A New Dawn – An Alternative Campaign System

So you’ve taken up Infinity, familiarized yourself with the latest version of the Army app, and gotten some games under your belt. Maybe you’ve done an Escalation League or a couple of events, and are starting to get a handle on how ITS works. Or maybe you’re already a highly-ranked, veteran tournament player. But while tournaments are a great way to get in games and meet new players, I also feel like in many ways tournament play is just scratching the surface of what Infinity has to offer.

What do I mean by “just scratching the surface?” Have you ever read Infinity’s incredibly evocative source material and been inspired? Have you ever wondered what it might be like to play out some of the political shenanigans, cut-throat back-room deals, and the resulting desperate covert operations upon which the game’s source material is based?

You are not alone!

What I’m talking about is campaign play, where the players are working together to tell a wider story taking place within the Infinity universe. Whether it’s the machinations of a particular Tunguska syndicate, the inscrutable aims of the Old Man in the Mountain, or the under-handed dealings of a PanO political lobby, there’s something fun about linking individual games together to weave a tale of blood-shed and intrigue, of providing a narrative to your battles.

To that end, we’ve developed a campaign system designed to allow players to create and run their own campaigns, weaving a narrative in which heroes will rise and fall, fortunes will be gambled, and the fates of nations may ride. The system is designed to be flexible and support a variety of mission systems (ITS, 20×20, YAMS, etc).

This article uses as its main example our own campaign, set on the politically fractious planet of Dawn. Will the Caledonians achieve some measure of economic and political independence, or will the Kazakhs be able to keep them in check? Will the traders of Haqqislam and the commercial interests of the Yu Jing StateEmpire be able to benefit from the political instability? And what of the small force of Morat saboteurs operating so far behind enemy lines? Will they be able to exploit the divisions between the human factions and disrupt the planet’s crucial Teseum exports?

And while our Dawn campaign serves as an example, we also include tips and methods to using this system to tailor this approach to your own forces and factions. We know you’ll be able to put them to good use and create compelling narrative campaigns of your own!

Enjoy!