Review of the system-agnostic Lovecraftian SF scenario, The Sentinels, from the Dark Space collection.
In-short: A nasty little trick of a scenario that doesn’t actually give players much to do, but it can be worth experiencing without the railroading stinging too much due to its very short run time.
Spoiler-lite for Players and Keepers
As described in the review for Orpheus Station, the first scenario in the collection, Dark Space is system agnostic, light on details, and heavy on mood. While I ran Orpheus Station with the Cthulhu Dark-Mothership hack Darkship, I ran this scenario with straight Cthulhu Dark. This worked better for me, both because I just prefer Cthulhu Dark in general, and because it better suits this scenario in particular. Slight spoilers, but the scenario is even more mood-based than its predecessor. Getting out of the players’ way is the systems’ main requirement here.
With single column paragraphs, the scenario text takes up eight pages. Besides the extra cover page, there are no illustrations (an aside on the title art; I quite enjoy all of them, usually very colourful and abstract portraits on a black background, but unfortunately I do find The Sentinels to have the worst of the lot, instead featuring a muddy image in muted colours). Frequent titles break up the single column text, leaving at most four paragraphs in a row, and more often than not separating individual paragraphs when describing locations. Despite, or because of, its simplicity, The Sentinels, and its sibling scenarios, is very readable, with a simple white background and unobtrusive but easily understood system-neutral mechanical bits ‘coded’ into the text via italics and bolded red text. As is Dark Space’s style, the text is largely prose-like, rather than purely descriptive. This includes some large ‘read-aloud’ sections.
In what I imagine is a deliberate decision, as nearly all the scenarios follow suit, there are no maps or illustrations. This generally isn’t an issue, as most exploration isn’t of the ‘room-to-room’, map out the dungeon, sort of variety, but I did find myself a little confused by the overall described layout in this specific scenario. Whether this is my lack of reading comprehension or an actual issue with the writing, will be up to each GM. As will the Dark Space style overall, and this scenario exemplifies that style to either a great or horrible degree. From the GM side, it reads like a short story. If run by-the-book, I imagine it feels similar from the player side as well.
What might save the scenario from itself is its length. It may be the shortest of the Dark Space scenarios, with my run taking only a little over two hours, and I could easily see that halved. The ‘railroading’ is in full force, but if the GM and players are happy to hop in the train and let the mood take over, the short ride should keep the worst of the format at bay. Being the second scenario in the collection is an odd choice, though. I would suggest putting this midway through as a short diversion, or use it as an impromptu session filler, as there isn’t much prep involved.
If that doesn’t sound of interest, though, there is unfortunately little opportunity for structural adjustments outside of a full rewrite. More on that in the spoiler section below.
Dark Space, containing The Sentinels and its seven sibling scenarios, can be found on DriveThruRPG in PDF or Print-on-Demand formats.
This is a rug-pull, ‘gotcha!’ scenario. It exists entirely to jab at the players for something they didn’t really have any choice in doing. As a little bit of flash fiction, its fun enough, and with Dark Space’s prose-like text, it largely reads as such. But from a player perspective? I’d say how much of a good natured finger wagging it gets versus angry fist waving depends on how long the GM allows the scenario to drag out.
To sum it up: the party investigates a signal on Charon, thinking it might be extraterrestrial life. It is! Unfortunately for the clueless (literally, there are no clues) investigators, they make an oopsy by opening a door and killing an entire alien civilization. Forward past wandering through a barren underground city covered in dust until the party finds a spooky E.T. computer where they can watch a recording of the last few hours, witnessing the inadvertent genocide. Slide whistle, sad trombone, that’s all folks.
Poking around the city takes up most of the playtime, with the party coming across a dozen possible rooms and events. These can be spooky or sombre, and are nice little scenes, though almost entirely reactive. Entirely reactive, as is the full scenario, with the single exception of a room containing random flying polyps that can auto kill at least two player characters, and quite possibly cause a TPK, though triggering the monsters requires a player character to summon them. Why they would do this, who knows, as there are plenty of warnings, including an awkward double SAN/Panic/Whatever roll (or quadruple, if the things are summoned), but it’s in the text anyways, despite not really being clear why the aliens have these insta-kill pets sitting around, or what the scene adds to the scenario in general. Learning a spell to summon flying polyps could help (or more likely not help, but at least be funny) in future scenarios, I guess.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of many ways to open up the scenario without gutting it. The rugpull is the whole point of the scenario, and you can’t pull the rug if the players aren’t made to patiently stand on it. Poking through an abandoned underground city on Charon is neat, but without the ‘haha you ended a civilization’ bit, there isn’t much to actually do. You could perhaps have the polyps be out and about, having been let free when the aliens turned to dust, turning the scenario into a cat-and-mouse sort of thing as the party tries to find out what happened while avoiding the spooky monsters. Except that would just be Orpheus Station again…
One last thing I want to talk a bit about, and it’s something I usually don’t care to mention or focus on; plot holes. When it comes to RPGs, I honestly don’t care about gaps in plotting or jumps in logic, and I certainly don’t hold them to the same standards as other media. Giving players opportunities for unique experiences they can take part in together in ways other media can’t allow is what I want from an RPG module, and I’m happy to ignore if some NPC motivations or setting details don’t really make sense if it can support the kind of play I’m looking for.
BUT.
In The Sentinels, there are a few little niggling bits that really do kind of get in the way of play. These almost all come down to the scenario seemingly forgetting its in a science fiction setting and the player characters have access to all manner of tech. This comes up in all manner of ways, but the largest by far is that the player characters should very easily be able to analyse the dust everywhere and quickly figure out it was people, and recent people at that. Immediately dispelling the twist through pretty basic Star Trek-esque readings that most all SF-minded players would try out is not ideal when the twist is the whole point of the scenario.
All other criticisms aside, the scenario is moody, and the rugpull can be effective. If the GM thinks the group would be up for a very guided session, and the GM can keep that session very brief, there is fun to be had. Those are some strong conditions, though, and when compared to many of the better sibling Dark Space scenarios, I’m not sure I’d recommend turning to The Sentinels until others are exhausted (for example, Orpheus Station, which also has a ‘everyone turned to dust’ twist, but with more to do besides just that).
Dark Space can be found on DriveThruRPG in PDF or Print-on-Demand formats.
