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Pre-Order and then a KS raises a potentially interesting dilemma - get the Pre-Order or wait until the KS with then (maybe) inevitable 'better deal' and/or exclusive miniature(s), etc.

^True! Also, kickstarters are known for delays, especially if you opt in for extra minis and other gubbins... may end up getting your book significantly later than retail in that case. Although it sounds like a special version at least.

I'm thinking that they'll be a pretty good deal on 'bundles' of books, but you've got a good point about delays, and significant delays...

And they will probably be a pledge level that bundles a bunch of books that presume you already have the core rules...

Or, what if they have a bundle *with* the core book and all of the extra books when you've already preordered the main rules?

Some manner of herp and or derp is liable to happen, here's hoping they can avoid it

If they really do fund supplements through the kickstarter... it will be interesting to see if they hold shipping 'till everything is ready, or do waves. Waves of multiple books sounds expensive for somebody though.

Going by their previous Kickstarters, it gets pretty pricey if you want 'all the stuff, in print' from one of their campaigns.

I signed up for the playtest, and got the download this morning.
I wouldn't mind seeing about doing some online / telepresence gaming for this.

It's only one scene, and rules shouldn't be too hard to get down.

I'm betting someone with experience playing by Google Hangout or other means could do this a couple times to get some feedback easily.

While reading over the rules, looking at the rolls, heat and the campaign... for some reason all I could think was how I could utilize the rules and modify Zombicide tiles, spawn points, rules to create a cooperative Infinity RPG.... mainly due to the main reason I don't play RPGs much anymore, I always end up having to GM so I rarely get to actually play.

So what's this "heat" all about, then?

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
So what's this "heat" all about, then?

Essentially Heat is a basic representation of the level of threat for the opposition. It is used by the GM as a currency per say. As the players take certain actions or pay points into the pool by taking a variety of actions. Then the GM is able to spend those points to keep the game moving and developing. Heat lets the GM do things like activate NPCs, Interrupt PC actions or trigger complications. In the Alpha scenario the GM can use Heat to move a gangster horde, move objects to obstruct the players vision, autofire (gains additional 1d20) or cause the players to injure civilians with stray rounds.

For me it reminded me of noise counters in a way in Zombicide, so let me come up with a method to apply it to move 'enemy units', spawn units or create encounters in a cooperative game without a GM.

[Marge] Hmmmmm :/ [\Marge]

The CD system is... clunky yet interesting. May be worth getting special dice, but perhaps it could have been done in a more interesting manner.

Aw hells yeah! They kept the Dark Symmetry (called Heat in this one) mechanic from Mutant Chronicles. I always love GM-facing resource pools (because I want to play the game too damn it!) so it is nice to see these things made the jump. Players burning their long-term fate for short-term gain is always a fun little catch 22.

Just skimmed it so far, but it looks like it took the core of the system as developed for Mutant Chronicles but has tweaked a few things to work better for the setting at hand. Should be fun, may have to run the intro scenario for my group.

The alpha doesn't do much for me.

I'll wait and see the finished version. ATM, I think Eclipse phase can handle the duties of a 'sphere based game adequately.

I'm on my phone so I'll have to be brief; too much text can become a pain :/
Anyway, not that impressed, either...

This whole Infinity Points/Heat thing seems to me like it would be more suited to a fantasy game or at least something with magic, as it conveys a sense of "karmic debt" for lack of a better term. It just feels out of place, to me, in an RPG to represent a game as fairly gritty as Infinity.

In other scifi games I've played, the PCs are elevated above standard grunts by generally being more skilled and with access to a wider range of equipment, rather than magical points.

I have not looked at it as I only got back from my mums yesterday so I will look in a day or two.

In the online dice shop there is a body part location die as well as the odd D 100.

Sounds promising so far! Keen to hear what the guys who have experience of RPGs think about it.

I'm really actually also looking forward to some of the background being padded out, and hopefully some potential for crossover to the wargame for campaigns and things of that nature.

 Dark Severance wrote:
While reading over the rules, looking at the rolls, heat and the campaign... for some reason all I could think was how I could utilize the rules and modify Zombicide tiles, spawn points, rules to create a cooperative Infinity RPG.... mainly due to the main reason I don't play RPGs much anymore, I always end up having to GM so I rarely get to actually play.

Heh, I know that feeling ^_^

I already more or less know the rules from Mutant Chronicles, and IMHO the core system is quite solid, rules-medium without much extraneous bloat. The Heat rules seem quite interesting, too.


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 Shae-Konnit wrote:
I'm on my phone so I'll have to be brief; too much text can become a pain :/
Anyway, not that impressed, either...

This whole Infinity Points/Heat thing seems to me like it would be more suited to a fantasy game or at least something with magic, as it conveys a sense of "karmic debt" for lack of a better term. It just feels out of place, to me, in an RPG to represent a game as fairly gritty as Infinity.

Well, it is mainly a rule for narrative pacing. Personally I find those generally useful as a GM, but I'll have to see how this specific rendition works.

In other scifi games I've played, the PCs are elevated above standard grunts by generally being more skilled and with access to a wider range of equipment, rather than magical points.

If you want a more "realistic" system, I'd suggest you might want to take a look at Eclipse Phase. You can get the PDF for free, and the system is stupidly easy to hack for Infinity.


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 chromedog wrote:
The alpha doesn't do much for me.

I'll wait and see the finished version. ATM, I think Eclipse phase can handle the duties of a 'sphere based game adequately.

Agreed on EP, it's a pretty great system that IMHO would be perfectly suited for Infinity.

But as I said I liked the system in MC, so I'm at least willing to try it out.

I guess one thing I really don't like is a system to enforce narrative pacing; as a GM I'm generally in control of the pacing and can manage a realistic encounter without a system telling me at what rate it must progress.
Seeing it on paper is one thing, I know, and a playthrough would give me a better feel for such a rule, but right now I really don't like it :/

I haven't played Mutant Chronicles so can't really comment on that but Eclipse is fairly solid.

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
I guess one thing I really don't like is a system to enforce narrative pacing; as a GM I'm generally in control of the pacing and can manage a realistic encounter without a system telling me at what rate it must progress.
Seeing it on paper is one thing, I know, and a playthrough would give me a better feel for such a rule, but right now I really don't like it :/

I can understand the feelings behind what you are saying, however I'm not perceiving it as simply a 'system to enforce narrative pacing', it is much more than that. I will preface this to say that not all GMs and players are equal in experience or ideas when playing RPGs. It is one of the reasons I end up being the GM or end up taking up the GM role after-awhile. The same is said about players who want to brute force their way through every encounter, which can be fine, but as a group there is a group measurement of 'threat'.

Since it is Alpha and only a very small amount of information, its designed to simply play through mechanics of the combat dice and gave you enough to only do the sample scene. There is a lot more that will most likely to be added to it. I've always viewed an Infinity RPG as more than just 'shoot and captive objectives', that there are more skills, item uses and methods given the future setting that run and gun is an option but there is more. With that in mind the basics explained is a basic reaction/action sequence, for every action there are possible reactions that can happen. The issue with RPGs is that GMs/Players vary so not everyone gets the basic understanding that kicking down a door generates a certain amount of noise, compared to maybe hacking it open. Infinity has a good balance of when a player acts, the opposing players get to react and it is clearly defined in your ARO. The RPG is just using that to help define it more by giving a guidelines of what a GM can do for a ARO and how those situations are created. It also can help players determine 'how much threat' is generated based on actions they do as a team. Sometimes you do need to take the chance and take out a group of guards, but you have a basic understand of what reaction can happen from it. Instead of the GM being "all powerful controller", it brings them to a player level perception (as perceived by players) to give them an idea of what can happen as a result. This also creates a system where newer players/GMs can take the plunge and makes it easier to rotate a player to GM, taking turns every week, so one person isn't always stuck a GM... but doesn't necessarily need them to all have the same GM skills.

Maybe I'm over-thinking it and granted, its all an assumption of perception based on what is released so far. However that is is what I perceived when I first looked at the basics laid out, how they can be used and expounded upon in a fuller RPG version. Given that it is Alpha, they are fairly open to ideas and suggestions as well, now is the time to voice them in the Playtest Comments.

Yeah, it is best to view Heat points (or any kind of economy-based action-point) as clear guideline to how often you can throw out complications. In games without such situations it is easy to be too lax or too harsh with this. Someone takes "addiction(space c-c-c-cocaine)" and it never comes up in play, meanwhile that guy with "allergy(spaaaaace bees!)" finds a beehive at every street corner that is easily angered by gun fights.

What I like about Heat is that its back-and-forth economy is based on making players deal with failure (which works best, of course, if you tend to play in a fail-forward kind of manner with failures leading to interesting complications rather than simply stalling out the plot). On the player side, each time they are hit with repercussions or decide to take an auto-failure, they gain Heat that can be used later to succeed. What does this mean? Folks will be less afraid to try stuff! This can be one of the biggest issues in an RPG, breaking the "its not on my char sheet" barrier and getting folks to think outside the box. Incentivizing failure means that folks can totally try and talk their way past that bouncer. If they get up to him and realize they have no way of talking past, they can always grab the Heat and eat the consequences to set themselves up for a later (stress free, because those points wont go to the GM) feat of awesome. Folks that try stuff and make the game more interesting get more opportunities to fill their heat pool which in turn leads the game more toward having interesting and memorable things happen. Don't think about it in in-game terms, this is entirely a narrative meta-game mechanic meant to encourage folks to try things.

On the GM's side it gives them a general ability to pace out complications for PCs as well as giving them a per-game resource pool to help tweak challenge (much in the same ways PCs in many games have a per-game mechanic of making their lives easier) without having to deal with the issues of giving individual NPCs an action point pool similar to what PCs get (the roll that Infinity Points play here, though I will note that these starting characters have far less IPs than a starting Mutant Chronicles character).

It is a multi-purpose tool for the GM allowing them to pace complications, boost NPCs to bring out a greater challenge, while also working as a great source of ebbing/flowing tension.

But as a GM, I am a fan of mechanics that face to my side of the table and allow me to interact with the game without resorting to pure fiat. I think the mechanic will be great for recreating the kinds of Shirow-punk-esque narrative that tends to be the central inspiration for Infinity's aesthetic.

I had a big response but overall, I just don't get it.
May be helpful to a starting GM who isn't yet sure of themselves but, personally, it's of no use to me so I'd disregard it.
If I'm already disregarding big bits of the system I feel I may be better off playing something else :/

I've spoken with players and GMs who had experience with games with a similar system and to be honest there wasn't an overall positive reception.
Players didn't like it because their Infinity Point equivelant would get used against them later.
GMs didn't like it because the scenarios and story they designed kept getting hand-waved away when it was most annoying to them so they felt their work was wasted.

Now I'm not saying it shall always, 100% be like this but it has happened so may be worth bearing in mind.

I signed up for the playtest but I've got nothing yet. At least I think I signed up, I must have stuffed up...but dammit I want to tery it ha

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
Players didn't like it because their Infinity Point equivelant would get used against them later.

Technically in a traditional RPG everything a player does is used against them sooner or later at some point. That is the whole GM (antagonistic) design vs the players. What fun is an RPG if players aren't taking risks or going to try to take an easy route because they are afraid of points being used against them later. The whole point is to make there feel like there is a risk.

Another way to look at it, I'll compare it to Mass Effect gameplay. There is no benefit to not soldier my way through the encounters, nor is my soldiering in any way effect the ability to complete a mission or play the game. I love ME series and I've played other classes, they do take a bit more to play and do require more skills but they don't have an overall benefit to me simply powering my way through with guns. Using guns doesn't generate more aggro or threat from mobs, any different than another class simply sneaking through stealthy. Soldering my way through lets me level up more effectively than trying to avoid confrontation. The system is designed to try to create more methods than to simply rely on a gun. It also gives you measurable methods to determine the cause and effect of those actions.

I will say though I think we are focusing too much on one aspect of the rules. There is a lot more than that like momentum which a player can store for later use and infinity points. These rules just barely touch the surface, really are only outlined to allow testing of gameplay mechanics in the alpha scene. There are going to be more abilities, equipment, actions, and situations which flesh it out a bit more. It is a bit too early to make a judgement of disregarding it to so soon.

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
If I'm already disregarding big bits of the system I feel I may be better off playing something else :/

Honestly I have yet to play an RPG rules system or met someone that has played or GM'd that hasn't disregarded bits of the system. If there was such a perfect RPG, I would probably be playing it over anything else honestly but like miniatures game they all have their pros/cons.

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
I had a big response but overall, I just don't get it.
May be helpful to a starting GM who isn't yet sure of themselves but, personally, it's of no use to me so I'd disregard it.
If I'm already disregarding big bits of the system I feel I may be better off playing something else :/

I've spoken with players and GMs who had experience with games with a similar system and to be honest there wasn't an overall positive reception.
Players didn't like it because their Infinity Point equivelant would get used against them later.
GMs didn't like it because the scenarios and story they designed kept getting hand-waved away when it was most annoying to them so they felt their work was wasted.

Now I'm not saying it shall always, 100% be like this but it has happened so may be worth bearing in mind.

Not liking a system is a perfectly valid response. After all everyone has their own tastes, and that's good.

 Dark Severance wrote:

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
Players didn't like it becmisfortuner Infinity Point equivelant would get used against them later.

Technically in a traditional RPG everything a player does is used against them sooner or later at some point. That is the whole GM (antagonistic) design vs the players. What fun is an RPG if players aren't taking risks or going to try to take an easy route because they are afraid of points being used against them later. The whole point is to make there feel like there is a risk..

Of course there is always risk, obviously always risk and always consequence. I am no way whatsoever at any point even suggesting that there shouldn't be.
Just that those players prefered to deal with a situation on their own terms and accept what happens later, rather than invoke whatever points system and invite even more misfortune where there needn't necessarily be any.
In my experience anyways, whenever a difficult situation was encountered we just thought of ways around it. When we had the option of using such an Infinity Point esque system we didn't; we just tried to think of another way.
Whenever there were consequences it was when it made sense; never needed a system to make it happen.

But maybe that's just me. My group and I avoid the whole "GM vs Players" thing as much as we can. I've been a GM for quite a while now, and I see it as my job to construct an interesting world full of interesting people for the PCs to interact with and with an an engrossing story.
I react to the PCs actions accordingly in ways I believe make sense and with regards to the personalities of those NPCs involved. I am not deliberately acting against them.

And before I get hit with a "Well, technically..." I guess I should clarify. Way I've seen "GM vsPlayers" is when a GM just throws NPCs/Situations at the players just to give them something to do or to make things hard for them/challenge them. Not necessarily as a logical consequence of their actions or as a natural progression of the story.

 motyak wrote:
I signed up for the playtest but I've got nothing yet. At least I think I signed up, I must have stuffed up...but dammit I want to tery it ha

There's no NDAs in place here - just follow the links posted earlier, DL, read, enjoy, review, post your thoughts, etc.!

I definitely will say that as a general rule, I don't like games being too heavy handed with how they ask the DM to do things. Heck, I disliked the whole normal/heroic/epic level progressions in 4th ed D&D as they felt too forced.

That's kind of what's so cool about PnP RPGs though, it's not like loading up a PC game and trying to argue with how it's written (though arguably mods allow you to do just that...), you (and to a lesser extent, your players) are free to adjust things until you get the right pace, challenge, and so on.

I'm still really curious to see just how much background and lore we get for Infinity in general from this RPG and future supplements.

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
But maybe that's just me. My group and I avoid the whole "GM vs Players" thing as much as we can. I've been a GM for quite a while now, and I see it as my job to construct an interesting world full of interesting people for the PCs to interact with and with an an engrossing story.
I react to the PCs actions accordingly in ways I believe make sense and with regards to the personalities of those NPCs involved. I am not deliberately acting against them.

That is perfectly acceptable and I can relate unfortunately they are usually a rarity compared to the norm, at least in my area. Not everyone is going to be the same though, so a system needs to account for the broad spectrum of all instances.

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
If I'm already disregarding big bits of the system I feel I may be better off playing something else :/

Honestly? You probably are. RPGs are big, varied, and intensely personal things that some folks may not mesh with. That's cool, there are plenty of fish in the sea and nothing requires that you love the Infinity RPG. I liked the 2d20 system used in Mutant Chronicles and I'm liking the tweaks to Infinity it up with this, so I'll be hopping on board. But folks shouldn't hang up their aspirations of making personal homebrews or using a system they like better just because there is an official RPG for something. Play what you love, life's too short for not running what you think is fun.

But as a lover of meta-gamey narrative design that doesn't assume an all-powerful viking-hat GM, 2d20 is really working for me in a "just traditional enough" way. Still medium crunch with lots of options, but with some narrativist bits sprinkled in to make things feel more dynamic and to encourage folks to get in to things on both sides of the screen.

But not liking it is perfectly valid, so don't feel like you've got to justify your preference. We all have games that we just don't grok and don't mesh well with, such is life.

But does it?
I'm not so sure. Personally I like a system that best conveys the setting rather than one just designed to please.

Way I see it right now, I'm not sure that aspect of the system does.
This is, of course, my own personal opinion and not an obsolute.

This topic is for opinions, so I gave mine with, I hope, some reasoning behind it.


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 Dark Severance wrote:

 Shae-Konnit wrote:
But maybe that's just me. My group and I avoid the whole "GM vs Players" thing as much as we can. I've been a GM for quite a while now, and I see it as my job to construct an interesting world full of interesting people for the PCs to interact with and with an an engrossing story.
I react to the PCs actions accordingly in ways I believe make sense and with regards to the personalities of those NPCs involved. I am not deliberately acting against them.

That is perfectly acceptable and I can relate unfortunately they are usually a rarity compared to the norm, at least in my area. Not everyone is going to be the same though, so a system needs to account for the broad spectrum of all instances.

What I said being in regards to this by the way ↑


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But not liking it is perfectly valid, so don't feel like you've got to justify your preference. We all have games that we just don't grok and don't mesh well with, such is life.

I always do like to.
Past experience has kinda conditioned me to this; I've been told too many times, "Oh, you're just saying that because (whatever) >:-( " that I always have my reasoning ready to try to express :/

And in a topic like this I feel like I should. Hell, if I was designing a game and someone says, "I don't like this." I would like to know why