Hello fellow bucklers of swashes. I'm working with my longtime group and getting back into 7th Sea. I've always loved the idea of Riposte but hated how clunky the mechanics are of mentally shifting around ranks. I am good with moving stuff around abstractly in my head but many of my players aren't, so I was wondering if anyone had changed how Riposte behaved.

Idea 1: Make your Parry and Attack, both at -10, and add your ranks in Riposte as a flat bonus to those rolls. Riposte is an extremely powerful ability, so that penalty may need to increase to -15?

Idea 2: Make your Parry and Attack, both at -5, with your ranks in Riposte added back as a flat bonus (thus, 5 ranks means no penalty), but the attack does less damage. A rapier would do 2k1, a knife would do 1k1.

Thanks!

Has anyone noticed that Studio Agate has a new Kickstarter getting ready to launch, promising "A New Journey" for 7th Sea?

I'm guessing this is the big news that Studio Agate and Chaosium keep hinting about. Does anyone have any more info?

CONFIDENTIAL – NOT FOR CIRCULATION
EXPLORER'S SOCIETY INTERNAL ARCHIVE
Field Analysis Document 771-Delta / Author: Dr. Quentin Lysander Trague
Title: "Echoes of the Engine: A Unified Theory of Prelapsarian-Originated Thaumaturgy"

Prologue: The Heretic’s Whisper

Should this manuscript fall into the custody of ecclesiastical authorities, I will no doubt be subject to conflagration. If apprehended by more clandestine ecclesiastic agents, I may find myself either consigned to oblivion or sequestered indefinitely. Should the Crown of Avalon deign to scrutinize this treatise, I would expect my existence to be ceremoniously redacted from all institutional ledgers. Nevertheless, I write.

I am Dr. Quentin Lysander Trague, Senior Carto-Cryptologist of the Western Arc and once-affiliated Scholar Emeritus of the Probabilistic Observatorium of Vodacce. I have trodden within no fewer than three dozen antecedent archaeological anomalies from Ifri to Montaigne, have stood beneath ancient crystalline constructs vibrating with harmonic intelligibility, and have borne witness to blood-driven phenomena in Montaigne estates most decadent and degenerative. I have seen. And my comprehension has been irrevocably altered.

I assert unequivocally: Thaumaturgy is not divine. It is not a sacrament. It is not born of mythopoetic origin.
It is residual interface. A relic of a civilization immeasurably more advanced, whose mastery of cosmological infrastructure renders our petty lexicons—magic, miracle, myth—tragically insufficient.

What we ignorantly denominate “sorcery” is, in verity, merely the vestigial operational subroutine of an extinct metaphysical apparatus.

Section I: The Inheritance Delusion

Contemporary scholarship presumes the arcane faculties are manifestations of divine selection or hereditary sanctification. This assumption is intellectually bankrupt. The so-called “bloodlines” of sorcerous talent appear to operate according to protocols of genetic authorization—fixed channels of metaphysical syntax assigned via lineage not by chance or miracle, but by design.

Let us commence with the art of Porte. It operates through geometrically encoded spatial violation, requiring sacrificial catalysts and mnemonic anchors. This suggests not mystical spontaneity, but structured access to unnatural corridors—an architecture of translocation governed by sacrosanct numerical constants. It is a gated protocol, not an act of will.

Glamour exhibits even more egregious characteristics of systematized artifice. Its practitioners emulate personas from a mythic continuum, yet the transformation does not occur merely in perception—it is ontological. This is congruent with the superimposition of archetypal overlays—an ancient psychosympathetic system that reconstitutes identity within the parameters of symbolic resonance.

As for Sorte, its practitioners manipulate what is universally misidentified as fate. In truth, they perceive and influence a quantum-interconnective lattice—a construct of such sophistication that it mimics destiny itself. What they call threads are, in fact, relational vectors, observable only by those possessing the biologic heuristic to interface with the system’s remaining access points.

In every instance, what is referred to as sorcery obeys rule-bound phenomenology—an axiomatic behavior wholly incongruent with supernatural spontaneity.

Section II: Geocultural Parallels

Expanding beyond Théah, we find these modalities echoed in disparate geographies.

Within the Crescent lands, the discipline of Qisma invokes transformation through invocation of sacred nomenclature. These are not mere incantations. Their structure and semantic patterning align with inscriptions found upon obelisks and glyphic panels associated with antecedent ruins. These “names” are not prayer—they are command inputs.

In Ifri, Azyr practitioners manifest fire responsive to linguistic modulation and gestural rhythm. This implies a phonoresponsive bioenergetic interface, reminiscent of harmonic actuators recovered in certain catacombs beneath Mbey.

In the Atabean isles, the so-called shamans engage with oceanic and meteorological intelligences. If these forces are not merely animistic personifications, then they are ambient operating intelligences, semi-autonomous remnants of climatic regulation systems.

The crystal-based blood sorcery of the Tzak K’an cultures, meanwhile, provides perhaps the most transparent correlation to ancient technology. Their artifacts hum, illuminate, and respond. To blood. To song. To rhythm. These are hardware interfaces, misapprehended as spiritual sacraments.

Section III: The Echo Hypothesis

The question then arises—if these systems are not magic, how do they persist?

I propose the Echo Hypothesis: that these are not systems in function, but in recursion. What we experience are redundant sub-processes, remnant instructions embedded within the substrata of physicality itself. They persist because the system was not dismantled—it was abandoned.

These subroutines—be they Glamour, Sorte, Porte, or otherwise—continue because they were designed to be self-correcting, self-renewing, and responsive to anthropomorphic stimuli. We are the interlopers, yes, but we are also the input.

Myth has not emerged around these disciplines as explanation—it is the excreted residue of their function. The myths followed the phenomena, not the inverse. The Old King does not empower Glamour. Glamour generates the Old King.

Section IV: The Faerie as Function

In Avalon, the Sidhe are revered or feared as prelapsarian entities. I contend they are neither spirit nor deity. They are operational maintenance protocols—autonomous intelligences whose function was once to mediate the archetypal field.

Their behaviors are rule-bound. They enforce contract. They punish deviation from narrative logic. They serve myth not because they believe in it, but because they were created to protect it.

On one occasion, I was permitted to cross the threshold of a stone circle reputed to be a Faerie gate. There, a Sidhe emissary pronounced a sequence of utterances in what I recognized as derivative of the glyph-tongue found at Syrneth Node #18-V. The gate opened. Coincidence? I think not.

These beings are not fantasy. They are processes.

Section V: Cataclysmic Considerations

Should we persist in our uncritical usage of these systems—casting, tearing, weaving, invoking—we risk reactivating core functions beyond our comprehension.

We assume the systems are broken. I posit they are merely dormant. The multidimensional lattice might yet reconstitute. The Sidhe might evolve beyond constraint. The Sorte strands might extend into metarealms of determinative logic.

The world itself may respond—not with benevolence, but with system-wide recalibration.

Section VI: Protocol for Interference Minimization

1. All sorcery must be reclassified as Residual Operative Echo Phenomena (ROEPs).
2. Genealogical tracing of sorcerous lines should be reframed as Access Vector Mapping.
3. Sites of high thaumaturgic interaction should be quarantined and stabilized.
4. Cross-discipline activation events must be suppressed to avoid syncretic escalation.
5. Faerie phenomena should be subject to disruption analysis, not folkloric indulgence.

Addendum: The Ecclesiastical Challenge

Let me be clear: I do not refute Theus. I merely suggest that His works may be inscribed upon an antecedent architecture whose function we have only begun to decode.

We walk upon a lattice of intention older than scripture.

Signed,
Dr. Quentin Lysander Trague
Scholar, Explorer’s Society
Codename: Mirrormask

-

INTERNAL USE ONLY — VATICINE DOCTRINAL COMMISSION
Ref. Codex Custodiae No. XVII-CXII
Issued under Authority of His Excellency, Cardinal Bellavère, Prefect of the Office of Sorcerous Anathema and Preternatural Inquiry

Title: A Scholastic Refutation of Dr. Quentin Trague’s Mechanistic Heresy, as Contained in "Echoes of the Engine"

Issued: Feast of Saint Caldus, 1668 A.V.

To the Eminent and Most Reverend Shepherds of Théah, and the Faithful in Communion with the See of Vaticine Authority,

Grace and Apostolic Benediction in Theus our Lord, Who Is and Was and Shall Ever Be. It is the solemn obligation of the Holy Mother Church to rebuke, by syllogistic armament and catechetical jurisprudence, any profane fabrication which seeks to vitiate the divine ontos of supernatural operation.

Having been presented with the subversive manuscript penned by one Dr. Quentin Lysander Trague, henceforth referred to as the Author, whose tractate entitled Echoes of the Engine articulates a philosophical conceit which endeavors to reduce the arcana of thaumaturgical endowment to mere residual emanations of mechanistic provenance, the Commission has reviewed and now offers the following refutation in sanctified erudition.

I. On the Nature of Sorcery as Theopneustic Phenomenon

The Author’s postulation of sorcery as a recursive artifact of a defunct civilizational apparatus denies the univocal dignity of Theus’ providential sovereignty. He posits, fallaciously, that so-called "magic" constitutes a residual operational subroutine, thus converting a metaphysical charism into an impersonal technē, a systematized artifact devoid of teleology or moral intelligibility.

Let the catechumen be reminded that sorcery, though corruptive in its fallen manifestations, is ontologically permitted by Divine Concession (cf. Compendium Theologiae Mysticae, Book II, Caput 4), and must be interpreted as either a perversion of spiritual faculty or a manifestation of preternatural agency—namely angelic or diabolic, under the governance of Theus’ permissive will.

To insinuate that such faculties arise from ancient architecture rather than divine dispensation is to lapse into the heresy of Instrumentalism, wherein grace is displaced by unaided mechanical determinism.

II. On the Ontological Error of Operationalism

The Author’s semantic reduction of arcana to programmable syntax reflects a Neo-Gnostic Instrumentalism, wherein all metaphysical causality is subordinated to empirical vectorization. He fails to comprehend that what appears to modern alchemists and mechanists as “rules” are but vestiges of celestial harmony, whose ordering principle is inscribed not in device, but in the Logos—the eternal Word through whom all being subsists (cf. In Evangelium secundum Ioannem, St. Hieronymus).

In asserting that ritual efficacy arises from patterned input rather than moral intentionality or spiritual congruence, the Author reifies sorcery into an autonomous liturgy, devoid of penitential consequence or moral finality.

III. On the Blasphemy of Faerie as Programmatic Entity

To describe the Sidhe—who by the Church are categorized under the genus Spirituum Ambiguorum—as autonomous regulatory subroutines is not merely erroneous, but a profanation of spiritual taxonomy. The Author’s language transmutes persons into processes, and intelligences into algorithms, thereby effacing the essential distinction between ens rationis and ens spirituale.

The Church affirms, in consonance with Denziger Concordat 1123, that such entities are either malign daemons, fallen intelligences, or at best pagan simulacra, not servomechanisms of a deific machine. To assert otherwise is to stumble into a heresy long condemned.

IV. On the Teleological Horror of the Author’s Eschatology

By positing that the reactivation of these so-called systems might induce a system-wide recalibration of reality, the Author proposes a techno-eschaton bereft of moral judgment, eschatological justice, or beatific culmination. This is contrary to the Creed of Ascendant Prophets, which affirms the Parousia, the final rectification of all reality in the person of Theus.

The vision the Author imparts is not that of Saint Caldus or the revelations of Hierophant Benedictus, but that of a deterministic apocalypse, one governed by machine reflex rather than divine fiat. It is eschatological nihilism masquerading as reason.

Conclusion and Decree

In summation, the tract known as Echoes of the Engine promulgates a multi-fold heresy: it denies the personalism of supernatural agents, subverts the sacramentality of ontology, and ascribes sacred phenomena to defunct techno-idolatry. It is hereby classified under the formal condemnation of Doctrina Mechanica Haeretica.

Let it be expunged from all reputable libraries, its citations annulled, and its author, if apprehended, remanded for ecclesiastical judgment under Canon XV, §3 of the Codex Inquisitorum.

By our seal and under apostolic imprimatur,
+Cardinal Lucien Bellavère
Prefect of the Holy Office
Vaticine Church of Théah
Feast of Saint Caldus, 1668 A.V.

What is the core of 7th Sea that no other game achieves? What did you loved that you can't find anywhere else. And what do you hate?

I already played 7th Sea 2e twice. Once it was a one shot by other GM that ended up like DnD with d10s, and the other one was a short adventure ran by myself for about 6 sessions that devolved into calvinball. I couldn't click with the rules and the system broke many times in front of me. I ended up overriding basically all the rules, which is not good.

After some reddit I found that 7th Sea 2e is a bit of a mess, but that some people like it anyway.

I am on a personal project (out of spite) to rethink the system into something that I would enjoy more. I did like most of the ideas as written concepts, they just were so weird in execution. I don't know if I ever would publish anything, but is a fun exercise in design for me. I have a lot of ideas, but I wanted to check with strangers too. Again, I am aware of other similar systems, I'm coming from a design perspective.

So I wanted to ask to people that have played successfully (or unsuccessfully); and people that have read it, what was about this system that you loved? What would you say are the core concepts of this system identity and which changes would make it unrecognizable? What things have you changed, or what kind of changes do you think this game needs?