In which Violet Heart, Dynamo, Starblight, and Stella Nova discover a brand-new threat to... the world? The universe? Time will tell....
YouTube link is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r7JREdP0C0
https://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=RPG_Livestream
It's basically just about tea, as far as I'm concerned.
Calling this "Sentinels Live" messed me up because that's the name of Handelabra's Tuesday stream. c.c I was like, "Isn't it a little late to be talking about episode one?"
It was a good first session, I think. The reveal of the art was pretty awesome, especially since I knew the dragon was coming from having seen the GM prep stream. (Which I think I'll skip next time, I'd rather be surprised!) I did feel bad for Adam, though, Starblight got wicked jacked up like, multiple times. D:
I had the same thought. Might be better to rename the title Sentinels RPG Live Epsiode 1 discussion.
As to the Epsiode itself I was mostly waiting on who Christopher was going to target with the swallow whole ability of the Lazer Dragon. I’m also curious who drew the art for the session.
I feel sad I was not informed of this thread. I shall feel sad no longer. Hi.
I mean, I did put it in the RPG forum. But, edited.
Was I the only one who was a little disappointed? I actually felt the encounter was kind of frustrating. The dragon was built with the villain rules, but since it was invincible, it wasn't really a villain, it was more of a hazard. It probably could have been built using the environment rules instead. It also wasn't clear what the actual objective was until the scene was already in the red–having the scene go straight from "we're poking at things to see how this works" to "we're about to lose" would have made me not want to keep playing. Starblight's sword encouraged him to attack the dragon, and I understand that was a result of a major twist, but it was seriously misleading. No one else had any guidance at all until the end. And when they did, there was only one thing they could do–Overcome checks to disable the sigils–and it was just a question of justifying the action using the powers and qualities on their sheets. (I mean, they could have done other things–boost each other, attack the minions–but with the scene about to end, those would have been dumb.)
If that had been my first experience with the game, I probably would have lost interest in it immediately. There was some fun shared narration, but you don't need any system at all for that. (I was actually a little shocked at how many people in chat had never seen a game run collaboratively that way–I've seen it often, even in "crunchy" systems like D&D.)
The only thing I was disappointed about was the time spent trying to destroy the wisps. There Starblight is getting eaten and Violent Hearts is over there ribboning up something that didn't seem very important. Also Dynamo was over there helping her, so half the party was dealing with something trivial.
I thought the invincible Laser Dragon was fine. In my head they just lacked the knowledge of how to handle such a beast and a future encounter it'll probably be able to be injured. A misleading Major Twist also doesn't bother me much either, honestly that was something that made me wonder if they were supposed to attack it.
I do agree, someone completely new to an RPG probably should not be involved in that game. From the sound of things only Rae lacks a lot of RPG experience. I also love games where it promotes outside thinking rather than just stab the big bad until it doesn't move anymore.
I think the issue with the Laser Dragon came from two separate, but linked points:
1) The communication that the LD was all but impervious to attack. That's the sort of thing that has to be established from the very outset; when a character unleashes an attack against it, a GM has to be explicit in stating--both in and out of character--that the attack isn't going to have any effect, no matter how well the character rolls. That can be described in any number of ways, but also should be accompanied by the out-of-character statement that, "Your normal attacks aren't going to do the trick here; try to find something else..."
2) The lack of ultimate goal of what to 'do' with the LD, once it was established that the dragon couldn't be harmed. Was the goal to drive it into space? Get it back into the egg? Immobilize it? Send it to another dimension? This is something the players should probably have taken the lead on, but some GM direction, "Okay, so attacking it isn't getting you anywhere. What's your next plan?" could have really gone a long way towards player organization and strategy.
One thing I'm *not* a fan of is the ability to "game" the system, by passing the initiative order from GM -- Scene -- GM -- Scene. That seems really cheesy to me, and takes away a good deal of player agency. I'm likely to already consider enforcing the rule of "you can't pass to yourself" a little harsher, with the scene only ever advancing after every other actor has gone and, once it's gone, must be passed to someone other than the GM.
What do you mean? Iirc there's already a hard rule that you can't pass to yourself, even if you're the last to go in a round.
Personally, I like the whole thing with villain -> environment -> villain -> environment, since that's something only the gm can do at their own discretion. The starter kit even describes it as a way to "punish" players who try to always save the non-heroes for last, and I think that's brilliant.
The other thing is that continually doing it gives the players twice as many turns at once as well.
I actually kind of enjoyed it. It contianed most of the humor you expect from the Letters Page but with more people and Lazer Dragons. Also, I feel like they could have used a better name than Lazer Dragon.
Also, totally interested in seeing where this thing with Starblight goes.
All the more reason to prevent it from happening, in my eyes.
If you want players to do something, it’s much more productive to reward them (or, at least, frame it as a reward) for doing the desired action. Maybe you award the person who passes the initiative to the GM or the scene tracker a one-die reroll during their turn.
Penalizing them with the threat of four consecutive turns not only fragments the pace of the scene, but also deviates from the more freeform nature of initiative…
Meh it takes a couple of games until the player is ok passing it to the villain and not before the end of the turn. I mean Craig wanted to be last several times. Some players like being a sweeper and want their hero to be last to set up the order for next turn.
I felt it seemed fairly clear within a reasonable amount of time that attacking the laser dragon wasn’t what they were meant to be doing. I caught on that the idea was to let the dragon out before it could do too much damage in the constrained area, I think Christopher certainly got that across and he provided guidance on what to focus on after the dragon encounter too.
Did have a fairly recent D&D campaign where the players encountered a dragon that was not to be fought, would have been a total party kill, so maybe I’m aware for such things.
It seems to be quite a light rules system, which could work quite well for superheroics - a genre often struggled with in RPGs. I’m looking forward to seeing more and seeing how in depth it can get when you see more of a villain role in play and such or if it might end up feeling a bit too light perhaps.
So, I've been putting a lot of thought into the initiative system. At first, I thought it was clever, different, and simple, but now I'm not so sure.
First, the Sentinels RPG is, overall, tactics-light. Mostly, when your turn comes up, you look at the situation and do what you think your character might see as the most pressing issue that's within their skillset to address. That's what the players in this game did, and it's what I see people do in the starter kit games I've seen demoed. But choosing turn order is a surprisingly difficult and tactics-rich decision. Take all your turns first so you can eliminate threats and defend yourselves, but let the villains take double turns? Let the villains go early so you can chain a bunch of boosts and coordinated attacks? Use an ability that lasts until the end of your next turn, which discourages you from acting early in the next round?
I don't mind tactical decisions--I love tactical games in general--but that's not the strength of the Sentinels RPG. It's a smooth, simple system with a focus on storytelling and roleplay. I don't feel like the initiative system is a good fit. Notice how, in the live game, the only time the players stopped to discuss strategy with each other was when deciding turn order. They could have discussed it at other times (to give each other boosts, defend each other, etc.), but after the first couple of turns, it was the turn order that derailed them from organic play into tactical play.
Second, turn order isn't a character decision, it's a player decision. This is the bigger problem, I think. When you decide who goes next, it's you making that decision, not your character. Notice how in the live game, the players only stopped thinking from their characters' viewpoints when the decision of turn order came up. I felt like it significantly broke the flow and immersion.
That's even weirder when considering the GM's perspective. A villain shouldn't have any concept of taking turns--that's a game mechanic, not an in-world thing. The villain isn't the one deciding who should go first, the GM is. Should the GM think strategically in favor of the villain just because it's their turn? What if the villain is a group of mindless minions--should they make inferior decisions? And when the GM is taking the environment's/scene tracker's turn, their decision can only be based purely on narrative at best, antagonism against the heroes at worst. I feel like this is actually harder than GM'ing D&D--in D&D, you just have to decide what the monster you're playing as would do, not what "the story" would do. The GM has to deliberately decide to make things easier or harder for the players--which, yeah, is part of a GM's job, but it's an extra level of challenge that doesn't seem necessary.
So yeah, I'm thinking a more traditional initiative method might serve this whole system better.
I thought the initiative system was interesting, but this seems like a solid analysis. It is kinda weird, altogether.
Overall what I’ve seen I don’t take any issue with what Christoper did and I think the more free flowing nature gives the players/GM am ability to set things how they want to. It also seems fairly well cemented at this point. I’ve heard Christoper explain why it was used and honestly I’d rather see similar in other RPGs.
Honestly, I havn't seen much problem with it. Mostly because when I demoed the starter kit I tried to do as much crud with absolute zero's ice as physically possible. He's pretty much an all purpose hero.
That's certainly an interesting analysis, Mindwanderer. I could definitely see why some groups would want to drop the initiative system (either for more in-character time* or faster play). The biggest problem I've had running the starter kit is players taking "too long" to dedide what they want to do on their turn, and that has been solved by having players say who they'll pass to at the start of their own turn, so that the next person can start thinking about what they want to do earlier. If I were to drop the system, I'd probably adopt the order set by the card game for simplicity.
*Interestingly, the starter kit provides an alternative way to think about a game of the RPG: it suggests that the players/GM are a group of comic-book writers putting together a story, with the GM acting as editor-in-chief. Now, pretending to be a guy writing about Absolute Zero seems to me FAR more boring than pretending to be Absolute Zero, so I tossed this suggestion aside in less time than it took to read it. But if you were to play the game imagining that you're the writing staff, the current initiative system is perfectly in-character. "Oh! It would be so cool if Abs. Zero were to go next, he could do [this]!"
As to the episode itself, I didn't manage to listen to the whole thing (I started the episode too close to bedtime to watch the whole thing), but the second that Christopher put overcome tickboxes on the relic-things it was obvious to me that the goal of the scene was to deal with them and not the dragon. I'm surprised to read that they didn't until closer to the end of scene. (That said, just because it was obvious to me doesn't mean it should be to everyone).
Having a strict turn sequence system would achieve the same thing, and then some, since you'll know when your turn is coming up a whole round in advance.
Yeah, I don't think that makes a ton of sense. Each player represents a hero, and their motivation isn't to tell a good story, it's to overcome the challenges the GM throws at them. There are ways you could structure a game where everyone represents a writer in editiorial control of their favorite character, but this isn't it.
Having read through the starter kit, I wasn't sure of this at all. There are a lot of "checkbox" elements that are entirely optional, and many aren't even good uses of your time.
Any chance these will be done as a podcast as well? It is hard to watch videos at work/home but listening to podcasts is easy
They’ve announced that they have plans to do so during yesterday’s episodes. Didn’t sound like there was any set date but that they Trevor working on it
I think we'll have to disagree there. The goal of an ROG isn't just to overcome the GM's challenges, but also to work together with the GM to tell a great story.
So... do we have a thread for episode 2?
We don't, so I'm just going to post stuff here! I've really enjoyed the first five episodes - all the art is incredible, and the storyline's been really interesting. I can't wait to see how things unfold in the final episode.
Watching this unfold and seeing how the characters play has me really excited to play/run the game!