Jumping right into it, we’re off to do character creation for Trinity Continuum. Word of warning, this is going to be a bit of a long read, so make yourself something to drink and watch me build a character!
Character creation is broken down into several steps:
- Concept
- Paths
- Skills, Skill Tricks, and Specialties
- Attributes
- Apply Template
- Final Touches
Step One: Concept
This step is probably the easiest once the player characters and the GM sit down and go over the basics of the campaign setting and expectations. But since I’m doing this blind, I’ll just go with the generic Action / Adventure yarn and say that I’m a Disgraced Former Police Detective
Aspirations
As a sub-step, it’s time to declare my character’s Aspirations. Aspirations are player goals for their character, so I need to be sure that I set them accordingly from my perspective.
At this point I get to set 2 short-term and 1 long-term Aspiration. Short-term aspirations are ones that are achievable in a single session, while Long-term aspirations are related to a characters Paths and will require multiple sessions to achieve.
For my character let’s go with:
Short-Term Aspirations
- Stop a crime in progress
- Call on an old friend from my days at the force for help
Long-Term Aspirations
- Find out who set me up
Not a bad start! Plenty of things to do to push any of these angles.
Step Two: Paths
Paths are a “package” of decisions that represent aspects of a character’s life so far. In Trinity Continuum these are sorted as: Origin, Role and Society.
Paths consist of:
- A short description
- Four skills associated with the path – The character gains three dots to spend on these skills.
- Community, contact and access connections – Players pick a single community connection within the path and gains a dot towards a contact connection
- Edges associated with the Path – players gain two dots to distribute among Edges associated with each path
Origin Path is the character’s background and how they got started, Role Paths talk about what they do, and Society Paths are all about their place in the world.
While there are rules for creating your own Paths, I’ll be using the ones made available in the book for the purposes of our sample character.
Origin Path – Street Rat
Connections – Store Clerks
Skills – Athletics 2, Enigmas 1
Edges – Adrenaline Spike 2
Role Path – Detective
Connections – Police Officers
Skills – Aim 1, Integrity 1, Persuasion 1
Edges – Photographic Memory 2
Society Path – Archangel
Connections – Pro Bono Lawyer
Skills – Close Combat 2, Empathy 1
Edges – Iron Will 2
Step Three: Skills, Skill Tricks, and Specialties
Okay, so good so far. In Trinity Continuum, skills are rated from 0-5, and while you get some skills from your Paths, you also get 6 more dots to spend on any of the skills.
Milestones to keep track of are if a skill hits 3 dots, the character gains a Skill Trick, and an additional Trick for each dot over 3. Characters start with one Skill Trick.
Also for any Skills at or above 3 dots, they gain a Specialty.
For my Disgraced Former Police Detective, I’m spending my 6 skill dots on: Aim 1, Close Combat 1, Enigmas 1, Integrity 1, Medicine 1, Pilot 1
This pushes their Close Combat to 3, granting them a Skill Trick and a Specialty. I decide to go for Sucker Punch as their Skill Trick, and Street Fighting as a Specialty.
Step Four: Attributes
In an interesting change of pace, Attributes gets assigned much later on in character creation. Attributes in the Trinity Continuum are categorized along Physical, Mental and Social Arenas. These are then ranked from highest to lowest.
Characters being with a single dot in each of their Attributes, and get the following budgets to spend on the Arenas according to their chosen ranking: 6/4/2
But before we spend on those, it’s also important to know that there are also Approaches assigned to these Attributes, which are: Force, Finesse and Resilience. Characters have a Favored Approach, a preferred means of doing things. To reflect this, all Attributes that fall under a character’s Favored Approach also gains 1 dot.
Alright, for our character I’ve decided on:
Intellect 3, Cunning 1, Resolve 2
Might 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Presence 4, Manipulation 2, Composure 2
Step Five: Apply Template
Since we’re already here, we might as well go all in. Not only do we have a pretty badass Former Detective, we’ll up the ante and make them a Talent as well.
Determine Moment of Inspiration
At this point we make the character larger-than-life. As a Talent they have that moment of Inspiration that changes their lives forever. The moment of inspiration grants one additional dot in an associated attribute.
Again as with the Roles, you can pick from a list of examples or go with your own.
I’m going to go with Violence as my moment of inspiration, things went sideways during a case they were dealing with, and the character survived it a changed person.
This also grants +1 Might.
Determine Advantages
In addition to their Inspiration, Talents also gain four Gifts from their Paths. In addition they have three points to distribute to their Intuitive, Reflective and Destructive facets of their Inspiration.
Checking the Allegiances, Archangel grants Gifts for Skill (Close Combat, Empathy, Persuasion). I’ve chosen:
Fight Choreographer
Hidden Advantage
Know Thine Enemy
Disarming Candor
As for Facets, I’ll go for:
Intuitive 1
Reflective 0
Destructive 2
I also start with 3 points in Inspiration, which starts at 1, plus another for each facet with at least 1 point in it at character creation.
Step Six: Final Touches
At this point, we get a host of other customization perks:
+1 Attribute
4 Edges
I’ll spend those on
+1 Resolve
Forceful Martial Arts 3
Free Running 1
And there we have it, a full character build for Trinity Continuum. Despite the length of this post, it didn’t take that long, and while there was a bit of flipping back and forth, it wasn’t quite as painful as say, Exalted in terms of making a character.
There’s a lot of concepts that have been introduced that we haven’t gone over just yet, but I’ve run into a lot of things I like. We’ll go to those in time, but I’m most excited with the Allegiances. I was worried that Trinity Continuum would be a “generic” Modern Day game, but it looks like they’ve put a ton of work in the setting through the Allegiances. I’ll save my raving about those when we get to it though.
Next up, we’ll be taking a look at the Storypath System and how it works.
If you’re interested in picking up Trinity Continuum, it’s available on PDF over at DriveThruRPG.
