Games in the Trinity Continuum line from Onyx Path Publishing present settings filled with action, adventure, intrigue, and mystery. The Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook presents the world outside your window as if it were populated by action heroes. These highly skilled individuals, known as Talents, subconsciously manipulate the world around them to allow for heroic feats and amazing action! The Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook contains everything the players and Storyguide need to run the game, create antagonists, and craft thrilling tales! However, the core rulebook is only the beginning.
Various additional settings throughout the Continuum offer tailored experiences for playing in different genres and time periods. Trinity Continuum: Adventure! provides a pulp-inspired setting in the 1930s where dashing heroes fight wicked evildoers, explore strange telluric phenomena, and fight against the rising Nazi menace. Trinity Continuum: Aberrant brings the action to the year 2028, when superhumans known as novas have risen among the population. Many of these novas put their powers to use acting as municipal protectors, government contractors, or Elite mercenaries selling their skills to the highest bidder. As the world changes around the characters, Aberrant asks, “What Would You Do with The Power of a God?” Trinity Continuum: Anima presents a dystopian view of a city in the 2080s, run by a fascist government who seeks to build a new nation on the ashes of North America left in the wake of a devastating war. Reliant on new technology called Glass, citizens of Cascade can interact with the city’s augmented reality. Furthermore, they can enjoy an online roleplaying game called Terra Surge in which they assume the roles of fantasy heroes. Threats abound in the world of Anima as the FSA’s fascism threatens the characters in the real world, while strange mysteries within Terra Surge threaten their digital lives. Trinity Continuum: Æon presents a look at the 2120s, where humanity has discovered psionic power and harnessed said power to journey to the stars! In this setting, the players assume the roles of psions. Psions are rare individuals with high psychic potential who undergo a special procedure to awaken those abilities. Psions are heroes of humanity who stand against alien invaders and monstrous aberrants. They’re also pioneers, pushing technology in bold new directions and exploring space!
All these settings run on the Storypath system, which uses d10 based dice pools. The players roll these dice pools, which are constructed by combining a character’s Skill and Attribute ratings and seek to hit a target number on their dice. The target number generally remains unchanged and the number of dice that meet or exceed the number are counted as successes. Circumstances that help the character provide Enhancement, which counts as automatic additional successes if a single success is achieved on the roll. Circumstances that hinder the character may increase the Difficulty – the number of successes required to complete a task. Alternatively, the Storyguide may assign Complications, which have a value between 1-5. If left unresolved, Complications cause interesting obstacles and consequences for the affected characters.
The basics of the system are easy to learn. While each setting on the Continuum offers additional system widgets and options, the core engine remains constant and consistent throughout the game line. This is a boon to Storyguides and players who want to expand their experience beyond a single point in the Continuum, as new genres and power sets can be explored without the need to learn a new system each time.
The Storyguide’s role in Trinity Continuum is to adjudicate rules, control Storyguide characters, provide description of scenes, and manage the plot. The system leans on Three Areas of Action, which help the Storyguide decide what aspects of the system are best applied in a given scene. Each area of action in the Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook contains several example rolls and guidelines, offering further clarification and ease for the Storyguide and players to have a smooth and fun play experience. Trinity Continuum also assumes the characters are incredibly competent. Dice rolls are only required if failure would be dramatically or narratively interesting. If the possibility of failure doesn’t help move the story forward, the Storyguide can simply decide things go in the player character’s favor. The Storyguide may also assign Momentum when the characters fail their tasks. This currency can be spent in various ways to help the characters, so even failure is rewarded by the Storypath system!
While the Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook is required for all the other lines, it’s not the setting you need to start with. If you want space opera, pick up Trinity Continuum: Æon and dive right in! The Storypath system lends itself well to new groups and the system is flexible enough to accommodate multiple play styles. New Storyguides can keep things as simple and straightforward as they want, adding in more system elements and complications as the group’s system mastery increases! Pick up the Trinity Continuum settings of your choice at the Onyx Path Publishing DriveThruRPG store!
Great stuff about Trinity 🙂