New 7th Sea Rules For Lucian's Campaign

Here are the 'house rules' I'll be using during the campaign. This list might get updated as we go, and I find new things to make rulings about. Some are pretty basic, and in others, I'm trying to mitigate what I see as some deficiencies in the system, and to try out some cool ideas I read about. To wit:

Level-0 knacks: There's no ruling in the books on these, I think, so we're going with a slightly modified version of house rules we've used on the MUD before, to wit:

Level-0 knacks in skills you have may be attempted as a straight trait check. The idea here is that when you learned the skill, you learned the very basics of all knacks, even the advanced ones.
Level-0 basic knacks in skills you don't have may be attempted as trait checks -1k1. i.e. if you don't have 'Climbing' and your Finesse is 3, you'd make a 2k2 roll.
Level-0 advanced knacks in skills you don't have may not be attempted.
Level-0 sorcery or swordsman knacks may not be attempted.

Spending XP: You may spend XP to raise a knack or trait at any time. If we're in turn-based mode (as in during combat), it takes 6 sequential actions to do so, and you must be able to practice during that time. Out of turn-based mode, do it whenever. If you are learning a new skill, you must designate some game-time (not play-time, necessarily) to having a particular person (PC or NPC) teach you that new skill. If you are gaining a new advantage through GM fiat (learning a language is the most obvious choice here), the time it takes to do so is also under GM fiat. As a general rule, it takes 3X the amount of XP to gain an advantage as it would have with HP.

Drama dice: Everyone starts off with a number of drama dice equal to 2X their lowest stat or 1X their highest stat, whichever is higher. When drama dice are awarded during play, you do not get an XP along with it (this is a change from how I originally envisioned things). You can then save or squander it as you see fit. I'll try to keep drama dice flowing, especially since reading that John Wick used to give out about 10 per adventure. Any leftover drama dice at the end of an adventure do not gain you any XP.

Reputation dice: You get one reputation die for every five points of reputation, instead of 10. This does indeed carry over to Glamour. You can have *both* positive and negative reputation, but you can only use the reputation dice from one set in any one scene, and this fixes your reputation in the minds of the people you're intereacting with at that point. You can spend one positive repuation point to cancel one negative reputation point if you wish (to keep you from becoming a Scoundrel and therefore an NPC, for example.)

Story dice: This is an idea I'm stealing from 'The Pool', at http://www.randomordercreations.com/thepool.html

Look up 'monologue of victory' (MOV) there. Basically, once it's determined that you are successful at something, you get to narrate the outcome and 'stretch the boundaries' a bit. To quote from the page:

"Giving an MOV is like taking control of the game for a few moments. You can describe your character's actions, the actions of those around him, and the outcome of those actions. You can even focus on less direct elements of the conflict such as what's happening in the next room or who's entering the scene.
You can do just about anything. In fact, these are the only real limitations you must observe:

Don't make alterations to the characters of other players (such as killing them). You can add complications for them and affect the things around them, but don't intrude on the creation of a fellow player.

Keep your narration in synch with the established facts and tone of the game. If you need to ask the GM questions or prompt the other players for responses during your MOV, do so.

Keep your narration reasonably short."

I'm importing this concept into 7th Sea via souped-up drama dice I'm calling 'story dice'. My idea is that everyone gets 1 story die at the beginning of the adventure, and you can use it at any time to perform a MOV for some action you really want to do, and don't want to leave to whims of dice/GM sadism. (See the Pool site for an example of a MOV in action; I've also mocked up a couple 7th Sea examples based on actual play.)

If you're uncomfortable with this (and some are), think of it the same way you do when you successfully attack someone and the GM says, "OK, roleplay it out." Your action is successful; we're mostly interested in the 'color' of how it happened. In some sense, a story die is just like a drama die that always rolls a 10+.

To get more story dice into the game, I'm trying the following very experimental rule: At the point when you are awarded a drama die, you may, if you wish, immediately give it to someone else. You give them the die, and say, "This is for doing <X>" where X is some in-game action their character has performed, presumably something you thought was cool. In doing so, you forfeit the XP you would have gotten with the die, and the recipient does not get any XP for this either. However, that die is now a story die instead of a normal drama die.

As I say, this is highly experimental, and if it doesn't seem to be working, we might change it. But this whole game is somewhat experimental, so.

(I will note that as written above, you never actually roll a story die. Maybe I'll come up with some mechanic for this, if it seems necessary.)

Hubris/Virtues: Virtues really seem to get the short shrift in the game. As one review put it, "I tried to tell one of my players that the book said that Virtues were cheap at the price. 'They lie,' he replied." So, to shore up the imbalance, if you take a Virtue, instead of taking the normal Virtue description, you may use this instead (decide upon character creation):

Virtue: "When performing an act that the GM agrees falls within your Virtue, you may use any drama die as a story die."

The reverse, hubris, will work pretty much as written in the Player's Guide, except that in this case, 'The GM may activate your Hubris to force you to do something' means,

Hubris: 'The GM may spend a drama die to force you to perform an activity that falls within the scope of that Hubris, and things will go badly for your character as a result.'

When no dice are spent, but your character takes dramatic action in a way consistent with their virtue or hubris, you're somewhat more likely to receive a drama die than a different character who didn't have that trait would for the same action. I thought of trying to formalize this (a la disadvantages in Nobilis), but scrapped the idea.

If you would like both a hubris and a virtue (or if you already have both from inky's campaign), this is fine. A hubris still gives you 10 HP, and a virtue costs 10 HP, so if you take both, that's a net zero.

Esploding dice: This hit home with me when I was calculating die-rolling probabilities: Exploding dice help you exactly when you don't need it. 7th Sea is supposed to be a 'roll over X' system, and exploding dice explode only when you've already *rolled* a 10 or two, so you probably already succeeded. This isn't so bad for single explosions (which do often help) but becomes more and more true for multiple explosions. So: if you roll a 30+ on any one die for any one action, and you can think of a way to logically tie a success on that action to your *next* action, you get a free raise for that second action.

Magic: The basic systems are cool, but I don't like tying drama dice to magic. Drama dice should be more of an OOC thing for use to let your character accomplish tasks you feel strongly about than a mechanic to allow your character to live up to its basic premise. Hence, see the sorcery rules.

(But remember that 'bargain' magic will make you an unhappy-Matushka magnet. Plus, it's illegal.)

This line last updated January 16th, AD 2003
lpsmith @rice.edu