Episode 114 of the Letters Page: Create A Thing Live

Some tiny part of me hopes this means we'll get a GI Absolute Zero variant. Though Black Fist by himself is worth getting excited about. :D

And lemme tell ya! I was looking forward to not having to purchase the extended edition save as maybe a graphics patch for the digital version, because it was just gonna be new art, right? And I'm not that much of a completionist! Now we got actual new content coming, argh! XD

I hope the scenarios and variants will be available as separate packs, because I honestly don't want to buy the entire game again, and that's assuming I'll even be able to. :(

I just got a chance to listen to (most of, so far) this episode...and I'm excited! I wasn't too jazzed about another create-a-thing podcast now that we've seen C&A do that a couple times, but what a whole bunch of amazing surprises: create-a-thing for Sentinels of the Multiverse: The Card Game! Create-a-thing for gameplay! Accidental-on-purpose announcement for SotM: The Definitive Edition, which we had heard them talk about as a thing they'd like to do sometime, but wasn't yet a Happening Thing! Accidental-on-purpose announcement that C&A will be creating new content for that edition, when they previously only suggested new art! New variants! Scenario Mode, that perrennial fan suggestion!

Honestly, I'm astonished this thread doesn't have more whooping and hooplah in it.

I have a few immediate thoughts about scenarios - all of them good. :)

First of all, it's brilliant to do them as a single panel. I immediately started thinking of them as a sort of oversized Mission card. Great way to encapsulate the essentials of what you need to set up and explain the story situation without taking up much table space and using the mechanics we are already familiar with. 

That Baron Blade scenario sounded absolutely awesome. I'm inclined to try it out right away on my own, as we heard it on this podcast, even though it's probably horribly imbalanced. But it was especially cool to hear Christopher and Adam think through the mechanics of it, and see right away how they align to the story beats they wanted to highlight. I love the idea of using the Infrared Eyepiece to track which platform the Baron is on: that punches up the whole function of the Eyepiece and really pushes players to make Wraith the investigator of the team.

At the end of the Baron Blade story, when Christopher suggested Blade would have an "Argh, next time, heros!" moment, I of course immediately thought how easy it would be to string scenarios together into a campaign story - or just as a string of episodic encounters. (Perhaps more as something to introduce in the scenario pack.) I've recently been playing Scythe: The Rise of Fenris, and it makes a template that I think would work well here with legacy-ish modules that don't involve modifying or damaging components, and an upgrade process where players trade their gains in one game into perks in the next. Like, imagine if: if you catch Baron Blade before he escapes, each player may begin the first turn of their next game by playing 1 card, using 1 power, or drawing 1 card.

Finally, I think scenario mode will open up a whole bunch of fan content. We've been noodling around with this on the forum, with various campaigns, story modes, canonical battle lists, and challenges to each other. But codifying a quickly recognizable format for how to present a story scenario; tying it to specific, known mechanics (character card flips); and the fact that the scenario content just fits on 1 oversize character panel -- all of that, I think will make it very easy for fans to create their own scenarios or set up their own favorite confrontations from the world of Sentinel Comics. You just lay out a piece of paper in the same scenario panel format, and interested players can print it out. Creating that panel is a pretty low barrier, and playing it doesn't involve much at all in terms of extra components. I hope Christopher and Adam are willing to entertain that fan content here after they publish the Definitive Edition scenarios!

Anyway, all extremely cool.

Oh, by the way: doesn't a first appearance variant mean we will get that Luminary-in-a-Portal-Fiend-skin character card?! ;)

Oh, I'm extremely psyched about the Definitive Edition! :-D Everything about it sounds wonderful, and I'll gladly turn my current set into a(nother) demo set to get it. ;-) 

Scenarios, more variants, new art... This will be wonderful! (But that's just _my_ opinion, of course. ;-)

Yeah, I'm also SUPER excited about the Definitive Edition!

Unfortunately last week was a little nutso so I didn't have time to come on here and gush.

But yeah, the scenarios sound fantastic.  The Baron Blade one in particular sounds like a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to the new art.  And getting variants is the icing on the cake for me.  SoTM is my favorite board game by a wide margin, so I would've grabbed the DE even just for new art, but getting fantastic-sounding scenarios and new variants as part of the deal make it even better.

A critical question that must be asked:

Wil Handelabra be updating the digital game with scenarios and First Appearance variants?

Yep, but we all know the dangers of assumption... ;)

That's true - I was thinking of Christopher's joke during the episode about how he and Adam were signing Handelabra up for a whole bunch of work that they hadn't agreed to do yet, but I forgot that Handelabra had already done that survey about a story mode.