Messages from the Far Havens

It looks as though I will have an opportunity to sneak in a little Infinity 2d20 for a few slots before the year is out. This wasn’t part of the plan, but we are looking to mix it up a bit with alternating fortnightly play, and I thought a nice contrast to Pathfinder 2e would be some space operatic factional cyberpunk. There might be some space in the game for ‘new’ players to mix in with the Thursday nighters.

Infinity is at the very crunchiest end of the 2d20 spectrum, an early incarnation of the system before they lightened it up with newer entrants such as Homeworld (another I’d like to get to the table). The game has had seven years of continuous books, squeezing the setting juices for a deep and conflict laden future that has an Altered Carbon edge to its pervasive AR, alien infiltrating, fragmented core. There’s a lot to take in! 

In fact its depths and the jagged edges of the crunchy system have always slightly unnerved me. The game might be a tingler, but I’m going to say a wary one. I have only ever run it at North Star convention for one shot play. Why do I do this to myself? Get a crunchy system and inflict it on innocent convention friends in the tightest of session formats? Honestly… And yet, to a sufficient extent, I have bossed the system into compliance and delivered some fun games with it. 

Online PC generator. Click image to explore…

Sometimes it is worth just going for it, and not worrying too much about the details. I have at least three printed camopaigns of material already, so diving in with some of that is the way to go. It further helps that Infinity has a lot of online support. The online character builder takes a lot of the complexity away whilst providing a guided journey through the lovely lifepath system A character is probably ab out 20 minutes away, with an exported PDF character sheet as a usable momento.

The beginnings of the Infinity 2d20 Setup on Role VTT

The lack of an integrated system on Role lightens the prep time. PCs and NPCs are mostly recorded off Role itself, with dice rolls and consumable resources initiated and recorded on the character sheet. More Role developments are incoming soon for the dice roller, which I’m hoping will include custom dice, useful for 2d20 games. Modiphius are already partnering with Role as a supported VTT where their content can be purchased and played. Dune, Fallout, Homeworld and Star Trek have received offical support, though I’m not expecting Infinity to get anything at this late stage in its published life cycle. I don’t really need anything anyway, though having someone else create maps, images and tokens would be sweet!  

Role also makes it super easy to publish a streamed game, with OBS doing the heavy lifting. Your OBS scene pretty much just has to have a Window Capture’ of the Role session browser tab, with some sound configured. Anything else is trimmings. I’m not a stream watcher (Glass Cannon Network are an exception and are awesome), or a stream content producer. I had a bit of a go, and was technically proved, but overall didn’t really work out. I’d like to showcase both Role and Infinity, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll find a group who would be happy to give that a go.

 I kind of appreciate that D&D4e is perhaps not the ideal game for Role VTT right now, particularly as I happen to play it tactically with a lot of map and tokens. We’ve been playing this game  on Role for just shy of two years, so have seen in a lot of the changes. Most of the updates have had limited impact on our play experience, so I’m looking forward to see where the tactical map side goes in this ‘theatre of the mind’ friendly VTT.

D&D4e Stonefang Pass Battle with my group

Overall, Role has supported our game really well. After quite a bit of effort I gave up on representing the full characters using my developed sheets, with PC development happening off Role but with shared dice rolls used and shared in the VTT. I think a more condensed display, pop out, and some other features might have kept everything in Role. Instead we make use of a few lighter supporting sheets to support initiative and dice rolls. With some glitches here and there, it has been great to have a stable video conference connection throughout our play over the two years. 

I’m looking forward to running more games in Role and to see how the platform develops throughout 2023. Homeworld 2d20 has ready assets on Role and other lighter games Two of my longer form games for 2023 will use Foundry VTT to squeeze some juice out of my hosting subscriptions that I have with Forge and Livekit on the Tavern. Coriolis has a good system on Foundry and premium assets ready to go. Trudvang could happen on either VTT as there is no system on Foundry. As it happens, I have created a small support sheet on Foundry, which will do most of the dice rolling, and manages the ‘Open Roll’ exploding, which Role does not. 

So, a thank you to Role for being there and supporting the biggest game of my life. Foundry will also feature as the gaming plans continue for 2023.

Something of a cazy notion to pre-order the Homeworld Revelations 2D20 RPG from Modiphius. I have plenty on the shelves already, from Traveller/Cepheus to Infinity 2D20, vectoring at full thrust past some excellent PbtA offerings, Scum & Villainy and lighting up some FFG/Edge Star Wars awesomeness. Ah well, I jumped in. In fact I also had a go at the originating RTS PC game to give me a flavour. I was unsurprised to find that I was wholly crap at it, but I got the idea.

This is probably my first, lighter end 2D20, based as it is on the Star Trek line, no doubt with some touches. Perhaps not the very lightest end, but much breezier than Infinity and housed in a 9.5/6.5″ digest sized book. I must say I am pleasantly surprised at the innovations that have come to the 2d20 stable since Infinity and Conan. It remains recognisably the same game but streamlined and honed to achieve some of the complexity of system with a simpler concept and word count. It is, perhaps, a little better explained than Infinity, though that isn’t saying too much.

I had wondered if the six Attributes and six Skills would make characters generically much the same, with minor variations in capability, whilst finding that ‘everyone can do everything’. This is cunningly mitigated by Focuses, Defining Aspects, and Truths and Talents. Focuses are suggested, but utimately freeform traits where, if a skill test succeeds, is within the skill value, and falls within the focuses’ influence, two successes are gained instead of one. This elegantly achieves the more complex 2d20 effect, without the need to keep track of focus values for the skills. It steps your character up to shine in particular situations. Defining Aspects are special Truths that can be used to gain Focus Points, most often to give you a dedicated critical for the skill task. Leverging these Aspects in play also provides Resource Units (RUs) for advancement. Talents provide specific rule benefits, in general and specific skill areas. For example, ‘Empathic’ gives you an additional d20 to Insight when determining the intentions or feelings of another character. Truths are freely expressed traits that can either provide an advantage or a complication, reducing or increasing the difficulty of a test by 1. These are used as part of scenes too. 

I like the way initiative works, with player side typically going first with one character and then handing over to adversaries to go and switching between throughout, moderated by Momentum or Threat spend to break that pattern. Usual options for holding, and spending Momentum to get an extra Major action. It looks like it will hang dynamically together really well. I may have to unlearn a few minor things to pick up the nuances of this tightly put together 2d20 ruleset.

The seven step lifepath will quickly create a Kushan character with some backstory and everything needed to get going. It looks simple and quick.  There’s also a ‘creation in play’ option, to record the very basics and find out more as you are playing the game. Nice. To round out the playable roster are supporting characters, quickly created and available to play if in the scene. I’m not sure if this is quite troupe play, but it is heading that way when you want to switch into the shoes of a haried flight specialist, or a troubled dealer on the lower decks.

I’ll be interested to see how Resource Units are spent in play, either upgrading characters, supporting characters or ships. Nice to use the RUs coined from the RTS PC game.

Starships are given a fairly comprehensve treatment in the game. Ships are rated on a scale of 1 to 6, ascending in size and power. Ships have 6 attributes, just like characters, but these are tailored to their role: Communications, Computers, Engines, Sensors, Structure, and Weapons. These are used directly in the game, replacing character attributes when using a skill that harnesses the ship capabilities. I have only skimmed, so need to get some play in to see how it all works out at the table. My surface scan has picked up lots of character actions (hoorah for action and things to do), simple starship combat rules, building on the mechanics that have come before, many starship stats with pictures, and a template set of ship creation rules. Plenty to go at.

The Historical and Society Briefings look to give a gamable set of information to underpin the setting. It’s good to see that these briefings are laced with Story Seeds to prompt adventure. I’m new to the Homeworld setting, so it looks pretty good to me, not least because it appears quickly digestible.

The book rounds out with sections on Gamemastering and Non-Player Characters, backed by a pretty comprehensive looking Index. At 332 pages they pack a lot into this book.  The GM pre-order bundle comes with a themed dice set, some cheat sheet handouts, counters, and my first digest sized landscape GM screen. Dinky, sweet, and maybe useful. 

I had wondered about expanding the game with some cool starship miniatures. It looks as though Modiphius have got that well covered with Homeworld Fleet command, a fast play boardgame of spaceship combat in the Homeworld universe. It comes with 101 starships with an expansion providing 100 more. You’d want to get them painted…

Crowdfunding will launch in November 2022, so not very long from time of writing. I’ll see what the damage to my Budget Attribute would be, expecting some immediate ‘Breaches’. What a combo that would be though!

Role VTT

The game has potential for broader re-use beyond the Homeworld setting, should you be interested. I might want to tighten some aspects of the game, such as what starship ‘short jumps’ actually meant. It might be there in the text. As it is, there is plenty of play potential at a rage of levels with this core game. I tend to gravitate to Foundry VTT these days for online play, but worth noting that the free Role VTT has a ready to play gaming room themed to Homeworld. The VTT is free to use and excellent for webcams, audio, and some sheets and dice tools around the edges. t would be the obvious place to start. It won’t calculate any of the Stress dice or successes, but you can eyeball that fairly quickly.

A fun romp of a space opera, starship based on an epic journey to the people’s homeworld against considerable odds.