Book 4. Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies by Chad Underkoffler.
Book 4. Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
Author: Chad Underkoffler
Genre: Role playing game
Pages: 323
Release date: 2009
This is my extensive review of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies by Chad Underkoffler (with an assist to Evil Hat). Anyone that knows me knows how much I love the rpg Spirit of the Century by Evil Hat. This game definitely shares much of what I love about that game. Especially tying into a pulpish genre that I can sink my teeth into. With SOTC, it was 1920’s pulp, with S7S it is the Swashbucklers of the 16th century. Who doesn’t love the three Musketeers? I have so many memories of all those movies (my favorite being the more recent one with Sutherland, Sheen, etc).
But since this is the longest review EVER. I am going to LJ Cut it. Short verson? Do you like Pirates? Do you like Musketeers? If so, buy this book. :)
Chapter 1. The world of the 7 Skies.
This was the first chapter of the book, and it gives good information about the layout of the world. I have to admit; it did confuse me a bit at first, but eventually got a good grasp as to how the world is. I really like the fact that each “sky” had its own taste and feel. A nice start to the book with basic information that helps you understand the world.
Chapter 2. Island nations of the 7 Skies
I loved this chapter. Too many RPG’s give you basic information of the world, or even worse, force you to have to buy other books to get that information. Each nation has its own flair and form of government. In addition, none are necessarily, good or bad, and mostly neutral (with possible exception to the cloud-island of Ilwuz…known as the pirate island). This allows the players to make the worlds the way they want, where they want.
Also each one is given basic information. How it is run. What the people are like. And my personal favorite of, what is happening now in that kingdom. Yes, people LOVE to make their own worlds and plotlines, because it is fun. But sometimes you don’t have time and a ready made hook can give you an idea. It is such a simple thing, but one I don’t see enough of in games. The last thing I liked about this was a small thing about how the others in the world see each specific people. It was actually somewhat funny at times.
It also shows just how different the people are. If you want to be a musketeer in the truest sense of the word, you may have come from Colrona. If you want to be a pirate, you may have grown up in Ilwuz, even though you could be a pirate from just about anywhere. This is a great chapter in describing the major cloud-islands in the world.
Chapter 3. The Mystical & the Faithful.
This chapter covers the mystical and faithful in the world. Such things as alchemy, gifts (more on that below), and The Koldun (magic users in the world). It is up to each specific gaming group as to how much (or how little!) magic is used in their game.
Everyone (hopefully) knows what alchemy is. In this world there is something called Alchemicraft, which allows players to create items, potions, ect. They are considered to usually be single use, and unstable. Oh and cheap. So use at your own risk. There is a better (but more expensive) type of items that is created by something called Kolduncraft. The times are much more fantastic, since it is being made by a Koldun, but they are also much more expensive and harder to attain. So just like real life, people can pay more for better work, or buy what they can afford and hope it works. J I love the simplicity.
Gifts are a kind of cool way to bring magic into the world. When a player creates a Koldun character, he can choose different gifts (there are seven to choose initially). The downside is that they can only use one of them at a time (unless they are an Archkoldun). A few of the gifts are as follows. Basilisk. They can hear thoughts of others, and send their own thoughts. Merhorse. Which allows a supernatural sense of perception. And one more, Thunderbird. The ability to command the winds, and even predict the weather.
Lastly is the church of Vaoz. They play in the world pretty largely as well. Welcomed into most of the islands and they can administer rituals (such as rite of marriage or mourning of death). There are different tests to reach higher levels of the priesthood.
Chapter 4. Skyships, trade, & warfare.
The first part of this talked about the different type of skyships in the world. It was nice to see how much research Chad must have put into this over time. This even included a page on different type of maneuvers one could attempt to try to pull off. Also a nice sheet on different types of sailors on a skyship. Ranging from Boatswain, to Sailmaker, all the way down to Cabin Boy. Lastly, there was a list of office on the ship.
Then it gave a small chart on how long it takes to get to each Island by Skyship. Again, it the attention to small things like this that made me really appreciate this book. There are so many things that seem obvious, but how many times have you wondered why something was left out of a book? Also, there was another chart showing what each island primarily exports and is looking to import.
Lastly, there was a section talking about warfare in the 7 Skies. A quick touch on surface war, sky war and piracy.
Chapter 5. Characters
Now to the grit of the characters. The elements of the S7S character are Fortes (which remind me of aspects from SOTC). They can be a talent, skill, relationship, or resource of a character. It is a short word or phrase, and it helps sum up what the character is to be like. If they Forte is relevant at all to the action, they The levels range from Poor -2, all the way up to Master +6. The level of the Forte will then give an associated modifier to the roll. Common Fortes are Wealthy, Fencing, Vehicle: The Sparrow.
Fortes also absorb damage, more on that later. J
Next are Foibles. These are failings or feature that can make the character interesting. We all know the GM is going to make the life of the players interesting to say the least, this is way for them to at least have a say in how it happens, and what direction they want the game to go. An example of this would be Revenge against The Craile Falcons, or unrequited love.
Techniques are nature, training, or background that provides a bonus when needed. When used, a technique can have one of two effects:
Roll and keep: Each technique gives them an extra die to roll; or
Flat Bonus: Each technique that comes into play allows a +1 to roll per technique used.
There are five types of techniques:
Idiom is the style and flavor of the action. If they describe what their player is doing, they get a bonus. Example. Acrobatic, Fierce.
Location/situation. These give a bonus in a particular situation or place. Example: City Streets, At a Gala.
Maneuver. Techniques give a bonus in using a particular type of maneuver or strategy. Example: Dodge, Parry, and Research.
Foes AKA Vs. X. Bonus against preferred targets. Examples: Vs Aristocrats, vs. special nemesis.
Tool or weapon: Bonus using a specific weapon or tool. Examples: Rapier, cloak, and my fathers forge.
Then there is a list of common Fortes, which was nice to see, since it is a blueprint for character types.
Style dice are interesting. You get these when your character does something “flashy”. They give a bonus to rolls, but since this is a swashbuckling game, there are plenty of ways to get more of them. So if your character says something particularly funny, he may get an extra style dice. If the character does something over the top heroic, he may get style dice. If someone’s foible is used, they get style dice. It is a cool way of doing things.
Now we come to one of the more unique things I have ever seen in an RPG. How they level up. You see, you do not get exp or anything like that in this game. Hell, the only way you can get better is when you fail. Yes, YOU did read that right. Each time you fail a roll; you get a training point, and then have to say how you failed. That can be fun in its own. But at the end of the session, the GM hands out training points, based on how many times each player failed a roll. Trying to climb that wall, to save Princess Buttercup and fail? Well, you get to say how you fail and you receive one Training point. It is such an odd way of doing this, and I am really looking forward to see how well it works.
The Ephemera is kind of cool too. Say your character saves the Pirate King from assassination. He could then have an Ephemera of “The pirate king owes me”. So in the next session they can use that like a Forte in a sense. Get bonuses and such. They usually only last one session, but there are ways around that.
Next is a very good character generation chapter. This was great. They made three different characters, and walked your through each step. With tips and notes to help you with the process. I don’t see this enough, and it was nice to see more than one example character being created. Kudos! Then came a nice section for justification as to why the PC’s are together. I laughed out loud at the discussion of trying to balance the party out and an old D&D problem with that. They even called it the “cleric problem”. Ha! That was great. I have been in a few parties that someone had to play a cleric because we needed someone to heal and that was the ONLY reason.
Challenges & Duels.
This chapter deals with more of the mechanics of the game. Challenges are your normal roleplaying type things: combat, investigation, business dealings, social, and even mystical. Something you can generally wrap up in one roll of the die and either you succeed, or fail. They also give very clear difficulty settings. Again, remember, if someone fails a roll, they get to describe how they failed and get a training point.
It goes like this. The player says what they are trying to do. The Gm sets the difficulty rank. The player rolls 2d6 dice, at a minimum. If the character has relevant techniques, those can contribute additional dice to the roll. The player then keeps the best two, and then adds any modifiers for relevant Fortes (say Good +2 for athletic, when they are trying to jump off one ship to another). Then the result is compared to the difficulty rank. Above means they succeed, lower means they fail.
Again, remember they can get styles points for incredible descriptions of both successes and failures. You can even get both training points and style points on a fail if they are creative enough. Madness personified!
Then we get to Duels. There is something that will take more than one turn to finish. It could be a fight with an evil Count, or trying to seduce someone, or get jumped by four ruffians on the street, or even haggling with a merchant.
There are rules about fighting different types. Minions are easy, all the way up to the Archvillian, whom could wipe out your entire party if given the chance. For minions, this is handled like SOTC. If there are four of them, you fight them as one opponent. You get two pts of damage on them, two of them are dead. A very simple and effective way to do this.
The duel itself is a bit complicated at first. The character will get to roll 3d6. Again, relevant techniques can add a +1 bonus or a bonus die.
Step 1. You engage the enemy.
Step 2. Divvy up the dice. You have to split up your dice for both attack and defense. The four ways this can go is this. All-out defense=0 dice for attack, 3 dice for defense. Strong defense. 1 dice for attack and 2 dice for defense. Strong attack. 2 dice for attack, and 1 for defense. All-out defense. 0 dice for attack and 3 dice for defense.
Step 3. The Charge. The attacker announces type of attack (and any Fortes used), then the defenders announces his type of defense (and any Fortes used).
Step 4. The clash of steel. Both sides roll, and compare the dice. If the attack roll is higher, the attacker does damage to the defender. If the attack roll is lower, there no damage to the defender. The player always wins in a tie.
Step 5. The Touch. IF damage is taken to a player, they can absorb it with their Fortes. This is very strange and took me a bit to really understand. More on that in a bit.
Step 6. Volte-face. This is where the rolls are reversed and the attack becomes the defender, and vice versa.
Step 7. Next turn if applicable. J
Damage. This is a very odd thing, but kind of interesting. You can take damage in both challenges and duels. In challenges, the damage is equal to the difference between the total of the roll, and the difficulty rank. In duels, the damage is equal to the difference between the attack and defense rolls.
So what happens is when damage occurs, the player picks which of their Fortes they want to absorb the damage. They can also choose to spread it out to more than one. Usually (after choosing which Forte will absorb the damage) the first hit will generate a story hook later for the player. The game just notes which Forte it was and can play with that later.
There are two types of damage. Failure Ranks and Wound Ranks. Failure ranks happen mostly in challenges that are mental, social and sometimes physical. Wound ranks happen in physical challenges, especially duels.
So, if someone was in a duel and took two wound ranks, they could go about this a couple of ways. They could have a Forte of Fencing at Good +2, which they probably don’t want to lose since they are fighting for their lives. But the also could have a Merchant at Good +2, and Horsemanship at Good +2. Well they could then absorb the damage by dropping the Merchant to Average +0 and do the same with Horsemanship making it also Average +0. These will eventually come back, but it is a very different way of going about damage.
If someone if forced to drop their last Forte below Poor -2, they are Zeroed Out. They are then, mostly dead (love the Princess Bride bit). They then surrender and it as someone else’s mercy, which can never be a good thing. Could this mean a rescue attempt? Who knows?
They go on to talk about Vehicular duels as well, which are handled a little differently, but is also kind of cool.
Lastly, an example of play, which I always love.
Chapter 7. Gamemastering S7S.
One of my pet peeves for years is how awful most gaming books are on how to tell you how to run the game. Yes, experienced gamers may be able to pick up things quickly, but what about the noob? My biggest and most consistent example of this is the Serenity game. I loved Firefly and Serenity, so when the game came out I was really excited and bought it. That was about 2 or 3 years ago and no one in my group wants to run it because of how poorly they tell you how to run the game. Or don’t at all for the most part.
So this is something I always look at now. Chad does a good job of giving you solid advice on how to run the game. Nothing over the top, but it doesn’t have to be.
The one cool thing? The Map of scenes idea he came up with. I have done something like this in the past, but it was just a way to write down all of the characters main things you want to focus on, and connect them to each other. It was cool. Overall, sound advice and good stuff.
Oh, NPC’s. He made some. Yay! That makes me so happy. J
Chapter 8. Swashbuckling Adventure.
This was interesting because it talked about the genre in specifics. Talking about different types of setting you could use and how to go about them. And you could see by the quotes and such on the side from famous movies/books where inspiration came from. It was interesting reading and something that I really appreciated.
Overall.
Things I liked. The setting had me at the word go. Great description of the major islands and the people.
Unique ideas about how to do damage and leveling up. A TON of info that is great to help run the game.
A lot of information about the magic and the people. An awesome part on making more than one example
of characters. The gifts are very sweet. Style dice are cool. A lot of great (yet fictional) quotes thrown in
to give it a cool flair. My favorite?
“While it is a great thing to die for love, it is a greater thing to live for love.” Awesome.
Things I did not like.
Mostly minor quibbling here. The beginning was a bit confusing, when talking about the layers and such.
It took me reading it a few times to understand it. It became clearer when I was reading about the different
skies. I don’t now if I still understand the damage part yet, since it was not 100% clear. Unique, but a bit
confusing. Especially as to when it should happen. Not a lot of art, but I am willing to ignore that because
of how much info there was.
Rating. 9 out of 10. I cannot wait to play this!