# Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game

A superhero TTRPG from Greater Than Games, set in the Sentinel Comics world of the Sentinels of the Multiverse card game. Heroes roll a power, a quality and a status die, and a Green, Yellow and Red scene tracker escalates every fight and puts a clock on it. Play the established heroes or roll up your own with guided hero creation.

## At a Glance

Comic-book superhero action • Power, quality and status dice (d4 to d12) • Green/Yellow/Red Scene Tracker • Attack, Defend, Boost, Hinder, Overcome • Guided hero creation • Game Moderator + group

## Why It Fits

Pick Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game when your group wants superhero fights that play like a comic book issue: a team splitting its turns between beating the villain, saving bystanders and stopping the disaster before the scene clock runs out. Players describe their powers freely instead of looking up a rule for each one, and the GM gets quick tools for minions, villains and environments.

## Fit Facts

- Prep: Medium
- Price: Paid

## Facets

- Genres: Superheroes
- Mechanics: Campaign, Character Customization, Narrative-Driven
- Themes: Cinematic
- Decision tags: Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Rules Medium

## Scores

- Complexity: 3/5
- New GM Fit: 3/5
- Roleplay Focus: 3/5
- Combat Focus: 4/5
- Tactical Depth: 3/5
- Campaign Depth: 3/5

## Best For

- Groups who want superhero fights where saving bystanders and stopping the disaster matter as much as beating the villain
- Players who like describing power stunts freely instead of looking up a rule for each power
- New groups who want to start with ready heroes from the Starter Kit and move to rolling up their own

## Avoid If

- You want heroes to grow from street-level to cosmic over a long campaign
- You want a detailed point-buy that models exactly how each power works
- Your campaign is mostly civilian drama or investigation rather than action scenes

## Explorer Notes

Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game (often shortened to SCRPG) is a superhero TTRPG for groups who want fights that play out like a comic book issue: the heroes arrive, the villain's plan gets worse every round, and the team has a few turns to stop it before the page turns. Powers are described in broad strokes, so a player with ice powers can catch a falling civilian in a snowdrift without a rule for it. The best use is a team of heroes taking on villains under a ticking clock, in one-shots or ongoing arcs.

It is a weaker fit if you want a simulation of how superpowers work, a points-buy system for building any exact concept, or heroes who grow from street level to cosmic over a long campaign. Characters start capable and stay at roughly that power level.

## What the game is

SCRPG is published by [Greater Than Games](https://greaterthan.games/), the St. Louis company behind the cooperative card game Sentinels of the Multiverse. Sentinel Comics is the fictional comic publisher whose heroes and villains appear on those cards, and the RPG lets players use those characters or create their own. The core rulebook credits Christopher Badell, Cam Banks, Dave Chalker, Philippe-Antoine Ménard and Clark Valentine as authors, with Adam Rebottaro as lead artist. Banks is also the lead designer of Cortex Prime, and Chalker's Critical-Hits Studios co-developed the game.

The game uses its own dice system, sometimes called GYRO (Green, Yellow, Red, Out). Each roll uses three dice, one for a power, one for a quality and one for the hero's current status, and most actions read only the middle result. One player is the Game Moderator (GM), who runs villains, minions, environments and the scene clock.

The default setting is the city of Megalopolis after a multiverse-shaking crisis. The Freedom Five have become the Sentinels of Freedom and opened a training campus for younger heroes, including the teen team Daybreak. You do not need to know the card game's lore to play: the book presents enough of the setting to run it, and a group can also play in its own invented world.

## Publication history and editions

A boxed Starter Kit with pre-made heroes and six adventure booklets came first, in 2017. The core rulebook was crowdfunded on [Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game) from January 29 to February 22, 2019, raising $354,307 from 2,925 backers against a $50,000 goal. Backer copies arrived around the turn of 2021, and the PDF went on sale on DriveThruRPG in February 2021. A second edition of the Starter Kit replaced the original booklets with new content featuring the Freedom Five and their former intern Unity.

The publisher's ownership has changed twice since then. Flat River Group bought Greater Than Games in 2021 and, in April 2025, cut the team and halted new projects, which left the RPG line without new releases. In April 2026 Handelabra Games, the studio behind the digital Sentinels of the Multiverse, bought the brand, and on May 12, 2026 [Greater Than Games announced](https://greaterthan.games/blogs/news/welcome-back-gtg) that founders Paul Bender and Christopher Badell had taken it back, including the rights to Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game. The rebuilt store lists the core rulebook, a leather-bound Special Edition, the GM Kit and the Guise Book, plus a new one-shot added in August 2026. As of November 2026 the announcement mentions new Sentinels of the Multiverse content, but no new RPG supplements have been announced.

## What you need to play

- Core rulebook: about 450 full-color pages with all rules, hero creation, GM tools, two adventures and a set of established heroes and villains. The [DriveThruRPG PDF](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/341539/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151) was $29.95 on November 4, 2026 and includes form-fillable hero, villain and auxiliary sheets. The [hardcover](https://greaterthan.games/products/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook) was $39.95 on sale (regular price $59.95) at the Greater Than Games store.

- Dice: dice of each size from d4 to d12, enough that each player can roll three at once. The official dice set (three of each size) is optional.

- Starter Kit (second edition): thirteen booklets with six ready heroes and a six-part adventure. The PDF is on DriveThruRPG for $9.95. It teaches the game without hero creation and is the easiest way to try it.

- Free downloads: the publisher's Sentinel Comics page offers free reference sheets and supplementary PDFs.

## Supplements and adventures

The line is small. The GM Kit holds screens and quick tools for improvising twists and minions during action scenes. The Guise Book is a comedy supplement built around the joking hero Guise, with advice for running humorous scenes, two silly adventures and extra heroes, villains and minions. A few short one-shots (Off the Rails, Terror Forms) are sold separately. The leather Special Edition contains the same rules as the standard core book.

Larger setting books that fans expected, such as volumes covering more of the Sentinel Comics multiverse, did not appear before the 2025 shutdown, so most of the lore lives in the card game, the publisher's Letters Page podcast and fan wikis rather than in RPG books.

## Digital tools and VTT support

There is no official VTT module. An [unofficial Foundry VTT system](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/scrpg) supports hero, villain and environment sheets and the scene tracker, but it is marked as no longer in active development and was last verified for Foundry version 11. Most online groups use the form-fillable PDF sheets and any dice roller that handles d4 to d12.

## Core rules and play structure

Stories are organized like comics. A Collection is a story arc, an Issue is roughly one session, and each Issue is made of Scenes. Scenes are Action scenes (fights and crises), Social scenes (talking, persuading, arguing) or Montage scenes, where each hero picks one benefit from downtime between the big moments.

When a hero acts, the player names a goal and picks one of five basic actions:

- Attack: the result is damage dealt to a target.

- Defend: the result is subtracted from the next attack against you.

- Boost: create a bonus another character can add to a later roll.

- Hinder: create a penalty on an opponent's roll.

- Overcome: solve a problem in the scene, such as rescuing bystanders, shutting a portal or disarming a device.

The player rolls a power die and a quality die that fit what the hero is doing, plus a status die that depends on the hero's current zone. The dice are sorted into Min, Mid and Max, and a basic action uses the Mid result. Abilities change this: one hero might attack with Max, another might hinder with Max and attack with Min in the same turn.

Overcome results set the outcome: low rolls fail unless the player accepts a major twist, middling rolls succeed with a minor twist, high rolls succeed cleanly and the best rolls add a bonus. Twists are complications: a minor twist is a short setback in the scene, a major twist is a story problem that can follow the team for several issues. Players can also accept a twist on purpose to get more out of an action. The rulebook gives example twists for each hero choice, so players are not inventing every complication from nothing.

Turn order is passed around the table. After a character acts, they pick who goes next, heroes or villains, and the round ends when everyone has acted once. Passing to all the heroes first means the villains act back to back.

## Creating heroes

Hero creation takes about a hundred pages of the core book. A hero is built in steps: Background, Power Source, Archetype, Personality, Red Abilities, a Retcon step to adjust earlier choices, then Health. Each step hands out dice to assign to powers and qualities, plus abilities tied to the Green, Yellow or Red zones.

There are three methods. In the guided method, players roll dice to get a few options at each step and choose among them, which produces surprising heroes quickly. In the constructed method, players pick what they want at each step. A third option lets experienced groups build a hero directly with the GM. Archetypes cover familiar comic roles such as speedster, blaster, shadow, armored hero or robot, along with odder builds like form-changers, minion-makers, modular heroes and divided heroes.

Each hero also takes Principles, short statements of what the hero believes or stands for. Acting on a Principle in play earns hero points and gives the player ready-made complications to draw on.

## Signature mechanics

### The Green, Yellow and Red zones

Every hero tracks a health-based zone, and in action scenes the whole scene also moves from Green to Yellow to Red on a Scene Tracker. A hero can use abilities from their current zone and all earlier zones, so the strongest Red abilities only open up when the hero is badly hurt or the scene is close to disaster. The effect is that fights escalate the way comic fights do, with the biggest moves arriving near the climax.

### The Scene Tracker

The tracker also works as a timer. It advances once per round, environments act on its turn, and when it runs out the scene ends, whether or not the heroes reached their goal. A team that spends every turn punching the villain may win the fight while the reactor melts down. Reviewers single this out as the part that makes SCRPG feel different from other superhero games.

### Out abilities

A hero whose health hits zero is out of the scene, but the player keeps a role: each hero has an Out ability that represents inspiring or assisting the team, borrowed from the card game. Heroes do not die unless their player decides it is the right story.

## What play feels like

An action scene usually opens with the heroes arriving to a problem with several parts: a villain, a wave of minions, endangered people and an environment that is getting worse. Players argue about priorities, pass the turn to the hero who can set up a boost, and describe their powers in comic panel terms. Because the rules care about the action type rather than the specific power, players get creative. A ghost hero whose psychic attacks do not hurt robots can try to Overcome by pulling the whole scene into the land of the dead.

Between action scenes the game slows down. Social scenes cover secret identities, reporters and arguments in the team, and Montage scenes compress training, research and recovery into a single choice each. Players who mostly want investigation or drama in civilian identity should know that the rules have the most detail in action scenes.

## Running the game

The GM chapters and the section called the Bullpen are often praised. Opposition comes in three sizes. Minions are a single die that shrinks each time they are hit. Lieutenants roll to resist damage before shrinking. Villains are built from an approach and an archetype, with health scaled to the number of players, and the same villain can be built differently for different stories. The book also gives rules for environments with their own Green, Yellow and Red abilities and for multi-stage doomsday devices.

The GM advice favors moving the story: if the heroes need a clue, they find it, and randomness goes into how ready the villain is. Building a balanced action scene is quick once the GM knows the tools. The main friction is the book itself. Hero and villain creation spread options across many chapters, so expect some page flipping in the first few sessions.

## Campaign fit

SCRPG handles both one-shots and longer arcs. The Starter Kit and short adventures run in a session each, and pre-made Sentinel Comics heroes make pickup games easy. For campaigns, the Collection structure supports multi-issue story arcs, and major twists carry consequences forward. Advancement is mostly sideways: after a Collection, heroes can rework powers, retcon earlier details or gain story options, but their overall power stays about the same. Groups that expect steady growth in power should look elsewhere.

## Reception and awards

The core rulebook was nominated for six ENnie Awards in 2021, including Product of the Year, Best Game, Best Layout and Design and Best Family Game, but did not win any of them (see the [2021 ENnies list](https://ennie-awards.com/portfolio-item/2021-nominees-and-winners/)). The original Starter Kit was an ENnie nominee for Best Production Values in 2018.

Reviews are positive. [Gnome Stew](https://gnomestew.com/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook-review/) recommended the core book in February 2021 and called the Scene Tracker the piece that sets it apart, while noting the page flipping during hero creation. A [coopgestalt review](https://coopgestalt.com/2021/01/16/sentinels-comics-rpg-review/) from an active group called it easy to teach and quick to GM, with criticism of the limited advancement and the artificial feel of locking strong abilities behind the zones. On DriveThruRPG the core PDF averages 4.9 from 51 ratings. Community threads keep asking how the game handles scenes that are not fights, which matches the rules' focus.

## Where it is strongest

- Action scenes with a real clock, where saving people competes with beating the villain

- Free-form power use: players describe the stunt and pick an action type

- Guided hero creation that turns a few dice rolls into a usable hero

- GM tools for minions, lieutenants, villains and environments that are quick to use

- Boost and hinder actions that make teamwork matter

## Where it can frustrate groups

- Strong abilities stay locked until a hero or the scene reaches Yellow or Red

- Little power growth over a campaign

- Hero creation sends you back and forth through a large book

- Fewer rules for civilian life and investigation than for fights

- A small supplement line, and new RPG releases have not yet been announced by the returning owners

## Content and safety notes

The default tone is Silver Age comics: heroic, colorful and mostly free of gore. Villains threaten cities and civilians, and some plots involve mind control, clones and alien invasions. The publisher lists ages 8 and up on the core book. Groups running darker stories will be adding that tone themselves.

## Best starting path

Start with the Starter Kit PDF or one of the core book's two adventures (Battle of the Bands, a short scenario for the Daybreak teen heroes, and A Conspiracy of Clones, a larger plot that can open a campaign). Play one session with ready heroes before making your own. Hero creation makes more sense once you have seen the zones and Overcome rolls at the table. Then pick up the core rulebook from DriveThruRPG or the publisher and let players roll up their own heroes with the guided method.

If your group wants established Marvel characters and more defined power rules, compare the [Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game](/item/marvel-multiverse-rpg). For teen heroes and emotional drama, [Masks: A New Generation](/item/masksanewgeneration) is the closer fit. More options are on the [superhero TTRPGs](/category/superheroes) page and in our [best superhero TTRPGs](/blog/best-superhero-ttrpgs-mutants-and-masterminds-masks-champions) roundup.

## Research notes

Last checked November 4, 2026. Prices, ratings and availability come from the sources below on that date.

- [DriveThruRPG: Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook (product 341539)](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/341539/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151)

- [DriveThruRPG: Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game Starter Kit (Second Edition)](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/227693/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-starter-kit-second-edition?affiliate_id=1659151)

- [Greater Than Games: core rulebook](https://greaterthan.games/products/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook) and [Guise Book](https://greaterthan.games/products/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-guise-book) store pages

- [Greater Than Games: Sentinel Comics product line and free downloads](https://shop.greaterthangames.com/pages/sentinel-comics)

- [Greater Than Games: Ownership Returns to Original Founders (May 12, 2026)](https://greaterthan.games/blogs/news/welcome-back-gtg)

- [Kickstarter: Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game (2019)](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game)

- [Critical-Hits Studios: Sentinel Comics: the Roleplaying Game](https://critical-hits.com/studios/sentinel-comics-roleplaying-game/)

- [ENnie Awards: 2021 nominees and winners](https://ennie-awards.com/portfolio-item/2021-nominees-and-winners/)

- [Gnome Stew: Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook Review (Jared Rascher, February 9, 2021)](https://gnomestew.com/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook-review/)

- [coopgestalt: Sentinels Comics RPG Review (January 16, 2021)](https://coopgestalt.com/2021/01/16/sentinels-comics-rpg-review/)

- [Foundry VTT: Sentinel Comics the Roleplaying Game (unofficial system)](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/scrpg)

- [r/rpg: Sentinel Comics RPG, what does it play like? (2022)](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/x6f9ns/sentinel_comics_rpg_what_does_it_play_like/)

- [r/rpg: Sentinel Comics RPG or Marvel Multiverse? (2025)](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1mro7ww/sentinel_comics_rpg_or_marvel_multiverse/)

## Links

- Explorer page: https://www.ttrpg-games.com/item/sentinel-comics-rpg
- Agent JSON: https://www.ttrpg-games.com/api/games/sentinel-comics-rpg.json
- Publisher or official site: https://greaterthan.games/products/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook
- Reviews or retailer page: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/341539/sentinel-comics-the-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151