Adventure - Trinity, Aberrant, etc

[Razuur]

Wow, I was really impressed with the preview for Adventure.

I must admit that I have never played any of the Trinity games (Adventure, Aberrant, or Aeon/Trinity).

That preview shows some real potential in Adventure!

What has been everyone elses experience with this setting?

Razuur

 

[SSquirrel]

Wow, I was really impressed with the preview for Adventure.

I must admit that I have never played any of the Trinity games (Adventure, Aberrant, or Aeon/Trinity).

That preview shows some real potential in Adventure!

What has been everyone elses experience with this setting?

Razuur

I've played Aberrant some and read both Trinity and Adventure. Never really got into Adventure cuz Pulp hasn't been my thing, but some of my friends have really gasmed over it. I'm hopeful the d20 versions do well so that we can get future supplements that expand beyond what existed previously and that it will hopefully be dual statted *grin*

The system originally allowed for a very fun game that flowed pretty well, I just had to kill Quantum Blast cuz it was way over powered *grin*

Hagen

 

[malladin]

I have to say that Trinity is still my favourite ever game, even after all this time. I'm especially interested in seeing them come out because

as I now write D20 I find it difficult to justify to myself spending time roleplaying another system. Hence Trinity D20 is making me ache that it's taking so long to come out.

I also think that a D20 version of Adventure and Aberrant can actually fix some of the problems I had with teh Storyteller versions of those games:

• We came to know Aberrant as the bucket full of dice game. As with other Storyteller games you have to roll a number of d10s and count successes for each dice that rolls higher than a 7, and then reroll any 10s. Replacing this with a single D20, IMO, will speed upthe game no end, and I think speed of play is crucial to capturing the feel of a Supers game
• Adventure is great, don't get me wrong. There's not a lot to fix here. Adventure has some realy inovative new systems that haven't been done by ANY other roleplaying game, so I can't wait to get an OGL D20 system version of these that I can use in my own games. However, in Adventure you tend to play someone who is very specialist in a quite narrow area, and have the ability to start as being pretty near tha maximum potential in that area. Hence there's nowhere on your character sheet left to go after a few weeks of XP has been applied. A level based character development system will go a long way towards fixing this problem (IMO).

I'll just end with a quick note on why Trinity is my fave. Trinity captures a lot of the feel of both Babylon 5 and Star Wars, but without the problem of playing the epic plots (as these types of games need epic plots to capture the space opera feel) that everyone already knows as they';ve seen them already. Players have a real sense of mystery as the game world unfolds around them and they discover more and more of the mysteries of the setting. Plus the Psi Orders are really cool and capture a lot of different possible PC attitudes to the game.

I would say buy them all. I'm not sure if Aberrant will be better than M&M, but It will certainly be darker (IMO a good thing). I'm a big fan of Pulp, so getting a decent pulp genre game is great (very little of it out there that meets with my ideas of how pulp should work) and Trinity is just quite simply, the best.

Ben

 

[DeBracy]

Are they basing these books on the d20M ruleset or the D&D 3.5 core...? It seems manufacturers aren't that good at making that stuff obvious to us buyers... :\

 

[malladin]

Are they basing these books on the d20M ruleset or the D&D 3.5 core...? It seems manufacturers aren't that good at making that stuff obvious to us buyers... :\

There's a good article by Andy Bates on the approach to these games on www.wolf-spoor.org (I think). Whilst it doesn't go into great detail, it does state that they're using 6 10-level base classes, a la D20M. As to the rest of the system, I'm not sure. Personally I think the class system is the best bit of D20M and this same approach has been done successfully before by Mongoose's OGL games and (my own) DarkLore.

Cheerio,

Ben

 

[IanWatson]

There's a good article by Andy Bates on the approach to these games on www.wolf-spoor.org (I think). Whilst it doesn't go into great detail, it does state that they're using 6 10-level base classes, a la D20M.

Thanks for the plug, Ben.

Yes, Adventure! will be using six base classes, each on a level 1-to-10 track. However, they're not the same base classes from D20M. They're not based on ability scores. They are: Aristocrat, Entertainer, Investigator, Scholar, Scoundrel and Warrior.

They don't appear to be as rigid as standard d20 classes, representing different pulp archetypes. Probably a combination of how they're treated in d20 vs how they're treated in d20M. If you look at the preview's license/copyright section, they do reference the d20M SRD, so there's likely some mixture of both happening throughout the book.

 

[SSquirrel]

as I now write D20 I find it difficult to justify to myself spending time roleplaying another system. Hence Trinity D20 is making me ache that it's taking so long to come out.

I also think that a D20 version of Adventure and Aberrant can actually fix some of the problems I had with teh Storyteller versions of those games:

• We came to know Aberrant as the bucket full of dice game. As with other Storyteller games you have to roll a number of d10s and count successes for each dice that rolls higher than a 7, and then reroll any 10s. Replacing this with a single D20, IMO, will speed upthe game no end, and I think speed of play is crucial to capturing the feel of a Supers game

Personally I find this statement to be a little wonky. So what if you now write d20 material? If you and your friends wanna play a campaign of X system as well do it. Do you feel guilty playing otehr systems b/c that means you aren't testing your d20 stuff further?


Yeah Aberrant is a bucket full of dice kinda game, but I always thought the auto successes from mega stats were a worse problem...right behind Q Blast. Q Blast as written is WAY too strong. I removed that power and made auto successes work as extra dice instead, so adding to the problem you had with it. This helped to make sure players don't just plain die if they lack Armor. Also made it 50 Nova pts instead of 30 and allowed 2 dots in anything at 1/2 price for each point of Taint they acquire. Definitely made it feel much more "The power of a god"


Hagen

 

[Von Ether]

Wow, I was really impressed with the preview for Adventure.

I must admit that I have never played any of the Trinity games (Adventure, Aberrant, or Aeon/Trinity).

That preview shows some real potential in Adventure!

What has been everyone elses experience with this setting?

Razuur

*hits Razuur with a rolled up newspaper*
Bad Razuur for not playing the Trinity universe, Bad Razuur.

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.

Personally I expect the d20 versions of the game to do the same for d20 that they did for the Storyteller system, which is to offers some new mechanics that might be come standard down the road (for some GMs anyway.)

I have a feeling that Inspiration is going to revamp Action Dice (though Action Dice were inspired by Inspiration in the first place.)

For me, Trinity is on the top of my list, followed by Adventure and then Aberrant.

 

[Shag]

Also HUGE AEON fan!
I have all the books still (even the spiral bound main book that says AEON no sticker!)

Unlike aberrant (buckets oh dice) and Adventure (rules gave me a head ache for some reason) Trinity was perfect the way it was...

This time I'm afraid I have to say b00-urns to D20

Oh well maybe well get to see some new meta plot material....Those Qin are up to something!!

 

[malladin]

Oh well maybe well get to see some new meta plot material....Those Qin are up to something!!

You really think so? I was quite disappointed with their adventure in 'Deception'

Anyway...

I can see what you mean about Trinity (sorry, Aeon). It was written for Storyteller system and will be hard to convert. Aberrant and Adventure were more trying to use storyteller to capture a feel of game that it was not well designed to do. I don't know that D20 can do these better. Instinct tells me that Adventure should be closer to D20 style gaming than aberrant, but then I used to think D20 Supers coudn't be done until I bought M&M .

I can see what youmean about Adventure giving you a headache. Those Dramatic Editing rules are very different from anything else in mainstream roleplaying. Having played it I was very pleased with the end result - the players really became involved in maintaining the story as opposed to trying to keep their charaters alive all the time. Not something that's necessarily wanted in most games, but right on the mark for Pulp!

Ben