7th Sea creator John Wick joins Chaosium as Call of Cthulhu studio picks up swashbuckling RPG

John Wick, the designer of high adventure roleplaying game 7th Sea, has joined Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest and King Arthur Pendragon studio Chaosium.

Wick will serve as creative director for the RPG, which has been newly acquired by Chaosium, as well as writing for other RPGs produced by the publisher.

Chaosium confirmed that Wick will continue to have “creative oversight” of the game he created alongside Jennifer Wick and Kevin Wilson in 1999 and remain a “principal author” of future 7th Sea content.

7th Sea was inspired by a combination of The Princess Bride and The Three Musketeers, set in a world of magic and seafaring high adventure influenced by 17th-century Europe and built on a ‘roll and keep’ d10-based system. A spin-off card game was also released in 1999, but has since gone out of print.

A second edition of 7th Sea was crowdfunded to a record $1.3 million on Kickstarter in early 2016, but was delayed after studio John Wick Presents ran into financial difficulty and was forced to lay off all of its staff. Chaosium said its initial focus would be on completing fulfilment for the rewards outstanding from the campaign and that for 7th Sea: Khitai, a standalone RPG set in 7th Sea’s world of Théah.

Before leading the creation of 7th Sea, Wick helped to design the original Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game and its follow-up roleplaying game in the mid-1990s. Both games were recently acquired and rebooted by Fantasy Flight Games.