How to make "On the Seven Seas" playable

[stefanov]

dear all,

I have been using Chris Peers rules for many periods, from Darkest Africa to Modern combat.

I have tried On The Seven Seas once with my son, and found it rather difficult to play. I think
that the main reason being that Osprey requires to write rules on a fixed number of pages
with the booklet format, with requests to the authors to oversimplify the original layout.

To cut it short I have revised these rules, for my personal use, to become more similar, I believe,
to the rest of Peers' rulesets, for example doubling fire weapons ranges, randomising figures' movement,
changing a bit recoil rules and also the Greed and Fear rules.

For example, the party who has a Greed much greater than fear will have an advantage in moving (move first)
and a disadvantage on being less caring on firing (fire last).

With a limited number of changes the rules become playable, on the same lines of his Darkest Africa rules,
if you like these simple rule mechanics.

I have played a scenario using my updates, with pirates trying to dig a treasure on a native infested beach with
many old gamers at my club. Everybody had an enjoyable evening.
I have played so far only with troops on the mainland and not the ships, nor the campaign, which
seems a bit vague to me.

I invite all gamers wishing to spend a bit of their time to improve this simple ruleset. I think
that some ideas like Greed and Fear are original, not appearing in other rules, making it
worthwhile for improvements.

If you wish a modified Quick Sheet with all my changes please write me a line in private.

I hope not to infringe any copyright law. If yes, please moderator let me know.
cheers Stefano