First Impressions from Gencon

I got to try out a game of this at Gencon.  I am pretty sure we were using the starter pack.  We played as the freedom 5 plus Unity in a plot involving some robots showing up.  Overall I did not enjoy the game, and I think at least part of this was due to a GM not being fully prepared.  And I don't hold this against them.  Gencon is hectic and exhausting, and this is just as a participant.  I can only imagine how difficult it is for the people actually there to work.  And I know this person wanted to do there best but for whatever reason could not.  So there is that.

I would say apart from that, my impressions of the system were not great.  Part of this can be written off as a bad one shot con game.  And one game is a very tough spot to judge an RPG from.  But several features indicate that this is not my kind of RPG.  The big, glowing in neon lights, stand out problem that I have with it is the metaplot.  It became very very obvious that the game was designed almost entirely to drive players through a pre established metaplot, which will be supplemented at regular intervals with new published material, and which already has several "issues" that players are expected to go through.  I am a huge fan of Sentinels, and I love the fictional universe Christopher and Adam have created.  But I do not play RPGs as a kind of cheap amusement park ride to see all the stuff someone else has already made.  This is a personal preference, and I think that if you are drawn towards the RPG as a way of seeing first hand the kind of stories they want to tell about the sentinels universe, you will likely have a much warmer impression of the game.

The mechanics are mostly fine.  They exist, and are there.  They mostly won't get in the way of anything, but on the flip side don't do anything interesting on there own.  I suspect they were kept fairly generic and bland so that a GM would not have to wrangle with the players as much while trying to force the metaplot down a certain direction.  Cam Banks (designer) has compared it to FATE and Apocalypse World.  I am fairly familiar with both, and I would say that it is reminiscent of FATE in a lot of ways, so if that is your jam, it might be worth looking at.  But it is absolutely not a *World style game, and does not have the features that make such games compelling.  Do not get this system if you are looking for fiction first super hero action.  Its very rules light and cinematic, but fiction will just as likely follow the mechanics than the other way around.  

I got a chance to look through the how to play booklet, and it did not impress me.  If the GM was struggling because they lacked experience, then this would not be of much help at all.  The GM section was generic in the extreme, and will not give solid advice to GMs who are looking to improve but are lacking an understanding of what will make them successful vs not.  For this reason alone, I would not recommend buying the starter kit unless A.) you want the adventures that are packaged with it, and B.) you have someone who is experienced with GMing traditional RPGs who is willing to run the game, that way he can use whichever style works for him rather than being completely in the cold in having to learn it without effective tools.

I realize this is a fairly negative post.  I am not trying to be down on the fun that people will undoubtedly have with the product.  This is more a case of "If you are like me and are looking for x, y, and z, this isn't it".  And for everyone else, I really do hope you have a blast playing this game.  If my complaints aren't things you'd worry about, it should hopefully be really fun.

My understanding is that it will have a metaplot in the same way D&D does in the Adventurers League, e.g. you're free to ignore it and run whatever games you want to with material presented in the various books. C&A spend a lot of time encouraging people to throw their work out the window and go crazy with the material they make available.

Do you have much experience with pre-written adventures? This feels no more railroading than a pathfinder adventure path. In fact, the looser system of “overcome this” as opposed to “succeed at a DC X check using one of these two skills” allows for a lot more variety in how you go down the path. 

Than again, I guess a lot of that is the DM. I’ve had many games where I’ve been led down a set path, but due to a skilled DM it’s felt like my own ideas.

I’m interested to see that you said you don’t think it has the appealing parts of Apocalypse World. For me, the best part of AW (and PbtA stuff) was always the very descriptive style of play, enshrining the principle of To Do It, Do It. From what I’ve seen, it’s almost meaningless in this system to say (for example) ‘I attack the minion’ - at the very least, describing the use of powers and skills that apply means that it’s rare for any two actions to be quite the same.

If you’d be interested in seeing another approach to things (and perhaps assuage some of your concerns about railroading), the GtG channel on YouTube has their recent series of Sentinels Live sessions, I’ve been watching them and having a great time.

Also: welcome to the forums!

My experiences with any prepublished adventure modules is that they're either railroad-y, "dungeon crawls" (which wouldn't really work for a superhero game), or location/investigation adventures (which would work for some superhero styles, but not others).  You can use the core system to build more open adventures if you like, once the GM rules are available.

@liarliar  I would say that Sentinels does not use that principle.  As an example, when Absolute Zero attacks a minion, he gathers his cold die, his ranged attack die, and his health die, and rolls those.  You can encourage him to describe what he is doing, but "I am doing a ranged cold attack" generally handles it.  Nothing breaks if you ignore the fiction.  Whereas if you ignore that principle in AW stuff just doesn't work and you end up with nonsense scenarios that don't make sense until you go back to fiction first.  

And yeah, published adventures are typically railroady, not denying that.  But my impression from the starter kit is that this is pretty much the meat of what they give you.  The starter kit doesn't give you enough to go off and make your own scenarios with your own characters.  You'd have to do a lot of hacking to get those essential pieces.  And even then a lot of stuff seems to be missing.  When the full rules get released, a lot of these concerns may go away, but in that case you still wouldn't really want the starter set unless you want the metaplot.

There is something I think is really cool, which is major and minor twists.  These are nifty ideas that can lead to fun gameplay, even though they are bolted onto a system I don't like.

Could this be a case of Misused Terminology? Calling it a Starter Kit could imply that it is useful for starting your own games. If they had called it a Teaser Kit or something similar, would that have assuaged some of your concerns?

I mean, quickstarts Starter Kits are a thing in the RPG world, and this hits all the points… Go and search in DTRPG, and you'll have a boatload of those.  The SC Starter Kit is a bigger one, with a larger than average adventure, a bit of modularity in how you play, and is a way to get a taste of the system.

Same thing with Quickstarts.  None of those generally give you enough to make your own scenarios.  (Simpler systems, maybe, but Chargen is almost never included)

Maybe.  Its also worth keeping in mind that my concerns are largely tied to my personal tastes.  So if the full game makes it possible to ignore published adventures, I still might consider it a metaplot driven game that doesn't interest me.

There will definitely be rules for creating your own adventures.  The purpose of the Starter Kit was to provide potential players and GM's a taste of how SC:RPG plays, not provide a core rulebook from which to build characters and adventures.

I'm not sure if you've listened to The Letters Page podcast, but Christopher and Adam spend a lot of time on there saying "this is the story of [X] in the RPG timeline, but do whatever you want if that doesn't work for you".  So yes, the core set is going to contain a lot of metaplot adventure, but it's also going to contain the building blocks necessary to allow players/GM's to do whatever they want.  C&A have mentioned on numerous occasions that being able to do whatever you want with the RPG is very important to them.

As for fiction-vs-mechanics, that's basically been entirely left up to the players.  If the player wants to themelessly describe that "AZ makes a ranged cold attack at the spider bot near Unity", they can, but the door is also open to say "AZ forms an ice javelin, leaps over the nearest spider bot and while in mid-air launches the ice javelin at the bot attacking Unity, landing beside her on a small ice platform created before landing".  Players who are naturally more creative and/or embrace the comic-book-ridiculousness will go for the latter approach, but there's nothing stopping players from going with the former.

@Jay

I don't know that it will assuage your concerns entirely, but the core rulebook will have all of the rules for building heroes, villains, environments, etc. etc., and are not tied to the metaplot. The examples are all metaplot examples, just like D&D examples are typically all Greyhawk examples, but you can build and run anything you want. I definitely know people planning to just run an MCU adventure once the book comes out.