Tell me about RIFTS

Storyteller01

First Post
I actually enjoyed the game (probably no surprise to most of you). Mainly, I loved the actual lack of balance. The setting forced you to put some thought and effort into the survival of your character. It really forces you to create your own balance. Made for a fun game! Also added for some RPing that you don't find in d20.

Dunno... IMHO, the d20 systems need for balance seems to really curtail rpg possibilities. Said potential can be found in Rifts if your willing to wrack your brain around the rules for a while.

I agree about the rules though. We just went with the combat system, but we house ruled that every 15% actually gave a +1 to a d20 roll (this was WAY before d20 came out). Cut down on arguements like 'I have a 50% Hide and rolled a 49/But I have a 70% Search and rolled a 51/WHO WINS!!??'.

I also agree that when you play you need to maintain the setting focus, but I rather enjoyed the huge amounts of world books. You could play virtually any setting.The main Coalition setting, while the base setting, was not the defacto story line. You could just as easily play out a clash between two Russian warlords without ever involving the coalition or any of the usual player character types.



My two pesoes...
 
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Dbudzik

Villager
I’ve played Rifts since it was released. The Palladium system hasn’t changed much since 1983 and it definitely shows. It’s a bunch of different mechanics all slapped together. Eight attributes, each with a different set of bonuses that grow at different rates all apply to different rolls, which are d20. The skill system is percentile and there is an ENORMOUS list of skills. Characters belong to an OCC (occupational character class) or RCC (racial character class), which provides a starting package of skills, abilities, attribute adjustments. Choosing some skills results in more attribute bonuses, which is kind of cool because you can “train” your character to absurd levels of ability. Combat is messy and laborious. There are THREE damage tracks: HP, SDC, and MDC. Originally, it was just hit points, but to make characters more resilient, they added structural damage capacity, and then when Rifts was released, they added Mega Damage Capacity, which is super/high-tech SDC. All of this means combat lasts forever.
So the system is not great.
The settings, however, are amazing. You can go wherever you want. Vampires, Atlantis, mechs, other infinite dimensions, magic and high tech and everything in between and authors have written TONS of stuff for the game over the long publication history. World Book: Africa had the four horsemen of the apocalypse in it. Pantheons of the Megaverse had all the gods / goddesses you could want. Dimension Book 1: Wormwood is, without a doubt, the most amazing setting ever published for an RPG.
 

timbannock

Hero
Supporter
As others have said, it's a mixed bag. Mechanics are at best an inspired but unplayable-as-is hack of early 80s D&D, setting is problematic, and its sensibilities are completely disconnected from the idea that you can both improve the game play and remove questionable assumptions. It's also exhaustively detailed, with an uneven metaplot in later works.

But the setting stuff that does work? The art and in-game-world designs of tech, monsters, and magic? When it works, it works very well. There are diamonds to be found, truly, but if you look too closely there's still so many problematic elements -- and again, the mechanics are garbage -- so it's very hard to recommend as a whole.

The better bet is the Savage Worlds version of the game, because it's actually playable. Or you could take the setting stuff you like and use Cortex or some other non-trad/non-simulationist sytem and probably make something 100x better.
 

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