PCO.Spvnky:
Flint_A, how can you possibly expect any game to runs smoothly and the way it was intended when you first run it? How long did your game last? I have run games that ran into the 1000s of xp.
We played for about 9 months. I was so generous with the xp that in the end they literally conquered the world. (Well, they conquered Eisen. But they had so many favors owed to them by all the other countries that they set up a UN with them in charge, basically.)
We also had sessions where we didn't roll anything for hours. In fact, we mostly avoided the fights because one of two things happened. 1) They allowed the NPC to talk and I convinced them that they should let the NPC live and make some sort of deal with them. This is because 99% of the characters in the 7th Sea books can be sympathized with. (Heck, they even made a deal with Villanova when they could kill him.) 2) They were SO STRONG near the end that I basically said "no rolls, you win" unless they were fighting someone/something extraordinary. (Although they did fight several enemies who were quite extraordinary.)
But when we actually ran the fights, I found they were quite cumbersome. But the regular fights were still okay. We tried a large scale battle once, with thousands of soldiers. Never again. The rules for warfare are just terrible. It took us HOURS and the only reason the party won was that I made the enemy commander act predictable on purpose.