DriveThruRPG.com
Narrow Results
$ to $















Back
pixel_trans.gif
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant $19.99
Average Rating:4.5 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
36 1
11 0
2 1
1 0
1 0
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Ryan H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/02/2021 16:32:17

I've spent the last decade trying to find a Superhero RPG to run. This quest didn't lead me to the first edition of Aberrant; however, it gave me hands on experience with my fair share of superhero RPGs. If you're looking for a superhero game to run, you don't need to read the rest of this review. Buy this. This is an insanely good superhero game.

Let me explain why. 1) Differentiated options in smooth narrative play. Fire attacks do persistent damage. Arrows can be swapped out on the fly to whatever payload you need. Speedsters might go splat if you hit them but good luck getting that hit off. The characters you make feel different; however, the underlying system also allows improvization on the fly. You spend your bonus successes on stunts. These stunts give you options. These options can be predefined and have mechanical goodness. Alternatively, these stunts can be poured into narrative bonuses or narrative complications for the enemy. This allows the joy of building your character with plenty of options to pour xp into, but it also allows you to truly play an adaptive roleplaying story game and not a grindy board game.

2) Setting. My quest for the perfect superhero RPG initially struggled with the system. There's a lot of systems with a lot of flaws. Eventually, I found plenty of options. Cortex Prime, Mutants & Masterminds, Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition. These are all great RPGs to run a superhero game. I then stared wide eyed at a blank sheet thinking "what do I do now?". When players have ultimate power, it's so hard to figure out how to direct them. How do you challenge someone with the combat skills of a legend? How do you keep a campaign going when the players can fly to the objective? What do players do? Aberrant has a setting already developed. It tells you who the players could be. It tells you about the challenges your characters might face. It doesn't just tell you how to run a superhero game. It tells you how to weave a superhero story.

3) The Batman/Superman answer. Different games have their ways of answering the age old superhero RPG question. How do you have Batman and Superman in the same party? Different systems have their own ways of addressing this. I think each of the systems I listed above tackles them in a competent enough way. Aberrant addresses this by outright telling you- Novas (the super powered player archtype) will forever be stronger. They get additional experience at character creation, and they even score successes on dice rolls easier than Talents (the mortal but skilled Batman archtype). Talents instead get luck manipulation. They can edit scenes and introduce story details. Their Gifts (feats specifically for Talents) allow them further luck manipulation. This is so fun to play with. The mortal character never hits as hard the super powered character, but they are contributing to the story in an incredibly meaningful way. You want the person without any powers on your team.

If you're looking to pick up a new RPG and like superheros, I highly recommend Trinity Continuum: Aberrant.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by P A C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/01/2021 12:28:16

I've never written a review for DriveThru before, despite having spent what must be £1000s over the years. I felt I had to write something for the new edition of Aberrant .... Aberrant was one of my favourite games of all time when it first came out, for its era it was amazingly presented, had a fully realised world but went beyond a normal four-colour setting ... it asked you the question, if you gained abilities that made you more than human, what would you do? Superheroes existed but they were the arm of a multi-national organisation and were as much (if not more) about garnering good publicity and enhancing the public's opinion of that organisation as they were about doing good. There were supercriminals but they worked for crime syndicates and were motivated by money and didn't sit in secret hideout laughing maniacally while they plotted to take over the world ... well, there's Divis Mal I suppose, but that's another story ...

The presence of Homo Sapiens Novus, these incredible creatures, transformed the world, as you would believe they would. The structure behind the setting owed more to Watchmen than Avengers and therefore made more sense. It may be that I'm getting old ... I was incredibly fortunate that the first graphic novels I read way back when were Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman Year 1 and Return of the Dark Night ... all of which arose out of the desire to look, as Hollis Mason said, under the hood ... to see why people would don a strange costume or do outlandish things and to look at how beings that could change the world would change ... the World.

Aberrant's first edition asked all those questions and also asked how mankind, shivering in the shadow of creatures powerful beyond comprehension, who looked human but ultimately couldn't be human, would react. How would Homo Sapiens deal with the first threat to their primacy in millions of years ... the answer in the first edition was plausible, chilling and dark and it defined the core drama of the game and gave a solid mystery for the players to unravel, a shocking hidden truth for them to unearth. On a personal level the heroes had to fear their own transformation and being forced away from humanity as the manipulation of quantum itself transformed their body and mind into something other than human ...

So, the 2nd edition. I've only just got it and I haven't read it cover to cover so this review may be utter twaddle, skim reading may have played me false but ... on first impression ... the setting in its broad strokes is still well developed, the system is (arguably) an improvement on the previous edition ... it's more streamlined and it's still well-presented (although a bit too four-colour for me) but what it lacks is what made the previous edition so great, it lacks the darkness that sat at its core, it lacks the moral ambiguity that was engrained in the first edition, where you were faced with opponents (not exactly villians) who's motivations were understandable, even if they led to unacceptable action. The current iteration isn't terrible by any means, it just seems to be a much more standard four-colour superhero setting, there are still morally ambiguous elements and, off-stage but way off-stage, their is the coming apocalypse that helps define the setting but it has abandoned the dark moral conflict that the previous edition had in favour of high action and adventure.

Come back Chiraben, all is forgiven!



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 2 (of 2 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items
 Gift Certificates