RIFTS movie confirmed

[Stone Dog]

Though if you're dealing in SDC, you're barely in RIFTS. The MDC kluge was specifically added for the sake of RIFTS.

Not to nit pick, but it was designed for Robotech actually.

Other than that, you pretty much have Rifts in a nutshell there. It has giant robots and powered armor, dragons and atlanteans, wizards and psychics, orcs and elves and freaking godlings and so much more I can't even list them and they are just about ALL PC's.

There is no balance that I have ever seen. Nothing is arranged in levels or tiers or anything else that might give a hint as to relative power. You can easily have a being like the silver surfer (no I am not kidding, there is a whole club of them) right along side of a newly hatched dragon with a sentient monkey as a sidekick and expect them to go through the same adventure. It is wacky.

 

[KChagga]

The worst thing about knowing a Rifts movie is being made is all of the things that won't be in it. To make a decent Rifts movie they will have to really restrain themselves on what they use.

I expect to see as characters;

A scientist a.k.a. puny fleshbag

A juicer (for all those damned matrix effects)

A cyborg (the tank of the group)

A hot shot robot pilot a.k.a. puny fleshbag in a can

An annoying other dimensional being (I'm thinking Jar-Jar pulled through a Rift)

Probably all of the cool aliens and monsters will be enemies that get killed quickly. The supernatural will most likely just be another different kind of bug to squash. Alas.

 

[Crothian]

Rifts is a pretty fun place to play. It has a lot of grewat ideas that just don't work that well together. In the movie I want Splurgoth, I want Coalition...evil Coalition, and I want Victor Lazlo.

 

[RogueWriter]

Though just so you know, RIFTS is the furthest thing from balance imaginable.

I disagree. In my own experience GMing Rifts since the first book came out, I've realized that balancing player power levels is the onus of the GM, not the rules. The easiest way to do so is to limit the characters to either everyone being SDC or everyone being MDC. As a general rule, this will work. Of course, this can be tweaked farther. I've run all mecha campaigns, and I ran an all extremely-high-power level campaign. On the other end, I've run campaigns where everyone started with nothing and were SDC.

Rifts, like any game, is simply what you make of it.

RW

 

[SkidAce]

Rifts is for playing fun...love it. DnD is my favorite but we do a lot of one offs set in Rifts.

And the movie better have Glitterboys and Boom guns, and the aforemention Blind Slave Barge Women.

But sadly, What are the odds of them including the human Coalition and Skelebots as the bad guys? Here's hoping Chi-Town stays the bad guys.

 

[Impeesa]

If it has a flamboyantly French Glitterboy pilot and a good look at the moral ambiguity of the Coalition, I'll be happy.

--Impeesa--

 

[buzzard]

I disagree. In my own experience GMing Rifts since the first book came out, I've realized that balancing player power levels is the onus of the GM, not the rules. The easiest way to do so is to limit the characters to either everyone being SDC or everyone being MDC. As a general rule, this will work. Of course, this can be tweaked farther. I've run all mecha campaigns, and I ran an all extremely-high-power level campaign. On the other end, I've run campaigns where everyone started with nothing and were SDC.

Rifts, like any game, is simply what you make of it.

RW

Umm, no. You don't seem to have any use for balance in your mind so you dismiss it as a point of analysis. Balance is a reasonable thing to look for in a ruleset. While it probably will never be perfect, it can facilitate games in which no one player simply dominates. Yes, such a thing can be done by the GM, and in fact some attention shold be paid to this in all cases. However, when working with such an unbalanced system as RIFTS, the burden is onerous.

The GM in a RIFTS games will be required to set some very hard rules are to what is and isn't possible. I imagine that if you limit things just to the basic rules, this wouldn't be so bad, but with the plethora of RIFTS books out there, you're chopping off a lot of stuff. The thing is that RIFTS supplements created the concept of power creep in a way that the complete guides of 2nd Ed could never match. Cosmo Knight anyone?

buzzard

 

[RogueWriter]

Umm, no. You don't seem to have any use for balance in your mind so you dismiss it as a point of analysis. Balance is a reasonable thing to look for in a ruleset. While it probably will never be perfect, it can facilitate games in which no one player simply dominates. Yes, such a thing can be done by the GM, and in fact some attention shold be paid to this in all cases. However, when working with such an unbalanced system as RIFTS, the burden is onerous.

The GM in a RIFTS games will be required to set some very hard rules are to what is and isn't possible. I imagine that if you limit things just to the basic rules, this wouldn't be so bad, but with the plethora of RIFTS books out there, you're chopping off a lot of stuff. The thing is that RIFTS supplements created the concept of power creep in a way that the complete guides of 2nd Ed could never match. Cosmo Knight anyone?

buzzard

Umm, no. I think balance is a wonderful thing, I just don't depend on the game rules to provide it. As long as you realize that SDC plays with SDC, Mecha plays with Mecha and MDC plays with MDC, things workout rather well. Rifts by its nature, includes so many concepts that balancing out all the varied character concept is impossible. How do you balance a Juicer against a Cosmo-Knight? Answer: You don't. They don't belong together. The campaign itself, when planned has to include the balancing factors, by limiting character creation to appropriate OCCs, PCCs or RCCs.

Let's put it this way, a party of adventurers made up of a Godling, Dragon, Cosmo-Knight and a Street Rat is unbalanced. If the GM doesn't warn the Street Rat player that he isn't in the same league as the others, and will most likely get killed in the first encounter that can challenge the other players, then yes, it's unbalanced.

In many ways its very similar to this: You're starting a new D&D campaign. Everyone is told to make 17th level characters. One of the players decides he wants to play a 1st level character instead. That's what mixing "inappropriate" characters is like in Rifts.

I feel that the problem isn't really that there is a lack of balance in Rifts, Rifts's nature and scope IMO preclude doing that with the rules, it's that there is no reliable means of determining a common, comparable measure of power between character classes other than basic nature. I.e. MDC/SDC/Mecha....

 

[Crothian]

There is a few mistakes people make with Rifts, they allow the player to play what they want. In rifts you can have a field scientist human and a glitterboy pilot with a glitterboy in the same group. In D&D you can have an expert and a fighter with the sword of Kas in the same group. The rules allow it in each game system, but its up to the DM to place the restrictions.

Ya, there are a couple dozen world books plus source books plus conversion books ect. One doesn't have to use it all. Just like in D20 there are class books, race books, etc. In the few years of d20 I already have more d20 books then Rifts books, and I have all the Rifts books.

 

[buzzard]

I feel that the problem isn't really that there is a lack of balance in Rifts, Rifts's nature and scope IMO preclude doing that with the rules, it's that there is no reliable means of determining a common, comparable measure of power between character classes other than basic nature. I.e. MDC/SDC/Mecha....

I think we have a failure to communicate.

You say that RIFTS is balanced, and then you say that there is no way to effectively compare power levels in other than a broad way. Do you not understand the inherent contradiction?

If the system were balanced, it would be possible to say "make a 1st level character" and you would have some amount of expectation that they would all be of comparable power.

In RIFTS, yes you can say "Make a MDC character", but that still leaves things all over the map. The GM has to know every class which is to be available well, and make judgements on them. He als has to sheperd people into particular regeimes of power levels. Also keep in mind that the comparison to 17th level vs. 1st level doesn't really cover it. The 1st level character could simply be given more levels (or a race with ECL) to catch up. There is no way a street rat, even of high level, is ever going to be consequential in a major dustup compared to, say, a Mega-juicer.

Then we have the issue of what do you mean by MDC character. Is it RCCs which have inherent MDC? Would you include such a thing as a Glitterboy? They are pretty bad dudes, but the pilot inside is still pretty squishy.

Don't get me wrong, I like RIFTS. It is a fun setting. However implying that there is anything like balance in it simply isn't true. Palladium doesn't specialize in balance. Heroes Unlimited is another example of this. This does not mean that you can't have fun in the system, or you can run a game which has balanced characters. It just means that the balance has to be externally applied, and does not come from within the system.

buzzard