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Anyone who has read any of my interviews will know that the Infinity Project started out as a table-top RPG some twenty-three years ago, taking shape in the living room of a couple of friends in Auburn, WA.
It began as a single chart, and went by the name "TAU Wars."
Over the next fifteen years, it evolved, becoming more complex and complete with every revision. Its greatest success as a "house" RPG came in the navy town of Bremerton--at one time encompassing as many as thirty players, half of whom played on a regular basis.
At the time it was known as "Multiverse Unlimited."
I can't begin to describe the long hours of work that went into it, nor to how many people a certain debt of acknowledgment is due. Though most of the hardcore design work was mine, the ideas and concepts sprang from the imaginations of upwards of a dozen people, including Charlie Angevine, Norman Edwards, Glenn Messner, Bill Lucas, Dusty Rhodes, Myron Connery, and sundry others who might prefer to remain unnamed.
Many of them would barely recognize what Infinity has become.
What this is all leading to is an invitation to those who might be interested to take the existing materials, along with the new information available in the books and forthcoming Infinity Bible, to revisit the RPG and craft it into a new gaming system that we can then publish and distribute to those who might be interested in exploring farther into the Infinity universe.
I wouldn't even object to multiple systems coming out of it--ranging from someone using the d20 open source system to someone who wants to refit my old percentile system for the new concepts revealed in the novels.
I'd love to see the Infinity RPG resurrected, even if I didn't necessarily recognize the new forms it took.
To that end, I have a Yahoo Group set up for this very purpose, to which I will begin uploading all the Infinity RPG material I have on hand. Those who are interested can join the group and discuss their thoughts with me and anyone else involved. It might take me a little while to get it all up and running, but that's my intention over the next couple of months at the outside.
Now let me add a little bit about gaming, and about RPGs in general. The term "gamer" used to refer to people like myself, those who played table-top systems like AD&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire, the Masquerade, etc... Now it encompasses those who play computer and video game consoles, as well as on-line text and graphical MUDs.
But any way you slice it, in my opinion, nothing out there compares to a good old fashioned table-top game. Why, you may ask? Simple. Versatility. Options. No matter how advanced the game, it's impossible for the player to do something that hasn't been foreseen by the programmers. Each and every one of them is limited in that way. As a gamer who prided himself on doing the unexpected, using resources in ways no one could have anticipated, I find that single limitation terribly and irrevocably distressing.
Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy computer RPGs. But, no, they're not nearly as enjoyable as a good table-top game. I can't spend half an hour discussing the tactical situation and how to stretch the written rules into absurd shapes never intended by the designers with another player while the game master glares at us for ruining his or her plans. Can't be done. And even if you do come up with a glitch or a bug to exploit, it's either against the rules or risks compromising the whole program. You're not using the rules in ways no one ever considered, you're going beyond them. Not the same at all.
Takes a good deal of the fun out of it. For me, anyway.
I find it terribly amusing that people still like to make fun of D&D players, as if we're all a bunch of asocial nerds who couldn't hack it in the real world. As if we all live in our parents' basements. Sure, we may be nerds, but in a country where 80% of the population hasn't bothered to read a book in the last year, I'm not sure that's any kind of insult. The world could use more problem-solving nerds, people who've been trained, or trained themselves to solve elaborate puzzles, solving problems with limited resources.
That's what the original Infinity RPG was designed for and I've been blessed to have had the chance to play with some of the most brilliant gamers I could ever imagine, folks who have as much a talent for tactical game-play as I do myself. There are few game masters, running very few systems, who haven't ended up slack-jawed and stunned by something I or one of my fellows have pulled in the midst of a game session.
I set out to design a system that celebrated that style and met with some success. Sure, hack and slash is possible, but not always advantageous. It pays to learn to think one's way through rather than charge in and let the chips fall as they may.
RPGs can be a teaching and learning tool, as well as one hell of a lot of fun. Since I intend for the Infinity RPG to follow many of the rules set out in my books regarding magic--that the primary limitations of any spell are knowledge and imagination, one might see how knowledge on the part of the player could be beneficial. Add that to the possibility of time-travel, or jumping from one possible Earth to another, where historical events change the whole scheme of things, you might see how that might be the case.
So my question is--how many folks are up to the challenge? My oldest son wants to design a computer and/or video game based on my books, but I truly believe it'll require far more computing power than we have now to do it justice. If he's as dedicated to this idea as I was to my writing, I have every reason to believe he'll be able to do it. Someday.
In the meantime, I'd like to see at least one new table-top system come out of it.
What say you?
Saje Williams
11-20-2008