aramis erak
Legend
not really. I like my parody silly in tone and engaging in wordplay...I like that it does that though. Do you?
Spaceballs. Galaxy Quest. Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Monte Python and the Holy Grail (Movie and stage). Monte Python's Life of Brian. Star Trek Discovery¹.
Rifts hits the same mindset space for me as TORG, and I prefer TORG's mechanics to Rifts'. I also prefer TORG's setup for the genre mix-n-match.Every new book I buy that has to specify what's "bad" and/or instructs me the "moral" way to play the game puts me off.
Most of my dad's family are in greater Detroit Metro... which is 100+ distinct communities in search of a common identity....Midwesterner humor can be sort of dry (and weird), Siembieda is from Detroit, Michigan; so like Chicago, is even more of somewhere to poke fun at. Chi-town is even regular slang for the place, it is all sort of a gonzo parody, played straight, if that makes sense, sort of like the Yoopers being the last bastion of civilization.
Many of my wife's family, as well. Making blanket statements about Detroit having a uniform ANYTHING is problematic.
I agree, however, that Rifts is intended as parody. But it's not labeled as such, and given its serious tone, that it's parody is a thing the Siembieda would have been better mentioning in the disclaimer.
t's very easy to look at the Rifts Corebook and miss that it's parody. Several of my former students have....
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1: Yes, I'm accusing ST Discovery of being a Star Trek Parody, not real Trek. Even if I do enjoy it. Orville and Strange New Worlds are both better Trek, IMO.