39,327
edits
Trinity Universe (game): Difference between revisions
update links
(tropelist) |
(update links) |
||
| (2 intermediate revisions by one other user not shown) | |||
Line 27:
** [[Post Cyber Punk]]: Aberrant, by contrast, provides a setting that's rapidly building towards a utopia, as novas use their abilities to rapidly advance science and technology, terraform the Sahara, and decide the fates of nations by shootfighting on global TV. Of course, all of this is set up so that it can be torn down in the Aberrant War.
* [[Deconstruction]]: ''Aberrant'' deconstructs the superhero genre, often abandoning or defying many of its standard tropes.
* [[Doing
* [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]: The ''Aberrant'' corebook and the later ''Players Guide'' stress that the powers and abilities a nova gains when they "erupt" are usually a form of wish fulfillment. For example, a man who has never been particularly bright but has always wanted to be would become super-intelligent. However, under the rules, a nova cannot have a higher rating in a given "Mega-Attribute" than they do in its associated regular Attribute. So in order for a Nova to be a true supergenius (as opposed to just pretty smart), they would need to have had above-average intelligence to begin with. Similarly, a 98-pound weakling is never going to be able to juggle tanks as a nova, no matter how much Taint he collects to boost his powers.
** This is not, however, entirely true. Because "Nova Points" (used to build a character's powers) can be spent to increase Attributes, and Mega-Attributes are...well...Mega (the first level of Mega-Strength allows one to life a ton), Novas can become pretty much anything they really wished to be. Although...one does wonder why Giuseppe Bennati ''wanted'' to become a [[Lovecraftian Superpower|walking sac of acidic viscera held inside by an invisible humanoid force field]]...
*** That's the subconscious for you. Novas with pre-existing mental issues tend to manifest them badly, whether at initial eruption or as aberrations after the Taint starts getting to them. 'Sloppy Joe' is just one of the most extreme cases, having manifested his obsession with his cancer<ref>Giuseppe first erupted as a response to undergoing chemotherapy.</ref> and his internalized self-loathing in the ''worst possible way''.
* [[Humongous Mecha]]: The Danguard Armored Warrior from Aberrant, and the VARGs from Trinity.
* [[It Got Worse]]: [[Rule of Three|Three times, no less.]] First the Aeon Society starts up to guide mankind to a beautiful future. They are betrayed from within (twice) and [[World War II|history took a]] [[Cold War|a depressingly familiar route.]] Then the Novas arise and start turning Earth into a utopia. Sadly [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]] and that and Project Proteus caused the Abberant War. Millions die, several areas are rendered uninhabitable, communications are set back 100 years and the Novas only leave because China threatens to nuke everything if they don't. Humanity recovers and begins to shoot for the stars, setting up colonies on other worlds and even making friends with an alien race. Then the Aberrants return, start blowing up space stations and [[Colony Drop|drop one such station on France, destroying most of it]] and two other less friendly alien races show up, intent on destruction and in one case rape. [[The World Is Always Doomed|One wonders why humans bother anymore, really.]]
Line 52:
* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]: Being a nova is awesome, until you acquire so much [[The Corruption|Taint]] that you either go crazy, turn into a [[One-Winged Angel|hulking abomination]], or [[Power Incontinence|have your powers go wildly out of control]]. (Sometimes all three.) Of course, acquiring Taint is necessary for a nova to attain true power, so...
** Actually, it's not ''entirely'' necessary. The only Taint a nova absolutely has to have is the 1 point of permanent Taint for each dot of Quantum over 4. This means that you can hit Quantum 10 (which, remember, is the Q-level at which you can access powers like ''Universe Creation'') with only 6 permanent Taint, which barely qualifies as 'medium aberration'. Take the suggested medium aberration 'Vulnerability', whose only side effect is that you take +3 dice in damage from a particular attack form—which at that level of power is about as comparatively threatening as a mosquito bite—and shazam, perfectly sane Quantum 10 nova.
*** Actually, once you've hit Quantum 8 you gain access to Quantum Supremacy, which among other things allows you to permanently rewrite your own 'quantum template' (that is, to hack your own character sheet). That would likely allow you to actually remove your permanent Taint from yourself, so all you need to do is keep your Taint score at the minimum until you hit Q8 (min Taint for Q8 is 4, which is 'one mild aberration') and then boom. Even if your DM does not allow you to use Quantum Supremacy for permanent Taint removal, at Quantum 10 you get access to Planck Scaling which ''entirely'' lets you do this.
*** Sadly, as novas didn't have access to the rulebooks, most chugged down Taint like delicious superpower steroids for short-term gains (...such as being strong enough to literally move mountains) and consequentially used said superpowers to ruin the Earth.
*** Doyen propaganda! It was those damn Zips that fucked everything up. Except for the whole Fall of OpNet thing, that was a crazy abby, our bad.
| |||