David Crennen Interviews 7th Sea designer John Wick

Tolerance: respecting individual differences Intolerance: banning outsiders from your table because they think different

Already we can see how the rulebook is enforcing intimidation and silencing of diverse play styles that are NOT extreme, just different. Why is the rulebook pushing this extremist intolerant view of in-game NPC murder? Why is there zero-compromise on allowing a Player one Corruption-free murder in a game session? Several people have played 7th Sea successful with one or two brutes being murdered and the 7th Sea rules did not fail nor did the Corruption mechanic fail when applied to the innocent child in-game.

You heard of institutionalized bias and prejudice? When rules deliberately take an extremist position with regards to morality inside a game world, those rules create an intolerant "SHAME CULTURE" to dissuade certain Players from feeling comfortable at a 7th Sea table run by a Purist.

So let us talk Convention play. Let us say 4 strangers arrive at a table and 2 of them allow their Hero PCs to kill one or two NPCs (not wholesale slaughter so let us stop with the hyperbole). The other 2 Players are Pacifists. Very easy social situation for the experienced GM. The tolerant GM (who is not a moral extremist) works with both Player groups to make them feel welcome. That empathic GM does not force the Pacifist players to kill and discourages the others from graphic narrations of violence and discourages wholesale slaughter, but allows one or two murders to balance both play styles. Bad Players can do bad things that do no involve killing. They can use threats of violence to force a whole group of Natives in The New World to row their ships for hours. That is not Heroic but it is not murder and is not torture, just forced labor, and the rules do not stop this.

With regards to the GM getting ownership. The rules give the GM power to steal another Player's character sheet. A Player who is polite at the table, respectful of fellow Players, but whose in-game Character murdered 6 brutes. The Power Dynamics are in the GM's favor as written making that GM an intolerant bully on a power trip. A Player's only recourse is to accept getting ostracized from a game that Player loves because the GM is a Puritan extremist.

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