Alderac Entertainment Group and John Wick Presents have announced the sale of publication rights for Wick’s fantasy pirate world 7th Sea, with a new edition of the roleplaying game planned for 2016.

In the late 1990’s, after proving itself with the still-popular samurai game Legend of the Five Rings, Alderac Entertainment Group opened up another fantasy setting inspired by historical events:  7th Sea.  This time the subject matter was the romanticized “golden age” of pirates.  The new game world was the brain child of prolific roleplaying author John Wick, who had been with AEG since the company’s beginning and was a major contributor to AEG’s earlier Legend of the Five Rings.

The 7th Sea world, like its predecessor, appeared in both roleplaying and collectible card game incarnations.  Both games proved to be critical successes, earning Origins Awards in their respective categories.  Two editions of the role-playing game were published, one in 1999 using a variant of the “roll and keep” system from Legend of the Five Rings, the second in 2002 using a d20-based system and known as 7th Sea:  Swashbuckling Adventures.

Now AEG has sold the publication rights to John Wick Presents, owned by John Wick himself.  Wick has announced plans to produce a new edition of the 7th Sea roleplaying game, which will be released some time in 2016.

AEG recently sold the rights to its venerable Legend of the Five Rings world to Fantasy Flight Games (see “Fantasy Flight Games Acquires ‘Legend of the Five Rings’”).