Line #6 YMMV/SeventhSea


1	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: One of the Kickstarter goals was an entire soundtrack of Sea Shanties, sung by a crew aboard a ship. The full track can be found on Spotify for those who didn't back the Kickstarter.
2	* BrokenBase:
3	** Several ideas of the first edition metaplot were contentious and divisive, most notably [[spoiler: the alien Syrneth creating humanity, probably as a slave race, the Thalusi/Strangers being behind the Bargain and having a very active role in Thean history, and the man most of Theah knows as the Third Prophet actually being an impostor who orchestrated the murder of the actual Third Prophet, with only the Knights of the Rose and Cross knowing the truth.]] At least [[spoiler: the eventual reveal that Theus is actually an ancient alien demiurge himself, if a thoroughly-benevolent one actually behind much of what was attributed to him in history]] is safely and emphatically optional.
4	** Since the release of the Second Edition, which introduced major changes in both the gameplay and the settings, there are debates over which edition is better:
5	*** Gameplay wise, fans of the First enjoy it for having a fairly deep system of swordfighting and customization that encouraged thematic choices, and feel that the Second is a bit schizophrenic about whether it wants to be a “story game” or a crunchier experience. Fans of the Second Edition like the easier gameplay because it makes the players feel more like the heroic swashbucklers they're supposed to be, something that the First Edition had more trouble depicting because of its higher difficulty.
6	*** Setting wise, the first edition focused very deeply on events on a single continent, for heavy and rich intrigue, but at the cost of a smaller world that didn’t necessarily make external sense, since it’s effectively a Europe that developed to about the point of the early modern period with almost no other cultural influence, plus two tiny "empires" based on [[ArabianNightsDays the Middle East]] and [[{{Wutai}} east Asia]], dwarfed by the other nations, whose history and culture ''also'' don't make external sense. Second sought to broaden the world enormously, giving players more varied places to visit and dramatically increasing the number of possible player concepts a party could contain, but at the cost of losing much of that depth and detail, plus diluting the "swashbuckling" feel of focusing on a single time and place. Also, while the Second Edition abandoned many of the more controversial aspects of the First Edition's metaplot, it did not replace them with other conspiracies and "secret lore" of its own, losing out on the feel of mystery and discovery that its predecessor enjoyed whether or not the revelations were satisfying.
7	* DesignatedHero: In the Second Edition, Bour Ba Ighodalo is still listed as a heroic NPC even though his actions include: slaughtering all the strangers in his capital city (save for the children and teachers) out of fear they could surrender the town to the Atabean Trading Company's forces besieging it, selling slaves to said Company, attacking neighbouring countries to capture said slaves, and unleashing the evil abonsam spirits. Needless to say, if he was a player character and the rules were enforced, [[FallenHero he'd have succumbed to corruption and become a villain already]] in spite of his FreudianExcuse of having crossed the DespairEventHorizon after his sons were sold to slavery[[note]]and even then he chose to have the Thean civilians of his capital city massacred before his sons were captured and sold[[/note]], or his ultimate goal of driving away the ATC - because the rulebooks explicitly state that villainous actions still give corruption points even if they're done to serve a noble cause.
8	* HilariousInHindsight: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China Cathay]] protects itself behind a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China wall of fire which is great]].
9	* ItsEasySoItSucks: A common complaint about Second Edition. A "success" requires one set of 10 (dice totals added up to 10) to accomplish any task. If a player rolls 3 dice, they only have a 15% chance of failure. On average, a player will roll 4 dice, and a min-maxer can position themselves to roll a dozen. Also, all wounds are healed after combat, rather than "dramatic wounds" requiring surgery.
10	* ItsHardSoItSucks: A common complaint about First Edition. For what was meant to be a game about heroic swashbucklers doing heroic things, a lot of players felt the game was really stingy with the character points, really encouraged a KillerGameMaster mindset in the GM, gave the setting's Villains ''huge'' amounts of political and military power at their disposal compared to Heroic equivalents, and had an odd fixation on the out-of-place cosmic horror aspect many parties and character concepts might never encounter at all. The default roll difficulties meant that a character who wanted any chance of accomplishing basic tasks had to really specialize in them, to the point of being crippled in all other areas, and being a Sorcerer or Swordsman (which many considered the main appeal of the game) cost so many points it practically forced one to buy a Hubris - which the books flat out instructed the GM to treat as a carte blanche to screw with the player. It didn't help that the only {{Non Player Character}}s given stats tended to be major players in the metaplot, with levels of competence players couldn't even imagine getting - creating the impression that, at best, all they could hope for was to play second fiddle for [=GMPCs=] or be slaughtered by villains the books seemed more enamored with than themselves. Whether the fanbase was just unappeasable, the developers went too far trying to fix the problem, or everything was fine and the complainers were a minority is still up to debate.
11	* LevelGrinding: Second Edition's level up system has been described as this. There is no XP in the system. Instead, players write individual stories with a designated reward at the end. Depending on where the campaign takes place and how much content the GM is able to cram into a session, players can find themselves finishing a campaign and only having made it halfway to their level up.
12	* LowTierLetdown: [[MonsterAdventurers Sidhe PCs]] in longer campaigns. They [[CrutchCharacter start the game with many potent, practical advantages, only somewhat balanced by restrictions on the skills and advantages they can and can't learn]], but then ''cannot gain Drama dice'', meaning they [[CantCatchUp will never be able to gain or spend experience points]]. In other words, they overshadow other starting characters to begin with, then are overshadowed later on as they never learn or improve.
13	* MoralEventHorizon: Built into the rules, a character, including an NPC, who hits -30 reputation points becomes a Villain (unless the character's been framed; only "earned" negative reputation points count), and the GM takes away their character sheet. Although a Machiavelli-style Advantage will put it off to -40 or -50, depending on how strongly the ends justify the means.
14	* ScrappyWeapon: [[FairFolk The Goode Folke]] are explicitly not supposed to be enemies players can best in violent combat, so as to encourage players to [[PuzzleBoss out-think, rather than out-fight them, and defeat them with creative solutions]]. In fact, the game goes out of its way to make clear that just owning the weapons that can hurt and kill them permanently is grounds to be hunted down and subjected to a FateWorseThanDeath by the rest of the faerie race, and that every faerie feels it when one of their own gets offed for good. This unfortunately makes the advantages one can take to own or know how to make such weapons nearly useless, and begs the question of why the game designers even included such options at all.
15	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Some fans believe that the attempt to make the Second Edition setting LighterAndSofter either went too far or was done too unsubtly [[PoliticalOvercorrectness in order to make the game look "progressive"]]. Some of the complaints are that many major {{Non Player Character}}s that were imported from the First Edition had their sexes, genders or sexualities shifted. John Wick has said he has no problem with these critiques, and points out that there is nothing stopping players from using the First Edition setting with Second Edition rules or- vice versa. However, he is quite clear in the 7th Sea Official Podcast that Second Edition is not a continuation from the prior game line, but a complete update and that its changes are here to stay.

Context YMMV / SeventhSea