Sanctuary & Sentinel: Let's Talk About It

Guardians devote their lives to protecting a Sanctuary of power that can spell ruin for the world if it falls into the wrong hands. This is the setting premise for Sanctuary & Sentinel, a 2-in-1 storytelling game by designer Meghan Cross and published by Siren's Song Games. 

Sentinel

The original game, Sentinel, is a solo-journaling game in which you tell the story of the last surviving Guardian that stands guard over a place of power, the Sanctuary. This utilizes a deck of standard playing cards and some polyhedral dice to determine prompts such as memories of the last Guardian, how the Guardian manages to defend the source from threats, clues left around the Sanctuary, and the passage of time. It all culminates in a final roll that determines the fate of the Sanctuary and the Guardian.

Sanctuary

The other part of game is called Sanctuary was created after Sentinel but should actually be played before playing Sentinel. This is also a journaling game if played solo, but optionally, instead can be played as a GMless storytelling game with a small group. It begins with a short map-making phase in which cards are placed on the playing surface then flipped one-by-one to determine the what exists at that locations as well as questions to fill out the lore of the Sanctuary, the Guardians, or the Threat, those that are trying to take or destroy the Sanctuary. 

After the map-making phase, the game moves into a phase called The Battle for Sanctuary. In this phase, cards are drawn one-by-one, each detailing an attack on the Sanctuary by the Threat. A single-die is rolled against a target number to determine the success or failures of the Guardians' defense against the attack. Depending on whether the Guardians were successful or not, various question prompts are asked about the effects of the attack, how it was repelled, or any lasting effects upon the sanctuary. In the case of a failure roll, the target number moves up, making subsequent rolls harder to succeed. Eventually, the target number will reach an amount where it cannot be beat by a die roll and the game moves to its final stage, The Last Stand.

The Last Stand is very much similar to the last roll in The Sentinel solo game. A single roll determines how the Sanctuary is saved and why there is only one Guardian is left to defend the Sanctuary moving forward. This last Guardian is the protagonist in The Sentinel. 

Things I Liked

  • The layout of the spreads is very efficient and the rules will easily walk you through the gameplay. The only flipping back and forth is checking the prompts of the card pulls. Even then, it is only a few pages.
  • The art utilizes a mixture of bronze age aesthetic and stained glass and is used as borders or centerpieces with text flowing around them.  The only colors used are red and black, which echo the colors of the playing cards.
  • The prompts during play of Sanctuary. I only played this solo, but I imagine that playing with a group, it would create a very satisfying, surprising, and unique setting and lore.

Things I Think Could Be Better

  • After playing Sanctuary, I felt the prompts of Sentinel were lackluster. This could be due to it being an earlier release or my maybe even my own bias for enjoying lore building over single character development. A big turn-off for me during any journaling game is having to cover the same prompt on multiple occasions. I believe it also hinders replayability. 
  • The single die-roll for the epilogue of each game. While I do enjoy the prompts of each epilogue option, I believe it could be more satisfying if there was a mechanic during play that would help determine the epilogue option rather than an unmodified die roll.

Final Thoughts

While Sanctuary & Sentinel will always tell a story about Guardians defending a Sanctuary from the Threat, your creativity, or the group's creativity, can really alter the definitions of those story elements and lead to a very different feeling story iterations. If you enjoy journaling games, world building games or general creative exercises, I suggest giving this game a go. I hope to one day try out Sanctuary as a short one-shot in group play because I really do love me some collaborative story telling.

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