Miniature Monday - What Was Not and Could Have Been

Hello everyone, and welcome to a different style of Miniature Monday article. We've been sharing miniature scans and rule excerpts for Trinity: Battleground over the last several months as we prepare for its resurrection, but this week we want to take a moment to look at the game's history, as well as what it could have been.

Trinity: Battleground was released in August of 1998 as a branch of the Trinity roleplaying game White Wolf debuted the year before. The release was accompanied by a marketing campaign that included advertisements in Dragon and Shadis magazines, as well as promotional posters to help drum up attention for the new game. The Trinity: Battleground box set contained the rulebook, resin miniatures, and everything else needed to play, and was accompanied by twenty blister packs of metal miniatures to add variety to player's battles. In total, the line contained thirty-four miniatures, all sculpted by Bob Naismith, an industry legend known for his work at Citadel Miniatures (now Games Workshop), Grenadier Models, Wizkids, and many other miniature companies. Unfortunately, all this wasn't enough. Trinity: Battleground went out of print less than six months after its initial release. Regular releases for the Trinity roleplaying game continued through 1999 before slowing to a trickle and ending altogether in 2004. In 2012, Onyx Path Publishing purchased full rights to the Trinity Universe and published a new edition of the roleplaying game as part of their Trinity Continuum line, but Trinity: Battleground remained dormant until we reached out to resurrect it.

But what could have been? White Wolf had big plans for Trinity: Battlegrounds before it was sadly cancelled. Additional expansion boxes were planned that would drastically expand player's options, including LoneStar and ChromePrime. LoneStar would have brought the fighting to Earth and added a new faction of Psions called Orgotek, rules for armoured battlesuits called Vargs, and new Psi Powers, support troops, and miniatures. Less is known about ChromePrime, but it would have introduced an alien race called the Chromatics as well as additional Psion orders and possibly other aliens as well. There were also plans for additional terrain packs, supplements with new planets to fight on, and packs of character sheets for players to use when creating their own custom models. Of course, all of these would have been supported by more miniatures for each faction, eventually including vehicles.

Obviously, none of these later supplements were ever released, but fortunately not all of the work on them was lost. At some point in development, likely when it became apparent that the line was in trouble, White Wolf's plans changed from releasing boxed supplements to condensing all the rule material into a single book, the Trinity: Battleground Players Guide. Eventually, even that project was cancelled.

Kindly, White Wolf put the completed material for the book up as a free download on their website. Onyx Path had a new cover made for the document when they bought the Trinity line, and you can currently download it for free from their DriveThruRPG page.

In the end, Trinity: Battleground was an exciting and ambitious game that burned out before it had a chance to shine. Although it's disappointing it never had a chance to reach its full potential, it still has enough material for players to build unique and interesting armies and play out satisfying battles on the tabletop. When combined with material from the Trinity RPG, players can expand their options even farther. This forgotten game is the perfect example of why we started the Wargames Resurrectionist project. Trinity: Battlegrounds was a game talented writers, sculptors, and artists poured their work and creativity into, and it deserves to be remembered as more than a forgotten footnote in wargaming history. We want to preserve it and make it available again, both to gamers who saw it when it first released but missed their chance to buy it, and new gamers who have just come into the hobby and want to collect these interesting and characterful minis. We are looking forward to sharing them with all of you when we re-release them later this year.

Tune in next week when we share some scans of the Trinity: Battlegrounds terrain.