Final Story

I know there has been a lot of speculation and theories about Sentinels over the years.  What I'm wondering is after the final expansion, Christopher will you tell us the story of what has happened?

Tactics happens after the final expansion. :)

I think they ment what really happens over the course of SotM (and likely the order in which it happened).

Very much so.  So, as an example, when did Fixer die in relation to when Voss was defeated. 

Some time ago, I believe I recall Christopher promising a timeline once the story was completed, giving, for instance, the dates each title ran.

I'll be glad to get any information story wise.   The more the better.  

I'm still hopeful that an updated approach to the comic book that was half of a cancelled Kickstarter could be funded.  That may be a naive or uniformed hope.

A story bible would definitely be awesome.  Hell, I'd pay money for it ( presumbly as a book for the RPG ).

I know the idea has been suggested before, but I'd be all for an Encyclopedia of the Multiverse giving detailed stories about each character as well as sections devoted to important events and battles. All, of course, accompanied by Adam's stellar artwork.

I asked about this during GTGs Gencon panel. I can't remember if it was Christopher or Paul, but they said the RPG will pretty much serve as a story bible. They also mentioned that something like a Marvel/DC style encyclopedia wouldn't have a good cost benefit to labor ratio. Basically Christopher and Adam could produce at least one and likely more expansions or games in the time it would take to make that encyclopedia.

It would be fantastic to have a HISTORY section in the RPG books when they come out!

I thing GtG has missed out by not sharing the game's story more directly than they have.  We pour over every clue from every source here on the forums, but I would imagine that a normal player would have no idea about which Legacy died when in which timeline or who Chokepoint is or what she's up to (I'm still unclear about that one).  There's a lot of great story buried in this game, but you have to be an archaologist to get a lot of it.

EDIT: Mr. Fixer's life and death shenanigans with Zhu Long is another example of a juicy story that I'm sure average players have no idea is even going on.  To a casual eye, Fixer has just changed his costume a couple of times.

Well, first off, it's clear that this is a deliberate choice on their part to tell the story out of order (as opposed to just not getting around to it). Of course, something could be both a deliberate choice and a missed opportunity.

But I also don't know whether or not it was a good choice on their part. It's obvious looking at even the base set that there's a really rich story behind all the characters, that there's much more going on than is revealed on the surface. I feel like this adds a lot to the game, even for casual players. Of course there are different degrees of this.

Some of the out-of-order storytelling is quite unusual, but other bits are more ordinary serial storytelling conventions. For instance, it's quite typical in fiction series that we don't know what's going to be happening in the final showdown. It's unusual that we have seen little hints of what might be happening. I know it's one standard fiction-writing technique to write little back vignettes for your characters that you don't share with the readers.

In the specific case of Mr. Fixer, I think his story is revealed pretty straightforwardly in the Temple of Zhu Long deck.

The Letters Page podcast was supposed to fill this need. Unfortunatley that idea has been shelved indefinitely.

There is only so much we can infer from the art and text. Even little hints can be interpreted totally wrong or go unnoticed completley (for instance, my theory that Visionary was from the IL timeline originally was confirmed as totally wrong. Incidently this means there is a version of the Freedom 6 we have not yet seen). There are tons of small-ish storylines alluded to in-game we know nothing about (like for instance how Ra gets captured and is saved by Fanatic, or the entire Heliopolis War thing for that matter) where there is very little art/text to put together a narrative on our own.

As far as Chokepoint goes in your other question, here is what we know. She was evidently brought back to Ft Adamant in seceret after her supposed death at KNYFE's hands post the V5 uprising (see KNYFE's deck for artwork on this). Deadline's alien power crystal thing was evidently in their possesion as well, as they both merged and she gained cosmic-level visions/knowledge as a result.  She is now driven to, I guess, remake the world in an image she sees fit based upon her newfound knowledge and power. Given her ability to use and manipulate tech/metal/armor/whathaveyou, heros like Unity/AbZero/Bunker had to find new ways to combat her, leading to their Termi-nation promos.

I'm hoping the RPG takes off well. If it does, it's a good opportunity for them to tell some of these stories more straightforwardly while making money doing it.

And wow, Foote, you pick up on a lot more stuff than I do. I didn't even know the name "War of Heliopolis", though I guess that's the story of the creation of the Horus of Two Horizons.

It's the point of RPG's to create your own story and not follow in the footsteps of one already laid out for you on rails?

Honest question. I've never played or been a part of a pen/paper RPG like D&D or what the Sentinels RPG is. 

Edit:

I think the creation of Horus happens in the one-shot "Horus of Two Horizons" (you see the issue name on Ammits card in VotM). War of Heliopolis is either the 1st or possibly the 2nd major confrontation between Ra and the Ennead (though I think it's second becaus I believe he is Horus at that time). But here is where my point is made, because we don't know hardly anything about it besides the fact that the issue's are named in flavor text.

Often an RPG is set in a world populated by characters that tell a story around the actions of the player characters (PCs). The story of the PCs might dip in and out of the story of other characters, but those other stories are happening around them, regardless. It really depends on the game / campaign setting, though.

Hopefully the RPG storyline will start at the end of the card game, as that will allow us to get all the card game's background and story, and set us at a point in time where we can do interesting things in the aftermath of the final set. Then we can learn the story of the world following the card game through the events described in the adventures they publish. 

(I thought they'd actually told us when the RPG was going to be set, but I can't find it nor can I remember. Anyone else have that?)

I think the RPG would be better served taking place right before the card games aftermath. If it happened post, you wouldn't have characters like Ra (who dies/is lost in that final battle) and possible others like Nightmist or Scholar whos fates are questionable post finale.

Thanks for the other explaination though. That makes sense to me.

Christopher already said that the RPG takes place right before the final expansion.

I think I recall them sayin in the thread for the rpg post gen-con that the rpg will be taking place just before the finale

I also wouldn't be surprised if there are one-shot scenarios to play through that tell the story of some adventure of the main heroes, like the War of Heliopolis. I think it's already clear that you will be able to play as Legacy/Wraith etc (as in the demos at GenCon etc), as well as create your own characters.

EDIT: For that matter, what was the scenario at GenCon? Is it part of the canonical storyline?

I was thinking of the RPG as a physical place to put background and stories and character information, because it's an important part of the setting.

It seems very natural to use all that stuff as "fluff" even if you don't choose to use pre-existing characters.

White Wolf products have a lot of that kind of thing, with lots of descriptions about different factions/people/areas/etc, and some short stories/vignettes to help you get a feel for the flavour of stories you're likely to create in your own games.

What I'd like to see for SC:RPG is general world-flavour in the main section of the book, and descriptions of the environments. I'd put character sheets and bios of existing characters as an appendix at the back. [i]Proper[/i] bios, with up-to-date history, so we can use it both as a resource for the RPG and as general reference material for us Sentinerds.

The RPG taking pace right before the final expansion would put it shortly after the comic book they tried to launch with Story Wars.

I think the comic will be back as part of the RPG launch.  (hope hope)

I think it would make sense that each RPG we play is essentially one of the many alternate universes in the multiverse. There will be certain similar paths we can all take, but each universe will be unique. How different is up to us in the end.

IIRC, there was discussion that the SotM RPG would include a timeline of game history.  I hope so because even if the official setting is just before "the OblivAeon Event" I may want to run a campaign in other times.  I'd love to run some golden age SotM games with an earlier generations of heroes ad info about the past of the Sentinel's worlds would help with that.

Also, as a fan of Atomic Robo, I could easily see running a campaign that jumped around in time.