Sanctuary & Sentinel - A Solo TTRPG First Playthrough

Sanctuary & Sentinel by Meghan Cross features two solo journaling style RPG games in one beautifully designed booklet. You can play each game as completely separate entities, or you can continue the story of your Sanctuary game into the second game, Sentinel. I chose to do the latter, and it created a deep sense of connection to the setting and story for both.

• Requirements: a standard deck of playing cards, a six-sided (1d6) dice, and your journal.
• Game style: journaling, with card event prompts and creating a map with cards.
• Resource management: Minimal. There are no stats like dexterity or health to worry about.
• Playtime: Estimated at 1-2 hours for each game, but this can depend on how big you make your Sanctuary, how many prompts your Sentinel journeys through, and if you write long or short journal entries.
• Replayability: Endless. The prompts are open-ended enough to allow for countless creative scenarios, but defined enough to be inspiring and impactful.
• Booklet: 55 pages, well formatted, clear instructions, beautiful artwork. Limited run.
• Available as Print & Play: Yes, on itch.io 
• Solo RPG List Entry with additional information.

Beginning with Sanctuary, you will divide your card deck into specified suits. Some of these will be used to build your sanctuary - the place you and your comrades have vowed to protect at all costs. How many 'rooms' or areas of the keep is determined by how many cards you use to build the map, and then you flip the cards over to discover what those areas are through provided prompts. What power, object, or oath your sanctuary protects is up to you, as is the nature of the threat trying to obtain it. After setting up your Sanctuary, you will use the other cards to create events by placing a card on top of a map card (room), flipping it over, and following the event prompts. 

Success or failure is determined by the simple roll of your 1d6 - anything above a 2 will earn a success. But, be wary, for each failure increases the difficulty by increasing the roll required for a success. After your first failure, you must beat a 3 on your next event, and so forth, until you have enough failures so that winning the next event becomes impossible, thus evoking The Final Battle.

This system of building failures culminating in a final event made for a unique experience. It wasn't a random unlucky roll of the dice that had my character dying in a way that felt unfair and unsatisfying. Every success and failure built a story of events with ever increasing stakes, a rising tension, and an unavoidable finality that made the sanctuary and its occupants feel like a living, breathing world I desperately wanted to save but knew would be destined to fall. Never has a game so eloquently captured that Minas Tirith feeling for me before - an epic battle of the ages in a struggle against the dying light, with the encroaching darkness gathering at the gate. Hope fades, it seems all is lost, and yet... 

In Sentinel, you are the lone survivor of an epic battle, tasked with protecting what remains of a once proud sanctuary and the sacred power it holds. Sentinel can be used to continue the story you began in Sanctuary, or you can create an entirely new scenario. Instead of creating a map of your sanctuary with cards, you will use the full deck, with a Joker inserted into it. Draw the cards, follow the prompts, and journal about the experience, until you draw the Joker and the game ends. You will then roll your 1d6 to see how the story ends.

After finishing both games, there was a feeling of satisfaction for time well spent, but also an unexpected feeling of loss. I had become so engrossed in the world and guardians that Sanctuary & Sentinel helped me create, it saddened me to leave it all behind. The ending, though, at least for my lone sentinel, could be the beginning of an entirely new journey. But, that's a story for another time...