Sentinels System Summary

Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG Summary

The Sentinels system is a very open-ended gaming system intended to give a relatively open-ended system to adjudicate games about superheroes and similar characters. The system allows for the development of pretty much any kind of character, and you can work with Jason to make sure that your character will blend smoothly into the world.

GYRO and Dice Pools

The main mechanic of the system for resolving actions centers around building a dice pool and then resolving that result.  Dice Pools always consist of either a single die or three dice.  The vast majority of dice pools will be of the three dice variety.  Your character will have a list of Powers, Qualities, Abilities and Statuses.  Your dice pool is created by determining the Quality and Power that you want to perform that action, and adding it to the status die.  
GYRO refers to the various status that a scene and/or character may be in at any given point.  This stands for Green-Yellow-Red-Out.  On your character sheet, your abilities will be broken out into Green, Yellow, Red, and Out zones.  Also on your character sheet you will find areas for your health ranges, also flagged as Green, Yellow and Red.  To indicate the progression of a scene, a Scene Tracker will be used to indicate if the scene is in the Green, Yellow, or Red Zone.  If either the scene or your individual health leaves the Green Zone, your character is considered to be in Yellow or Red, as appropriate.  You may only use abilities in your current or earlier zone (i.e. when in Yellow, you can use abilities in both the Green and Yellow zone).
Each Power, Quality and Health Status will be assigned a die during character generation.  When assembling your Die Pool, simply add the appropriate die for the Power and Quality that you are using, and add the Status die for whichever Zone you are in.  If you do not have an applicable Power or Quality, then you add a d4 as an unskilled check.  
Unless otherwise directed, when rolling a Dice Pool you will typically be using the Middle (Mid) result in the pool.  If you are able to use an ability for this roll, that ability may direct your to use either the Maximum (Max) or Minimum (Min) result in some ways, or even combine all of the dice in the pool for a particularly big effect.

Principles

Each hero will determine two principles during character creation.  These principles define the primary means by which the hero will normally look to address problems.  Each principle will define a triggering scenarios ("charging headlong into danger", "using your powers in a new way", "someone younger than you has failed at this task") and if you apply the principle when making a Die Pool, you may use your Max die for the result and you and all of your allies gain a Hero Point.

Initiative

Within a given scene there will be a number of actors. At the start of the scene the GM will determine which actor acts first. At the end of each actor's turn, they designate who follows them in the initiative order. There are several abilities and effects that may override this designation. The environment (as representative of innocent bystanders, environmental threats or dangers, etc.) is always considered at least one actor in the scene, as are each hero present. Minions may be grouped and resolved as a single actor, as may lieutenants of matching die sizes or reasonable positioning.

Hero Points and Experience (Issues/Collections)

During a given game session, you may have an opportunity to gain a hero point.  You may earn up to 5 hero points per game session.  At any time prior to the start of the next session, you may convert the Hero Points you earned last game into bonuses for the next game.  You may choose to break up those points into five +1 bonuses, or 1 +5 bonus, or anything in between.  Any points that are not converted to bonuses are lost.
At the end of an issue or campaign, you will note the name of the issue in the "Back Issues" section of your character sheet. Once a hero has 6 Back Issues, they are gathered into a Collection and given a name. Collections, similar to Hero Points, can be called upon to help the Heroes out in a time of need once per session. Collections have 3 uses:

• After rolling, change the number on one die to any number of the player’s choosing.
• Establish a fact about your character based upon a previous issue, with GM approval.
• Invoke to avoid a Minor Twist, provided a relevant explanation can be made.
• Anytime a player calls upon a Collection, they should try to build the story in some meaningful way. Sentinel Comics RPG is all about the story and Collections are a great way to build a character’s backstory after the fact.