Infinity The Game

Originally shared by Eloy C

Eloy’s gaming progress report for April and May 2016:

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

1) Still playing A Song of Ice and Fire. I’m playing Ser Owen Halcyon, Lord of House Halcyon in the Riverlands. This is a great group, with some nice roleplaying. We had a bunch of surprises over the last couple of sessions, and my character is trying to adapt from being a dumb (but very deadly) Knight to Lord of a House. Had run in with Countess Olenna of Highgarden… nothing bad could come of that… 😛

2) Up to session 17 of From Distant Shores, my Burning Wheel game. Started Chapter 2 and everybody is super excited. Have run a tourney with joust and grand melee, a banquet, a lot of political maneuvering. Spies, arson, knife fights (2), an ambush, an assassination attempt, interrogations… this game is easily the best I’ve ever been involved in. Tons of fun.

3) Finished playing Dogs in the Vineyard. It was a very nice ending, with one of the PCs dying in the process of helping rid the town of demonic possession. We had a nice epilogue for my character who somehow managed to win a Healing conflict to survive his grave wounds.

4) Started playing My Life With Master, with the same group as DitV, but with a new GM. Interesting game. Character creation was fun, echoing concepts from the Saw series of movies, set somewhere in a remote mountain village in Italy. Our new GM is FANTASTIC roleplaying the master… it’s like watching improv theater. It’s fascinating to watch. The gameplay is not as grueling as I’d thought it’d be. I’ve had zero bleed from the abuse that my character is taking. It’s like watching a movie. And the Overture scenes are nice… sweet and sincere… we’ll see how it goes from here on…

5) Have played 5 sessions of my second Burning Wheel game: Burning Cabal, with the all-apprentice sorcerer crew. It’s been fun, though sessions are slow. We must be doing something right, though, as the game has now become weekly.

6) On the Videogame front, I’ve started playing XCOM 2, which is basically https://www.infinitythegame.com/ made into a videogame. Seeing as how I love Infinity, this is an excellent videogame for me. Turn-based, which negates my natural klutziness and poor reaction speed. Very immersive. The soldiers have got their own randomly generated names, nationalities and looks. As they level, the game assigns them nicknames. It gets to the point where they become individuals. In spite of being able to save multiple times, your guys still get hurt and killed, so there’s that element of realism. I’m definitely NOT ready for the Ironman version of the game, where you can’t save in combat.

7) Read of all Mark Smylie’s Artesia comics, which are hard to come by. So sad that he never finished those. The worldbuilding is fantastic. After reading the comics, I read all the lore from the Artesia: Adventures in the Known World, and I just love the setting. It’s so rich and vivid, particularly given that the comics have brought it to life. After that, I’ve started reading Mark Smylie’s novel: The Barrow, which is the story of Artesia’s brother, Stjepan (who’s also appeared in the comics.) I don’t know how hard it is for people who don’t already know the lore to pick it up from the novels, but having read the comics and the game, it’s a great read. It’s VERY NSFW, even more so than the comics themselves (which were pretty graphic too), but the world is just so real and interesting.

8) Started watching The 100 on Netflix, recommended by Paul Beakley . First 2 episodes are, as Paul has said, there to weed out the weak-minded watchers. (Meh, this is just more teenage CW stuff), and then episode 3 hits you with the Apocalyptica right in the face… Granted, there’s hints that this isn’t just your regular CW stuff from episode 1, but there’s character death on levels that would make G.R.R. Martin proud. It goes from teenage drama to Lord of the Flies real quick. I’m only a dozen or so episodes in, but I’m loving it.

How about you? What have you been up to?

https://www.infinitythegame.com