Palladium/Rifts--what's your opinion?

[Andor]

The problem is the same one DnD 2e had, multiplied by 1000. Lots of supplements, all with power creep and most with strange interactions. If you think the max damage DnD builds are bad wait till you see what can be done with Rifts. Builds are routinely posted with damages in the thousands of MDC per round. I saw one that did several hundred thousand per round. In Rifts btw that's enough damage to kill the pantheon of your choice. Even amoung by the book character classes you have the Vagabond (read commoner) to (in a supplement) the Cosmo-knight who was a character designed to go toe to toe with a star destroyer.

Rifts has good ideas and can be a fun game to play, but decide on a powerlevel and a campign flavor and then make sure all the characters match that level.

 

[eyebeams]

Aside from the obvious problems, characters in Palladium games tend to be very front-loaded. You get lots of cool stuff to start, but the incremental benefits leave much to be desired.

However, the ideas behind the combat system, where every move a character makes is emulated, are excellent. The implementation is bad.

I'm actually finding it very inspiring for a game I'm working on where I plan to break all the commonly held assumptions about good conventional game design. I plan on:

1) Unbalanced character classes and races.
2) Separate resolution methods for skills and combat.
3) Scaled damage.

. . . but I think I can make it work, by looking at RIFTS and seeing how successful games turn these problems into assets.

 

[Salad Shooter]

I'm personally fond of Rifts. With a little tweaking, the rules are bearable, and I love the setting.

I think its all matter of personal preference, and what you're willing to put up with. If you are willing to put up with the inconsistencies, and you like the over-the-top post-apocolyptic type game like RIFTS is, then so be it. If not, well, stick with d20 Future

 

[Aristotle]

To echo what you've heard a thousand times before: Great setting with lousy mechanics. I actually have a large RIFTS collection but I've never run it. I just got it to read the fluff and mine it for ideas for campaigns. I stopped a few years ago after hearing some of the things ex-employees had said about the company and things that the owners themselves were saying on their own website. I don't have references, dated emails, or links... so I'll just chalk it up to not being willing to give my hard earned money to a company that doesn't seem to value me as a customer or respect others professionally.

I realize that not every game should jump on the d20 bandwagon. But RIFTS is one setting that could really benefit from a complete mechanic change, whether it be to d20 or some new and more 'modern' mechanic (IMHO of course).

 

[sword-dancer]

I never estimate the unbalancing CC in Riftzs a design mistake, but a design feature.

They were IMPOV not intended to be all balanced to gether, but to fill a niche in that Multiverse.

I found and find the MDC concept a good one.

These are SF Opera technology.
Military Hand-Weapons aren`t any longer designed to take the soldier out of action, but their primary Effect is, to break his armor up, to take him out of action.

Thesame design principle difference beteween an arming sword and a shortsword vs a poleaxe or a Bec de coeur.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I'll give RIFTS this: they gave away the "big secret". I got the first RIFTS book when it came out and as I remember the reason why everything went kablooie-gonzo was supposed to be a big secret. I hate that in RPGs. Anyway, they eventually told you why all the realities slammed together, making me very happy.

Care to elaborate? I don't remember there being a "big secret". Nukes were launched. Ley lines got flooded with all that PPE from millions dying at once. Rifts opened at the junctions, mass devastation, cycle repeats. All that was in the main book. Are you talking about something else?

-TW, who can't believe he remembers what PPE stands for.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I love the Rifts setting, but HATE the game. Rifts had some of the best ideas going in an RPG, but it was so horribly implemented. There is no balance and each sourcebook ramped up the power levels. (But a city rat is still a viable character option in a party along side a Glitter Boy, a Crazy Juicer, and an Atlantean Undead Slayer....right...) Plus, Palladium is very likely the #1 company that I have heard the most horrible things about.

Someone leaves WotC, you hear how the people were happy to work there and wish the company the best. You don't hear that with Palladium. Bill Coffin has gone on a couple rants on RPG.net about how much of a lunatic KS is.

In a lot of ways, one can take the various D20 products from D&D to D20 Modern/Future to Star Wars to Darwin's World to make a game that feels a lot like Rifts. I've been doing that for a while now. Take all the various monsters and races from the myriad of D20 products, convert a few elements from Rifts, and put it all into the D20 Modern framework and you have a much better system for Rifts-style games than Palladium ever gave us.

Kane

 

[BlackMoria]

There is few games I loathe and Rifts is one of them. Wonky mechanics, zero game balance....I could go on but others have already said.

Could be the bad memories are coloring my perceptions. I remember my first adventure in Rifts. Glitterboy, some Cyborg dud, and a couple of other characters I don't recall. We were given a armored personnel carrier. Our first encounter was with some giant mutant prairie dogs, who destroyed the APC and killed the party.

Come on....their freakin' prairie dogs, for god sake!

I decided to give it another shot and the next adventure, the party got tesseracted by a demon lord into some dimension to play....baseball. Yep...baseball. So we played several sessions playing demon baseball, trying to find a way to get away. Only to die by some Cuthlu like demon lord who was hosting the baseball tournment. No contest either. We were dead, just like that.

Needless to say, I couldn't leave fast enough.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Care to elaborate? I don't remember there being a "big secret". Nukes were launched. Ley lines got flooded with all that PPE from millions dying at once. Rifts opened at the junctions, mass devastation, cycle repeats. All that was in the main book. Are you talking about something else?

No. Which leads me to believe

a) it wasn't in the first printing
b) it was and I missed it

I do remember the big human government keeping the nukage and ley lines a big secret. Maybe the government's position was underlined so often and the true event was only mentioned once so my mind went with the government's line. Sneaky government.

 

[mossfoot]

Personally I love the Rifts setting (at least in its initial form, I haven't seen where the suppliments have lead past the first couple of years). I like the concept, the art and whatnot. But naturally I'm not a fan of the palladium system.

However, my take on the matter is: Play what works with your players, 'cause they're the ones who really matter.

I had a group in Ontario, and we played Palladium just fine for many years. Another group in B.C., however, despized my attempt to use the GURPS system for a fantasy game (they found it too slow and complex), but when I used Mekton (of all things) it went perfectly smoothly. To each their own, but ultimately the Players are the ones who have to be happy