A quick look at a big book: Infærnum

 

While calling Infærnum a big book is perhaps a stretch, the lavish 192 page hardback is certainly not a zine, and these are obviously the only two categories of book and thus it must be a big one. Published by Mind's Vision, Infaernum was originally written in (Brazilian) Portuguese by Caio Romero with graphic design by Raul Rinaldi. 

Unfortunately, I think the game suffers from being a translation, sentences are often clunky and unusually phrased in a way that does not feel like an intentional stylistic choice. This is a huge shame, as the book looks great, there has definitely been a significant investment in the presentation, so it would be great as if the crowdfunding could also have paid for another editing pass on the text. Fortunately it is generally clear, so it presents no obstacle to reading and playing the game, it just does not read particularly naturally.

The version I read was the deluxe Apocalypse Edition, which is a gorgeous tome, full of colours and with gilded edges, I was eager to dive in. Looking at the game, the obvious comparison is to Mörk Borg, which is indeed listed in the game's inspiration. However, any similarity here is only skin deep: both games are centred around an ongoing apocalypse, and have graphic design inspired by the aesthetics of metal music, however, delving deeper into the meat and bones of the game? they could not be more different.

The game's crowdfunding campaign page describes it as "a rules-light RPG (Role Playing Game) with an Old School feel (OSR) but narrative-driven, where you interpret characters in a pre-determined story." while its FAQ makes clear that the gameplay is very different from Mörk Borg. I was a bit sceptical of this claim: how do you make an OSR-feeling game so similar in content distinguish itself from Mörk Borg? The truth is, you don't: I'm not the OSR police, but I struggle to find anything that I would describe as in this game. Nova wrote a great post re-litigating the eternal question of what constitutes OSR (unfortunately, for democracy-related reasons, you can no longer vote for it in The Bloggies). The game is not really deadly, requiring rolling three sixes simultaneous sixes, or gradually accumulate 12 "dooms" for character death, and generally does not rely on players problem solving to overcome challenges, just on rolling successes on their dice.

The game essentially rests on just a single core mechanic: Whenever you want to do something with uncertain outcome, roll 3d6: a roll of 1 is a doom, meaning something bad happens, 2 and 3 are neutral, 4 and 5 are deeds, meaning your character successfully does something, and a 6 is a miracle, where something very good happens. If something positive is affecting the attempt each miracle will cancel a doom in addition to their normal effect, and vice versa for negative affects. Challenges have a difficulty number attached, and each deed will usually reduce it by one, when it reaches zero, the challenge is overcome. This is basically fine, though I do wish I had more ways to affect the dice pool. So far so storygame.

A lot of focus is also places on the game being playable both as a solo game, as well as GM-less and with a traditional GM+players structure. Its acknowledgements cite Ironsworn as "the best and most complete game" the designer has ever seen, so I imagine there is a fair amount of inspiration taken from there (though I have not read it, so I cannot say for sure). While this is absolutely possible from the rules at hand, I think it betrays a lack of focus and structure that generally plagues the game, at least in my eyes.

The game takes place over the last six days of the world, ending with the apocalypse (and a single day in the aftermath, maybe). It is clearly based on the Christian biblical apocalypse, devoting a day to each of the four horsemen, before the final confrontation before the promised land. At least that's what's presented as the prophecy that forms the bulk of the game's structure, which it is very quick to tell you that you can disregard in part or entirely. This is, I think, a manifestation of the game's greatest weakness. The author has placed a lot of emphasis on the fact that this is a toolbox for building your own apocalypse. He wants to give the player(s) total freedom, and thus the game ends up not providing very much.

Each day of the apocalypse, seemingly the main driving force of the game, presents a d6 table with some vague prompts related to what is happening. It is possible that these actually work well in play, but in isolation, they seem too vague an disconnected to be particularly useful or inspiring: examples from day four of the apocalypse (associated with Famine) include "Villages are being plundered by a band proclaiming themselves The Justice.", "For some reason, people are showing cannibalistic desires.", and "A gluttonous noble musters an army to charge taxes that must be paid in food." If I had a bit more setting to latch these onto, these could be excellent little adventure seeds, but the game leave all of this worldbuilding to the player(s), offering just some simple oracles to answer any questions and give inspiration. When faced with a question about the world, the game asks you to roll a d6, where a 4 or higher means yes, and three or lower means no (a modifier can be added or subtracted if one of the answers seems more likely). If inspiration rather than answers are what you seek, the game encourages you to use its two d36 tables together: one for verbs, one for nouns. They offer words such as "increase", "expose", and "increase", and "home", "anger", and "faith", respectively. The game asks you to "Put together one of the results of the verb table with the one from the noun table and interpret the sentence created. Use the first idea that pops into your mind and try to understand what it may mean in the narrative." And while this is all well and good in theory, I find the words too generic and vague for this to sound particularly useful. I am reminded of Nova's takeaway from her Critique Navidad blogstravaganza, where she remarks that many games present prompts that are too broad and generic.

I think this is the biggest issue with Infærnum: in its eagerness to let me make any apocalypse I want, it neglects giving me the building blocks to do it with. This is a huge shame, because the core idea of the game is very compelling to me: fighting demons and omens in the final days of the world as I try to find the promised land, my only hope of survival, is a killer pitch, and I am sure this game could be immensely fun to play with the right GM. However, as presented, it just doesn't offer enough to get my juices flowing. I wish it would tough, because the art pieces really make me want to dive into their world.