Interaction with terrain features is gone, no more lockpicker hacking program, no more dropships, elevators, no more synchronisation with civilians, no more civilians to begin with. Infinity has tended towards tournament play for a long time, N4 seems to be an acknowledgement of that. It looks like in the future all games will focus on this aspect of the game. Funny problem that is caused by this is that some of the classified cards demands synchronisation. Let's see how they get around that, maybe they exchange the card. Sadly, this shift also means the end of 20x20. This mission system was first created to make missions simpler. This reason has been removed as the ITS missions are simple to play now. What was left was to stress the narrative possibilities of the game. Now the N4 rules do not fit the requirements of 20x020 anymore. Sure, the old time gamers could still apply the old rules of synchronisation, etc, but new players won't and it would be very awkward to include those N3 rules into a N4 20x20 document. Maybe CB will release an expansion about narrative gameplay in the future, including those rules. It would be great, but would certainly take a while for such a book to happen. There is probably not enough of a market for that, because people seem to prefer strictly competitive tournament-style play.
There's a lot to play with via Scenario Special Rules, since those allow you to write exceptions to almost any rule in the game. From what I've seen, narrative play is well-liked among people who can get involved, but scheduling difficulties can make long-term campaigns or narrative leagues difficult to run, and it is always hard on the organiser due to the high upfront and ongoing workloads involved in running a good game. I don't imagine we'll see another official campaign book again, at least for a long time, but I'd still be willing to take a shot at homebrewing something to GM in N4 if I could get reliable player numbers.
Considering how rushed the rulebook seems to have been? I think there's reasons. Not good reasons, and I'd almost call them shitty excuses, but there's at least one plausible explanation.
If there is a reason the rulebook feels rushed, then there is also reasons to cut stuff out of it to reduce the amount of work and finish the product more on time.
The civilians can be found in the ITS11 rules on page 8. I guess CB forges their narrative in the ITS seasons and will show the neccessary skills there.
The rulebook does not feel rushed. You are adding your own narrative. Narrative rules being put into the rules with those missions is much better than the core game. Not every player is going to play ITS. Sometimes they are just going to play games. And keeping the narrative rules in narrative missions is part of that.
Putting the narrative rules into the ITS module or a narrative-play module is a good idea. @prophet of doom , 20x20 games has always ended up having great narrative for me. I would love to see you take it in the more-narrative direction now that the N4/ITS combination does seem to be squeezing into a tourney-rules box. Thanks for all the great work to date!
ITS 11 was the last season, wasn t it? Good point. Cb may end up putting such rules into the ITS tournament file. They obviously wanted to save on paper with the rule books, otherwise the tohaa and fireteams wouldn t get a separate document and the print wouldn t be that small. And yes, cb wants to use the ITS seasons and their annual campaign to forge their narrative.
I would love, love, love CB to release a compendium or narrative play book. Something that keys off the major battles in Infinity for casual fans to focus on the story and the world of infinity. I'm talking in a similar vain to Warhammer 40K or Age of Sigmar. There are many pivotal moments in Infinity and some of these were done in conjunction with Beasts of War online campaign leagues - but I'm talking about more casual scenarios that provide a guide for players to experiment and imagine their own offline narrative missions, giving us examples and suggestions, calling back to the "Operation" boxes stories and compiling all those PDF files that were available online from CB. I think there's a lot of potential in an expansion book for something like this.
How is a book like that supposed to differ from collecting the missions published in ITS over the years, or handing a player a copy of Campaign Paradiso?
@prophet of doom would love to see your 20x20 expanded with those scenario rules and released for N4. I truly believe it is something needed for the more casual gamers.
Campaign Paradiso is an old mission book. I meant that the campaigns can be reimagined, or revamped for N4 rules. If a collection of revamped but older historic missions bother you then I recommend the book be about new narrative story lines, or as yet unseen story lines. Even so, a campaign book to aid players construct storylines for narrative driven play would be a welcome thing for gamers like me. Warhammer has tremendous success with its focus on narrative campaigns. Suggestions for story " sauce" to really spice up the objective of what players are fighting for or fighting over.
You seem to be missing my question entirely. Suppose someone went through and updated the Paradiso campaign missions to N4. And updated all of the ITS and Dire Foes missions to N4. Is that sufficient narrative content, or did you want something else?
What I would love to see is a book that has some extra rules delving deeper into terrain rules, rules for buildings, for scenic structures, for vehicles such as dropships. A few hacking programs could be included as well that allow to interact with the buildings. The rules for civilians should be included in that book as well. Then, of course, a narrative mission campaign a la Paradiso could form the bulk of such a book. This is however, just wishful thinking. I doubt that CB has any plans or even capacity for such a project.
do you think I should copypaste the N3 rules for civilians and dropships into the 20x20 document and shape up the rest of the missions to the N4 wording?
Yes. For starters. When you are comfortable with the N4 ruleset, update the civvie and dropships rules as needed. Maybe CB will 'borrow' your updates for the official ruleset. I for one enjoy 20x20. I enjoyed YAMs in the N2 days. I suspect that CB will publish rules updates that accompany their Narrative Events, like TAGline, Treason and Xenotech, and probably use the re-introduction of retired factions --if they are re-introduced at all -- to introduce more "Casual Games" scenarios and supporting rules to test rules, and of course in ITS 12 whenever that releases. November 19th according to the CB store, for the release of the tournament pack.
Just to bump this thread. Our small community was a bit burned out with ITS missions, so we played a couple of 20x20 missions with friends over the weekend, it was a blast! Now we are even thinking about campaign!
As soon as a game has a "standard" tournament format most players tend to play it. Btw, the ITS missions are more divers than most tournament format (like ITC or WTC in 40k, or official games of ASOIAF etc ... ). I would love them to include more exotic missions in the pack. But it shouldn't stop you from playing more narrative games with spec op etc ... Last time we were 3 players and came our own house made scenario. One player starts in the middle and has a civilian with 3 orders of his own each turn coming from one side of the tabble and has to make him cross the table. The two other players can synchronize it to prevent it from receiving order. Paradiso campaign / daedalus fall book is full of such funny missions
