The Project: Sentinel, aka Sentinels, campaign was a DC Heroes game run by the same Game Master who had run the Marvel Super Heroes games I had previously played in. In fact, when the Sentinels game first started I tried playing a DC Heroes rules version of the Midnight Express character I had played in the Marvel games, but the character did not fit this new campaign so I switched it for a new character.

The Sentinels game was set in the DC universe and we fought a mix of established villains and threats from the comics as well as new enemies created for the campaign. The Game Master would later merge the characters from the old Marvel games with the characters from this DC game into his own super-hero universe he called Paradigm, modifying the events from these prior campaigns to fit the new world. More recently he has rebooted his Paradigm universe for a new campaign he calls Paradigm Shift.

DEF RICHARDS

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Jeffrey Richards was one of the longest continuously serving covert metahuman operatives in the United States Armed Forces. Richards was a Private in the United States Army serving in the 1950s when exposure to radiation from atomic weapons testing granted him metahuman powers. When those metahuman powers surfaced, hHe was immediately transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia for special training and observation. Under a covert operation codenamed Project: REDBLOCK, Richards and several other government metahumans were assembled into a Special Forces cadre. Often members of the cadre were used to supplement other Special Forces units as well as regular Armed Forces. Richards was on standby during the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961 but was not called into action. Similarly, the entire cadre was on alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis but the President authorized no action. At this time Richards was assigned the code name Guardian.

The metahuman operatives of Project: REDBLOCK saw most of their action in Southeast Asia. Members of the cadre joined other Special Forces on missions or were assigned to metahuman-only squads. In the early 1970's the project was disbanded and the metahuman operatives were reassigned. Richards was then given the new code name Titan and assigned to the newly created MONOLITH project. With the increasing number of metahumans appearing, the government briefly considered allowing Titan to go public but this idea was eventually scrapped. Richards was used extensively for operations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East during the seventies but he was not permitted to operate in North America.

During the Reagan administration, Richards' code name was changed to Powerhouse. He was often "lent out" to the CIA for operations in Central America. Again it was decided to keep Richards' existence secret. It was during this period that Richards began to question the motives of his superiors, and whether or not his missions were in the best interest of the American people. After the return of the Captain Atom Project, a rivalry erupted between it and MONOLITH. As time went on, Richards became more and more selective about his missions, rejecting some outright. After the events of the Janus Directive resulted in the restructuring of the governmental metahuman community Richards resigned from service.

Richards spent the next few years crisscrossing the country acting as a vigilante. He eventually crossed paths with the Sentinels and agreed to join up with them despite their government connections. At this point he was using the name Def Richards, a short form of an unofficial term they had from his MONOLITH days, when a mission requiring his presence was referred to semi-jokingly as DEFCON (Defense Condition) Richards. Richards later switched to using his old Powerhouse codename.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Richards is a living radiation battery. His body absorbs ionizing radiation and metabolizes this to grant him superhuman strength, endurance and resilience. Over the decades after initially developing his powers, increases in ambient background radiation due to nuclear weapons testing had the additional effect of gradually increasing Richards' power level. By the early 1970s Richards was one of the strongest beings on the planet and had gained the additional ability to project blasts of energy from his eyes, though he could only do this a few times before he would have to recharge his internal energy levels before being able to do so again.

Thanks to his increased strength and endurance, Richards could run at almost 200 miles per hour and could leap an eighth of a mile. In addition to being impervious to harm from most conventional infantry weaponry, Richards was also highly resistant to disease, poison and other chemical attacks, and could heal from injuries at a highly accelerated rate. These abilities also meant that Richards' body aged at a slower rate than a normal human, meaning he was still in excellent physical condition (even without considering his powers) despite being chronologically over 50 years old when he joined the Sentinels. However, Richards' powers are highly dependent on metabolizing radiation. If cut off from the normal background radiation for an extended period of time his powers will start to fade until he theoretically reaches the physical level of a normal, if well trained, human.

Richards is a highly trained soldier, skilled in armed and unarmed combat as well as military tactics and the operation of a variety of air, land, and sea vehicles.

PROJECT: SENTINEL

The Sentinels were a team of superhuman heroes, operating under nominal supervision of the United States government but with a great deal of autonomy. The team took its name from the government codename assigned to the project that they operated under, Project: Sentinel.

Besides Def Richards the other members of the Sentinels were:

ALL THIS & WORLD WAR II

All This & World War II was the name of an adventure module for the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG, part of a series of modules involving time travel. As part of the Sentinels campaign we played through an adventure based on the module. The crux of the adventure involves the players having to travel back to World War II to thwart a Nazi plot, and in the process the characters must assume alternate heroic identities in order to blend in with the Mystery Men (i.e. super-heroes) of the era.

The Golden Age identities adopted by the Sentinels for this adventure were:

Warp Zone | Other Worlds | Paradigm / DC Heroes