Adventure - Trinity, Aberrant, etc

[malladin]

The biggest excuse I heard from most people about not playing the Trinity universe came from being lazy. ( "I HEARD it was vampire in space." "Did you check it out?" "No, I was too busy playing AD&D to find out." "Well here, lets play the games and you can find out how they aren't vampire in space." "No, I am too busy playing AD&D right now.")

Hopefully now that the game is "DnD" AND people have learned that White Wolf can "make real games" via Scarred Lands, the tide will turn.

As a former Vampire player I think I attribute Trinity with knocking me out of the whole 'moody goth' vampire schtick (thank God!). I think the trouble with its success was that it was the wrong product for White Wolf's existing market. I think I eventually fell out with a bunch of players who tried to play it too much like Vampire (not that there was a big fight, but we've never bothered to get back in touch...)

I'm with you, Von, on the Trinity, Adventure, Aberrant order. 'Tis a shame that's not the release schedule .

Ben

 

[pensiv]

I have the original AEON book and never bought the Trinity book. Were there any changes between those editions?

 

[MrFilthyIke]

I have the Aeon book too, loved it...loved it. Aeon and Fading Suns are my two No1 "space game settings".

I'm stoked for all three, though Aberrant in low on my priority list.

 

[Von Ether]

I have the original AEON book and never bought the Trinity book. Were there any changes between those editions?

If you are talking about the Trinity softback (more than 300 pages for $15, what a gaming value!!), the only real change was the summary of the metaplot that was revealed by the time it was published.

 

[Von Ether]

I think the trouble with its success was that it was the wrong product for White Wolf's existing market.
Ben

To be more fair, Trinity (the first game, not the universe) had a lot of strikes against it since it was trying to do too many new things at once.

1.) A $30 rpg during the mid-90s, not a good idea.

2.) The plastic sprial bound folder

3.) A branding problem since the game was promoted as Trinity until the 11th hour, when the lawsuit popped up.

4.) White Wolf being heavily typecast as the "games for goths" at the time. I know a lot of people who never touched a WW game until it had a d20 lable."Vampire in Space" my brass.

5.) Obvious metaplot (a turn off for some) that stretched out over the whole game line (another turn off for some) and went backwards in time (amazing how gamers like to brag that they are creative and intellgent and then get they get quickly confused and confounded over little things like that.)

As a universe, the game line got some knocks from Aberrant.

1.) A game about super powers that sent conflicting messages (Not four color/ but draw your inspiration from comic books)
2.) The developer took Ab in a diffenent direction than game line developer had established earlier in Trinity.
3.) lack of direction

The Adventure! game was done more as a favor for the fans and the developers than really as profit generator. But then I have to applaud that if WW was going to do some "filler" while we wait for the new World of Darkness, then trying to give the Trinity Universe another chance is a great way to do it.

 

[SSquirrel]

3.) A branding problem since the game was promoted as Trinity until the 11th hour, when the lawsuit popped up.

Actualy itw as branded as AEON until teh 11th hour when Viacom fussed due to Aeon Flux on Liquid Television and BAM it became Trinity shortly after release.

As a universe, the game line got some knocks from Aberrant.

1.) A game about super powers that sent conflicting messages (Not four color/ but draw your inspiration from comic books)
2.) The developer took Ab in a diffenent direction than game line developer had established earlier in Trinity.
3.) lack of direction

But then I have to applaud that if WW was going to do some "filler" while we wait for the new World of Darkness, then trying to give the Trinity Universe another chance is a great way to do it.

I just wanan see future supplements for the Trinity UNiverse get to come out and maybe be dual statted to appease both crowds. I actually thought SToryteller worked just dndy to handle supers and the system was quite flexible for any character we wanted to make.

To be perfectly technical, 4 color comics are much more 50s and early 60s than today. I think there was a lot more influence from things like Dark Knight Returns era Batman and such than Avengers #3. Take a blend of X-Men mutant fear, pretty much any power you could find in a Marvel comic book, the standard story arc and a scale of something that will make you die or become an NPC (Taint, Paradox, etc) and you pretty much have Aberrant. Lots of things take hints from comic books. One of the things Aberrant did so very right is the first 90 or so pages with all the great color stuff for the world info. I REALLY hope they retain something like that. Hell I hope they take some cues from Green Ronin and have really good supers art throughout. Some of the Aberrant art was kinda lacking, was some was way good.

Hagen

 

[Razuur]

Well Von Ether, I hate to break your bubble, but I am not one of those people you are talking about!

Until 3e, I played a 1e/Arcanum (by Bard Games) system since the early eighties.

For Sci Fi, we vigorously played WEG's Star Wars and FASA's Star Trek

For Spying, we visited exotic locales with Mayfair's Jame's Bond.

When feeling heroic, we played the Advanced Marvel Superhero rpg.

When feeling apocalyptic, we hurled ourselves into Palladium's Rifts

When feeling Temporal, we launched ourselves in Tardises in the Doctor Who RPG by FASA.

And when feeling horrific, we descended into a decade long World of Darkness game.

So as you can see, we defintely played lots of systems, and the Storyteller system is one that we were/are fond of tremendously. But we really played basically one game for each genre, and did it for *YEARS* na *YEARS*. Some as much as 15 to 20 years! Thus we never really had the need to upgrade.

I saw Trinity when it came out and looked it over, but passed for some reason. Weird cover if I remember. Because we played all of the above games, we hade a sci fi and a superhero game. It never really grabbed me. I lost touch with the gaming industry for about 4 years in there, where we kept playing our games, and heard a game called aberrant came out... Then last year, I saw Adventure at Borders, as well as a lot of old Aberrant supplements.

So, I think I just kind of missed the boat whith the whole line, but I also didn't buy *ANY* gaming stuff during this time.

When 3e came out, most of our old games had finally been played to death, and were ready for retirement. Since then I prolly spend $100 a month on gaming stuff, and 99% of it is 3e. Now that Adventure is out, I am definitely going to give this line a look at.

(raps von Ether over the head with his newspaper) So THERE!!!!!!

8)

Thanks for the responses everybody (Von Ether included!)

Razuur

 

[nobodez]

Well, I got a look at the Adventure! book yesterday, and I must say, I like it. They separated the setting from the rules (the first four chapters are setting info), which I liked. Also, I love the compromise between D&D3.5 and D20Modern. Works great. It's got the cool modern feats and skills (minus Computers) but uses the slightly more balanced duplicates from 3.5.

Of course, my favorite part is the Background feats. My plan is to make a small squad (all three ally feats, that's 6 additional characters, two of them inspired) to help out the team. Or I could just take a combination of Followers and Gadget to make a Silver Age Batman character.

Heck, there's a Stalwart quirk that allows you to leap small buildings in a single bound!

 

[malladin]

Of course, my favorite part is the Background feats. My plan is to make a small squad (all three ally feats, that's 6 additional characters, two of them inspired) to help out the team. Or I could just take a combination of Followers and Gadget to make a Silver Age Batman character.

Backgrounds was one of the things I liked most about storyteller games. Talking as a GM its good to have those kind of things quantified in game terms so that they become a character option rather than just something thathappens to all characters as they develop (and gives them the chance tio start out with a decent helping where possible).

Batman's a great concept for older periods of history. I had a character, Dr Edward Jeckyll aka "The Man of Iron" that was basically a victorian batman. Although, that was for Feng Shui (1850s juncture).

One other character concept I found worked will for the old version of Adventure was Han Solo. I played a smuggler with his own cargo sea plane and ran booze from Cuba into Florida. Swapped the Mellenian Falcon for the 'Iron Goose' souped it up with some inspired gadgetry and took lots of ranks of pilot, with specialities in air and sea.

Cheerio,

Ben

 

[Von Ether]

Actualy itw as branded as AEON until teh 11th hour when Viacom fussed due to Aeon Flux on Liquid Television and BAM it became Trinity shortly after release.


I just wanan see future supplements for the Trinity UNiverse get to come out and maybe be dual statted to appease both crowds. I actually thought SToryteller worked just dndy to handle supers and the system was quite flexible for any character we wanted to make.

To be perfectly technical, 4 color comics are much more 50s and early 60s than today. I think there was a lot more influence from things like Dark Knight Returns era Batman and such than Avengers #3. Take a blend of X-Men mutant fear, pretty much any power you could find in a Marvel comic book, the standard story arc and a scale of something that will make you die or become an NPC (Taint, Paradox, etc) and you pretty much have Aberrant. Lots of things take hints from comic books. One of the things Aberrant did so very right is the first 90 or so pages with all the great color stuff for the world info. I REALLY hope they retain something like that. Hell I hope they take some cues from Green Ronin and have really good supers art throughout. Some of the Aberrant art was kinda lacking, was some was way good.

Hagen

My bad, typo ... really