The World of Trid is a fantasy roleplaying setting I began in 1989. While it's changed and expanded over the decades, the one constant is its adherence to the Basic/Expert rules that inspired it.
The Implied Setting
Trid is my attempt to create the "implied setting" modeled in the
Basic and
Expert D&D rules of the early 1980s. Back then, I had no awareness of how strongly rules could impact setting. It wasn't until I ran B/X modules with the BECMI rules that I noted slight dissonance. The excellent Mystara Gazetteer series, written for BECMI, seemed to confirm this tonal disconnect—surely it was an extrapolation of the B/X implied setting, but one of many possible extrapolations—and the differences
felt, subjectively, were the result of specifically accommodating the BECMI rules.
The implied setting of B/X had a different feel. For starters, it didn't really exist, and that was not just a metaphor—it was a subtle appeal for the reader to create one. All we knew of the Known World—as the B/X setting, and later Mystara, would become—relied on a terse brief published in the Expert adventure module
X1 Isle of Dread. Many of the places described came from author Tom Moldvay's
own campaign, co-created with Lawrence Schick, and the brilliance of these conceptual entries was that they provided enough information for the reader to imagine—correctly—who lived there and what went on, but they were so happily lacking in detail that the reader could simultaneously imagine—with equal clarity—their own how's and why's.
Though little of the Known World was documented while B/X claimed it, the B/X rules themselves provided some insight. Certainly there were monsters, and there were adventurers who assembled to defeat them, not only to establish order in the world, but also to gather wealth and amass power. But there were other clues about the world that the B/X people lived in—the implications behind the "implied setting." Divine magic implied actual gods. Arcane magic implied a non-divine source of magic. Ruins implied ancient cultures; the treasures within implied they were rich. The Common Tongue and the universality of coinage implied social unification, which by extension stood for Law. The 3-point alignment axis itself implied that the struggle between Law and Chaos bordered on existential.
These are the foundations of the implied setting. Upon these are scattered wonderfully specific assertions, gathered from across the rulebooks, both overt and implicit. Neanderthals attack ogres on sight. We don't know why, but such is their relationship in B/X-land. Unguarded treasure always contains silver. What's important there? The silver, that it's unguarded, or both? This is the genius of the implied setting: The rules plant seeds for things that exist and happen within it but the reader gets to cultivate them however they like.
Ultimately, Trid is another extrapolation of B/X's implied setting. And while it's inevitably embellished with its own house rules and additions, Trid does my best to cleave as closely as possible to the tone and quality of the Basic/Expert canon.
Development Approach
Upon the foundation laid above are built the details of Trid's people, places, and things. But Trid is a big place—deliberately large enough to support ideas I haven't thought of—so inventing those bits and keeping them consistent with both the implied setting and each other required a sustainable approach. To that end, here are the "rules" I set for myself while creating Trid:
Default to RAW: To maintain compatibility with the implied setting, Trid is written for use with the Basic/Expert rules-as-written. While Trid includes its own house rules, new classes, monsters, spells, etc., these are themselves written to be modular and optional. The goal is portability: One should be able to adventure in Trid straight from the books or even using their own house rules.
Random first, logic later: To match the tone of the implied setting, and to populate it quickly, Trid relies on a host of random tables, from the basics of terrain and culture to the minutia of village shops and dank treasure holes. Random results are conceptual, suggesting what might be, until the referee can be connect them to create something of interest to the player characters. Some random results remain untethered and are left for the referee to explore or ignore.
Detail is the enemy: To promote customisation for individual campaigns, Trid is presented with the minimum detail, giving referees enough information to run their own campaigns, but also the ability to expand on it however desired. While this approach has the obvious benefit of saving time, it more importantly makes it easier for the referee to connect random elements (see above), and to incorporate the players' (often unwitting) input while doing so.
Appendix N
Trid is an amalgam of many disparate inspirations, including:
Fiction
Cornwell, Bernard: The Saxon Stories
Hardy, Lyndon: Master of the Five Magics
Howard, Robert E.: The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian; The Bloody Crown of Conan; The Conquering Sword of Conan
Lewis, C.S.: Chronicles of Narnia
Moorcock, Michael: The Elric Saga
Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Hobbit
Vance, Jack: Dying Earth
Wolfe, Gene: Book of the New Sun
Non-fiction
Breay, Clair and Joanna Story (editors): Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War
Bulfinch, Thomas: Bulfinch's Mythology
Cheyney, Edward P.: A Short History of England
Chickering, Howell D.: Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition
Frere, Sheppard: Britannia: A History of Roman Britain
Fry, Stephen: Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined
Gaiman, Neil: Norse Mythology
Gibbon, Edward: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Hamilton, Edith: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Haywood, John: The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings
Howarth, David: 1066 The Year of the Conquest
Jager, Eric: The Last Duel
Jotischky, Andrew and Caroline Hull: The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World
McCall, Andrew: The Medieval Underworld
McEvedy, Colin: The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History
Tuchman, Barbara: A Distant Mirror
Role Playing Games
Baker, Richard: Worldbuilder's Guidebook
Charlton, Coleman and Pat Fenlon: Character Law & Campaign Law
Cook, David and Stephen Marsh: Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rulebook
Gygax, Gary: B2 Keep on the Borderlands; World of Greyhawk
Heard, Bruce: Voyage of the Princess Ark (DRAGON Magazine, Issues 153-188) ; Champions of Mystara: Heroes of the Princess Ark
Judges Guild: Ready Ref Sheets, 2nd Edition
Moldvay, Tom: B4 The Lost City; Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook; X1 Isle of Dread
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