Silver Age Sentinals (SAS)
I. PRESENTATION
For $49.95, you get a color, hardbound book, my favorite kind. It is well-constructed. The artwork varies in quality, but is uniformly good and in some cases excellent. The "first appearance" inserts are note-perfect homages to the classic comics. The layout is excellent and the text a nice, readable font.
II. Capsule Summary
Chpater 1: Introduction introduces the super-hero and includes an informative, affectionate introduction to the history of comics and super-heroic role-playing. An interesting read, that also establishes SAS's place in the genre.
Chapter 2: Character Creation is 83 pages long, covering discussion, character outline, distribution of points, and background. It is player-friendly and well-written, with concisely and clearly outlined Powers and Skills. At no point did I feel the need to flip forward to the rules section to understand basically how a Power works (although I am a BESM veteran). The Powers, Skills, and Defects are comprehensive and non-redundant.
Chapter 3: Game Mechanics walks you through the rules. The rules are simple and well-presented, the examples thoughtful.
Chapter 4: Weapons and Vehicles provides stats and rules for all the ordinary Gadgets heroes and villains use and abuse. While SAS lacks a certain precision, many weapon types are covered with appropriate statistics. Armor is (appropriately) unimpressive but still useful enough. The Customizing sections for both weapons and vehicles are excellent; your hero can have a sports car with a Big Motor and armor. Heroes use a lot of equipment that is non-standard, but not quite super-technology, and these rules handle it well.
Chapter 5: Playing Superheroes offers some helpful advice, combining some low-key preaching with important points about the genre and solid advice about role-playing in general. If you can get your players to read this section, it will explain how to play a well-adjusted superhero of good moral fiber. In short, you get: Superhero Gaming, Secret Origins: Creating a Hero, Great Power, Great Responsibility: Being a Hero, United We Stand: Superhero Teams, and Advice Summary for Players.
Chapter 6: GMing Superheroes tackles the game and genre from the other side of the GM screen. Of particular note is its savvy-licious Lost in Translation section, describing comic book tropes that are difficult or impractical to bring to the gaming table. It also offers a ton of stuff you should bring in. While nothing revolutionary is here, you get 26 pages of dense material.
Chapter 7: World Building talks about establishing game continuity and a comic book world experience. It offers advice for peopling and landscaping your world.
Chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11 cover the house setting. It does not suck! Their campaign centers in Empire City. Rather than a thinly disguised real world city, they have chosen a completely undisguised real world city with fictionalized elements. Except where it differs, it is New York City.
Here and there are entertaining bits of fiction about a super-cop's first few days on the job, working with Empire City's heroes.
The house characters are actually pretty cool, from the manga-sword wielding Red Phoenix to the Superman/Captain America inspired Sentinel on the good side, to the assassin Alice, Queen of Hearts and the nefarious overlord Kreuzritter on the other.
Chapter 12 is full of Adventure Seeds.
There are appendices covering random characters, glossary, animals, NPC's, BESM conversions, and metric conversions. The BESM conversions are terse but sufficient. The metric conversion appendix has some worthwhile cleverness included by our Canadian friends (just read it).
III. General Review
If you play Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) and you like superheroes, buy this. It is worth owning in its own right. The game system has been massaged for superheroes, the D10 version of the game engine is successful, and the source material is excellent. Mechanically, I find it superior to BESM for simulating super-brawls, and would recommend it on that basis.
If you like superheroes, try this even if you don't like BESM. Forget the campy BESM Attributes; the Attributes in this game have been re-engineered into a comprehensive list of Powers and normal Characteristics. It is versatile. It is mathematically sound. It is easy. It is heroic.
Its treatment of genre is excellent, and as I noted above, its original "comic book covers" showing the amazing first appearances of SAS characters are spot-on.
I'm not going to make any extravagant claims, as I will admit I am still honeymooning with this game. However, I really, really like this game. My two favorite super-hero games are DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes (for its genre modeling and basic elegance) and Hero System (for its precision and versatility), with Aberrant taking third, on the strength of its simplicity and satire. Silver Age Sentinels deserves to be named alongside them, no doubt about it. I had some doubts about a BESM-based game offering the flexibility and customization you need for a good superhero game, but those doubts have been dispeled completely. SAS gets top marks for versatility as a super-power toolkit. It need hardly be noted that as a relative of BESM, it is as simple as you could hope for a well-bounded gaming system. Finally, where Hero System offers sporadic bursts of serviceable (if somtimes campy) background, and Blood of Heroes tends to inspire nausea in veteran gamers and comic fans, SAS offers not only a thorough treatment of the genre, but a cool campaign setting of its own. Forget GURPS IST or the Champions, SAS has superheroes you would love to read comics about.
The only considerable criticism I have to offer is that a 150 point character could be anything from Nightwing to a Superman villain. That is potentially a problem, but does offer advantages, in that players can choose between very powerful, very versatile, or simply very experienced characters. Nevertheless, beware of alien marauders who do over 300 points of damage in an attack showing up alongisde Kung Fu fighters.
IV. Playtest summary
I ran a pickup game of SAS with my family during a recent visit out of state. The player characters were:
- The Freemason, master of Gnostic magic (Dynamic Powers)
- Shobura, monstrous alien fugitive with strength, armor, and claws
- The Black Spot, a battlesuit character with a pirate theme and a flying ship
- and a character whose name escapes me, a somewhat armored, super-strong Wolverine/Sabertooth type
Shobura's player was playing an RPG for the first time. Nevertheless, everybody designed their characters with minimal guidance from me in about 45 minutes. It was one of the most painless first-character sessions I've ever run.
I sent them up against the Scaly Mob:
- The Black Mamba, mercenary of magnetism, from Singapore
- The Python, an Australian speedster/martial artist/minor powerhouse, with a string of previous villain identities and atrocious wardrobe choices
- Queen Medusa, psychotic hitman with the ability to inspire fear in all those around her, American-born
- Basilisk, super gadgeteer with a minor electric aura, a Canadian scientist gone bad
- giant robot snakes
They ranged from 125 points (the Basilisk) to 164 (for Queen Medusa).
With Queen Medusa, I ran into some design issues, unable to settle on Mind Control (marginally applicable and needing many modifers) versus Special Attack (modified to the extremely high Rank of 14 to get what I wanted). I settled on the latter, figuring a villain had 56 points to spend on one Power if that's how I wanted it to work. I decided to worry about the implications for PC's some other time.
Scene one, a bank robbery gone bad. During the first combat, Shobura learned the folly of not heeding the GM's advice. Without any significant fighting Skills or appropriate Attributes, he found it difficult to land a blow. Queen Medusa sent the PC's into disarray, forcing them to regroup and fight as a team. The Freemason used his Powers to turn invisible and teleport, easily outmaneuvering but not overpowering the villains. The heroes pounded the bad guys into the ground, with somewhat excessive collateral damage caused by their inexperience.
In scene two, the heroes are challenged to appear at a certain time and place, a Garth Brooks concert in a crowded arena. The heroes arrive as evacuation is underway; but before the crowd can be safely dispered, giant robot snakes attack heroes and civilians alike, while Queen Medusa sparks a riot. Shobura finally landed a lucky blow, destroying one snake by himself. The feral fighter showed off his talents, dishing out and taking some damage. The Black Spot has some trouble hitting, but managed to nail Queen Medusa, putting her on her last leg. Her fear powers proved formidable once again, but this time the Freemason effectively nullified her while the others dove into battle. The robots were destroyed and Queen Medusa punched out.
For scene three, the heroes are basking in their success. The heroes regroup on the Black Spot's flying boat. At first baffled, the Freemason's powers prove useful in scanning the city for the escaped villains. They corner the Black Mamba, Basilisk, and Python in their secret headquarters, an out of the way warehouse, and effectively ambush them, leading to a hard, desperate fight, but one in which the villains are ultimately forced to flee and surrender.
Combat was simple to adjudicate, the Powers required little or no flipping back and forth through the rulebook, and the probabilities were well-balanced, assuming to-hit rolls in the 8 to 14 range. Mind powers proved formidable, but could be withstood by both the Black Spot (because of his intelligence) and the Freemason (because of his Mind Shield). The Attribute Divine Relationship helped the heroes out here and there, allowing re-rolls in tight spots. I liked how Dynamic Powers offered versatility without eclipsing the power of more specialized characters.
The one question I had was whether the area and range limits of Dynamic Powers (like the Freemason's magic) applied to Special Attacks, which as Powers have their own rules apart from environmental or general Powers.
We had a great time. One of our players moaned at the end when I gave out 1 Skill Point as an advancement award. SAS suggests offering one Skill Point about every other adventure and one Advancement Point (like a character point) every three or five. Sensible, but it might seems sluggish to players who are used to seeing XP after every adventure. One or two character points in SAS is much like a level in DnD. Still, no one else voiced complaints, since on 150 points, their characters were already basically what they wanted them to be.
It's been a while since I've been this really, truly excited about a new game system. I hope everyone who likes superheroes will give this one a try. Imagine the elegance of MEGS, the versatility of Hero, and the simplicity of BESM, and then throw in a campaign world people will want to use. While every system has its limits, I will give this one the Mary Poppins Award for "practically perfect in every way." It is particularly impressive as a first edition.
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