving my own thoughts on the new edition.

To Open

We came into 7th Sea from Legend of the Five Rings.  L5R is a game we've enjoyed from the start - and originally we hoped that 7S would be an expansion from the original L5R setting.  I was always curious about what lay beyond Rokugan, and I hoped that this game would answer the questions I had.  It didn't, but what it did provide was a fascinating world which was very familiar to me, while adding a unique twist to the setting.  7th Sea was an inspiring game, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Coming into 2nd Edition, there were a lot of things we hoped would be kept from 1st Edition, and there were some things we had very little interest in - we would take it or leave it.  Some things we enjoyed were the secret societies, the swordsman's schools, and the styles of sorcery.  Some of the things we did not enjoy as much were the Riliasciare (secret society) and the Syrneth (there just wasn't enough information on them to work with).

I've been in a handful of campaigns - on both sides of the GM shield.  Sophia's Daughters played a big role in two of the campaigns, and by far they're my favourite of the secret orders, though the Knights of the Rose and Cross are a close second.

Six Points

So, our author has six points that he brings into the review, and I'll touch on those before I move forward.  In fact, it's these six points which made me feel the urge to write my response.

• Setting changes that makes pirates make sense / archaeology should make sense, too.

I've mixed feelings about this. First and foremost, the pirates felt like a part of the setting, but didn't dominate the setting - and I was fine with that. If you wanted to play a pirate, there was a lot you could do with it. If you didn't want to play a pirate, there was a lot available.

As for pirates "making sense".  Well, how did pirates make sense during the 1600s to 1700s?  They sailed the seas, robbed people, sank ships, and did this for a number of reasons - whether they were working for a nation and attacking a rival nation, had personal rivalries, foiling trading organizations, or out of sheer desperation for food and money.  Any of these could fit into 7th Sea with ease.  The idea of the "pirate nations" was an interesting idea, where a group of pirates worked together towards a common cause, making something akin to a semi-anarchic nation, and I thought that was kid of cool.

The archaeology angle was a bit more problematic.  See, there was just enough information on 'who was around before' to give the GM some fodder, but there wasn't enough to help lay out what would be reasonable or unreasonable.  Little trinkets which do weird things?  Sure.  Ruins that could have any number of traps and tricks?  Sure.  But beyond that?  Err, can't help you there, really.  And I think that's just it - there was enough dangling of threads that it could interest people to go out and do this kind of stuff, but there wasn't enough to make it feel worthwhile.  Lost civilizations exist, but we didn't know enough as game masters to draw upon it without the worry of there being some severe contradictions later.

See, I kind of liked the lost civilization angle.  I had visions of the PCs exploring ruins, and running the risk of awakening a dire threat - or perhaps some evil NPCs think they've found a way to awaken the Bargainers to get some nifty stuff which will allow them to rule the world, and the PCs could try to stop this from coming about.  But... there wasn't enough information to really run with this, I feel.  As a GM, I like running my own stuff, but I kind of prefer having the information presented for me to use as I see fit.  Not enough information, and I'll just ignore it and run some other plot which doesn't involve it - and that's what I wound up doing.

• PCs being awesome, not just the shadow of badass NPCs.

And this is where I veer off from the author.  I made some seriously badass PCs in 7th Sea.  Were there people even more badass?  Of course.  When I make a new character, I expect them to be at the beginning of their game, not the top of it.  These are people who need to build on their reputation, to carve their way forward, and pick and choose their fights along the way.  And there need to be people they can look up to and admire, or look at as a foe they will one day defeat.

 As I've said in Shadowrun, "No matter how good you are, there is always someone better."

 My personal albatross was Giovanni Villanova.  I made a nephew of his, and my goal was to one day kill him, take over the family, then systematically take down the other leaders and establish a unified Vodacce under my rule.  That's a pretty ambitious goal, and Giovanni is one hell of a bad guy.  This wasn't going to be a plot that would come to fruition any time soon - this was something I saw as a possibility years down the line.  I needed to get my skills up, get allies, come up with a plan, and then see to it that I could take him down - hopefully in a duel to the death.  Giovanni was an inspiration.

As for being badass.  Well, you see, in one game, our characters encountered bete noir - evil dogs who could teleport.  One survived our encounter and escaped, and then began to plague us in the home of an ally.  So, I set up a trap, waited for it to show up, and had a fight to the death with it.  It was a harrowing, exciting experience, because my character was 'good', but I wasn't sure how good he was.  Coming out of that, I walked away clinging to life, and it was one of the most thrilling of encounters I have ever had.  My character was awesome.

But here's the thing.  A character doesn't have to be awesome because they have awesome attributes and awesome skills.  A character is awesome by how you play the character.  You can make someone who is a bit clumsy, who doesn't know much, who makes mistakes, and who is nowhere near as skilled or talented as the people around you.  But the character can still be an awesome PC.  He may come up with ideas which inspire the more clever PCs.  He may stumble into the wrong place at the right time to foil a plot.  NPCs may adore the character and see him as 'charming, but insignificant' and provide the group information they'd not get otherwise.  Over time, the character may develop, but it doesn't have to be a mechanical 'awesomeness'.

• Less Dumb Metaplot

Ah.  See, I'm of mixed feelings when it comes to metaplot.  On the one hand, I want to see a living, breathing setting - something that is evolving over time, and provides me with inspiration.  A good metaplot tells a story, and alters the setting over time, and I can use it as a backdrop of 'here's what's going on' while I run the game I want to run.  I might use some, none, or all of a metaplot, depending on how I feel about it, or I may veer drastically from it if the actions of the PCs alter things, and then just use what I want from what can be salvaged.  Regardless, I'm fine with this.

For example, in Legend of the Five Rings, the PCs broke the coup.  They sided with the Scorpion Clan, they got the Emperor-to-be killed, and Shoju the First took the throne.  The Clans all gathered around the city, preparing to take the Scorpion Clan down, the PCs went out and played peacemaker, and even got the Crab to sit out the war by offering them to 'observe'.  The Scorpion didn't ask for help, they simply wanted the Crab to see how the Scorpion fight - and everything was wrapped up by the idea of re-doing a Tournament to see who should take the throne.

Of course, this means that pretty much anything in the official metaplot after the coup needed to be looked over critically, and that's what we did.  The Clan Wars were very different, and some of the things in the books had to be adjusted or ignored.  Which is fine.

Meanwhile, you have something like Shadowrun, which also has a metaplot of sorts and moves forward, with technology adjusting over time, new things coming in, old things leaving.  We've clung fairly close to the metaplot in Shadowrun, and everything there's been usable to date.  When there's a new edition, the technology and setting suffers a sudden shift, but we've always rolled with it.

For me, "dumb" is subjective.  The metaplot in 7th Sea?  I don't find it dumb.  The revolution in Montaigne makes perfect sense, and I was looking forward to my character going in and trying to save as many people as possible.  The faerie war in Avalon?  Also made sense, and I wanted to see how that played out.  There were threads all over the sourcebooks, and I was looking forward to seeing how some resolved, and others didn't, and they would make for some interesting things happening in the background (or not background, depending on where the PCs were).

Some of these plots were game-changers.  The Montaigne Revolution was a huge one, and I wanted to see how that broke the setting.  With 2nd Edition, there's a sort of 'reboot' of sorts, and things are at their start.  A nation just did something revolutionary, and there's going to be ripples (I hope) from it, and I want to see these carry forward.  Sure, some people don't like that - but I'm always of the view that if you're making a game, taking things away is perhaps more harmful than leaving things in, and letting the GM decide whether or not to take it away.

• Things that make secret societies cool out of the box rather than leaving them to be surprises, whether good (Die Kreutzritter) or terrible (Daughters of Sophia)

An interesting thing.  I love the Daughters of Sophia, and I think Die Kreutzritter are cool.  Here's where we differ, obviously.  I do agree however, the secret societies need to be cool out of the box, but I don't mind the surprises from the sourcebooks.  The thing is, unless you want an incredibly thick Book of Doom, things need to be left out, and they can only get expanded in source books.  In L5R, you have the Way of the Clans and then the Secrets of the Clans, which deal with a lot of stuff about the different Clans which couldn't be in the main rulebook.  What's up with the Tattooed Monks?  Well, they're not going to put all that stuff in the main rulebook - but in a book about the Dragon Clan?  Sure.  Do the Scorpions have ninja?  Not going into the main rulebook.  How about the awesome power of the Phoenix Clan?  Sourcebook.

I'm fine with this.  I'm fine with some bare bones information in the main rulebook, and then adding on the extra cool in the sourcebook.  The one quibble I had when it came to 7th Sea was with the Knights of the Rose and Cross book.  You can't be a member of the order if you have Sorcery.  I'm fine with the rule - it makes sense in context - but it would have been lovely if they had mentioned that in the main rulebook.  That's the kind of information I feel needs to be in the rulebook.

Now, there's one secret society that I think was actually weakened by their sourcebook, and that was the Rilasciare.  See, I can handle 'anarchists' as a concept.  However, I can't handle 'kill anyone you think is a threat to your goals' and 'kill anyone in charge' as something heroes do.  These guys were not heroes - they were villains.  I think that was perhaps a problem with Die Kreutzritter as well.  Both of these groups had, as part of the order, this thing about killing people, and if you're playing a hero, simply killing people is Not Okay.

• No character build options predicated on “Suck now to be ok in 25 sessions or so!” (that is to say, the way swordsman schools were handled)

Again, I think this is a matter of perspective.  I made a very decent swordsman out-of-the-box, and I got a bunch of Advantages that would come into play as my character progressed.  He didn't rock all the socks, but he was pretty good.  The second character I made, I took three swordsman schools and a sorcery at character creation.  He didn't "suck" in the slightest, and in fact stood even with the other PCs.  I don't really get this idea of a PC "sucking".  The PCs are cool if you make them cool - and cool comes from a combination of mechanics and roleplaying.

• No forcing players to spend XP

I don't know about "forcing".  For me, the XP system made sense.  You want to unlock greater power, then you need to improve your game.  Want to progress as a swordsman, then you need to prove you've got what it takes for your teacher to be bothered helping you progress.

 This was where I think 7th Sea did better than L5R.  In L5R, you could progress in all your courtly skills, and your sensei would suddenly decide you should learn the next step in your school of bushido.  (Say what?)  In 7th Sea, you want your teacher to give you the next 'secret technique', you prove you're ready for it.

 This makes perfect sense.

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Now That That's Out of the Way

When I walked into 2nd Edition, I admit to a degree of nervousness.  As you can see, I adored the first edition, and there were going to be a number of changes with 2nd Edition.  To some extent, I think most of my worries were unfounded, and this is very much going to be a lot of 'we'll need to see when the sourcebooks come out'.

That happens with a lot of new editions, so that's okay.

So, if you want to know the layout of the book and some of the finer details, the review I linked to is the place to go.  The detail he goes through is exhaustive, and I think that's good.  I'm more looking at this from the perspective of 'what do I see that's different, and how do I feel about it?'

Well let's look at character creation first.

The original system gave 100 points, with the option of maybe getting a few more.  My group offered an extra 25 if you filled out the questionnaire, which helped you get a feel for your character, and also gave the GM a boatload of hooks as well.

Anything you wanted to do came out of those points.  A swordsman school?  That's a bunch.  Sorcery?  A bunch more, including buying the bloodline to be able to pick it up.  Attributes, backgrounds, advantages, these all came out of your starting points.  Making a character involved coming up with a solid, tight concept, and then building around it.  Don't expect to rock socks at everything - pick where you want to excel, and where you're willing to start weak and build up.

My first character was a Vodacce swordsman.  So, I took Noble, I took Swordsman, and I picked a bunch of backgrounds and advantages to round that out.  My second character was a Son of Lugh, trained in the woods by mythic figures, and 'adopted' by the Lady in Red - a sidhe.  He had the claymore school, the brawling school, and the archery school, as well as the Son of Lugh sorcerous bloodline.  That character was weak in a lot of areas, but considering his background, it kind of made sense, and the XP he did get rapidly put him on stable ground, simply because raising everything from 1 to 2 is so cheap.  Once he got that footing, he started getting.... scary.

In 2nd Edition, you don't have points to spend all over the place.

Instead, you have your basic attributes, you pick your nation, and then you pick two backgrounds.  These backgrounds give you your starting skills (instead of buying skills), and your advantages (instead of buying advantages).  Consider them something akin to templates.

It's different.  The thing is, however, it works.  I was able to easily make my first character in 2nd Edition, and while he was missing a few specific quirks, it held to the core of who he was.  (Aristocrat / Duellist).  Can I make my second character?  Oh hell no.  Looking at what's available, there's nothing to go with the Son of Lugh style of sorcery.  I figured if I remade him, I'd simply remove 'archery' from his background - punching and swording would be his thing.  Without the school of magic, I'd be looking at "Pugilist" and "Duellist", perhaps.  He'd take a bit more work, I think.  Which is why I'm willing to wait until Sophia's Daughters comes out as a sourcebook.

The thing is, there's a lot of choice that comes with this new edition.  The templates are pretty to the point, and there's nothing saying you can't have the game master make a template to fit an ideal you have.  Really, it's "pick two advantages and five skills and a quirk", and put them together to fit what you have in mind.  There's a lot of excellent examples here, and there's a lot you can build on.

So, let's see.

I can take the Quirk from Orphan (put yourself in danger so someone else doesn't have to be alone), which kind of suits the character.  Boxer from Pugilist fits.  Duelling Academy from Duellist doesn't, because he never formally signed up (being a kid in the woods learning how to use a big sword from a mythical figure).  So, perhaps Hard to Kill would fit.  Then for Skills:  Athletics and Brawl from Pugilist, Intimidate and Weaponry from Duellist, and let's go Empathy from Orphan.

That suits him well.  Actually, looking at Knight Errant from the Glamour Isles background, I could see Sorcery and Boxer perhaps.  But we'll see what happens when the books come out in the future.

Skills

In the original 7th Sea, you would pick a 'Knack' and get a bunch of skills associated with it at 1.  In the new edition, you take your background and get 5 skills at 1, and they go up if they overlap.  It's not bad, really, it speeds up character creation and I think it's a big plush, since you don't need to fiddle with a bunch of math to figure out what you can do.

The dice system is pretty good too.  The original Roll and Keep could be a bit problematic if you had bad attributes, but the new system makes every die work for you, and that works well.  The rules about being a Big Damn Hero are also firmly in place, and I like that too.

This game is not 7th Sea 1E with a new cover.  This is a bunch of adjustments, world building, and a new way of looking at the game.  So far, I like what I see.  I'm a little tense, because I want to see what they've done with Avalon, Vodacce, and the Knights of the Rose and Cross, and Sophia's Daughters, which are the areas I loved the most in 1e.  However, John Wick's done a good job so far, and I really am looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Coming Soon!

Samantha:  Guess what?  I'm a DJ!  Well, sort of.  I've got my own program starting up on the 28th on phoenixradiofm.net.  I'm getting the best of both worlds though - because I don't have to talk on-air.  Instead, we're using a text-to-voice program, and the conceit of the show is that it's being run by an AI.  It's a spin-off of my friend Karma's show (Sundays, from 4-7pm PST), and instead of having a human host with AI co-hosts, it'll be an AI host with a human co-host.  The voice is pretty nice, and the backstory leading up to it's gonna be fun.  If you can tune into Karma's show on the 28th, it's effectively a two-parter, going from one show, to the other, and bridging the two shows.

We've been playing a lot of Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, and I've been having a good time of it.  The Saturday group's been playing on Skype text off and on the last week, and I've been enjoying it - especially since a friend of mine's introduced a bunch of NPCs to help flesh things out.  The Thursday group's been doing well, too, and I've been having a good time.

Dunno what else to say.  :>  Just.. things have been good.