Core Rifts Ideas (vis a vie Modern/Future/DnD)

[Graf]

Disclaimer (I wish this kind of thing weren't necessary but anyway)
I know some people don't like Rifts, the company that publishes it or the man behind it (Kevin Siembieda) some kind of personal animosity. I think these are all valid kinds of things to discuss (except for the last one) but that's hopefully not going to wind up being the main theme this thread. So if you were tortured by a DM using a Palladium game in the past please feel free to start your own thread about that somewhere else.
Likewise if you feel the Palladium system is perfect and any attempt to discuss how the world could be utilized in a different system is an insult to Mr. Siembieda then I'd like to assure that I don't mean any disrespect and encourage to you post about your love of the untouched system here.

I haven't played or looked at a Rifts book in years, but as products like D20 Future and Apocalypse have started to come out I've been reminded about just how broad and intricate the world K. Siembieda created was.
In addition to being wildly creative, as an attempt to combine fantasy and futuristic elements together in a coherent, playable world it was brilliant.

I'd like to think a bit about what the core concepts of Rifts are and what could be mimicked with D&D/Modern/Future rule set.

Ex: In the original the Coalition States (usually called CS) had formed big mega complexes on the east coast. It was a tech heavy region of the world, filled with Xenophobic humans, ruled by an absolute authority figure and perpetually threatened by very real, very powerful enemies. There were a handful of very specific near and non-humans who filled the role of "psychic cops", cyborgs, and guys in power armor.
Thematically it borrowed from the Empire from Starwars (prejudice against non-humans, military society, outlawing of mysticism, etc) and the Imperium from WH40K (magic/psychic powers attracting the attention of dark and powerful creatures from beyond, a corps of trained psychics constantly conducting raids, squads in power armor sweaping over a barren landscape to root out magic/demons/psychics, outlawing of magic oriented books, and again a military society).
Modern + Future/Apocalypse seems like it could capture this well. (especially if you start characters off at a character level where they can begin with a prestige class).

However other aspects of the game like Ley Line Walkers (Wizards who don't need to prepare spells, Cybernights (who can summon psychic weaponry), Baby dragons (as player characters) and so forth would be much easier to mimic using the DnD ruleset.
(Modern's magic system seems very limited in what it would enable a lower or mid-level PC to accomplish...)

Is it possible to balance both of these rulesets?
I'd be especially curious about balancing player character classes.
(the biggest complaint I heard from people who played in Rifts was that there was no attempt at balancing different character classes, especially as the number of high powered MDC granting character classes increased with the addition of multiple world books)

I am inclined to think that DR can effectively compensate for the mega damage segment of the game (i.e. Splugorth Slavers are terrible creatures whose flesh is resistant to normal weaponry. They have DR 20/Magic or High-tech).
A follow up question would be: If monsters and players are somewhat easier to kill (vs. the 100s of MDC often possessed by the frequently played PC classes and the 1000s+ MDC of the bigger monsters) how would that impact the setting?

[Edit= fixed tags]

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I don't port and convert rules from Palladium Books to my campaigns, but I do take general and abstrat ideas (like Tritonia from RIFTS Underseas) and develop them further as to hoe I see it might fit into one of my campaigns. I use Tritonia in my homebrew SciFi game with races adapted from Traveller, DnD and Gurps and reorganize develop further the fluff text from the RIFTS book. The same could be done with almost any idead from any book to make it compatible for another system.

 

[danzig138]

Is it possible to balance both of these rulesets?

I'm not sure what you mean by balance both of these rulesets. If you mean what I think you mean, then it would be easier, IMO, to simply rebuild everything from the ground up using the d20 rules. Keep the ideas and flavor, but don't bother with actually converting rules. I don't think you could easily get or maintain balance by simply porting from one to the other. If you mean what I think you mean.

A follow up question would be: If monsters and players are somewhat easier to kill (vs. the 100s of MDC often possessed by the frequently played PC classes and the 1000s+ MDC of the bigger monsters) how would that impact the setting?

Good question. To keep the flavor (nations under siege, such as with NGR and the GE), you'd probably have to dramatically increase the numbers of hostile D-Bees. Otherwise, in a system where the D-Bees go down that much easier, the human nations (CS, NGR) would have a much firmer control over the land, and I think would have control over more territory as well.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I'm not sure what you mean by balance both of these rulesets. If you mean what I think you mean, then it would be easier, IMO, to simply rebuild everything from the ground up using the d20 rules. Keep the ideas and flavor, but don't bother with actually converting rules. I don't think you could easily get or maintain balance by simply porting from one to the other. If you mean what I think you mean.

My thoughts exactly. Most D-Bees and such converted over from Rifts even using the best conversion guide still end up much more powerful (on average) to comparable D&D creatures. Take the flavor of whatever you're bringing over, but don't try a true conversion. It can be done, but it's usually not worth it. Personally, I use the Palladium rules as a guideline and then build it up to where I want the creature or mecha or whatever to fit into the D20 system.

Kane

 

[shadowbloodmoon]

I myself am working on such a conversion, but it is for my own personal use and not for display, as Palladium makes a big deal out of such things. Nonetheless, being a person who couldn't stand MDC, I agree with what these guys said. Your best bet is to start with flavor and use d20 rules to mimick the flavor. It's the only way I've not lost a few strands of sanity that I have left when porting the two. Especially having to compensate for the power creep in Rifts books. Read South America 2, you'll see what I mean. They had to post an errata for some of the weapons in there. But I digress. Rifts and its corresponding books is an awesome campaign world. One of the best I've seen. Rules-wise, different story.

 

[Voadam]

There is a sourcebook for balancing and integrating d20 modern and D&D, second world sourcebook I think it is called.

 

[Graf]

I want to respond to posts in more detail but real life (upcoming test) are going to make this short.

I'm not sure what you mean by balance both of these rulesets. If you mean what I think you mean, then it would be easier, IMO, to simply rebuild everything from the ground up using the d20 rules.

Yeah. That was what I was getting at. I'm not even sure if I'll ever been in a position to run it but I was also, though this was poorly expressed, about -what- is integral to the setting and what can be left by the wayside.
(Attempting and actual port never entered my mind.)

Good question. To keep the flavor (nations under siege, such as with NGR and the GE), you'd probably have to dramatically increase the numbers of hostile D-Bees. Otherwise, in a system where the D-Bees go down that much easier, the human nations (CS, NGR) would have a much firmer control over the land, and I think would have control over more territory as well.

As a general policy I would prefer to avoid making rules changes that altered he composition of foes, etc. significantly
As an alternative I was thinking about using the weapon damages in Starwars actually. Higher damage ranges would mean the system could support DRs similar to 3.0 (i.e. 50/adamantium).
Full body MDC armor would also provide DR.

In terms of themes
The key themes that I see floating around CS can both be
1. Against the Darkness (vs. powerful supernatural foes).
2. We have met the enemy and they are us (vs. internal CS corruption)
I think that mimicing these themes in Modern/Future would work.... has anyone tried?

Outside of CS it gets trickier....
the themes seem to be
1. Fighting the good fight (DnD)
2. Exploration (very DnD)
3.
but I'm having trouble pinning them down easily. What are the themes that people have used in their games (or found re-occuring).

I know that Palladium takes registered copyrights and so forth seriously (and I'm supportive of that) but can people who have done conversions share a little about some of the key decisions they've made.
Ex:
Sorts of systems used: Straight DnD with cosmetic modifications for guns? Or a hybrid of other systems? Anybody tried Modern?
(people generally like being a 1st level Cyberknight a lot more than a "fast" hero 1)

In terms of Modern/Future/Apoc
Are the kinds of cyberware, mutant creatures, etc. in those books similar/adaptable to Rifts?

Also
Juicers are, by design, better than other classes. How did you handle this? (I would be tempted to make the initial side effects more pronounced or else limit their awesomeness in some fashion).
Anythoughts on balancing magic vs. tech?

Especially having to compensate for the power creep in Rifts books. Read South America 2, you'll see what I mean.

(I agree that the world is awesome).
The "powerbloat" in rifts was always something of an issue, by the time atlantis/england/wormwood came out it was rare to see a nonMDC character (unless they were a temporal warrior or something else with lots of attacks and autododge).
Which was a similar problem to DnD 2nd ed in that if you wanted to play with the new (or superpowerful) stuff you had to constantly start new characters.

There is a sourcebook for balancing and integrating d20 modern and D&D, second world sourcebook I think it is called.

How are these books?

Off to study but thanks for sharing your responces everyone!

 

[The Lost Muse]

If I might make a suggestion, d20 Modern would probably be a good system to base a d20 version of Rifts off of, but the starting level should probably be about level 5 (a good entry point to Advanced classes that mirror some of the OCC's in RIFTS). A better option might be Mutants and Masterminds (second edition coming out in September).

 

[danzig138]

-what- is integral to the setting and what can be left by the wayside.
(Attempting and actual port never entered my mind.)

This is a good question. It can be approached from a couple of different angles. Mechanically, I'd say the GB, Juicers, Lone Walkers, Psychcs, Dog Boys (I can't stand them), and SAMAS/Dead Boys are integral. When trying to build it up, I'd probably ignore all of the books except the Core, WB 1, SB 1, and Lone Star. Setting-wise, the CS, and the basic idea behind the FoM, Laslo, Tolkien, and the internal struggle with Quebec.

As a general policy I would prefer to avoid making rules changes that altered he composition of foes, etc. significantly
As an alternative I was thinking about using the weapon damages in Starwars actually. Higher damage ranges would mean the system could support DRs similar to 3.0 (i.e. 50/adamantium).
Full body MDC armor would also provide DR.

I'd certainly prefer higher damages and DR, just to keep some of the massive power flavor of the original. Although not superpowerful damages.

In terms of themes

I think the setting of Rifts is excellent for exploring the basic themes that are talked about in many game books - Man v. Man, Man v. Nature, Ideology v. Ideology. That's one of the strengths of ths setting IMO - the way it's structured is open to many themes and ideas. You can have big themes (Us v. the CS) and little themes (You can't affect the big things, so the little things are that much more important - helping a D-Bee village survive and relocate for example).

Sorts of systems used: Straight DnD with cosmetic modifications for guns? Or a hybrid of other systems? Anybody tried Modern?
(people generally like being a 1st level Cyberknight a lot more than a "fast" hero 1)

In the last conversion I worked on, I used Modern (with Future) as my base, with some modifications. I opened up most d20 books as race material. I set up a way to start 1st level characters in Advanced Classes (I haven't been able to test that one yet). Armor as DR (converts kinetic damage to non-lethal*, reduces energy damage)
*I don't use non-lethal damage as described in Modern, I use it as subdual damage.
Cyberware is basically Shadowrun bashed together with Battlelords and some other ideas. I didn't add a whole lot in the way of Advanced Classes - mainly just modified some existing ones, and took a couple of D&D full classes and altered them (for example, the Soulknife is the basis for the Cyber-Knight).
Crazies, Full Conversion Borgs, and Juicers are templates (I think have the Juicer at +6 LA) but I'm not sure about the numbers.
What I'm thinking about now is modifiying the classless/levelless OGC rules from Godlike, but I don't know if Rifts will work better with or without classes.

In terms of Modern/Future/Apoc
Are the kinds of cyberware, mutant creatures, etc. in those books similar/adaptable to Rifts?

I don't have Apocalypse, so I can't speak to that. I think Modern is a great base for such a project. Future has some good stuff in it that can work for Rifts as well. As for creatures, I think you can draw upon just anout any d20 source and slip them into Rifts, and iit'll be alright.

Also
Juicers are, by design, better than other classes. How did you handle this?

Juicers are nasty. IMC, the template has a +6 LA (and playtesting indicated that it might need to be higher). You could reduce the power of the juicer, while trying to keep the flavor. This is not my favorite choice. I'd rather keep the power high, but the character has to come up with the money (or sign the approrpiate contracts, limiting his adventuring use),find a place to do the conversion ("I think of as like trying to find a clinic that can instal alphaware back when alphaware first showed up in SR), and have a serious risk that the character may not live through the operation. The rest would hopefully be balcned by oposition. No one is going to hire a Juicer for piddly little jobs. When someone hires a Juicer, he knows it's because there is something nasty going on.

Anythoughts on balancing magic vs. tech?

Not really. I think in d20 Modern, the two are pretty well balanced. But, balancing the two hasn't been a goal of mine in the conversion process. I admit I have a slight tech bias, and it shows in my work.

(I agree that the world is awesome).
The "powerbloat" in rifts was always something of an issue

Yep. Power creep. I never had an issue with newer books have better tech or better magic, I mean heck, the survival of humanity is at stake. I'd hope they have the R&D depts on a 25-hour a day schedule. But when almost every new critter was M.D.C., it was a little too much. I think part of the problem there is they never set down actual honest rules for what should or shouldn't be M.D.C., and why.

 

[scourger]

I converted a Rifts game to d20. All the PCs were CS soldiers, so their choices were initially limited to a few Rifts OCCs. I also used only the core book, so it was simpler. After a couple of missions, I switched to the DragonStar rules. I didn't bother converting everything. I just told the players to remake their PCs using the closest equivalent in the new rules set. There was some resistance, but it played okay a few times. One of the adventures was my best effort at DMing, I think. I then switched to Omega World, which was a much better fit for me to run the game; but I think it made the PCs too generic with only one class (explorer) even though they got a lot of chances to specialize with many, many feats. The campaign died when only 1 player showed one night. It was at his house and he (probably wisely) chose to go out with his girlfriend rather than play alone. I wouldn't want to do it again, but if I did I would use to OW rules on top of regular d20 D&D. That should give the players everything they could possibly want to play and would give the DM lots of easy-to-use tools to make NPCs & foes that are Rifts-like. For example, I had a meta-plot going that invloved a squad of dog-boy NPCs. It would have been a snap to create them as OW mutants. Sadly, the game never got to that point.

You can get Omega World here:

http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/2002/v5748btpy72wv

Best $10 you'll ever spend on d20!