Mini Review - D "Infinity" Magazine #3: Children of the Night (For Just About Every game System You Can Think Of)

D "Infinity" (because I can't end a font with an infinity symbol) is a strange little bird.  It's a magazine that tries to cover many different RPG systems from many different publishers.  It's hard to tie down the notch it covers as it covers so many niches.  The question then becomes, does it cover them well?

Surprisingly enough, I think it does.  That is due, in no small part, to some decent writing and editing.  For an article about a game I do not play to have value to me, the writing must be strong enough to go beyond game mechanics.  On the whole D "infinity" # 3 does it's job pretty well.

Oh, lest I forget:  The index is actually hyperlinked to the articles it lists.  Well done!

It starts with a Tile Based game called The Search for Bigfoot.  If you remember the old Tom Wham games that used to be stuck in occasional issues of Dragon Magazine, the concepts are similar.  For the price of a magazine, you get a free game included.  In this case, you have to print out the pieces, and I suspect you'll need to use some card stock or such to print it out if you want it to survive more then one sitting.  Can't  tell you how well the game plays, but the tiles look well done.

There is an interview with Andy Hopp.  I don't know his work as an author or artist, but the art used is pretty weird but very good.

There is a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide.  Written fairly well, but all this should be pretty standard tactics for most Roleplayers.  Still, useable in an of your modern zombie games.

Digital Dice - It deals with mapping programs.  Including many free ones (I think they are already listed on the left side of this blog but I need to see if I missed any).  Nice article but fairly short.

One Starry Night - A Call of Cthulhu / Cthulhu Live scenario set in the modern day.  I'm about 20 years removed from my last CoC game and I've never run a "Live" style RPG.  So I was fairly lost reading this.  I need to refresh my CoC knowledge.  It does include some nice looking handouts.

The Prop Room is an article detailing how to make some fake dragon teeth (well, if you could make "real" dragon teeth it would be a different kind of article).  Not sure how useful it is as an article, but it was damn interesting and kinda cool.  I guess if I was a LARPer it would be much more useful.  I'm not ;)

A look at some of the guilds in the city of Kos.  Actually, it's one guild made up of multiple professions.  It's okay.

Then we get some stuff for use with "Basic System".  I though that meant it was going to be used with Chaosium's Basic RPG.  Nope, its for use with OSR type systems.  Go figure.  Still, 8 pages of naturalish type monsters is never bad and can keep players on their toes by keeping things fresh.  Did I mention the art if pretty good though out the magazine?  It is.  Oh, and an article on Mutation Artifacts for Mutant Future.  Wait, theres more:  Some Orc Spells.

Then we go OGL, or rather 3X.  Another preview of Cooper's Corrected Summon Monsters series of PDFs.  If I recall correctly, he did this with the monster manual too.  I don't play 3X, but this may be of value to those that do, assuming you believe it all needs to be fixed.

Next we get a page of Character Caricatures.  Decent art.  'nuff said.

Hey, an OGL article about Plague & Rabies, written by an MD, with game effects and treatment.  Wan't I just wondering about stuff like this?

Some sci-fi OGL stuff.  I forget, this is a partial house organ for Skirmisher Games.

Some hybrid races for Pathfinder.  Half-ghouls.  Damn!

Alien Vegetable Monstrosities for Pathfinder.  Yeah.  Interesting painted minis.

An article for 4e, but as the system is a dead system, I didn't bother reading it.  Doh!

All in all, a decent bang for you buck.  Which is surprising, as usually the attempt to please all means you please none.