Just picked up RIFTs for the first time since 1993 ...
- Thread starter nedleeds
- Start date
cignus_pfaccari
First Post
GreatLemur said:
Well, some people here complained loudly about the 3.0 - 3.5 conversion, and I'm sure more did about AD&D2 - 3.0. I'm sure some people complained about the GURPS changeover from 3r to 4th edition, but in general, as long as a new edition is an improvement, people'll go along with it.
But even without making major changes to how things work, I can't imagine it would be that hard to make RIFTS combat clearer. I'm a fan of examples (ideally, they'd detail a single encounter with escalating complexity), and certainly charts of modifiers would be very useful.
Brad
nedleeds said:
Here's the real trick:
Back when AD&D was a train wreck, Siembieda came along and designed the Palladium system. The Palladium system was great: It was basically a cleaned up and improved version of AD&D that incorporated a lot of the common house rules people used while making the game easier to learn and play.
Siembieda used basically the same system for RIFTS. And it was still pretty cool.
Then, a decade and a half later, WotC showed up and did an even better job of cleaning up and improving AD&D. They called it 3rd Edition and there was much rejoicing.
But Siembieda loves his old system, and no one was going to tell him otherwise.
The tragedy here is that Siembieda could duplicate his own past success with a wave of his hand at this point by revamping RIFTS to D20. But this is a man so stuck in the past that, AFAIK, he's still laying out his new products by hand (instead of using a computer). So that's unlikely to happen any time in the near future.
GreatLemur
Explorer
Sweet Christ, is this actually true? That's just horrifying.JustinA said:
Tetsubo
First Post
GreatLemur said:
Yes it is in fact true. "Lay-out" still means "actually laying things on a table" for some people...
I don't like the Palladium mechanics myself. And the whole meta-damage idea is absurd... but I love a good deal of the art and much of the setting concepts. The best Palladium product to date, the second edition of After The Bomb. I must have read the mutant animal section of that book three dozen times just for fun... and I've collected some 165 pages of fan created mutant animal species from the Palladium forums... I would love to play a Spider-goat...
I'm posting from someone else's computer, so I don't have access to some of my usual resources...:
according to posts from at least one person who actually worked with the man until he ticked him off royally, this is true.
The same person also claims that KS doesn't playtest stuff, and occasionally doesn't give people credit for their contributions.
Edit: It took a little looking, but here's what I'm talking about:
D20 is indeed the goose that is laying the golden eggs at this moment, but KS could do almost as well by simply revising the system so that it actually works like a well-oiled machine. Instead, there are warts on the system that have been there since day one.
He could also do revisions of the game for GURPS, HERO, or a WoD system and still make serious money. (For the record, without doing a true conversion, I have run RIFTS in HERO to the great enjoyment of all involved.)
according to posts from at least one person who actually worked with the man until he ticked him off royally, this is true.
The same person also claims that KS doesn't playtest stuff, and occasionally doesn't give people credit for their contributions.
Edit: It took a little looking, but here's what I'm talking about:
D20 is indeed the goose that is laying the golden eggs at this moment, but KS could do almost as well by simply revising the system so that it actually works like a well-oiled machine. Instead, there are warts on the system that have been there since day one.
He could also do revisions of the game for GURPS, HERO, or a WoD system and still make serious money. (For the record, without doing a true conversion, I have run RIFTS in HERO to the great enjoyment of all involved.)
Last edited:
ShadowDenizen
Explorer
Not everything needs to be D20.
Even putting aside KS' seemingly irrational hatred of D20, I still don't think that wold be the smartest move for RIFTS.
Sure, you'd likely get a bit of an upsurge on sales, I would imagine, but you lose part of the idenity of the game if you do that. (Look at Lot5R; the D20 version, while more or less mechanically sound, lost alot of the charm and appeal (IMO) of the orginal game.)
I'm not defending KS/Rifts by any stretch. The rules need to be rewritten from the ground up, to at least offer the PRETENSE of cohesion. (It always amused me that you could have a starting party where one character is a GlitterBoy, and the other could be a DOPLHIN? Huh?)
Actually, I found the game's "imbalance" to be part of the game's charm. One of the first RIFTS games I ran featured a Vagabond and a Glitterboy.
No problems.
Michael Silverbane
Adventurer
Dannyalcatraz said:
I had a pretty similar experience... In the first RIFTS game I ran the party consisted of a Glitterboy, a Shifter, a Vangabond, a Rogue Scientist, and a Dragon Hatchling. There was, of course, some challenge in making sure that everyone had something to do all the time, but the players really seemed to enjoy it. That game lasted a little over a year with roughly the same characters (the Shifter got eaten by something that he brought in, and switched to a Burster, at one point). It was good times.
Later
silver
Vraille Darkfang
First Post
Michael Silverbane said:
Do I know you?
Because that is Identical to the First Rifts Game I ever Played in. I don't remember the game lasting a year though.
However.
Rifts was really good when it came out, but it has not aged well.
Rifts is about 15 years in need of some very serious revisions.
Um, their Publishing Tech is about 20 years behind the times.
I'd rather it didn't go d20. I'd be happy with Rifts 2.0 Myself.
Form what I've heard of KS, this will require a Chistmas Carol Level of Haunting by Games of Editons Past to ever happen.
