Early thoughts on The Seven Part Pact
I’ve played through 3 sessions of a The Seven Part Pact game with 5 other people, and I’ve got some thoughts that I want to record now. This is a very different experience than I’ve ever had in a TTRPG, so I’ll definitely be writing a retrospective when the game ends. Writing this should give me something to riff off of when that time comes. I’m not writing this for people who don’t know anything about the system, so I’ll try to save some word count by not explicitly explaining the game. Jay Dragon, the game’s creator, probably has a primer or something explaining it somewhere, go read Jay’s blog for that.
I’ll begin with the caveat that this game is not made for me. It’s a heavily structured rules-dense narrative game; I typically reach for freestyle rules-light OSR games. We aren’t a match made in heaven, but a friend of mine is really into it and I’m always willing to have new experiences.
As an overview, we’ve had 3 sessions of 2-3 hours: One and a half sessions were mostly dedicated towards setting up the game and the rest have been playing it. We’ve got a good group and things are going about as smoothly as they can on that front.
What I’m digging
The flavor is immaculate. Isha is interesting at it’s face and the basic premise, powerful men trying to keep the world together in very flawed ways, is gold. Wizards get mutations as they age, which makes them strange freaks. Each spell I’ve read feels particularly well thought out in how it evokes specific ideas and feelings in play. The whole Ages thing that allows groups to decide what kind of world Isha will be during the campaign presents a lot of up front buy-in. We’re playing in the Age of Awakening (or something like that) and the resurgence of magic is definitely a question on all of our minds and driving the game forward.
The social commentary contained within its themes are well encoded into the game itself and would be very hard to ignore if some group specifically wanted to, though I think that would be a mistake. Patriarchy is unmistakably present in every single interaction one has in this game as we pilot the grand patriarchs of Isha.
Creating a wizard is a pleasant experience which really gives you a lot of bones to work with. Currently, I’m playing an ancient Mariner wizard whose losing himself to the call of the wild and isolated from humanity into the realm of myth. Also, just a weird old guy. Every wizard at the table is interesting and this is absolutely in part due to the choices the system presents to you in character creation.
I don’t hate the celestial audience system! I’ve only played my own and subbed a few times for different celestials while they play their puny wizards, but for the most part It’s nice to have some clear delineation in what matters every player focuses on. It’s also been a real treat talking amongst the table during or after every scene about the consequences and complications present. In some ways, it makes the game feel like a shared solo Roleplay experience… well, I guess we call that collaborative story telling, but you get what I mean. The only bummer for me in this regard is the tendency to want to give these meanings mechanical representations. Actually, speaking of which…
What I Don’t Like
I just don’t enjoy half of this game and am quite bored outside of scenes. I’m the Mariner, so I keep up with the trade routes and storms in Isha, keeping everything from becoming a ravaged waste. We haven’t traveled outside of Isha yet, so I can’t comment on my role as the travel procedures guy yet.
So much of this game ties back to these pseudo-board game systems called domains. The beginning of every month in the game is based around reading the orrery star chart and doing whatever it says to do to your domain. Most of the complications that we’ve came up with affect these domains. A lot of our Time spent(Time is a currency for doing actions in this game) go towards managing these domains and preventing the bad stuff. If the bad stuff happens because you either slacked off on your wizardly responsibilities or did something wrong (or just got unlucky), it usually spills over to the other players and everyone deals with the bad stuff.
I think the goal is that we’re simulating the loneliness of wizards and the sheer stress that they go through trying to keep the world together on their own. It perfectly highlights some of the key faults of patriarchy and capitalism, putting all of the power and resources into the hands of a chosen few. All of that makes sense to me, if I’m accurately describing how the systems are intended to work.
All of this is true, and yet I don’t find them engaging nor interesting. I don’t think it’s really a complexity thing, either. The rulers for the Mariner’s domain are fairly simple themselves, it’s mostly tracking some shipping routes and throwing storms around when the game tells you to. Yet it still feels like a burden to me. What makes it worse is that this is largely half of the game? many of the actions taken during our first week were tending to our domains. I spent time moving a storm to a horizon and building a shipping route, and a bit more time at the market getting some groceries (by groceries I mean spell casting materials to potentially start fake casting Apotheosis). While these actions are often quick, at least for my life as the water guy (it ain’t much, but it’s honest work), they still bring the game’s highs down for me as they fill the gaps between scenes. This wonkiness creates a lot of points in the game where I’m just not sure that I care about what’s happening. Things are happening in other player’s domains as well, but they don’t leave me with any particular feelings or interest.
That comes to my second problem while dealing with them, because I also don’t feel any particular things or have any particular interests in my own domain. It just feels like work. When complications happen, I don’t feel the pressure of the narrative tension as my character has just one more thing added to his already stacked wizardly plate. My only concern is that it might mean I have to do more tedious work on my little corner of the game.
Perhaps as we play, something will click and I’ll just get it. Until then, I’m left with a constant recurring thought in my mind: I’d rather have just rolled a random D6 for this and kept track of any complications in the form of a fate aspect or some other sort of narrative tracking tool like that.
Don’t forget to write about lore
I almost published this while forgetting my only other minor grievance: a lot of the lore feels hard to pin down in my mind. There are interesting details and secrets throughout the different islands and domains, but after the surface level vibes of the place I don’t really feel like a lot of it comes out in play. Perhaps as we play more and I read more, it’ll come out, so I don’t know if this is actually an issue for me yet or not. So far, I just don’t feel like I have a good picture of Isha in my head outside of the aforementioned awesome vibes.
Overall, I’ve got mixed thoughts on this game. I’m still sticking around: my table is a blast and it’s making up the difference in enjoyment levels for me.