Initial experiences trying to run the starter kit (SPOILERS)

I tried to run my first session last night.  It actually didn't go very well.  Partly this was because there were distractions, but partially because the adventure format is so freeform that both I and my players had a rough time figuring out what to do.

Each issue starts off with "setting examples."  Okay, that's all very well and good to suggest ideas for when a GM is developing their own adventure, but this one is prepublished.  I don't want a laundry list of far too many ideas to introduce at once.  I don't want to throw newbies into a situation where they're asked to improvise almost completely open-ended.  That works really well for some people--the creative, spontaneous sorts--but not for people who like structure.

Since this group of people wasn't up to thinking of their own ways of being heroic without some kind of stimulus to respond to, I tried to warm them up with a building threatening to collapse on top of a refugee camp.  Eyes dive to the character sheets (even though these players know their heroes' archetypes intimately through the card game, and I prompted them ahead of time to think of actions first, character sheet second).

Tachyon wants to do something science-y to figure out why the building is collapsing.  Success with a minor twist: I tell her that they've set up their kitchen area near an exposed girder, which is giving way due to exposure to heat and moisture.  I can't think of a good twist, but then again I'm not sure how much good this information does them.  Lamely, I suggest that fixing the problem would probably destroy their supplies.  Unity does great, magically comandeering an excavator to help prop the building up and buy them more time.  Wraith is completely at a loss, since her skill set doesn't directly apply; she opts to hover around the area looking for anything out of place.  Another success with a minor twist: I tell her there are some men hanging around suspiciously, neither moving to help or escape.  I have some vague idea that they'll seem to be looters but are actually good guys for some reason.

Round two: Tachyon is still struggling with the whole science thing and coming up blank.  Eventually she realizes she can just use her speed to evacuate people, and does so successfully.  Unity animates a slab of ruined metal to act as a gurney and hauls people out (the only roll they made that didn't justify a Principle, but she rolled very well).  The building collapses.  Wraith keeps an eye on the suspicious men and rolls a 10 on doing so stealthily, so I describe some comic panels in which they're looting before the dust even clears, but then Wraith emerges dramatically from the dust and takes them all out before they can react.  (I figure the 10 can make up for the minor twist I never got around to applying.)

And that's as far as we got.  Since it took so long to get through so little, I'm going ahead and reading the other issues for my own entertainment (as we probably won't end up playing them).  There's still a lot I find vague, so I'm trying to line up all the possible gaps as I go.  (Also, my players don't think in superhero terms--their first question was where their characters were living, since their HQ was destroyed and using up scarce hotel rooms or staying in refugee camps didn't seem appropriate for them.)

So, questions so far:

• Harvester Spider Bots can't reach heroes to attack them if said heroes are flying.  But the spiders shoot laser beams from their eyes, so why not?
• "Avoiding Collateral Damage" in issue 2 introduces a new concept: twists that get dramatically more severe as the scene tracker progresses.  Nothing in the core rules suggest this should happen.  I see some later scenes apply the same concept.  This seems unbalanced--the GM would be acting strongly in the players' favor if they used scene twists when in the green and "general" twists while in the red, and vice-versa.  I'm not sure how to choose twists in a way that's fair, consistent, and interesting.
• There's basically no information on the poor family that lives in this house.  I assume the GM makes it up as needed, but I don't know why they should--this info could easily have been in the book.
• The VoidHeart has one special ability it can use instead of a basic action: create a dark hero and simultaneously advance the scene tracker.  Under "tactics," however, the book says that an Overcome can be used to disable "one of the VoidHeart's special actions".  Does this disable one aspect of its one special action (the manifestation or the advancement) or is that a mistake?
• The epilogue to issue 2 doesn't suggest how the Visionary knows about what's going on in Insula Primalis, the Tomb of Anubis, or Russia.  "She's psychic" seems very hand-wavy (which, fine) but doesn't help adjudicate what information she might have about each situation for when the players inevitably ask questions.
• In Prime Wardens #67, Insula Primalis tends to Hinder heroes until its own next turn.  Is this hinder used up on the first roll each hero makes, or is it effectively persistent until it expires or is Overcome?

That's as far as I've read so far.  I'm sure I'll have more questions.

I'll agree that this seems to be a very freeform system; it seems to be assumed that the players will be taking as active a hand in crafting the story as the GM does, compared to some other RPG systems.

So I'd wager stuff like the family's info isn't provided because it's probably seen as minor/flexible enough that you can simply think up whatever you or the other players find most pleasing versus concrete canon.

With Visionary specifically, in her podcast episode it's stated she spends a lot of her time after arriving in the main reality learning how to investigate secrets and "conspiracy" type things, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume she's continued on in the same vein after OblivAeon including keeping general tabs on old allies and any psychic or Void-related anomalies she can sense. (From a GM POV, I'd want to use her as a tool and assume she has just enough of a feel for the situation to help prod players into figuring out initial directions to start working from if they're struggling on their own.)

This is kind of my worry about the system, I prefer much more structure, for all that I definitely know the lore here. May get a chance to play it soon, though, so we'll see!

For all that I wrote an adventure in the system already, I haven't actually gotten a chance to play with anyone yet. I too am concerened with trying to get people who don't often roleplay to sussced in such a system, but in truth I am also just getting to the point where I no longer want to be in groups with people who don't roleplay, but thats an entire other can of beeswax.

Reading on: Concerns about Justice Comics #740:

• This is a really weird one to wrap my mind around.  It's mostly a battle against the environment, and despite having two "scenes," it's basically one long slog of an event, where even just looking into a new room is an action.  Looks like it'll require a lot of flipping back and forth to look at the environment's twists, features, and challenges.
• I don't even see success/failure results for Scene 1; I assume if you fail, you basically fail the whole issue and are done.
• There are lots of challenges that require the heroes to succeed at three specific Overcome checks.  Some of them I'm not sure how they'd even realize they have to do, especially if the team lacks Tachyon.  The "Reactor Ractions" ones, I don't even understand myself.  How the heck does one "Restart the levitated dipole containment system?"
• At several points, it suggests that destroying the OblivAeon shard is the only way to stop the Proletariats, but then at the end it provides a challenge that not only allows you to stop them without destroying it, but says that the only way to reach it to destroy it would be to stop them.
• Proletariat looks nearly unbeatable!  Hit him and you create a minion.  He might take a point of damage if multiple heroes do it, but he can reabsorb them to regain far more health than he lost.  An attack that would otherwise destroy a clone just makes two smaller ones instead of one smaller one--again, Proletariat takes 1 damage but he can absorb the extra clone to heal for more.  Even if Proletariat went first in one round and last in the next, no hero has an attack that hits one target multiple times (unless Unity has a bunch of bots).  Each hero would have to use an Ability or a Risky Action to attack Proletariat (for 1 damage after the first attack) and at least one clone (hopefully "missing" and splitting the clone and damaging Proletariat rather than weakening it).  It would require a very precise (and slightly nonsensical) strategy on the part of the heroes--and one which the GM can probably unravel by choosing the turn order carefully.  Fortunately, the heroes don't have to fight him here, but if they ever did, good bloody luck.
• There's no artwork for the Mega-Tariat.  For shame!

He does only get one reaction per round, so he only makes a clone the first time he is hit each round. In a one on one fight this would make him near unbeatable, but facing a group his low HP can see him get blitzed down.

Nope:

Proletariat may use this reaction more than once a turn, but each time he uses this reaction each turn after the first time, he takes 1 damage.

He can do this infinitely, and thus will never take more than 1 damage from any attack, and each such attack potentially creates even more healing opportunity than the health loss.

Isn’t Proletariat at that point borderline mindless? It should be evident after a round or two of combat that something’s up with him and that some investigation might help more than brute force.

Yeah, I think Proletariat is likely statted the way he is because in this scenario he's more of an obstacle than an actual combatant. His mindless form is basically environmental blockage you need to clear, and his normal coherent form has no particular desire anymore to fight against the heroes if they don't give him one (like Fanatic deciding to whale on him the moment she saw a "bad guy").

This is game is very narrative driven. I can see a lot of people having a hard time playing this game if they played D&D before. It will take players a bit to get use to it. I would keep it simple in the first few session. The books are open to fill in whatever you want. Do you want the spider bots to have lasers, let them.(I did) If not, do they run away with parts they savaged? They don't need to attack every turn. I made my spider bots scavengers only attack when they see a target. (I stole stuff from the temporary FF5 base bunker to get the attention of the Unity and tachyon that were doing science.

As or the family in Void if Broken, you can fill that out. Are they going to have a talking role, or asleep the whole times. Legacy related to the family and apology for the damages in their house. It was a nice speech given to the player. This game is very much like improve, both the GM and the players are creating a story. Try as much as possible to say yes (It need to make comic book scene), and see where that takes you.

Proletariat is an obstacle as much as a victim here. When the heroes first encounter him, describe him is doing things that are mindless (I described him follow his own track and having some misform ones). There are so many that a fight will get them nowhere. Let them fight it to see how pointless it is. Sure you take out 4 but there are still 400 left in this area. Scene one is them trying to go below, they do not find it by the end of scene 1, advance the plot. Tell them they find the elevator after some narration. I would start the next scene with a major twist. Any overcome scene here can be solved as long as the players give you a solution you like. You may not know how to shut it down but Tachyon might. If not let them get creative. I had my AZ Remove his suit and encase the whole plant in ice (ala F6 incap side, the AZ Character held the Oblivion Shard, made him take some damage and said it powered him up. Got destroyed in the process) It bought time for a real clean up crew could arrive and fix the problem.

Also I drew a stick figure Megatatiat, I had a player make me stop drawing because it was just creepy. (drew a blob and just added body parts. Put a happy face some where in the drawing.)

I do admit that coming up with Twist is hard. Dave recommends writing a few up before hand.

And going into the final issue:

• The introductions to issues 3-5 suggest that the heroes should be able to identify Baron Blade as the mastermind behind all these disconnected adventures.  However, I don't see any way they can accomplish this.  They're supposed to be able to deduce that "Only a brilliant yet twisted inventor could create all the robots and inventions the heroes have faced."  And then they're supposed to jump to the conclusion that only Baron Blade fits the profile, despite seemingly being dead.  They're even supposed to think that, if Blade is in fact dead, this is the work of a "copycat," even though nothing in any of these adventures fits anything Blade has done historically.  If I were a player coming into this who legitimately thought Blade was dead (ignoring the comic book tropes about the dead not staying dead), I'd figure it was some new opponent, probably some villain from another reality (which Arataki's presence and backstory would seem to hint at, as well as Miss Information's reality-twisting powers and Fanatic's new black sword) or some dramatic transformation of an existing character (like Anubis, Proletariat, and to a lesser extent Fanatic).  Unity also might suspect RevoCorp if her player is the suspicious type.
• However, failing to figure out that it's Baron Blade doesn't seem to have any specific consequences.  There are references to it having consequences, but none are ever spelled out or even suggested.  He "gets the drop on them," and his escaping is the "most likely result," but I don't see how or why.
• Scene 1 provides only one option for locating the underwater base: examining a robot to figure out where its signal is coming from.  If the heroes don't include Tachyon or Unity, both the players and the GM will have to come up with something extremely creative to move this forward.  And if they don't, the whole adventure shuts down.  This is, frankly, extremely sloppy design, especially given that this is to be played with preconstructed characters with known capabilities.
• (Sidenote: this flaw is present throughout the whole packet.  The writers could have very easily provided hooks or suggestions throughout that specifically apply to the six heroes involved, instead of leaving it so open-ended.  Future products won't have that advantage, but this is an intro, meant to be easier to both play and run.)

• The module also assumes that the heroes figured out that the spider-bots were being controlled through a signal that used to be in the mothership.  However, it was entirely possible to clear that challenge without ever doing so.  Once again, this leads to a dead-end potential.
• Then there's this: "The heroes are able to find a basic underwater vehicle for getting there, or spend their hero point bonuses to make something more elaborate."  What?  Nothing in the rules suggests that hero points can be used for anything other than floating bonuses to rolls.  I have no idea what mechanic this is supposed to refer to.
• Dolphins aren't porpoises, and they swim in pods, not flocks.  And jellyfish come in blooms or swarms.
• The Scene 3 Threats are just dirty.  The GM adds a threat, for free, every time the number of enemy targets drops below the number of heroes.  So they don't know it, but spending their actions fighting minions is literally self-defeating.  That sucks.
• Those minions refer to "calling back" to previous issues.  Does that just mean "hey, I remember these" and getting a bonus for doing so?  That's a strange mechanic, and it's vital for dealing with the skeletons.  Also, I'm not sure how knowing what complete skeletons look like would help damage the incomplete ones (especially since the finished ones didn't self-repair, so these are clearly different) or what's actually involved in downgrading the soldiers.
• What the heck is the "psychic conduit?" What does it look like, what does it do, how can it be disabled, and what does it have to do with the trip to the Void?
• Has anyone tried fighting Baron Blade yet?  With 70 HP and a ton of defensive abilities, he looks exceptionally hard to take down before the scene tracker runs out, especially if they chose the sneaky approach and thus likely won't even reach him for a few rounds.  Although, again, there's little compensation for the number of players, so a team of 6 will have a massive advantage over a team of 3.  And a team of 2, which is technically allowed, is just... forget it.

I'd just like to say that I have, on a few different occasions here on these forums, tried to determine what exactly a Starter Kit is and have said that I've never played an RPG before. I feel like through this thread I've gained far more knowledge and understanding of what it is than I ever did when it was announced, and I know now that I would not like it, haha. So thank you, MindWanderer, for being so thorough in your critiques. Hopefully, these items that you discuss will improve in future RPG products, but you've definitely clued me in to the fact that this is not the type of game I would actually like, despite really enjoying the characters involved. I wonder if there will be a time when the lore and art from these books become available in a form that is digestable for my non-RPGer brain...

@much0gust0

I dunno, as someone who is an RPer, I find MindWanderer's approach to not be the one me or my own past RP groups would have taken to some of these things.

The main one is that they seem to be taking a "everything must be beaten up" approach to everything, when that's not only not the only possible approach, but is very explicitly stated as not being the correct approach in many spots in these books.

They also seem to be taking an approach that the GM must do everything a specific way (and particularly one that must seek to defeat the heroes), when a GM not only can do basically whatever they want ("Rule 0", as it's often known in RP culture parlance), but it's explicitly stated in various parts of the books that the GM is here to help provide an interesting story and not to defeat the heroes, and that the GM should be flexible and also encourage the players to also make things up.

So... I feel some of their critiques are understandable and some feel like, to admittedly be a bit blunt, they didn't actually read the books.

The previous issues have a number of clues scattered throughout that the various tech the heroes encounter is based somehow on Blade tech, nor would I ignore a very common comic book trope in an RPG explicitly based on comic book tropes.

The last issue calls out on page 5 that a consequence of Baron Blade seeing them arrive is that one box from the next scene tracker is ticked off before it starts. The implication is that this also happens if they don't figure out beforehand that it's Baron Blade; the flaw is more the text not making this specific.

Likewise, a lot of the complaints about "open-endedness" in various spots are specifically addressed in the various books with blurbs saying it's OK to be flexible and let the GM or players make up whatever sounds coolest.

For instance, regards the "only Tachyon or Unity can do this or else the story shuts down", the text already explicitly says on page 2 in "Figuring out where to go next":

The proposed elements of Scene I provide a straightforward method for doing so, but if your players want to take a different approach, run with it! Encourage the players to think back over what they already know, leveraging that information to lead them to the robot source.

Some of this is also solved by GM assistance (since again it's explicitly stated the GM's goal in this system is to help narrate and not to defeat the players). If you have a group that isn't already the "I take 20 on Search" type, for instance, then just gently nudge them into being more curious by adding on scene narrations that call out certain aspects as being puzzling. ("The spiders all stop when the Mothership dies, as if invisible strings had been cut. Hmm.") Or if the players are not figuring out on their own that something is the wrong approach, again, it can be called out, so there's no reason for the players to "don't know it". ("You defeat yet another minion but it feels like there's just always more of them no matter how many you take down.")

Likewise, the GM text calls out that hero bonuses can be used to make a more elaborate vehicle so the GM can pass on to the players, "If you use up some of your hero bonuses, you can do some general kitting out of the method you use to get to the underwater base to improve how the next scene goes for you."

Likewise again, the gameplay guide explicitly states that yes, the entire point of writing down what "issues" and "collections" you played through is so you can "call back" to them in future stories.

The psychic conduit has to do with how in Issue #2 Visionary explicitly used psychic mind powers to send everyone into the Void (which another thing the GM should be conveying in narrations). If they don't recall that, then the answer is "whatever way the players come up with that sounds most plausible to their hero's powers", which again is explicitly called out throughout the books as being how players should handle Overcome checks.

Finally, with Baron Blade, GMs are generally expected in most RP systems to scale down or up enemy threats as is needed to match player capabilities including how many players there are. The text could be more explicit in pointing that out, but the GM always has that option to take.

I'm honestly sorry if the tone of this seems a little harsh, but some of MindWanderer's criticisms are already addressed by simply reading the text, some are addressed by the game being obvious you're not supposed to solve everything by beating it up, and some are addressed by the game expecting the GM to do their job and narrate information to the players as appropriate/needed.

Yes, but are there rules for such scaling in this system? I have minimal experience in GMing, but usually there are rules for scaling threats up and down, some sort of guide for the GM. I was hoping for that since this RPG system, according to Paul, was supposed to be geared especially toward new GMs. I'm likely to be GMing this for two to three heroes, but some of these encounters – the Baron Blade one, in particular – seems nearly impossible at such low player counts. I get as GM I can scale them down for lower player counts, but some direction there would really help. I don't even know what hero-count this Baron Blade encounter is balanced for? Six heroes? Five? Four? That'd help to know what I'm starting with, but perhaps I'm overthinking it.

Honestly, when reading the previous issues (things like in issue one, if Argent Adept is fully stabalized, it'll affect the final issue), I was hoping those heroes could show up for the final battle as NPCs on the heroes' side and there'd be stats for them. Like if you convinced Haka you were all on the same side, she could join the fight as an NPC. If you talk Fanatic down, she could show up. Visionary. Tempest. But if you had a full compliment of heroes (like 5 or 6), those NPC could be off doing their own thing (like they are in this issue), so it doesn't get too overpowered for the heroes. I guess that was just wishful thinking (and maybe I'll just have to come up with some dummy stats for those characters, so I can play it that way, cause I like the idea of them showing up at the end to help the heroes out, if things went well in previous issues).

Still, I'd appreciate any tips/rules on scaling these threats for lower player count, either official or unofficial.

The scene tracker seems to be a pretty good guide. The heroes have [number of scene tracker boxes] x [number of heroes] turns to both complete the scene's objectives and cope with any villain/environment threats, which seems like it's the core math to work from. Count up any Overcome boxes, take into account the minimum number of turns it'd take to defeat a baddie. (like a d6 minion would take two hits to defeat; one drop to a d4, then out of the picture.)

If it seems like from there the heroes would breeze through every necessary step, then add on a few more threats or harder twists. If it seems like the heroes would struggle to fit everything in, scale back the threats and use easier twists, threats, and villain abilities.

I admit to wishing we got stats for the NPCs as well, but since that would more or less amount to six more character booklets I can understand why they handwaved it a little. I'm hoping we eventually get a book of all the Sentinels of the Multiverse heroes still extant (as well as new major ones like Anubis and Muse) fully statted up either in the core rulebook or as a supplement. (And by "hoping" I really mean more like "This needs to exist or I will be very cranky". >> << )

Pardon my ignorance (seriously), but if there really is so much of "The GM does what they want," then why not just have a short couple of paragraphs to describe a story and that's all? What exactly is critical information in the booklet that ISN'T just from the top of MindWanderer, et al's heads? Adjacent question, is that the way most RPGs are or do they go into more specifics? I admit I'm still pretty confused how one could play the Starter Kit without having a Rulebook, but at least I understand the POINT of the Starter Set now and what it actually IS.

Thank you, Jeysie, for being an apologist for the system, at least, and defending its merits as a contender in the RPG realm for me so that I don't just back away slowly forever. =P

We don't have a Core Rulebook yet, with details about character creation and designing your own scenes and issues, but the Starter Kit does come with a Gameplay Guide, which is a rulebook in the sense of "this is how the game's mechanics work."

I wouldn't say it's that there's "so much" of the GM/players doing what they want, it's more that generally in any RP system the GM always has the option to do what they want if the text as written isn't working out for their group, and also that Sentinels seems to be more on the freeform side versus some other RP systems.

The advantage of stuff like this Starter Kit is that any premade adventure provides an extensive framework of plot outlines, obstacles, and enemy stats to work from, which leaves the GM to only have to handle more minor narrative details. Just this system seems to encourage more flexibility than some other RP systems with how you overcome and deal all of those things.

Like to pick one example other RP system and one example from this game, in D&D it'd be far more explicit with some things like "In order to pinpoint the VoidHeart, the players have to figure out how to do these specific steps each with this specific DC to roll against," while here the system is like "You have to pinpoint the  VoidHeart: Overcome" as a thing that needs to be done, and otherwise leaves it freeform in that the GM/players can think up whatever sounds best to their tastes/heroes that will accomplish that end so long as they roll an Overcome check for it.

The advantage to the GM here is more that they don't have to think up the entire overall plot for which this is one thing that must be done.

It's hard to say whether most RPGs do this, since I'm honestly unaware of how many RPGs on the market are "freeform" versus "crunch".

So basically, a lot of RPG systems are "crunchy", meaning they rely more heavily on statistics. If this was a D&D game, say, I'd agree with virtually all of MindWanderer's criticisms, because D&D is designed to revolve more heavily on having precise numbers and steps for everything for players to roll against, so it would be a failure on the part of the Kit to leave so much up to the players/GM.

But there's also a lot of RPG systems that are "freeform", where everything is narrative/story driven and adjucation is done by extremely simple and sparse decision mechanics, if not left wholly up to the fiat of the players and/or GM. By that metric Sentinels has far more crunch going on, but is less specific on the story details themselves.

Really I therefore think what Sentinels doesn't do like most systems is that it's a middle-ground hybrid, whereas most systems lean far more heavily towards one or the other. It has more things left open than the average crunchy system, but has far more structure to decision adjucation than the average freeform system. That may be why it throws people off if I had to guess; crunch players have to get used to more of what happens being left up to them, and freeform players have to get used to more stats and dice rolling. I'd think freeform players would have the easier time adjusting to this system, though.

It seems pretty good in that respect. The actual decision adjucation system is well fleshed out in the Gameplay Guide, and the scenarios are designed to handwave as much as possible stats for anything beyond the pregen heroes and the various statted enemies and obstacles. (Argent Adept is badly injured so even if brought back to consciousness and basic functioning he wouldn't have the ability to do more than provide a Boost each round anyway; Visionary has to stay behind to hold open the portal so she can only give you a very limited psychic guide in the Void, the NPC heroes at Megalopolis are wholly busy with keeping robots off your back so you can do investigative work so the contribution of any NPCs that showed up is handled with random minion reduction each turn, etc.)

I do think there are cracks here and there that I do agree with MindWanderer's criticisms about, but I feel most of it is stuff that's merely implied that the text should make more overtly explicit than stuff that was left out entirely that shouldn't have been because it's needed for the story to function.

Heh, no problem, though I'm honestly more trying to clarify a bit, re the difference between actual flaws that mean the game doesn't work as designed, and if the way the game works as designed is to the taste of what certain groups do and don't expect.

Like… I hope they'll correct me if I'm wrong with my assumption, but MindWanderer and their group seem like players used to far more crunchy systems. So a lot of their criticisms revolve around "this game doesn't work because it doesn't give me anywhere near enough crunch".

But the game is very open about being more freeform and relying much less on crunch, so I feel criticism should revolve around "does the game provide enough crunch to be coherent with itself", and I feel less of what MindWanderer wrote is an actual criticism by that criterion (and the responses from folks like speedyolrac suggest I am not alone in that suspicion).

So, I feel MindWanderer's distaste is less because the game is actually flawed, and more because it's just not to the taste of their particular playing group. So I'm less being an apologetic in that I think everybody should love the system (like I said, I think freeform players will have an easier time adapting to the system than crunchy players), and more being an apologetic of "please don't criticize the game as flawed for the parts which I feel are actually structured fine but require a different playstyle than some groups may find enjoyable".

Finally I think it might be worth dropping the money anyway even if all you want is the lore; very definitely so if you go with the $10 PDF-only option from Drive Thru RPG. I have basically zero chance of playing this any time soon, but I'm pretty happy with the story bits and new artwork in it. (Then again I like to read RPG sourcebooks for fun in general, so make of that what you will.)

I hope Jeysie doesn't mind if I jump in to try and help. 

As I see it Its not that there is a large amount of GM's do whatever they want, the issues are meant to give you a structured enviroment in which to play and get used to the system whilst having enough leway for the GM to embelish and ad lib as needed depending on player action or inaction. The system also lends it self well to player creativity instead of the entier thing being locked in on what the GM has perscibed for the scene.

To use scene 2 in issue one as an illistration of this instead of it being there are these perscibed ways to solve the problem your given end goals for the heros/players and they come up with super powered ways to solve it using there skill sets. Some examples beyond the obvious Wraith extrapolates from given data using her investigator skill or Legacy realising through years of leadership that the small minions are moving in concert with the big spider bot or if the players are stuggling just a random line of 'AZ your plug in that you use to listen to the raidio is getting odd feedback when facing that larger bot. I wonder what that could be about" 

To me as a sytem it embraces some/all of the tenants of naritive based permitions systems that we have seen since the arival of Apocalypse World such as play to find out what happens and fill the players life with heroics and danger and fail forward enforced within the rules. The few tweaks to the dice sytstem I like and haven't seen anything like them before. If your looking for a wholistic package they may give a beta doc with the kickstarter but for someone who want's to dip there toes in to the system in a way with minimal overhead this seems like the best method. 

As a side note my local group loves narative based stuff so something like this was well within our wheel house so we could just be smoothing out rough edges with on the fly calls that might not be part of the intended experince. 

Also hi new to the forums just wanted to try and help. 

Wraith can also figure out the tech stuff. In one demo the wraith hero took charge of that. Bunker, if he is creative can make a tech scanner with this suit, or say since they are dating Wraith he can call her up and use her mega-computer. But I see your point that they should add more ideas so players can jump off them.

 Proletariat also says that Blade was there if you save him, and one can just give hints to Legacy that the tech looks like his old nemesis tech past book 2.

@Demiher0

Nope, feel totally free to pitch in, especially since you have experience with playing narrative/freeform systems while my experience with those is only secondhand so I had to make some guesses. (Nice to see my intuition that freeform players would have an easier time with this system than crunchy players turned out to indeed have some merit.)

And welcome to the forums! :)

@MindWanderer, your list of complaints sound like exactly the kind of issues I'd be having too, if I'd gotten the Starter Kit.  From what I've read on the forums, the game sounds too hand-wavey for my tastes (which is by design and many people seem to really love it, so that's fine) but it also sounds a little rushed and not-yet-completely-baked, which is an unfortunately familiar feeling with many post-SotM GtG games.  In any case, I just wanted to express solidarity with your viewpoint, brother.

I feel like I'm being misunderstood here.

I don't at all feel like "beating things up" should be the default solution to a scenario, but when it's presented as an option, it should work.  This is why I feel like the starter kit's treatment of NPC's is bizarrely inconsistent:

• Proletariat is almost entirely a non-threat.  You get him to absorb his hundreds of clones and he's wiped out, clearly no threat and not aggressive.  Yet stats are presented for him as a villain; moreover, those stats make him practically indestructible.  He shouldn't even have stats (so that the GM can adjudicate the conflict some other way), but if he does, they should make sense--he should either be beatable, or it should describe him in such a way that the fight will end in a satisfactory way without him being technically beaten.  As written, if the heroes attack him for some reason, it's virtually guaranteed that they will fail the adventure (probably by the scene tracker running out).
• Haka, on the other hand, is an active threat.  She's strongly inclined to attack Tempest and the heroes, and attempting to subdue her forcefully is a reasonable approach.  However, talking her down is presented as the only solution.  There are no stats for her.
• Same goes for Fanatic: She's being an active aggressor, clearly not in her right mind, swinging around that blood magic sword and generally making things worse, and a player might very reasonably try to restrain or even incapacitate her.  Again, talking her down is described as a requirement for successful completion of the scenario.

Similarly, I don't mind when an objective is significantly open-ended.  "Pinpoint the VoidHeart" is fine as it is.  Tachyon might scan for energy anomalies, Unity could create a swarm of drones to search in all directions, Legacy could focus on his Danger Sense and try to feel out which direction the greatest danger is in, Bunker or AZ could uses sensors in their suits' HUDs, etc., etc.  The book even gives some general examples in a sidebar.  And only one check from the whole team is needed.  That one is great!

Conversely, "The Signal" is awful.  It's a very constrained challenge that focuses on an entirely technological feature.  Players of heroes without science or tech abilities will be hard-pressed to find a solution to this one even thinking outside the box.  And it requires three Overcome actions, which in many games means that one player will be sitting there making all the rolls while the others sit on their heels.  It's all very well to say "if your players take a different approach, go with it," and certainly they should be allowed to do so, but if you're going to write up a whole scene that presupposes only one solution that may not make sense for many groups, you may as well write nothing and just tell the GM to improvise the whole thing.

Next point: the issues having clues that point to Baron Blade.  I read them.  I don't see it.  All the new tech is designed specfically in a way as to disguise who built it.  All the old tech is, well, old.  Even if Blade had nothing to do with any of this, an adventure in Insula Primalis would involve the heroes getting shot at by rusty old cannons that Blade left there.  Same goes for the reactor: just because Blade was involved in its design decades ago doesn't mean he has anything to do with the plot at hand.  And none of the rest of it his consistent with his style.  His tech in the card game has all either been the form of over-the-top megalomaniac stuff (doomsday devices, giant floating platforms) or personal enhancement or defense.  He built the one decoy bot of himself.  Otherwise, making robot spiders and mummies and deliberately hiding his hand in their design isn't his M.O. at all, nor his handing off some of his tech to some other random villain to use in their own scheme.

And about the rules about invoking Issues: I have read these rules as well.  Players can invoke Collections, not Issues.  There's no rule suggesting they can do what the scenario suggests, since the events haven't been compiled into a Collection yet.  Would it be reasonable to allow them to invoke an Issue instead?  Sure!  Do the rules suggest they might be able to do such a thing or how it would work?  No.  Same thing with allowing them to use Hero Points to accomplish things other than get bonuses: it's reasonable, but a player who's trying to play the game by reading the rules will never think of doing this.  The only way these things will happen is if the GM says, "Oh, by the way, here's a new rule six issues in that you can use in this situation."  This sort of thing happens when the developer writes the scenarios: they know what they generally had in mind when they wrote the rules, but they didn't actually write down the part of it that makes these situations work.

I feel it's entirely consistent.

Proletariat is presented with villain stats for completion's sake to go with the other villains and minions, but he's clearly presented in the scenario as not having any inclination to fight the heroes and fighting him indeed is presented as being entirely counterproductive (since Fanatic doing that in the first place is what caused the problem!)

Likewise Arataki and Fanatic are both extremely powerful heroes it would take an entire contingent of most heroes to maybe think of taking down, and in neither case would it do anything to improve the situation. And not statting them is also completion's sake, since then people would ask why Argent, Vis, and Anubis aren't statted either, plus they'd require more involved statting than the villains do. (Again, it'd essentially be six more character booklets and up the price and production time.)

You do realize that Legacy is literally the only member of the Freedom Five + intern with no technological elements? AZ has his suit, Bunker has his suit and his expertise, Wraith has her tech and expertise, Unity has her tech and expertise, and Tachyon has her tech and expertise. So it's literally impossible to have a group of heroes with no tech or science abilities since the guide advises having at least two heroes and a GM.

Except they do, in that the book explicitly states they can do so. If the players don't think back to the old issues on their own, if they discovered the relevation information, the GM therefore has explicit permission to mention it to the players.

Yes, because that is literally a GM's job. To provide relevant information that the players can use for their situation.

Sure, the GM and veterans of the card game know that Proletariat is a "villain" and Haka and Fanatic are "heroes," but they don't behave that way in the context of the adventures.  Taking them  down would absolutely improve the situation!  In fact, the heroes are required to neutralize them for the sake of the plot–it's only in issue 6 that there might be consequences for having done so violently instead of peacefully.  They don't need full "hero" stats, they need a half-page like what Proletariat got as a villain.  Because, in this adventure, they're effectively villains (more so than Proletariat, certainly).

Information about the adventure, yes, about the story and what's going on.  But A) players who read the rulebook should be able to pick up all the core mechanics, and B)  this is far too late in the game to introduce new core mechanics .  They shouldn't be buried in a footnote in the last issue of the series.  If Hero Points and Issues can be used for things like this, players should see that in the relevant sections of the rulebook (just like the fact that Reactions use only one die instead of a pool should have been in the Reactions section of the rulebook, but Critical Hits forgot to write it down), and, as this adventure is effectively a tutorial, these options should have been introduced in Issue #2.

Tryin to take down Proletariat would just produce the same result Fanatic got.

And taking down Arataki and Fanatic would likely be impossible, restraining them would be close to impossible, and just result in a really ticked off Arataki and Fanatic who will almost certainly just start in on you the second you stop restraining them.

Like if I were the heroes in universe presented with a pissed off Haka or Fanatic, my first instinct would be to relocate my presence to the other side of the planet, and my second instinct would be to try doing just about anything but fighting. This goes double after listening to the Cosmic Contest podcast.

Which would kinda go against them saying they wanted to make sure all the NPC heroes were statted up the same way as the heroes you could create yourself.

From a few posts back:

…when the issue introduces it as a one-off for very specific effects that the GM is explicitly called out as being able to tell the players, I'm glad you agree.

I apologize, but I honestly don't see how this wasn't already sufficiently addressed. If they were introducing something that could be used literally the entire time, yeah, then you'd be correct that it was an unfair oversight to not mention it before now.

But in this case they're one-offs that do extremely specific effects that make sense for a specific scene. And it's literally no big major deal for the GM to point it out if it turns out to be relevant.

It honestly sounds like you're just not comfortable running games that are more on the freeform side. Which is fine, but you seem kinda hostile towards the RPG for that fact.

Also, Spiff, I honestly feel puzzled that you're a Sentinels fan as I honestly can't recall the last time you said something on the forums here that wasn't a potshot either at the games, GTG, or the fans.

Am I said, freeform is fine.  But this is just half-freeform.  Some things are fully fleshed out, and those work fine.  Some things are totally open-ended, and those also work fine.  But some things are half-baked, creating a scenario with an insufficient number of solutions, or setting things up that could easily lead players into situations that just aren't covered.

The stats presented for Prolateriat are for after the major crisis is resolved, perhaps even after the OblivAeon shard was destroyed.  It's not for when he's splitting uncontrollably.  And either way, presenting stats for him makes no sense: either he's an unbeatable hydra (as he is throughout the issue up until this point) or he's a non-threat.  And then the stats that are presented for him just don't work.

As for Haka and Fanatic, you've listened to the podcasts.  You know how tough they are.  But players who are only familiar with the card game would have no idea, and players for whom this is their entire introduction to the Sentinels universe would be even more clueless.  In Haka, all they'll see is some big woman with a spear--not a credible threat for all the power and tech the Freedom Five are packing (and honestly, I don't believe any Haka could take down the whole F5 at once).  Fanatic looks pretty scary, but she also looks kind of like a bad guy here, and players new to the universe may have no idea she's much more powerful than she looks.

That said, I can agree with the decision not to bother statting them out fully (although some tips about how to handle them in combat would have been nice).  I just disagree with Proletariat getting full, messed-up stats just because he's a "villain" in the card game (and isn't one here).

As for the Hero Points and Issues getting one-time effects, first of all, I don't see where it says that the GM is supposed to tell the players that these rules suddenly apply.  Second, if they do, I think it's silly when the GM introduces a new rule in the form of a yes-or-no question: "These skeletons are clearly incomplete versions of the ones you fought in the fake Tomb.  If you want, you can 'call back' to when you fought them before to disable their healing, which you have literally no reason not to do."

And I just don't see the need for one-time rules like this, either.  If a hero wants to try to shut off the healing, or sabotage the mini-reactors, let them think of something that makes sense and use an Overcome.  If they want to pimp out their submarine, Boost would be great for that.  If Hero Points can be used to create persistent boosts instead of single-user ones in certain situations with GM's approval, that's the rule right there, one sentence, that could have been in the rulebook (and could have applied in the last four adventures).

Why, though, when the idea is clearly to not get into major combat with them in the first place?

It's more realizing there would be literally no point to providing you with information you're not supposed to use somehow. You've always stuck me as a smart person, does a book really have to explicitly tell you "hey dummy tell the players this info if it turns out to be relevant"?

Or you could phrase it the way any GM would actually do it and go something like, "These skeletons are clearly incomplete versions of the ones you fought in the fake Tomb, which gives you some insights on how to beat them more effectively now."

Like, I think my reason I have difficulty taking your criticisms as being in good faith is that you always come up with ways of looking at the things here that you'd have to be deliberately not even trying even slightly at all to come up with, then claiming it's a flaw with the game as opposed to your own intentionally finding the most not-even-trying-at-all way to do things. And I know you're smarter than that, so it comes off as being in bad faith.

That IS in the rulebook. Right there on page 7 of the Gameplay Guide. Again, I have a hard time feeling your criticisms are in good faith when you're saying things should be in the rulebooks that literally already are there in said rulebooks.

Because, as others have pointed out, it would be entirely reasonable, the way the stories are presented, for players to think that combat with them is a viable solution.

If I were a player hearing that, I wouldn't think to say, "Okay, well, maybe I can attack them in such a way that they won't be able to heal?"  The other ones didn't heal, after all, so why would that knowledge apply?  And when they're being first described, they haven't demonstrated their ability to heal yet.

At best, I'd ask, "Okay, how?  Does that give me a bonus or something?"  And then what can the GM say?  "No, but you can shut off their healing.""Cool, how do I do that?" "Just attack them, the same way you normally would." "Uh, okay… but why is this even a question?  Why give them healing at all if,  given that we had to have fought the other ones to even get here,  anyone who fights them now can shut it down for free?"  To which I have no answer.

I'm not seeing it.  There's no mention of hero points anywhere on that page.  It defines persistent mods and says that they can be created via Abilities.

I'm a huge fan of SotM but have been saddened and frustrated by the growing pains caused by GtG's explosive growth.  All I'm trying to do here is offer a little support to counterbalance the inevitable "it doesn't bother me so I don't see why it should bother you" posts.  I think the issues MindWanderer raises sound like real issues that would have been solved with more development time.  It didn't occur to me that saying that would sound like a potshot.

…makes it explicitly clear that combat is pretty much a bad idea that isn't going to go anywhere. It's your job as GM to nudge players if they don't take the hint.

Well, I mean, if you put zero effort into coming up with an answer, then yes, it'll be hard coming up with one.

This discussion feels like the sort of discussions when someone has an axe to grind against a thing so they come up with the most incredibly and deliberately bad way possible to interpret or do that thing and I feel like literally the only way I can answer after a while is to go, "Or we could just do and interpret it a nice normal sane way instead and thereby easily solve your misgivings completely."

I'm going to just bow out as a result, and I admit I feel like at this point any system may provide you with some difficulties, as GMing any system requires some creative approaches and putting in good faith attempts to work with players' ideas even if they're outside the specific boxes.

Yes, that's exactly the thing in question.

[quote="Jeysie"]

Yes, that's exactly the thing in question.

[/quote]

As someone just catching up on the last page of the discussion, I don’t see that following from what the argued point is, Jeysie.

The argument put forward was about using Hero Points to create Persistent Bonuses. Page 7 does not say that and Page 11 is the only one to mention Hero Points.

One gains Hero Points from the use of Abilities involving Principles to Overcome, other Abilities like Unity’s Hasty Augmentation have the option to create Persistent bonuses when Boosting, but these are separate mechanics (which are in turn separate from the Floating Bonuses that you use Hero Points for between Issues). I just hate watching people talk past one another like this as an argument goes on.

I must be easily swayed, because I keep finding myself agreeing with both sides of the argument as they're presented.  Jeysie offers a lot of valid solutions to MindWanderer's problems.  However, a lot of them seem to rely on "any good GM would know how to handle this" which doesn't really work for people like me with no GM experience and very little RPG experience in general.  For all the talk I've heard about this being a great system for first-time GMs, I would like to see these pre-made issues be a lot more explicit with things.

And as far as the Hero Points and Persistent Bonuses part of the argument, I think it works like this:  Hero Points give you Floating Bonuses.  All bonuses are supposed to be things, not just stat boosts.  So a player could decide that their Floating Bonus is a pimped out sub.  There's no mention of whether or not Floating Bonuses are generally allowed to be Persistent (although it does say they're Exclusive).  However, in the specific case of Issue 5 Scene 2, it says they can be Persistent.  So can Hero Points be used to make Persistent Bonuses at other times?  It seems like the answer is probably, "Maybe, if it seems appropriate."

Agree with this pretty much 100%. As much as this system was touted as being great for first-time or new GMs, I think the issues, as written, are more meant for experienced GMs/RPGers. I go back to my earlier question about scaling the encounters for smaller hero counts. Jeysie had a decent suggestion with modifying the scene tracker. I think that would somewhat work, but it'd also give Baron Blade more turns to hurt the heroes, and with only two heroes, they'd likely get hurt a lot (or maybe the GM would just have to spend a couple turns having him giving a big villain monlogue!). 

But there is no official way to scale these encounters for smaller player counts, let alone any indication that they may need to be scaled. It's hard for me to believe that these encounters are balanced for hero counts from anywhere from 2 to 6 heroes. But a new GM, who was only able to grab a couple of friends to game with, would try to play the issue/scenes as written, likely only to find the two heroes wouldn't stand much of a chance.

Anyway, I still look forward to playing the RPG. It sounds like it'll be a lot of fun. But I do wish there was more guidance for those of us who haven't GM'ed much, especially if we're hoping to play at lower player counts (2 to 3 heroes, 1 GM).

Reading my mind, here. I've been fascinated by the suggestions on here about how to nudge players in the right directions as they sound so cool! I think of myself as a pretty creative dude, but with exactly zero experience in the RP realm, I wouldn't have thought along any of those lines at all. Again, I feel like it's enough to back away from this system for now and hope for some upcoming lore books (or Letters Pages?) on the future of the Sentinels timeline.

And see this makes me sad, because a lot of what MindWanderer is coming up with is actually either explictly addressed on the page or just requires any good faith effort to succeed at.  Even aside from this particular game system, I feel sad at people being turned away from roleplaying in general because it's fun and actually a lot less difficult than people here are making it out to be, even when using more complicated systems.

And I feel bewildered that ths is coming from a fandom that usually blows me away with how much more positive and creative it is than I am.

I guess TL;DR: I am really confused that I'm sitting here going "this is all either literally written on the page or requires literally just any effort at all to accomplish well enough to get by" and it's making people go "wow this all sounds awful and difficult" and it just makes me want to stop trying to talk at all if stuff I say is going to have an effect that not only makes no sense but makes things worse when I was trying to make them better.

Also I missed this initially:

You honestly don't sound like you are fan of much beyond the original core set, going by what posts you've made since I joined up with the forums. And honestly if it wasn't for your website and the way people talk you up, I would assume from your various posts you don't like any of the games at all (or GTG or the fandom, for that matter) and then wonder why you post here.

And I just don't. It feels like the majority of their issues fall under:

1. Not reading what's literally in the books.

2. Interpreting everything in literally the worst way possible.

3. Being unwilling to do anything at all that's not explicitly in the books.

The fact that people are still chiming in saying they agree the system seems awful and difficult then leads me back to my opening paragraph in this post. Namely, how do you read someone like me going "literally all you have to do is read the books and do anything even slightly creative at all" and get "oh no this is so hard and difficult" out of that? It's like, I feel frustrated that apparently when I open my mouth all I do is make things worse because apparently people have literally the total opposite reaction they should have had from what I said.

@EVERYONE: Conversations, arguments, and discussions are fantastic. However, your word choice must show respect for each person involved (and those not involved). Please keep that in mind.

Fine, I edited my post. What I said in my second post is more my point anyway.

Pretty much everything I've written in defense of the system can be summed up as "this is all either literally written on the page or requires literally just any effort at all to accomplish well enough to get by". And I feel frustrated at being dogpiled and ganged up on with lectures and negativity for saying that, when I don't see what about that deserves lectures and negativity.

Jeysie, I would like to think that the types of conversations we've had in the past would indicate both enjoyment of them and respect between us.

I think I'm seeing what the miscommunication is on the "Page 7" issue. Let me know if I'm still getting this wrong.

It sounded to others (myself included) like you were claiming that a feature of Hero Points was to make an otherwise not Persistent mod into a Persistant one and that Page 7 literally says that (which it doesn't).

What I believe now is that you were saying that Hero Points create bonuses (they do) and that Page 7 specifies that "abilities and effects" can make mods Persistent and/or Exclusive. Since Hero Points are creating a bonus, the text on Page 7 about duration qualifies and the "effect" language means that we can adjudicate when such a mod might be Persistent within the narrative rather than relying on the crunch of Abilities to justify it.

That is, it's a difference between us hearing "Hero Points can make a mod into a Persistent one/Hero Point-created mods are Persistent" and you meaning "Hero Points create a mod, which might be Persistent because that's a quality of mods in general".

Do I have that straightened out?

This has been an interesting forum.  Personally, I enjoy the loose form of the system (But I do wish they put important information at the start), but this starter kit was sold as easy for anyone to pick up. I do wish for the RPG to be successful and for new people to enjoy it.

So for the new Gms, what would you like to see in future modules?

More suggestions on what to do. (I think if they list weird examples it might open people's mind on what is possible).

Clearer rules, an example game with more rules being used.

Feel free to add your more.

I'd like a video of Christopher GMing the whole starter kit!

I admit I do feel this kit is easy for a newbie GM to pick up, because I am a newbie GM.

Like it feels weird listening to people like rjc917  go "this is meant for new and first-time GMs" like they're refuting me, because I'm a new GM whose entire opinions here have been as a newbie GM!

My experience is about 99% with playing RPGs! X3 Meanwhile, the number of games I've GMed? One. And it crashed and burned. And the reason it crashed and burned is because it was D&D, D&D requires about five million bits of prepared numbers and stats, my RP group was shall we say very eccentric and unconventional, and eventually their tendency to run things off the rails on a regular basis outstripped my ability to think up a sufficient quantity of new stats on the fly.

So when I say, "this Sentinels RPG system seems pretty simple to come up with ad hoc things for", I'm not saying it from the POV of someone who can GM in their sleep, I'm saying it from the POV of someone who crashed and burned at GMing D&D who is looking at this system and noticing it seems to fix and improve a lot of the reasons I crashed and burned at GMing D&D.

I also should clarify when I say "a good GM would do this" I didn't mean "an experienced GM would do this", but more like "a helpful GM should do this".

Since some of MindWanderer's gripes were along the lines of "how would the players know this thing in the book" and my reaction of "because you as a GM would tell it to them" was not from the perspective of being an experienced GM, it was from the perspective of being the sort of human being whose instinct in general is, if someone doesn't know something they should, but you know that something, you should be helpful and tell the other person that something so they know it too.

Likewise, my reaction to Jimeni on how to scale things up or down wasn't from the perspective of an experienced GM, it was from the perspective of being the sort of person whose instinct is to look at things and logic or math them. Game is too easy? Add more threats. Game is too hard? Remove some threats. And me saying stuff like "you can math from the scene tracker how many turns the players have to solve everything and work from there" wasn't an "experienced GM" guess, it was a "I'm the sort of person who does math to the things" guess.

So… I hope that clears things up a little? Maybe?

Yeah, basically, I think?

FWIW, my thought process was: If it's noted that abilities can potentially create mods that can persist until the end of a scene, I didn't see any particular reason why there couldn't be a thing where that scene which happens to involve creating an underwater conveyance gives every player a scene-specific ability to potentially create a mod in the form of a souped up  underwater conveyance  that grants a boost that persists until the end of that scene. It seemed like a logical enough extension to me of that rule about abilities that grant persistent mods that was specified on that page.

Especially since because it's specified straight out on the page, that means the GM doesn't have to guess to know it, and in turn the GM can pretty much just read that bit of the page word for word to the players if they want to.  So even if it doesn't seem logical… well, it doesn't have to. It's being told straight up to you anyway, so you can just use it without having to logic it.

And likewise if you still think it's just silly and illogical, you can also equally just decide you don't want to use the silly and illogical thing and it doesn't break the scene any to make that decision. So it just seemed weird to me all around from any POV I could think of that it was being presented as a flaw.

My own thoughts are that by and large it would be a good game for first time roleplayers, but could end up being difficult to run for people making the jump from more tactical RPGS like DnD or Pathfinder who are used to things being less open ended.

I would also say that I would encourage players who are stuck that they could use an overcome action using Wraith's deduction or Legacy's leadership or Tachyon's Mind over Matter to go "alright, my character takes a step back from the situation to try to figure out what is going on" to notice something like. "Oh, the spider bots are acting as if they have some kind of hive mind" or "you notice a way you can disable baron blades suit." Such hints can also be given out for free when a hero gets an overwhelming success.

Incidently, If I had to pick an RPG that would be the worst for a first time player? Nobilis. Not that its bad, I have no idea if its bad or not because I never got a chance to play it, but "godlike anthropormorphic personification" is likely not the best thing to start as if you have never roleplayed before.

So, let me see if I've got the Blade Clues straightened out...

Freedom Five #801: If a player gets an overwhelming success upon investigating a captured or destroyed robot, they see the basic concept falls in line with both Blade and Omnitron tech. If they get just a basic success, they know that the robot was built to work in amphibious environments and wasn't built by aliens. If the players fail, or don't investigate at all, they know that these robots are just the worst and that the person who built them is a jerk.

Freedom Five #802: The heroes learn absolutely nothing about the dastardly Baron, but, assuming they succeed, they do get a pet rock. A magic pet rock. Cool.

Tome of the Bizarre #86: Someone set a trap designed to ensnare a hero or group of heroes for a decent period of time, using robots and trickery. If Miss Information shows up, she probably gloats about a mysterious benefactor, and players should be informed that robots aren't something Miss Information generally uses. She must have been hired by someone who uses robots! If a player investigates the robots, they see that their construction has been shrouded in a similar way to the spider bots! The person behind this probably wanted to wrap up heroes so they couldn't interfere with an impending attack on Megalopolis!

Prime Wardens #67: The heroes encounter a large amount of Baron Blade's technology, including an cybernetic allosaurus. If you'd rather not come out and tell the player that the technology reminds them of the spider-bots, perhaps if they inspect the fallen allosaurus, they see that, although it must have been built by Baron Blade, the construction details have been hidden in a very similar way to the spiders! Also, the players lose their magical pet rock. Much sadness ensues.

Justice Comics #740: Assuming the players don't let him explode, or start punching him for no reason, Proletariat comes to and tells the assembled heroes that he saw Baron Blade alive! The GM can also tell the players that if Baron Blade had returned to his country of Mordengrad, that would have been all over international news. The only explanation is that Blade is in hiding somewhere! Could that mean that all of this is his doing?

Freedom Five #803: If the players have figured out it's Blade, great! Help the players figure out his plan is to combine technology he stole during the Oblivaeon event with the immense natural power of Akash'Flora to create robotic abominations with a nigh-unlimited source of energy. This also means that the heroes know exactly what to expect when breaking into the base and they should get bonuses and other such advantages for doing so. However, if they weren't investigating or came to some other conclusion, they get caught off guard in the confrontation in Blade's underwater base, allowing him to go first and forcing the heroes to take a good amount of damage before the fight begins in earnest.

Does all of that sound reasonable? That's sort of how I plan on running it.

I can see how it would seem that way.  I think SotM (the whole game, not just the core set) was an astonishingly solid game, both in theme/lore and mechanics.  Huge fan.  But subsequent half-baked efforts like GSF, Tactics, the lack of communication, long delays, etc. have worn the shine off for me a bit.  So I think you're right that I don't post much in the way of "GtG is so awesome!" anymore and when I do post, it's usually to point out something that's not awesome.  But it's only because I still care.  If I stop posting altogether, then that part will be gone too.

That's clear.  You also don't seem to see how anyone else could think they're real issues too, maybe?

Well, I admit it's more posts you've made like this one, which I find… offputting, to put it mildly, and not the sort of thing I'd expect from someone who respects the product or the fans.

Well, I mean, I only went to major lengths to spend my time trying to address people's concerns, a lot of which that I wrote seems to have been in turn completely glossed over or ignored by people, but, sure, make a dig at me which also glosses over and ignores what I wrote, that's really respectful and productive.

I guess we're just not viewing things through the same lens because that post is just me standing up for someone else who had expressed something besides unquestioning adoration of all things GtG and me pointing out that sometimes superfans on the forums can have a hard time modulating their response to criticism of their favorite game company because to them, everything is awesome.  That exact same situation feels eerily familiar at the moment for some reason …

Ah, I see what we have here.  I'll stop feeding it.

And that's what I find disrespectful. The idea that people who don't have an issue must be "superfans" who just hate all criticism, as opposed to people who don't have an issue because they… looked at the situation carefully and honestly legitimately didn't see an issue in that particular case. For reasons which they explained that had nothing to do with hating anything that isn't adoration.

And yes, it does seem kind of familiar. Because here, yes, I considered someone could think they're real issues… and I didn't merely disagree and leave it at that, but paid the respect of spending a lot of my time trying to explain why I disagreed. And I feel annoyed that we're even having this derail because you couldn't just accept that from me versus making a dig at me.

I guess the main problem I have is that if someone tries to run the adventures exactly as written, they will probably fail.  It's all fixable, by the GM adding some information here, tweaking some numbers there, and frequently by players coming up with something unanticipated that makes total sense, but none of that should be necessary.  An inexperienced GM, perhaps one who's so overwhelmed by a new system that they're having trouble improvising, or one who just isn't creative, or one who's used to adventure modules (like, yes, D&D) that attempt to cover all possible bases, might struggle with this.

On the other hand, an GM like Jeysie, experienced or not, who is wonderfully creative and has absolutely no qualms about taking the adventure completely off the rails if that seems like the most fun thing to do, will do just fine with adventures written this way (and I can see how D&D might be a struggle if that's your approach).

My concerns are:

1. Adventures should, when possible, be written so that a wide range of styles can be used to experience them.  As they are, they work perfectly well for the creative, improvisational types but not so well for the by-the-book types.
2. There are currently two Sentinels products.  Both of them are extremely by-the-book in design.  In the RPG, if Omnitron-X fights Plague Rat, the GM can and should simply rule that the robot is immune to infection.  In the card game, players should absolutely not do that.  There are pages and pages of rulings and examples that cover all the bizarre interactions between specific cards, which should be followed whenever possible.  Many Sentinels fans--though certainly far from all of them--will be coming into the RPG with a similar expectation.
3. The most popular tabletop role-playing games in the world are still D&D and its offshoots.  If new players have experience with one such game, it's likely to be that one, and they're going to expect to be able to run games the way D&D works.  
4. The core rulebook itself is pretty tight.  Its rules are clearly written (other than a couple of errors), the mechanics are functional, and approaching it from a very literal perspective is completely possible.  I'm still not sold on the Overcome table and how dangerous it is to attempt any sort of Overcome check that doesn't correspond to your better dice and one of your Principles, but that's a numerical tweak.  There are extensive, concrete examples for things like twists and risky actions that the players and GM can easily make use of (while also saying that being more creative is encouraged).  The adventure booklets (other than the first one, which has clearly been playtested much more) fall short here, where it's clear that if the same amount of playtesting and attention to detail had been put into them, they could have covered more of what many players are going to need.

TL;DR: It's great that the adventures work well for someone like Jeysie and her friends.  They don't work work well for me and mine, and I don't think I'm wrong in stating that there are a whole lot of Sentinels fans out there who are similar to me and mine.  And a whole lot of this stuff could have been easy fixes.

See, I honestly don't understand this thinking, because from my own experience, this is 100% necessary in literally any RPG system out there, as there is always going to be some part of an adventure, premade or otherwise, that doesn't go exactly according to plan, because players never go exactly according to plan.

The phrase "no plan ever survives contact with the enemy" can be equally applied to "no adventure ever survives contact with the players".

It's more like I accept the reality that adventures are often going to go at least partly off the rails no matter what the system because players themselves almost always go at least partly off the rails both accidentally and intentionally.

So when you say things like this, I honestly legitimately don't understand how you successfully run any D&D sessions, because D&D is extremely punishing when things don't go exactly according to plan, and in my experience as a player that is a when, not an if.

In contrast, this system seems extremely forgiving when it comes to having to ad hoc, to the point where ad hoccing is a central part of the system in the first place.

And that's part of why I've been arguing with you, because it seems weird at best to complain about sometimes having to do things in the Sentinels RPG that you not only equally have to do in other systems, but are often much harder to do in other systems, including the one you say you're familiar with.

Just like how D&D modules don't work very well for creative, improvisational types but work great for by-the-book types.

Which I think is the crux of the problem here. I honestly would have no problem if you had said something like "as someone who's really comfortable with very crunchy, by the book systems, and has a group that rarely does anything that isn't equally by the book, this doesn't feel like it's for me because there's many things here that are tricky for such players", because I'd agree, I think players more comfortable with narrative are going to have an easier time here.

But you haven't phrased it like that. You go "well, this will fail", "this isn't designed right", "well, you shouldn't have to do this", "well it should do this" as if they're objective facts and… they're not.

Edit: I guess to sum up, reading your criticisms of this system often feels like listening to someone who's well-practiced at successfully doing calculus on a regular basis complaining a new scientific process is too difficult for them because it might require them to do long division now and then. It just… doesn't compute very well in my head.

I've played a lot of D&D modules with a variety of DM's and players, many of whom were extremely creative.  As long as they all buy into the adventure hook, a well-designed adventure will cover pretty much anything they want to do.  It's perfectly possible to write things in such a way as to appeal to both styles of play, and yeah, I think if something fails to do either, it's objectively bad.

Dude, if your group honestly has never ever done anything ever that has required even the tiniest bit of improvisation from a GM, that is not a sign that you play well-designed adventures, that is a sign that you somehow have managed to live in the roleplaying equivalent of Magical Christmas Land. Which is kind of awe-inspiring, but also… not very common, to put it mildly.

In my group, it would literally impossible for any adventure to ever account for everything we could normally think up, let alone some of our more unusual ideas. (Heck, it would be pretty hard for any adventure to account for anything I could think up, and I'm pretty boring and uncreative compared to most people. I have personally accidentally derailed part of a plot on at least two occasions I can remember offhand.)

So I'm honestly pretty interested in a system which is clearly aware of one area that is hard in many current systems (trying to ad hoc when players invariably do what you didn't expect) and makes it easier to cope with. Conversely, I find it… odd that you're unhappy with that.

Scratch my previous analogy, it feels more like seeing someone who can do quadratic algebra easily by hand complaining someone is making life difficult by handing them a graphing calculator.

I'd just kind of like to point out to Spiff if he's reading this that I am not the one outright saying,  "Yeah I think my subjective opinion is objective fact."

I mean, I do agree that it's possible to do so. But I also think that one, it's extremely rare for an adventure to do so, and two, I feel it says absolutely nothing at all bad about an adventure's quality if doesn't do so. Since to me the criteria is "does the adventure's playstyle fit the overall system's playstyle"? A module for a crunch heavy system should fit a crunch-heavy playstyle, and conversely a narrative-heavy system's module should fit a narrative-heavy playstyle. It's nice if a module geared for one type of system happens to also work for a different playstyle, but it's icing on the cake, not a requirement to keep a module from being "bad".

I feel like we're going into hyperbole land here.  Improvisation is fine.  And a good GM will be able to improvise when player, inevitably go off the rails.  And sure, my players do that all the time.  And sure, no module will be able to cover every random thing every player will ever throw at it.  There will always be cases where someone decides to deliberately insult an NPC who has critical information, or decides that a plot macguffin is inconsequential, or totally ignores my hints that attacking the monster way over their level is a much worse idea than trying to talk to it.  GM's do have to deal with this and try to swerve the plot back on the rails.

But the module should attempt to cover probable scenarios in a reasonable way.  Providing some suggestions for if the heroes try to subdue Haka would be an improvement.  Changing the stats for Proletariat so he could actually be fought would be an improvement; conversely, omitting his stats entirely and describing how attacking him will have Obviously Bad Consequences would be an improvement.  Providing more non-technological suggestions for clearing obstacles would be an improvement.  For heaven's sake, including variable statistics so that the encounters scale with the number of heroes would be a vast improvement.  Just omitting stuff that could make the adventures easier for anyone to run serves no purpose.

Yes. And so not only is this module not bad for not doing that, but I give it props for existing in a system where it's appears to be much easier to adapt to any random thing a player might throw at it.

Kind of like how the book gives suggestions like how any attempt to attack her reduces the effectiveness of attempts to talk her down?

Kind of like how the opening narration describes how there's now hundreds of mindless Proletariats clogging everything precisely because Fanatic decided to attack him?

Kind of like how multiple times the books note suggestions of non-technological suggestions for clearing obstacles, in those cases where the obstacles aren't explicitly technological?

So, it's not possible to just omit a few minions or add a few twists?

Dude, one of your complaints said a module was so horribly designed because it didn't give names to a family when in the context of that module even literally just referring to them as "the parent, the other parent, and the kid" would work just fine.

If I come off as thinking you never do even the tiniest bit of really easy improvisation, it's because you are literally sitting here frequently saying a scene is "objectively" broken and totally impossible for anyone to play because you might possibly have to do the tinest bit of really easy improvisation.

Like, I'm done, it's kinda clear you're just literally grasping for any slight reason to dislike the system, and that no amount of what I say is going to dissuade you from the practice (and apparently is not going to dissuade others from approving of that attitude).

And if they have no interest in talking her down?

Sure.   And if they'd left it at that, great.   But then they gave him stats for after you've reduced the number of Proletariats to one.  The presence of those stats imply that fighting him is a viable option, and with those stats, it's not.

Yes!  Except it should do that every time.

Of course it's possible!  Why didn't they say so?

Again, hyperbole.  The family lacking names and identities was an omission, but it's not "horrible design."  None of these mean a scene is "broken" or "impossible to play."  They're just much harder work than they need to be.

And I don't dislike the system.  The system has a lot of potential, and will have more when it's been cleaned up and all the stuff that was supposed to be in there is actually in there.  And Issue #1 is fine.  Issue #2 is OK, too–there are a few oddities in places that could have used a tad more proofreading, but it seems pretty solid.  It's only the rest of the issues that I have concerns with.

Fercrissake, Jeysie, why are you so invested in proving MindWanderer wrong?  He's just expressing an opinion.  It can be right from his point of view same as yours is right from your point of view.

Jeysie, I think it should also be said that I would certainly PLAY a game (or 6) of the Sentinals RPG, but that, based on the feedback discussed in this thread, I would not try to DM it. Having never played an RPG before, I was already nervous to try to DM one, and now it sounds like it's out of my wheelhouse. I obviously don't have the starter kit, but it doesn't sound like it gives very good instructions about what is and is not allowed for a DM to do (or even what the ROLE of that person is, since as an extreme newbie, I've had to learn through others' experiences on this forum. I had never heard the term DM before this product was announced.). This was a bit of an ignored critique when "playtesting" first began on this game and I read a document that was basically a foreign language to me.

As someone who has played systems with similar aesthetics, it sounds like you have an awesome skill at your disposal to really understand what the intention is behind a certain written section of text in the kit and utilize it to tell a good story, which is awesome! I want to play with YOU, haha! I'd bet you'd have no problem with steering me in the right direction in a game. But, I would definitely have challenges with doing that and so I won't be purchasing the kit for that reason. It doesn't make me stupid and it doesn't mean I can't read or even that I'm not creative enough...it just means that I need firmer bounderies and guidelines when I'm being told to do something. As the person in my group that buys all the games and teaches them (and quite frankly, as members of these forums, I imagine that most of us are this person), I would naturally fall into the DM role...and now I know I don't want that and would likely not make it an appealing experience for those around me the way that you might.

I almost wish that, as it is a "Starter Kit," it had been released online for free so that ALL people could get a taste of the system and I could read some of these interactions myself to see how a lowly noob like me interprets them. Hopefully when the Kickstarter begins there will be a document that I can peruse.

.

At the risk of jumping into the bonfire here, I'm going to toss in a few observations, coming from the perspective of a fellow RPG designer.

I have no issue with Proletariat having stats in the game.  In truth, I think that Haka, Tempest, Anubis, Visionary and Fanatic should all have stat blocks similar to that of Proletariat, to better delineate their mechanical abilities as NPCs.  And, given that, I think they should have been statted up as just that:  as NPCs.  NPCs don't, and shouldn't, follow the exact same format as PCs in this system, so the inclusion of their stats can and should absolutely look different than their stats as PCs in the forthcoming corebook.

There are, absolutely, points within the adventures that could stand to be more specific in the myriad approaches that players could take to succeed in a given scene.  Stats for Haka, for instance, would come in awfully handy, should the group decide to wrestle her into submission, rather than simply trying to talk her down.  Same with Fanatic in the nuclear plant.  Why couldn't Bunker simply "External Combustion" his way through the legion of Proletariats, burning them in one giant conflagration of clones, clearing the way?  While morbid, that's just a single example of a way--outside of the scenario as written--to succeed in that given encounter.  However, the text necessary to understand that Proletariat is a roadblock, not an adversary, isn't called out or made specifically noted. 

A sidebar here would have done a lot of good:  "Attacking Proletariat:  Your players, upon seeing an old foe like Proletariat, might immediately leap to the attack.  If they do, feel free to enter combat--we've included stats for Proletariat above, if you need them.  However, the mass of clones here doesn't actively attack any Hero unless they've been attacked, and really serve as more of an environmental hazard than an active enemy.  If your players do fight the clones, be sure to narrate the effects of both their attacks--which create more clones--and the fact that the other clones don't even seem to recognize they're being attacked.  Your players may, at that point, decide upon a route other than violence."  That's a single paragraph, but it could go a long way towards the insinuation that, "Hey, there's a better way to go than knives and guns here..."  But, as I'll get into below, space is at a premium...

There are, absolutely, points within the adventures that are 'railroady' in terms of their solution.  I think about the 'chase' through the Egyptian tomb/maze, which is abstracted to the point where there's an entire thread already devoted to how to run that specific scenario, much of which comes down to "handwave it all".  The end confrontation with Blade suffers from timing issues, given the constraints of the GYRO scene tracker mechanic.  

But--and this in no way is meant to be an apology for GtG or Critical Hits--we are looking at an incomplete rules-set here.  Any quickstart is exactly that; incomplete, basic rules.  It may well be--and probably is, truth be told--that the rules for "how to scale encounters, based on player number" is in the GMing chapter of the corebook.  It's not exactly the sort of thing that you, as a writer or a layout guru, try to cram into the 24 page booklet that's going in your quickstart.  It's not essential information to playing the system or running the game; yes, it's useful, but it's not critical.  It gets left out.  Same goes for things like, "how do I design a montage scene?" or "how do I structure this chase throughout the city?"  What we've been given here is a glimpse of what the game is like, a few iconic characters to examine, and a few scenarios within which to play.  No more, no less.

So when MindWanderer notes that--and I'm totally paraphrasing here, so don't come at me with misquotations--there's not enough detail here and we don't have an idea of how to manipulate these encounters to get around the railroaded authorial intent, he's right.  But he also needs to be patient, because that level of detail isn't possible in the type of product currently released.  That sort of granular information has to come in a heftier book.  To me, that argument is like cracking open the Basic Red Box D&D and asking "Well, what if I want to grapple this guy?  Where are the rules for disarm?  This is broken..."  As to the argument surrounding "There's stats there; that implies that we should fight"--that's a false association; only the GM can even see those stats.  To the players, Proletariat is as the GM presents him:  a viable foe, a mindless nuisence, a mass of writhing rubble, or somewhere in between.  Saying that the mere presence of a stat block implies him as an adversary insinuates that the GM literally isn't reading the module, only fishing for stats, which should rarely if ever be the case.

However, with Jeysie retorts with--again, totally paraphrasing; no hate towards either of you at all--well, you just need to interpret the rules as a GM and be creative...he's right.  But, with so many players reaching this RPG through the card game--some of whom have already mentioned limited to no playing or GMing experience--the new players have a right to want guidelines for HOW to be flexible and what they can offer a player:  what makes a good Twist or complication, what goes into a dynamic encounter, and what should go in a stat block.  While many of those details cannot--by necessity--go in a quickstart guide, guidance should be found here, especially if this is to be viewed as an intro-level piece.  That said, the insinuation that "What, aren't you creative enough to think on your own?" certainly hasn't endeared many to your viewpoint, despite the fact that I actually agree with nearly everything you've actively argued as a positive within the text.

TL;DR -- Jeysie and MindWanderer, you're both right, but you're coming at each side in a manner that accentuates the axact same fault.  Yes, there should have been more detail about how to GM in a narrative style, but that's not the sort of thing you can really put in a 24 page quickstart guide; I have no doubts that it's going to be covered much more deeply in the corebook, not that it helps now.  Yes, there are certain encounters that were dealt with in a railroad-y or an unwieldy manner; likely, that comes from the fact that with a limited page count, you can only cover so many contingencies.  No plan survives contact with the players; that's the first rule of GMing.  

Honestly, it sounds like the argument being made across the board is, "Why isn't X here?".  If every X was in the starter kit, it wouldn't be a starter kit--it'd be the corebook itself.  And yes, for an intro-level product, the starter kit should have included some additional advice on "What if your players do THIS?", but with word count at a premium, something has to go on the chopping block.  When you're trying to introduce a whole new mechanical system, explaing how powers and qualities and the like work, that doesn't always leave enough space for 'fluffy' items like GM advice.  It sucks, but it's a reality of publishing.  

I love you both, (you too, Spiff!); have a good holiday, if I don't get a chance to write back.

Warning: Massive post incoming. Apologies. :)

Having read the Starter Kit and all of this long thread, my thoughts:

MindWanderer: Your criticisms are valid. There is much that must be extrapolated if you come from the crunchier RPG systems where everything is accounted for via a rule. D&D is rife with rules, and every rule must be followed or players cry foul because that's not what the rules say, and the rules are binding! I know this from my years running 3.Xe through the RPGA back in the day, where min/maxxers and power gamers ruled the roost, and every splatbook was considered fair game. Those adventures were railroad one-track plots, where the slightest deviation from the narrative would result in disaster for the group, and the amount of wiggle room for player ingenuity was very narrow indeed. Follow the adventure plot from point A to B to C all the way through, and players were lead by the nose by the adventure being blatant in spelling out every little plot thread with great big bold signs that lit up like Christmas trees.

Great Hera, did I hate those days.

For every one truly creative player or gamemaster I encountered back then, there were easily 25 to 30 power gaming munchkins who would rather let the dice and stats do all the talking, and adventure design revolved entirely around the formulaic crunch and rules because that's what players expected to interact with. The catch phrase of "roll-players instead of role-players" applied heavily here.

I think a lot of the current RPG game experience is overshadowed by this great beast called D&D, and that any system that doesn't use rules crunch so extensively is treated as bad design instinctually instead of just another play experience.

I gave up on D&D and went in search for something better suited for telling stories. Found Savage Worlds Deluxe (a current favorite with my group and a great compromise between crunch and narrative playstyle), Fiasco (yes, there is dice rolling, but the actual game is entirely narrative driven and immensely satisfying when played with players who like telling group stories), Call of Cthulhu (The system reads a lot heavier than it plays, in that the math/crunch is all mainly handled by the players and the gamemaster is largely free to facillitate a great story), Dread (extremely unique system that is so light on crunch, yet the crunch really ratchets up the tension as the story progresses, which is super awesome if you like telling scary horror stories), Lamentations of the Flame Princess (old school fantasy plus heavy metal Twilght Zone using NSFW adult situations and themes, as well as serious weird fiction? Yes, please! Some crunch but only when really needed, since most of the material is just so out there and different from everything else on the market) and now the Sentinel Comics RPG, which I think achieves the goal of giving the players all the crunch they need to support what they want to do by forcing them to first describe what they want to do and then apply the crunch to determine how to make it happen in game mechanics.

As an experienced gamemaster, my entire goal over the years has been to find a system that allows for fun, compelling stories that involve thrilling action on the behalf of the players, with very little prep time required of me to make that story come to life. Twenty to thirty pages explaining how the mechanics work is about all I have the time and patience to read these days when it comes to a new system. If I can't explain that system to new players in 15 minutes or less, along with giving them a great theme to hook them into wanting to play the system, then that system gets shelved pretty quick. The Sentinels RPG has a great continuity from which to draw ideas, the rules are super easy to explain, and the adventures are set up to allow the gamemaster to do the same thing as the players, i.e. describe what they want to add, then use the rules crunch to make it happen in game mechanics.

Are there details that seem to be omitted? Coming from that heavy D&D crunch grognard background, the old RPGA judge/gamemaster in me is screaming right alongside MindWanderer. Who let this go to print? This is a big pile of threads and no actual details! Why give stats for something you aren't supposed to fight? The only reason for stats to be put in the adventure is for the gamemaster to run a combat encounter with them! It's so broken! Players can't possibly win! Arrghh! Gripes! Fist waving in GTG's general direction! Don't they know what they're supposed to be doing?!? Terrible design! Grrr!

But! But, that is the old way of doing things and this system seems to want to break different ground with a unique system that encourages a different way of playing. One where the players and the gamemaster are encouraged to be more creative, let go of the D&D rules safety blanket, and trust that they can create a super awesome comic book story without needing all that crunch. And no slight towards Champion, but a roleplaying game where you are a comic book superhero needs the system to be light enough to fly in order to be able to tell those super awesome comic book stories. The card game already has all the crunch for people looking for crunch. That system already exists, where you get to be a Sentinel Comics superhero and use crunchy rules to beat up the bad guy.

This RPG is a different experience than that, because eventually you will be able to create your own Sentinel Comics superhero and tell your own stories. That is something that is very difficult to do in the card game. You can do it, but that's a lot of time spent designing a deck of cards that will work within that crunchy playset.

I can understand someone coming in expecting everything to be crunchy details and guide you by the nose, but it honestly looks like Christopher and Co are trying to create something new and different from what has come before. Finding the right balance of which details are important to include in a roleplaying adventure and which are not so important appears to be a learning process right now. More than likely they will be learning a great deal from us here on the forums, and they will take MindWanderer's concerns into consideration moving forward. I don't expect they will completely rewrite the Starter Kit, but then we're talking about a company that completely overhauled the launch product that started all this back in 2011. So maybe they'll revisit it in the future? PDFs are super easy to revise and release to a customer base, given that a proper structure is put in place to allow redownloading of purchased digital content.

Anyway, I'm digressing a bit...

The adventures included in the Starter Kit are... fairly loose in presentation. Is this a bad thing? For me, as an experienced gamemaster looking for a narrative based system that isn't all about rules and crunch dictating what players can and cannot do, I don't think it is. The adventures are meant to give gamemasters new to this system something to go on, teaching how a gamemaster for Sentinel Comics RPG can run a game session. In that regard, I think they're adequate in achieving that goal. There is an inherent flaw to every published adventure out there no matter what RPG system, in that they are written with a certain playgroup in mind, and this means that every adventure by its nature and design has to be tailored and adjusted to fit your specific playgroup. I feel these adventures were written with all six of the characters intended to be used, even if one or two players has to double up to get them all in, but at the same time the very system--the crunch itself--is set up to accomodate a fluctuation in numbers, which in turn means the adventures are probably the closest to being useable straight out of the kit no matter who is playing. That's exciting to think about from a design perspective.

The missing details and the impossible stats included seem more like a tease of what's to come for a gamemaster when the full core rulebook comes out. After all, this is a product meant to get you interested in learning more about the system and what potential it has for your gaming group. Is Proletariat completely unbeatable? Maybe. But the story being told by the adventure says the point isn't to "beat" Proletariat. It's to save him. And isn't that really what being a superhero means at the very core of the idea?

Haka is meant to be impossible to beat in a fight, and at a table with six players it is hoped that someone will get the idea that fighting her isn't a good idea. But what if they don't? What if they decide this person needs to be slapped down? Well, the gamemaster has a few options. Go ahead and narrate the fight, let the players roll dice and then describe how Haka easily tosses the heroes around like rag dolls while gunning for Tempest. What's the end result here, from a story perspective? Forget rules and stats because that's not what's important to the story here. What's important is that the heroes figure out how to save Tempest before Haka beats the snot outta him, which is what happens when that scene tracker counts down to zero. I would expect a few rounds of the gamemaster not rolling anything and describing the incredible ease with which they are losing the fight to this woman who vaguely reminds them of their missing friend would be enough for the players to say, okay, this isn't working, brute force clearly isn't the right choice, time to try something else. Even going so far as to have Tempest avoiding Haka's attacks early on and trying to talk her down or explain how he doesn't know her at all might get the idea across to the heroes that this is a case of mistaken identity. Sure, the adventure doesn't spell it out and it doesn't give stats for Haka, or for Fanatic who is pretty much doing the same thing, but in examining the base crunch of the system, if it did so, then it would be robbing the gamemaster of having any impact on the story being told. And the gamemaster is just as important to the storytelling equation as the players. They should have fun too. So my take on these missing details is not one of bad design but of supporting the core design of the game, that being that everyone is trying to tell a super awesome comic book hero story. The gamemaster gets to play too, but not like in other roleplaying games where they are the keeper of the stats and crunch. Here, they can bring their own creativity to the session without it all being dictated to them by the designers.

Should there be stats for Haka and Fanatic and Tempest and all the other heroes the players encounter? Maybe, maybe not. I see it as a deliberate choice by the designers to not include them, because ultimately the session isn't about their stats. It's about the players being superheroes, and superheroes need someone to save and someone to beat up, and they need to figure out when one or the other applies in a given situation. When the heroes first encounter Proletariat by the hundreds, they're completely mindless and present no real threat. It's only when the players actually explore the plant and find out that Fanatic is the real problem here that anything can start to be resolved. When/If Proletariat recovers, he's too exhausted to fight anyone, doesn't really want to stick around, and leaves pretty much after telling the heroes he saw Baron Blade arrive at the plant. The heroes really have no reason to want to attack him when he is grateful for them rescuing him in the first place.

Fanatic is a friend to the heroes, and it should be clear to them that something is wrong with her emotionally. But let's say the heroes go into attack mode and decide they need to fight her. Well, the gamemaster could just waste a few rounds not rolling dice and having Fanatic give warnings to not get involved, like it says in the adventure. But this is another chance for the gamemaster to interact and play with the players instead of just reading stats and rolling dice. What's the ultimate story outcome here if the heroes do nothing but fight Fanatic? The plant explodes. Proletariat pops back into one body, everyone is knocked unconscious, Fanatic flies away, and the heroes don't look so good going into the next adventure. Surely the heroes will come up with a different strategy before that happens, yes?

So, now that I've written that whole novel that no one will want to read, here's where I feel the Starter Kit fails:

First, the PDFs aren't bookmarked. Being able to click page numbers in the Table of Contents to navigate the document makes for a better digital resource. Or maybe they are and I don't have the feature turned on. I don't know. But it's a super handy feature in other digital gaming resource files, so it'd be nice if that were added to future products.

Second, I played the demo at Gen Con, which consisted of the first adventure, and it was run by Philippe-Antoine Ménard, which is probably about as high up on the design chain as one can get short of having Christopher running the game. There is a key element that Phillippe-Antoine used during that demo that isn't discussed at all in the Starter Kit, and seems to me to be absolutely crucial for the players to understand what exactly they are supposed to do in a given scene.

That element is index cards. Let me explain.

Phillippe-Antoine started the game by describing the devastation in Megalopolis, then asked each of us what we wanted to do to help with the recovery efforts, specifically asking where we were in the city, and encouraging partnerships when it made sense. He would then write down the name of that location on an index card and put it out in front of us on the table. Then when the spider bots attacked, he wrote "Objective: Defeat the Spider Bots" with a check mark box next to it on another index card, and wrote "d6" for each spider bot on each location index card (3 per player). All of this told us players exactly what we needed to do, how many bots there were, and where they were located. Commence battle, where Phillipe-Antoine crossed out a "d6" every time a spider bot in that location was destroyed. Once all the spider bots were destroyed, he checked the box on the Defeat the Spider Bots card. High fives all around.

Next, Unity examined the bots and found the mixture of code. She also got high enough to merit knowing they all worked together via a particular wavelength frequency that was controlling them via a hive mind setup. Interesting information...

Players get the distress call at Akash'Flora from Argent Adept. Off the heroes zoom! Phillipe-Antoine begins laying out more index cards: "Objective: Defeat the Spider Mothership" with its "d10" marked, and telling us how it's laying eggs at a rapid rate, which are turning into harvesters that crawl onto the tree; "Objective: Find the Signal Source" with no boxes, representing the information we learned about the bots and how they are all being controlled from somewhere; "Objective: Stop the Harvesters" with no boxes, and telling us about the vast horde of bots crawling all over the tree and how there are far too many for us to pick off individually; "Objective: Rescue the Human Shields" with the -2 penalty written out, and telling us that they are being used to protect the harvesters, drawing two boxes representing the effort required to rescue some and then all of the civilians; "Objective: Defeat the Armored Spider Bot Snipers" with their "d6" numbers, and telling us how they've found strategic places to web up and offer superior tactical fire on those trying to interfere with the harvesters; "Objective: Defeat the Roaming Spider Bots" with their "d6" numbers, telling us about how there are some wandering bots acting like soldiers; and finally, "Objective: Rescue Argent Adept" adding a check box and writing "Find Argent Adept" next to it, while saying we heroes know Argent Adept is in trouble but have no idea where he is within the chaos that is happening.

As those index cards kept coming out, the enormity of the problem in front of us heroes became clear. Staring at that table top littered with all those objectives made the scene seem overwhelming. Yet one by one, we each took on a challenge and began earning checkmarks on those objectives. Unity managed to hack a spider bot, locate the transmitter on the Mothership, and even had the spider bot transform into a blinking "weak spot" identifying exactly where we needed to hit the Mothership to knock out all the spider bots in one go. As we uncovered new information in the scene, Phillipe-Antoine added check boxes, such as once Argent Adept was found and checked off, a new box was added with "Save him without further injuries" next to it. When that happened, he added the optional check box, "Stabilize him", which added to the tension of the scene as we realized we weren't sure when an objective would be entirely complete.

The index cards served a vital play experience purpose in focusing the attention of the players on what their objectives were, using language that gave a subtle clue as to what strategy would work best. In this aspect, the Starter Kit fails the new gamemaster as well as the experienced one, as I feel this element to be absolutely necessary to the play experience. It communicates a massive amount of information in a very organized fashion, and facilitates the gameplay by giving the players just enough guidance for such an open narrative system.

Just adding an index card that says "Objective: Get past the Proletariats!" or "Objective: Find Fanatic" and slowly revealing the new check boxes one by one as in saving Argent Adept above, is enough to get players into the swing of what they actually need to do. It was this element of the demo that most reminded me of the card game since it so clearly showed what was going on in the story.

Without explaining this index card element, the Starter Kit fumbles in telling a more crunchy or punchy based game group what they need to do or how to keep track of what's going on. The game can be played without this index card element and the solutions could be happened upon more narratively, but I wouldn't recommend it starting out unless you have a group that can handle that much freedom. For a first time experience of the system, with the Starter Kit as the only exposure to the game, then not having this index card element makes the game more challenging to run and play overall, and can lead to a lot of the frustration as expressed by MindWanderer as regards "What if my group just wants to fight everything?" With the index card element there with a check box that says, "Talk down Fanatic from her murderous rage" or something similar, the group will start understanding that punching everything isn't the only answer, and that in turn can help inform your choice of words when filling out the index cards in future encounters. You could use "Talk down" or just use exactly what's listed in the adventure--"Get Fanatic to stop fighting long enough to actually listen to you".

When I start to look at the adventures with the index card element in mind, everything falls into place for me. I get what the creators are trying to accomplish and why the adventures are written the way they are. That this element is not discussed or shown in the Gameplay Guide nor in any of the adventures is puzzling to me as it feels so integral to the experience and how to actually run the adventures. It could be one of those "little details" that is so insidious in the design and playtest phase that it was hiding in plain sight so to speak, and it was just taken for granted that it would be understood without needing to explain it. Or maybe that's how they found to best run the game and figured it was just a gamemaster trick to help run it and did not actually consider it a part of the system. I can't really imagine playing the Starter Kit without it, nor could I imagine a gamemaster designing their own scenes without using it.

So yeah. Index cards. Use 'em. The entire kit cleans up a bunch when you do. :)

This is the crux of what I've been trying to get at all along, that MindWanderer needed to stop saying that something was objectively and universally bad when the truth was it simply just didn't cater 100% to their specific playstyle and that's OK if obviously and admittedly unfortunate for MindWanderer.

I'll start this by stating that I am neither a newbie player or GM, having started with D&D back in 77 and Champions in 81, not to mention a wide variety of other games along the way. I've run games at cons for people who have either not played the game I'm running, or even not played RPGs at all, so I've learned some things about how to present new ideas and make them appealing.

Jeysie, I sincerely recommend you take a step back and re-read what you've written. The attitude that comes through from your words to me, and obviously to others, can be summed up as "I don't have a problem with this so I don't see why you should. And if you do, it's your fault for not being a good GM/player like me." Hopefully you can see how an approach like that would not be very helpful to folks who are having problems with the game.

The Sentinels RPG as presented in the Starter Kit has a few core concepts that represent a distinct paradigm shift from traditional games. That doesn't make the game bad, but it does make the game different and introduce a learning curve that new players will have to overcome in the hope of enjoying it and having fun (and having fun is the main reason we do this).

Don't dismiss or belittle those who may be struggling on that curve. And if you don't see the curve, then at least accept the fact that your perception is not the only valid one and that you may not be best suited at addressing their issues.

I'm still reading through the kit, but I see some of the issues MindWanderer has brought up, and do look forward to hearing how others have dealt with them.

Edit: I caught twoeyedjacks's post after posting this, and if the forum board had a "Like" feature, he'd get a truckload from me. :-)

That's exactly the sort of thing I was talkng about. the index card concept is genius and goes a long way to make the game more understandable and appealing to new players. Thanks for the tip, sir!

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Well, I tried.

I loved twoeyedjacks's post too.  The index card trick sounds perfect, adding just enough structure to keep the players focused while still allowing for the loose style this game is obviously going for.

FWIW, I think stats for Proletariat and anyone else the players encounter should be included if for no other reason than if a player wanted to make their own adventure later which included Proletariat, they could refer back to the published stats to do it.  From that point of view, each time you include stats in an adventure isn't just about whether it's appropriate for the fight at hand, it's about en-awesomening future possibilities.  I used to do that all the time with Marvel Superheroes adventures -- whether or not the heroes actually punched Kingpin, the next time I made my own adventure wherein Daredevil got into a wrestling match with ol' Wilson, I had what I needed.

Oof. This whole thread seems to be getting bogged down with personal attacks and disrespect…
I know people have expressed different viewpoints, but there comes a point where the opinions of others have to be accepted and I find it unlikely that the continuation of the conversation is going to be a wholesome or pleasant experience for anyone.
So can we get back to sharing experiences about an RPG which nobody owns yet or has full knowledge of? Sure the Starter Kit has some apparent flaws, but until we get the rulebook, I don’t think we can be absolutely sure of the RPG’s quality one way or the other.

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Some off the top of my head of what I was trying to say more or less this entire time:

1. I feel like the system takes a lot of things me and my group struggled with during our time playing D&D and makes an attempt to fix them. It looks like it does a good job of that, though that comes from reading through it and not getting to play it yet.

2. The game system is definitely geared more towards the freeform side of things despite having a fair bit more crunch than the average freeform game. I agree therefore with the idea that freeform players will probably have an easier time sliding in (since the dice system looks pretty simple), while crunch players will have to adjust their mindsets more significantly if they want to give it a go.

As someone with a sort of hybrid group which was often trying to do a lot of narrative in the d20 system yet was too wary of trying to adjucate via fiat rather than dice, I can see how this system could address a lot of the issues we had with combat, though conversely having our skill-heavy play be condensed into Overcome checks + narrative would still require some mindset switching.

3. Considering having to think up an overall structured plot and tons of stats on the fly was a big chunk of why my attempt to GM went south, I can see how this adventure and system would do a lot to solve those areas I struggled with.

4. To follow from that, this system seems to be a lot more forgiving any time you need to wing it, because it's already a lot more ad hoc to begin with, and speaking as my own not-that-great-at-being-creative self, I feel "winging it" is by far the hardest skill to acquire as a GM, so I feel anything that helps with that is a huge plus.

Edit:

And I will also be fair to everyone who wants me to look at MindWanderer's POV and I will say it seems boil down to an issue of clashing axioms.

MindWanderer seems to RP with a pretty by-the-book group whose creativity falls within a definite finite and reasonable set of parameters.

My RP experience in the past thus far has been with a group that was, to put it straightforwardly, a bunch of eccentric oddballs.

So MindWanderer seems to have strong expectations of an adventure and system that accounts for every reasonable variable choice/outcome and docks heavily for adventures and systems that don't provide that. Conversely they put little to no real value on the ability to ad hoc because they rarely need it.

Meanwhile, I am fairly certain nothing short of a quantum-level AI could anticipate what my group could come up with, so I don't place as much priority on an adventure accounting for everything in detail so long as it gives a good outline and a general idea of what needs to happen and some general ideas on ways to get back on track if it doesn't. Conversely, I value strongly and grant points for any system that makes dealing with unexpected things on the fly easier to do.

So we were stuck because they're criticizing how the adventure doesn't give enough detail for what their group needs, and I was saying how I think the adventure gives enough detail for my group's needs considering we're probably just going to do something totally weird anyway and so more relevantly to us it also gives enough flexibility for what my group needs.

We were also stuck in that they were like, "It's unreasonable to expect a GM to ever need to paper over anything" and I was like "It's unreasonable to expect that a GM will never need to paper over anything" because we are both right considering our own personal experiences.

So hooray for "competing access needs", as some of the jargon goes.

@twoeyedjack -- you know, that index card idea is so good it might be worth posting it separately in a new "Pro tip: use index cards" topic so that people who never made it all the way through this conversation can get it.  Seems like it could really help some people.

Thanks everyone for your viewpoints.  I know the developers are keeping an eye on these topics and weighing all opinions in order to try to satisfy as many people as possible.

twoeyedjack: That index card thing is fascinating, as it fundamenally changes the way players will look at things.  It's actually an extremely "crunchy" solution, the sort of thing I've only ever seen before in video games (which have very rigid success criteria and literally zero room for improvisation regarding them).  If the GM writes "Convince Haka to stand down" on an index card, attacking her isn't even going to occur to them, and they'd know instantly it would be a bad idea.  If an objective is named "Pile of Proletariats," they'll know they're done when there's just one Proletariat left (plus all the check boxes would be checked).  Similarly, when I saw the "Locating and saving Argent Adept" in the book, I wondered whether that would even occur to players on their own (and in the Play Better podcast, it did not), but if you write it down and show it to them, then they know.

I agree with Spiff: the topic of index cards and their effect on gameplay totally deserves its own topic.  Using them eliminates a lot of my concerns, but at the cost of verisimilitude.

PlatinumWarlock: I dunno.  Clearly the core rulebook is incomplete, although I anticipate that it's only missing the creation rules, setting information, and the like.  I expect all the gameplay rules are there (minus the stuff they play forgot to write down).

However, the adventure modules should be complete.  To take scaling as an example, clearly they had some idea that scaling needed to take place.  Issue #1 is perfectly adequately scaled, since it's nearly all minions and each group has one minion per hero.  I would probably take an extra step and scale the lieutenant down to a starting d8 for two or three heroes, and maybe to a d12 for six heroes, but it's close enough.  But the later adventures, #6 in particular, don't scale very much at all.  Even if the core rulebook has a section on how to build combat encounters to be an appropriate challenge for the number of heroes, for a GM to make use of that when playing a module, they'd have to use those rules to reverse-engineer the existing encounters, figure out how many heroes they were designed for, and then add, subtract, strengthen, or weaken the enemies (or add or remove required Overcomes) to re-scale them.  That's a whole lot of work (which needs to be done in preparation, not at the table) when the module could have simply said that Baron Blade's HP = 30 + 10/hero, for instance.

Agreed; there seem to be simple solutions which could aid with the scaling which probably should have been included.

I can't help but note that the three adventures that seem to be the best put-togther (1, 2, and 6) are written by Christopher and Philippe, while the three that seem to have bigger issues in scaling, coherency, and overall formatting (3, 4, and 5) are written by Christopher and Clark.  Perhaps there's a "same page" issue between Phillipe and Clark that needs to be ironed out, possibly within the context of "Here's how we choose whose stats to present" and "Here's what we do to scale encounters, based on player count."

Index cards are a good idea, but again–that falls under the sort of GMing advice that would be perfect for a GMing chapter in a corebook, but wouldn't likely appear in a quick-start guide, simply due to lack of space.  I certainly hope that appears as a sidebar somewhere along the line, if not a section unto itself.

I do appreciate the measured, thought-out response.  Thank you for helping to de-escalate the thread and keep things productive!

Y’all done got me all misty-eyed. Shucks, just trying to help. snortsniffle

I usually don’t get involved because I never know how my stupid long posts will be received. I don’t want to be part of hurting feelings, since text is tough as a communication medium. It doesn’t have the verbal and visual nuances that can communicate more meaning.

I see MindWanderer and Jeysie as both having valid points, and figured maybe I’d try to understand MindWanderer’s point of view. I’m already more on the Jeysie side of things as far as looking for a more narrative driven system, and I’m super excited about the Sentinels RPG system since it runs so well. Without the index card element being explained in the starter kit, though, I was puzzled why folks were having trouble with it. That’s when I actually realized that index cards aren’t mentioned at all, and I already had the honor and pleasure of sitting at Phillipe-Antoine’s table, giving me a first hand experience with the index cards, and it never occurred to me to even look for it in the kit. I read the adventures with the added context of that play experience, and it all made sense to me.

I’m really glad I could help. And yes, it is a good idea to make it its own pro tip thread. I’m typing on my phone right now, though, so once I have my laptop in front of me I will do just that, if it means it will be helpful to the cause!

Bot-tastic!

You said a lot of stuff I meant to say just in a way better way than I said it, so I'm really grateful.

While I appreciate the narrative stuff tons, my love is particularly for a system that will break far less when any of the lovable loons in my group do something unexpected, with that being a nice side effect of the more narrative approach.

Like to give an example: One of the most memorable moments in my d20 group was when one of the players decided they were going to push a couple crates of bottles of soda onto an enemy below. It took the poor DM literally a good half-hour of combing through various d20 rulebooks to try to figure out how to adjudicate it, including some of us helpfully looking up how much a couple crates of soda should weigh.

But in contrast, in this system, near as I can tell, you could pretty much handle that as a risky action, with it taking about a couple minutes to throw together the appropriate three dice, and then I'm wagering it probably would take much less than another 28 minutes to come up with a reasonable narration and minor twist.

That's why I felt a little put out when people accused me of being elitist in saying stuff seemed easier to figure out here, when my metric for saying stuff seems easier was looking back at particularly gameplay-halting things my group's players did in d20, and then looking them up in this system to see how this one compares. And generally my perception was "It would be way less of a PITA here, at the price of having to put a little more work into coming up with narrative stuff."

And as someone whose sense of direction is abysmal at best, I appreciate that the combat seems to be far less reliant on precise position, as opposed to my days of old staring forlornly at the GameTable map on the screen in confusion and finally saying "guys I give up, can someone just tell me what direction I should go in to attack whatever annoying orc lackey is the closest to being dead"?

I'm not convinced that the scaling is as necessary as some in this thread.  All the adventure modules from my youth said right up front something like, "for 3-4 characters levels 8-10".  As long as it's stated on the cover how many characters the adventure is designed for then bringing fewer or more than that is on the gamers, not the adventure writer.  If that kind of guidance isn't given so that the players can't know how many characters is the "right" number of characters, then I would agree scaling becomes necessary.

Yeah. It’s not given. But, true if it said that, at least you know and can work from that.

Well put. Thanks for this. Something didn't dawn on me until after reading your post: I've never actually purchased a Starter Kit. What experience I've had with RPGs has been diving straight into the core rulebook, so yeah, I was probably expecting a bit too much from a starter kit. And, as a page designer and editor myself, I can certainly appreciate the "space is at a premium" philosophy. Still, though, would've loved a sentence in there that said, "These issues have been designed for X number of heroes, so if you have fewer, you may want to adjust by removing minions and challenges, and perhaps adding bursts to the scene tracker." But, alas, that's one more sentence that would've had to have something else removed. So, good point.

But this does just make me look forward to the core rulebook more and more. I'm guessing that you're right and the "how to scale encounters" will be in that, and, if not, I'm almost certain how to design encounters is going to be in the core rulebook (I'm pretty sure they've said as much, and that wasn't something I was expecting in the Starter Kit), and if it teaches us how to design encounters from scratch, I'm sure I can work out scaling for published issues.

But now, I just really want to get a group together and play this thing. Where are all the Sentinels lovers in Austin?

That’s actually really funny. As a veteran D&D DM, I know 1) yeah, there’s a rule for that, and I actually know where to find it, and 2) screw that, I’ll improvise. Sounds reasonably dangerous, so let’s go with 2d6 bludgeoning damage, DC 11 reflex save to avoid. Could maybe hit two adjacent enemies. Done. (As it happens, looking it up, in 3rd Edition, 51-100 pounds of soda would have to fall 30 feet for every d6 of damage. Close enough; mine rewards the players more for their creative action. In 4th Edition its damage would scale by level; the table is on the DM’s screen but I don’t have it on hand and there’s no 4e SRD).

Yeah, we eventually came up with something similar to that, using the falling damage you mention adjusted by the overall height/weight differences, and the GM deciding that because of the layout of the situation it just automatically hits. I still have the logs with the significant amount of discussions involved. X3;

That was the same session we all decided to have my PC throw the party's droid at the enemy as well (we just really really didn't like the bad guy), so you gotta love any session where I uttered the line to another player "I'd take a -4 since you're an improvised weapon, though."

I also remember another campaign where we were trying to get through a space station controlled by a crazy AI, and at one point were confronted by a door with a ridiculously dangerous security system that thwarted every initial attempt to get past it. So I was more or less like "Geez dude, what are you doing to us, but OK, if we really have to deal with this I'll figure it out, darn it", and since my PC was the party's engineer, I proceeded to with the help of the other players eventually plan out and create a massive jury-rigged armored mobile battering ram out of office equipment, which finally let us manage to possible suicide run the door but turn out to survive the security system long enough to bash in the door and then quickly hack into the control panel on the other side of the door to properly disable it.

We then basically said something along the lines of, hey man not to sound like wimps, but we sorta request you go just a tiny bit easier on us from here on out because we almost couldn't progress! And the GM's like, yeah, actually you weren't supposed to get past this, since you were supposed to go around the other way. And we were like, wait what? Then dude, why didn't you just tell us that to begin with? And the GM was basically like, we were being just so gosh darn determined and creative that he wanted to see exactly where we went with it and basically just didn't have the heart to tell us to stop, so that was the time a GM out of sheer pity and curiosity let me accidentally sequence break about a fifth of a plot by doing the equivalent of that urban legend of that math student who solves the world's most difficult math problem on the college chalkboard because he doesn't realize you weren't suppposed to.

My group was basically made up of a lot of players where any one of us individually would be sufficient to make GMs lay their heads on the table and cry, let alone combined together. The main reason it worked anyway is because our two biggest oddballs also happened to be the two players best at being GM. The main reason my own attempt to GM didn't work is because I was the least oddball of all the players. X3

Edit: Another thread's convo reminded me to say that if there is one aspect of this system I actually am iffy on, it's the Scene Tracker. I honestly would be tempted to just totally ignore the Scene Tracker entirely if I ever got to GM a Sentinels game, especially if it was for my old group, as I cannot imagine them ever managing to fit any scene whatsoever into only 8-10 rounds. We're the type of group to take four 4-hour sessions to work through a single combat, or spent an entire 4-hour session roleplaying checking into a hotel room and eating dinner; we'd fail every single session every time if we had to work under time constraints.

Holy moly this thread exploded. I have to keep reading. I asked my question to get other's point of view. I believe in this product and want to use my position as a playtest to voice their options so this can be a better game. I am taking notes and going to fight for them.

While I love GTG, I do side with Spiff that they can do a better job. It has taken months for people to join the forums ( I had to personly DM Paul to get her account set up), The whole tactics thing, and their lack of communication. A simple open letter by the Community manager would go long ways in public goodwill. Paul's monthly update has been nice, why wasn't that done sooner. Spirit Island was delayed for a long time, Love the game but some feedback would be nice. OblivAean was delayed far too long and I feel that the RPG may come out after this Buzz of the Starter kit fades. It is important to hold them accountable so they may improve. 

We have a joke that tactics will be out after the heat death of the universe. And I am sad there I will not be playing with Becky Blast till then.

 "Hm. I have opinions regarding the starter kit. I should check this thread out."

 "Well, that's...something to think about."

 "Now that's just impolite!"

 "A Wall of Text approaches!"

 "Such conflict! Can't...take..."

 "..."

Well, now that that's out of the way, all I have to offer (of value) is that, as an experienced role-player, the game took some getting used to during the Gen Con demo. Note cards may have helped, but would have also done too much of the work for us...perhaps. As an experienced GM, though, running the game was very difficult when compared to how much - and this is the important part - a concrete structure of rules assisted me by way of holding my hand.

I'm a creative player. I'm a creative GM. My creativity, though, has never been a necessary tool in the game, but always a flavorful addition to it. Now, my experience is more limited to games like D&D and Pathfinder, but FATE has always caught my attention. Necessitating adaptability and creativity does add a new set of difficulties to GMs unused to running such games - at least it did for me. Without a structure that let me know I was doing everything the 'right' way, it felt like I was doing everything the 'wrong' way, when most of Sentinels gears around doing things 'any*' way. It takes some getting used to. 

As a longtime player of Mutants and Masterminds, I was looking forward to something more along those lines, just stylized for SotM.

I didn't get what I was looking forward to. I got something different, something outside of my comfort zone.

Sometime I'm excited to get the hang of.

I think both Mindwanderer and Jeysie have valid points that they each obviously feel very strongly about. Twoeyedjack and others lent some excellent perspective to all of this, too. I'd like to see these cracks, chips, and smears we see get patched and polished by the time the core rulebook comes out, but that isn't going to happen unless we're constantly reminding ourselves to give constructive feedback. It doesn't always have to be positive, mind you. There's value in negati...wait. That doesn't make sense. Anyway, you get what I'm saying. If you have a criticism, present it with solutions. If you have compliments, reinforce the fundamentals of the game that you feel are responsible for them.

God, that sounds so lecture-y. Anywho, this is a solid online community that I'm relatively new to, and I hate to see disagreement turn to disrespect. So let's like...be excellent to each other and stuff.

Oh man, I wish you'd gotten to step in before now, because this right here was literally 100% what I had been trying to get at the entire time.

That literally anything is fine, even if it's silly or cheesy or doofy, so long as it results in you and your group having fun. It's just a matter of getting over that mental hurdle versus talking yourself out of stuff (because I know from experience both from my own thinking and from trying to teach things to other people that it's too easy to talk yourself out of stuff).

Unfortunately everyone read that as me being elitist when it wasn't intended to be that way and it went downhill from there.

Since I honestly always try to encourage people to just try their best and most importantly have fun with their best. There's never a wrong way to have fun so long as you're not hurting anyone.

"Fun" can be tricky sometimes, though. Are the players having more fun if they have to figure everything out, or if they're given notecards plainly spelling out their objectives? Is taking a wild guess only to have it fail still fun because we got to take the guess? If there a thousand ways to get from Point A to Point B, but no actual road connecting the two, are you ever sure you're headed in the right direction? And, more importantly, does it matter if you are?

I've never been much for modules - they've always been too linear and confining for my tastes. It feels - to me - that these modules are the opposite, especially if they are meant to serve as a learning tool for new GMs. I struggled with inventive, relevant twists, myself. And yes, the Gameplay Guide does lay out all the nuts and bolts of the game, but, well...I want to know what colors this ride can come in, y'know? I love coming up with all my own stuff, but I also like being nudged into directions I might not have thought of on my own.

Regardless, I don't think anyone meant to go into this discussion with both barrels blazing. If you lot are anything like me, you occasionally find yourselves lacking in social graces and charm and - especially if you're anything like me - hypersensitive to criticisms of your perspectives and values.

All I really find helps then is to remind myself that there are two kinds of people I come across throughout the day: People who aren't douchebags and people who don't matter. Any confusion between one and the other is usually on me.

My own perspective is that there is no objective "right" answer in an RPG, there's only the subjective matter of what gives a story your group had fun creating.

My view is that in the end any twist is fine so long as it keeping things moving. Even well-worn cliches can be fun in the right context, particularly in a lighthearted comic book inspired RPG. Why worry?

Honestly, as someone used to a group where people played literal ninja secretaries and ventriloquist bards as PCs, where toilet paper and action figures were viewed as useful inventory items, where conversations like "Can the computer scan for dead lifeforms?" "That's an oxymoron." "Dead deadforms, then?" "No, that requires the optional deadform scanning module."  cropped up regularly, and where whenever the GM asked "what option do you want to take" the answer was invariably "whatever leads to the funniest result", I feel like worrying too much about being perfect with your creativity is a bit overrated.

My view pretty much is: So long as you put in whatever effort you can, I'll do my best to help you make it work. I prize earnestness and sincerity over being perfect.

I think this is more of a responsibility for the GM in Sentinels than it is in possibly any other game I've played or run. But the fun kind of responsibility. In most games, it's the GM's job to challenge the players - in Sentinels it's their job to…help them? 

Maybe that is too broad, but it's at least part of my takeaway.

Yeah I liked this attitude from the Gameplay Guide since it meshes with my own. The fact that the GM plays the bad guys as part of their job description doesn't mean they are the bad guy; the job of GM is more like administrative assistant. And a good admin assistant makes everybody else's job run smoother by doing their own job.

Especially since while a well-timed character death can be a compelling story, killing everybody prematurely just ends the story completely, and where's the fun in that?

Ugh. You should have seen my first 4e campaign. Plenty of character deaths - none of them well-timed.

"Yes, this werewolf is kicking our asses! The two of us should separate from the party and pursue it on our own!"
"Forbidden magic? Only forbidden if you're some kind of pussy!"
"People jump from airship to airship all the time!"

The only ones to survive the entire campaign were a black Dragonborn inspired by (and voiced by) Morgan Freeman and a fighter who was literally Gaston. Outside of those two, five players lost like a dozen characters.

Are we getting off track? I feel we're getting off track.

I'm glad you brought that up before we actually tried our hands at this preview This will certainly make things go smoother, even if our group has some experience with more freeform games, like Fate, although, for whatever reasons we don't seem to click with Apocalypse-based ones. You might also be interested to know that some games out there also rely heavily on index cards to work, like Danger Patrol and Fantaji, but they do tell you that beforehand

I'm hoping this test will keep our interest in the game as I've already been able to "reskin" the characters in the booklets to recreate our own group, which is nice for starter, but the prospect of waiting months for the full rulebook is not ;(  

Hi Gang!  I am not sure if some of these questions got answered and I have the same ones.  I have a LOT of experience running superhero campaigns using other systems and a fair amount with Powered By The Apoc (PBtA) games and I have questions.  Here are the initial bullets with my comments.  My comments start with [John].

• Harvester Spider Bots can't reach heroes to attack them if said heroes are flying.  But the spiders shoot laser beams from their eyes, so why not?  [John] Sure they can shoot them at range.  Very free form.  :)

• "Avoiding Collateral Damage" in issue 2 introduces a new concept: twists that get dramatically more severe as the scene tracker progresses.  Nothing in the core rules suggest this should happen.  I see some later scenes apply the same concept.  This seems unbalanced--the GM would be acting strongly in the players' favor if they used scene twists when in the green and "general" twists while in the red, and vice-versa.  I'm not sure how to choose twists in a way that's fair, consistent, and interesting.  [John] TOTALLY AGREE!  With PBtA the difficulty of the twists stays the same.  This is the first time I have seen a concept of increasing the difficulty of these.  With the PC is is COOL and makes sense.  When the pressure is on the heroes step up.  I am not getting...when the pressure is on the environment gets more inherently dangerous???
• There's basically no information on the poor family that lives in this house.  I assume the GM makes it up as needed, but I don't know why they should--this info could easily have been in the book.  [John] Too funny.  Agree.
• The VoidHeart has one special ability it can use instead of a basic action: create a dark hero and simultaneously advance the scene tracker.  Under "tactics," however, the book says that an Overcome can be used to disable "one of the VoidHeart's special actions".  Does this disable one aspect of its one special action (the manifestation or the advancement) or is that a mistake?  [John] Confused too.  Clarification anyone?
• The epilogue to issue 2 doesn't suggest how the Visionary knows about what's going on in Insula Primalis, the Tomb of Anubis, or Russia.  "She's psychic" seems very hand-wavy (which, fine) but doesn't help adjudicate what information she might have about each situation for when the players inevitably ask questions.  [John] Agree as well.  I don't want to get people upset but in general I thought the intro packet should have been less tied to the setting.  Dunno...I guess hand wave away...superheroes after all...
• In Prime Wardens #67, Insula Primalis tends to Hinder heroes until its own next turn.  Is this hinder used up on the first roll each hero makes, or is it effectively persistent until it expires or is Overcome?  [John] This is a big question of mine.  Also does hinder prevent that PC from acting at all until all of the points are removed?  Examine, Tachyon gets hit with web hinder -5.  Bunker attempts to rip it off but rolls bad and does +3 boost.  Does that mean Tachyon can only try to escape now?

Thanks gang!  Looking forward to trying this out.  :)

@twoeyedjack  Holy carp Batman!  I am totally using the index cards!!!  :D

"I'm gonna shoot him,"

"With what?"

"My plasma cannon obviously"

"You're gonna shoot your chief Tech-Priest … who's leaning against the delicate containment shroud over your ships fusion reactor with a Plasma Cannon designed to deal with Amored Tanks?! "

"Yep."

"Don't you think that's an overaction in the circumstances?"

"He insulted my jacket."

"… the cannon misfires, the engine crew carry you to med bay"

"But i didn't even roll yet!"

Yep, My Long running Rogue Trader game nearly ended, because the new player decided to fire a Sun at Another slightly contained Sun inside of what is essentially a submarine. and didn't understand why i flubed it & put him into critical condition until they arrived at the planet they were going to. Even in Grimdark dude… just… Think for a second.

I loved that game, we had a couple very meaningful character deaths, Noble scrifices, poweful last words & great martyrs… and James who can't quite get the hang of not firing 50ft napalm/plasma-deathballs in rooms that are only 20ft accross…

To answer your bullet points one at a time from how I read it.

• Harvester Spider Bots can still shoot webs at flying heroes and bring them down that way, or just have more spider bots focusing on the people on the ground.

• The scene tracker is a lose representation of how the scene is progressing both for the heroes and the villains, when the scene starts both sides are unprepared for a major battle, in the yellow the battle has been ongoing for a while and major damage to the environment is likely, or as in "Avoiding Collateral Damage" the family starts to wake up and draw attention to themselves, in the red the battle has gone on long enough that the environment is taking serious damage and if you're in an unfriendly environment it's throwing everything it has at you.  Long story short, yes, the longer the battle goes on the more dangerous the environment gets.  Also notice that some environment twists actually help the heroes slightly, or at least benefit both sides.

• The family who lives there isn't important to the plot, therefore it's either up to the GM, or never becomes relevant.
• I read the VoidHearts special actions as it has the special ability to bring in a Dark Hero, and the ability to advance the scene tracker, but as two seperate abilities (possible misprint with the AND supposed to be an OR), therefore an overcome can remove one of these and two overcomes can remove both.

• It's partly expected that you as GM have at least thumbed through the other books, that being said you can handwave it with that she just got generalized visions of roughly where to go and didn't have time to focus on them as she was, well, keeping the portal stable for the heroes return and didn't have the focus to find out more.

• Hinders merely effect dice rolls, if tachyon got hit with a -4 web hinder (hinders and boosts only go up to 4, a roll of 5 would give a +/-2 modifer depending on if it's a boost or hinder) her next roll would be reduced by 4, with the Insula Primalis hinder mentioned, all rolls Tachyon made would be hindered until the environments next turn or until someone gave her a boost of the same amount.  Persistant hinders can be negated or reduced by boosting the character if the boost is made precisely to remove the hinder.

Sorry if my explanations aren't clear enough, if you need more info just reply and I can attempt to clarify further.

@BlueDarky  Thanks for the GREAT reply!  :D

Reading over the thread, my general response (which I think echoed some earlier comments) is that:

Sentinels RPG (SRPG) is kinda crunchy, but not really. It requires perhaps more work than D&D. D&D has a stat or rule for practically everything. Want to pick a lock? You got a Lockpicking skill. Anyone who wants to pick a lock either uses Lockpicking or does it unskilled. If your characters wants to pick a lock, they go to the Lockpicking section.The rules tell the GM how a character can pick a lock.

SRPG is a bit more freeform. Someone playing Wraith might decide: "Use Agility + Investigation" because you're trying to Investigate what's on the other side of the lock, and I don't understand the difference between Dexterity and Agility." :) Or "When I selected Agility, I intended it to mean Dexterity, too."

Someone else running Wraith might say "Use Gadgets + Stealth", because you're using a lockpick and you're trying to sneak through the complex by getting past the door.

And someone who is a number cruncher might say, "I'm going to use Throwing Knives + Investigation, because I've got d10s in both and those are my highest dice. Justification? I'm using a throwing knife to pick the lock."

That's not unique: some of the Cortex RPGs do the same thing. But I can see why it's kinda... schizophrenic. It often requires a combination of thinking outside the box/creativity, and number crunching. And sometimes it gets down to personalities and approaches: what if the GM thinks that using a throwing knife to pick a lock is nonsense? What is the person who chose Wraith (or built their own character) because they wanted to pick locks and thought it was a good combo to do so disagrees with the GM? Let's say that both sides honestly believe their points of view: you get some bad feelings.

You also get some players who do try to number crunch/game like that. Or are they? They rarely say that they do, and often they don't think that they are. Or they think that it's all a part of that type of RPG. Or maybe it's how they get their kicks. Externally, how do you tell the difference between the different types? Is there a difference? Is one "better" than the others?

And yes, this kind of thing should theoretically be run up with the GM before character selection/design. But... there's a lot of potential situations, and several players.

How does this all tie in to the discussion? It seems like we have two sides, one taking the Type A GM and the hardcore approach (which isn't unique to D&D, and D&D-ish GMs), and the other taking the Type B GM and the "If you think of it, they will come and I will approve" approach. The starter adventures seem to be written the same way, IMO. Some parts are very "Do what you will" and some parts are "Here are very specific guidelines and rules for dealing with these situations."

Just my two cents.

"Attacking Proletariat:  Your players, upon seeing an old foe like Proletariat, might immediately leap to the attack."

Maybe they're trying to play it cagey with whether Proletariat is a foe post-OblivAeon? If they treat him like a foe and stat him to fight, you might think he's still a foe OblivAeon-wise. If they don't, you won't.

So treating him like a natural hazard doesn't give anything away.

Having finished Issue 1 in the PBP as Unity, I have some more feedback to add.

Regarding the issue:

It runs pretty smoothly, but the "Horde of Harvesters" is a bit wonky.  First, the players need to realize that unlike all the other spiders, you don't just hit the horde with damage, you use an Overcome to neutralize all of them at once.  It's unclear why they can't just do the same thing to kill all the other spiders without using an area attack that's actually on their character sheets.

Second, the swarm of spider-bots is described as being unstoppable because they're being replaced so quickly, yet the mothership only lays up to 5 new spiders a round.  It doesn't really state in the issue that the mothership is in fact laying way more than that, but the others are going to the tree.  Without that, it's hard to realize that destroying the mothership means that Overcome actions can be used to clear the tree.

Both problems are solved by using index cards with checkboxes for objectives, as described above.  Once again, it really seems that this was the intended method of playing the game despite not being overtly stated in the books.

Regarding Unity:

Unity... has some problems, I feel.  She's fun but she has some design flaws.

1. She's far too dependent on minions.  I get that it's her whole archetype, but the minions are fragile and it's easy to find yourself without any, either because they were destroyed or because it's a new scene.  At the beginning of an adventure, it's fine, she just makes them.  But when she reaches Yellow status, if she doesn't have any minions, she has to choose between falling back to a Green ability or using Brainstorm.  I ended up using Brainstorm a lot; it's a great move even though it keys off a d6 power.  But if you're using that, you're ignoring Unity's archetype and over half her ability set.  When she reaches Red, she can start making two minions a round, but at that point the scene is almost over and the time to build up your forces is past.  Usually only rounds 7 and 8 are Red, and if she makes minions in round 7 they'll only get one chance to act.
2. Her Principles are unbalanced.  Every single one of her Powers is technology-related.  Other heroes are more diverse and can approach challenges in different ways.  With Unity it's technology or bust.  This means that she's going to be using Principle of the Gearhead virtually constantly.  Principle of Levity, on the other hand, is extremely challenging to use, and even if she can think of a way to use Levity with one of her Powers, she could probably have used Gearhead too!  If she had Banter or Insight as a Power (several other heroes have Insight as a Power), it would help a ton.
3. She has both Science and Technology as Qualities.  That seems redundant, and since Technology uses a bigger die, she'll be using that pretty much exclusively.  And again, since all of her Powers are technology-related, using that big d10 Technology die is going to be the "correct" choice nearly every time.  I ended up using Former Intern and Insight just for fun a few times, but I could have easily justified Technology instead every time.
4. Overcome is a trap choice for minions.  As Dave described, the success table for Overcome is designed with Principles in mind.  Mostly the heroes will be using their Principles when Overcoming, and as a result they'll usually either succeed outright or succeed with a minor twist.  Minions, on the other hand, usually have a d8 to roll at best, meaning the chance of outright success is only 1/8.  They're much more likely to create twists or fail, and you do not want a bunch of minions creating additional twists.  Twists are serious business, even minor ones, and unless those twists are directed solely back at the minion that created them, they can get the whole team into a lot of trouble very quickly.  And if you're using an action to create a minion that acts once, creates a twist, and then either destroys or hinders itself, Unity would have been better off just taking that Overcome action herself.  If you want minions to help with an Overcome situation, give them the Boost action.

@Mindwanderer how did you negotiate the Unity difference between "discard" and "destroy"? When you discarded a bonus to upgrade a bot, did you treat that as a destroyed bonus for the purposes of "Volatile Parts"?

I did, yeah.  It actually didn't occur to me that this was ambiguous, but you're right, it is.  Yet another thing that could use clarification in the final product.

Agree. Thanks! Controversial!

Not having followed the PBF, I can’t comment on it specifically, but having run the first issue a few times (and the second issue once), I can say this:

The GM guide (and Argent Adept) describes the horde coming out of the river, the severs, etc, and that there are hundreds of them arriving each min. They’re not actually coming from the Spider Mothership. When I set the scene for my players, I tried to make that clear, and I think I did a good job because they took the hint.

As for Unity, my players haven’t yet had a problem with her. Yes, she is kind of a one-trick pony in that she pretty much only wants to build bots, but she’s also kinda useless in the card game (and Tactics) without her bots too… so if that is a failure of design/balance, then it’s a consistent one.

I hadn’t really given any thought to her mostly wanting to use tech, maybe because my players have also triggered creativity instead a bunch of times? But while she is limited in that respect, is that not the point of having a team? In one session my Legacy player tried to examine the spider bots to learn about them… and he was able to definitively conclude that he was not holding a toaster in his hands. Legacy just can’t do science/tech, but that’s not a failure balancing Legacy, it was a failure of my Legacy player to let someone who should know about robots to do the examining.

Now, maybe it’s just easier to coordinate teamwork when you’re all sitting around a table together/skyping vs making individual posts. Or maybe my Unity player(s) is going to end up struggling later on, but so far we haven’t had an issue resulting from Unity being unbalanced.

I take the tiny spiders eating at the tree as coming from a different source, or even if you wipe them all out they come back moments later. The Spier queen could lay an egg of thousands of mini-bots, it just when the heroes arrive it has to protect them self. ( I never add minion until the team finds the source.

Unity

I do have to admit that making bots can be a chore, and making it work takes a while. And it does take a while to do. But I had a player just make a spy Bot (overcome) and turn her iPad into a controller so she can boost the bot from afar, Tachyon gave her a boost to make the spy last longer. I had another player make a bunker bot and ride around on top of it. Even had someone make a flying dinosaur (I then showed them the back cover) to move the party around. One Unity didn't even make bots just mad Stuff for people. AZ had a sword and shield, Gave Wraith a hand crossbow that shoots knives, and Legacy Paladin armor. They where dead set on making it a D&D campaign.

If you guys are going to continue, remember that hero points are boosts, use that often, along with risky actions, to make the most of her. She can have tons of action economy so balancing might be hard. If you don't like the bot make the part, downplay it. I would even ask the Dm if you can swap it out for something. (It is normally reserve  when you get a collection but that might be just too far down the road).

Play By Forum. The team communication is tough. if someone has a quick question it might take days to figure out. Even quick back and forth between players might be hard. Like Player can't say, "hey can someone give me a boost?", Or "I got this guys let me handle it." as quickly as in person. I am having growing pains with PBF.

Side note: Don't get me started on the issues I have with the starter kit and it's use of words.

Wait, I don't understand this.  The book does say that the spider-bots initially come from the sewers, but after that they come from the mothership only:

Clearing them is a overwhelming  task, especially while bots keep coming in droves from  the mothership…

They need to  shut down the spider mothership before they can  hope to sweep away the harvester bots…

The heroes can attempt to control the horde of  spider robots, but can only accomplish the second  part of the challenge once they have dealt with the  mothership.

If your players were of the understanding that the spiders weren't primarily coming from the mothership, how did they clear the scenario?  The whole objective is to beat the mothership so replacements stop arriving, then either disable the signal coming from inside the mothership or use heroic actions to sweep the remaining spiders off the tree.

My main concern is that she has a smaller range of options available to her that most other heroes, especially in the Yellow zone.  When she has bots, great, but when she doesn't, she gets to… build a bot.  One.  That has a good chance of getting killed before it has a chance to do anything (it just needs to fail one minion save).  In the card game, she can do lots of other things–put out equipment, use one-shots, etc.  She does have a few cards that aren't that useful when she has no bots already in play, but Volatile Parts can at least sit on the table and wait (or be sacrificed) and Inspired Repair at least cycles itself.  RPG Unity has two out of three Yellow abilities that do nothing without bots, and one out of three Red abilities that's underwhelming without them.

Yeah, but when they did use Creativity, could they have used Technology with just as much justification?

And what about her two Principles?  In your games, when Unity used an Overcome action, how often did she use Gearhead vs. Levity vs. neither?

How did that work out?  By the math, Unity will usually have a d8 bot, and boosts will usually be a +2, which means the bot will have a 3/8 chance of success without creating twists.  If Unity and Tachyon are both boosting it, it'll probably have a 5/8 chance, but then you have two characters working together to do what one character could do better by themselves (plot notwithstanding).

My players figured out the "signal in the mothership" pretty quickly, and wanted to "Overcome" by damaging the signal first rather than killing the mothership first. Unity used Magneto-powers to snatch the antenna off of the mothership, de-activating all the bots, only to have the mothership clobber her and take back the antenna, re-activating the bots. It was a wild madcap caper.

Interesting! I always just set the scene as describing the bots coming up out of the river.  Granted, maybe I'm just remember (and my players are too) that from speaking with Argent… I'm not really sure anymore.  Either way, it is made clear that there a a crap-ton of spiders attacking the tree.

None of my players directly tried to deal with the horde, but they did focus on the mothership.  I think initially they tried to deal with the snipers, but when in round one the mothership laid 5 eggs which turned into spider bots, and then in round 2 those 5 spider bots attacked the players, they took the hint pretty quickly that the mothership was something they couldn't ignore.  (I purposefully called it "Giant Spider" instead of "Mothership", since I felt that "Mothership" was a little too obvious, and wanted them to figure it out at least somewhat.)  It made for a good fight (I think), since my players ended up fighting against an ever-increasing wave of enemies, so the tension kept rising.

In terms of figuring out the signal, one (or both?) of my players did a "try to figure out what's going on here" overcome about mid-way through the fight.  It was either Wraith (Principle of Detective) or Unity (Gearhead), I'm not sure, though it may have been a combined effort (i.e. the first of them figured out the the spiders were being controlled from somewhere, and then the second deduced that it was the mothership).

Once they defeated the mothership, Unity specifically tried to take control of all the spiders by hacking into the mothership (Gearhead).  I was all set to deny that but grant the overcome to disable the signal, and then she rolled an "overwhelming success"… so I granted her requect which meant that the spiderbots actually began repairing the tree… until an outside signal shut them down anyway.

In many situations, she probably could have used tech just as easily.  My principle with Unity in particular has been "that sounds like a creative situation, so I guess you're using creativity?".  It's not perfect, but I'm trying to encourage my players to add some more variety to what they're choosing, even if it does result in the same die size.  This is not a perfect solution, but it's better than trying to shoe-horn everything into whatever has the highest die.

On the Gearhead vs. Levity count, I think I've only ever seen my player attempt Levity once… and I denied it since it was a situation where it clearly didn't apply.  That said, a read of that principle tells me that unless Unity is giving a persistent boost (Augmentation), she should pretty much always try to Boost by telling some funny jokes. 

That all makes sense, though maybe part of this just comes down to GM'ing?  In the games I've run, I don't directly attack Unity's bots overly often, and usually not right away.  I want to let her build a few up, since that's her whole schtick and if I take that away it's not a lot of fun.  I don't ignore them either, but I often use attacks that the bots stand at least a chance of surviving.  (The idea here is that when I kill the bots, I want a tense "will it survive?" die roll before that happens).  Basically, I'm trying my best to subtly encourage my players to play to their characters' strengths, and allow them to actually do that, while also keeping the tension high so that they feel like they're never too far away from defeat.

You are right Mind Wander about what the book said. In a few games, where the player did not figure out there was a mother ship, I had the mini-bots come from the mother ship. I had to throw them a bone. Just most modules I modify them to suit the players and their actions.

I had some groups mostly solve the communication problem in scene one and others where they just figured it out on Yellow2. Each group is different.

Levity is hard to do, I do agree. Might have to keep your mind open on that. I feel that book 1 is harder to pull of Levity. There are times in the other books where it can help.

3/8 chance of getting a success with a twist is not bad. They rolled and got a good number. It was a free action for Unity (she gave a persistent boost) so she was free to help the fight. Heroes don't always have the best odd but still have to pull things off. Minor twist are not bad at all. So in my book the odds are higher, 6/8.

(I been running the starter kit maybe 15 times now.)

Hm, so it sounds like the heroes virtually always go for the signal, either because they were inspired to take the time to search for something like that, or because they were given the hint by reaching Red in the scene tracker.  I wonder how often they take the other approach (disable the mothership and then sweep the tree clean themselves).

And it also sounds like Unity being fun depends a lot on how much the GM decides to attack the bots.  For Unity to be fun, the GM should probably ignore the first one or two bots and only start going after them once they start building up.

Really?  My read of the minor twists is that they're really bad, for the most part.  "Take damage equal to the max die" will either destroy the bot outright or weaken it permanently.  "Hindered using Max + Min" doesn't really apply to one die, but it should be about enough to guarantee the bot's next attempt is a failure (or is destroyed on its next save).  The scene escalating would be disastrous.  Being separated from the rest of the group is situational, but presumably without guidance from Unity it would stop being useful.  Summoning another enemy minion could be bad or not depending on turn order and whether the other heroes have mass attacks.  And story-based twists waste the other heroes' time, which also makes the effort a net loss.

Hasty Augmentation is an interesting choice for a minion.  I was about to say I wouldn't use it, since then you've used two turns on something that can be destroyed instantly, but then it occurred to me that a persistent boost can be used on minion saves as well!  That's actually not a bad move, depending on the enemy.  And if the bots survives until Unity or the scene reaches Yellow, she can heal it using Flash Forge, and as near as I can tell it would keep the Augmentation.