#sentinel comics rpg

[zybynarx]

DAY 30: Real Gone (Sheryl Crow)

This is my character for the Sentinel Comic RPG that I am currently playing with some friends! His name is Luis Melendez, A.K.A. Destello. He has the ability to manipulate/use wind and electricity to his advantage. Long ago his family was cursed, but somewhere along the line one of his ancestors decided to make a profit out of their bad situation. So now his family works pretty similar to La Familia Madrigal (Encanto).

He's a doof, and I love him. ❤️

[magicalgirlartist]

[ID: 7 panel comic taking place in a plaza with a large tree in front of a blue glass building. The characters are Sprout (young white woman with brown braids), Riptide (young white man with shark teeth), Anthony/Argent Adept (white man with orange hair and a beard), and Absolute Zero (man in a blue robot suit). 1: Sprout and Riptide are walking away from Anthony (all wearing plain clothes). Sprout is smiling and waving at Anthony over her shoulder, Riptide looks back at Anthony with his hands in his pockets, Anthony waves back at Sprout. 2: Riptide points over his shoulder with his thumb and looks at Sprout. Riptide: "So who was that guy?" Sprout: "Oh, that's Anthony. I see him at Akash'Flora all the time. I think he's a gardener or something." 3: Fully black panel with white text reading "LITERALLY MONTHS LATER" in all caps. 4: Argent Adept (in hero outfit) standing in front of the tree. AbZero (off panel): "Kid, this is the Argent Adept of the Prime Wardens." AA: "Oh, we've met." 5: Side view of AA, AbZero, and Sprout. Sprout is pointing at AA in shock. AA looks mildly surprised. AbZero is just watching this. Sprout: "YOU?!" AbZero (small text): oh cool you guys know each other already 6: Sprout looking away with a hand to her chest, dismayed. "Why didn't you tell me you were the Argent Adept?" 7: AA looks up and away thoughtfully. Sprout leans forward, hands in fists, angry expression. AbZero looks away with one hand to his face, suppressing a laugh. AA: "I suppose it just didn't come up." Arrow shaped text box pointing to AA: "thought she already knew" Sprout: "ANTHONY." [End ID].

Oh my god this is only funny to me and my brother but I spent so long on it I'm posting it. A running gag we have with Sprout is that she doesn't know that her buddy Anthony, a guy she sees at Akash'Flora all the time, is actually the Argent Adept and a teacher at her fucking school. Anthony, not keeping his identity as the Argent Adept a secret, assumed she already knew. She didn't.

Also Absolute Zero is there because I love him.

[2bit-sunshine]

I am going to be running sentinel comics rpg for some friends and my brother soon. Im very excited to play a super hero game! Ive been looking for one for. Awhile. And soon ill have a second one to try to!!

[thrythlind]

The Guardian Wings

Spark Bug Rune Striker Black Sheep Danica Thorn

Dae Vespi is a supernatural being from an alien planet who was captured and experimented upon by the Thorathian mad scientist and working as a data analyst for a local PI office. She is skilled at supporting her friends and team-members.

Malaya Suarez is an ex-army soldier who was part of a failed project trying to create a magical power armor. Her combat training and familiarity with occult lore had caused her to be tapped as the test pilot for the suit. Tinkering on her own, she found a dangerous way to make it work.

Pa'rea is a woman from the far future showing both Thorathian and Human descent. She has great power and is very eager to prove herself. She's friendly and outgoing, with a smile on her face, but it's clear that she feels like she believes that she is a disappointment to her family.

Danica Thorn has interacted with the organizations responsible for handling immigrants to Earth from other planets ever since she barely survived the disasters that accompanied Deadline's attacks. And has secretly been developing the cosmic powers she got afterwards.

Shortly before leaving the army, Malaya was loaned out to the forces responsible for handling the refugees from the Thorathian invasion fleet and after leaving stayed on to be a case worker, which is how she knows Dae. Pa'rea joined later when she came to Earth on her own and claimed to be from the future and they all met Danica at a charity event that was crashed by minor supervillains seeking to kidnap the "helpless" Danica.

Since then Danica has sponsored the heroes and since most of the group can fly to one degree or another, they have called themselves the Guardian Wings.

[lorekeeper-backset]

The best part of SCRPG games is coming up with the meta reactions to the comic you're playing out. Like, for example, which of these characters is a Tumblr Sexyman and who has the most fanfiction written about them.

[tavi-arts]

This is Sylph. She is a model for her mother’s fashion company by day, and a half-dryad crime fighter by night, with the help of her plant friends.

[thryth-gaming]

A bit more theory-crafting - Sentinel Comics

Okay, so recently I had a commission for an urban fantasy character from Rachel Denton aka Tallinier and I let her go where she wanted with the direction. She ended up going for a deep-one/merfolk inspiration and also something a bit more colorful than the drab appearance deep ones usually get.

Rachel Denton's links:

Instagram

Patreon

Artstation

The Husk of Twitter

As a note, this reminds me of some past concepts of my own (which I resisted showing her until she was done because didn't want to influence her) but also reminds me of a video game named Call of the Sea.

In any case, I'm going to build a couple of characters off of this picture. And, because I feel like rolling dice. I'm going to start with Sentinels Comics.

Step 1 - Background

Roll, 7 and 10.

Options

7: Academic

10: Military

17 (7+10): Interstellar

I've done Academic recently, there is an amphibious alien species in sentinels, though they don't look like the picture above.

But it does mean that the idea of aquatic aliens is there. And I'm not sure I've done an Interstellar background, at least not in easy memory.

I think I will put the d12 into hmmm.... I'm going to say Deep Space Knowledge, and the d6 into Investigation.

For Esoteric principal, I'm grabbing Principal of the Sea:

And now on we go.

Step 2 - Power Source

Roll, 3, 5, and 6

Options

3: Genetic

5: Mystical

6: Nature

8 (3+5): Powered Suit

9 (3+6): Radiation

11 (5+6): Supernatural

There's a few magical interstellar characters in the canon of the setting, the picture doesn't seem to point to Powered Suit everything else seems likely. I've done a Genetic recently. I generally enjoy doing Supernatural... but I think I might do Radiation this time. No, actually, I am going with Mystical.

Okay, I'm going to assign the d10 to Awareness, d8 to Toxic (from Materials category), and d6 to Telepathy (from Psychic category).

For abilities, I'm taking Sever Link using Awareness and Modification Wave using Toxic.

For the extra Information quality, I'm taking Magical Lore.

And to the next step.

Step 3 - Archetype

Rolled 1, 7, 8

Options:

1: Speedster

7: Armored

8: Flyer

9: Elemental Manipulator

15: Wild Card

Hmm, I think I'm going to go for Wild Card.

I think I'm going to go with d10 Vitality, d8 Persuasion, and d8 Close Combat.

For abilities I'm going for Multitask with Vitality and Gimmick for Close Combat.

Then for the yellow ability, I'm going for Expect the Unexpected.

For the Principle, going with Justice.

And now for the next step.

Step 4 - Personality

Rolled: 8 and 9.

Options:

8: Fast-Talking

9: Inquisitive

17 (8+9): Naive

I've been having the image of her as an interstellar explorer, so I think I'm going to go with Inquisitive.

The background quality will be Star-Hopping Deep One.

Step 5 - Red Abilities

For Red Abilities I can choose.

Athletics powers

Intellectual powers

Materials powers

Psychic powers

Information qualities

Mental qualities

Physical qualities

Social Qualities

I think I'll go with Push Your Limits and Aware Response.

Aware Response goes with Investigation.

Step 6 - Retcon

Going to take a third Red Ability in the form of Impenetrable Defense with Toxic.

Step 7 - Health

8 + Vitality 8 + Red Status 10 + 4 = 30

Green: 30-23, Yellow: 22-12, Red: 11-1

Step 8 - Finishing Touches

Time to fill in the character sheet.

[gorgonarcher]

Game 1 - Sentinels Comics

Just because it's on the mind, let's start with Sentinels Comics which is the RPG based on the card game Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Sentinels Comics has one of the most well-done and interesting random character generation systems I've ever seen. More to the point, it doesn't really generate a character on its own, what it does is narrow down the choices for your character at each point. It gives a bit of a boundary to avoid the option paralysis that happens with a lot of open games.

So, let's do this in steps.

Step 1 - Background

This step gets you your first Qualities and describes what you were before you became a hero.

First, we are going to roll 2d10.

In this case, I get a 7 and an 9. This gives me three choices because I can use the option at either result or use the option that I get by adding them together. This means my options are:

7 - Academic

9 - Performer

16 (7+9) - Former Villain

Academic would give me a strong quality here but fewer selections on the next step as well as an Expertise principle. Performer would give me a couple of good qualities and full selections next step, along with a Responsibility. Former Villain gives me some good qualities, an Expertise principle, and full selections for the next step with a better dice pool than Performer. I think I will go for academic.

I'm going to assign the d8 to History and the d12 to Self-Discipline.

For the Principle, I'm choosing "Principle of History"

Most principles follow this pattern. Stuff to color roleplaying things and questions to ask when bad stuff happens. And then an ability that allows you to Overcome using your Max die instead of a Mid die. This increases your effectiveness in that situation tremendously since you're comparing three different dice.

There are some "roleplaying" bits that seem extreme such as the Indestructible principle allowing you to just ignore low-powered attacks in a roleplay scene or the ability to survive in open space... or so on. And there are one or two Abilities that are a bit different than the Overcome with Max standard.

Also note that Principle abilities grant Hero Points. These are spent between sessions for benefits in the next session.

And that leads on to Step 2.

Step 2 - Power Source

This step gives you your first Powers and defines what gives you your power.

Most characters will roll 3 dice at this point, being able to take any one die or combine any two, creating anywhere from 2 to 6 choices. However, because our Background we only roll 2 dice, a d10 and d8.

I roll a 1 and a 3 making my options as follows:

1 - Accident

3 - Genetic

4 (1+3) - Experimentation

I'm leaning toward Genetic. Here, not going to break down the options this time. Just it leads into the idea I have most. There's other power sources I could have gotten like Cursed, Supernatural, or Relic... but this is cool, makes me think that whatever she stumbled on triggered a genetic heritage like she's a descendant of the gorgons perhaps.

I love the fact that you can tell same story from different angles dependent on your choices. I end up taking Signature Weapon, so she clearly finds a Relic, but it isn't the source of her power. Heck, if Relic had been a choice, I could have later turned to Genetic and discovered the power was mine all along.

So, now we assign the dice that we rolled. I'm going to assign the d10 to a power from the Intellectual powers and choose Awareness which is the catch all physical senses ability. And then apply the d8 to Signature Weaponry and I'll name that the Serpent Bow.

As to Abilities.

Green - Always available

Yellow - Available when health is low or situation is serious

Red - Available when health or situation are dire.

For the two abilities, I'm going to choose Adaptive, and assign Awareness to it, and Area Assault with Serpent Bow assigned to it.

When you roll an action you choose a power, a quality, and take a die dependent on your or the scene's status. In order to use abilities, you must choose the named power or quality. So in order to use Area Assault (which we'll rename later) she needs to use Serpent Bow as her power, but she can use any quality that fits what she's trying to do. Note that Serpent Bow can be used either with melee or ranged combat... she can still hit people with her bow.

Note that Adaptive primarily Boosts her, and since it doesn't specify, it would use the Mid die (ie, if she rolled a 6, 3, and 1 she'd boost with the 3) and then she can also either remove a penalty or heal 1 (her Min die, the lowest rolled).

The main benefit of Abilities are to either take multiple actions, affect multiple targets, or use dice other then the Mid die in some situations. Abilities are either Actions, Reactions, or Innates (passive).

For the Green power, I'm going to choose Growth and it uses a quality, so I'm going to assign Self-Discipline to that. Persistent means the boost lasts the entire scene (like ongoing in Motw) and Exclusive means that if you use it you can only use it, it won't stack with anything else.

Now, we move to step 3

Step 3 - Archetype

This describes how you have learned to apply your powers and gives you a mix of Powers and Qualities. Now, at this point, we roll the 3 dice from Step 2. d10 + d8 + d8.

I roll a 2, 4, and 7 making my options as:

2 - Shadow

4 - Marksman

6 (2+4) - Close Quarters Combat

7 - Armored

9 (2+7) - Elemental Manipulator

11 (4+7)- Sorcerer

Now, the obvious choice is Marksman. But I'm feeling like going a little bit less the obvious route. I'm going to rule out Elemental Manipulator and Sorcerer, because doing flashy energy stuff isn't what I'm looking for here.

Sneaky type (Shadow) is tempting... and so is Armored. This wouldn't be the first time I've done an unusual Armored (I have a character is an Armored archetype based on Precognition... she sees the attack coming and thus can dodge).

I think I'm going to go with Close Quarters Combat. Yup, I'm making a melee archer.

bwuhahahaha!

I have 3 dice to assign here.

I'm going to assign d8 to Close Combat... Agility is tempting... and yeah, I'm going to go basic there. d8 Agility. And then I'll assign the last d10 to Ranged Combat.

Now, for abilities.

Going for Flexible Stance using Agility, Defensive Strike using Close Combat, and Dual Strike using Ranged Combat. This means that one of her moves requires melee, one can be melee or ranged, and one requires ranged.

Now I get one at Yellow. For the Yellow, I'm going to take Precise Strike using Serpent Bow... which means I can either shoot arrows (or snakes?) from it, or thwack people with it like it's a club or staff (or whip?). Another ability that can be either Melee or Ranged.

I've made a "Close Quarters Combatant" who is actually better at range, but can fight melee as well.

This also means I have to take a Responsibility principle. Let's see.

Detective and Everyman are both tempting... lets see, do I want a Sherlock/Batman-esque type who sees through everything? Or a normal lady who just got power she didn't ask for?

Let's lean into the Academic background and go Detective:

Anyway, this leads us to Step 4.

Step 4 - Personality

As with Step 1, this step always gets 2d10 to roll. It will give you one quality which you name for yourself, an Out ability to use on your turn if your character has been taken out of the fight and also cause you to pick your two Red abilities. This will also set how your status die works.

Some of these have weird special things they do, but most are pretty similar and more less just roleplay specific.

I rolled a 2 and a 5 giving me the following options:

2 - Natural Leader

5 - Sarcastic

7 - Stalwart

None of these do much special. Two of them have d8s at all the Status levels and one starts at d6 and ends up at d10.

I'm going to go with Sarcastic for the Out ability of being able to Hinder opponents even after I've been taken out.

For the backstory quality I'm going to say Descendant of Euryale.

Step 5 - Red Abilities

Now I choose two Red abilities. These have to be a from categories of Quality or Power I already have, so let's look at my list:

Qualities

Self-Discipline d12 (Mental)

History d8 (Information)

Close Combat d10 (Physical)

Ranged Combat d10 (Physical)

Powers

Awareness d8 (Intellectual)

Serpent Bow d10 (Hallmark)

Agility d8 (Athletic)

This means that I can pick Red Abilities from the following categories

Athletic

Hallmark

Information

Intellectual

Mental

Physical

I have a bit of a love for passives, and I'm going to take one here in the form of Endurance Fighting from the Physical category:

Then I'm going to focus on the ability to tackle objectives and rescue people by grabbing Canny Awareness from Mental Qualities.

This moves us to Step 6.

Step 6 - Retcon

Now, I choose one thing to add or change about the character so far.

Swap any two dice of your Powers.

Swap any two dice of your Qualities.

Choose a different Power or Quality used in one of your abilities.

Add any d6 Power or Quality from any category.

Increase your Red status die by one size (max d12)

Change either of your principles to any other principle.

Gain an extra Red Ability.

The third option is there because technically you can't choose powers or qualities you haven't taken yet.... but I generally ignore that in character creation so I just don't use those.

But I think I'm going to take the d6 extra power and give her Shapeshifting.

And this takes us to Step 7.

Step 7 - Health

Max Health is determined by adding the following:

8

The maximum value of your Red status die (d8 in this case).

The maximum value of any of your Athletic powers or Mental Qualities. So I could choose either d8 (Agility) or d12 (Self-Discipline).

Either a roll of d8 or just add 4.

Now, I usually try to maximize Health, but it does occur to me that someone with lower health will get to Yellow and Red faster so there is a a weird sort of reason to go for low health if you want to go for the powerful but fragile route. And I tend to not roll.

However, as a Close Combat type, I'm going for higher health.

So: 8 + 8 + 12 + 4 = 32 health.

There's a chart to follow for breaking this down:

Green: 32-25

Yellow: 24-12

Red: 11-1

And then we come to Step 8.

Step 8 - Finishing Touches

This is basically where you add color to your character's stats, so this is where I describe the character and rename her Abilities.

So, my idea here is that Sahar Zamani is a historian who was hired to take part in an archeaological dig which was attacked by villains seeking to do a tomb raiding and in the course of the chaos, she stumbled upon an ancient relic which reacted to her buried genetic heritage as a descendant of true gorgons and woke it up, enabling her to fight off the raiders.

[countzeroor]

Supers RPG Experimentation: A-Ko

Recently I've picked up a couple of supers RPGs - the Marvel Multiverse RPG and the Sentinels Comics, and I'm creating some test characters in the process of trying to learn the system. My first trial run: A-Ko.

So, with tabletop RPGs, I like to pick out a few character concepts to use for creating characters to help learn the system – often based on anime, movies, TV shows, or novels – trying to emulate those characters to help learn the system. For example, for Fantasy games I tend to go with the Heroes of Lodoss. Recently I’ve picked up a couple of supers RPGs – the Marvel Multiverse RPG and the…

[tabletopbellhop]

Unboxing the Sentinel Comics Custom Dice Set

Check out what you get with the Custom Dice Set for the Sentinels Comics RPG from Greater Than Games

[joshmedin]

Not Equal At All

Not Equal At All

Game Design Essay

Introduction

Many game systems offer a variety of choices or options during character creation; the general thinking among these options is that they are, in theory, “equal” to one another.  In other words, while there may be specific reasons to pick one or another for certain purposes, they can all be chosen without fear of one choice being clearly superior to the others, or at least close enough to not hinder gameplay and player enjoyment.  But this isn’t always the case, and in some games where very coarse-grained choices are part of the process, a wrong choice can have a heavy impact on character capabilities.  Let’s look over some examples.

(For the purposes of this essay, I’m NOT looking at comparative resource costs to get the same result, which is the bane of certain more-complex character creation systems, but instead circumstances where players may have a handful of choices to make.  The topics are similar, however.)

Broadness of Application

One area that this will often matter is broadness of application; if a character has a trait that can only be used in limited circumstances, they may feel very limited in play compared to a character with traits that can be used in a variety of ways.  Extremely freeform traits, such as Aspects in FATE, are susceptible to this problem.  (The FATE rulebook does provide guidelines, but it can still take experience to see the difference in application between Can Make Machines Purr and “Okay, I’m going for it!”  One is good for technological challenges, but the other could be used for almost anything.)

But sometimes, these issues with broad application are actually built into the system.  One example of this is the Sentinel Comics RPG.  PCs built in this game have two Principles in their Abilities list; without getting into game mechanics and probability too heavily, these are actually a very important resource for characters, because they allow characters to use the Overcome action with a dramatically improved success rate.  (The odds of complete success jump from extremely roughly 2% to 43%; PCs should rely on them a lot!)  Principles are selected off a list (and the full range of choices is sharply curtailed depending on character type), and everybody will always have precisely and only two of them, so they should, in theory, always be comparable.

But they aren’t.  An Overcome in SCRPG is, roughly speaking, beating a challenge that is not an opponent, whether it’s persuading an official, solving a puzzle, rescuing a drowning victim, or infiltrating a warehouse.  The Principles, among other things, have a triggering circumstance in which they can be used.  For example, the Principle of Lab says “Overcome while in a familiar workspace or when you have ample research time.”  That’s good when those very specific things are involved, but it becomes a very hard stretch to rescue a drowning victim or shift a boulder out of your way.  For contrast, the Principle of the Tactician says “Overcome when you can flashback to how you prepared for this exact situation.” For that one, it becomes almost impossible for the GM to deny its use, and fairly simple for a player to justify it.  Shift a boulder?  Studied leverage just in case.  Drowning victim?  Took lifeguarding classes to know what to do, anticipating trouble.  Persuade an official?  Did research on the profiles of all of them.  One is much more broadly useful than the other, period.  A player who plans ahead and picks at least one Principle that they can use in a wide range of situations will have a distinct advantage, but a random choice might find a character who is great at knowing locals and their own business and at situations where being small and young is an advantage and nothing more.  

(And yes, very creative and/or persuasive players may be able to somehow stretch and distort their Principle to fit anything, but there’s a point where it just goes outside rational use.)

Scenario Specific

During a scenario at a gaming convention I attended last year, one of the pregen PCs had their one-and-only special trait be a bonus at piloting extraterrestrial spacecraft.  In the course of the scenario, our characters wound up on a spacecraft that we couldn’t control or pilot in any way, arriving at another spacecraft that we then took over-- and that wrapped the game.  That player never had a chance to use their specialty; it was irrelevant to the game.  Now, that’s not good design, since it was a convention game with pregen PCs, but it showcases another kind of problem with unequal choices-- scenarios where some of the options for characters don’t matter.  A classic one is a character built for social encounters who finds the group frequently in deadly combat, but there are countless other examples that are possible.  (At the same convention, I wound up with a character whose major resources were related to hacking and communications, which was fine, but the only conflict involved very dangerous enemies attacking us while we were on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and it was set in the 80s, so there wasn’t much I could do with that.)  This is at least easier to solve if the GM is involved with the characters during the creation process, and can guide them into roles relevant to the scenario, but if that doesn’t happen, it’s all too easy for a character whose focus is not relevant for the game to simply be unable to participate in the way they wanted to, and that feels like a serious loss.

Combat and Noncombat

One key area where this matters in games is, of course, combat; woe betide the player whose character lags behind others in this arena, it is known, lest they simply die!  And that’s certainly a concern-- many RPGs involve a lot of combat, combat almost always involves the entire group, often takes up a lot of table time, and inability to participate meaningfully can get somebody killed.

But that’s actually not the only consideration here.  Being combat-capable is so ingrained into game design and character design that it’s almost not the largest concern compared to noncombat application in a number of game systems.  

One of the classic examples of this is the most popular game in the US and probably worldwide-- Dungeons and Dragons, notably the current edition.  In D&D, one class is “Fighter”; Fighters… fight.  They are good in specific aspects of combat; otherwise, they have skills.  But everyone gets skills; likewise, everyone can participate in combat, often challenging Fighters in their specific area of greatest strength (Single-target combat), and utterly triumphing over them in other aspects of combat (Crowd control, for example.)  It’s doubtlessly necessary for gameplay-- it wouldn’t do to have other classes be helpless in combat, which is a large part of D&D-- but outside of combat, things change.  Fighters can have Skills, as can all classes.  But spellcasting classes gain abilities that let them bypass Skill challenges, or let them do things that no Skill could ever accomplish, and this gap grows larger and larger even as the combat abilities of spellcasters grows with it.  

But this can also impact other systems!  In a relatively freeform system like Cortex, creativity can let a trait like Senses outperform Super Strength.  It’s easy enough to justify using Senses in combat-- analyzing a foe’s movement, spotting their weaknesses and strengths, and so on.  But Senses can also be used to solve puzzles, track enemies, potentially even have application in social settings.  Likewise, in some games, it’s very possible to even use social or psychological skills in combat, perhaps by creating “Good morale” assets for other to use.  However, conversely, it’s often much, much harder to apply combat skills to noncombat situations as broadly.  Being a master archer is much harder to apply to debate than it is to find a justification for a master of persuasion being able to distract a foe or boost an ally.  In this regard, it’s a serious issue if combat-themed characters can’t do anything out of combat, but the reverse isn’t true, and it’s something that needs to be considered, either in game design or in campaign design.

Does it even matter?

Does it actually matter if characters are unequal?  This is a delicate question, and depends in part on the group and the specific players.  If the differences aren’t great, of course, it surely matters less no matter what.  But sometimes it’s easy to see where one character has noteworthy advantages over the other… and I think that it does matter, broadly, and it’s worth addressing. Some players, for example, can become frustrated with their inability to contribute, or to act effectively, and that frustration isn’t fun, the more so when it’s not obvious that some choices aren’t as good.  Likewise, even if one player doesn’t mind being less capable, other players may become frustrated with that player’s weakness and having to cover for them; the GM, in turn, may find it more challenging to balance encounters and challenges while still allowing that player spotlight time.  Overall, the less inequality between equivalent choices, the more desirable the results will be, even if it’s fine with certain players.

Solutions

When making characters, of course, one should look at options and choose carefully, but that’s not always very satisfactory.  What if one’s character concept depends on certain choices, or if it’s not obvious that there’s a problem?  Another good place to work on this problem is at the design phase of a game, of course, but that’s not an option the majority of the time; most of us play games other people have already made.  (I’m a game designer, but for a variety of reasons, mostly play other people’s systems.)

Sadly, this means that a certain amount of work on the part of the GM becomes necessary; it is, however, worthwhile.  It’s good to see what choices players make, and then play to them.  Is the player immune to something?  Make sure it shows up so that they can have their moment!  Do they have a Principle that’s great at stealth?  Give them lots of chances to sneak in places!  Make sure to give players a chance to shine by adjusting scenarios to their characters, rather than making the players adjust to the scenario.  Sometimes, it’s the only solution, but I think that it’s the best one.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

A wild 2023 recap post appears!

Stuff I made this year:

Fiction: Nope. Work continues to consume me.  I DID write like 33k that maybe will be publicly accessible in the future, but who can say.

Playlists: I think the only two I remembered to share were Oleander (a playlist for my Wickedness character) and the vast and the void (what it says on the tin).

RPGs: Also a nope.

Knitting: Made a shawl!  And a hat, technically, that I forgot to take pictures of.

Other stuff: Taught 5 classes, 4 of which were new preps!  Did fieldwork in Japan for the first time since 2019! Gave an hour-long talk in Japanese!  Presented on two conference panels!  Finished two academic book reviews! Survived somehow!  The period between August and December sort of doesn’t exist in my memory?  I was doing things but almost all of those things were work, so. The isolation has been wearing on me, but with the combination of A. not having any time to do anything other than work and B. for Various Reasons questioning whether I want to stay at this job, it's been really hard to build local community. I'm going to try to work on that next year, but also I'm going to have two new preps again in the fall and one of my spring classes is already overenrolled, so who knows how effective that'll be.

Media I enjoyed this year:

Books: I read 46 books this year apparently!  Top picks in no particular order: The Singing Hills Cycle (embarrassingly my jam), The Southern Reach Trilogy (shocking that it took me this long to read this), My Own Devices (even MORE shocking that it took me this long to read this), Imperial Radch (so AGGRESSIVELY my jam), She Who Became the Sun (this was a hilarious accompaniment to one of my fall classes), Camp Damascus (read this on a plane back from Japan which was An Experience), The Tale That Twines (loved the first book; the second book is even better), System Collapse (yeah, no one is surprised that I loved this).

TTRPG: Wickedness!  This was the only new TTRPG I played this year, but it was really good.

Video games: Mask of the Rose and Saltsea Chronicles, both of which I want to/should poke at more. Special nod to 13 Sentinels which we enjoyed 90% of a lot.

Manga/comics: I think the only thing I read was The JOJOLands?

Fanfic: I didn’t actually wind up reading that much fanfic this year again, in part because I was reading so many books.  A few picks, in no particular order: The Gardener (CR C2), Keys to the Castle (CR C2), Whistle Song (CR C2), pieces of (you) me (CR C2), Descriptions of a River Flowing (CR C2), Slip the Blindfold (CR C2), Heart to Heart (JJBA: JJL--PLEASE read this if you care about JJL at all), riverside beatitudes (JJBA: SDC), Fully formed, ready to run (ExU: Calamity).  Honorable mention to Asking for More (Stranger of Paradise), which is a WIP but made me laugh so hard I hit myself in the face with my phone.

Films: I actually watched like eight movies this year!  All but two of the new ones on a plane, to be fair, but.  Top picks: Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse and Shoplifters (『万引き家族』).  Honorary mention to Suzume.

TV: Finally finished Stone Ocean!  It was good!  Rowan and I are also like halfway through catching up on TGCF and it is also very good.

Podcasts:  Continued to listen to way too many of these.  Top picks: The Silt Verses, Trice Forgotten, Within the Wires (hey can we talk about the newest season? truly wild), and Re: Dracula.  Honorable mentions to The Evaporated: Gone with the Gods, 『なんかIWAKAN！』 (WHICH IS TRAGICALLY ENDING???? where am I supposed to get my chaotic Japanese gender and sexuality discussion now :(((((), Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later, Critical Role, and Worlds Beyond Number.

Music: Dessa's Bury the Lede was excellent, of course.  I also apparently listened to Maisie Peters' The Good Witch a lot (it was in my grading rotation in October). And then this past month there's been a lot of Hozier's Unreal Unearth. But a lot of my listening this year was either albums on the bus (rotating mainly between Quiet Company’s We Are All Where We Belong, Bury the Lede, yorushika’s entire discography that I can purchase, Wednesday Campanella, and various soundtracks) or putting something on loop and falling into a fugue state.  Apparently my top song of the year on Spotify was “Square One,” which I think I put on looping while grading in the spring.  My Spotify top songs list was even more inexplicable than usual this year.

Anyway, あけおめ！！！ 良いお年を！！！ (or else!!!!)

[greatwyrmgold]

Superheroes are an established genre these days, but they (obviously) weren’t when Marvel, DC, etc were starting out. This means that they have one thing that most modern superhero settings don’t: Unique origin stories for each member of the cast. Superman is an alien, Wonder Woman is an Amazon, the Green Lantern found a ring, the Flash got stuck in a lab accident, Batman is rich and stubborn; together, They Fight Crime!

Contrast that with more recent superhero stories. In My Hero Academia, every hero and villain has a Quirk. In Worm and Ward, every cape is a parahuman. In Steelheart and its sequels, the Epics are all…it’s kinda like Worm, if it called its villains Epics and didn’t have any heroes or general term for “superpowered human”. In Kamen Rider and Big Hero Six (among others), everyone’s powers come from science. In Miraculous Ladybug, Steven Universe, and other series on the border between superhero and either magical girl or urban fantasy, it’s all magic. And so on.

That’s an interesting shift to look at.

Obviously, not all modern superhero stories fit this formula. Some, like Mutants & Masterminds, Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Dreadnought/Sovereign, give unique origin stories to every superpowered or Badass Normal member of the cast; aliens, rich inventors, and super-soldiers stand side by side with witches, martial artists, and people whose powers’ origin aren’t really explained.

But these are all deliberate throwbacks; Dreadnought and Sovereign are trying to give trans kids the same kind of power fantasy cis ones get from reading Spider-Man or Wonder Woman, Mutants & Masterminds is an RPG for playing classic-style superhero stories, and Sentinels of the Multiverse has a whole metafictional layer of fictional comic books and pubishing history behind its cards.

There are some kitchen-sink-origin stories which aren’t so obviously “just” riffing on classic superhero stories one way or another. One Punch Man is the example that comes to mind first for me; a lot of its monsters are eventually revealed to have a common origin, and most of its heroes are “just” Badass Normals, but it still has some espers, oracles, cyborgs, aliens, mad scientists, and so forth. And then there are series like Dragon Ball, which TV Tropes insists is a superhero story so don’t @ me, which is just set in a goofy world where anything goes because the author cares less about series continuity than dumb jokes. But by and large, the rule is that superpeople in recent media share an origin story with everyone else in their setting.

And a lot of the time—especially in non-serialized media—that origin isn’t really discussed. Sky High, for all its accidental eugenicsy/fascy undertones and general mediocrity, is a pretty good example I can trust at least some of y’all to know about. Superpowers are just a fact of life, and that’s all anyone needs to know before we launch into our story about how a random dude with no powers becomes the greatest hero (by inheriting both of his parents’ powers at plot-convenient moments). There are a couple off-hand mentions of toxic waste sometimes giving people superpowers, but this is both a joke and exceedingly uncommon in-universe. Superpowers have one origin, and it’s genetic.

Putting aside how Sky High handled that setting element, it serves as a decent template for how superpowers work in everything from The Incredibles to Strong Female Protagonist to Worm to My Hero Academia to Aberrant to Wild Cards to the Milestone Comics universe to—you get the idea. People have superpowers, for reasons that may be explained in detail, or handwaved with something about genetics, or just ignored. These powers, or at least the status of having powers,are almost always heritable to some extent; when they aren’t, the superpowers are usually a recent phenomenon. Different superpowers are as unique as they are in kitchen-sink universes, each following their own internal logic, but they might share some common weaknesses (e.g. can all be “turned off” by the same kind of power nullification cuffs/field/power). And so on.

It’s rare for these rules to be stated explicitly, except in stories that try to get detailed about how their power system works (hiya, Worm!) It’s just accepted that, for instance, everyone’s powers are different yet the same; we know that’s how superhero stories work, so we accept it. Which would be normal genre stuff, if it wasn’t for the fact that there are a lot of high-profile superhero stories which don’t work that way! Anything that falls under the Marvel and DC umbrellas, for instance. Some rules apply to individual heroes—for instance, we can expect the kids of Superman, Zatanna, and Batman to inherit at least some of their parent’s powers—but they don’t apply to everyone and can’t be assumed.

That said, I’m pretty sure the genesis of this “standard superhero ruleset” comes from Marvel, specifically the X-Men. Marvel mutants all have a common, handwavey origin, with shared weaknesses (anything that removes or suppresses mutant abilities), but each mutant has their own unique powers. And so on. Aside from existing in a kitchen-sink universe, with lots of weird one-off power sources and the like, it’s just like the modern superpower system I’ve been describing.

I dunno if this is meaningful or anything, but I think it’s interesting, and I hope some other people do too. If you’ve read this far and you’re not one of them…I’m sorry.

[himawariness]

Case File: Poe - Devlog 1: Planning, Concept, and Art Style!

I posted my first devlog for Case File: Poe on my site, but I’ll post it here too! It's about the art planning and concept progress so far :)

It's a little long but keep reading below to read more! 

Whenever I come up with an idea for a new game or comic, I usually always like to start with the characters first. However, for Case File: Poe, the premise came to me first while I was working on my previous game, Dolchio. With the rough plot in mind, I sketched out some character designs and realized that I didn’t like them or feel attached to them at all lol.

So I thought I'd use some old character designs and find a way to stick them into this new game! So that’s how three of the four main cast members were added to the game (Poe, Rokio, and Morg). With the characters decided, I could move on to writing and conceptualizing how the game would look and play; Without the characters and loose plot, it’s really difficult for me to write or do anything else.

Now that the characters are out of the way, it’s time to write! Which I’m gonna talk about in another devlog because writing this story is my poor little brain work harder than it ever has in years…!! I thought Hansel had a complicated story, but this one is a whole different beast and I’m honestly having some trouble staying organized. But I’m hoping it’ll pay off in the end! No worries though, I’d say the writing is about 70% complete as of posting this devlog, and I started back in February 2022! :] Here’s a blurry image of one of the many several writing/outlining/planning pages I’ve done hehe (blurred for no spoilers!)

Moving on, now I could start drawing. I don’t like drawing until I have a good chunk of the writing done because I don’t want to have wasted some time drawing something and then end up scrapping it if I decide to change the game around later. I originally had planned for Case File: Poe to be a top-down RPG, like Hansel or other standard RPG make games. So I drew a few character sprites for the game and played around with different styles. But I wanted the game window size to be larger, and forcing full screen on the game would make it look weird if I used small pixel art. So I tried making bigger sprites, or even upscaling them. Long story short, I had to scrap the RPG style and go for something else.

I knew that because of the nature of the game, a strict sidescroller like the style of Dolchio wouldn’t work the best because I want the player to be able to explore the map. While the sidescrolling style would allow for some exploration, it was more suited for Dolchio’s linear storytelling where exploration wasn’t as integral to beating the game. That’s not the case for this game, as it is about a mystery. Exploring and gathering evidence is the most important part! So I had to go all the way back to the drawing board and play some other games to find some inspiration. And so I did find some gameplay inspiration from games such as Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Shin Megami Tensei, Danganronpa, Your Turn to Die, Virtue’s Last Reward, and 13 Sentinels.

With RPG Maker MV’s clicking/Mouse support, I figured out what I had to do! Like a clicking adventure game, I was going to have to make a game where the player can explore the whole environment by directly interacting with it and its characters. With that in mind, I started creating concept art and sketching out some of the art for the game!

So with plot, gameplay ideas, characters, and concepts are out of the way for now, I could move on to thinking about the general art aesthetic that I’d like: I want Case File: Poe to look good. Like, really REALLY good and I’m afraid that my art skills aren’t at that level yet. I don’t it to look or feel like an RPG maker game. So why not just use another game engine?? I’ve made some stuff using Game Maker Studio and I’m confident with it and I could use that but… I like using RPG maker!! It’s fun hehe >:]

Regarding the art, it just means that I have to practice some more and actually take my time on it. Seriously, I usually don’t have the patience to take my time drawing and so I like to rush and finish all my pieces under an hour. It’s a bad habit, I know!! Which is why I’m forcing myself to sit down and not rush through the art, and to make myself polish the artwork as much as I can! And so, yesterday I completed a cutscene CG test where I took all of the time I needed to get an idea of how much time I would need to set aside for the art of the game. This CG took me a little over 3 hours instead.

And I’m definitely happy with the way it came out!! Yes! The game is coming together in my head! Next, I have to figure out the interface, world map, other graphic design stuff but I’ll leave those for later. My priority now is to finish writing the game and start the script. After that, I can go ham on the art and theeennnn start the programming!

I know this was a long read, but thanks for reading through it! Hopefully I can get these devlogs up regularly that way I can make myself consistently work on the game. :]

[thrythlind]

So, the minimum number of heroes in a game of the Sentinels card game is 3 and the maximum is 5, so going to do a couple more of these random Sentinels characters.

Spark Bug Rune Striker

Step 1 - Background

Side note, this is one of those videos where I curse the fact that many of the pretty things I see are due to astigmatism and won't appear on camera. There was a lovely green diffusion from from the die showing 9 that .... just I can not explain well. Anyway, this gives us the options of : 8 - Tragic 9 - Performer 17 (8+9) - Interstellar Okay, with the alien magic wasp-lady in the party, I think I have to opt for Interstellar and bring out another Throathian refugee.

I'm going to put the dice assignments like this:

Deep Space Knowledge d12 Creativity d6

Well, I thought about the obvious "Principle of Space", but then thought of this:

And now on to Step 2 - Power Source

Okay, let's see what options this provides.

1 - Training 2 - Accident 3 (1+2) - Genetic 6 - Nature 7 (1+6) - Relic 8 (2+6) - Powered Suit

I am so very tempted to do more magic stuff... but I have... an idea.

So, I'm going with Genetic instead.

So, I'm going with the following assignments:

Flight d6 Strength d8 Intuition d10

And for abilities, I'm choosing:

Yellow: Danger Sense (Intuition) Area Assault (Strength)

Green: Rally (Creativity)

And now we're going on to Step 3 - Archetype

That gives us the following options:

2 - Shadow 7 - Armored 9 (2+7) - Elemental Manipulator 10 - Robot/Cyborg 12 (2+10) - Psychic 17 (7+10) - Gadgeteer

So, I want a more fighty character because Spark Bug is very supporty and Rune Striker is kind of fighty, but I want someone a bit more in your face.

That brings me to Armored or Elemental Manipulator.

They're both tempting.

And.... I think I'm going with Armored.... for a particular reason.

I'm going to add:

Vitality d10 Close Combat d8 Leadership d8

Armored comes automatically

Repair (Vitality) Dual Offense (Close Combat) Living Bulwark (Strength)

And for the Principle, we get an Expertise, and I definitely have an idea:

And now on to Step 4 - Personality

So, this comes to following options:

1 - Lone Wolf 3 - Impulsive 4 - Mischievous

Impulsive and Mischievous are both of the Personality types that have unusual effects. And I'm going with Impulsive

I could upgrade one power or quality.

And I think I am going to go with Creativity... I thought about Vitality, but this is more interesting.

Now for Step - 5 Red Abilities, let's focus on fighting and protecting people.

Attaching Unerring Strike to Intuition because this is from the Intellectual powers set of Red Abilities. Heroic Interruption doesn't have an attached Power or Quality but is from Mobility and is available because she has flight.

Also note that Unerring Strike is an upgraded version of her Unstoppable Charge

Now comes to Step 6 - Retcon

So, what option to take. I kind of want to add in some Cosmic ability, but never got that option. But I think for this character I need to up that Red Status die.

She's a bit unreliable until things get really nasty.

Which brings us to Step 7 - Health

8 - Base 10 - Max of Red Status Die 10 - Max of Vitality 4 - Taking the non-roll option

32 health with a break down very much like Spark Bug

And that brings us to the Finishing Touches

Pa'rea hasn't said much coherent about her past. She's from some point in the far future and is a descendant of both Thorathian and human stock. She has a impressive physical abilities and friendly manner.

Some of the things she's said, along with the moniker she took on, imply that she at least believes herself to be a disappointment to her family, whoever they will eventually be. She mostly appears to be cheerful and happy, but has a reckless tendency to just throw herself into a fight. It's clear she's desperate to prove herself to someone, but she's silent on just who that is.

(Side note, the attitude I took eventually leans more toward different Principles, but she can switch into those via experience later)

[lorekeeper-backset]

"The Meme Community was always going to murder us."

-My GM