Sentinel Comics RPG Core Rulebook

194
On Failure
Rolling a 1-3 on an Overcome action and choosing
not to take a major twist is a failure (as is the unlikely
event of rolling a 0 or less, when making a roll with
a penalty). This isn’t the same as taking a twist. It
just means that the hero doesn’t make meaningful
progress towards the goal, while the scene tracker
and/or challenge ticks towards its end. Each action
that a hero takes is important, so failing to make
progress is a big deal when the clock is ticking.
A scene tracker that reaches its end doesn’t
mean game over either. It should be a major
setback, for sure: buildings are leveled, the heroes
are captured by the villain, or the moon blows up.
That can change the direction of the remainder of
the issue or the rest of the issues in a collection,
but it just ups the stakes of what the heroes need
to accomplish.
Linked Challenges and Branching Out
Action scenes are often created by mixing and
matching a certain number of challenges and
threats that play out until everything has been
resolved. However, you can tap into the power
of challenges to create scenes where heroes jump
from one dire situation to another or where they
chase villains across the jungle of Insula Primalis.
Instead of creating a scene where all challenges
and threats are present at the same time, you can
sketch out a series of challenges and link them
together in a way to drive action forward. When
the heroes resolve one (or more) challenges,
new ones unlock, possibly bringing new dangers
to bear on the scene. Thus you can create exciting
multi-stage scenes where the action moves from one
situation to the next, or from one location to the next.
Escalated Twists
Some challenges have more than one path to
success, and often those different paths require
different numbers of Overcome actions to
complete. This allows the hero to take risks in order
to complete the challenge more quickly. The risk is
that the twists are escalated — in the shorter path,
twists can be taken from a higher GYRO level! For
example, if the scene is in Green, the shorter path
puts Yellow twists on the table if the hero doesn’t
achieve complete success. If the scene is already in
Red, the GM can add an additional complication of
their choice — hit the heroes with an extra Green
twist, convert the twist from minor to major, etc.
The point is to make the shorter path high risk but
also high reward.
Creating Challenges
Jennifer plans an issue where heroes are racing against
minor villains to uncover a relic that could summon an
ancient evil. She sets the scene in the ruins of a jungle
temple and creates an environment for it (using the
guidelines found on page 240).
She decides that heroes (and villains) need to solve
a complex locking mechanism to gain access to
the vault guarding the relic. Then, playing to an old
cliché, she intends to bring the whole temple down
on everyone as heroes and villains duke it out to take
possession and try to escape the ruins.
She designs the scene’s backbone as a challenge
made of three linear sub-challenges. She also decides
that most minor and major twists brought into play
during the resolution of these challenges will be taken
from those she created for the environment. She’ll
explain to her players that it represents the spirits of
the temple guardian reacting to their invasion.
THE HARBINGER’S RELIQUARY,
PART 1
Description
A long forgotten temple is hidden at the foot of
the arcane volcano on Nexus Primalis. It contains a
relic: the Harbinger’s Doom Horn.
Heroes and villains both are racing to resolve these
challenges to gain access to the Doom Horn.
Resolution
Explore the ruins to find the relic’s
vault.
Outcome
The location of the vault chamber is found by
either the heroes or villains, depending on who
performed the last successful Overcome action
and thus get the first Overcome attempt on part 2.