Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags

I'd love 'em.  levi.kornelsen@gmail.com, if you would!

And yeah, Infected is much older than Schema 7.  I would *not* try to import conditions to it without a total overhaul, but cues, man...   Whooo, I'd want to bring those.  Luck, could go either way.

As suggested, I tried out the system with an Infected one-shot. Since Infected uses an earlier iteration of the engine, I wanted to backport some of the features. Conditions I left out by your suggestion, but each PC got two cues, and luck points were included so that cues could have some mechanical teeth.

Bottom line: everyone at the table (most of whom have been RPing for a few years, across more than one system) were pretty pleased with the engine.

The stakes system means almost every roll comes with interesting choices even after the dice have hit the table  - and also before, if the player gets to decide whether they're being Bold or Cautious, which I tended to allow. 

Cues fix a central problem we've had with Fate character aspects, which is that the GM has to memorize about 20 aspects in order for them to be relevant. Moving that responsibility to the players helps distribute the load, and also makes players pay attention to each others' characters, which is great.

However, while Schema seems great in general, I don't actually think Infected was a good choice to showcase it. I'm still excited to use Infected in a campaign, but in a one-shot it didn't really shine. This seemed to be for three reasons.

Firstly, a lot of the mechanics of Infected are about resource management, which on the scale of in-universe time covered was not really an issue, leading to a lot of bookkeeping that ultimately amounted to nothing.

Secondly, a lot of the fun of post-apocalyptic games is in rebuilding from the ashes: founding or finding an enclave of survivors and helping them achieve stability. 

Thirdly, a big part of the appeal of Infected (to me) is in the gradual development of the setting as the apocalypse progresses, with things getting weirder, more exotic monsters surfacing and the nature of the Roil, the Makers, Nocturne and so on being explored by players and characters alike.

In a three-hour one-shot (plus one hour for character creation), there wasn't enough time to do justice to any of that. People had fun, but it didn't feel like a complete experience.

But like I said, the engine itself made a good impression. I'm now working on another one-shot, with full Iteration 7 features. I'll let you know how it goes.