Infinity RPG

[Kitsune]

Could it happen, should it happen? Potential KS project for CB?

Whaddya reckon? I'd love to see one, personally.

[Pierzasty]

It's already happened. AFAIR Infinity was first an RPG for Gutier's group and then someone decided to make it a wargame.

[kidterminal]

Is there an earlier RPG version still in existence?

[Pierzasty]

Most likely, if you can get Gutier to publish it

[Kitsune]

Will it be up to date with all of the current paradiso background and the like though?

Bit a of a teaser though, isn't it. "There is one, its just not published"

[kidterminal]

We should demand it. Someone get us an address to email.

[Pierzasty]

Come on, who knows what exactly they have written? We know that Gutier has the whole fluff, many books ahead, in his brain. How much of it is written/prepared to be new Infinity books, we don't know. The whole RPG project may well entail a total reworking of the mechanics etc., there's a huge difference between a homemade system and a system worthy of publishing, that ties into the Infinity-wargame world and won't hurt the brand or sales.

[Gav99]

I know a friend of ours plays an RPG called Eclipse phase. It sounds very similar to how Infinity works with everything I'm hearing, maybe with a little more detachment of the physical sence. It kinda sounds like you play Aleph, sleeving in and out of bodies (meat sacks) and controlling things through your inbuilt modem. Might be worth a look if you're after that kind of flavor.

[Darkeldar]

While I will say Eclipse Phase is a game I'd like to play, even GM, and it is about the same type of game. The actual mechanics are a bit fiddley and uses a percentage system as opposed to a D20 (I know, I know). I was trying to see if a system like Starblazer Adventures, which pays more attention on ROLE playing than dice-rolling. It uses aspects to define the character and a pyranid of skills to define what a character can do. With the Spec Ops rules now out, it may be time to revist SA and see if that will make effective starting characters.

[Wax]

DTjunkie and I have been working on an RPG adaption of Infinity. We are using Dark Heresy (translating d20 -> d100) with homebrew weapon/armor stats.

It will hopefully start soon and we can see how well it works. If it works well we can post up the numbers we have been using, for the benefit of others.

[Nicho]

Awesome. I would love an infinity rpg :-)

[kidterminal]

You can use the forum to set up some play testing groups Scott. Play testing makes perfect.

[Darkeldar]

Anyone else signed up on Infrno (http://www.infrno.net/)? I've played a Burning Empires campaign on there and it seems to be a stable play space.

[Morze]

It would be nice to know, what differences if none there are in a RPG and tabletop game. There is "a sure" bit of information, that special characters were once player character. I have a theory, that case: Ko Dali has something to do about it.

"You see the Avatar, sliding eeriely silently trough forest door. It seem it hasn't noticed you yet. What you do?"
" I jump down from the tree and try to knock it down in close combat."
"You want to fist fight the mighty Avatar? An tool of utter destruction and a voodoo tech warmachine?"
"Aha, I just bought erratic movement -skill, should help me to get close enough to use my powersword."
"As you slide down and start running towards Avatar screaming like a madman Avatar opens fire!"
"I dodge! Ouch. I use nano hexagon for auto succes."
"You are now ten meters ahead of Avatar."
"I prepare my sword!"
"As you grab the hilt, you notice you can't move. Roll fortitude check!"
"Fail..."
You are now under EIs control. Roll a new character!"
"What?!? Oh well, it's only a game."

[Lampyridae]

"You want to fist fight the mighty Avatar? An tool of utter destruction and a voodoo tech warmachine?"

At first I thought that that line read "fist the might Avatar..."

[Oreet]

I know a friend of ours plays an RPG called Eclipse phase. It sounds very similar to how Infinity works with everything I'm hearing, maybe with a little more detachment of the physical sence. It kinda sounds like you play Aleph, sleeving in and out of bodies (meat sacks) and controlling things through your inbuilt modem. Might be worth a look if you're after that kind of flavor.

Here I was about to jump in and say the same thing, only to find that Gav beat me to it.

[MarcoSkoll]

I feel an Infinity RPG would have to be quite clever about its approach to really be proper roleplay.
Just stringing together combat encounters (as in the infamous dungeon-crawl) is not the stuff of an RPG - in fact, it is such an antithesis of proper RPing that I'd probably leave a group if a GM approached an RP that way.

It would need plots that were deeper than just fighting, and gave players a good degree of freedom. I think you'd need to justify the characters being somewhat outside the normal chain of command - maybe as mercenaries, maybe as spec-ops - or doing things less conventional to what we see on the Infinity table - rogue AI or Speculo hunting could be interesting subjects.

It's a similar point to what I've been trying to approach with a possible concept for an Infinity webcomic - trying to find plots that are both good narratively and which I actually want to do.
The advantage with that is that I don't have to agree with the rest of a group on that though...

I think that disagreement might actually be the largest issue with an Infinity RPG. Unless you've got complete agreement between players on which faction your characters come from, your options will often be dwindled to only fighting the EI, because there's not a lot else the factions can agree on.

[Wax]

Don't worry. Not all of us were raised on shitty DnD groups. This will not be a game of rollplaying if I have anything to say about it.

In all seriousness though, it really all depends on the group. You can get plenty of roleplaying out of a group doing a bug hunt, they just have to be roleplayers.

[MarcoSkoll]

I'm a little intrigued as to why you've picked 40K RPG as your basis. The strength of Dark Heresy is really that it provides a ready made approach to gaming in the Grimdark (and that FFG actually better know how to write GW's setting than GW do these days) - it's not the most stellar system I've encountered.

I have been working on a hybrid of Inquisitor, Infinity and Dark Heresy for a while, but that's intended to be a 40K universe game (mostly a development of Inquisitor to fit in reactive narrative and some non-combat mechanics).

[Wax]

The project/game was DTjunkie's initial idea, and he is spearheading the majority of the effort. It was his choice and I can only relay what I understand as why DH was chosen. I think a big factor is that our group most is familiar with the 40k roleplaying games and their system. It was also for the ease of converting the d20 rolls to % dice (multiply all numbers by 5). He looked at Eclipse Phase and someone showed him a Starship Troopers RPG that apparently had things like hacking already in the system, but he stuck with DH. That being said, it has been easy to work with so far and I'm happy he stuck with his gut, as simple systems lend themselves to adaptability.

We are only using DH as a loose framework to start from. It will be used for stats, and non-table-top related skills (social, awareness and the like). We are making our own system for armor and weapons. Importing skills from the tabletop as talents and traits, and using mostly mechanics straight from table-top for combat (attacking player rolling 3 separate d100s for his attack, defender rolling 1d100 for his 'ARO'). As I said, we'll see how it works, but I'm hoping we'll all be pleasantly surprised how much like I:tg it will be (at least, the combat elements). Hopefully we'll see more co-operation from the different human factions than we're all used to... But then again we already have our Bao troop planning harassment for the JSA guy.

[Oreet]

I'm looking to start up an RPG group, and since there's not an Infinity one, I'm going to recommend that we play Eclipse Phase.

[valthonis]

Hopefully an RPG would end up better than a party consisting of a Lasiq, Myrmidon, Chimera, Karakuri, and a Gwailos that has somehow convinced the DM that he's fighting for freedom against the EI...

[Aisriyth]

Didn't they mention at Gencon last year that they are toying with the idea to release an RPG book internally right now?

[chromedog]

What is it with games going full circle these days?

Infinity the game is based around a rpg campaign run by one of the guys in the past, so rpg ideas and events triggered a skirmish game?

There are already rpgs published that can easily cater to the infinity rpg needs. With minor work.

WM started out as an Iron Kingdoms D&D kinda module world, that got popular and spawned a skirmish game, that spawned a NEW IK rpg - that will no doubt spawn a new miniatures game based on a miniatures game based off a D&D module.

[Lazi]

Talking about RPG, I think its usually more about the setting/fluff than actual mechanics of the game. I mean, there are many open or semi-open systems for RPG that are quite universal and the group can adapt them easily. You really do not need a system that is bound with the setting. What I want to say is that all you need for playing RPG is the fluff we already have (well, some sort of RPG setting book with additional info could help) and some open system. I can imagine playing Infinity with FATE system (or FUDGE). It should be easy enough to adapt it for specialties like hacking and others. And also you need the players who really understand what the RPG is about - which is not winning, but having fund and living a story.

[valthonis]

Talking about RPG, I think its usually more about the setting/fluff than actual mechanics of the game. I mean, there are many open or semi-open systems for RPG that are quite universal and the group can adapt them easily. You really do not need a system that is bound with the setting. What I want to say is that all you need for playing RPG is the fluff we already have (well, some sort of RPG setting book with additional info could help) and some open system. I can imagine playing Infinity with FATE system (or FUDGE). It should be easy enough to adapt it for specialties like hacking and others. And also you need the players who really understand what the RPG is about - which is not winning, but having fund and living a story.

I'm a huge fan a Traveller (the 2d6 version) and could easily see Infinity fitting into that with all the class/work/roles to pick from.

[Lazi]

Talking about RPG, I think its usually more about the setting/fluff than actual mechanics of the game. I mean, there are many open or semi-open systems for RPG that are quite universal and the group can adapt them easily. You really do not need a system that is bound with the setting. What I want to say is that all you need for playing RPG is the fluff we already have (well, some sort of RPG setting book with additional info could help) and some open system. I can imagine playing Infinity with FATE system (or FUDGE). It should be easy enough to adapt it for specialties like hacking and others. And also you need the players who really understand what the RPG is about - which is not winning, but having fund and living a story.

I'm a huge fan a Traveller (the 2d6 version) and could easily see Infinity fitting into that with all the class/work/roles to pick from.

I am not familiar with Traveller but I believe any system could be refitted for Infinity - some would be easier, some would be harder to refit, but thats another question.
But I am not a big fan of class-based systems. It is often too restrictive and I find it hard to make the character I really want. And thats why I really like FATE

[valthonis]

Traveller has a class system, sort of. Basically you start at X age and you take 4 year career terms. So you might pick your first career as a scientist or join the Navy, either way you have to roll to see if you can get into the career (Careers have specific sub types, Navy has "Pilot" has one of it's sub types). If you fail you can apply to the draft or be a space drifter for the term. Once you're in a career you earn skills, but at the end of the 4 year term you have to roll to see if you did well enough to keep your career and if successful the possibily of promotion (bonuses to 'retirement' and skill options).

Any way, you're limited to about five career terms, adding 20 years to your character's age. When you 'retire' , or basically basically stop working to go travel the stars, you get some career payout/pension depending on the career. But at the end, the character is what you have, there is no leveling along the way.

The party will almost always be in debt for a ship to travel with, which means you have to do something to pay the bills.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of it.

The hardest part in my opinion is how to make it 'Infinity' like. Adding hacking is easy enough as there is already a computer skill for such use. The careers are generic enough that they could be used (Marines, Navy, Journalist, Scientist, Drifter, etc) within the Infinity universe, but how to make it feel like you're playing in Infinity?

Sure you could set up the game to match the destinations and generaly feel, but I don't think it will ever be more than that.

I like Infinity for Post Humans, Karakuri's, Loup-Garous, Swiss Guard, etc, but how exactly can you put all that into an RPG without literally tossing all those characters into a group and saying "Now, get a long and go adventure!"?

[Pierzasty]

I like Infinity for Post Humans, Karakuri's, Loup-Garous, Swiss Guard, etc, but how exactly can you put all that into an RPG without literally tossing all those characters into a group and saying "Now, get a long and go adventure!"?

Mercenary list.

[kidterminal]

I love old traveler, but I don't think it would be suitable for Infinity.