What is Rifts like?

[bielmic]

i used to play the game and have many fond memories of my experiences but certainly not because of the rules. first, i'll start with the good. the art in the first 10 years was mainly Kevin Long's and was excellent despite being only black and white; while it's gone down since then, it's still good. The story/setting/atmosphere is one of the best i've seen in roleplaying games. The rules, on the otherhand, were not good to begin with and have not aged well. they are largely unchanged from the mid 1980's and definitely feel that way. new mechanics are tacked on and don't feel truly integrated and there is no balance whatsoever. while in the 80's and 90's this was pretty much the standard, it's not true nowadays for most rules and the story/setting can no longer make up for it. if you'd like to play it, my recommendation would be to use the rifts books for setting info and maybe the shadowrun or silhouette (DP9) rules for the actual play.

 

[Prince Atom]

Be careful about talking about playing RIFTS with another system's rules.

That's just chumming the waters. Mr. Siembieda makes Disney look cute and fuzzy when it comes to protecting his intellectual property.

If you want to make a RIFTS conversion, don't talk about it online. I think he Googles for such threads.

Friendly cautions,

TWK

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Be careful about talking about playing RIFTS with another system's rules.

That's just chumming the waters. Mr. Siembieda makes Disney look cute and fuzzy when it comes to protecting his intellectual property.

If you want to make a RIFTS conversion, don't talk about it online. I think he Googles for such threads.

Friendly cautions,

TWK

Just mail him a bullet. There was a discussion way back on UseNet about which systems would be better or worse for conversion to Rifts. We never even converted anything just discussed which features of systems might make things more or less difficult. He sent out C&D letters. I returned mine with a single 180 grain 7.62 boat-tail. Never heard from him or that damned wife of his again.

 

[Rhun]

I love the Rift's Campaign Setting; some of the World and Dimension books are just incredible. However, I agree with everyone that says the lack of a good game mechanic is a major drawback for playing the game. With a good gamemaster, though, Rifts can be a lot of fun.

 

[Spinachcat]

Rifts is a tremendously fun kitchen sink setting with an old school system build on pseudo-AD&D rules. It is a great game with the right group and GM. If you are looking for strict game balance, then convert to your system of choice. If you and your group likes to play fast and loose, going for the cool cinematic action and not worrying if anything really makes sense, then you will probably love Rifts.

I have played Rifts with Savage Worlds, RISUS and Tri-Stat/BESM and the game works fine. I have seen threads where people have converted Rifts to Unisystem, GURPS, ORE and D20 with good results. If you own any D20 Modern, D20 Space, D20 Post-Apocalypse books, you could build D20 Rifts.

BTW, Palladium does not care if you talk about conversions all day long. They only care about people posting conversions with huge chunks of their IP from their books. Kevin is not the RPG Bogeyman anymore than WotC is the Souless Evil Empire.

 

[Crothian]

Rifts is a game that brings in everything one would want. And it does it better then any other game that has tried this. It proves that bringing in everything and doing it well is just really really hard because Rifts has major issues with it.

Rifts taught me to DM. It taught me how to say no to players and more importantly how to say yes and not have it ruin our fun. It can teach you how to deal with characters of amazing power and lack of power. But it takes a good DM to do that and a good group to have fun with it. Rifts is a tough setting to run, there is a lot going on there and there is a lot for players to do. I think it has shown that some people just are not cut out to run or play it.

 

[cholke]

I love the Rift's Campaign Setting; some of the World and Dimension books are just incredible. However, I agree with everyone that says the lack of a good game mechanic is a major drawback for playing the game. With a good gamemaster, though, Rifts can be a lot of fun.

I have to agree about the books. I have never played Rifts or the Palladium Fantasy game so I can't comment on the game mechanics, but I have generally never found another series of books I have enjoyed just reading so much. The storyline in all the books just always seemed so great and provided a wealth of material for my D&D games. The vampires in Central America or the Splugorth in Atlantis have just always sparked my imagination. The Mystic China books provided so much more material than Oriental Adventures for D&D. I have never spent more money at my local store on a game I have never played. I still pull them out and just re-read them for new material. I guess that is the goal of a setting without a lot of published adventures, but to me at least they sure have done a good job.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

BTW, Palladium does not care if you talk about conversions all day long. They only care about people posting conversions with huge chunks of their IP from their books. Kevin is not the RPG Bogeyman anymore than WotC is the Souless Evil Empire.

Unless Kevin gets in a snit. Mostly they don't care but if you start talking mechanics they pay attention. You may not even have actually converted anything or used their IP but once you get to the stage of comparing mechanics and how they would covert from one system to another you're quite likely to get a C&D. They use those C&D letters very liberally trusting to the fact nobody wants to be sued to make people quit.

As to the rest Rifts is an extremely fun out-there game if you're willing to just go with it and trust in a lot of GM adjudication. It's needed since the rules are really poorly done. They're based on AD&D but all the add-ons and subsystems really kludge the works up. Far as it goes you could use their books for setting and use d20 with some modifications to handle the rules. I've seen very few things in rifts that couldn't be ported to d20 (and in the process become much more stable rule-wise).

 

[s.j. bagley]

it's like 20 different 13 year olds decided to make what hey saw was the most kick ass game ever made (in all its juvenile glory) and then they were all combined into one monumentally stupid game.
it's not the worst game i've ever played, but it's up there.
.
that being said, i've had fun with it, once or twice.

 

[scourger]

It fell off my radar until I picked up Rifts Machinations of Doom last year. It is a very cool combination graphic novel and surcebook. It reminds me of the way we used to play Rifts in the 90s. I've even got designs on running it again. Pick it up and you'll enjoy the read.