Lots of interesting discussion in the RPG design space around M.'s article on why RPGs suck. Lots of it is interesting discussion, but read too much of it and you go blind. Instead, I've been inspired to take a tangent and re-examine a game that I think hit far more of the right notes than most people gave it credit for.

Trinity

I don't want to spend too many words waffling on the nature of the game; if you don't have a copy already then hie yourself over to DriveThru RPG, where the corebook's available for the price of a pint.

I'm contending here not that Trinity did everything right, but that it did more right than other games of its time, and (controversially) games that have come since. Let's make some lists.

The Good:

• Strong Foundations Trinity covers the solar system—and then mainly the inner-system planets—alongside a few extrasolar locations. In doing so, it has to have a single setting that players buy into using if they're going to play the game. This is the world we're using, it says. Go have fun..
• Related to that, A Sense of Self. I've lost track of the number of recent games that only include a sketch of a setting, trusting in the people around the table to do all the work. Trinity, as a child of the 90s, doesn't just have a strong setting, it has an internally consistent setting. It knows what it wants to be, and that certainty bleeds over into play.
• Modules, Not Tools If gaming in the first decade of the new millennium has a buzzword, that word is "toolkit". It applies to the reboot of the World of Darkness⁰, it applies to the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and to a swath of games that have followed that trend. Trinity does something different: it gives you tools, rather than modules. Want to run a cyberpunk game shot through with elements of Dickian thoughtcrime? Set your game on Luna. Military SF? Australia. Brushing the edges of transhumanity? South America or Asia. Brazil-grade dystopia? Welcome to North America. Post-apocalypse? Europe. Star Trek? Welcome to outer space. Whatever you want to use is packaged up along with a region in a big ball of story-stuff, but that packaging also makes it easy to not touch on things.
• Fractal Gaming The overall setting has to hang together while suspending all those modules—but each one has to be reasonably independent, or else they stop being modules. To that end, the game's designed to be almost fractal in nature, expanding or contracting depending on the group's focus. The exemplar of this is the Trinity Field Reports, which expand upon specific bits.
• Supplemental The modular focus means that you only need to pick up the books that focus on the aspects of the setting you want to use, rather than the usual late-90s design that revolved around doling out secrets throughout the line¹. Even the supplement treadmill was modular.
• A Big Bang The main events of the Trinity plotline all came through a chain of adventures, the core of which was three books long (optionally, one could expand that to six books). Nothing shows a setting changing better than putting the characters slap-bang in the middle of it. How Trinity handled the metaplot is possibly unique, and certainly the best possible way to do so.

The Bad

• Supplement Treadmill Sure, it did it differently, but Trinity still had a supplement treadmill going, and each new book moved the timeline forwards some. This caused a forced reliance on other books that robbed the modular nature of some of its value.
• Fixed Narrative The big metaplot means that groups don't have an easy jumping-on point if they're not playing through the Darkness Revealed campaign—or at least, if they're not then the big setting events can pass them by and change everything in the background.

Those aren't complete lists, just bits that are sticking in my brain. I'm not going to fall into a trap of calling for a do-over of Trinity, because that'd be looking to the past. Instead, I think we should use it to learn from history.

A theoretical future game that learned from these points would have a strongly-drawn, internally consistent setting with areas set aside for a range of subgenres. Modular supplements can then expand on the people and places assigned to each subgenre. To avoid the traditional metaplot stumble, each module is pegged to the starting point presented in the core book (a slightly more toolbox-y approach), but everything—including the core—has a chapter in back that details changes as time moves on.² That way, you've got supplements that really are supplements, rather than extended bits of the corebook slapped between new covers. The game thus explicitly uses any combination of books to present the people, the places, and the changes of time that the players encounter³.

I had some further burbling on this topic, but then lunchtime came and I rather lost my thread.

---

⁰: Which I helped create, before you think I'm ragging on it.
¹: Any Deadlands game, Brave New World, hell anything coming out of Pinnacle for a while in the 90s.
²: Exalted nearly did this, but instead pegged everything to a specific date. Which works well when the idea is for the players to fundamentally redefine the setting from day dot, but removes any support from the guys playing as to how the world might change outwith the players' actions. Which it will, barring solipsistic power-fantasy.^4
3: One thing I think M. hits on the head is that players engage in a fictional world through three factors: the place they're in, the people they encounter, and the time they spend, and a good game should give the GM tools to let them do that.
⁴: My comments on Exalted were based on what I'd read and played of the line, which didn't include books that highlighted dealt with ways to move the timeline forwards. I'm leaving them here for reference only, M. highlights many of Exalted's good points as a followup.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth blog, where people have commented. I'd prefer if you joined them using OpenID (so you can still use your LiveJournal account details).