Tell me about RIFTS

Turanil

First Post
I did read a couple of comments on RIFTS on these boards lately. This aroused my curiosity. However, there is very little (if any at all) material about RIFT available on the Internet. So, everyone who knows about this game, could you speak about it? What it is about exactly? (Seems to me a mix of everything fantasy and sci-fi thrown together) What's nice about this game? (And what's clunky too...)

Thanks.
 

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Ottergame

First Post
If you're over the age of 16, chances are you won't find much enjoyment in Rifts.

It's clunky, totally unbalanced, and the quality of the books range from poor to flung poo.

On the benefits... well, it's inexpensive, there's lots of books out there for it, it's popular among the early teen crowd, and it's got an aggresive ammount of support by the company.

It tries to be all genres, but everything is slapped together with little real effort for explanation. Mostly it aims to include everything kids think are "cool". Big explosions, big robots, big guns, big fights. Think Dragonball Z, or Inuyasha, but even lower in quality.

Again, it's targeted audiance is boys aged 12-16. play at your own risk.
 

Henry

Autoexreginated
The reason you won't find much about it on the internet is that Palladium is very vigilant about guarding their copyrights. For a while, even WotC had a note on their d20 forums that discussion of conversions to Palladium products was NOT allowed. (It still isn't, I just haven't seen the note there recently).

Other than that, I know little about the system, other than that it's supposedly similar to AD&D, but using a percentile system. Heck, that description fits Rolemaster, too, for that matter. :)
 

Thanee

First Post
RIFTS is just totally freaked-out megalomaniacal crazyness.

The rules are pretty bad and widely regarded as completely and utterly unbalanced in every possible way. Even the PC races/classes are completely unbalanced. Ranges from pretty normal every-day humans to superheroes that can tough it out with a tank platoon.

The background revolves around the conflict of a Nazi-like regime (the Coalition, who violently oppress all things that are not human and technology, psionics and magic-use are highly regulated, beings from other dimensions hunted and exterminated) against the free-spirited psionicists and magic-users and outer-dimensional beings. There are plenty other factions in the mix as well.

The whole concept is based on dimensional rifts (hence the name), which result in an excessive mix of literally everything (fantasy, science-fiction, vampires, mecha, pulp, horror, ninjas (including ninja-turtles (and this is not a joke)) and whatever else that is out there) put together into the big conglomerate that is RIFTS.

I think with a GOOD GM it could actually be quite fun, there are a lot of neat ideas there (and a lot of very silly ones, too).

Bye
Thanee
 

Kanegrundar

Explorer
My experience is different from Ottergame's. Rifts is the epitome of the mish-mash setting. It mixes magic, technology, mecha, and supers into a setting. There are some great ideas in the game, but the system is horrible. Magic is extremely weak compared to technology. There is no sense of balance, and each subsequent sourcebook ramps up the power level. It's not all bad. Some of the books have some great ideas, like I said. I run a conversion of it using D20 Modern, and in a balanced system it's a lot of fun. You can have fun playing straight Rifts, but you need to have the right group of players and a GM that knows what exactly he'll allow and what he won't. If not, it'll turn into a free-for-all slaughter-fest with a wide disparity of characters. (One group I played with briefly had the following make-up: A core rules Cyber-Knight, an Atlantean Undead Slayer which was nearly unkillable, a Free Quebec Glitterboy capatain which was nearly as bad, a simple human vagabond, and a Jungle Elf Millenium Druid. Only the Atlantean and the Glitterboy survived the entire session, my cyber-knight lasted for about half the session, and the human and elf were dead in the first round of combat.)

I doubt that Rifts is targetted at a younger crowd, but that's the crowd that seems to play more than anyone. Palladium used to run ads for Rifts talking about it being an advanced system not suitable for RPG beginners. Doesn't sound like they were targetting the younger, and more likely "inexperienced" crowd there.

The reason you don't find any information about Rifts on the net is Palladium's OVERLY restrictive net policy. You can't post conversions to or from any Palladium system on the net. I don't think they like you to even post your own statted homebrew stuff.

Kane
 

Doug McCrae

Legend
This is a perfectly reasonable description of the world, from Palladium's own website.

The setting is good, IMO. There's a preponderance of giant robots and much other crazy batshit but lots of good ideas too and interesting interaction between them. The Coalition is the best idea in Rifts, in many ways a perfectly reasonable human response to the invasion of Earth, intended to serve as a sometime foe/sometime ally of the PCs.

There's a bunch of nice artwork, especially Kevin Long's stuff in the first few books.

However, as everyone says, the rules system is a big steaming pile of crap.
 


Turjan

Explorer
Kanegrundar said:
I doubt that Rifts is targetted at a younger crowd, but that's the crowd that seems to play more than anyone. Palladium used to run ads for Rifts talking about it being an advanced system not suitable for RPG beginners. Doesn't sound like they were targetting the younger, and more likely "inexperienced" crowd there.
Hehe, I don't think you got your psychology right here :D. Is there a way to make your product more interesting to a kid than placing your Ice Cream Sundae in front of the little guy and telling him that he's to young to eat it ;)?
 

Kanegrundar

Explorer
Turjan said:
Hehe, I don't think you got your psychology right here :D. Is there a way to make your product more interesting to a kid than placing your Ice Cream Sundae in front of the little guy and telling him that he's to young to eat it ;)?
True. Now that I consider that I saw those ads in comic books when I was a teenager, I think I may have been wrong all along. Funny thing is, I buy more Rifts now than I ever did when I was a Teen (that was my 1E and 2E D&D days), and I'm nearing 30.

Kane
 

zenld

First Post
I GM and run in Rifts regularly. I am not a 12-16yr old boy. I am male, but haven't been 12-16 for many many years.

Rifts is a good campaign setting. Lots of possibilities. Magic. Psi. Tech. Whatever, and anything else you can think of.

The trick my group discovered to making Rifts very fun is keeping the power levels of the PCs roughly equivalent. We do not allow extremely powerful PCs in a group mainly of normal humans, nor a normal human in a group of dragon hatchlings or other high power races. So as stated before, basically what you need for Rifts to be enjoyable is a good GM. I would add good players. I have one player who hates the system. Completely. But he shows up to play every session because we have fun. And he is enjoying the campaign immensely.

I am not advocating Rifts over anything else. Nor do I advocate anything else over Rifts. Play what you like. Rulesets can be modified, ignored, or coped with. Worlds can be created or purchased. Just play.

zen
 

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