Infinity Cheat Sheets

I made some cheat sheets for the Infinity RPG. Others (such as the excellent Jens Christian Ploug) have made more exhaustive sheets, which are worth checking out. These are simple handouts, somewhat lacking in info when compared to the awesome GM screen that's coming out and these other entries.

But I think they're pretty easy to read, and feel super legit to me. I faked our awesome layout guru's style well enough, I think. So yeah: they look slick, and should be a good handout for demo games, con games, new players, or people like me who can't keep all this stuff in their brain.

No more Teasing: Here are your HYPER LINKS  (they are actually pretty calm):

THIS IS THE VERSION FOR YOUR SCREEN

THIS IS THE VERSION FOR PRINTING though it works on your screen too

wooo, how 'bout that?

~Killstring

You're in the Danger Zone (2d20 Combat)

Zones! They're great. But for folks who are used to pulling out a measuring tape, it can be a bit of a transition. Combat in 2d20 is much more narratively dynamic than a lot of turn-based tactics games: there's a lot going on, and abstraction is part of what makes that go.

But first, let's talk about zone maps.

Talkin' 'Bout Zones

So, let's take a look at a cool piece of isometric art.

Awesome isomeric art courtesy of jgrainger.deviantart.com.

Pretty rad scene, right? Nice little cafe. What a great place to have a shootout! But to do that, we'll want to divy it up into zones. Looking at the art, I see six distinct areas of interest:

1. Outside
2. Center Tables
3. Couch area
4. Bar
5. Left 1-Top
6. Right 1-Top

Thinking in Inifnity terms, the chairs, tables, and glass probably provides Light Cover, whereas the bar provides Heavy Cover. 

So my zone map might look something like this: 

If this is too small, click here for a larger version.

What a wonderful place to get shot coffee.

Zones are Groups, not Just Distance

Obviously, distance plays a part in things. But zones are often full of stuff. In our above example, somebody on the north side and south side of the "Couch Zone" aren't next to each other, but moving around in that zone isn't a big deal.

So let's say that Miyamoto Musashi is trying to enjoy his latte in peace, but Joan of Arc is playing her French Canadian indie rock too loud. This being Infinity, shit's about to get real

So! Musashi wants to violently interact with Joan. He can shoot at her with his pistol (or throw a baguette at her, if he's not that angry): that's close range, so no penalties: though she is going to benefit from the light cover. Or, he could make his way over and punch Joan: that's actually easy too! Move past couches, vault over them, whatever: all that stuff is in close range: moving to any point within that zone is a free action. So vault that couch, and get within Reach: it's still a free action to get there. Then the punching can commence.

One thing to take away from this, is that they're not just standing there: they're moving around. Combat is dynamic: so just because someody's in a zone, that doesn't mean that they're standing there, making it easy to hit them, right? 

It's dynamic. Fluid. There's a lot of motion going on.

At Home on With the Range

But distance is a thing too. 

So after all this ruckus, the nice Hasassin Lasiq who runs the cafe has just had enough of these recreations wrecking her shop. So she pulls out her Viral Sniper Rifle, and takes aim.

Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

She's in the Bar zone, and they're in the Couch Zone, with Center Table Zone inbetween. So while it might be counter-intuitive to think of it, this is actually long range: perfect for a sniper. With no range penalties, Joan and Miyamoto are in some trouble: reluctantly, they agree to stop fighting, and settle their dispute with a game of dominoes. 

"But Killstring: that's awfully close for 'Long Range'"

Yep! That's the adjustment I was talking about. RPGs tend to happen in closer quarters than miniatures games: it's a different genre of expression, if you like. Just like how in a kung fu film, everybody knows how to block, but in a beat'em up video game, hardly anyone does. 

But more importantly, the long-range weapon is good at taking aim and firing in a precise manner: you wouldn't want to shoot it from the hip. So yeah, in the manga-inspired, kinetic action of Infinity, this is a perfectly reasonable range to fire a sniper rifle in.

"Ok, fine. But what about long Long Range? Does that still work?"

Yep! It's just about finding a shot.

So let's say that you're at a football field. (Non-American football, 'cause that's what I got art for)

https://phuymatric.deviantart.com/art/Basic-Isometric-Football-field-521360372. Pretty Cool!

That's a big open space! I'd say that each colored bleacher would be its own zone, each half of the pitch would be one, and the different sidelines would each be one too. With big zones like these, rounds might be a little longer, right? None of this D&D 3 seconds tomfoolery: this is cinematic. The rounds are as long as makes sense for what's going down.

On the topic of what's going down, Joan never paid her tab at the cafe. The poor Lasiq just wanted to retire in peace and make coffee: but she cannot abide by this insult. Thus, she hunts Joan to a football match. 

Joan likes to watch from the corner don't ask me why it is a mystery

So! Taking care not to shoot any of the players, the Lasiq takes aim. It's 3 zones away: that's Extreme range. It's a +1 to her difficulty, but that's nothing she can't handle. She takes aim, and the paintball hits, thoroughly embarrassing St. Joan during her day at the stadium. Mission accomplished.

If there weren't players on the pitch, the field might be one zone, so this might only be Long Range. It really depends on the scene. Bottom line: zones are full of stuff. That stuff, more than meters as the crow flies, determines how hard it is to get a bead on a target for ranged attacks, how easy it is to move, etc. People in 2d20 combat aren't sitting still: they're scrambling, moving, ducking for cover, and so on.

"So Wait, I have to make a map any time I wanna do stuff?"

Not at all! But it's probably a good idea to make a couple so that you get a feel for it. Zones are more art than science: I spend a lot of time saying "I think that's probably a zone, " and going from there. While you're likely to want visual representation every now and again, hopefully everybody gets enough of a feel for this that winging it becomes second nature.

"What was that? I think I zoned out."

It's cool, I'm zoned-out too. 

Anyway, hope that's useful! Perhaps next time, we'll talk about Quantronic Zones, for hacking adventures.

Until then, be excellent to each other!

~Killstring

Conflict in 2d20

(Or as I like to call it, The Infinity Engine¹)

Now that Infinity is finally in the hands of Kickstarter backers, folks are gearing up to run and play their first games. It's an exciting time!

This boy is very excited, and not at all asleep.

But with that excitement comes questions. Infinity has a couple subsystems - Acquisition, Combat, Hacking, Psywar - and this can seem kind of daunting at first glance. Systems like Shadowrun have trained a lot of gamers to brace for radically different mechanics in these subsystems, and while there can be merit to that approach, it understandably rankles people, and/or turns them off to the game.

"It's all one system. Learn one, and you know them all."

Understandably, some people have been asking about the different systems in Infinity, trying to make heads or tails of them. To that end, I've prepared this simple guide, but the most important thing to remember is that it's all one system. Learn one, and you know them all.

What do I mean by that? Read on.

The Core Mechanic

If you wanna do something in a 2d20 game, you roll... 2d20! Or 3, 4, 5, d20s, if you feel like adding extra dice to improve your odds, usually done by increasing Heat. You add the attribute and skill appropriate to the test together, and anything that rolls at or below that number is a success. Hooray for success! If you get more successes then necessary, you generate Momentum, which can be used to do all kinds of neat stuff. 

So that's the core. Pretty simple once you've done it a time or two: there are options at every stage, but it's as simple as:

1. Pick up your dice
2. Roll those dice
3. Compare results to a target number

... which should be pretty familiar to people who roll dice.

The Conflict Engine

The core mechanic can get you through just about anything. Depending on your playstyle, you might never use anything else. As an aside, I've absolutely run games with very story-focused players where treating Ballistics like any other skill check was the way to go². But we have these cool systems, and it'd be a shame to not use them. Thankfully, they're pretty easy to get the hang of as well.

Let's say that you have an obstacle, and you want to remove it. Great, let's inflict some damage; that'll do it. The setup here is basically the same.

1. Pick up your dice
2. Roll those Dice
3. Compare results to a target number

...with some added steps. In Infinity, damage is usually 1+ the total of your [CD} (those are the fancy d6s). So we need to roll those too.

1. Roll some fancy d6s (non-fancy is actually just fine)
2. Add up all the ones and twos, and note the sixes (those are Effects)

And that's it for your roll. Then we do stuff with it! 

Stuff

In general, conflict follows a simple process:

1. Take your Damage
2. Subtract [Soak]
3. Apply Damage to [Stress]
4. Possibly add [Harms]

Stress is your incidental damage track. Like HP in D&D or video games, losing it doesn't do anything, but it gets you closer to bad stuff. Harms are your bad stuff: you get them when you run out of stress, take more than 5 damage in a single hit, or both.

And that's it! Now you know everything.

But Killstring, weren't you going to explain combat, hacking, etc?

Yep! And I just did.

Because those are all the same.

Let's say you wanna punch an evil alien. It's pretty evil, so it deserves a sound thrashing. Just follow the above steps. Armour (and maybe Cover) is going to be your Soak, Vigour is your Stress, and Wounds are your Harms. 

But let's say you wanna instead, hack into a soda machine, to get some free soda. Rad. Follow the above steps. Security (and maybe interference) is going to be you soak, Firewall is your Stress, and Breaches are your Harms.

Rinse, repeat. Once you recognize the system, you can quickly handle all the subsystems. Even Buying gear is the same. To paraphrase Nathan Dowdell (who wrote the thing), you can think of a purchase as an attack against your own resources. The item's Cost is your damage, your Earnings is soak, your Cashflow is stress, and any Shortfalls are Harms. And if you wanna go nuts, Assets are kinda like Reloads. :D

How many d20s will this get me? "All of them, Mr. Okada." Then let us make it rain.

And that's basically it.

But what about Psyops, Quantronic Zones, all that stuff?

It's important, sure! But it's still the same thing. 

Physical combat takes place in physical zones. I'f I'mma punch the aforementioned evil alien, I need to walk over to them to do it. Same thing with Quantronic or Social zones. 

Think of it like a dungeon crawl. If the goal is for the adventurers to open the treasure chest, they don't just roll Knowledge: Dungeoneering and get the chest, right? They go through rooms. Some of those rooms have traps. Some of them have baddies to fight. Some have secret passages. 

A big hacking job is the same way. Literally. Draw up a cute little zone map. Decide what connects. Put some stuff in it. The hacker travels from their entry point, to the treasure chest, overcoming obstacles on the way.

Psyops are pretty much the same as well. It gets a little more abstract, but it's basically a social network dungeon crawl.

But Killstring! What if I don't want to do a dungeon crawl for every hack or persuasion?

Then you shouldn't. Honestly, if you do want to, you still maybe shouldn't. Would you model every fight as a dungeon crawl? If I want to just punch this guy, can't I do it? He's right there. Same logic applies elsewhere. There's no need to do a big Psyop to gain access to the CEO of SuperEvilMegacorp, if they're standing in the same line at the coffeeshop, right? I can just start talking. 

The extra systems are ways to do full-on infiltration runs in every aspect of the tripartite battlefield of Infinity. And another way that the combat system = hacking = social. 

Once you get a good feel for one, just keep in mind that the others are pretty much the same. If it ever gets confusing, go with what you know, and work backwards. I know plenty of folks have extensive dungeon crawling experience: put that to work in your hacking runs! I bet you'll be pleased with the results.

Anyway!

I hope that this was useful and/or entertaining to folks. Please feel free to comment or hit me up on G+ or Twitter if I can help clarify anything.

May your games be epic, and not too exhausting to run. 

Be excellent to one another

~Kilstring

* * *

1 - I am so sorry (I am not sorry).

2 - "I wanna shoot the mook in their stupid head." Okay, roll Ballistics, difficulty 1. "Two Hits!" You have shot them in their stupid head. It is now much stupider, due to ventilation. Bye-bye, mook. "Hooray!" Sometimes, that's all that you need.