Data Sphere

I just played this game where my opponent would have drawn if his WIP roll to score an objective point at some console would have succeeded. He failed and thus lost, just because of this one die roll he cannot influence. (I know there was an entire game behind that, but still.)


This got me thinking again that this WIP roll to score objectives (in the broadest sense) as we have in ITS and 20x20 is not ideal. I have thought about it with some friends and one interesting idea came up:

All troopers can score by spending a short skill and passing a WIP -3 check. Specialists have the option of either taking that test or spending an entire order and passing it automatically.


This would give players a choice of whether they want to risk wasting half an order on failing a test or spending an entire order with the security of passing it? Would that be attractive or would it be more attractive to simply have the specialist take a pretty secure WIP +3 test for a short skill?

I don't know if there's a 'right' or 'wrong' way to approach scoring. Certainly in some games you automatically get the point, whereas in others you have to pass a test. In Infinity, it makes sense passing a test, as you need to find/download data etc in a hurry, and you might miss it in a rush, but I can understand the bad taste left by duffing all your WIP rolls.

Personally, I'm not a fan of 'all specialists are treated equal' that ITS often does. At the very least, 'preferred' specialists are at WIP+3. This is puts most tests to the >75% success rate. Maybe command token for a re-roll?

Well, I am talking about 20x20 here, of course. That is the one I have the power to change. 20x20 uses the preferred specialist requirement you mentioned and that will stay that way!

I thought about allowing command tokens for re rolls, but did not want to interfere into the main rules.

I am less worried about the background reasoning and more about the game mechanics. I guess at the end of the day, there is more flat random in Infinity than we like to admit.