Ultimate Rifts. Improvement or Same Old Stuff?

[danzig138]

Maps = Use an Atlas after all the basic geopraphy is earth, just with a few minor changes

Doesn't work. At least not for me. Yes, it's Earth - Earth after a cataclysm that has done lord knows what to the polar ice caps, not to mention that a piece of land the size of Texas was dropped in the Atlantic ocean. I would love to see an actual scientifically generated projection of what Earth would look like after the arrival of Atlantis.

Time Line = Each book has an excerpt from Erin Tarn's "Diary's" which are all dated to provide you with some sort of a loose timeline, D&D doesnt' give you time line either though

No, D&D doesn't give you a time line. D&D uses a stripped down Greyhawk as a core setting, primarily in the form of names. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, actual worlds, like the world of Rifts Eartth, do provide timelines. And so should Rifts.

Game Balance= What do you want to Balance?

Dragons hanging out with Vagabonds?

 

[danzig138]

wait anxiously

Wait anxiously. . .if anxiously means foaming at the mouth rabid fanboy Sorry, some of the Palladium fans have left an unpleasant impression on me at times.

 

[danzig138]

If Rifts was Rereleased with all new d20 ruleset, since most peoples complaint seems to be that they love the setting but hate the rules would it be more enjoyable for you to play and therefore you would be willing to play RIFTS where as now you do not?

Who would be doing the write-up and conversion? That would have a big impact on my decision to give a Rifts d20 a shot. If I was writing it, sure, I'd give it a go. If KS was doing the work, I'd cry at the horrible things he'd do to d20. If Monte Cook or Sean Reynolds did the work, I'd surely be interested.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Catavarie!

If Rifts was Rereleased with all new d20 ruleset, since most peoples complaint seems to be that they love the setting but hate the rules would it be more enjoyable for you to play and therefore you would be willing to play RIFTS where as now you do not?

I would buy it in an instant.

As most will note, very interesting setting, bewildering mechanics.

 

[Aris Dragonborn]

Settiing = Gold

Rules =

For my part, once I get my copy of Spycraft 2.0, I'll be looking into a merger of Spycraft/d20 Future/d20 Apocolypse to create my Rifts setting - though just how much will make it into my homebrew, I'm not quite sure.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Look at Rifts: Aftermath. That book advanced the timeline for the whole world up to after the Siege of Tolkeen.

I have it. From what I understand, Ultimate Edition did not go this route, instead refering the user to... yes, another book. Lots of books for "One book system" no?

 

[Catavarie]

Who would be doing the write-up and conversion? That would have a big impact on my decision to give a Rifts d20 a shot. If I was writing it, sure, I'd give it a go. If KS was doing the work, I'd cry at the horrible things he'd do to d20. If Monte Cook or Sean Reynolds did the work, I'd surely be interested.

KS would never write RIFTS as d20 so you wouldn't have to worry about that happening, and I seriously doubt that anyone that has a long history with Palladium would do it either as that would cause loss of their meal ticket, but someone from "outside" of palladium could be more easily persuaded to do so, and since they like using freelance artists and writers more and more, its easy to find more than a few peeps that now the text but don't have such a blinding devotion to as many.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Wait anxiously. . .if anxiously means foaming at the mouth rabid fanboy Sorry, some of the Palladium fans have left an unpleasant impression on me at times.

Aye, same here. I was just dancing around saying that as much as I could. ;

Kane

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

would say that the game could could be converted to d20 with a bit of shoehorning, just because d20 is written to balance classes, doesn't mean that you can't still have unbalanced classes within a d20 game...its just that the concept of RIFTS lends itself to needing a ton of tables and differing stat blocks than most d20 games do. Its the nature of the beast, so its not possible to fully turn RIFTS or any paladium game into a full d20 system but it could be made more Userfriendly with simplier math and more intuitive rules for actions and items.

BESM d20 in combination with Mecha d20 might work fairly well here. Are there any aspects of the RIFTS setting that aren't covered by the two?

 

[Infernal Teddy]

KS would never write RIFTS as d20 so you wouldn't have to worry about that happening, and I seriously doubt that anyone that has a long history with Palladium would do it either as that would cause loss of their meal ticket, but someone from "outside" of palladium could be more easily persuaded to do so, and since they like using freelance artists and writers more and more, its easy to find more than a few peeps that now the text but don't have such a blinding devotion to as many.

As a long-time fanboy of Rifts, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I even have notes somewhere on how I would take the Corebook and the "Mega-Sorcebook" series (GM Guide, Book of Magic, Aftermath...), and patch it all up into three organized books...