From: "Kevin Wilson" Subject: [7th Sea RPG GM] Re: Pirate Nations Review Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 13:03:51 -0700 > they're all Avalon and they need to get back there post-haste. Canguine > is an absolute delight -- a wonderfully colorful city with lots of nifty > detail. I eagerly look forward to their time there. (;< While I probably Thanks! > important about various characters. Berek will probably be making an > appearance in my game (what? My whole crew is Inish, except for the lone > froglet who's an Inish wannabe...), as will the Corsairs, perhaps. I'm > not sure I want to use Reis just because he's soooo bad that he makes my > stomach turn -- and I'm a GM! I oughta be inured by now ... I might use Hee hee! "Doesn't play well with others." is definitely going on my Reis T-shirt. > prize for them! My one complaint about this section is that in looking > at all of the characters provided, they are *huge*! Let's just take > Berek for example -- he's got a Swordsman's school and a Virtue *and* > the Noble edge, for starters. A 'normal' character could barely pay for > all of those and then get maybe a couple skills. I don't really find > that ... fair. Yeah, you could say that Berek's been around a while and > all that -- I understand that these characters have earned some > experience -- but some of these things you can't really pick up with > experience, and you need to buy them to begin with. I guess it's just Remember, gaining Advantages aren't illegal after the campaign starts, you just can't do it without the GM letting you (either giving you the Advantage for free, or charging you XP for it). The only thing I can say for sure that you can't pick up later is an Arcana. > the ongoing problem I have with some of the AEG characters -- I found > this going on in L5R too. The 'main characters' are so big and tough > that normal characters don't stand a prayer of taking them down, not > even with a lot of experience. I'll probably be downsizing some of these guys. True, the pirates are tough. But not all of them are quite AS tough. We felt it was important to give GMs a broad range of power levels for the pirate NPCs. You might start out against one of Kheired-Din's subordinate ships, Captained by Edahgo, for instance, with few real 'named' NPCs on board, and then, as the Heroes gain in power (and oh, believe me, they will.) they can start to take on the bigger baddies, possibly culminating in a series of adventures to kill Kheired-Din or Reis themself. Also, with the sole exception of perhaps Hamish on the Corsairs ship (who I consider more monster than human), the NPCs are all 'street legal'. Given time and XP (and a syrneth artifact or two in some cases) your Heroes can be just as tough. But, we really thought that Heroes should have to work hard to take out a pirate as famous as Reis or Kheired-Din. > OK, and pretty average. I *really* like the fortune-telling section -- > pay character points, get your fortune told, pick up a bunch of cool > background. Neat! Looking forward to seeing more of these spreads. (: I Excellent. I wasn't sure that was worth my time when I was writing it. I'm glad to hear someone enjoyed it. Thanks for your kind words, and your gentle criticisms. I hope to improve with each book I work on for 7th Sea, and comments and criticisms are tremendously helpful in determining what I'm doing right and wrong. That said, anyone else got their Pirate Nations yet and want to throw out some comments (good or bad)? -Kevin Wilson -- Contents Copyright (C) 1997,98,99 by ALDERAC ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC.