Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Undeniably true. Sentinels may be further disadvantaged by the perception that it's specifically tied to the card game/faux comic line setting. The rules themselves are reasonably setting-agnostic and work fine for homebrew or ports to other licensed properties, but that's not immediately obvious from the book and of course all the NPCs and fluff are specific to Sentinel Comics fictional publications. Most supers games based on anything but the Big Two derive their success from being versatile toolboxes for playing the genre - see Hero, M&M, Icons, even good old V&V - or by being very good at a niche within the niche - Masks, arguably Aberrant. Sentinel Comics at least appears to be tied to one IP, and that IP has a tiny fraction of the fan base that Marvel and DC do. Heck, even M&M's upcoming Valiant Universe book will likely have more people interested in that IP than the ones for whom the Sentinels setting is a big draw.Supers play is kind of niche, overall.
Thinking about it, that's probably true of most or all supers TTRPGs. Adventures, detailed campaign settings and NPC books are the bulk of what comes out beyond the core, and none of those are really for players. Hard market all around.Oh, I don't really expect many player-side products, in general. It isn't the kind of game that sustains by putting out more and more player options.
Arguably true. I know a few folks who prefer the random system, many more who prefer the pick-from-menu second approach - but almost none who'd argue that character generation is a strong point of the game. Something more traditionally structured would probably have helped a lot. It's kind of maddening since you can see how to build a "choose your own abilities" setup could work with the way Red abilities work already.No one was a big fan of the character creation system. It seemed interesting as an option, but we all agreed it really needed a 'allocate 12 dice to powers, qualities... pick these GYRO powers" option that wasn't just the 'secret' 3rd option of "pick whatever you want."
That may be the single most requested thing among all the online discussion I've seen. I'm really comfortable with the system as a toolkit and I still kind of hate doing environments myself. It's not like there aren't a reasonable number of examples or decent guideline in teh core book, they just require a lot of creative juice - and perhaps a little more explicit advice on how much impact an environment should have on the action scene.For the GM, creating environments was a little difficult to grok, though they are a pretty central concept to the game.
All true. The faux-publishing house element of the IP is clearly a labor of love for Christopher and Adam, with hundreds, possibly thousands of hours of podcast fluff. Christopher was awaiting surgery to replace several cervical disks and has been serious pain meds for weeks, and he still managed to record almost an hour of answering letters about the setting last episode. And that despite fans telling him not to worry about taking time off or worrying about content and concentrate on his health instead. That's not something they're just doing for work or to help sell games any more, if it ever was.As pointed out, support for the game really dried up after the initial release. I don't think the pandemic did it any favors, but the GTG devs really switched gears and went all in on their Definitive-Edition card game. I think if they had gone with the Urban book, adding in some more street-level options for characters, that would have really helped over the silly Guise book. It felt like the Devs themselves didn't care much about supporting the line any further, and given that they had a number of other games that came and went, it unfortunately felt a little par for the course. (As a little side rant, they really seem overly invested in building out their meta-comic universe storyline, but I don't find it very engaging).
It does accomplish that very well. Better than games that try to capture the feel by calling rounds pages or panels or whatever, even. The GYRO system is a very clever way to keep a sense of urgency going and avoid the kind of "finishing slog" many combat systems suffer from. Arguably even better at that last than 13th Age's escalation die is, and that's saying something.All that being said, I still plan to give the game another go, and I've done a few homebrew hacks to the game to make it more palatable to my group for the next go around. I really like how it models playing "Comic Books" over "Super Power Simulations".
I'm aware, but I think I've gotten SCRPG data from almost everyone who posted regularly, either through their older posts or direct messages off site. Not much traffic on the subject there these days either, aside from two folks working on heir own meta-textual comic companies and one or two posting new characters regularly. The most active actual players there have largely given up and walked away from the game at this point, for various reasons.I've seen more discussions about this game off these forums on the 'purple' rpg site, so you might have some luck there getting feedback if you haven't already tried.
Thanks for the thoughts on the subject, anyway.