Post by Adam on Apr 16, 2009 14:40:51 GMT -5
It's short, it's Star Wars, and it's gone from zero to fully fledged in about two months. Say hello to Infinite Frontier! An entirely unexpected side project that I just had to do. Judging that it wouldn't take anywhere near as long to write, I reckoned I could do IF before Wraithsight without suffering too badly for it. As it is, it's been worth it, because I learnt quite a bit about game design and came up with some new mechanics during the process (and I haven't even played it yet).
Infinite Frontier came about when I and a friend of mine at uni were sitting in my room playing Battlefront 2 and talking about Star Wars. Tom mentioned that he'd played the Lord of the Rings game in past, and thought briefly about making a Star Wars game. I agreed that it'd be pretty neat to make a Star Wars tabletop game based around the way Battlefront 2 played and worked. Half a minute later, the action point system sprung into my head fully formed (lightsaber blocking and everything), and it was too good to pass up.
Challenging myself to write something so simple and compact that it would fit into 20 pages, I set about my task. I've half succeeded, in that the army lists don't fit (although the whole thing might fit into 30 pages, if you take out the army list examples). TTG rules writing being what it is, you have to include explanations and exceptions and statements that cover all the possible angles.
As I mentioned, the idea that grew into Infinite Frontier (and in fact pretty much runs it, as everything other than a model's normal movement and a couple of abilities is done during actions) was the action point mechanic. You hear about action points being a horrible mechanic that slows down games and makes them fiddly or difficult to play smoothly, and indeed, the couple of rulesets I've seen that use them either do it terribly (Adeptus Titanicus) or are massively complicated (Inquisitor). Infinite Frontier's action system is very simple, and hopefully, quite elegant on the table. Your model or unit moves, then spends its action points. Typically there are one to three of these.
For basic units, with one action point, it emulates how a unit performs in most games: the unit usually has two options, run or attack. There's no charge move in Infinite Frontier, as it doesn't really seem Star Wars-y to do it that way (and I was going for a feel similar to Battlefront 2, if you recall), but there will be one in the 40K mod. That's by the by. Troops rarely have other actions that they can perform apart from the basic ones, but those still offer plenty of options. Suppressive Fire and Cover Me let you slow enemy units down or hold off encroaching infantry while the unit's specialists pick out heavier targets. Take Cover lets the unit take greater advantage of the concealment afforded by terrain (or other units...). Disengage lets you move outside close combat if you get stuck - although on units with one action point this isn't amazingly useful, as you don't go very far and can't do anything with your newfound freedom.
For units with two action points, you not only have all those options, but you have the versatility of being able to pick two. Run and shoot? Check. Suppress one unit, attack another? Check. Kill what you're engaged with and then take cover against retaliation? Check. Then there's Veteran, a rule that lets you spend a single action point before you move, and makes units even more versatile. Elite units occasionally have other actions they can use, but mostly, their 2 Actions are there to let them kill stuff. Vehicles (usually sporting Ac 3) can't perform quite so many different actions due to their size or the redundancy of such; Disengage is pointless when you're six metres high, as you can just walk past whatever's engaging you, Take Cover is kind of difficult for the same reason, and so on. They do have plenty of firing options though, with the rules allowing models to target a different enemy with each action.
Then there's Heroes... and here's where it gets interesting. Heroes have a lot of extra possibilities. Command, which allows a nearby unit to immediately perform an action. Lightsaber Block, which keeps your Jedi alive - each action spent blocking increases the model's Swiftness by one point. Force Leap, a useful movement that lets the Jedi jump out of combat and over things in its way. Various other Force powers - push, pull, saber-throwing, choke, Sith lightning - that every Jedi has at least two of. Even more Force powers and abilities that most Heroes have; it's a rare Hero that doesn't have at least one extra action or force power in its profile, such as Qui-Gon Jinn's Pacifist and Meditation, or Count Dooku's Flight and Steadfast Command. Deciding where to spend those usually-three action points is crucial to your gameplan, as each Hero is a highly valuable piece - whether for its damage output or its tactical abilities.
So I think that works. It's easy for me to add additional things that a unit can do, whether in its profile or in the core rules themselves. I don't have to put in "Instead of shooting..." or "After movement..." or anything of that sort; I just say it's an action and it fits right into the ruleset. And no other system could make Heroes work quite the same way; I could do the other stuff by application of some complex special rules, but attempting that on Heroes would cause rules meltdown, methinks. ;D
There are a few other interesting touches in Infinite Frontier that stand out, mostly because of sheer unusuality. One of these is the close combat rules. There are no charges, no combat resolution, no anything. If you end a movement within 2" of an enemy model, you are in close combat. All that means is that you can't be targeted by stuff that isn't in CC with you and you have to target stuff that's in CC with you. Melee weapons are merely ordinary weapons with a 2" range that let you move 1" if you hit a target and allow you to choose exactly which models your attacks hit if you so wish. Oh, and you can't normally move out of CC without using a disengage action. That's pretty much it! Yes, you can shoot in close combat! (FPS feel, remember.) Doing this not only keeps the page count down but makes the game simpler, and avoids games passing without any melee at all. Close combat is no longer the thing to avoid if you don't have rending claws or a powerfist; it lets you lock down an enemy unit with a superior one and destroy it without fear of being interrupted (well, until someone else joins the melee, of course). Also, a basic infantry unit being able to fire its blasters at a Jedi that's engaged it make them a credible threat to said lightsaber-wielding warrior pacifist, and it's an incautious Jedi that gets into melee without using at least one Lightsaber Block.
Another is the statline. Infinite Frontier has a very simple statline of only six stats. The most obvious differences from the norm are the lack of a Morale stat - IF has only the merest vestige of a morale system in the Hearts of Rubber rule - and the lack of a separate melee/ranged skill stat. Skill caters for both. After all, so few units actually have melee weapons - let alone melee *and* ranged weapons - that two stats would be redundant, especially as half the time they'd be equal anyway (look at 40K, where the only ones with WS =/= BS are Orks, Nids and Grey Knights - all easily dealt with with the application of special rules, as the WS-BS difference is usually standard).
The lack of a morale system is probably puzzling some of you. I have a few reasons for it. It's partly there because of the computer game playstyle - nobody runs away in Battlefront 2, or indeed, any other FPS I can think of; certainly your character never breaks away from your control to flee in terror from his foes. It's partly there because nobody runs away in panic in any of the Star Wars movies, except the Gungans (who, as you may guess, get Hearts of Rubber).
It's mostly there (or rather, not there), though, for two gameplay reasons. One, morale systems usually either do little or nothing to half the armies in the game - there's always a fearless army (Nids, Cryx, Undead, and in IF's case it would be the CIS) - and two, because it breaks up the game and is always fiddly to write out. Duel of Steel had a morale system until recently, when during a playtest game a mech took some damage, broke and ran off. It still had a solid amount of damage left, and watching it go gave me a bad feeling. That wasn't a victory on the firing mech's part. It removed a fighting model from the game for no real reason, probably leaving his three teammates wondering "WTF?", and spoiled the feel of the game a bit. So I got rid of it, and numerous lines and pages of crap were trimmed from the game in the process; you'd be surprised how much space you have to devote to a mechanic that occasionally rears its ugly head to spoil someone's day. I thought Infinite Frontier would play just fine without one, so I left it out.
Putting in arcs of vision in a game of this scale is probably an unusual and slightly unnecessary step, but it took up surprisingly little room and allows you to get an amusing one-up on a target by encircling it. It'll need some favourable playtesting results before it's in for definite, but it's in there for now, at least.
The weapons are also very simple. A weapon only has two stats: Range (which is 'Melee' for melee weapons) and Power. Special rules take care of all kinds of interesting variations. I'm quite pleased with how comprehensive this system is; while writing the CIS army list I think I only needed to add extra special rules to two or three weapons, and those were simple enough. I didn't include a Shots stat because there are different ways a weapon can fire more than once. Multiple Attack is always on, but is rare, representing multiple weapons or weapons with multiple blades/barrels (like Darth Maul's doublesaber and the twin blaster cannons on an AAT). Burst Fire is optional when firing, and fires multiple shots but at a -1 to hit. It's the difference between pressing the trigger once and holding it down.
The rules for different unit types - five of them - fit onto one page, apart from the Jedi/Sith force powers, which are another page. The vehicle rules are succinct, only taking up 19 lines (compare that to the entire chapter on vehicles in the 40K rulebook, or the 4-and-a-half pages on warjacks spread throughout the Warmachine Mk2 beta rules... not bad, eh ;D). I'm definitely pleased with that.
Overall, the aim is for a quick, simple and adaptable system - it shouldn't be difficult changing IF to work as a 40K ruleset (a charge action and maybe some perils-of-the-warp-type psychic power rules are probably all that's needed), and I have a big points calculator spreadsheet so army list writing is a little less traumatic than it could be. Only playtesting will tell on how smooth IF is. We shall see.
Infinite Frontier came about when I and a friend of mine at uni were sitting in my room playing Battlefront 2 and talking about Star Wars. Tom mentioned that he'd played the Lord of the Rings game in past, and thought briefly about making a Star Wars game. I agreed that it'd be pretty neat to make a Star Wars tabletop game based around the way Battlefront 2 played and worked. Half a minute later, the action point system sprung into my head fully formed (lightsaber blocking and everything), and it was too good to pass up.
Challenging myself to write something so simple and compact that it would fit into 20 pages, I set about my task. I've half succeeded, in that the army lists don't fit (although the whole thing might fit into 30 pages, if you take out the army list examples). TTG rules writing being what it is, you have to include explanations and exceptions and statements that cover all the possible angles.
As I mentioned, the idea that grew into Infinite Frontier (and in fact pretty much runs it, as everything other than a model's normal movement and a couple of abilities is done during actions) was the action point mechanic. You hear about action points being a horrible mechanic that slows down games and makes them fiddly or difficult to play smoothly, and indeed, the couple of rulesets I've seen that use them either do it terribly (Adeptus Titanicus) or are massively complicated (Inquisitor). Infinite Frontier's action system is very simple, and hopefully, quite elegant on the table. Your model or unit moves, then spends its action points. Typically there are one to three of these.
For basic units, with one action point, it emulates how a unit performs in most games: the unit usually has two options, run or attack. There's no charge move in Infinite Frontier, as it doesn't really seem Star Wars-y to do it that way (and I was going for a feel similar to Battlefront 2, if you recall), but there will be one in the 40K mod. That's by the by. Troops rarely have other actions that they can perform apart from the basic ones, but those still offer plenty of options. Suppressive Fire and Cover Me let you slow enemy units down or hold off encroaching infantry while the unit's specialists pick out heavier targets. Take Cover lets the unit take greater advantage of the concealment afforded by terrain (or other units...). Disengage lets you move outside close combat if you get stuck - although on units with one action point this isn't amazingly useful, as you don't go very far and can't do anything with your newfound freedom.
For units with two action points, you not only have all those options, but you have the versatility of being able to pick two. Run and shoot? Check. Suppress one unit, attack another? Check. Kill what you're engaged with and then take cover against retaliation? Check. Then there's Veteran, a rule that lets you spend a single action point before you move, and makes units even more versatile. Elite units occasionally have other actions they can use, but mostly, their 2 Actions are there to let them kill stuff. Vehicles (usually sporting Ac 3) can't perform quite so many different actions due to their size or the redundancy of such; Disengage is pointless when you're six metres high, as you can just walk past whatever's engaging you, Take Cover is kind of difficult for the same reason, and so on. They do have plenty of firing options though, with the rules allowing models to target a different enemy with each action.
Then there's Heroes... and here's where it gets interesting. Heroes have a lot of extra possibilities. Command, which allows a nearby unit to immediately perform an action. Lightsaber Block, which keeps your Jedi alive - each action spent blocking increases the model's Swiftness by one point. Force Leap, a useful movement that lets the Jedi jump out of combat and over things in its way. Various other Force powers - push, pull, saber-throwing, choke, Sith lightning - that every Jedi has at least two of. Even more Force powers and abilities that most Heroes have; it's a rare Hero that doesn't have at least one extra action or force power in its profile, such as Qui-Gon Jinn's Pacifist and Meditation, or Count Dooku's Flight and Steadfast Command. Deciding where to spend those usually-three action points is crucial to your gameplan, as each Hero is a highly valuable piece - whether for its damage output or its tactical abilities.
So I think that works. It's easy for me to add additional things that a unit can do, whether in its profile or in the core rules themselves. I don't have to put in "Instead of shooting..." or "After movement..." or anything of that sort; I just say it's an action and it fits right into the ruleset. And no other system could make Heroes work quite the same way; I could do the other stuff by application of some complex special rules, but attempting that on Heroes would cause rules meltdown, methinks. ;D
There are a few other interesting touches in Infinite Frontier that stand out, mostly because of sheer unusuality. One of these is the close combat rules. There are no charges, no combat resolution, no anything. If you end a movement within 2" of an enemy model, you are in close combat. All that means is that you can't be targeted by stuff that isn't in CC with you and you have to target stuff that's in CC with you. Melee weapons are merely ordinary weapons with a 2" range that let you move 1" if you hit a target and allow you to choose exactly which models your attacks hit if you so wish. Oh, and you can't normally move out of CC without using a disengage action. That's pretty much it! Yes, you can shoot in close combat! (FPS feel, remember.) Doing this not only keeps the page count down but makes the game simpler, and avoids games passing without any melee at all. Close combat is no longer the thing to avoid if you don't have rending claws or a powerfist; it lets you lock down an enemy unit with a superior one and destroy it without fear of being interrupted (well, until someone else joins the melee, of course). Also, a basic infantry unit being able to fire its blasters at a Jedi that's engaged it make them a credible threat to said lightsaber-wielding warrior pacifist, and it's an incautious Jedi that gets into melee without using at least one Lightsaber Block.
Another is the statline. Infinite Frontier has a very simple statline of only six stats. The most obvious differences from the norm are the lack of a Morale stat - IF has only the merest vestige of a morale system in the Hearts of Rubber rule - and the lack of a separate melee/ranged skill stat. Skill caters for both. After all, so few units actually have melee weapons - let alone melee *and* ranged weapons - that two stats would be redundant, especially as half the time they'd be equal anyway (look at 40K, where the only ones with WS =/= BS are Orks, Nids and Grey Knights - all easily dealt with with the application of special rules, as the WS-BS difference is usually standard).
The lack of a morale system is probably puzzling some of you. I have a few reasons for it. It's partly there because of the computer game playstyle - nobody runs away in Battlefront 2, or indeed, any other FPS I can think of; certainly your character never breaks away from your control to flee in terror from his foes. It's partly there because nobody runs away in panic in any of the Star Wars movies, except the Gungans (who, as you may guess, get Hearts of Rubber).
It's mostly there (or rather, not there), though, for two gameplay reasons. One, morale systems usually either do little or nothing to half the armies in the game - there's always a fearless army (Nids, Cryx, Undead, and in IF's case it would be the CIS) - and two, because it breaks up the game and is always fiddly to write out. Duel of Steel had a morale system until recently, when during a playtest game a mech took some damage, broke and ran off. It still had a solid amount of damage left, and watching it go gave me a bad feeling. That wasn't a victory on the firing mech's part. It removed a fighting model from the game for no real reason, probably leaving his three teammates wondering "WTF?", and spoiled the feel of the game a bit. So I got rid of it, and numerous lines and pages of crap were trimmed from the game in the process; you'd be surprised how much space you have to devote to a mechanic that occasionally rears its ugly head to spoil someone's day. I thought Infinite Frontier would play just fine without one, so I left it out.
Putting in arcs of vision in a game of this scale is probably an unusual and slightly unnecessary step, but it took up surprisingly little room and allows you to get an amusing one-up on a target by encircling it. It'll need some favourable playtesting results before it's in for definite, but it's in there for now, at least.
The weapons are also very simple. A weapon only has two stats: Range (which is 'Melee' for melee weapons) and Power. Special rules take care of all kinds of interesting variations. I'm quite pleased with how comprehensive this system is; while writing the CIS army list I think I only needed to add extra special rules to two or three weapons, and those were simple enough. I didn't include a Shots stat because there are different ways a weapon can fire more than once. Multiple Attack is always on, but is rare, representing multiple weapons or weapons with multiple blades/barrels (like Darth Maul's doublesaber and the twin blaster cannons on an AAT). Burst Fire is optional when firing, and fires multiple shots but at a -1 to hit. It's the difference between pressing the trigger once and holding it down.
The rules for different unit types - five of them - fit onto one page, apart from the Jedi/Sith force powers, which are another page. The vehicle rules are succinct, only taking up 19 lines (compare that to the entire chapter on vehicles in the 40K rulebook, or the 4-and-a-half pages on warjacks spread throughout the Warmachine Mk2 beta rules... not bad, eh ;D). I'm definitely pleased with that.
Overall, the aim is for a quick, simple and adaptable system - it shouldn't be difficult changing IF to work as a 40K ruleset (a charge action and maybe some perils-of-the-warp-type psychic power rules are probably all that's needed), and I have a big points calculator spreadsheet so army list writing is a little less traumatic than it could be. Only playtesting will tell on how smooth IF is. We shall see.
