Sentinel Comics RPG: Issue 1 (Volume 1)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ธ.ค. 2024
- The Sentinel Comics RPG Adventure finally begins! Join Craig and the cast as they bring their characters to life in a world they've crafted together. If you love superheroes, this is a must-watch!
In Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game, you and your friends play as comic-book heroes - either from the pages of Sentinel Comics or your imagination. Join forces against terrible villains and fight in dangerous environments, all in a tabletop roleplaying game! Get your copy of this action-packed TTRPG system here: www.greatertha...
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It still stands that Craig's super power is putting together a dynamic cast every time
Awesome Session...The Chef Approves
Nice session!
25:20 probably one of my favorite moments
Purely mechanical things that really need to get better in the future:
1) The scene tracker is part of the initiative order just like a character is, and is treated as an NPC when it comes to who decides which character goes next (ie it's the GM). It doesn't automatically go at the end of the round, and if it does the GM will control who goes first next round just as he would if it was a villain going last. If there's an environment in play it goes immediately after the scene tracker advances, using the new GYRO status if that advance changed it.
This is a Big Deal because the players will often have to choose whether to push the tracker on rounds 2 or 6, handing initiative to it as soon as possible (which could be immediately if they're getting to dictate first turn on that round by having gone last the previous one). That means a higher GYRO twist out of the environment and lets the GM control the flow until he hands back to a PC, but it also means most or all of the heroes can act in Yellow or Red that round rather than waiting for rounds 3 or 7 or losing enough Health to reach Y/R early. With this group Yellow means better status dice as well as access to better abilities, and with most group getting 3 rounds of Red actions instead of just 2 is a huge power-up. It's rarer to see the tracker get pushed this way in round 6 because its usually more risky and less needed (some PCs may be in Red anyway due to Health loss) but it's very common to see it done in round 2. Playing teh way they do in this vid robs players of that decision, and is not rules as written or intended.
2) Find a better way to remember your mods, whether bonuses or penalties. They're being forgotten regularly throughout the vid, and it's part of why play is so very, very slow and really skews some results (like Tech Rat landing that big 7-point hit on his first turn and ignoring the -3 bonus that was just applied to him - not an auspicious second turn of the scene, but a sign of things to come). If your VTT can hand players tokens do so. If it can't, get a better VTT.
Remember penalties must be used on the first roll they can be applied to, after which they go away unless persistent. Almost all persistent mods are also exclusive, and you can only apply one exclusive bonus and one exclusive penalty to any one roll so always take the largest if you have several to choose from. Bonuses can be saved up for as long as you want, but using them normally has to be declared before the dice are rolled - which you should do as often as possible with persistent bonuses since they don't vanish after use.
Very importantly, saves versus damage by minions or lieutenants are rolls, and mods apply to them normally. It's very common to "crack" tough lieutenants by applying one or more penalties and then having someone deal damage to them before they can go and shed that penalty, effectively making their save harder without having to scrape up more damage in a single action. Minions don't usually require that level of coordination, but if you have both multi-target Hinder and Attack abilities on your team it makes sweeping them a lot easier.
Finally (although I think this group groks this already) the description of a mod matters mechanically, and may prevent it from being applied to a roll under the right circumstances. If that -4 penalty on the villain is "glued to the floor" it's probably not going to apply to them making a psionic attack with telekinesis, so that penalty will just sit there until it can be applied.
3) Profit's taunt ability (I think it's called In Your Face) prevents the victim from using their turn on anything that doesn't include an Attack on him. It's fine to do a multi-target Attack that includes him, but you robbed him at least once with a Hinder/Recover ability (I think from the Disruptive Approach?) while you were taunted. The taunt says "must Attack him if able" and it means it, even if that would somehow force you use a basic action (which would truly suck for a villain's turn, but that's be your own fault for building a villain with no Attack abilities at all). That ability is a trademark move for Physical Powerhouse archetypes, you see it used a lot.
4) Re-read the way environment turns are supposed to run on page 157-158. The scene tracker advances, then you take a turn for each environment threat in play, then if there are no environment threats in play, pick a batch of them and add it to the scene. If and only if you didn't add a threat this turn, then you pick an environment twist to carry out. Threats are defined as hostile minions, lieutenants or even villains (although the later don't appear via the environment, only challenges or scripted event type stuff) that didn't start in play, ie they weren't part of your scene element budget. If you follow the suggested rules, the environment will always try to put out some minion(s) or lieutenant-grade threat if there aren't any in play, and never perform a twist (like adding a challenge) if there isn't a threat out already.
Obviously you can break those rules - what's the point of being the GM otherwise? - for the sake of the narrative, but in general the rules are the way they are because it offers the players some degree of control over what their surroundings are going to throw at them. This is how the RPG emulates the deck-peeking/card rearrangement tricks from the card game, and it represents more choices for the players to make. Do you just tolerate that environment minion because his existence is blocking worse threats from arriving? Or do you scrub off every threat ASAP to keep twists from happening? The GM can almost always clear environment threats if they want (include them in multi-target villain attacks, eat them to pay for minor twists on gratuitous Overcomes, just have them flee the scene, etc.), presumably to generate a fresh (presumably better) batch, so the control isn't all that reliable. And if the heroes keep bumping them off themselves that's effort they're spending not hitting your villains and other start-in-play scene elements.
Note that environment threats don't need to be solely hostile to the heroes, they can be third parties who hate everyone. In the vid's environment they could easily have been minions representing pickpockets and opportunistic looters caught up in a super-fight who just want out and will fight anyone who gets in their way. You can also introduce hero-allied minions or lieutenants as twists, since the environment usually isn't entire hostile to the PCs. Maybe some of those security guards Circuit Breaker fried wake up, or a neighborhood minor hero lieutenant appears.
Thanks for the details!