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According to the Siembiedas, they got to visit Long when he worked at Raven Software and got a tour of his workplace, so presumably their parting wasn't too acrimonious. I don't think there's quite as much mystery behind it as people want to think, a lot of people want Long to burst out of the hedges and tell some horror story that confirms Siembieda chained him to his desk and how he had to cut off his own leg with a Copic marker or something, and that probably isn't going to happen.
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Aug 30, 2013 23:00
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Fighting vampires comes down to three things:
In any case, don't throw them up in a big fight against vampires until they're armed and prepared against them. But then, it's a one-shot, so it may be okay if they all die at certain points, depending on your intention. In your example, I'd let the dog boy have better armor than they have in the core, as well (I think they may have gotten some better armor in Coalition War Campaign or Lone Star, not sure). Having a swift vehicle to get around wouldn't hurt either. As Coalition, also bear in mind a lot depends on whether or not they have support as well. Also, I wouldn't ever make anybody play a Coalition Grunt, but it's a one-shot, so class balance doesn't matter so much.
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Aug 31, 2013 20:13
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It bears mentioning that occamsnailfile is currently running a Rifts Dimension Book 1: Wormwood writeup in FATAL & Friends right now. Edit: Also, if anybody knows of sites or galleries for Vince Martin, Thomas Miller, or Roger Petersen to add to the OP, I'd appreciate it! Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 22:52
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One thing that I don't think can be understated is that Palladium needs the Robotech RPG minis to be a success. Palladium has been a bad place for years, and has been able to keep running, but like a shark, if they stop, they'll sink. There's basically no financial safety net at this point. It's sad, I don't necessarily want Palladium to go under, I wish them the best, but it's amazing they've been able to keep going this long. Though I wouldn't necessarily predict their doom (as has been popular for about a decade now), it seems unlikely that they can maintain their momentum forever. With that Kickstarter update, Kevin really just keeps to clam up, show the pictures, give the progress report, and be done. The handwringing and apologizing just looks desperate.
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Jan 10, 2014 06:21
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Wibbleman posted:how do you gently caress up on a kickstarter that overfunded. It's well above the cash levels that say needing a range-hood would hurt. There's always the classic "we failed to estimate our costs properly in the first place".
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Jan 10, 2014 14:25
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So Palladium has announced they're going to do a 30th anniversary hardcover of Heroes Unlimited. But it's not a reprint of the book that came out 30 years ago, it's going to be the second edition. Apparently Kevin thinks it's in hot demand. Also there's a bunch of Kevin's toys and Palladium collectibles that have gone up on ebay. So if you want a Coca Cola Barbie that's passed through Kevin's hands or a signed portrait of the Palladium staff, there you have it.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:25
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Yeah, a number of books have gone into reprint now. And my second thought on seeing that is "Oh no, don't tell me you're putting your kickstarter money into a reprint of Mystic Russia and Palladium Fantasy books?" Hoping not, but every time Palladium gets a money injection, you tend to see the reprints roll out, because Kevin's seemingly focused on always trying to keep good chunks of their 30-year game line in print.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:40
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Asimo posted:Isn't having a stock of unsold decade-old inventory one of their big issues as it is? Some things do sell out. Of course, then they do a restock, and can fail at selling those... ... so it goes. There's a reason some books you buy from them can literally be yellowed with age.
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Jan 18, 2014 03:35
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Just leaving a note here for those that don't check the PbP recruitment thread that Ryuujin is running a Rifts recruitment for a Play-by-Post game. For those that dare to brave, dare to dream, and dare to suffer.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:25
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Well, you were right all along, the whole thing flaked out before it could start. On a more positive note, the FATAL & Friends review of Rifts Conversion Book 2 is done, our most painful F&F yet (to write, at least), so it's been added to the OP. I also added more Palladium artists a little while back. I forget who I added! But they're linked, now. Rifts World Book 34: Northern Gun 2 just came out. I actually found a copy of Rifts World Book 33: Northern Gun One a little while back used and picked it up; the weirdest part is since it was crowdfunded, it mentions most of the funders in the book as NPCs, and does them in bold print to boot. The kicker is that most people are just listed as a design of a given mech, so out of nowhere in each robot description it'll have something like "... the design team of Carl Gleba, Dayton DeFoe and Larry Todd Stanley set out to create..." It's a hilariously clunky way to fit all the funders in the book, though they are listed at the front as well. It just feels so emblematic of the weird decisions that go on there.
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May 22, 2014 03:23
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Well, here's an oddity that I have to post: excerpts from the comic that Kevin Siembieda originally published before Palladium Books: A+Plus #1 A+Plus #2 "'Balling' is what two people do when they're alone and want to enjoy each other..."
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Aug 1, 2014 16:28
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Yeah, unfortunately. That's why I said "published" and not written or drawn. But he owned Megaton Publications, despite it only publishing a handful of comic books.
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Aug 1, 2014 19:16
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Captain Rufus posted:I actually own and have completed the NGage game, and have an eventual plan to read and review every issue of The Rifter. I own like 2/3 rds of them for some reason. As somebody that's worked with somebody else at doing F&F writeups of Rifts, that's a steep loving mountain you're staring at, though I imagine you don't mean something quite so in-depth. We've been doing this for two years and have thirteen books down. Granted, a full F&F review every two months feels pretty drat impressive when I look back at it. Captain Rufus posted:Though it is decent enough in the TMNT version. Well, it's a mess there too, but it's more functional. It's still a system where trained ninjas are only able to sneak past people half the time, or where most PCs can throw themselves on a grenade without taking life-threatening damage. Or where you only kick all the time because it does more damage. Or some animal types are just plain better because the (unseen and undetailed) animal design system for some reason makes 1 BIO-E = 1 attribute point... Captain Rufus posted:That is one thing I am glad old Kevvy is still a dinosaur about because gently caress that trend and anyone who likes it. It was honestly state-of-the-art layout for an RPG in 1986. It just never changed until about a half-decade ago or so. BerkerkLurk posted:Sixth Sense is great and See The Invisible has utility, but again, I better be creeping around a haunted house and not flying through the air having laser battles. Yeah, you're essentially built as a supernatural watchdog... but also given some of the worst armor and weapons in the game.  Though they at least softened on that in later books, but I'd definitely suggest giving Dog Boys more of an edge on weapons and equipment. If this were a better game, I'd probably give them some spell or psionic disruption, preemption, or counterattack, but in Palladium you'd have to hash that sort of idea entirely from scratch as a new O.C.C. or some dumb nonsense like that.
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Aug 5, 2014 14:44
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Between the Wolfen, New Kennel, and Dog Boys, Palladium loves playable canines.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:14
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NTRabbit posted:Never played a Palladium game before, but I backed Robotech - latest news on that is that despite all the poo poo they stirred up by declaring they were going to sell it at GenCon before backers got theirs despite promising this would never be the case, and supporting that with a fake vote and an angsty backer update, and then that they had used a loophole to get out of a playing space fee by having their demo games and product in the RPG room instead of the minis hall, it now turns out that they made no allowance for potential customs inspections in their timetable. They've been better about overpromising and underdelivering in recent years, but it's still a big problem for Palladium. After all, their last fan-supported book ran about two years late (but is finally out, to be fair). But "fake vote"? You have anything more on that?
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Aug 9, 2014 17:49
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theironjef posted:And Coyle, Kankoran, and several races of alien canines in the execrable Aliens Unlimited. Yeah, I didn't include the Wolfen sub-races because they're just a given. Why aren't they just called Coyoten and Foxen? Oh well. Let's not forget Wujick's contribution in the form of Kuo-Ch'uan - Dog Boxing Kung Fu.
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Sep 26, 2014 20:13
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50 Foot Ant posted:Hopefully that wasn't too big of an infodump. Rather than dumping it in individual posts, it would really up help to put it in a single or several documents off of dropbox or the like so people can download it, and the thread is less spammed. Have you ever submitting anything to The Rifter? Because if you're writing this much Rifts material, you really ought to. I'm glad to see you kicking up dust in the thread but 
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Sep 29, 2014 04:20
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Bieeardo posted:Good god. I saw seventy-some new posts and thought something spectacularly awful had happened to the Robotech miniatures game, or KS had finally completed his metamorphosis into an alien intelligence. Even worse: the game might be released!... just kidding. I hope everybody who payed out at least gets their order, and isn't let down. (Some degree of letdown is likely inevitable, tho.) 50 Foot Ant posted:Naw, I've never submitted to the Rifter. I've thought about it, but never really got around to it. Not lazy enough, if you're writing this much! Granted, The Rifter only pays $10 a page, so YMMV.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:07
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Anybody know if folks have been getting their minis product yet? Supposedly most of the first wave of stuff should be out in the wild by now.
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Dec 8, 2014 05:14
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So, it looks like Palladium is putting out paper miniatures for Palladium Fantasy. I mean, the game doesn't have rules for movement, much less minis, and it can't be their hottest-selling game, but... sure. Paper minis. Presumably part of this is the fact that fantasy models are a lot easier to do in DazStudio than, say, Coalition soldiers. DazStudio? It's like Poser, only free. Oh, yeah, if that isn't odd enough, they're done by Mike Leonard. He does art like this:   He's open for commissions, by the way.
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Mar 22, 2015 07:22
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Plague of Hats posted:I'm always baffled by actual professional companies (even Palladium) going that route. Palladium largely recruits from their fanbase these days from what I can tell. Granted, that's always been true, Siembieda has always seemed wary of getting industry freelancers, but I think it's especially true after The Rifter became their vetting house. NTRabbit posted:My first wave of Robotech arrived today, a year and a half late, and a week after the kickstarter campaign for the first major expansion of Deadzone kicked off - Deadzone being the similarly sized and financed project that run on KS at the same time as Robotech. Wait, the Second Wave still isn't prototyped yet? Yikes. MalcolmSheppard posted:Oh God that's the real Rifts Black Market cover. I had to check. The 80s' comic esthetic is . . . well it's basically Rifts' thing. This is sort of sad. There was a collector's edition that looks much better with a gold-embossed glitter boy, but it's $35 more, so YMMV. Only 250 copies ever produced! (They're still available for purchase.)
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Mar 28, 2015 05:36
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Time for the easy joke: You see, Palladium planned to release this for April Fool's, but, you know. Palladium.
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Apr 22, 2015 03:30
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Exploding dice are self-balancing to an extent, really- the bigger your die value, the better your average is, even with the rerolls. The big difference is that rolling an exploding d4 is way more swingy than rolling an exploding d10. I did the math when I ran Fantasy Craft, since players at times had a choice of what value of exploding die to add to a d20 roll, and a casual review of articles on the subject backs up my own conclusions. It turns out bigger dice are still always better, even if confirmation bias means d4s "feel" better, since you're a lot more likely to get a memorable double or triple explosion and forget that three-fourths of the time you're still getting a mere 1-3. Savage Worlds always felt like a refinement of 1990s design principles to me, and it's a solid, lean system with an emphasis on minis. (Finally, those who hung onto those Rifts minis from the 90s will have a use for them...) I definitely have some gripes with it; I think starting characters are a little too weak, bennies are a little too uncertain, edges / hindrances really aren't any more balanced than most games of their ilk, and the equipment / magic divide... well. I think the equipment / magic divide will be the biggest question, since they use two different reward mechanisms to improve either (money or advancement) that aren't balanced against each other, at least that I'm aware. This is a particular point to bring up because some characters in the original Rifts start with equipment that's worth millions of credits while others get 2d4x1000 creds, and I don't know how they're going to handle that. For me the more immediate questions, though, are A) who'll be writing it and B) will the relationship with Palladium hold? Palladium has always struggled with licensing their work even though Kevin burns with the desire to see Rifts movies, toys, etc. For the record, previous licensees include Myrmidon Press (Palladium broke their relationship, they collapsed afterwards), Precedence Entertainment (collapsed), and Backbone Entertainment (only put out the one N-Gage game, but apparently still going strong). They've worked with Ninja Division on Robotech RPG Tactics, of course, but the scuttlebutt is that Ninja Division is just quietly trying to divorce themselves from the whole affair. Time will tell, but Palladium has had a hard time keeping an long-term relationship with another company, and they're going to have to change that for this to matter.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:28
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Well, now Palladium is starting to sell "Raw Preview Editions", which are... unfinished text-only versions of upcoming books in limited printings. You'd think that'd be the kind of thing you'd offer as a PDF for pre-orders or the like, but no, these are literal physical things that have to be purchased and sent through the mail. I guess that's one way of addressing people's complaints about book delays. 
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May 25, 2015 18:07
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Let us tell you of the tale of tragedy and woe that your Kickstarter money has sent us down. Thanks, backers! We owe it all to you! P.S.: We realize we may have planned badly and should have done all our minis in an entirely different scale. Our fault? Uh, you wouldn't mind buying them all over again at a higher price, right?
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Jun 7, 2015 11:07
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Ninja Division is a combination of Soda Pop Miniatures (Super Dungeon Explore, Tentacle Bento) and Cipher Studios (Hell Dorado, Anima Tactics), both of which are studios that used to work under Cool Mini or Not, but recently broke away to form their own company. About the only positive spin I see is that Siembieda credits Thomas Roache pretty hard, and it's about fuckin' time. He's thanked him in the past, but there literally would be no Robotech miniatures project at Palladium without him pushing it. As for him squeezing fans for money, see the "Raw Preview Editions" above, or him trying to sell signed galley proofs of books at conventions. At least he's selling something that isn't just a byproduct of the publishing process, even if it is $22 for a 6mm figure. (What really distinguishes Max or Miriya's veritechs at the 6mm scale, anyway? Wouldn't a good paint job fool anybody but a tiny minority of hardcore Robotech fans?)
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Jun 7, 2015 19:06
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Huh, thanks for correcting me on that, then!
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Jun 7, 2015 19:45
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Plague of Hats posted:I cannot stress enough how hard it blows my mind that product fulfillment was just a loving mystery to everyone involved until someone in China was all "Okay, we are done with the first batch. Where do we send them?" For all that goons as a whole talk about TG industry incompetence, I am gobsmacked that even Palladium spent literal years twiddling their thumbs not figuring out how their millions of dollars of product would reach customers. I'm actually surprised by the notion that Ninja Division didn't know anything about it, either, having participated in several Kickstarters previously, but it's possible that Cool Mini or Not handled the shipping and fulfillment end of stuff for them. Whatever the reason, I don't get the impression Ninja Division has had any trouble getting their last Kickstarter out to backers now that they're independent. Of course, the idea of them just making excuses to get out from under the debacle would support the scuttlebutt that they were just looking to untie themselves from the whole project (and the fact that they aren't mentioned as far as things going forward says a lot). I would presume it's some mixture of the above, ultimately.
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Jun 7, 2015 20:24
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Plague of Hats posted:Extra Hm. This is new: Kevin Siembieda posted:Artist and concept guy, Mark Dudley, has had some experience in this area, and is currently developing a Nightbane® concept being pitched as an animated TV series. He has garnered some interest and he and his team are currently working on the final details needed to successfully pitch this project. Fingers crossed. Mark had a great deal of first-hand experience to offer and the panel was lively and informative.
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Jun 8, 2015 03:09
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at mentioning the movie deal. Keep that flame burning, Kevin!
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Halloween Jack posted:This shouldn't be surprising considering the only thing Palladium puts out with regularity is The Rifter, and the last time I read an issue, a sizable fraction of it was devoted to Kevin treating his business like a charity, exhorting the customers to buy more products and evangelize Palladium to their friends. Which is frankly a scumbag move. It's to be expected in a company rag to an extent, honestly, but well, let's pull off a issue off my bookshelf more-or-less at random. Let's see: issue #17, dated 2002. It's 112 pages. 9 pages of that are just straight-up ad copy. Mind, bear in mind a lot of the ad copy that runs isn't even new ad copy, making it pure, uncut page filler. Another 3 pages are hype machine, including an exhortation to assist Palladium in the "slow economy" by special ordering books from local stores and basically asking fans to act as unpaid salesmen to store owners. There's also a variety of solicits for books that never came out - Land of the Damned 3 and Hardware Unlimited (both to be written by Bill Coffin, who was infamously "let go" instead), Adventures in the Northern Wilderness 2e, Atorian Empire, Mechanoid Space, and a new game called Void Runners. I want to just repeat that I yanked this from my middle of the shelf without looking, and found exactly what you just mentioned. Oh, I'm gonna tangent and read off the description for Void Runners, because it's a doozy. Kevin Siembieda posted:The game starts with the players. The player characters' first "awareness" starts in a void. Absolute Blackness. Each is a fully conscious essence without body or form. They have no knowledge of their own past nor the greater history of any time or place. They intuitively know they are a force for good, and they are given a chance to go forth to stop the unspeakable evil.
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Jun 9, 2015 04:13
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Let's check the newest Palladium news post and-Kevin Siembieda posted:UPDATE: Xounts Up device is amazing. Check out this Kickstarter
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Aug 15, 2015 00:17
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It feels pretty quid pro quo, intentionally or otherwise.
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Aug 15, 2015 14:01
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Halloween Jack posted:It's sad. Their rules have always been terrible, but they used to have Carella as a staff writer. I recently ran across evidence they planned to have Carella writing books for at least another year or so before he bailed, and had to find other writers to fill the gap. It's interesting to see what slips through their cracks. (Palladium is pretty cracked.) ManMythLegend posted:Man, if it never makes it to the shelves I'm going to be really bummed out. There's a reason every post of mine on the subject has been to the effect of "don't get your hopes up, everyone". I mean, I wish the best for the project, but it was announced way too early for something that Palladium is involved with. It probably shouldn't have been announced until they have a rough approved, at least, knowing how Palladium's approval process "works", and even that would have been too early. But then, it almost undoubtedly would have leaked out of Kevin's mouth at some point, so they may have had little choice.
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Sep 7, 2015 02:38
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Halloween Jack posted:Reading between the lines, it seems that Kevin drives away his staff writers the same way he drives away freelancers, it just takes longer. He actually takes a dig at Carella in the Game Master's Guide. It's kind of breathtaking to see how little regard he gives one of the most prolific and successful writers Palladium ever had, but there you have it. Not to say CJ's flawless, but it's pretty uncalled for. Halloween Jack posted:It is often repeated that no matter what anyone says about Palladium, they are still in business after decades. But I wonder how much business presence they actually have when the only thing they regularly publish is the Rifter. To be fair, they've been putting out a book every two to four months these days, it's just that books like PFRPG®: Bizantium and the Northern Islands™ or Robotech®: Expeditionary Force Marines Sourcebook don't make a big splash outside of the Palladium fandom. Which is particularly tragic for Robotech, which could be one of the more beloved franchises out there, but is tied down to an antiquated system and an antiquated company. Still, they've been getting out about two Rifts books a year - they've at least gotten over the horrendous dry spell they had during the '00s, but they're nowhere near the "one Rifts book every two months" schedule they had in the mid-'90s. Also they've gotten money from lawsuit settlements and the Robotech kickstarter, for what those are worth. But it's always weird to see where their money goes - reprints of old decades-old books that didn't have low print runs and are trivial to find, for example. You end up with a weird situation where the older a Rifts book has been, the cheaper it gets due to effectively being overprinted. But Palladium has to have new copies in stock, and they've been putting out a lot of superfluous stuff like that Heroes Unlimited anniversary hardcover (no new material, just a harder cover) or a lot of really, really tacky merch. And this at the same time they're saying that last year could be the last year for the Palladium Open House, but somehow they're digging into their pockets for stuff like Coalition dog tags. Honestly they've worked on such a shockingly small budget (seriously, it is a bit shocking) in the past I have a feeling they have no goddamn idea what to do with the opportunities they have, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe the Palladium fandom just eats up Palladium RPG coffee mugs and Glitter Boy hoodies. I mean, yes, they have stayed in business forever, but it's on a shoestring at points. For those that might point out those kind of infusions of money could be used to pay freelancers equitably or to expand their business or even just keep the lights on, you're too precious for this world. Or certainly too precious for Palladium. ManMythLegend posted:For some reason I was under the impression that PEG has fully licensed Rifts from Palladium which I figured would give them a degree of independence from KS's shenanigans. If you have a source for that, it'd be great to hear! But AFAIK, not much has come out publicly about the project since the initial announcement. CroatianAlzheimers posted:Let me get a few more beers in me and I can tell you some real good stories. Great to see you again, I'd love to hear 'em. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Sep 7, 2015 |
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Sep 7, 2015 08:07
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Siembieda's put up some new material on his eBay store, most notably a chunk of Kevin Long art, some of which is surprisingly affordable, and some of which is not. Interesting that Siembieda didn't let Long keep the originals (I presume it must have been part of the contract) and is now selling them off. There are some insights into where Siembieda's money has gone if you look at some of the bigger ticket items. No idea how much he paid for them or if they're really worth that much, but the guy loves (loved?) his collectibles.
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Nov 14, 2015 21:13
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MalcolmSheppard posted:At a used bookstore I found a copy of the Mechanoids Trilogy. It was 8 bucks, so I bought it. On the train home? Found out it was signed. Neat! Yeah, honestly Palladium makes a real thing of signing their books if you're at a con, it's a nice thing they do where they'll pass them around the whole staff present. The Mechanoid Trilogy is honestly really interesting for when it came out. I don't know if it's the first metaplot in a game, but it's close to it, but it's actually done in an interesting way where you could make it into a long multigenerational serial. But it's focused in ways few later Palladium games would be and is really a neat little passion project with a lot more thought put into the setting than you'd expect. It still has some of the systemic issues that would plague Palladium games for decades thereafter, but it's honestly just full of interesting ideas with very little filter. A lot of what would be foibles in later books are pretty excusable this early on.
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Dec 16, 2015 00:41
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MalcolmSheppard posted:The Mechanoids feels more like an RPG linked to a specific adventure path, since stories aren't laid out in sequences as much as core scenarios and environments. In terms of its system, I'd stack in favourably against a lot of OSR material. Many of the excesses of later Palladium games aren't present. Characters have small numbers of skills, no attribute increases from skills, and for the most part no multiple attacks. Combat looks deadly if you aren't wearing armour because characters hit each other most of the time, and dodging usually sacrifices your action for the round. Yeah. The main immediate issues I'd have with it is that it's possible (and actually not all that unlikely in Book 1) to roll a character that doesn't qualify for any class, and also that skill percentages are extremely low by modern standards. You tend not to have even odds of succeeding at a skill until around level 7... in a game that only goes to 13. I imagine this is chiefly inspired by the abysmal odds faced by the AD&D thief, but it's hard to say for certain.
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Dec 17, 2015 09:14
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The OP has been updated with links to the newer F&F Rifts reviews, as well as a link to inklesspen's site for those who don't have archives to read the older ones. At some point I feel I need to update it with the state of things regarding Robotech RPG Tactics, because that's such a cluster, but I don't know if I have the time right now.JohnnyCanuck posted:Kev sent back about 20 pages on how Lazlo is actually built on Toronto, about how the CN Tower is still standing because it's on a major Ley Line, and a bunch of other details. I don't think the info has ever shown up in any of the books, but it's all in Kev's head. Yeah, it's weird because if anything, Lazlo should be a central PC hub, and it's a vital and very important location in the setting, but it's never been written up! It's crazy. Rifts World Book I Don't Feel Like Looking Up: Canada has some details on the region surrounding it, but Lazlo has never been touched that I'm aware of. shades of eternity posted:Rifts Africa 2. Yeah, Africa is easily one of the worst Rifts books. I mean, a lot of that shows in the "Gathering of Heroes" section which has American, German, and Chinese heroes, but no African heroes! You'd think they'd have had a shorter walk, at least! But then, Rifts tends to idealize native populations in general but rarely ever gives them a face. "Oh, these guys are nice, so none of them really matter enough to mention."
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Dec 21, 2015 01:11
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shades of eternity posted:http://breadthofpopsanity.blogspot.ca/2015/08/rifts-siege-on-tolkeen-analysis.html Two things also come to mind that have been brought up by Bill Coffin himself regarding Siege of Tolkeen. Even though he wrote a lot of it, he was never a big fan of the idea; Coffin was a guy who liked Palladium Fantasy first and foremost and never really clicked with Rifts, and didn't feel he had enough passion or investment for the project. So even from the start, you have one of the writers who didn't think it was a great idea in the first place and admitted it wasn't the project for him. The first thing is just tactics. You have to invent reasons for the Coalition and Tolkeen to have a stand-up war. There's not much reason otherwise why Coalition can't just lob cruise missiles or do airstrikes to just bombard Tolkeen. They don't even need to draw on their nuclear arsenal, but they could. Similarly, there's not a lot of reason Tolkeen couldn't teleport in assassins or suicide bombers into Prosek's location once they divine it and blow him to holy hell, unless the Vanguard (that's a secret society of pro-Coalition mages) manage to keep an anti-magic field up around him in total secrecy 24/7. The second thing is the themes. Until Siege of Tolkeen, there's not a strong metaplot in the game; every disaster in Rifts is a potential disaster. The Mechanoids have just touched down and it's up to the PCs to fight them off and close the gate. The Four Horsemen have landed but there's enough time for the PCs to stop them and prevent them from forming into the Apocalypse Beast. The gargoyles are poised to take over Europe, but maybe the PCs can turn the tide. Rifts is a game where disaster is always looming on the horizon ready for the PCs to stop. But Siege of Tolkeen creates a disaster that not only can the PCs not stop (influence or soften, maybe, but not stop), but it reduces them to bit players in that conflict, and it works against the way Rifts had been written up until that point. Worse yet, it mostly just returns the game to the status quo as you mentioned. Tolkeen hardly mattered before, and it just dials back the Coalition military to the troop levels they were at before Coalition War Campaign. If CJ Carella had been involved, I'm sure a lot of the abandoned threads in Rifts Mercenaries would have been picked up for that and you would have seen a much larger role for established military companies that just gets abandoned. Larsen's Brigade should be a huge, huge player, but it it... arrives too late from what I recall? And there are obvious hooks for a number of the other companies to finally throw them into one big conflict and really get to tear through the material in that book, but alas.
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Dec 24, 2015 17:55
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I've never played a Palladium game, but I'm excited about the Savage Worlds Rifts conversion. However, I haven't heard any news, and I'm considering getting the core for Rifts so I can get a feel for the game. Should I just wait for the better version which may never come, or should I play a system I know may be too much for me? I wouldn't say "no", but bear in mind you're paying for an artifact or the loose setting material than anything too functional. Which isn't to say it doesn't function at all, but bear in mind it's based on systems circa 1986 where everything is bullet spongy, starting characters are only marginally competent at anything that doesn't involve shooting people or casting spells, and balance? Forget about balance entirely. But if you want some rad '90s art and an old lady providing a guide to the setting, that's where you'll find it. All that in mind, you can easily find the original version (not Rifts Ultimate Edition, but the original softcover) for under $10 with shipping at a online bookseller. A lot of the early supplements you can find for $5-10 as well because they've been overprinted as gently caress because Palladium's a little buggy about making sure their books stay in print. If you're going for the old, cheap books, the main supplement I'd recommend in addition to the core is the Sourcebook (not the revised edition). Most other books quickly get pretty tangential and are large alternate regions or settings. The Ultimate Edition will generally run you retail - it's better than the original core, but mainly by degrees. If you want the original Rifts experience circa 1990, just a copy of the softcover core and the first sourcebook will do. If you don't mind a very snarky summary, you can find the F&F writeups done by occamsnailfile and I in the OP instead. If you don't have archives, you can find them mirrored at Inklesspen's site. Those might give some idea of what you'd like of the early books, most of which are pretty cheap for the above reasons - we've done about the first seventeen books that were released at this point. Inklesspen's site is probably better, though a few of the newest reviews are only on the forums. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 03:54
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