Palladium books?

[ACpilot]

I've been reading en world for a long time but never registered or posted until now - just to tell you how awesome RIFTS is.


I've been playing and running RIFTS for around 18 years, on and off among other games.

I've never played the game rules by-the-book, always used a heavy amount of house-rules and on-the fly fixes - but even then the game was not about balance of any kind.

RIFTS is about a brutal, HELLISH, post-apocalyptic earth sitting at the center of a pan-dimensional mega-versal struggle.

You can play everything from a psychic slug, uneducated human scum, pixies, all the up to dragons, demons, and young gods.

It is a truly insane setting with truly insane - action oriented rules.

Best part of the rules as-is; you can often have 6 or more attack actions per round! My friends and I always used the incorrect "blow your load" method for combat where each character did all actions at once - its not how the rules are worded but it made for insanely fast and violent anime-esque combat.

 

[Lord Crimson]

... and with RIFTS you can avoid a lot of problems other people have had by making sure the OCC's everyone plays are on par with each other, power wise, or that the players are clear on the fact that they will be seriously over shadowed if they insist on playing an OCC that is not as powerful as the rest.

This, right here. Treebore speaks much wisdom.

RIFTs is playable even with its wonky system. I've been doing it off and on for years.

Where it becomes an issue is when one player makes a common street thief, another is playing a Mind Melter Super Psychic, and a third is a soldier in a giant suit of power armor packing weapons with a 3 mile range and doing more damage per attack than everyone else can do in a full round of attacks.

Sure, as a GM you can make that game work... but it's a hell of a lot of work doing it.

 

[scourger]

$3 for the Rifts core book is a steal. Good catch.

 

[Treebore]

STOP IT! You guys are making me want to break out my RIFTS books and try to remember all my house rules and get yet ANOTHER game going!

STOP!

It is insane fun, isn't it? I sure could use some insane fun right about now.


STOP!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

(Techno- Mages...Atlantean Undead Slayers...Karmic Martial Artists from Heroes, Unlimited via the Conversion manual...Juicers...Ley Line Walkers...)

 

[Treebore]

Your evil. EVIL, I say!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

(Bursters...Millenium Tree Druids...Glitterboys...Magnetic supers from Heroes, Unlimited via the Conversion manual...Wolfen warriors from Palladium Fantasy via the Conversion manual...Full Conversion Borgs with rail guns...Coalition defectors with SAMAS suits...)

 

[wingsandsword]

This, right here. Treebore speaks much wisdom.

RIFTs is playable even with its wonky system. I've been doing it off and on for years.

Where it becomes an issue is when one player makes a common street thief, another is playing a Mind Melter Super Psychic, and a third is a soldier in a giant suit of power armor packing weapons with a 3 mile range and doing more damage per attack than everyone else can do in a full round of attacks.

Seen that happen, it hurts, a lot.

The only RIFTS game I ever played in using the actual Palladium rules had as a party:

1. Atlantean Tattooed Maxi-Man (Magically imbued humanoid slave-warrior that is essentially a super-saiyan)
2. Full Conversion Cyborg (battlefield robot with a human brain deep within, think super-upgraded Robocop)
3. Street Rat (completely mundane human refugee/street urchin)
4. Rogue Scholar (completely mundane human historian)
5. Armorer/Operator (completely mundane human weapon repair/design expert)
6. Glitter Boy (mecha operator with a laser-resistant suit of power-armor and a cannon that packs as much firepower as a battleship)

So yeah, 3 characters that could take on small mundane armies solo, and 3 mundane humans that will die if they take even 1 Megadamage. Didn't help that the GM then had the PC's find a time machine and go back to pre-cataclysm "modern day" Earth and it became a Nightbane crossover. . .and PC"s joining playing both nightspawn and mundane characters like a modern-day National Guardsman (I guess he had some Soldier OCC). He then had us end up on Phase World. . .where one PC wanted to play a Cosmo Knight, another was talking about Dragonblood Juicers, and another wanted to bring in a Demigod. . .

In other words, the power scale is so widely swinging between PCs in Palladium games as a whole that you could have as starting characters a mundane 19 year old refugee, history buff, or soldier fresh out of basic training, super-soldiers that can level towns on their own, beyond-super-soldiers that can take on starships or mid-sized armies alone, or quite literally minor deities.

 

[Treebore]

(Bursters...Millenium Tree Druids...Glitterboys...Magnetic supers from Heroes, Unlimited via the Conversion manual...Wolfen warriors from Palladium Fantasy via the Conversion manual...Full Conversion Borgs with rail guns...Coalition defectors with SAMAS suits...)

...Here is your "MASTER OF INSIDIOUS EVIL" card...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

*grin*