It's helpful to view Trid as a sandbox of sandboxes, each with its own set of environmental conditions, challenges, and rewards. Referees may isolate these regions or connect them through whatever common threads they wish to devise. Though Trid is vast, action plays out at a local scale—referees can add their own populations, magic, monsters, patrons, treasures, and power struggles to any sandbox with minimal effort or disruption to the (loosely coupled) whole.
World Themes
All of Trids’ varied sandboxes are passively connected through the Fall of the Ardic Republic 991 years ago. This event converted much of the settled land on the Continent into wilderness, now the dangerous province of humanoids, monsters, and power-hungry men.
The Age of History
The current period began when the Fall of the Republic ended the Age of Fable. After the Fall, established provinces were reshaped or eliminated entirely; very few remained intact. Reëstablishing these polities became a free-for-all among power brokers of all stripes—prior officers of the Republic, landed nobles, non-secular orders, wildermen kings, and rogue adventurers—all driven by varying degrees of altruism or selfishness. Competition between these potentates and their motivations, amid the looming threat of a dangerous wilderness, has made survival a challenge, and that struggle has been the Age of History’s hallmark.
Civilisation is Rebuilding
Man has always understood that there is strength in numbers, and so establishing and defending permanent settlements is the most effective way to ensure peace and safety. Because the nation-state does not exist on Trid, a polity’s size is the physical extent to which the settlements within can push back against (or expand into) the surrounding wilderness. Continental realms are defined by their capitals and the surrounding communities either allied or under their control. The size of a settlement determines how much of the surrounding land it can patrol (i.e., “settled” for encounter purposes), though a polity’s mapped borders likely extend to indisputable boundaries like rivers, natural features, or roads. The land between what’s shown on the map and what’s actually safe is best defined as frontier; beyond the frontier lies wilderness, where certain danger and probable death await.
Law vs. Chaos
Given the rigours of the current Age, Law and Chaos is most commonly contextualised by the safety of settlements against the danger of the wilderness. Thematically, this is what drives alignment choices.
Lawful: Believe that ordered communities provide the best foundation for prosperity, safety, and sustainability. Codified laws and social order are the best way to ensure every member of the community is working toward those goals.
Chaotic: Believe that individuals should be free to make (and act on) their own choices their well being. Codified laws and social order restrict personal freedom and prevent individuals from reaching their potential.
Neutral: Believe that self-reliance is the key to achieving an individual's prosperity and well being. Codified laws and social order provide a solid foundation for achieving individual mastery.
Conflicts are Prosaic
World-spanning battles between good and evil are fine for the faithful, but the majority of Trid's conflicts are motivated by more immediate and tangible prizes: territory, wealth, and power. Of course, some power brokers couch their ambition in altruism, but rarely do their goals serve the common good better than themselves. Conversely, adventurers may have aspirations to change the world, but they advance through the accumulation of riches and go where the money is. A side effect of these banal motives is that actions tend to play out on a local stage, and it is rare for conflicts in one region to influence significantly the conditions in another.
Prepping Games
Trid is a fantasy world based on the "implied setting" loosely described in the classic B/X game rules. As such, it relies on two pillars of old-school settings: a dependence on random results to populate the environment, anf an appropriate lack of detail about how those results affect the player characters. Together, these provide each referee a solid framework to support their own creative preferences and style of play.
Running Games in Trid
tbd
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