7th Sea Explorer’s Society

John Wick Presents has joined the ranks of publishers offering a hosted licensing community content program with DriveThruRPG. The 7th Sea Explorer’s Society allows interested third parties to produce and sell material for the 7th Sea roleplaying game without having to negotiate individual licensing arrangements. Participants can incorporate material from the game books published by John Wick Presents itself, or from any of the products uploaded by other participants as well.

Several adventures and rules options have already been posted to the Explorer’s Society. Piquing my interest, even though I’ve never played the game, is a set of Expanded Ship Rules with guidelines for sailing ship construction, customization, maintenance, and use in trade.

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Second Look—7th Sea Core Rulebook

When it comes to RPGs 7th Sea certainly feels the most dramatic. Set in an Age of Sail, this book is chock full of open waters, pirates, swashbuckling, sorcery, and romance. In fact, there’s only a handful of fairly simple mechanics to worry about while the rest of the Core Rulebook is oozing with flavor.

This book is also fairly sizeable, so you’re getting a lot of drama and flavor. Beautifully illustrated and laid out, the 7th Sea Core Rulebook was a joy to read. I cant say that about every RPG rulebook I’ve read. I’ve actually had this book for quite some time but it took me a while to go through it due to the size and the fact that there’s just a ton of worldbuilding to adsorb. This is by no means A Bad Thing™!

Did I mention our fellow Pawn, Thomas Deeny, did the layout for this book? He did. I’ve seen his angry cursing at InDesign on twitter.

I’d never heard of 7th Sea before, but just the premise intrigue and political conspiracies set in an open-water, mythical version of Europe was just too good to pass up. I’m sure if I had known about the game earlier it would have been one of my RPGs of choice. That being said, I look forward to finally sitting down and getting a chance to play this one in the near future.

7th Sea certainly dishes up a refreshing theme with mechanics for both actions and sorcery that don’t get in the way off all the mystery and excitement of the story.

A copy of 7th Sea was provided free for review by John Wick Presents.

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sushi-go-iphone-screenGamewright’s Sushi Go “pick and pass card game” has been adapted to iOS. It works on both iPhone and iPad and can be played locally against AI or online via Game Center.

Online multiplayer has finally come to one of my favorite games, Splendor (Android, iOS, Steam).

Tiny Epic Defenders has broadened its horizons and is now playable on Tabletop Simulator via Steam.

The deck-building word game, Paperback, has launched on iOS.

Big Potato’s new app (Android, iOS) provides timers, extra questions, sound effects, and other enhancements for several of the company’s games.

Academy Games’ 1775: Rebellion, a game of the American Revolutionary War, has been released on Steam.

Nocturnal Media has plans for a single-player computer RPG based on the 7th Sea tabletop game and is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

Lew Pulsipher’s Doomstar has been in-development 20 years as a tabletop game but made it out first via Steam.

Pathfinder Adventures, the digital version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, now works on smartphones (Android, iOS).

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Crowdfunding Highlights

Well now, there’s a lot of stuff on Kickstarter this past week. Let’s have a little looksee, shall we?

7th-seaJohn Wick’s 7th Sea Kickstarter campaign launched this morning and it funded within minutes. The Restoration Era roleplaying game returns to the land of Théah, a world that looks an awful lot like our Europe of 1668, but different. It’s The Princess Bride, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Three Musketeers wrapped up into a roleplaying game of derring-do. $20 gets you the PDF of the main game, but $40 gets you PDFs of all stretch goal books plus the first edition books. (Full disclosure: I’m doing layout on the quickstart adventure for the campaign.)

The storyline of the Sentinels of the Multiverse game comes to an end in OblivAeon, and Greater Than Games has returned to Kickstarter with a huge game-ending campaign! You can get a copy of the last expansion for just $39 plus shipping, or you can add on $15 to get all the variant hero cards (with all new artwork ) you didn’t get from earlier Kickstarters, pre-orders, or convention appearances. Or up your pledge again to get shiny foil versions of every hero card! Or even more to get the collectors case to store every single expansion in one mighty mega-box!

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IDW Games has launched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past board game and if they send a review copy to us, we’re probably going to fight each other to see who gets to play it first. It’s a story-driven adventure for players to fight their way through some of the comic book’s keystone moments. Stretch goals include hero packs based on April O’Neil, Casey Jones, and splinter; TMNT sculpts based on the original look of the turtles; and mousers! All this for $90 (or $150 for the earlier versions of the turtles).

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Jeff Siadek of Gorilla Games has a Kickstarter campaign for Battlestations: Second Edition. This update to the classic game that’s a little bit of a roleplaying game and a little bit of a board game has your crew on a modular space ship taking on one of hundreds of missions — official and fan-made. Zoom out to the star map where your ship encounters other ships, zoom in to what’s going on board your ship — or the enemy ship. It’s a crazy fun ride. Think Star Trek meets Space Hulk. Get the game in PDF format for $20, get a physical game with miniatures and all sorts of goodness for $90.

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7th SeaThe 7th Sea roleplaying game will be returning at the hand of one of its original designers. Alderac Entertainment Group announced the sale of the game property to John Wick, who’s company, John Wick Presents, will produce a new version of the game on an unspecified timetable.

According to the announcement, the deal also allows AEG to “publish a number of products within that line over the next few years.” I suspect these would be board and card games tied to the 7th Sea setting, though apparently the specifics are still under negotiation.

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