I got to play a game on Friday afternoon - "Seahorse Rescue."  There are spoilers for that, so you might want to skip the following paragraphs if you plan to play that scenario.  I had a fun time and it was useful for seeing more of how the game actually works when played.  I was the ship's master gunner, a lady soldier from Sarmatia.  Was also basically the ship's engineer.  Non-spoiler though: Spending drama points to help other players, especially when they help you in return, can really help cover things that your character is bad at.

We got some evidence that our employer was up to no good (slavery), or at least had some bad apples in it.  We sailed back to our boss, and ran into Peabody, the obstructive bureaucrat.  Our Vesten got him thoroughly intimidated by putting a knife into his appointment book and we moved on to talk to the boss.  Boss seemed shifty but accepted our evidence and promised to look into things.  Party split up a bit but was nominally heading to the fancy inn that our boss put us up to.  After a bit of drinking with the quartermaster

I went up to our room and started booby-trapping it in case we were attacked. (Sheet with a silhouette on the window, bucket of water over the door).  The others did some visiting of other places around town for info.  One got hit by the water bucket on returning to the room (I warned them to knock first...)

After most of us were back, we went down to dinner and got arrested by the town watch, which was looking for the ONE person who wasn't back yet.  They wanted to arrest him for... assaulting an appointment book.

We go along to the jail and talk for a while, but they take one of our crew away for independent questioning - turns out he's part of the Brotherhood, and they take exception to some of the piracy he's been doing.  I offer to set up a colored fire that will signal the ship to fire at the jail, but the captain says no.  The separated crewman uses Reckless Takedown to take down the guards surrounding him, and all of us have a chat with the guard captain.

We convince him we're actually on the same side, and he lets us all go.  Our quartermaster sneaks into our boss's place and finds several other pieces of evidence that indicate that at minimum the boss was turning a blind eye, but probably directly involved in bad stuff, but leaves out info on where to go next.  So, we decide the only thing to do is kidnap him.

Getting into the manor again is easy as our quartermaster had left the way open, but we don't know where the boss's bedroom is.  Cue the Vesten loudly banging on the front door to get Peabody to out so she can "apologize" in person for the book.  And then convincing him that she needed to apologize to the boss too.  The rest of us snuck through the house following them. (Note, I do not have any stealth, but lots of help from the party made it work).  We had a bit of a fight to capture the boss.  As I was a gunner trying to be stealthy, my approach was damage control - catching vases and chairs that got knocked over by those wrestling on the ground before they could crash and make noise.  Worked out quite well and was the highlight of the game for me.

We smuggled him (and Peabody) out of the house and sailed for the mainland.  Boss gave up a location in Eisen if we let him go.  We did, and investigated things there.  We were told about a large ship that was smuggling slaves into Eisen and a place that was serving as a stopover for them in town.  We snuck onto the ship (again, helping each other) and found lots of bunks for voluntary passengers (and a lot more guns than apparent from the outside) but nothing untoward.

Snuck in to the stopover place and found... they weren't slaves at all! A lady in the house had bought the slaves and turned them into indentured servants at various mines, farms, and militias throughout Eisen with one-year required contracts and the option to stay afterwards.  We were highly skeptical, but things seemed to add up and... we ended up sailing away.

As a story I felt it was a bit of a let-down ending, as there was no big climatic fight or anything, just an explanatory conversation.  As I also do a lot of Pathfinder I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of combat.  The GM explained that part of this was because we kept being quiet and we apparently avoided 6 fights along the way just by being low profile.  But I had a fun time, and felt like I consistently contributed to the party.  Even if I did keep wanting to blow things up.

I was in that party (The Escaped Slave) and I had a great time as the players were really into their characters and the hyjinx involved made it feel fun. I did see that the GM had 1 sheet of paper with NPC notes and that was the 'adventure' and I believe she winged it all based upon our actions, so Kudos to her! I agree the ending felt anti-climatic but given the information that seemed to be the way it would end.

Hmmm. I played Seahorse Rescue Saturday 8pm to midnight (unless I was at the wrong table?). Only had 3 players, Had a great time.

But our adventure ran completely different.

We found a sinking slave ship, rescued a couple, had their books so we had proof the people who hired us were knowledgable and complicit in the slavery.  We encountered a warship and a kraken.  Drove the kraken off with canon fire and  exchanged pleasentries with the captain (well, he was suspicious that we found something) While recovering our dead crewmen we noticed his crewmen looked kinda already dead.

We put into port at our destination and kept our (confirmed) suspicions to ourself with the intent of taking the information to the Brotherhood of the Coast.  We had to slip out in the middle of the night without provisions and made our way to one of the nearby islands hoping to find assistance.  Being against slavery worked to our advantage and in exchange for helping them with thier monster shark hunt we would be given provisions and sent on our way.  Ship skills and a good throwing arm took out a monster and we partied through the night.  Once we were loaded with supplies we headed towads the pirate's secret base.  We ran across the evil pirate (who worked for the Company) and tangled with his ship.  The crew defended against the Kraken, the Vesten took care of many zombies, I took shots at the evil captain and the quartermaster snuck into the Captain's quarters and burned the scroll/ contract that animated the zombies.  At that the captain screamed and was taken by the Kraken.

We handed the books to the Brotherhood, they would get the evidence to their network of contacts and work to get the Nations to turn against our former employers.

I wonder which one was the real SeaHorse Rescue or if the different GMs just went with the direction the Party was interested in going.being mostly

They were given a single page outline to work from and told wing it. If your game was fun, it is entirely the fault of the GM at your table. Seek them out and thank them in the future. I would guess the only adventures remotely similar were the same adventure being run by the same GM back to back.

Hmmm...as much as I like giving the GM flexibility to run a game at a con, this strikes me as lazy design.  It completely defeats the purpose of the shared play experience and leads to wildly inconsistent results. It also suggests that whoever had the task of putting the adventure together didn't put much work into it.

Now, that said, it sounds like everyone had fun.

I would say that it represents the way 7th Sea is meant to work: everyone has input on the plot and adventure.  There's only so much you can plan in advance when 80%+ of the plot will be written by other people.  Winging it is a key component of 7S2e.

There is input and there is planning for probable results. Even I use more prep for a convention event. A good adventure gives you a solid full opening scene, includes a brief combat to refresh or teach players the mechanic, an obvious route to follow and a couple alternatives for players who choose not to take that carrot. You then get some story development, a problem to solve ( or two) a side quest in case the players are moving too fast, and a big dramatic finale that should have the players actively involved in not just defeating the bad guy but on the edge of survival. (And probably saving a city from destruction). If you are runner ng a game YOU wrote, you can shorthand it to an outline. If you expect someone else to run it, you need a full write up. For 1st ed we do 10-20 pages on a 4 hour session including the stats. But we are covering contingencies, highlighting info pertinent to future campaign events and adding material for secret societies which may not come up.