Trinity Universe (game): Difference between revisions

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{{tropelist}}
== Contains examples of ==
* [[Ancient Conspiracy]]: The Aeon Society probably counts as this.
** Well, by Trinity. In Aberrant it's only 70/80 years old and in Adventure! it's about 2 years old.
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** [[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 inIn the Wizard]]: The publishers are quite adamant that the games—especially ''Adventure!'' and ''Aberrant''—do not involve magic in any way, shape, or form. All superpowers possessed by the characters are due to the manipulation of new forms of energy ("Z-waves" in ''Adventure!'', "quantum" in ''Aberrant''). Given the properties ascribed to these energies, of course, it ends up working out basically the same way.
* [[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''.
*** That's the subconscious for you. He probably had self-esteem issues.
* [[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.]]
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* [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here]]: The Upeo did this in fear of ending up like the Quantumkinetics. Effective when their bag is Teleportation.
* [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]]: Max Mercer is trying so hard, bless him...
** More like Set Right What Will Go Wrong thanks to his [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] powers.
* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: Project Utopia, directed behind the scenes by Max Mercer, is trying so very hard to avoid the [[Bad Future]] by helping the novas who work with it make a better world... while one faction is secretly keeping them on a regimen of contraceptives so they can't breed more, possibly stronger novas, and killing those who find out about the program.
* [[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.
*** Forget the Doyen, it was all Aeon's fault! The instant Novas showed up, they set up unofficial [[No Transhumanism Allowed|technology police]] and [[Super Registration Act|Super Registration]]! Project Utopia [[Reed Richards Is Useless|stomped hard on any tech that would rock the boat too much]], and the Mazarin-Rashoud clinics that ostensibly provided specialized training and medical care to help Novas [[How Do I Shot Web?|Shot Web]] actually {{spoiler|'''''secretly sterilized every Nova they got their hands on!''''' Is it any surprise that when the Novas discovered this, they went on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] that pretty much [[The End of the World as We Know It|wrecks the entire world]]? Think planet-wide [[wikipedia:Watts Riots|Watts Riot]]. Afterwards, the authorities [[Written by the Winners|destroyed all records of their crimes]], claimed that [[Always ChaoticExclusively Evil|all Novas inevitably go insane]], and systematically killed them from that point on.}}
**** Double subverted in Trinity, for while most Aberrants that psions run into are the [[Eldritch Abomination]] kind (or the Colony) there have been in-universe whispers of Aberrants returning from exile who look quite...beautiful. And there's the power Quantakeneitcs, Psions who could manipulate Quantum, who ran a Aberrant Treatment Center until the [[Knight Templar]]s came and [[Kill'Em All|wiped them all out.]]
***** And a minority of Novas maintained their sanity and humanity despite all this and either colonised other worlds peacefully or stayed at the edge of the Solar System to guard against the others (Didn't work, but good effort).