Rifts by Palladium Books

[Verdac]

Anyone remember Rifts by Palladium Books? Some of my old friends and I played restarted long complicated games that end up with us hiring a priest and a fire truck in order to raid the un-dead lands.

I still love to take some of the old rule sets and mixing them into home brew campaigns.

[TheYell]

They're still around.

[Knaight]

Rifts is still kicking - although there's a new Savage Worlds Rifts, which takes the Rifts setting in all of its gonzo glory and ports it to a system that isn't so fundamentally broken.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm fairly familiar with Palladium. Anything in particular you wanna talk about?

[Tinkerer]

Well the system is still fundamentally broken in Savage Rifts (probably even more so) due to Savage Worlds breaking down at higher power levels and Savage Rifts starting at higher power levels. But it's a much faster broken system so that at least keeps things brisk.

It also tends to turn Rifts into a game of rocket tag, imagine D&D's AC problem at higher levels (trying to balance making things almost impossible to hit vs almost impossible to miss) and instead apply it to the chances of damaging an opponent. So yeah I would definitely call it more broken than Rifts but I'd also call it more fun.

More balanced than Rifts but that's due to the fact that Rifts was intentionally designed to be imbalanced... which was nice for Rifts players because it meant that we didn't have the massive discussions about character balance that other games had (Looking at you tier list). You just kinda had to deal with it and the GM had to make sure everyone was playing at about the same level, which since there was a lot fewer character build traps tended to work out fairly well.

Actually come to think of it I wouldn't call normal Rifts system broken at all. I would call it slow, clunky, and all in all not a great system. But not broken. Savage Rifts on the other hand is broken to all hell. It literally took me less then 2 hours to figure out how to destroy the world (quite literally crashing the moon into the Earth) with just the main Savage Rifts book using an obvious system exploit which should have been caught. Despite following Rifts for almost two decades now and seeing the major power creep/power seep I can't say I ever ran into something like that.

But Savage Rifts is so much more fun that I don't think I'll ever be going back to normal Rifts.

[Knaight]

I'm not using "broken" in the sense of "unbalanced". I'm using it in the sense of "nonfunctioning". The system just doesn't work well, and while it's far from Palladium's worst work* it's an incoherent mess. Savage RIFTS is still all sorts of unbalanced, but the system works.

*Ninjas and Superspies (https://megadumbcast.podbean.com/), anyone?

[Tinkerer]

I'm not using "broken" in the sense of "unbalanced". I'm using it in the sense of "nonfunctioning". The system just doesn't work well, and while it's far from Palladium's worst work* it's an incoherent mess. Savage RIFTS is still all sorts of unbalanced, but the system works.

Oh I wasn't using it in the unbalanced sense either. In fact what I said that normal Rifts was more unbalanced but less broken than Savage Rifts. A large part of this is due to Savage Rifts resorting to simply adding a +1, +2 etc... to the end of the dice roll once you get above d12 which makes some things go really wonky. Like I mentioned as much grief as people gave Rifts for being overpowered I never could think up a starting level 1 group capable of crashing the moon into the Earth. Classic Rifts always functioned for me, just slowly sometimes (roll with impact can bite my butt).

Edit: When you have a system which is designed to go to from 4 to 12 before wonky stuff starts happening and you can start people off at 12 wonky stuff will happen.

[Verdac]

Sure it has it's awkward aspects the way all of the different systems and sub systems interact, but if you just take one of the sub systems, or massive tables you can introduce a level of chaos to your games.

For example I'm currently working on a home-brew 5e camp and I wanted to integrate madness into it... I thought the current 5e insanity conditions were a bit one soft side of things. I pulled out Rifts page 19... I wanted my players to be scared of madness... This should be fun.

[hamlet]

I'm not using "broken" in the sense of "unbalanced". I'm using it in the sense of "nonfunctioning". The system just doesn't work well, and while it's far from Palladium's worst work* it's an incoherent mess. Savage RIFTS is still all sorts of unbalanced, but the system works.

*Ninjas and Superspies (https://megadumbcast.podbean.com/), anyone?

I've used Palladium's systems before and genuinely never had this experience. Yeah, it takes work by the DM to make it all work and play well together at times, but it's not overly difficult. It's also got more fudge room than some of the stricter, more tightly woven systems out there that break down if your math was a little off.

Anyway, just my 2 coppers there. Personally, I think Rifts is an awesome setting and a fairly decent system.

Edited to fix idiot spelling error.

[Verdac]

I was thinking of doing a Rifts Coalition one shot, do you think I could rely on most players on being able to make their characters? Or would I be better off generating some archetypes for them to use and have a section devoted to just making characters and answering questions?

I don't know this might be a bit to much considering the system and how few people seam to have used it...

ideas?

[Anymage]

For a one-shot, I'm tempted to say to throw together some premades so people can jump right into the action.

If you were speaking more generally, having everyone talk out what they want to do in the first session is at a minimum extremely helpful no matter what system you're playing. In Rifts, it's much more so. Games tend to fall apart quickly when they face, not only grossly divergent power levels, but vastly incompatible thematics as well.

[Verdac]

thanks for the advice, I'll do a collection of pre-built for the one shot, it will probably be just easier that way for everyone involved.

[LibraryOgre]

Definitely, pre-built for the one-shot. Character creation in Palladium tends to take time, even if it's just writing things down.

[Verdac]

As I'm creating the different pre-mades I can't help but think of how complicated this will be for new players. I still love the world of Rifts and all of it's crazy but just cant help think that converting the world to an easier system to pick up and play would be best.

If I do this the system I keep finding myself gravitating towards is the D20 Numenera system by Monte Cook Games. It is a lot more work for me, however it should be a lot easier for new players.

Any ideas?

[LibraryOgre]

As I'm creating the different pre-mades I can't help but think of how complicated this will be for new players. I still love the world of Rifts and all of it's crazy but just cant help think that converting the world to an easier system to pick up and play would be best.

If I do this the system I keep finding myself gravitating towards is the D20 Numenera system by Monte Cook Games. It is a lot more work for me, however it should be a lot easier for new players.

Any ideas?

There is an official Savage Worlds conversion for Rifts. (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/186210/Savage-Rifts-The-Tomorrow-Legion-Players-Guide?src=hottest_filtered)

[TerrickTerran]

I will always enjoy Palladium. Kevin and Co. have treated me right over the years. While it's not everyone's cup of tea, the settings are definitely fun and as Mark pointed out Savage World Rifts is a definite thing and I've heard great things about it.

[Verdac]

I'm really busy with work and family but I'm defiantly going to make this happen, however it is not as much fun without players.

So what would your all rather play, the original Rifts, Savage Rifts, or some bastardized thing loosely based on Monty Cooks Cypher system?

[Lord Torath]

Robotech! :smallwink:

[LibraryOgre]

I'm really busy with work and family but I'm defiantly going to make this happen, however it is not as much fun without players.

So what would your all rather play, the original Rifts, Savage Rifts, or some bastardized thing loosely based on Monty Cooks Cypher system?

Savage Rifts. The system is tighter, and there's a lot that's relatively easy to adapt from Palladium (like 90% of OCCs in Palladium Rifts are irrelevant copies of others, and easily designable under the MARS system).

[Tinkerer]

Savage Rifts. Super fun, super flexible. A little more deadly than standard Rifts but that's because everything is moving much faster. I highly recommend Zadmar's guides at http://www.godwars2.org/SavageWorlds/ as well. Some of the best written guides that I've seen. I never EVER use online homebrew but in this case I grabbed all of his guides. I particularly recommend it if you have any mages or psionics in your group as it gives some more guidance on Trappings.

[Verdac]

Thanks for all the help, been reading over the Savage Rfts books this will be much better, and less of a pain, then what I was planing.

[sktarq]

Dealing with Palladium Rifts: You are dealing with an unruly powerful mount that will throw you the second you are not paying attention, has a mind of its own, wanderlust, treats the random thoughts of the players like their mates in heat, requires extensive grooming, feeding, watering, etc but can take you damn near anywhere if you keep the blinkers on it, stay in the saddle, and have a firm whip hand.

Dealing with Savage Worlds Rifts: As above but at least you know you're riding a horse and it doesn't have claws or three heads or something.