How to Play TriadCity

The TriadCity Players' Guide

Welcome to TriadCity!

Introduction

TriadCity is a game made of words. To play, you read and type. Text describes the imaginary world you're a part of; typing — entering commands — is how you interact with it and other players. While the world is the setting, what you do there is largely up to you. You can explore, solve puzzles, fight monsters, heal the sick and injured, write newspaper articles, practice magic, invent new hair styles, or just chat with friends. While doing these things you're growing your character — your imaginary self. As your character grows it gains new capabilities, allowing more kinds of interactions. The world is the setting, but your adventures are your own. Welcome to TriadCity!

Characters

Your character is your personal invention. You can pretend to be anyone, or anything, that you like. You can be yourself, or radically not yourself, or anything in between.

You get to choose how your character lives, and how it grows. In TriadCity, character Roles structure the capabilities characters can gain. You might be a Healer, a Thief, a Warrior, or something more strange like a Malopath. You're not limited to just one Role — although some are incompatible with others. You can combine them, in ways that make your character unique compared to everyone else. Roles enable the Skills which are key to advanced actions. Your Skills define not only what your character can do, but who your character is.

The World

TriadCity is a large — very large — imaginary city, filled with vibrant motion, mystery, silliness, and adventure. You'll solve puzzles and meet characters portrayed by the computer, along with players like yourself. The City has its neighborhoods, its rivalries and its problems to deal with. The more you play, the more you discover how difficult, morally complicated, and dangerous these can be.

Themes

TriadCity is generally satirical. Players have compared it with Michael Schur's brilliant The Good Place, which, while satirizing consumerism, vanity, shallowness, and human foibles in general, also has a serious moral purpose. Satire is moralistic; we're comfortable with that.

Playing With Language

TriadCity features unreliable narrators, first-person narrators, competing narrators undercutting each other, worlds intruding into other worlds, haiku, Anguish Languish, cockney rhyming slang, Pig Latin, lipograms, and puns by the zillions. It is made of these things. More radically, we've taken a technique from novels to a depth print can't achieve: two characters standing in the same room may see it differently, because the computer literally describes it differently to each of them. These are among the reasons why university classes on digital literature as well as books like The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism cite TriadCity as an emerging literary form. When you join us you'll be helping to invent the future of writing!

Support for Blind Players

Text is the universal interface. 80% of our currently active players self-identify as blind or visually impaired. Blind and VI players are first-class citizens in TriadCity and all our games.

Our iOS and Android apps work nicely with VoiceOver and TalkBack. Every control you can tap in the apps can also be invoked by typing a command. This Web site is optimized for screen readers, and our Discord is blind-friendly.

Very Friendly Culture

The TriadCity player community is welcoming, safe, actively moderated, and has been majority women for decades. TriadCity is completely free of the flame culture which mars some other online games. Even our bulletin boards are safe. We're proud of our success in keeping TriadCity free from the name-calling and petty squabbling we've so often encountered elsewhere.

Next Steps

Welcome to TriadCity! Read on, Macduff!

Players' Guide TOC
Intelligent, accessible adventure begins here. Join free today!