How do people feel about the character progression in this Starter kit?
It doesn't feel like much, and I feel myself wanting more ways to level my character between sessions. I don't know if when the book comes out, there will be more ways to feel like your character is growing or not, but feels like there should be. Collections and Hero Points don't seem enough to make me feel like my character is any better than before.
It's not that kind of game. Your character can learn and change, but they don't really "level up." It's a trope of RPG's, but it's not really a trope of superhero stories, and the Sentinels RPG is more a superhero storytelling engine that uses an RPG framework than an RPG that happens to be about superheroes.
Given the large number of games I've been in that have only lasted a few games, and the very small number I've been in where the team went all the way from low to high level, I don't really have a problem with it.
From what's been said character progress happens in 3 ways-
1. Up to +5 in boosts between issues (sessions), these expire after each issue.
2. Collections - 5-6 issues collected together that give bigger benefits, (reduce a twist one stage, reroll, make an alteration to a scene, ect)
3. Rebuild the character - Change a characters principles, swap a power, build a new one as a successor to the first, ect.
As others have said, SCRPG is more of a storytelling engine with RPG elements.
I'll admit, I still kind of find myself looking askance at the lack of character growth-through-power, but on the other hand, in this system, I don't know how you'd do that. You start with so much and unlock it over the course of a session, instead of starting with nothing and unlocking better over the course of a campaign. It is a really interesting way to approach an RPG.
I cut my RPG teeth playing Call of Cthulhu which, while there is “progression” in terms of picking up skill points here and there, was mostly about character advancement in terms of what you know rather than mechanically-represented stuff. If you want to start play as somebody who’s one of the top minds your field, unlikely to ever gain any more points in the thing you excel at, that’s entirely possible. Unravelling the mystery and (maybe) stopping the badness from happening was the reward more than the possibility of having a few numbers on the character sheet go up a few points occasionally.
This game hits some of those same points. Within a story arc you earn small bonuses based on what’s come before and your overall collections give you long term character knowledge/experience to pull from. It’s tied to your experiences directly without power-creeping your way into different types of story like many level-based systems are prone to doing.
Though Christopher's group was still able to go into space, pilot giant mecha, and have one among their number create a new plane of reality, so it's probably all about what sort of story you're trying to tell. :V
It is also a superhero comic role-playing game, don't forget. That stuff just happens in comics.
My lack of ever having read actual comic books is showing. XD
The important thing people also seem to miss when it comes to progress is that superheroes rarely gain any new abilities following their adventures, normally they simply gain new ways of applying their old powers which the system allows for anyway.
There are exceptions, though. Admittedly I'm not a huge comics buff, but I have read X-Men (the Silver Age X-Men were improving their powers all the time, often finding new applications for old powers) and the Fantastic Four (same, at least through the Silver Age).
This.
The illusion of change is a big thing in comics.
I think the concept of 'character advancement' is most often relegated to either a) one-hero issues or b) large, imprint-spanning events.
When does Iron Man get new armor suits? In his own book or when some massive threat warrants him going back to the proverbial forge. When he's in Avengers or some other team book, he's sporting the classic red-and-gold look, so he's easily recognizable and understood by readers who are there for the team-up stuff. Daredevil has a ton of stuff going down in his own book (going to San Francisco, getting unmasked, getting re-masked, running in the NYC mayoral election), but when he shows up in group street-level books, he's the same sort of Daredevil we come to expect. When Shadowland rolls around, though, Daredevil goes through a huge character shift--that's kind of the point of the whole event.
I don't think the concept of character advancement in a superheroes/comics rpg is a bad one at all, though I think it's best done incrementally. Heroes might get 'better' at various parts of their skill-set, or learn to use their powers in new ways, but it's a much rarer thing for a superhero to pick up a whole new power suite (which, to me, would be a ground-up rebuild of the character). In CSW, xp is typically used to add to Skill or Power ratings (effectively, practice with a skill or power) or to purchase a Mastery (a special expertise in a given area). What you can't do, however, is buy new powers; that's relegated to new characters only. That said, I can see the opposite case--ICONS, for example, doesn't have much in the way of character advancement at all, and it's one of my longtime favorite supers games--and will gladly play under either paradigm.
The thing is, when I said ground up rebuild, it can be going as far creating a new character to carry on the previous characters legacy to as simple as changing one of your principles to fit character development due to events in the story.
I am also worried about character progression, but before I can really comment on anything I have to see what the core rulebook looks like. If they have hundreds of powers to choose from then I think that will suffice? Of course hundreds is an exaggeration, but if they only have like 20 powers then it may leave me a little unsatisfied. It would be interesting if they had an upgrade system for character progression instead of adding more powers. For instance, a power that heals the caster can now heal an ally or two also after a few upgrades.
--------------Boss Tripp
That doesn’t really look to be the sort of progression that they’re looking at with this system. However, as you have more adventures, you’ll naturally get more issues and collected trades, which will make you better at using your existing powers - so if, for example, you wanted to use a one-target attack on multiple targets, you might be able to take a Risky Action to use it that way, and use a collected trade to boost your roll to the point of avoiding any downsides.
(this is all based on what I’ve picked up from watching Sentinels Live, but I think this is how that would work)
I’d be happy with a system that lets you “trade in” collections.
All that you learned across those however many issues has taught you how to make your healing affect multiple people, you no longer can call on them, but now have the option to heal one mid and one min rather than just one max!
something like that seems good. And there’s always the fact that as a small the rulebook is more guidelines!