Hi everyone!

There's a house rule I've seen for this system that I think is pretty cool. It's a three dot advantage that gives you two of the dueling abilities and they call it A Bit Of Knowledge. Gives some of the flexibility of being a duelist without the fluff and the five dot cost. Thoughts?

To be fair, of all the games I own and play, this one is the one I know the rules and balance factor the least.  When we get into actual combat, I will likely be lost until I see things in action a few times.

Given the massive disparity between duelists and non-duelists, I'm all for this.  And this is coming from someone who took duelist.

There's already a book advantage like that; it gives you parry, slash, and one other basic manuever of your choice, for a 3 pt advantage.

It is called Student of Combat.

There is?  O_o

I see Honest Misunderstanding, Bar Fighter, Boxer, Bruiser, Brush Pass, Camaraderie, Deadeye, Dynamic Approach, Fencer, Foul Weather Jack, Masterpiece Crafter, Opportunist, Ordained, Patron, Quick Reflexes, Rich, Signature Item, Sniper, Tenure, and Virtuoso for the 3 dot advantages.

 Are there more books out for this system than just the core?  If so, I may be super off base. =X

Yes there are the Nations Book 1 & 2, the Heroes and Villains book, the Pirate Nations book, and the Crescent Empire book. They all have at least some additional advantages. Student of Combat is in Heroes & Villains and in Nations of Theah Volume 1.

Here's the full text:

STUDENT OF COMBAT
You learn the Slash and Parry Maneuvers, as well as
one Maneuver (not a Style Bonus) of your choice
and can perform these as a Duelist does. The
Duelist Academy Advantage is considered a 3-point
Advantage for you.

Golly.  Okay, when I went to the JWP website there was just the core rulebook mentioned, so I thought there weren't any others.  I'll have to see if DriveThruRPG has them for sale! =X

Thank you, Vasily!  House rule request rescinded on account of it already being a thing!

DriveThruRPG should have them, since that is where kickstarter backers download them. I've actually seen a couple of them in our local RPG store as well.

Speaking of kickstarter...

I really need to see what all I've been given and actually read them.

I've got a lot of reading ahead of me tonight...

Witht he additional books they've really fleshed out/eliminated most of the holes in the core. The only things that still niggle me that're left are; how to make sword schools useful when dealing with brutes, without being completely overwhelming, and how to make minor challenges meaningful.

Hero point economy still strikes me as kinda wack. You can't save them session to session, and they can be hard to generate, and soem characters need boatloads of them (like super-panamax sized boat), while others can pretty much take them or leave them without any concern. To me it seems that if you're going to have heavy and light users, the heavy users should come with more built-in ways to generate them; they will cycle through them a lot, but it won't be that they suddenly feel useless because they ran out of juice and have no way to generate more.

Oh, I forgot, there was one other thing: automatic dramatic wounds; they need definition. It is unclear from the rules whether they fill up the wound boxes up to the next dramatic wound or if they just fill the dramatic wound box. Both present issues, of a sort.

If it is the latter, then everyone should be carrying like 20 pistols everywhere, to deal with Villains; once a firearm (or other such ability) is used on someone, there's little point to try to use anything that DOESN'T do automatic dramatics, because it will almost certainly never catch up (especially on Villains, who have loads of flesh wound boxes). But, with the former, the more powerful the Villain, the more powerful the gun (or other effect) becomes, also, the less wounded they are, the more powerful it is (measured in number of wound boxes filled).

I don't know if there's a good answer for that, but, ultimately, the answer determines a lot about how fights will go.

Given you can spend raises to reduce the wounds a gun deals but cannot negate the dramatic wound, it seems like you only deal a dramatic wound + the wounds from raises, as opposed to all wounds necessary to get you to and then also including the dramatic wound.  I see what you mean about that causing problems for people attacking in more general ways, since the only downside to losing wounds is that it gets you nearer to a dramatic wound.

I participated in four official 'games' when 2.0 was presented.

Only one of the GMs was able to carry the Rules Mechanics at all well. And, in my opinion, few GMs would have the knowledge/ability to be able to conduct a game very well, whereas most any GM can utilize 1.0.

My impression/opinion was/is that the proactive/FATE approach would only work well with four or fewer player-characters at a table.

There are a few interesting ideas in 2.0, but lots that are just bad. The combat mechanics were terrible, although it seems (from what I read here) that some corrections have been attempted since... which should have been made before the game was introduced, after all!

In perspective, I am 70 years old, have been playing RPGs since 1976 and 7th Sea 1.0 since 2001, and GM'd nearly 100 game sessions of those Rules.

Edit: I haven't bothered to download the latter books, and Wick Productions hasn't sent me any of the Pirate Booty that was promised in the Kickstarter.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:24, Wed 25 Oct 2017.

Oh, I got all of my pirate booty and have downloaded all the books, plus ran and played IRL. It definitely has a learning curve; it takes at least 2 or 3 sessions before things start going smoothly (and that is if you are focusing on learning the mechanics through play, as opposed to actually playing).

"Given you can spend raises to reduce the wounds a gun deals but cannot negate the dramatic wound, it seems like you only deal a dramatic wound + the wounds from raises, as opposed to all wounds necessary to get you to and then also including the dramatic wound."

See, I don't read that as being some sort of sure fire intent one way or the other; you can only reduce the additional wounds beyond the dramatic wound, sure; that doesn't say anything about wounds caused by getting an automatic dramatic wound.

When this came up in my IRL group, someone scoured the Internet and could find no official comment about it and no hard and fast consensus about it either; people go both ways. And both ways encounter logic problems; one way guns do super-highly variable damage, while the other they do consistent damage, but cause other weapons to, apparently, do basically nothing.

Given that the argument you made is for them to mark only the dramatic wound, consider this: if someone (who we'll say has the typical 5 wounds per dramatic) is shot (by a gun) then hit squarely with a sword (say, with a lunge, doing a pretty hefty 6 pts of damage), would you expect the sword to do pretty much nothing, simply because they already have a gunshot wound? I certainly would not expect that. That problem gets even worse with Villains, who have a number of boxes between dramatics equal to their rating; it is not uncommon for them to have like 10 or more; one gunshot and suddenly trying to do anything with raw damage is pointless.

Another way to look at that is that it means the gunshot only does 2 points of damage; mark a dramatic wound and a single wound box; everything else is just raises. In other words, they are only for finishing the enemy. That can be good, but it does mean that Villains should just be gunned down, and never waste raises on trying to hit them with a sword (or fists, whatever), since the wounds generated in that way will simply be wasted.

I won't contest that the rules are unclear here, just tossing out my kneejerk reaction from what I read.  I'm a newb to the system, so grain of salt, definitely.

I think "villains should always be gunned down" is true.  But your example of "a lunge after a gunshot should still do something appreciable" makes a lot of sense to me.  Do you have a preference on which interpretation is used, Vasily?

Well, you have my opinion of 2.0. I have no interest in learning any of fine-points of the Mechanics, new or revised.

The last I knew, Resolve and Brawn had no effect upon Flesh or Dramatic Wounds, or the Death Spiral. That's enough to disqualify 2.0 from serious consideration IMO.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 20:04, Wed 25 Oct 2017.

Was this originally a 1e game, and then it got converted into a 2e game?  (I stomped on into the game without realizing if it was ever not 2nd Edition. =X)

The original game was published in 1999. The Second Printing, in February 2000, corrected a few issues.

Edit: 1.0 was the usual action/reaction of RPGs going back to the beginning. 2.0 is the collaborative FATE version, which is completely different.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:08, Wed 25 Oct 2017.

Sorry, I mean the Legend of the Black Pearl game, not 7th Sea as a franchise.

It always was a 2.0 game.

This was announced originally as a 2.0 game.

My preference, as far as which worked better in IRL play with my group (keep in mind this can change drastically from group to group, given, as Alicia says, that this is a heavily collaborative style of game) was the filling the flesh wound boxes up to the dramatic wound when an automatic dramatic wound is dealt. It allows characters to be the "I don't like guns" type and not be pointless in group fights against Villains.

BTW Alicia; they didn't revise mechanics, so much as add Advantages (and Backgrounds, Sorceries, and Dueling Schools) to fill in the gaps. Some of the new stuff (like Student of Combat) make some of the mechanical issues (like duelists vs non-duelists in combat) less of a problem (almost everyone can find a way to fit in a 3 pt advantage; if they can't it only takes a 3 step story to make up for it). If you prefer an action/reaction gameplay style, then 2.0, no matter what they add, will never be quite right for you, I think.

Cripes! Go to sleep for a few hours and suddenly the board erupts in posts!

After reading through all these, I'm not so sure I want to GM this game any more!

Just kidding. Although, in my defense, I tend to focus on the 'story' aspect of the game rather than the mechanics. I've always found that mechanics tend to take too long to resolve online, though some go better than others.

Mutin... I mean... hey cap'n.  Don't mind us... we're... um... playing cards.