Sentinel Comics RPG Core Rulebook

192
Jennifer thinks back to the “Accessing the Codes”
challenge she created earlier (page 190) and decides
it would be more interesting if the villain’s computer
system deletes all its data after a certain length of time.
She decides to add a 3 turn timer to the challenge, but
also must tweak the fiction a bit to let more than one
hero get into the crawlspace to work on the challenge
so there’s some room for failure.
ACCESSING THE CODES
Description
Hacking the villain’s computer to get the code
Resolution
Penetrate the Firewall
Decrypt the Downloaded Data
Challenge Timer
Triggered
The computer system wipes its own databases
and memory. The code is gone and the heroes
must find a different way to control the runaway
spacecraft — time for Plan B!
The scale of consequences from such timed
challenges varies depending on the tone of your
game and the dramatic impact these challenges
bring to your scene. All should have impressive,
story-related consequences that make the (possibly
heavily injured) heroes’ lives more complicated.
Public embarrassment, media frenzy calling heroes
out for their failures, and dealing with a high number
of civilian casualties are just a few consequences
that could happen.
Jennifer is preparing the next issue and knows the
heroes plan to travel to Insula Primalis. She’d like to
prepare an action scene there. Two issues ago, the
heroes ran into a clutch of eco-hostile minor villains,
so she decides to bring them back into the story. The
villains and their cronies have done terrible damage to
the island, but how would they cover their tracks? She
has an idea!
Creating Challenges
She decides it would be most fun to have the heroes
arrive right when the villains are about to set off their
volcanic instigation devices: Seismic Thumpers! Not
only can the heroes then have a scene battling the
villains, but they have to deactivate the thumpers
before they crack open the fragile faults holding back
literal tons of magma.
Jennifer designs a challenge with a timer that
requires several steps to disable the seismic thumpers:
SEISMIC THUMPERS
Description
Three sets of huge oil derrick-like structures
sending waves of kinetic energy into the island’s
weakest seismic points
Resolution
Each successful Overcome action
disables a thumper, buying the heroes a
little time: add one unchecked checkbox
to the challenge timer
Challenge Timer
Triggered
Volcano erupts, roll environment dice
• Deal Mid damage to anyone flying over or
around the island.
• Deals Min to all characters on the surface.
• Evidence of villain activity on island destroyed.
Conditional Challenges: This or That
Usually, a challenge presents a situation that needs
to be resolved by one or more heroes. By design,
how it needs to be resolved — and how heroes
can cooperate to achieve that goal — isn’t clearly
defined. This allows for the widest possible range
of solutions; once resolved, the heroes move on to
other problems.
Some challenges, however, are tied to specific
if/then conditions, either in how heroes need to
approach them, or what happens when they are
successfully Overcome.