Starter Kit Gamemaster Pro Tip: Use Index Cards!

Buried in another thread is a long explanation covering my play experience during a demo at Gen Con 2017. It got some good buzz, and it was recommended it exist in its own thread here.

Well, I've done gone and made an Instructable with pictures and stuff to help explain it better.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Sentinels-RPG-Starter-Kit-Gamemaster-Pro-Tip-Using/

Needless to say, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS! INTENDED FOR GAMEMASTERS ONLY!

Hope it helps folks in running their games! :)

This is excellent! Thanks much! This is definitely an awesome resource I’ll be using, and I’m especially glad you included photos. But now it’s just making me want to play more and more!

Nice. Looks like one would run through a whole lot of index cards very quickly, so I'd probably use a whiteboard myself, but the benefit is clear.

However... It's more than a little video game-y. Telling the players what their objectives are supposed to be seems to me like railroading and detracts from the flow of a "role-playing" game. Players get to choose the means by which they achieve their goals but not what their goals should be. And it takes some of the discovery aspect away; players will be using their actions to try to check off boxes and not to learn and explore. (Of course, the constant march of the scene tracker does that, too; I'd be perpetually worried about "wasting" my actions in this system.)

What do y'all think?

I agree that the Scene Tracker is one big nitpick I'd personally come up with for the system, since as you say it feels like it would short circuit getting to just go with the flow. If I ever ran a Sentinels game I would be really tempted to just ignore the Tracker entirely and never use it as a result, as I honestly cannot see how my own group I'm used to playing with would ever in a million years be fast enough to fit much of anything at all into only 8-10 rounds.

So long as you use the Tracker, though, I don't see much of an issue letting the players know what's next on their agenda.

The Post cards are nice, Christopher and all the people who Demoed it at Pax Unplugged used them. They help focus the group, let them know what needs to get solved. And you can introduce them one as they find it. Remeber you are only giving the problem they can make use the solution, it is fun to see how players get to it.

Jeyse the screen tracker is also used to raise the stakes of the scene, the twists in each zone changes. It is also a way for heroes to use Yellow and red abilities without being in that zone. The scene tracker is there to speed up the game. If in 8 turns they do not finish it, you wrap it all up (Usually with not the best ending) and go to the next scene. I would give it a whirl before you change it. you can also add more time if you wish. I feel that 8 round is usually fast enough. I had to wrap up one game, but they just need to destroy the leftover bots, not really an issue.

@speedyolrac: Yeah, my group (with three players at the time) once took eight rounds of combat to deal with just two enemies. X3 Unfortunately we'd need to ad hoc some alternative to the tracker to give us any sort of reasonable chance.

Sentinels RPG is a comic book role-playing game, intended to tell a fun comic book story. It’s not “a day in the life of a superhero”. Silver age comic books are short, sweet, and to the point. While you certainly could just give the players free reign to determine their objectives and their approach, it leads to long, drawn out sessions where the progress of the game is entirely in the hands of the players. Anyone with gamemaster experience knows how that will go; a lot of floundering around and putzing about until a bad guy is thrown in front of them, and then they punch the bad guy until it doesn’t get up again, and they steal the bad guy’s stuff.

Occasionally you’ll have a group that can stay on task, but those seem to be the exception and not the norm.

Railroad-ey? Yeah, I can see that. But in this system, that’s kind of the point. You’re not really trying to role-play a hero so much as you’re role-playing a group of writers for a comic book, role-playing as heroes in a brainstorming session to create an exciting comic book story. And to do that, the editor-in-chief (gamemaster) needs to keep the writers (players) on task.

Ultimately all a gamemaster for any role-playing game is doing is determining an end goal and putting up obstacles on the way to that end goal. Every session is going to have railroad tracks laid down, it’s just a matter of how good the gamemaster is at covering those tracks and making the players think they’re in control of the direction of the story. They really aren’t unless you put them in a sandbox world and let them run wild.

It’s been my experience, though, that while players say they want the freedom to do anything they want, when they actually have such freedom, they don’t know what to do with it. It’s overwhelming to them. They would rather have the gamemaster drop the hook right in their mouths but not look like they’re dropping the hook right in their mouths. They want to be taken for a ride but not look like the gamemaster is doing the driving. It’s all one big illusion. Lies upon lies, as the creators say.

Laying out the objectives in front of the players and then starting a timer gets players moving. It lights a fire under their butts and Spurs them to take action. How they tackle the objectives is what makes them a hero. If they walk away or say, Naw, that’s too railroad-ey," and want to do something else, then the action of the scene continues without them while their hero goes to a hotel and sits down for dinner. That’s not really exciting comic book story, and if that were to happen at my table then I pull that player aside and ask them why they are there. What do they hope to accomplish by not playing the game? Because if a player does that, then it’s a big sign to me that they don’t want to play or don’t like the game. If they aren’t interested, then that’s a waste of time and effort not just on their part, but on my part and the part of all the other players who are there who want to play. I have no problem cutting that player loose, because honestly, I have enough people around who want to play at my table that should one leave another will take their place. I’m lucky to have that option available to me.

I don’t think this is railroading at all, personally. I think it’s how the game is meant to be played. Superheroes need obstacles and objectives, at least when starting out. After they get the hang of how to be a hero, you could slowly transfer identifying objectives over to them, but that’s a learning process and not a first time playing strategy.

The end goal of the Sentinels RPG is to tell an exciting superhero comic book story. I think a gamemaster should keep that in mind constantly when running it. Superhero comic books don’t have pages or panels or ink to waste waiting around for the heroes to act. Readers don’t have time to read through four issues before something exciting happens. And it has been made clear that Sentinels is a Silver Age comic series, so there isn’t a lot of gritty realism or grey area dilemmas to ponder. It’s evil doers afoot and terrible plots that don’t make sense in the real world but for a comic book story it works. They’re exploring crossover stories and metaplots that span multiple issues and space travel that happens without real world science.

It seems that each session of Sentinels needs a sense of urgency to it. I can tell you from personal player experience that the index card element adds that sense of urgency and overwhelming odds while also keeping it clear what needs to be done to save the day. Don’t knock it until you try it.

Whoa, slow down. X3 Because unfortunately you're kinda way, way off track. Literally nothing of what you're saying has any relation to my situation at all.

It's not that the way I have fun roleplaying means I don't want to do stuff and solve goals. It's that I want have fun roleplaying doing the stuff and goals, whereas following the Scene Tracker makes it feel like you'd basically have to rush willy-nilly around doing everything quickly and perfunctorily with no chance to actually roleplay anything. (It also makes you feel like you'd have to guess everything right the first time, with no chance for any sort of exploration or investigation.)

And then combat has the other problem that you'd have to play it absolutely perfectly to get by, when I'm very definitely really bad at combat.

So I'd basically rather take out a single element and keep everything else, then have to go "I can't play this" for ironically the exact opposite reason MindWanderer felt uncertain of playing it. They were uncertain because they want to roll dice, I'm uncertain because I want to roleplay.

Yes, we’d go through lots of index cards and help keep the index card industry afloat. The white board idea is also a nice one. This system is certainly a bit videogamey, but that’s part of the appeal to me. Yeah, maybe it does take away some of the role playing element … But not all of it. It’s still up to the heroes HOW they want to meet the objective, not to mention, if they really wanted to ignore the objective and do their own thing, if the GM allows it, they can. The objectives are just there so they know what they SHOULD be aiming at if they want to succeed and stay on track, and as Jeysie said, playing with the scene tracker, it might not be a bad thing to at least keep the heroes somewhat on track. … Anyway, I like this way enough to at least try it out with a group, and if they felt it was too railroady or controlling, I wouldn’t have to use it anymore.

Well, ironically I don't have a problem with "railroading", in a sense, which is why I was totally bewildered and taken aback by twoeyedjack's lecture. I'm not out to flip off the GM's story, the goal of players should be to work with GM as much as the GM should work with the players.

Like, I have no problems with, for instance, the goals being "find and stop this signal", "beat up the robots", "save this person". I'd just like to have fun actually figuring out those goals in a way that makes sense to us and has a fun narrative, rather than feeling like we have to rush willy-nilly between everything with no real detail and making sure we get it all perfect the first time. That sort of extreme urgency isn't fun to me, it's just dull and stressful.

I mean I do appreciate that some people like the really simple dungeon crawl fight-fight-fight type of playing that's just "I swing my sword and roll dice", but I just don't find that interesting myself.

I got to go with Jeysie on this one. I derive my enjoyment of RPGs from actually playing a role, not from achieving goals and checking off achievements. One of the most memorable (and enjoyable) scenes in one campaign I was in involved the characters sitting and talking to each other wihtout a single die being rolled.

That is a personal taste, to be sure, and I'm in no way claiming it to be the "One Way to Play". But it is what I look for, and if a game doesn't support it, then I can easily shift to playing another game.

The impression I've gotten from the Starter Kit is that the Sentinels RPG hews closely to the card game not only in setting but in mechanics, i.e. a race to achieve objectives before time and resources run out. It feels to me like it focuses more on the "Game" than the "Roleplaying" in "RPG".

If that is what the designers are going for, I wish them the best of luck. I just may not be along for the ride.

Yeah. Neither do I. I’d just be a tad worried that my players wouldn’t care for it, especially since the group I’m thinking I’d most likely play with, I’ve never RPG’ed with them before (except my wife, but she’s flexible).

I haven’t tried it out yet, but to me, it actually feels more role-playing, less game, especially when compared with something like D&D. But it’s certainly a blend.

EDIT: But I get what you mean … The scene tracker pressing you to do objectives in a certain amount of time can be game-y.

This is great!  One of the things I was most confused about was how to handle challenges.  Do I automatically tell the players what challenges are present, or do they have to discover them?  Do I tell them specifically what Overcomes have to be made or not?  If not the specifics, should they at least know how many Overcomes are required for a challenge or not?  Having never GMed before and only been a player in two RPG sessions, I had no idea how much information the GM was supposed to give upfront versus relying on the players to ask for it.  And since one of the groups I plan to GM for (my mom and brother) have never even played and aren't the most creative, I was worried they'd just be sitting there not knowing what to do.  Some groups might prefer things to be more open, having the players discover what they need to accomplish, but this videogame objective system is a lot more in my comfort zone.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you only really use the GYRO scene tracker when in an actin scene. During montage scenes – or general, open roleplay-- you don’t actually use that tracker.

To me, that’s where the real role-playing is done. Yes, you might ve some combat related tics or personality clashes during combat, but the argument that “I can’t roleplay while on a timer” seems to be a faulty one.

I do, however, liked keeping my players under pressure. I’m the sort of GM where, if you’re not prepared with your action when your turn comes around, I start visibly counting down. If I hit 0, the game moves on without your action. As such, i rather like the idea of “okay, you have 10 rounds to reinforce the bridge, save the civilians, and capture Citizen Moonbeam. Go!”

As a suggestion, instead of notecards? Try a Noteboard: https://thenoteboard.com
It’s cheap, reusable, and folds up for easy carrying. It’s easily one of the best convention tools I use while running games.

As far as the Scene Tracker goes, I definitely see the value in it between both keeping the scene from going too long and being so tied in to the game's mechanics of allowing more extreme abilities and threats as the situation gets more dire.  But it also seems like it could definitely be a bit too constricting and will also likely be unbalanced for certain player counts.  A compromise I've thought of is to still have the scene escalate through GYRO, but not have a Scene Tracker actually visible to the players.  All they would know is what color the scene currently is.  The GM could still be using their own hidden Scene Tracker, or they could just be using their judgment on when to switch zones.  Either way would allow them to adjust to fit how the group is doing so they can keep the tension high, but not just make things impossible.  This also seems to make more sense thematically, because unless there's a bomb counting down or something, the heroes usually wouldn't know exactly how much time they have before things get really bad.  They shouldn't be going into a situation thinking "Ok team, we've got exactly 8 rounds to neutralize this threat."

Not always.

There's a lot of scenes where it's a mix of combat and non-combat stuff. So, the combat is pretty OK (although there often seems to be an impractically large number of enemies to deal with compared to turns available to take them down in), but then you get to this weird thing where you're somehow supposed to do in one or two Overcome checks something that really should have way more incremental steps if you're roleplaying it out in the sort of detail I'm used to, including the steps of your PC being able to gather the info needed to even know what to do in the first place.

Then there's stuff like the Tomb of Anubis scene, where you're supposed to go through like 8 rooms in 11 rounds when it feels like it should be that a properly fleshed out single room roleplaying-wise should take several "rounds" just on its own to go through.

And… this isn't me saying the adventures are designed poorly, because I actually think they look rather fun taken as a whole. It's just trying to imagine accomplishing all this in such a narrow window of time that's making me "meh", which is why I'm narrowing in on just that single problem rather than saying I dislike everything about it.

See, I feel you're making the exact same sort of mistake twoeyedjack is making in the discussion.

It's not "Oh gosh I'm not prepared with my action."

It's more like "Roleplaying this out in a natural, normal flow would take about five steps, all of which I'm prepared to progress with promptly whenever it's my turn to help progress them, but we apparently have to somehow condense all that down into one single step instead because the timer's ticking."

You folks also seem to acting like it's a question of single players bogging things down for everyone else when I'm trying to say that every person in my old group had pretty much a similar slower-paced style.

Like twoeyedjack is sitting there going "it leads to long, drawn out sessions where the progress of the game is entirely in the hands of the players" and my reaction was, "Yeah, everyone in my group including the GM loves that sort of thing! …er, oh wait, you're actually saying you hate that? Uh… well… now I'm confused?"

Like if the players in my old group caught on that they were under a timer, then we'd get bogged down in wanting to out-of-character debate everything we were going to do beforehand just so we wouldn't be caught unable to do everything in-character. It would drag out the pace of the game instead of speeding it up.

Yeah. But in this case I do feel like the system is like… 90% there? And does a lot of stuff I really like? So I'd rather just tweak the one problem thing to suit myself than throw it out entirely.

Like I could see moving some of the zone progression stuff to action-based matters, where instead of the stakes getting higher being based on time, maybe it's based more on if players make certain types of really big mistakes or bad moves or bad rolls/twists, so they then have a sense of "oops I broke something OK guys my bad we need to fix that" and then the increased zone stakes feels based on their own actual actions rather than on an impersonal ticking clock.

Point the First:

I didn't imply or state that the scene tracker was combat only.  Rather, I said it's used in Action Scenes, rather than Montage or Open-roleplay scenes.  An action scene likely encompasses a number of items that are not merely "Punch the bad guys till they fall down."  In one Action scene, one character may be overwatching a hallway with a pulse cannon, while another hacks the high-security lock, and a third works to cobble together a makeshift explosive.  Given that, I still think it's perfectly reasonable to provide players (and their characters) with active deadlines.  ("You've got 10 rounds to make it to the security override controls or you're going to be overwhelmed with Omnitron 7 drones…")

I do think that the false Tomb of Anubis utiilizes the GYRO tracker poorly, as the obstacles themselves are severely abstracted.  That said, I easily think that adventure is the weakest of the six, eschewing structure in order to achieve overall feel and concept neither of which were executed well in the text.

Point the Second:

My point wasn't a conflation between the GYRO scene tracker and individual player turns, but rather a holistic statement:  I like tension in my games.  I like to maintain a ticking clock (or bomb, as the case may be).  And, if the group doesn't act before the clock runs out, I as a GM am not going to mellow out on them, simply because they couldn't/didn't/wouldn't make a decision when pressed.  If you, as an individual, hem and haw during your turn (making others wait on you and otherwise slowing down the action), I move on without you.  

Your group may be different in that regard; that's great if it is.  For me, I like the idea of a big warning sign for the group saying, "You have 8 rounds to complete 3 objectives.  Get 'em done!"  On an individual level, that manifests as "Your character is surrounded by 3 goons and Citizen Blorp is dragging away the reporter by the hair–make a decision!"  At my table, he who hesitates is lost.

Jeysie, I feel that you like to put words in people’s mouths and twist statements to suit your interpretation of them. I never said I hate long, drawn out role-playing sessions. I am currently running a game that takes place entirely in a giant sandbox of a town and relies completely on the players choosing a direction or plot thread and going from there. (Want to see it? Go here: Deadlands: Golgatha) I don’t guide them at all, only react to their choices. Been running this game weekly for just over a year. In that time they have died several times, discovered weird stuff, met interesting NPCs, tried to catch a serial killer, fought horrors man was not meant to know, and actively blew up the entire town to smithereens. They have also spent a lot of time going to the store, hanging out in bars, negotiating the price of horses, keeping watch at night, and running away from things that aren’t dangerous. And they still haven’t discovered everything I put into the town yet. A year of playing and there are still places they haven’t seen, people they haven’t met, plots they haven’t picked up. The pace is completely dictated by them and we have a great time.

I do enjoy that kind of role-playing. Never said I didn’t. And I would appreciate it if maybe you didn’t attack me by making such assumptions about me or using language that reads like you are belittling me when all I’m doing is trying to be helpful here with regards to running a Sentinels RPG session from the Starter Kit.

Everyone has their play style that they like. If spending hours checking into a hotel and eating dinner is your idea of fun, by all means, do it. I’ve done similar sessions and they were extremely satisfying. So don’t think I’m saying it’s bad or that I hate it or draw conclusions that are entirely unrelated to the topic at hand.

We aren’t talking about an RPG here where the main idea is you play a day in the life of a superhero. This is an RPG about making an exciting line of comic book stories, set in a Silver Age era of comic book superheroes. In this context, readers reading an entire comic book about Tachyon going to dinner, and that’s all that happens, well, it seems like readers wouldn’t much like to read that comic. But a comic where Tachyon is faced with stopping a horde of spider bots and rescuing citizens and having a fellow superhero in peril… That’s more fitting with the excitement and drama of a Silver Age superhero comic book.

Ultimately the table is your group of writers, and if everyone thinks the Tachyon Goes To Dinner issue will excite their “readers”, then I say do it! It’s your game! There’s no one right way to have fun with it. Decades of running RPGs has taught me that.

I do think that action scenes in a Sentinels RPG session need to feel high stakes action that is worthy of the attention of a superhero, particularly since that seems to be the point of action scenes in the Sentinels RPG. Whereas montage scenes are the exposition, the all-roleplay downtime between the times when the city is in peril. One entire session of Sentinels RPG is supposed to be one comic book issue, so a montage scene that eats up all of one session should probably have some really juicy character development or plot advancement to be worthy of “publishing” so to speak.

There’s ways to work that kind of thing. Tachyon goes to a fancy restaurant expecting to meet with her wife, but then she gets there and finds herself sitting across from Friction, her nemesis! As Tachyon is about to speedster her enemy into submission, Friction flips a switch on a clock device she hid underneath the table. If Tachyon attempts to use any of her speedster abilities, the device will trigger and all the bombs in the restaurant will go off killing everyone before Tachyon can save them! But! If Tachyon can get through this dinner without creating a scene and just hears Friction out, then Friction will leave and all the bombs will be disarmed ten minutes after Friction exits the restaurant.

Now we have a montage scene that engages the superhero in role-play with stakes (steaks?) that makes it not an ordinary dinner scene. There’s a purpose to it, one that likely will lead to the next scene of action as Tachyon needs to disarm the bombs and catch Friction, or maybe Spite is hunting Friction for reasons and she wants Tachyon’s help, or maybe Friction knows that Biomancer is doing terrible things that involve replacing her, or any number of other comic book plot tropes that explains why Friction needs to have dinner with Tachyon. Maybe she just wants to have dinner with her. I don’t know. But it should be viewed through the lens of what would happen in a comic book; of what would engage a comic book reader.

That’s the experience that I think the Sentinels RPG is trying to provide. I’m not saying that other experiences are bad or that they’re wrong or that I hate them. I’m saying that the purpose of the game is to do what heroes do. Defend the weak and the innocent. Throw a wrench in the works when the villains set their plans in motion. Jump in and lend a hand when your teammates are in trouble. Stand up for your principles. Punch evil right in the face.

Save the day.

After all, that’s what it says right in the Gameplay Guide.

And if you think there’s no role-playing during an action scene, honey, you have no idea. There is a ton of role-playing. Especially in this system since you have to role-play it first, then put together the dice. In other systems it’s usually the other way around, where the rules tell you what to do and the role-play is secondary to the roll-play during combat.

Yeah, and it's like:

1. You have to figure out that hacking a security lock is what needs to be done in the first place. (Step 1)

2. You have to get together the materials to handle this. (Step 2)

3. You have to actually do it. (Step 3)

4. If it fails, you have to either repeat this all over again or come up with a Plan B.

This is totally fine in RP that's allowed to progress at a normal state of speed. That's not fine when you've got only a limited amount of turns to do things.

Same more or less with the explosive. Figuring out what you want to do. Getting together what you need to do it. Accounting for what happens if it doesn't work the first time.

And I like tension in the form of tension that's sprung naturally from the actual roleplayed actions in the game. Not from the GM rushing us along at an artifical breakneck pace, because that's not exciting, it's stressful and un-fun.

Why, though? Your job as GM is not to command the players to march to your beat against their will, it's to help them have fun and tell fun stories. I mean, the Sentinels RPG's own gameplay guide says this.

Well, yeah, my group respects that the point of RPing is for everyone at the table to have fun, not for the GM alone to have fun while everyone else is stressed out and feels like they don't get to do anything fun.

Now I feel regretful in offering to RP with you, because while your ideas are interesting, your GM style is very very counterproductive to anyone getting to do any actual real roleplaying. As such, your great ideas would go to waste because everyone would be too busy racing through the plot at warp speed to ever let anyone properly do anything with them.

Dude, t his started because YOU put words in MY mouth and twisted MY statements to suit YOUR interpretation of them. That is what actually happened here.

Because I said literally nothing initally except that my own group likes to take their time roleplaying and took a long time to get through combat, and you out of literally nowhere decided to give me a full page lecture on how you thought I was derailing the GM's plot or taking forever to choose what to do, even though literally absolutely nowhere did I actually say that.

So my response to you was trying my best to make any sense at all of why you even made that whole lecture to me to begin with, because it seemed to have literally NOTHING to do with anything I actually said!

So I would ask you to not make untrue accusations of me, especially when you're accusing me of things you yourself did to me. That's not fair or respectful of you to do to me.

Dude.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/184425#comment-184425

Why did you right there criticize long, drawn out sessions, if you don't dislike long, drawn out sessions?

And I would appreciate it if you accepted the fact that it's not an attack for someone to disagree with you based on things you literally outright said (points above).

I have had plenty of occasions where I've read issues of comics with superheroes doing day to day stuff and I've enjoyed them plenty because I like superheroes as characters in addition to their combat powers.

Go back through the Letters Page podcasts and listen for Liz C.; you'll notice I spend a lot of time asking stuff like what the characters do on their time off or how they relate to each other, because that's what I find interesting.

And more relevantly I have the same right to what I find fun to roleplay as you have the right to yours.

Nowhere in this post have I made ANY disparaging remarks towards the way OTHER people like to play. Even when I mentioned dungeon crawls aren't for me, I still said I appreciate that other people like them!

So why are you (and PlatinumWarlock) disparaging the way I or anyone else likes to roleplay? That's not respectful of me or other roleplayers.

And that's great, but that just means you have the high stakes come naturally from what the players do during the session. Not from artifically rushing the players along in ways that are stressful instead of exciting.

Yeah, you are. You have spent this entire time insinuating strongly that you think the way I and others roleplay is objectively bad. It is disrespectful and I would like you (and PlatinumWarlock) to cease doing so.

OK, look, I also would like you to drop the disrespectful condescension too.

This is why I get upset and complain about the way people treat me. All I have done anywhere in this thread is politely and civilly explain why I feel the way I enjoy roleplaying would run into issues with this system, and have made what I tried to have be constructive suggestions as to how to fix my concerns without throwing out the entire system.  In return I've gotten you and PlatinumWarlock berating me for literally no good reason and accusing me of things I didn't do or say.

I would like to point out that browbeating me does not convince me to change my mind about my misgivings with this system. All it does is make me think I would never want to play with you or PlatinumWarlock as a GM because neither of you seem to have any respect for your players.

And I feel sad in PlatinumWarlock's case because he had great ideas, but I'd rather play with a GM who just runs average plots but wants to make sure their players are having fun, than a GM who has good ideas but is going to drag me along by my collar everyplace.

I feel like this may have gotten lost amongst all the other comments, so what do people think about my idea of not letting the players see the scene tracker?

Okay. Let's break this down in Sentinels RPG terms during an action scene:

1. Figure out hacking the lock - This is done for you as the gamemaster sets up the scene, and if using the index card element, then there's "Objective: Hack the Security Lock!" put out in front of the players.

2. Get together materials to do it - This is where I think you might have been lead astray. At the session at Gen Con, Phillipe-Antoine explained that you are a superhero and have all your superhero tricks already on you, within reason. While Wraith might not be carrying a supercomputer around, she does have her wrist computer that is wirelessly hooked up to her supercomputer within her lair, and if the player doesn't think of that, then the gamemaster can say, you know, you do have your gadgets on you, can you think of one that might help here? Then the player says yeah, I whip out my mini calculator computer and hook into the system! Boom! Done! The materials you need are already on you by virtue of you being a superhero. Wraith would NEVER go anywhere without her gadgets, and since it is a comic book atmosphere any needed tech or materials can be explained away using comic book logic. In another RPG, sure, there could be a whole session dedicated to getting the specific tech you need to do the job, but this is comic book world. The readers don't need all that prep!

3. Do it! - Yeah, well, this step tends to be what happens in the Sentinels RPG. First, the player describes what they're doing ("I'm going to hack into the security lock using my wrist computer!"), then they do it (assembles a dice pool from their stats that fits hacking into the security lock with their wrist computer).

4. If it fails, repeat or do something else - Well, ya. That's the idea. But there are also other techie types on the team who might be standing by to take over. Unity uses her tech skills to hack the lock when Wraith's own programming algorithms fail! The game doesn't exist in a vacuum, so realistically the entire thing is over and done with in one round, even if one player doesn't make the roll. And even if they all don't get the hack roll right, then one round goes by and the team tries again. It's no big deal, especially since the scene tracker seems to give you WAY MORE rounds than a team of heroes would ever need to complete the objectives.

Maybe you don't give your players enough credit that they can do things well even if they are under a clock. That spurs more intelligent approaches, the "fight smarter not harder!" strategies.

But it is your job as a gamemaster to make sure everyone's time is respected and valued. People take time out of their lives to get together and play games and socialize. That time is valuable and these people have made a conscious choice to sit down at your table, expecting to have a good time. One player wants to do long role-play sessions where no dice get rolled, another player had a terrible day and needs to let off some steam by punching bad guys, another player has to be out of there by a specific time because that's when the babysitter has to go home, another player has to be up in the morning and can't play past X time, another player has homework that needs to be done but they decided they would take the risk of failing an assignment because they want/need to relax with friends, and you have come in with a great adventure that has what you think are some really cool encounters and want to see everyone get through it tonight because you'll be out of town for the next month on business and want to assemble the next part of the campaign during that time.

I'd ask, why waste time not doing anything exciting if you came together to play a game about making exciting comic book superhero stories? This isn't about forcing players to march to your beat against their will. It's about making sure the game is worth everyone's time, including your own as a gamemaster. And if having all role-play with no movement forward on the plot or adventure is worth everyone's time in your group, then great! Do that!

I think this is a bit over the line here, drawing conclusions based on a very narrow view of the whole picture. There's role-playing, and there's sitting there lost in analysis paralysis trying to think of what would be the "right" thing to do. Most RPGs have an in-game "window of opportunity" for the player during a combat that is typically somewhere between 3 and 6 seconds. If you are role-playing to where everything you say is in-character, then it isn't unreasonable to allow that length of time be the limit. Plus, people can talk while doing other things. Comic book heroes and villains have all kinds of witty banter while in the middle of a fight. Talking is fine. But if you're going to break down every step of every action into a series of logical steps that can only be taken one at a time, each on a different round, then I think you might be missing the point of what a comic book story involves. Here in Sentinels RPG, you can describe what your hero is doing over two or three panels in the comic book, which means condensing things down to what really matters for purposes of a comic book medium. We don't need to see Wraith look at the security lock, decide she needs to go back to her lair, go into her gadgetorium closet, select all the hack tools, lock up the gadgetorium closet, swing back through the city, approach the lock, hook up the equipment, hack the system (player actually rolls here), and then see the results. Wraith already has the gadgets she needs because she's a superhero and that's what superheroes do–they plan ahead and bring the equipment they think they'll need for any given situations. It's unreasonable to think Wraith wouldn't have that tech on her already, so why not stop wasting all that time describing Wraith going back home and back out and instead just have her whip out her gadgets and hack the dang security lock already!

Now, that being said, at Gen Con it turned out that Absolute Zero ended up on the other side of town and instead of doing something superheroic to get to the tree, he chose to take the city bus. This became hilarious, and every time it got to AZ's turn, he'd describe how he's on the bus, taking selfies with the other riders or enduring the disapproving stare of the little old lady with her bag of groceries. This was so entertaining that Phillipe-Antoine gave him a persistant bonus to set up for when AZ arrived at the tree near the end of the battle and blast the Mothership to freezing bits as he stepped off the bus.

Roleplaying can work under a clock. It's about facilitating those choices within the context of the scene and making sure everyone has a chance to do something, and some of the best roleplaying can come out of those moments of stress. I understand not wanting to feel stressed out by the game and how it could make the experience unfun. But that didn't happen at that table at Gen Con, and it doesn't happen at my tables for other games when a clock comes into play. More than anything it has gotten the players to sit up, on the edge of their seats, and focused on the game while role-playing the entire time.

[moving this post to a better place in the thread]

Well for instance, I mentioned in the other thread how once I had to jury-rig a mobile armored battering ram to get around a security system to disable it, on a station full of office cubicles and science equipment.

So we actually in-character roleplayed me and the other player's PCs engaging in trial and error in initial attempts to disable the system, coming up with the battering ram idea and how to implement it, running around and gathering up office and science equipment, riding the silly thing, etc.

This was all around exciting and fun for us and at no point was anyone "hemming and hawwing" and holding up proceedings like you and PlatinumWarlock keep wrongly accusing. But it was also pretty slow in terms of over all time spent both IRL and in "turn-equivalents" because there was a lot of detail involved.

But that was OK. We had fun, and the GM was pretty impressed with our crazy lengths to ironically get around something he hadn't designed to be gotten around, but was so entertained he couldn't bring himself to tell us that versus just letting us do our thing.

But you and PlatinumWarlock are basically coming off as "ugh that's so slow of you to play like that and I'd never abide that in MY games, chop chop people".

And that doesn't convince me my tastes are wrong, it just convinces me to, well, give you guys the stink-eye, TBH.

Again, you seem to be under the erroneous assumption that it's just one player hemming and hawwing.

When it's actually EVERY player doing all this in detail RPing—that is, mind you, slow because it's detailed and not because we're hemming and hawwing–because we ALL like it.

I feel frustrated that no matter how much I try to clearly point that out, you keep coming back instead to this same type of lecture that has literally nothing at all to do with a single thing I have ever said.

Can I please be actually listened to?

Because I like superheros and I like the Sentinels characters in particular? Because on the occasions we do have combat, I don't mind it being comic book combat?

Plus, again with disparaging the way other people roleplay, because you don't really seem to understand that we might find other stuff exciting/interesting.

And when the reason you have to do that is because you're under a timer where you're going to keep failing badly and having plots cut short if you don't pick the right thing, that paralysis is what happens.

But when you're allowed to just go ahead and move things at a natural pace, you feel like you have leeway to be allowed to screw up now and then, especially if your screw ups lead to interesting twists (rather than the GM having to just artifically wrap it up because a timer ran out). So there's no need to sit back and optimize because you never feel like you're going to be punished if you don't.

Not for me. When I feel stressed and pressured I just get flustered and my brain starts freezing and I end up being like "Yeah I just can't do this, I'm gonna sit it out".

And I actually quoted one of my old RP logs as a response to another person's idea, where me and the other players were getting so flustered about what we thought was a time limit that we were actually driving the GM crazy with how we were confusingly talking over each other to the point where HE asked us to slow down and chill.

Sigh, look, you know, forget it. Fair warning from here on out I'm just going to totally ignore anyone lecturing me about things I never said or making fun of the way other people roleplay because I don't feel like another mess caused by other people not respecting my repeated requests that they not do that.

This is likely how I’ll play it … At least try it out this way.

Moved this post to here so it wouldn't get lost in previous discussion.

Sorry about that.

I wanted to say it seems to dovetail decently enough with my own idea of having the zone advancement be based on if the players choose to do particularly wrong things (or make poor enough dice rolls) so that their own actions happen to escalate the severity of things. Or in turn if the villain decides to do their own reactions naturally to the players ideas that again ratchet up the tension.

Basically either way, adjust the zone in ways that the GM feels best compromises between escalating tension while still letting the players progress in a pretty natural pace.

Aside: I'm actually reminded of a time my own group was technically operating under trying to find out how to discern a given bit of information within a 20 minute self-destruct sequence, and I checked and this is from our logs of that session:

[GM]: I do wish the both of you would stop throwing computer requests over each other. It's hard to keep up.

[My fellow player]: Sorry, we're feeling time pressures here. [GM] : What time pressures? the clock doesn't advance until I tell it to.

One thing to keep reminding your players if they feel under pressure from the scene tracker, is that they can use an overcome to prevent it advancing in the scene's turn, of course a critical fail (0 or less) could result in it advancing further.

What I believe the reason for the scene tracker is, is that heroes are constantly working under pressure, something is about to collapse, they're threatening to kill the hostages, Baron Blade's Terra-Luna Impusion device is getting ready to be fired, ect. ect.

So in the scenes green zone you've just arrived on the scene and are still taking things in before realising how bad things are.

The Yellow is the majority of the actual conflict, the pressure is on and you're attempting to resolve things before it gets worse.

In Red things are really bad, the building is groaning really loudly and the supports holding it up are starting to snap, the hostage taker is aiming his weapon at the hostages, the firing sequence for the Terra-Luna Impulsion Device has starting counting down to the actual firing time and it's time to pull out all the stops.

This serves two purposes,

1. It gives the players a representation of how bad things are getting adding an element of tension for the players.

2. I means that when the chips are down, people are not being hamstrung by taking too little damage to help effectively if the abilities they need are in the red or yellow zone.

I guess it's that I'm used to dealing with Magic Countdown - TV Tropes

Any kind of stated time limit or countdown in fiction seems to know when it's Being Watched , and will cheat accordingly for maximum drama. This phenomenon tends to occur especially as a countdown starts approaching zero.

Unless, of course, the players themselves speed things up. They decide they should be cutting wires when it actually involved turning the knobs. They crit fail their attempt at an important action. They actually go ahead and let that murderous minion finish moving logically combat turn by combat turn towards the hapless civilians without doing anything at all to try to stop them. They decide that going "Sure, go ahead, push that red button, see if we care" to the villain is a good idea. In that case, yep, go ahead and let the player have the plot-driving consequences of their actions making the condition of the scene worse.

Edit: And I guess therefore ironically what I'm saying is that I think the Minor/Major Twist system is totally perfect and would rather instead expand further on that dynamic. Because that helps things work more the way I feel comfortable with: The players themselves add bad scene-worsening elements if they pick bad/risky actions or happen to fail their rolls for things.

That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. They’ll have to know some of it anyway because they’ll know what the current color is. And it seems unfair to tell players, “whoops, time’s up” without as much warning and openness as possible.

I feel like if a group is less able to deal with a threat immediately and concisely, you might as a GM consider putting an extra turn in the green, yellow, and red zones, or only 2 of the zones, or just one extra turn for the entire scene, giving the players a little room to breathe without taking away the tracker or all of the tension. You could probably hide this from your players, and of course you would still need to alert them as to their zone, and at 5, 3, and 1 turn(s) left. Do you guys think that would work?

Jeysie, I don't know how many times I can say things along the line of "Your group may be different than mine; that's great if it is", without you coming back after me, claiming I'm attacking you, especially after I spent most of the last extended, argumentative thread agreeing with you...

I've run games for literally 25+ years.  I've run for home groups around my dining room table, I've run for groups at the biggest conventions in the US.  I've written for a number of massive companies, as well as a number of one-man-army shops on DriveThru.  I've written and published my own superheroes game, for Legacy's sake.  If you don't want to be at my table, that's fine--I've got players waiting in the wings.  But, could you at least possibly admit that what's going on at your table wouldn't always fly with people elsewhere?

If I sat down with 6-7 random people at a convention game, with an advertisement of "Omnitron returns to Megalopolis!  The Freedom Five must destroy the robotic menace before Freedom Tower falls forever!", and one of my players sat around on the bus, while the others tried to actively engage the plot, there's an active problem at the table.  One of the players is literally dragging down the rest of the group for his own, personal fun, while the others are likely struggling (or, at least, not at their optimal strength and flexibility) without his active presence.  At a table setting, it also means that the GM has to sacrifice time and effort to mollify that player, while running "the main plot" with the rest of the group.  I'm all for splitting the party...when it's in the interest in the party as a whole (i.e. "Unity, you and Wraith go that way and take out the reactor core; Tachyon, you and Bunker clear those drones.  AZ, you're with me:  let's crack that mothership's hull!").  When it's in the selfish intersest of one player?  That actively drags down the fun for everyone else at the table.  In a four hour convention game, if a full hour was devoted to one player faffing around on a city bus instead of fighting the giant robot, when the game was advertised as "Fight a giant robot!", I'd be pretty mad.  I think you would, too.

Again, your mileage may vary.  In my sizable experience, I've seen the contrary to what happens at your table.

For what it's worth, I think Phillipe adjucated that encounter very well.  He didn't make a big deal of the AZ's player's behavior, he rewarded them for rejoining the group, and didn't spend an over-large amount of time with that one player, at the detraction of the group.

You seem to think--and, I'm quoting you directly here--that my opinion is one of: ugh that's so slow of you to play like that and I'd never abide that in MY games, chop chop people.

Let me tell you a little story.  The first three sessions of the game that inspired Cold Steel Wardens, I GMing for four players:  my wife, our friend Lionel (the faculty advisor of the college roleplaying guild I founded), Will Herrmann (now the owner of Journeyman Games and the creator of the Savage Worlds Wild Card Creator), and Kat Ostrander (now, Kat Lee, the line developer for Legend of the Five Rings at Fantasy Flight games).  They're among some of the best players I've ever rolled dice with.  Do you know what the first three sessions of our campaign entailed?  Will's illegal immigrant character finding a low-paying job, low-rent housing, and a way to survive that wasn't squatting on the streets.  He didn't even meet another player character--Lionel's, in fact--until the end of the first session.

I *actively like* spending time doing nothing but in character roleplaying.  They're some of my favorite sessions, across the board.  But as a group dynamic--in my, again, not insignificant, experience--when you have half the group knee deep in zombie and the other half sitting around at the tavern, there's a significant, palpable issue with both your in-character motivational dynamics and your out-of-character/at-the-table group dynamics.  And, as the GM, it's your absolute responsibility to rectify this problem.

My point throughout this argument is no more and no less than this:  in an action scene, using hard deadlines both in-character (perhaps through the GYRO scene tracker) and out of character (through visual, verbal, and other social cues) maintains and enhances the tension of that scene.  If you take away that pressure, you also remove the tension from the scene.  

A third time, if you're okay with that and your players are okay with that, then you're fine.  I will, however, disagree with your choice, as it's actively bad storytelling technique. Telling a story--which is what, as both players and GMs is what we're doing--you've got to have conflict.  Putting the brakes on that conflict slows down the pace, the intensity, and the overall impact of your storytelling ability.  If you're okay with that and your players are okay with that, then you're fine.

As an overarching game-design philosophy, Cold Steel Wardens was designed to articulate and give voice to the moral quandary found in the Iron Age of Comics.  In the heat of the moment of an action scene, bullets fly, swords swing, punches land, and blood spills.  Yes, the chance to examine that quandary exists, but not in the depth or capacity of what the SCRPG would call a montage scene or in open-roleplay.  The depth emerges when the consequences are finally revealed:  when a vigilante sees where the bullets landed or when a would-be hero arrives just a little too late.  Without that tension, the whole game easily becomes meaningless; it's not something I'd ever be willing to sacrifice.  For me, that means that when running the SCRPG, I'm going to keep the GYRO scene tracker open, visible, and oft-utilized during action scenes.  During montage or open-roleplay scenes, I won't use it.  No more, no less.

I'm going to stress one last time that, If your group differs from mine, if your game experience differs from mine, and you're all having fun, that's spectacular.  My disagreement with how you run games is not a personal attack on you, on your group, or on your fun.  It is--precisely and nothing more--than a disagreement with the advice you're providing to other, potentially rookie, GMs.  I simply believe that deadlines and tensions have a major role to play in both player and character motivation than you seem to.

So you're saying that people who roleplay in detail while still following the plot logically as best they can figure it out, solving goals as best they can figure it out, having everyone being on the same page regards what to do and working together, and being prepared for their turns, doesn't fly with other groups?

Well, OK, I guess, but that now makes me wonder what IS the norm for other groups.

OK? And I have literally no idea what that has to do with me or my group, since that has never happened in my group. In my group nobody would ever do that sort of thing unless everyone agreed that having one of us do that would engage the plot.

Yeah, because that's literally the only way your continued essays to me make any sense.

I've stated over and over and over again that my group's players DO follow the plot, DO work towards goals, ARE prepared for their turns, ARE all on the same page, etc.  And yet you're still sitting here essaying at length about wayward, disruptive players even though I've stated over and over again that it has nothing to do with that.

So I have literally no choice but to assume you're against in-depth roleplaying and find it inherently disruptive, because otherwise I have literally absolutely no idea why you keep continally essaying about things that appear to be total non sequiturs in relation to anything I actually said.

OK, so what's wrong with my suggestions in these posts: https://greaterthangames.com/comment/184456#comment-184456 https://greaterthangames.com/comment/184460#comment-184460 where you make the tension based on everyone's actual roleplaying?

So you apparently think that actually doing any roleplaying in a roleplaying game is "bad storytelling technique" versus taking the time to actually properly develop and work through a plot.

So you're saying I'm right to be disappointed that you have great ideas that you're apparently unwilling to take any time to use properly versus rushing players at lightspeed through the game never stopping to actually do any real roleplaying.

Because again, the only way your essaying makes any sense whatsoever in relation to anything I actually said, is for me to assume that is your POV. Otherwise it's all just a total non sequitur.

Some of my advice regards this particual topic to rookie GMs is as follows:

1. Always communicate with your players to make sure everyone at the table is on board with what kind of game everyone wants to play and what everyone wants to get out of it.

2. Always try to make what happens in the plot follow logically from the consequences of the players' actions and choices, so that players feel as much as possible that what they do is actually a meaningful contribution. That includes having negative consequences when applicable.

3. Make sure that players feel excited and energized, not stressed out or flustered. It's OK for characters to be rushed when the plot calls for it, but the players shouldn't feel that way IRL.

4. Try your best to encourage the players to actually roleplay as their characters, rather than just "I swing my sword and roll Melee" the entire time.

If any of that is bad advice, I'd honestly like to know, but it's always served to make my own experiences enjoyable.

No, I don't want to be at the table of any GM who is going to do what you've done this entire thread and always ignore every single thing I say.

Like, from here on out, can I get a promise that people will actually always pay attention to what I say before responding to me, so I can stop having to waste everyone's time making these sorts of correction/defense posts because people are busy judging me poorly based on things I never actually said or did? Because I find it as tiresome as you do. It's making me actively not want to come here any more.

I am going to officially end this conversation by saying let's agree to disagree. Until further notice, please limit the conversation to ways your group might implement the ideas in this thread. Please refrain from stating reasons why someone else's idea won't work. Thank you for cooperating.

<3 Pydro.

Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you Enjoy your Holidays.

All of this. Merry Christmas guys.

Thank you, Pydro. :D

I really do want to see people's ideas on how to make the RPG work for everybody's group. :)

I bought dry-erase index cards and a bunch of dry-erase pens for another gaming thing that never materialized. (using for Aspects in Fate, ftr) I also have a little dry-erase whiteboard with a stand. Best of all, I got some multi-colored magnets. 

I wonder if there's an online service you could use to simulate the OP's original idea (since I'd love it for offline play, but I don't have anyone offline to RP with...) Or if there's a way to code Google Sheets for that sort of "reveal" dynamic. Hmm.

I used tabletop simulator with my friends the other night, the notecards in that worked quite well.

Posting this late as I just found out about this.

(I was the one running that Gen Con game, Hi!)

Thanks Twoeyedjack for providing this tool, it reflects how I both run the game and how we suggested any GM could use them too in the upcoming Core Book.  

I'm sure it's helped countless GMs in the last year (I found out about it when a friend of mine told me he was about to run the Starter Set). 

As for AZ's bus ride, there was a very strong "this is a Convention game" vibe to that move, the guy played up AZ's callous approach to life. Everybody seemed to have gotten a kick out of the the "Superhero in the Subway" trope and IIRC, he only spent one turn (maybe 2) doing this. I'm happy I allowed it and I still remember the moment fondly. It was pure "Gen Con story" material.

If anyone wants an alternative, I've had great success running Marvel Heroic with a large sheet of dry-wipe surface (actually, it's a Pathfinder flip-mat with a netural texture) and dry erase pens to track assets, resources and complications, as well as the doom pool and NPC stress tracks so I don't see why it wouldn't work as well for SC:RPG. It's a higher intial cost, sure, but it's cheaper in the long run.

I just got quite a few multicolored (red, yellow, green, blue and white) index cards and I'll probably use them for three things this evening when we are running the fourth story.

1. Heroes hitpoints and abilities
One of the characters in my group is Absolute Zero and his yoyo-hp might be easier to handle if he just has a certain amount of green/yellow/red blank index cards to indicate which zone he is in.
Colored index cards can also help the players to keep track of their colored abilities (putting away those abilities that can't be used right now)

2. Scene counter
I found it problematic in the previous 3 adventures to keep track of the scene tracker when I also have to turn pages for info on the scene, minons, ...
So I will just put a small stack of cards in the middle so the players can see what the current status is and also check how much time they will have.

3. Many other uses
So far I only used red/yellow/green, but I'll probably use the blue cards for minions, objectives, ... and may even use the white cards for short compilations of the basic actions and other rules.

I'll probably compile some rules cheat sheet - or has anyone else here done somthig like that already

It’s amazing how many players over the years I’ve encountered who refuse flat-out to follow any GM’s prepped adventure.



It’s a different playstyle, suited best to hexcrawls and rumor-mongering GM’s prepared to wing it on a moment’s notice.  It’s different, not better, not worse. Unless you try to use a heavily-linear “The route is prefigured, what matters is if we make it through the trip” type game. Which, the Starter Kit definitely is written as.

And yes, I’ve run games for that type - lots of “throw 20 hooks, then figure out which one they want to follow” - and often intentionally adding a few travel encounters the dice don’t call for in order to delay them from reaching long enough to have the week to build the dungeon.

Now, some decry the freedom of games like SC as “illusionsim” - creating a false illusion of freedom of choice… but I’ve known (and have been, from time to time) as guilty of illusionism in a hexcrawl player-driven setup. The dungeon used is written with plans for several of the hooks, so I wrote 3 or 4 in advance, each of which had small changes based upon which hook was followed, and then replaced it with a new one… giving the players the illusion that their choice was 12+ choices, when, really, it was between 4 dungeons…