#WeAreAllUs: The Sword of Kings

October 10th marks the first anniversary of Greg Stafford’s passing. To both commemorate that date and celebrate Greg’s contribution to the roleplaying hobby, Chaosium, Inc. is publishing not just one free scenario, but five. One for each of the major roleplaying games published by Chaosium, Inc. Either designed or influenced by Greg, they include RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, King Arthur Pendragon, HeroQuest in Glorantha, Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, and 7th Sea. The aim of these releases is twofold. One is to showcase each of these worlds and roleplaying games, typically with a scenario that can be brought to the table with relative ease, whether that is your own or at a convention, but primarily the purpose is to get everyone sat round the table and playing since we are all roleplayers. In Greg’s words, that #WeAreAllUs.

The Sword of Kings is a scenario for 7th Sea, the preeminent roleplaying game of swashbuckling action, adventure, and storytelling in Théah, an alternate and fantastical version of Europe and beyond in the seventeenth century. Written by the game’s designer, John Wick, it is a one-shot, one-session adventure that can be run as a demonstration scenario, a convention scenario, or a scenario that dropped into an ongoing campaign with relative ease. It is thus quite short, consisting of three scenes and is relatively easy to prepare, but on the downside, as a demonstration or convention scenario, The Sword of Kings is lacking pre-generated player characters. The Game Master will need to prepare these prior to running the game. On the plus side, the scenario comes with staging advice aplenty such that the designer’s voice is strong throughout.

The Sword of Kings begins in medias res—two ships, one of them on fire (the one the heroes are on, of course), a raging storm, and a sea battle—as the stalwart heroes withstand assault after assault from brute squads and a villain bent on getting his hands on the one half of the McGuffin that the heroes have in their possession. The player characters are not meant to know what is going on, but a quick flashback reveals that they are off the Highland Marches having been ashore in Avalon where a woman wearing the symbol of the Explorer’s Society not only told them of a legendary sword that could ruin the reign of Queen Elaine of Avalon, she also gave them half of a map that would lead to its location. Guess who has the other half and happens to be aboard the sailing ship that is not on fire and that the heroes not aboard?

The subsequent acts get the heroes onto the island where clues to the location of the sword might be discerned and from there to its actual location. The simplicity of the set-up and the scenario—which are all but clichés—means that it is not heavily plotted, but instead focuses more on staging its various scenes, such as things that can occur aboard the burning boat, what happens should the heroes be captured, and both who the player characters’ patron might be and who the villain might be. A sample villain is included, but the Game Master is free to create one of her own or simply bring a recurring villain from her own campaign. The plot is definitely more spine upon which the Game Master can hang contingencies and the like in reaction to the player characters’ actions. Adapting to such contingencies likely means that the scenario will never quite turn out the same way twice if run as a demonstration or convention scenario.

The ending in which, of course, the heroes find the sword of the title, may well be slightly downbeat following the excitement of the opening scenes, especially if the Game Master is running it as a demonstration or convention scenario. Perhaps she may well want to add one last confrontation with the villain of the piece, if only to show off what the newly found sword can do. For an ongoing campaign this is less of an issue as ownership of the sword is likely to cause the heroes further complications.

Physically, The Sword of Kings is an eleven page, full-colour, 5.20 MB. Behind its full colour cover, the scenario tidily laid out and written in an engaging style. The scenario comes with a decent map and a decent handout (also a map).


The Sword of Kings is relatively easy to pull and run with a minimum of preparation, that is, if using it in an ongoing campaign. As a demonstration or convention scenario it will need pre-generated characters and those will need preparing ahead of time. Otherwise, The Sword of Kings comes with everything necessary to provide a 7th Sea Game Master and her players with a session’s worth of swashbuckling and sorcery—more than mild peril, a dastardly villain, a McGuffin, and a mystery.

7th Sea's 7

Like the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons  and the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, there is also the Explorer’s Society for 7th Sea. It provides an outlet for fans and writers of the preeminent roleplaying game of swashbuckling action, adventure, and storytelling in Théah, an alternate and fantastical version of Europe and beyond in the seventeenth century. Inspired by films such as Ocean’s Eleven, Evan Perlman’s Sea’s 7 published by Chaosium, Inc. is a heist adventure set in a grand casino. Which means high stakes gambling, intrigue, secrets, lies, spies, dangerous liaisons, and more—but above all, rising tension as the heroes case the joint, devise and then execute the plan, doubtless ending in a flurry of action and consequences as they get away with it (or not)!

Ideally, the Game Master should have access to the Pirate Nations sourcebook, for the Queen of the Pirates has a problem and needs a favour. Someone swindled the Pirate Republic’s dock workers out of a considerable amount of money and to avoid any embarrassment, she and the Brotherhood of the Coast want it returned. Now the perpetrator has been traced to the Montaigne colony of Sylviette where she has resurfaced as the Comtesse du Janvier, operator of its newest, hottest social destination—the Casino Impérial. The Queen of the Pirates not only wants the money back, but the Comtesse du Janvier ruined. It sounds like a simple job, but security is tight, the company charming if duplicitous, and there is bound to be a plot twist or along the way. If not written into the plot, then probably due to the Heroes’ involvement.

Sea’s 7 is a two-Step, four-Scene adventure. In the first two scenes, the Heroes start planning the heist and spend a night at the casino looking for ways to get into the vault and the money out. In the second two steps, events escalate as the Heroes carry out their plan in the face of cruel opposition and a rival ‘heist’ before making their getaway as everything goes awry around them. The description of the Casino Impérial and its layout are detailed enough for the Game Master to run the Heroes through all four scenes, although the promised map is strangely absent. Of course, much of the action and story will be player-led, so there are lots of NPCs for their Heroes to interact with, from a nobleman on a stag do to a possible Fate Witch who is all too successful at the gaming tables; Opportunities aplenty to divert attention, uncover secrets, recruit allies, and more; Consequences to suffer, including stumbling into a tryst, getting caught sneaking around, being mistaken for someone’s enemy—did I mention that everyone at the Casino Impérial wears a mask?—and so on; plus secrets galore to uncover... There is a lot here for the Heroes to get involved in should they go looking—and they probably will—in addition to their actually robbing the place and ruining a reputation. 

Physically, Sea’s 7 comes as a 4.08 MB, full colour PDF. It is lightly illustrated, really just chapter headers showing period scenes of gambling and carousing. All very suitable and all very chaste, though doubtless, the events surrounding the Heroes’ heist attempt on the Casino Impérial will involve romantic entanglements, if not actual trysts.

With plot hooks, a handful of given nicely detailed villains, and example lists of approaches, Consequences, Opportunities, NPCs, secrets, and more, as well as solid staging advice, Sea’s 7 is a really superb toolkit for running heists in 7th Sea. There is so much information here that it is unlikely that the Game Master will use it all, though to do that, she would have to find a way to run it twice! In fact were the Game Master to run it more than once—perhaps as a convention scenario (all it would need is a good set of pre-generated Heroes)—it is unlikely that Sea’s 7 would play out the same way twice. Any 7th Sea Game Master wanting to run a heist will find Sea’s 7 invaluable and for any 7th Sea Game Master needing a short scenario to add to her campaign, Sea’s 7 is a good choice.

A Taste of the Far East

The setting for 7th Sea, the roleplaying game of swashbuckling and sorcery published by John Wick Presents is the land of Théah. Yet there are lands beyond Théah, which the publisher is only beginning to address with the supplement, 7th Sea: Crescent Empire, which explores the lands immediately to the east of Théah. Yet there are lands beyond this, far to the east—Khitai. Although Khitai marks the return of the designer to the same genre as his highly regarded Legend of the Five Rings, that is, Asian fantasy, 7th Sea: Khitai is different in that it does not dwell solely on its Japanese and Chinese influences and sources. Instead, it encompasses numerous sources and influences and encompasses numerous nations and cultures, from China, Japan, and India to Cambodia, Australasia, and Oceania. Much of the pleasure of seeing these nations and cultures included is that many of them are rarely visited by roleplaying.

The first taste of Khitai comes in the form of 7th Sea: Khitai Quickstart, which includes an overview of the setting and its themes along with a complete adventure. On a very personal level, the difference in themes between Théah and Khitai is twofold. The first is that the heroes—or player characters—are not driven to adventure, but pulled by the Call to Adventure, a very real, spiritual urge to fulfill their destiny. This call is made by the Song of the World and places a duty upon the heroes that is much greater than their personal desires. The second is that in Khitai, honour is supernatural rather than personal.

7th Sea: Khitai uses the same mechanics as 7th Sea. These are essentially ‘roll and pair’, the players and the Game Master rolling pools of ten-sided dice to create ‘pairs’ of one, two, three, or more dice that each add up to ten or more. Each ‘pair’ is a Raise, which are spent to carry out actions in Action and Dramatic scenes. For the player characters, these pools are created from a combination of a character’s trait plus skill, for example, Honesty + Convince or Peace + Brawl. These combinations are called Approaches, which define how a character will do something. For example, Joy + Weaponry if a character wants to smash his way through a Brute Squad—the equivalent of a band of minions or goons or guards in Khitai—using her tetsubo or Wisdom + Mysticism if a character wants to search his memory for what he knows of a particular Kamuy or nature spirit. Bonus dice are rewarded for varying a character’s Approach from action to action and for providing an engaging description of said Approaches. In comparison, the Game Master rolls a pool of dice equal to the Strength of the Villain or Brute Squad.

In a scene, Raises are then spent to inflict or block damage, to avoid Consequences—bad things that might happen to a character, to purchase Opportunities—advantages and bonuses that a character can find or gain in a scene, and to discover clues in a scene. Although the dice rolling mechanic is very much that of the traditional roleplaying game, the application is much more akin to that of a storytelling roleplaying game.

There is one change in the rules between 7th Sea: Khitai and 7th Sea, a rule that the Game Master can import back to 7th Sea if he so desires. This is how Brute Squads work and the rule change makes them much more of a challenge. In combat in 7th Sea, a Brute Squad inflicts wounds, one wound per Raise, which a character counters with his Raises also on a one-for-one basis. In Khitai, when the Game Master spends Raises for a Brute Squad, it does not inflict Wounds on a one-for-one basis, but rather inflicts Wounds equal to the current Strength of the Brute Squad. The character can still counter this attack with a Raise and so block the Wounds.

The 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart introduces the setting and its rules in smart fashion. Barring the change in how Brute Squads work, the Game Master and his players will have no issue with the rules if they have played 7th Sea. Likewise, someone new to both 7th Sea and Khitai may not adjust as easily to the roleplaying game’s more storytelling rules if they are used to traditional games. Even though there is a limited amount of space in 7th Sea: Khitai Quickstart, it could have done with deeper examples of play, especially given the switch it makes from traditional to storytelling roleplaying games. This is because it makes a radical change in the names it gives the player characters’ Traits. In 7th Sea, these are Brawn, Finesse, Resolve, Wits, and Panache—a very traditional set of characteristics and easy to apply. In Khitai, the Traits are Compassion, Honesty, Joy, Loyalty, Peace, Respect, and Wisdom. Now a character only has five of these seven, these five being the ones they value, but they are more conceptual in nature and not as easy to apply on a case by case basis.

There are seven nations described in Khitai, but only two are detailed in the 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart and visited in the adventure, ‘Life-Giving Sword, Death-Giving Sword’. The first nation is the island archipelago of Fuso, known for the rift between its traditional shaman-chieftains and the upstart warlord leaders, or daimyos, the most ambitious of which would rule not just Fuso, but all of Khitai. The shaman-chieftains are also capable of talking with the kamuy, which are natural spirits, guardian angels, ancestor spirits, and so on. In this, Khitai draws from the Ainu mystical tradition rather than from the Kami and mystical traditions of Japan. The second nation is the Kingdom of Han, noted for its scholastic and artistic excellence—as well as the literacy of its people—though riven by nepotism and corruption, including in its military.

‘Life-Giving Sword, Death-Giving Sword’ is a three act scenario, a tale of love, greed, and revenge. The heroes are travelling when they realise that they are close to a monastery where they sheltered before, but upon arriving at its doors, they find that it has literally just burned down. Investigation reveals that it was no accident and worse, an ancient and mystical blade is missing. Duty bound, the heroes must follow the thief across Fuso and beyond, harried by assassins and bandits along the way. Alongside the combat, there are scenes involving investigation, persuasion, and negotiation, so there is plenty of opportunity for the heroes to exercise their skills and do so creatively. Overall, ‘Life-Giving Sword, Death-Giving Sword’ is a very straightforward scenario, almost linear, and presented in a step-by-step fashion. This makes it easy to run and the Game Master should have no issues running the scenario.

Rounding out 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart are five player characters, ready to play ‘Life-Giving Sword, Death-Giving Sword’. They include a female mystic and clan heir, a male samurai advisor and duellist, a female warrior monk, a male courtier from Han, and a male spymaster, exiled from another nation, Shenzhou. This is a good mix and they are clearly presented and laid out, with clear explanations of their abilities and their advantages.

Physically, the 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart is a well presented and easy read. The writing needs an edit here and there, but this is a minor issue. Much like 7th Sea, the 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart is superbly illustrated in full colour with great artwork that captures some of mysticism and action of the setting.

If the 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart has an issue, it is that it does not address the honour as supernatural aspect of the setting as well as it does the Call to Adventure. This though, will not stop the Game Master from successfully running the scenario and the players from enjoying it. This is an excellent scenario and should provide an engaging session or two’s worth of roleplaying and excitement. Not too complex and with the right mix of ingredients and challenges, 7th Sea: Khitai QuickStart is an excellent introduction to Khitai and a good option for a group looking for a one-shot or a taster.

—oOo—

7th Sea: Khitai is currently funding on Kickstarter.