It’s that time again — update time! Are the heroes bad enough to take down… a little girl?

When Vanessa Long transported herself backwards in time, her first goal was to save the not-yet-born version of herself. She managed to get her parents out of the clutches of Project Cocoon — which was different in this reality, but still present and conducting experiments the likes of which The Visionary was all too familiar. From then on, she monitored the Long family from a distance, fearful of what might happen to this reality’s version of herself. When Vanessa Long was born, The Visionary was relieved that it was without an explosion of psychic energy, and that the baby seemed to be normal in all ways.

Six years have passed, and The Visionary has kept an eye on the Long family, but with no signs of complications, the family seems to be out of harm's way. Until one day, when the young Vanessa Long's latent powers manifested very dangerously.

The young girl's thoughts manifested themselves as physical creatures, and the shock of her new awareness of the world shut down her body, leaving Vanessa into a coma. The Nightmares she manifested tore through her home and out into the neighborhood, releasing psychic monsters into the world that the comatose young Vanessa Long had no control over. 

Can the heroes save The Dreamer from herself? 

—

The Dreamer has been talked about mostly as either part of The Visionary’s story, or much later as the hero Muse, who becomes part of Sentinel Comics in the “Universe 1” SCRPG era. She’s in a few episodes of The Letters Page, including:

But! Before she can become Muse, you must save her while she’s much younger and called The Dreamer!

You can only hope to save her, and not until her villain character card flips do you have a chance to save her! It’s a matter of preventing the Nightmares from getting out of hand and rousing her from her slumber without any psychic backlash. Be careful!

She has some Nightmares that you might have seen before…

As well as some new cards!

That second card reminds me: this deck also has several cards from the “Nightmare World” event, for which Adam did some of the coolest art from a very specifically stylistic era of Sentinel Comics.

The Dreamer is a similar villain to The Matriarch, in that she doesn’t have many appearances in Sentinel Comics, but is still very important to the arc and remembered well. Thus, her Critical Event is the uncommonly used “someone else as the character card for the same deck”, and I’m very excited about it… but that’s for another day! 

—

Our friends over at Penny Arcade do a lot of game livestreams. In fact, I was just there at the end of last year playing a cooperative comic book card game with them! It went pretty well.

Their incredibly popular “Acquisitions Incorporated” livestreams have gathered quite the devoted audience, and they’re coming back with an action packed second series with all sorts of plans, including props, costumes, special guests, and more!

Check out their campaign! If I know anything about those folks, they’re going to tell a bunch of great stories!

—

Tomorrow is the last update of the week, but there will be a bunch more next week — I promise! Until then, keep on saving the Multiverse!

-Christopher

I’m not even here! I’m actually on a plane right now (or, at least, at the time of this update being posted — not necessarily at the time of your reading this update) to Boston to attend the PAX East convention. I’ll be there this weekend along with other fantastic GTG folks, such as Paul Bender and Matt Kroll. If you’re around the show, come say hi!

Fortunately, even though I’m in the air, the badass Bailey (who has also been in the comments answering questions since the start of the campaign) was able to post this update for me, so all is well! Whew! Thanks so much, Bailey!

Now that we’re not worried about that anymore, let’s go to a very worrying place! It’s the brand new to Sentinels of the Multiverse environment: Æternus!

Sectors: Six — Punishment, Shame, Madness, Avarice, Corruption, Wickedness

Demon Princes: Seven

Demons: Uncountable

Chance of Escape: 0.01%

From before recorded history, humans have had a concept of an underworld. A realm of death and danger and madness — a place where evil and lost souls go for torment. Different cultures and religions imagine and describe it in their own ways, and they each  have their own names: Hell, Gehenna, Hades, The Abyss, Tartarus, The Pit, Naraka… the names we remember are a drop in the ocean of names forgotten for such a place. And that place is Æternus.

Æternus is a realm, not unlike the Realm of Discord. It is connected to our world, and you may find yourself there as a result of affected dreams or dark magics or even being severed from the mortal plane. However, instead of being focused on chaos as the Realm of Discord is, Æternus is a place of torment. 

Every being within Æternus strives to ascend to the throne. From the loftiest prince to the lowliest impling, the throne calls to all, promising power but ultimately resulting in destruction. The demons who live in Æternus are not immune to its torments — they delight in them, but they themselves are also tormented by their existence. Such is the way of Æternus. Surely, any who travel here to drink of its infernal power must be stopped! Can the heroes survive the torments of Æternus long enough to stop whatever villain is deranged or desperate enough to use such a place?

—

Welcome to Æternus.

Æternus is  a place that was created on The Letters Page podcast!

This is a realm full of torments and demons, and the demons can draw even more power from Æternus, in just the right — or wrong — circumstances. Is it a good place? No.

The demons themselves are pretty terrible, even more so when empowered. They seem so harmless, right? (Probably not.)

Since this is a brand new environment, it's full of spoilers... and I want to save some things back for the future! But, with these four cards, you have at least some idea of what is going on in Æternus. It's a terrifying place, and it is eager to visit those terrors on Heroes and Villains alike! Torment abounds!

—

It’s time for another crowdfunding campaign of note, and this one is thematically appropriate for today’s update! Shall we listen to The Black Ballad?

The Black Ballad is an RPG supplement (compatible with D&D fifth edition but not exclusively for D&D), about what happens after you die. I highly recommend you look at this crowdfunding campaign page, as the amount of people doing phenomenal work on it is staggering. Besides the game itself, they also have gorgeous art, novels, and even an orchestrated soundtrack?! Amazing.

To experience the adventure of your afterlife, back The Black Ballad on BackerKit!

—

Thanks for reading, everyone! Join us tomorrow for another villain, and remember to keep on saving the Multiverse!

-Christopher

And I’m excited to share it with all of you! The campaign continues to move along swimmingly, and there are still plenty more reveals on the way!

Yesterday, we talked about one of the most-changed heroes with some of the freshest mechanics, but we’re getting even more avant garde today, with a brand new type of card for Sentinels of the Multiverse! Something we’ve been teasing from before this campaign even launched!

Let’s talk about Principles!

Principles are cards that alter the way Heroes fundamentally worked, similar to the mechanical impact of Events on Villains, but not strictly an upgrade like Events are. Sentinels of the Multiverse: Disparation comes with 30 Principle cards, all of which share this deck back:

At the start of the game, any number of players may choose to use a Principle card alongside their Hero character card. You make this decision at the same time as deciding if you’re using the base Hero character card for the deck or a variant, and it’s a similar decision — you’re picking just what version of that hero you’re playing! 

There are a few different ways of picking Principles. Everyone can look through the deck and take whatever Principle they most want. Or, for a more targeted experience, you can deal each player 3 Principle cards, which they pick 1 of to use for that game. Or, the most deterministic option: deal everyone 1 Principle card. Boom. Done. Not all players in a game need to be using Principle cards! It will work just fine to have all Principles, some Principles, or none Principles. Up to you!

All that said, let’s look at a few Principle cards now!

Look at this friendly fellow! He’s here to help.

You can set the Principle card next to your Hero character card… OR! You can slide it under your Hero character card, covering up the art and just leaving the text revealed. Unless you happen to be playing the same Hero as the one depicted on the Principle card, the art is mostly there to give you an idea of how a Hero might change with this Principle (and hint at a story from the Sentinel Comics book Disparation in which that very thing happened). 

So, to talk more specifically about the Principle of Compassion, it’s a pretty simple trade. You do less damage overall, but you gain a power that gives out some healing and allows an ally to draw a card. Straightforward, but can definitely make a difference!

Time for another Principle!

Whoa! Ongoing cards are all Items? Indeed! This makes them additionally vulnerable to things that target Items, but with the upside of helping you find the cards you need. And some heroes will use this Principle very differently from others! Which really should be a true statement about each of these cards. That’s the whole point!

Let’s heat things up a little!

This is one that I wasn’t going to show off, but the playtesters talked me into it, so here we are! Everything you do is now FIRE! But note that the fire spread damage that happens after a target is destroyed doesn’t hit the 3 Villain targets or non-Hero targets… it hits the 3 targets with the highest HP, which means you’re likely to burn your friends, as well. Be careful!

Let’s get weird…

Last one for today, and it’s a weird one. Every time you would play a card, you can leave it up to chance, instead! Plus, At the end of your turn, you get a free play! Probably? I mean, there’s a little risk involved, but that’s OK, right? Right?! 😬

(Disclaimer: the Design not final tags on these are not kidding. We’re zeroing in on Principles, but they’re still not set in stone.)

Given the number of variants each Hero has, plus the 30 Principle cards in this set, the amount of permutations available for playing each Hero character is VAST. What sort of Hero will you be?

—

As promised, I’m showing off other campaigns this week, starting with Impossible Jones!

Karl Kesel is a fantastic comic book artist and writer who has created many enduring stories for some of the big real world comics publishers, but he’s also got his own stuff! The Impossible Jones comic books are a thing that Adam (artist of all things Sentinel Comics) recommended to me as indie comics done right, and there’s a lot of the heart and joy of supers comics that we try to bring to Sentinel Comics stuff. 

Check it out! If you like fun supers comics stuff, Impossible Jones might be right up your alley!

—

Thanks everyone! See you tomorrow for an update about a BRAND NEW Environment! 

Keep on saving the Multiverse!

-Christopher

Good morning, Sentinels!

How was everyone's weekend? I hope it was great! Now, we have a new week, and with it, new content! We’re starting off the week with a familiar hero — one that was in the original core game, in fact! But, she’s one of the most mechanically changed characters from the original core game. Let’s talk about it!

With the fall of South Korea to North Korea and rumors of nuclear testing near the Chinese-Tibetan border, the late 2000s brought with them a growing suspicion of hostilities from the Far East. When the Chinese began establishing military bases throughout the Pacific Islands and finally announced their nuclear stockpile, the U.S.’s suspicions of China’s aggressive new regime were confirmed.

Not wanting to come out the losers of this new Cold War, President Hargett secretly authorized the Department of Defense to begin testing methods of creating bio-engineered soldiers. Early iterations of testing were limited to soldiers already on active duty, but then Secretary of Defense Anthony Partin greenlit Project Cocoon. Selected from a census of already pregnant Chinese couples with combined high academic test scores, Sun and Pao Long were offered $500,000 to allow scientists to inject their unborn baby with Compound PSY-200.

After six months of weekly injections, Sun gave birth to Vanessa Long. Kept at the testing facility, Vanessa began to exhibit psychic abilities by the age of two months, able to move and manipulate small objects from only a few feet away. At three months, Vanessa’s mother suddenly dropped dead. Unable to confirm that Sun’s fatal brain aneurysm was unrelated to the injections, President Hargett ordered the program to be shut down. Plagued with grief over his lost wife, Pao wanted nothing to do with his infant daughter and left her in the care of the U.S. government. The sole success of the program, Vanessa would be trained to use her powers for combat and reconnaissance.

Fast forward to 2018: the U.S., already severely crippled by an increase in super powered criminal activity, fell to the combined forces of the Pan-Asian People’s Republic. While she’d fought alongside other heroes, including the Freedom Six, her efforts eventually proved fruitless. Realizing that there was nothing else she could do in her time, Vanessa, now calling herself “The Visionary”, used her psychic powers to transport herself back in time to right things before they’d gone so wrong. Unfortunately, psychic time travel is not without its costs. An inter-dimensional hitchhiker, another version of Vanessa who had made very, very different choices, now occupies a corner of her psyche, and the great strain required to bend time ruptured a blood vessel in her brain. While she could use a portion of her abilities to slow the bleeding, her time was still limited. With some extra baggage and a ticking clock, The Visionary will have to use everything at her disposal to save this new world she finds herself in, as well as this reality’s Vanessa Long, who she fears is in grave danger…

—

The Visionary has been a notable hero in the pages of Sentinel Comics since her first appearance in the mid 1980s, though her role frequently changed, due to the parasitic “Dark Visionary” deep in her mind. To learn more about her, here are some episodes of The Letters Page podcast!

The Visionary is a powerful psychic, but with some dangerous baggage…

A hero character card with additional information at the bottom of the card was introduced in the Rook City Renegades set with the hero NightMist. That set also introduced the concept of “side decks”, with The Operative having her own deck as part of The Chairman’s villain setup. The Visionary has setup instructions of her own that indicate what sets her apart mechanically: the Dark side deck!

I haven’t been showing off Hero or Villain deck backs, but I must do so in this update, as The Visionary has her main deck of 40 cards, next to which lives her Dark side deck, with its 10 unique cards.

The Visionary’s main deck has cards that give her a lot of power and flexibility, but reaching for that power often comes at a cost…

There are even twists and surprises, including another mechanic introduced in RCR:

That’s right! The Visionary could SUDDENLY Falter and pull a card from the Dark side deck when you weren’t ready for it.

But just what sorts of things lurk in the Dark side deck? It’s got 10 cards, all different, all dangerous.

Each of them give you some options as to how you use them and what costs you’re willing to pay for what effects, but there will be costs, and you can’t control what comes out of the deck — even though The Visionary has a lot of effects that look at the top cards of decks and can reorder or even discard what she finds, she cannot do so to her Dark side deck, as per the rules of side decks.

From the RCR Rulebook:

(Fear not! That’ll also be in the Disparation rulebook.)

As for The Visionary’s variants… just know that even though things might get a bit dark, they also might get a little weird, especially when alternate realities are considered!

—

For the first couple weeks, I’d been doing Q&A sections at the end of the updates, but the Qs haven’t been too pressing, so I’m going to change gears for a week! Given how great this campaign has gone so far and the excitement of all you wonderful backers, for the rest of this week, I’ll be highlighting a different crowdfunding campaign at the end of each update!

That said, today’s update ender is a little different: it’s the original Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition crowdfunding campaign! Why am I linking this? Because there have been a few questions about “what is this” and “how is it different” and things like that, which are best answered by the original campaign. There’s some good reading to be had over there, so go check it out!

I’ll see you all tomorrow with a very different update! Keep on saving the Multiverse!

-Christopher

Greetings, Sentinels!

Today, we’re going over one of the heaviest of villain stories, but one many of you have guessed is coming.

Legacy and Baron Blade have long fought each other, the heroic Paul Parsons constantly thwarting the villainous plans of the dastardly Baron Blade. Legacy's daughter, Pauline Felicia Parsons, grew up knowing that her father was a hero, that he fought crime, and that his life was in constant danger. The weight of the Parsons family line was clear: where evil reared its ugly head, there would always be a Legacy there to stop it.

When she reached 18 years old, Felicia was given a Legacy costume by her parents, and her father began training her in earnest. Her whole life had been dedicated to the pursuit of justice and preparing herself for the inevitable combat against evil, and she took to this new training like a champion. The years of crime-fighting with the Freedom Five were hard work, but some of the best years of her life.

Years later, Felicia Parsons was the best prepared to accept her father's death at the hands of Baron Blade.

The countless heroes who had fought alongside Legacy were stunned. No one could accept that it could happen. But Felicia calmly organized a lovely funeral for her father, and then smoothly stepped into his place in the Freedom Five — she had prepared her whole life for this, and she was ready to wear this mantle. No one saw the few tears she shed in silence for her father.

As awful as the death of Legacy would be, an alternate timeline experienced an even more terrible event.

In that same fateful battle, the mad Baron cornered and murdered the young Felicia Parsons, America's Newest Legacy, which left Paul Parsons America's Final Legacy. Legacy did not handle this well at all. He flew into a blind fury, tearing Baron Blade and the Wagner Mars Base apart.

Enraged and grief-stricken, Legacy disappeared. At Pauline Felicia Parson's funeral, little was said. The collected anguish of the mourners was far too great. Paul Parsons had not been heard from and did not attend the funeral, though some claimed to see a flying figure land in the graveyard later that night.

When Paul Parsons reappeared, it was in a very different form than before. The same strength and power was evident, but the man formerly called America's Finest Legacy was overcome with despair both for his family and for the future of mankind. His choice was clear: after him, there would be no Legacy. The world must be purged of all evil while he could still fight.

Paul Parson patrolled the world, silencing those who stood in his way swiftly and brutally. No longer the confident leader of the Freedom Five, he took to wearing armor and to destroying any suspected evildoers without pause or question. All of the strength and fortitude of the hero Legacy was now channeled into an unbending global dictatorship. Called Iron Legacy by his former allies, he reshaped the world into one which shook beneath his iron fist.

The heroes of the world came together to attempt to talk sense into the man who inspired so many of them, but any who attempted to stop him were dealt with swiftly. The toll was staggering. The world's foremost hero was now the greatest threat to freedom and liberty, all in the name of justice.

Now, with the timelines in disarray and so many worlds and realities intersecting, Iron Legacy has a chance to spread his rule even further. Will the heroes be able to stop him? Can they even bring themselves to fight? Iron Legacy has no such compunctions. His will is iron. Justice will be done. Do not stand in his way.

—

The Iron Legacy story is a devastating one. Most of the times Legacy comes up in The Letters Page podcast, it’s about either the Paul Parsons we know and love, or his daughter AKA Young Legacy. But we have covered the Iron Legacy story on the air, in Episode #57.

Iron Legacy has made his way to this reality, and he sees the evil and weakness that must be purged, just as he did from his own reality. Can the heroes stand against the man who wears the face of the finest amongst them?

As you can see from his Setup instructions and Gametext, Iron Legacy’s Ongoing cards are the main focus of his deck. And they’re all terrible.

He also has a few One-Shots to accelerate his deck and also to punish the Heroes who would stand in his way.

Besides a formidable physical force, there is also a psychological aspect to the fight, in that you’re facing such a powerful and inspirational hero… who has fallen so far.

Remembering who Iron Legacy was and seeing the journey of what he became? It’s one of the more heartbreaking stories from Sentinel Comics. Can you stand against him? How will you fight a Legacy who believes his own legacy to be over?

—

A different sort of question today, but one I’ve heard echoed a few places, so let’s get into it. I’ve intentionally phrased it fairly vaguely, to cover many angles of discussion.

A: We hear you. The “Hand” icon isn’t reading right, but all the icons are also treated differently than we treat icons in the rest of Definitive Edition, and that’s a problem. They’ll be reformatted to work like other icons (think Omnitron’s “Exterminate” and “Fabricate” icons). Oh, and we'll tweak and update the Hand icon. So, when you see them next, they’ll be [icon]Sun, [icon]Hand, and [icon]Ankh.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Maybe save the Multiverse a little over the weekend. You know, as a treat!

See you Monday!

-Christopher