The Whiner Knight said:
Far from it. He's one of my best friends. Nothing jerkish about it, IMO.
And compared to the dragon, a GB is small change. I think the dragon, and the dragon's player, caused him far more headaches than I ever did, especially since my major battle tactic included point-and-click with the Boom Gun or some other ranged weapon. Meanwhile, the dragon's player was going through this phase of "If it means I have to roll dice, I want to find some other method," which is to say, he wanted to do things by convincing the GM to let him do them, rather than rolling against a skill like everyone else.
But he's all better now.
Andor said:
OTOH 25 ISP per shot for the earplugs does sound like a screw job. I would expect them to either cost less than half that, or have a duration of a couple of minutes on the protection effect.
I said that seemed pretty steep at the time, but he explained that it was based upon a silence spell in the RIFTS book, the ISP cost of which was three or four times as much.
I don't know if the ISP requirement was per shot or per every few minutes. Like I said, it's been years.
TWK
There is a great deal of stuff not specifically covered by the Rifts rules (moreso than most games, IMHO), so you
must wing it. Normally, this wouldn't be problematic for an experienced GM, though Rifts is unique in this regard. Normally, this wouldn't be problematic because the GM would follow employ simple logic and deductive reasoning to come up with an appropriate judgement for the resolution in question. . .
As the case with the earplugs and the boom gun discharge illustrates, if you're basing your adjudication on maths or descriptions already present in Rifts, taking things in the next logical direction will amplify the unfun because, let's face it, the foundation of basic maths and descriptions that Kevin built the many aspects of Rifts are completely non-sensical, defying logic at its most basic level.
This isn't necessarily a flaw, though. It's a quirk.
When extrapolating the next step in an undefined procedure or process in Rifts, the experienced
Rifts GM will not employ logic or think in terms of what makes sense as, again, this is
Rifts and sense isn't a big part of the setting. Instead, to make Rifts work well in actual play, it has been my experience that the GM must substitute "what is cool" for "what makes sense". In other words, damn being sensible!
Rifts is the most metal RPG outside of Senzar, and that is how it needs to be played!
In short, if it sucks (e.g., boom gun sonic fallout, stupidly high ISP costs, etc), it doesn't belong in Rifts, no matter how sensible it may be. Rifts is about bringing the cool, at any cost, not about bringing the Sir Issac Newton at the cost of cool. It's a crazy, unpredictable, often maligned, paradigm of play -- but as legions of fans attest to, hey, it
works.
