Rifts vs D&D

[Orius]

KS also has a slew of house rules he uses when he plays at conventions at the like. The cognitive dissonance within Palladium is astounding.

Wait, what? Siembieda claims to have the most perfect rule system ever, and then he turns around and house rules it?

This is the most absurdly silly thing I've read about Palladium in a while. And it's hilarious.

 

[Mort]

Wait, what? Siembieda claims to have the most perfect rule system ever, and then he turns around and house rules it?

This is the most absurdly silly thing I've read about Palladium in a while. And it's hilarious.

I remember scratching my head at Siembieda's philosophy after reading the forward to Villian's Unlimited (a supplement for Hero's Unlimited - Palladium's superhero game). In it Kevin has a rant about how, in his game, if your character jumps on a live grenade he's dead - period, regardless of SDC left etc.
Now in a non-superhero game, ok, but that philospophy is so wrong in a supers game that I had to re-read the paragraph a few times.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Megadamage cowboy hats. And with the new rule that if you have any megadamage armor, the megadamage hit that overwhelms it only destroys the armor or something like that. So if you're wearing a Megadamage cowboy hat and boxers (that look like the Texas flag, obviously), and you get shot with like a nuke or a mecha cannon, it just blows up the hat and otherwise you're fine.

And this is why mothers always tell their children to dress in megadamage armor layers.

 

[VGmaster9]

Is it possible to do time travel and go back in the time of sword-and-sandal or swashbuckling?

 

[Stoat]

Is it possible to do time travel and go back in the time of sword-and-sandal or swashbuckling?

In theory, there's nothing stopping you from doing this. Time travel and genre mashups work great with the RIFTS setting.

In practice, you'd have to figure out how to deal with Mega-damage. Your RIFTS PC's will all have MD armor and weapons. Typical antagonists in a sword-and-sandal or swashbuckling setting will not.

Which is one of my many beefs with the mega-damage system.

 

[VGmaster9]

In theory, there's nothing stopping you from doing this. Time travel and genre mashups work great with the RIFTS setting.

In practice, you'd have to figure out how to deal with Mega-damage. Your RIFTS PC's will all have MD armor and weapons. Typical antagonists in a sword-and-sandal or swashbuckling setting will not.

Which is one of my many beefs with the mega-damage system.

So basically only your PC's can have MD eqiupment and not the NPC's? Just trying to make sure that there aren't many limitations in campaigns and stuff. It would also be cool going into a Victorian-era steampunk world or go into a prehistoric world where cavemen/cavewomen, dinosaurs, and other prehistoric creatures co-exist. That what I love about this, it lets you do ANYTHING. At least you can use it with GURPS, right?

EDIT: Also, can you go into a 1930's setting and go on a pulp-style adventure?

 

[VGmaster9]

Also, what kinds of things have people done in the pre-Rifts earth setting? Have they done genres from alternate history to urban fantasy?

 

[karlindel]

I prefer D&D to RIFTS. Of course, it's hard to compare the two, given that one is a fantasy RPG and the other is a genre mish-mash RPG. I will agree with the analysis of others that one of D&D's advantages is that an average GM can run a very fun game with little effort. RIFTS, on the other hand, requires more effort and skill on the part of the GM (and the players) to make the game fun.

I played in a very fun RIFTS campaign set in Russia. We had a lot of fun roleplaying, and a diverse group worked well together. The DM put some limitations on what we could play, but there were plenty of options available. We had a psionic, a ley line walker, a Mystic Kuznya (basically a magesmith), and a bounty hunter. Everyone was combat capable, even if some were better in certain areas, but with different skillsets everyone had different opportunities to shine outside of combat.

I am not a fan of the RIFTS system. Although not unplayable, there are a lot of issues that cause problems, and a GM and players will need to make a lot of judgment calls and/or house rules to make the system playable. The setting is interesting and has a lot of good ideas. It has some issues, but it is a game world, after all, and there aren't that many game worlds (or fictional worlds in general, for that matter) that don't have some holes in them. The system can be made workable, as long as everyone is on the same page about things and willing to roll with it.

 

[ProtoClone]

Ultimately, I guess I liken them both to hobo stew. Lots of stuff in it and sometimes you find things that work well together and things that make you wretch.

 

[Herr der Qual]

The first game system I ever played in was Rifts, so I have a soft spot in my wretched little heart for it. I must say, I love the alignments in Palladium products (Aberrant! ), the Rifts world is so rich and full of possibilities but I had to veto all C.J. Carela material. Siembieda's closed minded wonky lawsuit ridden world doomed that game years ago. With a major rules overhaul that game could be as fun as D&D, they need to ditch the Mega-Damage too, it's just too cumbersome, yes in the 80's any excuse to include the word Mega was a no brainer, but it's 2015 and we're jaded as a society now. So until I feel like devoting 100+ hours to developing and play testing/tweaking a homebrew rule set that deals with everything. Oh and there was a question about time travel, time travel is easy and there is a small paragraph in the core rulebook that states if you travel to a time/dimension/world that is S.D.C., all of your equipment simply becomes S.D.C. because in that reality M.D.C. cannot exist, therefore your 120 M.D. Body armour is now AC 19 120 S.D.C. armour that any smith can repair. (you gain an A.C. because they used fantasy rules from the Palladium world where no armour was better than 19)