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.