In January 2019 we presented two all-new offers of White Wolf’s Storyteller System games set in the Trinity Universe. First, the Trinity 1E Bundle presented the 1997 First Edition of the SFRPG of hope and sacrifice in the 22nd Century. And the Aberrant Bundle showed the origin of Trinity‘s devastating Aberrant War.
Trinity 1E
Originally published by White Wolf (and destined to reappear in a new edition from Onyx Path Publishing under its original title, Æon), Trinity depicts humanity recovering from a devastating war against superhuman mutants called Aberrants. World powers include South America, East Asia, Africa, and the Moon; North America and Europe remain a shambles. Players are psions (bioengineered human psychics), members of the six Psion Orders that safeguard humanity on Earth and on its long-lost interstellar colonies. Projecting an optimistic tone unusual for White Wolf, Trinity permits a broad range of adventures, from cyberpunk-style corporate heists to post-holocaust scrounging to space exploration. The large and varied Trinity 1E support line includes early work by Jenna Moran (Nobilis), Greg Stolze (Unknown Armies), and other noted designers.
White Wolf Publishing released Trinity in a spiral-bound limited edition as Æon in October 1997. When Viacom claimed the title infringed on its Aeon Flux TV show trademark, White Wolf renamed the game. The Trinity limited-edition hardcover appeared in November 1997, then the softcover in March 1999. The .PDF rulebook in this Trinity 1E Bundle was based on the softcover.
There were five titles in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $44) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete 324-page Trinity First Edition core rulebook, the Trinity Players Guide for 1E, the Technology Manual, and two Psi Order sourcebooks (America Offline and Shattered Europe).
Those who paid more than this offer’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Bonus Collection with eight more supplements worth an additional $80, including three more Psi Order sourcebooks (Terra Verde, Luna Rising, and Stellar Frontier), the complete Darkness Revealed trilogy of adventures (1: Descent into Darkness, 2. Passage Through Shadow, and 3. Ascent into Light), and three short Field Reports (Extrasolar Colonies, Media, and Psi Laws).
2. Aberrant
Set in the near-future year of 2008, ten years after radiation from the exploding Galatea satellite triggered bizarre powers in a small fraction of Earth’s population, Aberrant (1999) chronicles the struggles of these “novas,” or “new humans,” and their quest to fit into — or forever change — human society. Though some novas become vastly smarter, they grow no wiser. Instead, most of them become the center of celebrity cults, to their ultimate detriment. Setting the stage for the war that will blight the 22nd Century, Aberrant darkly deconstructs superheroes in the 1980s-90s manner of Watchmen and newuniversal.
White Wolf originally published Aberrant as the second game set in the Trinity Universe. Like Trinity, Aberrant is getting a new edition from Onyx Path. The new version is designed by superhero star Steve Kenson (ICONS, Mutants & Masterminds, DC Adventures).
This bargain-priced offer had everything you need to become a quantum-powered metahuman with the power to reshape society. There were three titles in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $50), including the complete 298-page Aberrant rulebook and Players Guide, plus the Storytellers Screen with its three-episode introductory story, “Permanent Vacation.”
This offer’s Bonus Collection added five more supplements worth an additional $74, including the baseline setting book Year One, the sourcebooks Elites (about super-powered mercenaries) and Teragen (the conspiracy that eventually starts the Aberrant War), and the scenario collection Worldwide: Phase II, which advances the timeline to the breathtaking future of 2015. After launch we added Adventure!, the slam-bang pulp-era game that starts the Trinity Continuum timeline. (Previously presented in our May 2016 Pulp Adventure Bundle.)
Most of the .PDFs in both these offers were image scans of the original hardcopies with OCR applied. Scan quality of several early titles is okay-to-good. Text is almost always copiable. Later titles in the Trinity line, such as the Field Reports, are crisp and colorful.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to these two Trinity Universe offers’ designated charity, the Bodhana Group.
