This is going to be a lengthy post but I feel there is a topic that we the players of Infinity or more accurately the people buying stuff from Modiphius need to raise with them. Please do not take this the wrong way I am trying to be constructive here and I am a staunch supporter of Modiphius and the 2d20 Infinity books.
But the latest two books (Mercenaries and Paradiso) have really caused me to stop and think about where the Infinity line is going.
Both these books on their own are decent products. I hope some of the formatting issues with the Mercenary PDF is corrected for when it hits print, thing like that are incidental. Disappointing that the PDF’s we get don’t have those corrections but manageable, what really irks me is the increasing frequency that the books are reprinting material from other supplements rather than giving us new options.
Take the Mercenary book as the first example. YanWater is in the Yu Jing book. Spike is from PanO. Jitterbug from the Nomad sourcebook (I can forgive you here as the Nomad book has this item in the catalogue but is missing stats). Heavy Shotgun, USARF Uniform, Teseum Hatchet all from Ariadna… the list goes on.
Now I am all for the idea that not everyone will have all the splat books to collect gear from and it is good to have all these items in one place, but why could you not just list the items on the tables and for the Fluff entries save some room by saying Heavy Shotgun: See page 54 of the Ariadna sourcebook.
So, the Mercenary sourcebook doubles up a fair bit, but Paradiso takes it to another level.
6 of the Creatures included in the menagerie of the Paradiso sourcebook are lifted straight from the Core Book!
Scorpionettes, Kragodon, King Tiger Seal, Karava Vinetrap, Jorogumo, Gayatri Moehau. Sure, you can argue that this way they are all in one place, but these are from the CORE BOOK. You can’t USE the Paradiso Sourcebook without having the core rules and all that was needed would have been a sidebar with a page reference to the core book in Chapter III: Flora and Fauna, as it stands these 6 profiles triple down on information we already have as the wildlife is talked about in the core book and then again in Chapter 3 of Paradiso before presenting the stats again.
We really should have had 6 new and unique creature stat blocks to play with or at least variations on these critters.
Now obviously, it’s too late to go editing Paradiso now but the point I want to make here is: If this reprinting and re-use of information we have already had from the core book is now going to be a normal thing then, how much of upcoming books like Technology of the Human Sphere are just going to be a copy/paste job.
I want new things, more information on the worlds of the setting and the creatures and items there-in.
My fear is that in place of an appendix with a master list of gear tables pointing to all the other sourcebooks we will just see a book that is a couple of pages of fluff followed by endless reprints in the desire to centralize everything made before.
Please Modiphius, when it comes to re-using already printed material give it to us in condensed form if you must but also give us more new content, we’ve been very patient with this line and I don’t want to see the sudden rush to get it wrapped up just destroying the quality of these products.
TLDR: Modiphius, please be more sparing when using Copy/Paste to fill out your supplement books for Infinity, the setting has such a vast flavour it should be easy to come up with new designs that add to what we have.