PREVIEW: Gear Part 4
over 7 years ago
– Fri, Apr 07, 2017 at 11:10:17 AM
Hi guys here's a quick update we've just added part 4 of the Gear chapter to your Backerkit Account core book folders. Read more below!
NOTES FROM THE LINE DEVELOPER
[Start] Since releasing the still-very-rough-around-the-edges Final Assembly PDF last Friday, we've received a lot of really positive responses. I've heard from several people that they're firming up plans to get their first major campaigns up and running, and that's really exciting to hear. Backers, of course, already have access to the Circular File adventure from the final version of the Quickstart Rules, the original full-text version of Paradiso Countdown, and a draft version of the AWOL scenario by Nick Bate. Over the next few weeks we'll be releasing additional preview content from Adventures in the Human Sphere, an adventure anthology which will contain eleven scenarios -- one set in each of the eleven inhabited systems of the Human Sphere.
While you've all been reading the Final Assembly PDF, our layout and proofreading teams have been hard at work rendering it obsolete. Several hundred corrections and improvements have already been implemented alongside the major work of smoothing away the stitches and synchronising the whole book into one cohesive whole.
Last Friday we still had 5 short chapters that needed to receive final approval from Corvus Belli so that they could be included in the book. Since then, we have cleared approvals, editing, and layout on the final two chapters of PART IV: GEAR (named Infinity 4.4 Gear Part 4 of 4 - v5.pdf in your Core book folder). Later today we'll be releasing a preview of the fully-assembled Gear section (including the Lifestyles and Services chapters). That PDF will still have some significant errors in the Gear Catalogue tables (among other things), but I wanted to let everyone get a gander of everything the Gear section has to offer ASAP. (Particularly since I know how important that is for those gearing up to start campaigns, some as soon as this weekend.)
Once we've finalised the other three chapters and have fully completed our proofreading pass on the book to eliminate the known errors, we'll be releasing the full PDF to backers so that we can put a thousand eyes on it and ferret out all the other mistakes. (That's never fun because you've always convinced yourself that this time you've caught all the problems... and you never have. But the upside is a much better book at the end of the road.) And then it's just one short trip to the printers and we'll finally have this huge, lovely, amazing game in our hands!
I can't wait. [END]
More soon...!
Chris, Modiphius
PREVIEW: Infinity RPG Core Book!
over 7 years ago
– Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 11:21:02 PM
Hi everyone, for those of you with the core book in your pledge you'll find a preview in your Backerkit Account of the full RPG (it's the latest file loaded).
I want to say a massive thanks to our designers Thomas, Michal and Chris for pulling some major late nights over the last two weeks to make this happen along with the writing team and Justin for staying up for some stupid hours to see documents bounce from CB to editor to layout and back again several times.
Please read a little further first so you know what to expect!
Update from Line Developer
[Start] The file you're seeing today is very much a peek "inside the factory", so to speak. This is our "Final Assembly" PDF. After more than a year of releasing individual chapters as sneak peeks for the Kickstarter, this is the point where we have stiched together all those component parts. The result can be a little Frankensteinian (as you'll see), but it's very much the beginning of the end as we start the press process. It's at this point that we can begin to see where the rough edges are and how things need to be brought into alignment. Where did the headers misalign across files? Where did the fonts break? Where does the pagination not line up? And so forth.
Although this stage of the project is a familiar one for me, it's also very different from any other book I've worked on: The pace of approvals and revisions, along with our desire to keep all of our Kickstarter backers tuned into every step of our development process, has resulted in us having dozens and dozens of chapters and sections which are now all being brought together. (It's also dissimilar from how the future Infinity RPG books will work, as those will be following a more traditional "3 or 5 sections being brought together" process.) Due to the approvals process, there are also a few sections still to be dropped in which are either with Corvus Belli now awaiting approval or getting final tweaks our end.
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Life in the Human Sphere, Faction: Nomads, Star System: Human Edge, Gear: Lifestyle and Gear: Services
(Those of you have been following closely may be wondering where this "Gear: Services" chapter came from. It's actually the result of splitting the Lifestyles chapter into two parts, which was a decision made during the last week in order to improve utility. I'm actually really bummed you can't see Lifestyles yet, because there's some really cool stuff in there. Soon!)
As anticipated, our assembly process has caused a few "bugs" to crop up in the layout that need to be manually resolved. These primarily involve text overruns due to final art placement and other changes, including:
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Several Careers in the Lifepath System now overrun their text box by about half a sentence.
- The Bonus Damage tables on pg. 67 need to be repositioned.
- The Bonus Damage Tables on pg. 95 are missing. (Bonus damage is apparently cursed.)
- There are temporary spacing pages in place. (You'll see this particularly in Part 3.) The final adjustments to pagination will be made when we have final approval on the last couple of chapters from Corvus Belli (and can be confident we won't have to just change the pagination again).
There are also several other examples of the same sort of thing found throughout the text. Which brings me to my final point:
So many of our backers have given us so much amazing feedback, and I want to make sure that continues to happen because it really is invaluable to us. But... not today. We know this file has problems. The entire point of its existence is, in fact, to have those problems. I encourage you to join us in taking your first opportunity to see what the entire book will look like as it steps into its final form. I want you to share that journey with us; that's your right as the phenomenal backers of this project. But you can take a break from highlighting the errors for a little while.
... that's what the pre-press PDF will be for next week!
Oh! Also! If you look at nothing else, do take a moment to check out the last few pages of the PDF, because we've got an updated version of the Character Sheet plus work sheets for Adversaries, Remotes, and Geists lurking back there. Those you can and SHOULD give us feedback on right now!
--JA [END]
So enjoy the book, we're gearing up the printers and discussing the print process, schedules for the actual print job so we can keep things moving. We are are aware of feedback on the gear chapter so please bear with us, there's a lot of moving parts going on in the background to improve the book for you.
Next week we'll be dropping in the missing sections, working on the 'see page xx' references (once the page count is locked down) and the final job the index. Whilst that's happening we'll be doing the final proof reading and getting the cover proofed and printed out to check it for errors.
Once you get it downloaded you will notice the book is a massive 468 pages and this will increase with the missing sections so we've bumped up the book by more than 100 pages - we could have been more ruthless and cut this to stay within the original promised page count however we feel this is another bonus for the long long patience you've all shown.
I've let the team collapse in to their respective sleep coma's around the world to recuperate before the final stages next week so for now have a great weekend!
Chris, Modiphius
PREVIEW: Gamemastering & Gear Section 4.3
over 7 years ago
– Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 11:08:25 PM
Hi all short update tonight, another two whole sections in layout for you to review - as usual you will find them in your Backerkit Accounts.
Infinity 5.1 Gamesmaster
Infinity 4.3 Gear - Part 3 of 4 (there's a final section coming shortly)
This is another 43 pages of core book in layout so we're making amazing progress this last week. Please fire off feedback to [email protected] or post in the comments here.
CB have give us more updated information on the Ariadna so we're doing final updates to that and getting the last section of the Gear chapter wrapped up. Meanwhile one of our design team Thomas is working his way through the whole book making the corrections as he goes, tweaking the layout to fix any bugs, replacing artwork that was only placeholders etc. We're aiming to get you as close to a final build as we can by the weekend to look over whilst we do the last updates. If either of the two last chapters cause issues we'll plug away with them whilst we all do the final proof reading and get the printer geared up ready to work on the proofs.
Enjoy the latest chapters!
Chris, Modiphius
PREVIEW: Adversaries & Combined Civ Chapters Plus GM Chapter!
over 7 years ago
– Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:24:41 AM
Hi folks we have a massive info dump of over 90 pages of layout tonight to get your teeth in to plus a preview of the GM Chapter. You'll find these in your Backerkit Account
Core Part 5 - Game Master v3.1 - This is a word doc preview, it's in layout now but get us any error reports so we can correct when it's complete.
Alien 01 - Combined Civilisation - 11 pages of background PDF layout
Infinity Chapter 5 - Adversaries - 80 pages of PDF layout - enemies to fuel your games!
On all of these please submit error reports asap to [email protected] or post in the comments. We do have our own proof readers reviewing content but every extra pair of eyes on the layout helps.
Here's an update from Justin the Line Developer
[start] We're entering the final week! By Friday, we should be locking in the fully-assembled, PDF of the core rulebook. I hope you're all as excited to see it as I am! At that point you'll have the opportunity to give us one last round of feedback to help us correct the last lingering typos, during which we'll be sorting out the 'see page xx' references and index. Then it's literally off to the presses!
For over a year now you've all witnessed an amazing flurry of creativity as rules, factions, planets, and other chapters have been released in a dizzying, real-time preview of our progress. As we approach this goal line, however, I'd like to take a step back and talk a little bit about how this whole thing is going to come together.
The core book is broken into seven large sections:
INTRODUCTION
- Welcome to the Human Sphere
- Chronology of the Human Sphere
- Adventures in the Wilderness of Mirrors
- How to Play Infinity
PART I: CHARACTERS
- Lifepath System
- Skills & Talents
PART II: ACTION SCENES
- Action Core
- Warfare
- Infowar
- Psywar
PART III: THE HUMAN SPHERE
- Faction: Ariadna
- Faction: Haqqislam
- Faction: Nomads
- Faction: PanOceania
- Faction: Yu Jing
- Faction: ALEPH
- Faction: Corporations
- Faction: Mercenaries
- Faction: O-12
- Faction: Submondo
- Planet: Acontecimento
- Planet: Bourak
- Planet: Concilium
- Planet: Dawn
- System: Human Edge
- Planet: Neoterra
- Planet: Paradiso
- Planet: Shentang-Yutang
- System: Sol
- Planet: Svalarheima
- Planet: Varuna
- Alien: Combined Civilisation
- Alien: Tohaa
PART IV: GEAR
- Acquisitions
- Gear Rules
- Gear Catalogue
- Lifestyle
PART V: GAME MASTERING
- Game Mastering
- Adversaries
REFERENCE SHEETS / CHARACTER SHEET
INDEX
As backers, you've seen previews -- either in draft or PDF (or both) -- of more than 90% of this material. Now you can see how it's coming together. The few remaining gaps are the material surrounding Ariadna (where we ran afoul of the fact that the N3 Human Sphere book was released after we had originally written our Ariadna chapter; so we've been making sure that the new facts we know about USAriadna are properly incorporated into the faction, the planet, and the map) and Lifestyles (where we've been hammering out a really clear and accurate picture of what life on the planets of the Human Sphere is like at the day-to-day level). Obviously we're down to the wire on this material, but I'm confident that we'll be able to use the time remaining to make sure we have the best versions of those chapters possible for you. The GM Chapter should be out of layout in the next couple of days and we'll have the Dawn Map hopefully for you tomorrow too.
(If you want a little peek into my office is like right now, load up the music video for The Final Countdown.) [end]
That's it for today hope you enjoy the massive previews and fire off any error reports you can in the coming days!
Chris, Modiphius
PREVIEW: Gear Chapter Part 1 and 2 in Layout
over 7 years ago
– Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 03:44:15 PM
Hi folks please check your Backerkit account the first two parts of the Gear Chapter are in layout. There's a couple of placeholders for images we're finalising with CB but it would be great to get your comments. That's another 34 pages of the core book!
The files are called Infinity 4.1 - Gear - Part 1 of 3 ... and Part 2 of 3
Adversaries is with CB for approval - 76 pages including the Bostria Art Master characters and I hope to share that tomorrow for final checks.
As usual please post comments here or send error reports to [email protected] as soon as possible - we're aiming to do the build of the book by Wednesday.
The layout team are working on the final missing sections including the GM chapter, then we'll have a final assembly and the 'see page xx' references can be sorted out. You'll have a final chance to proofread whilst the index is done and then we'll get the proofing process underway with the printers. They do a full digital proof for us to check the colours, etc. This is our final chance to make changes for last minute errors before the print pressed start rolling.
Enjoy!
Chris, Modiphius
