RPG Review: Sentinels Comics RPG Starter Kit

I probably should have gotten this review up sooner!

I’ve been sitting on this review for a while, slowly adding to it over time, and now that the Kickstarter for the Sentinels Comics RPG is up, it’s time to tell you how great the game is.

I own both the PDF and physical copies of this game, and I really love it.

With the Starter Kit, you will play one of the iconic Sentinels of the Multiverse. These characters are Legacy (a Superman/Captain America type), Tachyon (a Speedster), Absolute Zero (a Mr. Freeze-type, kept alive in a specially designed suit), Unity (a technopath who can create all kinds of gadgets and robots), Bunker (an Iron Man powered-armor guy), and Wraith (a Batman/Daredevil street hero).

The core of the game is based around the characters’ GYRO. A character at full health is Green, and can take the actions they have in the Green section. As they take damage, they will drop into Yellow, then Red, and finally, will be Out. Each of these zones have different abilities.

During your action, you will decide what your character will do. You can Attack (dealing damage), Overcome (getting past an obstacle of some sort), Boost (help yourself or an ally), Hinder (weaken an opponent), Defend (protect yourself or an ally), and Recover (get back Hit Points, which generally won’t happen during combat).

You will build a dice pool using your Powers (superpower abilities), Qualities (a huge variety of categories, including training or any other non-superpowered abilities), and Status (your GYRO, described above), grabbing one die from each category (sounds a bit like Marvel Heroic, huh?).

After you roll your pool, you will determine your Max roll, Mid roll, and Min roll. These are your rolls from best to worst. Generally, your Mid roll will be the roll you will use as your effect die, but different abilities will change that up.

Environments also have GYROs, so as the scene progresses, the effects in the Environment changes. Heroes and Villains will drop into their Yellow and Red statuses as the Environment does, so there’s a running clock in each scene.

That’s pretty much it for the rules. If you’d like more details, you can check out the Gameplay Book here.

Each character gets their own Character Booklet. From the front, it looks like a comic book, which I really like. Inside, each character not only gets a character sheet, but pages detailing every element of your character sheet, explaining exactly how to play. This means you don’t have to have the Game Moderator explaining every rule to the players. When it’s not their turn, they can flip through the book to see the explanations on their sheets. The booklets also give a page of backstory for the characters as well, which is brief and gives a good overview as to who these characters are.

One of my favorite things about this kit is the Issues. There are six scenarios, each with a unique comic book cover. They all look great, and you won’t necessarily play all six adventures in a campaign. The choices the heroes make will determine which Issues they’ll move on to. I really love that it all feels like you’re actually moving through actual issues, and it helps that the issues have fake comic book names and issue numbers like Tome of the Bizarre #86 and Justice Comics #740.

This whole kit is a great collection. The artwork by Adam Rebottaro, who has done the artwork for all Sentinels products, matches the style of Sentinels of the Multiverse, but is probably the best work he’s done yet. One complaint is that the kit doesn’t have any dice. Now, I don’t need any dice, but the kit contains everything you could possibly need as a brand new roleplayer, except dice. If you’re a brand new player picking this up, you’d be pretty disappointed to see that it was missing this one thing. However, the price point would go up, and I’m pretty happy with how much content they could squeeze into this one kit for the price.

Head over to your FLGS to pick up the physical copy, and/or pick up the PDF of the Sentinels Comics RPG Starter Kit here, then head over to their Kickstarter to back the full book!