by gentleman john » Sat Aug 06, 2011 8:28 pm
And so my reviews move form one set of shelves to another. Sometimes I think I have too many games. But, as Hunter S Thompson almost said "The temptation with a good games collection is to push it too far."
Silver Age Sentinels
Guardians of Order were the producers of Big Eyes Small Mouth, an anime-inspired RPG. As part of the 2nd edition expansion of their property, they created a generic game system called Tri-Stat dX, which they users as the core of a number of genre games. The first of these games was a superhero game called "Silver Age Sentinels".
The System
Tri-Stat was a simple, points-based system. The game used only three statistics: Body, Mind and Soul to describe a character. While these were not very granular and each stat covered a variety of abilities - for example, Body covered strength, health, dexterity and speed - but characters could buy disadvantages to reduce their abilities. Indeed, Tri-Stat being a points-based system had a number of advantages and disadvantages that could be bought. However, unlike Hero or GURPS, the return for disadvantages was not that good. As a result, players were not encouraged to create crippled characters. It just wasn't worth it.
Powers were bought from a menu of available abilities. The list of powers was fairly comprehensive, with characters able to customise them in terms of range, effect and duration. Again, there was not much granularity in the customisation system, but it performed perfectly well for role-players who wanted to create superheroes. Indeed, the attitude of the background material encouraged this. Characters were not meant to be gun-wielding vigilantes or angst-ridden ubermensch. Instead, they were meant to be superheroes who were willing to stand up for what was right and be willing to change the world.
So, what about the dX bit of the system? Well, the Tri-Stat system used a simple resolution mechanic: roll 2 dice, apply modifiers and roll less than your skill or ability score. Hang on - 2 dice? Which 2 dice? That depended on the game that was being played. In default Tri-Stat, the dice were d6. In Deus Ex Machina (their cyberpunk game) you used 2d8. Big Eyes Small Mouse (their "woodland furry" game) you used 2d4. Silver Age Sentinels went all the way up to 2d10, but still used the same skill and ability levels as Tri-Stat. This raised the obvious question: surely it was harder to do things in Silver Age Sentinels than in Big Eyes Small Mouth? The designer's answer was simple: Easy in Silver Age Sentinels was Hard in other Tri-Stat games. As a hero, landing a plane in a thunderstorm should be something they do every day. Landing a city-sized spacecraft in an ion storm should be a spectacular event. You're playing in the big leagues, now.
Alas, that was the problem with the system. You had to shift your expectations as to what is easy and what is hard, which is something that can be hard for a gamer to do when used to one version of a system. This, combined with my gaming group's aversion to Silver Age superheroics led to the game only ever coming out once. A pity, but there you go.
The Games
The Tri-Stat dX system had a number of games that used the same system. Big Eyes Small Mouth was the default system, with a number of supplements to support different anime series and genres. There were also the genre games: Deus Ex Machina (a cyberpunk toolbox game) and Dreaming Cities (an urban fantasy toolbox game). Guardians of Order also used the system for their version of Tekumel. Unfortunately, just before producing 3e Big Eyes Small Mouth, they went bankrupt.
On the Shelf
Not in current use, but sometimes dusted off and read.