Where to start?

[Asbjørn]

At the moment I'm not running any Aeon Continuum games in real life, but I'm thinking about it. My regular players are more used to WoD and CoC, with a touch of Twilight 2000 and CyberPunk. Not all in a mix, although I have tried that too.

Now I'm wondering which of the three games is the best introduction, and what kind of game is the best to start with. How did you guys start? What do you think is the best way to introduce new players to the setting?

[Heritage]

Hmm, tough question. I think one way to look at it is purely practical. Which system do feel most comfortable with? Do you personally have a favorite amongst the three? In some ways, I think the answer to those two questions might be a good place to start thinking about which to run.

[Ayre el KaBeer]

Trinity is probably the most 'instense' of the three and can quite easilly be made to have a similar feel to WoD and the game is not that far off from cyberpunk. It also has more to digest than the other 2 corebooks but a (moderately) successful Trinity campaign, I've noticed, does peak players interests in the other 2 games.

Starting players off on Aberrant is a simpler matter but get that game wrong and they won't even consider playing another Aeon game for a long time. This I know from experiece, luckily most wanted to play Trinity well before I bought the Aberrant book so it only took a year for me to get them to play. Sounds like a long time but we had 2 other long running games and a smattering of short ones at the time. Aberrant isn't that great for getting people interested in the other 2 games, especially Trinity.

I think deep down, everyone wants to play Adventure! so and A! game shouldn't cause people to pause for too long before they have an idea for a character. The thing is though I don't see A! as much help for getting your players interested in playing Trinity, though possibly Aberrant.

[Arcanum_V]

Aside from sharing a common storyline and a few signature characters, they're really three entirely different games with three entirely different sets of possibilities. I'd poll your players: are they interested in pulp adventure, superheroes, or psionics in space? Then go from there.

I came to the Aeon Continuum through Adventure!, but then rather quickly changed that dramatically for my game. I own Aberrant and some of my players have expressed interest in it (or a variation on it), so we may go there for an excursion from Adventure!. Neither I nor any of my players have any interest in Trinity; if we play a space game, it'll likely be a Star Wars or Star Trek setting with Storyteller mechanics.

The best way to get them into the setting is through the in-character material in the books.

[ProfPotts]

I'd definitely say Adventure!

With Trinity or Aberrant you need to know something about the background of the setting to really get to grips with the game. The colour sections in both core books get that information over very well, but who has players who are willing to read all that stuff before they play a game?

Trinity really is it's own setting - there are a lot of elements from other sci-fi sources, but it's hard to point at (for example) a well known film & say, "That's what Trinity is like." (Matrix jokes aside that is... ::rolleyes ).

Aberrant is also a bit too far removed from standard comic-book superheroics to be easy to explain without all the background stuff. Maybe if your players all read that comic by the guy who wrote Babylon Five or something, but it's still in a world of it's own.

Adventure! you just know you can get people to play. Invite them round for an Indiana Jones film night, throw in The Shadow, the Rocketeer, & The Phantom, & spice with The Mummy & The Mummy Returns. Point to the screen during various cool action bits & say, "That's exactly what Adventure! is like!". I defy anyone to not want to play the game after that! ::sly

As long as the players all have a basic knowledge of the pulp era / jazz age (& who doesn't know at least a bit about gangsters & molls), then you're ready to go.

You also have the huge advantage of starting at the begining. All the cool setting-specific stuff you can introduce over time, & it'll actually be a surprise to the players. Run the games in reverse & they'll try to kill Dr Primoris as soon as they meet him (or something)!

Another plus for Adventure! is that it's just the one book. If your players like the game, they can all easily buy a copy - which does help in certain situations.

Yet another plus for Adventure! is that, being the last of the three written, it's more developed, & with less bugs, than the other games. It also doesn't limit you to (basically) a single character type, like Aberrant & Trinity do - & players are often put off by that sort of limitation early on in a game.

Adventure! rules! ::thumbsup

[Heritage]

Personally, I started with Aberrant, which is still my favorite of the three, even if it is still the most deeply flawed ::biggrin. As a comic fan who loves Watchmen and other 'post-modern' comics, I was excited to see what WW would do, and I was not disappointed!

A friend of mine had expressed interest in Trinity (back when it was still called 'Aeon'), but when I looked at it with all the different groups, I thought it looked like 'Vampire in space', which I saw as a bad thing since at the time I'd never played a WW game, and I thought the were all lame ::blush However, since your players are familiar with WoD, having these groups to choose from may put them on more familair ground.

But since you also played Cthulhu with them, Adventure! could be an easy fit, too, and it also has WoD-like elements in the psuedo-supernatural realm. The three broad character groups help players pick out a general theme, but then within that framework, the sky's the limit. And rules-wise, it's easily the best written and quickest to pick up, and the one book factor brought up by the good Professor is indeed an excellent point.

I would agree that Aberrant is probably the worst to start someone in - in my current group, one of the players was completely overwhelmed by all the choices he could make for his character, and it took weeks to finally get him comfortable with character creation. Also the fact that so many of the powers have long, involved and often confusing descriptions did not help.

I think a good sitdown discussion of what your players are looking for and what they find exciting and fun is the best way to go. Based on purely practical factors, I'd probabvly start with Adventure!, too, unless your players seemed disinterested in the setting. And there's always time travel throughout the Trinityverse for a change of pace ::devil

[Arcanum_V]

I'd probabvly start with Adventure!, too, unless your players seemed disinterested in the setting.

This isn't really that much of on obstacle. It's really, really easy to set Adventure! in the modern era. It's not canonical of course, but it takes absolutely zero rules changes, and if you want to, it's easy enough to incorporate Aberrant's storyline and escalate the game.

[Finbar]

The best "My First Aeonverse Game" is probably Trinity, but that's it's probably because of my group's geek status. It's also got a lot of choices, but just limited enough to make things easy.

A! is great as well, especially if your players have a serious pirate fetish (I have been...er...forced ::blush to watch "Pirates of the Caribean" three times over the weekend....) . For that matter, if they just want to let loose and have fun.

Aberrant, however, I don't recommend unless they have a bit of experience. It just has a lot of problems for beginners, and the setting doesn't help much. Play only if Watchmen, Wildcards, Dark Knight or Kingdom Come are part of the group's collective subconscious.....

FR

[tooho]

As a Noob who has been playing for about a year, I'd recommend Trinity. It's been the easiest to learn from my view point, though my gaming group has just introduced me to Adventure. Since Trinity is so well defined it just seemed easier to get used to the system, though I find myself wanting to push my group to play more Adventure lately ::biggrin (Cliffhangers are nerve-racking.) ::lookaround

But then, that's just my opinion and I wouldn't have gotten so into role-playing if I had started with Adventure, I think. I wasn't exposed to pulp till just recently. ::blush

[Asbjørn]

The way I see it, there are benefits and drawbacks to each of the three games.

Adventure is easy to picture, allows pretty much anything in the way of character concepts, and has a game mechanics twist that intrigues most of the people I've discussed it with. It allows and expects players to participate in shaping the story to a much greater degree than most other games. On the other hand, that particular mechanic can be hard to grasp, and as an introduction to the timeline and setting it doesn't do much.

Aberrant has lots of rules stuff to get familiar with, but other than that really doesn't require much briefing of the players unless they want to play heavy conspiracy theory stuff from the beginning. The game world is mostly like our own, and playing a nova for the first time should be a lot about discovering what it's like, anyway. Of course, superhero games don't really have that much starting credit with my gaming group, so if I mess it up it's probably the end of it.

Trinity has tons of information. Almost too much for a beginning player, if I expected them to actually learn it before playing. I agree that you can't say 'that's Trinity', but the setting is so rich and varied that you can say 'that's like France in Trinity', or 'that's how I picture Luna in Trinity', which I think is good enough for comparison, simply because there's no point in starting new players off on a story that includes everything. There's also the added benefit of being able to use the Trinity game to teach the players the timeline and history of the gameworld. On the other hand, precisely the fact that Trinity stories can be so different makes it harder to capture the flavor of the setting without at the same time go into the metaplot, which is a lot easier with the other two.

[avatar_12]

Trinity has worked out best for me, It use's simular rules system to other wod games, can easily be pictured by my players. My group is hardcore tsr Marvel players so another superhero system would be impossible to sell on them. I haven't actually picked up an Adventure book yet so I not sure but pulp era might be differant enough to work.

some games we play on a semi regular basis

AD&D 1'st,& 2nd editions

Vampire

Rifts

TsR Marvel Super Heroes

Call Of Cthulhu

Paranoia

Feng Shui

Star wars 2nd ed

And of course Trinity

[madcat82]

BTW, if you need to introduce your players to the rulesystem, I have made changes to the original Trinity system so that it fittes for Matrix and Starwars.

If you wannt It, I can mail it. or post it.

[Prince of Boredom]

My group is hardcore tsr Marvel players so another superhero system would be impossible to sell on them

I'm right there with you (anyone remember the hard-to-find Ultimate Powers Book?), but I actually like Aberrant.

As far as Aeon games to play, the only one I have played (and only here) is Aberrant, I don't even own any of the others. The one good thing about Aberrant is that everyone (except maybe African pygmies) has seen a movie, read a comic, seen a trailer with superheroes. That can make character generation easy for them, if you're willing to do a little work.

ie. just ask your players, if you could make a superhero, what would you want him to do? Just about anything they can think of is possible with the Abberant rules (although not necessarily EVERYTHING they want). I've done this with my friends that don't actually want to learn the char gen rules and it works out great, just get their ideas, work with it a little bit, and then tell them what their character can do and see if they're happy. Rinse and repeat as necessary. And if they're familiar with the WoD already, the rules are easy.