Paradiso Campaign Lessons - Mission Monday

And that's it. We conclude our Campaign Paradiso. Why didn't I finish the campaign? There were a variety of factors, such as I took one year off of Infinity due to work that definitely hampered my ability to play. The group of players pretty much dissolved their interest for Paradiso pretty much around the same time. Everyone I played with got fed up with Paradiso around mission eight. In fact, a lot of the Infinity Forum-goers have a distaste for Campaign Paradiso. There are numerous suggestions on how to fix Paradiso (with my favourite thread here).  What was important was the lessons that Paradiso taught the Infinity Community.

Prior to Paradiso, there were no missions in a game that is agreed upon being a Science Fiction Special Operations Simulator. This was a great deterrent for many interested parties. A lot of the time we'd have to make up missions or use the only CB printed and approved mission: Hot Potato. With human nature, if the choice is trying to think up a scenario or just play "shoot them in the face", you'd be right with "shoot them in the face" being the popular option. There was a popular random scenario generator developed called YAMS (Yet Another Mission System) but that's about it. Random scenario didn't jive well with myself and my fellow opponents, we wanted a mission to tackle - not RNG determining the narrative.

That's when Paradiso dropped into our laps. Each mission had a clear indication of a story that enfolds on the tabletop and your forces are fighting over the results. We were given different locales to fight over and each mission brought different ways to play. These missions are directly responsible for the Infinity Tournament System but each had their own flair. This was revolutionary. We'd been shooting at each other for years when suddenly Infinity became more than "kill the other guy." When the game was over, you'd use any of the Objective Points scored for purchases on either your Army or your SpecOp.

This brings us to the first real criticism of any campaign system: winners keep winning. In Paradiso, there were even extra matches for winners to duke it out. Story-wise, it made sense in the narrative of Corvus Belli's Paradiso story but that turns out to be horrendous game play. Most players spent their points on their Army, as points spent on your SpecOp could be dashed away as soon as they're killed. The fact that we were going to be doing this over the course of months made players incredibly gun shy, with multiple play throughs with friends with test lists prior to the official match.

Infinity is a lethal game. I really learned that lesson with keeping track of each of my units. That also meant that if you had a Personality who died, they were gone from the rest of the campaign. This is one of the cool things about the game. If you're losing, you can turn the game around by hunting their Personality down. If you managed to execute them, you'd ensure they'd unable to play with that character again. This also meant the next time we played with a campaign system, everyone's XP gain would be the same for their SpecOps who was custom built for each mission (leading to ridiculously awesome 50 XP SpecOps after six months).

Speaking of which, since it was the Objectives and not kills that determined victory Paradiso really taught us to play for the objective. From a lot of other wargames, it seems like the objective is "kill the other guy, here's an excuse to do so." Infinity completely changed that paradigm with the introduction of Retreat not equalling defeat. There is even justification in the story on how Haqqislam is soundly routed, so they sick the O-12 on the victors to ensure that no one wins. It's why you want to win by slim margins instead of sending people home in body bags, otherwise the 'Nuke it from orbit' options looks incredibly attractive.

With players trying to wrap their heads around the paradigm shift of 'killing does not equal winning', we tried to optimize how to play with Infinity's objectives. This is where Paradiso became incredibly problematic. A lot of the objectives made great sense from a storytelling perspective, which becomes horribly difficult to accomplish with incredibly fragile models instead of plot-armoured (Warning: TV Tropes) individuals. I had plots planned out for character arcs of my characters, I stopped attempting to do that halfway because of how often they even bothered to survive. What made Paradiso a mess was the difficult scenarios.

Missions 101 and 202 are great. The train mission of 205 isn't bad either. The other Paradiso missions are incredibly difficult and even controversial. Mission 102 requires running around the board flipping switches, which is where that criticism of ITS began. 301 was especially controversial because players were supposed to use a time limit and those that didn't reported scoring 30-50 points, as if that is fair (which they'd then be able to sink into their Armies and SpecOp). When the time ran out, the Space Station exploded in addition to randomly being destroyed. The requirements for opening capsules that may explode and kill your models to summoning DropShips was just too random and damning.

Paradiso permanently shifted the Infinity meta-game from one Battle Group to more than one. Infinity was a game that was "Play 10 models and you're good" to an incredibly complex mismatch depending on your faction if you wanted to run upwards to 20 models. There was so much to do and in very few turns to do it, more Orders were required to make sure you could accomplish the mission. This meta-game shift is something I dislike as well, as Infinity was originally a game I could play with just ten guys.

Love it or hate it, Paradiso entirely changed how Infinity is played. Just as Human Sphere had introduced Link Teams to change how people can play with their little metal men, Paradiso gave a purpose to pushing them around the table. The Retreat rules and Objective-focused game play is what made ITS the system it is today.

In case you've missed out on the episodes, here's the links:
Paradiso Narrative Campaign Start
Paradiso 101
Paradiso 102
Paradiso 202
Paradiso 204
Paradiso 205
Paradiso 301
Paradiso 302