Roleplaying Games & Minigames

Recently someone asked me:

So what are the problems with 7th sea?

To which I responded:

This is pretty much from memory and a recent flip through but I think the core problems are:

* The distracted and unorganized way the book is written
* The amount of time that goes into the minigames of the game compared to what the result is
* The fact that it was written far before the likes of Window, Scion, PDQ, and FATE's "Keep challenges a challenge and let your players do the simple fun things without obstacle"
* The fact that it doesn't pay much attention to the extreme focus a Swashbuckler game needs for both Social and Physical Challenges.

A good way to look at the last one: Starting up a new final fantasy video game takes exactly 2 steps. These steps are purely technical and are "obstacles" to playing. However "puzzles" in the game, like figuring out a sequence of notes, are elongated and protracted.

In 7th Sea and a lot of games in that era plus one or two in this era they're switched. The game mechanics become "obstacles" and "puzzles" become abstract roleplaying. Rolling dice and such should be fun parts of the games and not purely technical steps to get to playing.

The extended problem with 7th Sea is that

A.) None of the books are really available by sale (Or sail! Ho ho ho)
B.) All the PDFs are non-searchable
C.) All the PDFs are megabig due to direct scanning
D.) The scans are usually shitty
E.) Any torrents have low seeding
F.) The books are just plain ugly

And he replied:

What is wrong with how &th sea handles those things? What other games handle those things in specific in a better way?

Normally I wouldn't call those minigames. Managing your manor house is a minigame, handling having children and raising them is a minigame. In some games Duelling is a minigame because it uses different rules than the usual combat stuff. Those seem more like tropes. Which should be handled in a fun way, I agree.

Me, i thought 7th sea dice were whacked, and that they had way too many specific skills for situations. The extra detail seemed to be requirements to have fun, not additional fun to be had.

So I told him what my thoughts were:

See that's what a lot of older and newer games missed. The game part of RPG is just a mesh of various minigames put together.

The object of Connect Four is to put 4 discs in a row. That makes up a game. One objective and a procedure for obtaining that objective. What does that sound like? "Combat Rules" in RPGs. There is an objective (Defeating the opponent) and procedure for obtaining that objective.

RPGs are just various games stuck together and layered on with a "theme" or "setting" so you can act out and pretend. It's all just a mask over a bunch of games though.

Once you've got that figured out you can notice which "parts" of an RPG are actually minigames and not just technical obstacles. 7th Sea tends to make a lot of the game play into technical obstacles instead of being a minigame.

It ended up being a rather interesting conversation and lead me to a deeper understanding of my belief about RPGs.