OK, last few days have been a storm of comments and a lot of it looks very negative. I just want to be on record as saying that I still very much like the game as presented. I still trust the staff to have played this and tweaked the mechanics based on their professional experience. I think in a home game it will play marvellously. But I also looking at this for convention campaign formats and that may be problematic. (As well as for large groups which I tend to have).
So please note any complaints I have tossed out are simply things that I suspect could be a point of confusion for newer gamers that I want to join us and run great games so I can retire someday.
Sun, 05/29/2016 - 18:21
#1
Salamanca
Feedback apologies
Naw, I don't think anything is upset (or they shouldn't be). The point of this period is to make the game as strong as possible. It speaks to how passionate folks are to make everything work.
TAJ-07: Technopriest And Justicar Of 7thSea2e
I agree: there's a lot to like in the book, it's definitely an improvement in most aspects. But there's room for improvement :).
I'm reserving judgment until I see the final book. Yeah, there are issues. Some of them will probably be fixed this week thanks to all the feedback given. Some are related to design choices that you may or may not like, and they will still be around after the final cleanup.
I think that a lot of them are related to "simplicity". We have gone from a 2-book core system with about 500 pages to a 300 pages 1-book only core system. A lot of things have to be trimmed in order to be able to fit them in. There's plenty of information on the setting, and a lot of rules that can't go too deep because of that space limit.
But luckily this time they could plan the line of books to be published properly, in advance, and with the assurance that they are gonna be published no matter what. So even if there's not space enough to develop more deeply some of the systems we will get more of most of them later. The core has some basic rules so you can start playing with ships as part of your stories, but the real juice is reserved for the Pirate Nations. Nations and Secret Societies will be greatly expanded on their own books, both with their secrets and more player options. But for now we have the basics needed to use them. (plus all that nice 1st editions pdf's to serve as inspiration meanwhile).
The good thing is that almost all of us (except the 145 backers at the Explorer Pledge Level) are gonna get the books as they appear, at least in pdf. And they are gonna expand our options plenty. We've a whole lot of material coming our way :D
I agree that Newbies might get a little bit lost. Not sure, because I'm far from being a newbie, but there's a chance... But I also think that the book makes a great job of presenting a wonderful setting to somebody that hasn't checked it before, and that has always been the strength of the game.
I trust this people. I trusted Wick before, but he also had the good sense of getting great professionals along in this project, and I'm quite sure that they know what they are doing...
"We have gone from a 2-book core system with about 500 pages to a 300 pages 1-book only core system." This.