So here's something that I've been working on for a while, usually in a fairly casual basis. Given that the latest installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise hits theaters today, it seemed appropriate to finally publish this.
7th Sea 2nd Edition - Converted Dueling Styles
A bit of background as to how this document came about: I had actually started this not-so-little conversion project way back in October 2016, long before the Explorer's Society option for publishing fan made 7th Sea material was officially a thing. It started out pretty small, consisting of only a handful of adaptations of 7th Sea's 1st edition Swordsman Schools into workable Duelist Styles for the game's 2nd edition. I did get a bit of feedback on the forum I initially posted the material at, some good, some bad, and some useful, but I ultimately chose to remove the material from that forum as things were starting to get a little too toxic for my taste.
One problem with the initial conversions was that I really didn't have a chance to play test these in mock combats as much as I would have liked. Part of the reason it's taken me so long to finish up these conversions and then post them is that I've tried to run mock combats in a preset collection of scenarios (Duelist Hero vs. small Brute Squad, Duelist Hero vs. large Brute Squad, Duelist Hero vs. strong non-Duelist Villain, Duelist Hero vs. weak Duelist Villain, and Duelist Hero vs. strong Duelist Villain) to see how they shook out. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with how the various styles shook out. They're not perfect, but as Steve Kenson (a game designer whom I deeply respect) said with regards to RPG design, there comes a point when you've got to say "it's good enough" and release it, otherwise you'll be "working on improving" the material forever.
From the very outset, I never intended to do conversions of every single 1e Swordsman School that got published (and there were a lot of them). I mostly focused on the ones that I firstly found to be interesting and secondly that I could come up with something nifty for the style bonus. One thing I tried to avoid was rampant re-skins of style bonuses for previously published Duelist styles. If the only thing I could come up with for a style was a total re-skin, I simply dropped the the style. There are a couple of exceptions as those Duelist styles I felt had enough in-game flavor to warrant their inclusion even if the style bonus wasn't anything truly original.
I did add a few converted Advantages, such as a revamp of the 1e Exploit Weakness Swordsman knack and the Left-Handed Advantage, as well as a little something for the professional pugilists out there that prefer bare-knuckles to bared steel. I had considered doing a conversion of the Finnegan "Swordsman" School (aka Drunken Irish Boxing), but I ultimately opted not to, even if I did come up with a pretty nifty style bonus (which wound up being used for the Lucani style bonus instead).
Now, some of you may be aware that one of the initial releases for the Explorer's Society was the supplement "At Sword's Point," written by Rob Weiland. What you may not be aware of is that I wrote a pretty scathing review of the product on DriveThruRPG (it's the only review of the product so far), due to the vast majority of the dueling style conversions being either clunky to the point of "why bother?" or being unimaginative tweaks of styles from the core rulebook. I'm sorry, but if I'm going to take a Duelist style, I want to be able to do something that's not only cool, but isn't just a bland reskin of another style. For instance, Rob's take on MacDonald, a style that favors using the Highlands claymore is just the core book's Ambrogia using different Traits. There were a couple points where Rob and I had very similar ideas as to what a style's bonus should be (Lucani for instance). To be honest, had this product been any good, I would have totally abandoned this conversion project of mine in favor of the "official version." Yes, I gave it 2 stars, but that's only because I feel a 1 star rating is reserved for something that is complete and utter garbage that should have never been purchased in the first place.
I suppose one question that might crop up with regards with this document of mine is "why didn't you publish this as part of the Explorer's Society?" Well, there are two good reasons. The first is that I didn't feel this constituted an original enough work, since it's based very much off 1st edition material that belongs to John Wick. The second is that trying to get this published for sale when there's already a similar product out there just felt incredibly tacky, as well as disingenuous given the rather scathing review I'd left for the product. As to which one is "definitively better", Rob's "At Sword's Point" or my "Converted Dueling Styles," that's something I leave to the individual to decide. If a table wants to mix and match, pulling Duelist styles from both files, then have at it.
So, there's the story on the how and why regarding the creation and sharing of this little project of mine. I hope you find it useful, and that the Duelist style bonuses I've created don't prove to be more powerful than I anticipated.
As for the latest PotC flick... yeah, I think I'll wind up waiting for it to hit Netflix. The trailers did little to make me want to see the film, and as much as I've enjoyed seeing Johnny Depp's performance as Captain Jack Sparrow, I think the character has worn out his welcome for me.
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