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Halloween Jack posted:I like Nightbane so much that I at least wanted to go through the process of generating a character, but I found it almost impossible. Layout isn't usually something brought up in reviews as a factor that saves or sinks a game, but it had so many special case rules wedged in-between parts of the character creation process that I gave up in frustration. It's in this classic rpg.net thread (the same one with the infamous Bill Coffin posts), but I dug up the relevant posts so you don't have to dig through 20 or so pages of posts to find them, since his appearance in the thread is pretty brief. Bill Coffin posted:The thing with BTS [Beyond the Supernatural - ARB], though, is that it needs an angle, and I'm not sure Kevin has one in mind. I could be totally off the mark on this, naturally, but it seems to me that he just doesn't know where to take the game. The grim and gritty horror angle is already being done beter than Palladium can muster (Call of Cthulu). White wolf has covered a lot of popular monster genres so successfully that it would take a work of genius to revisit subject matter such as vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc. And right now, I don't think Palladium has that in it. I think CJ Carella does, and his work has proved that on a number of occassions, and I think that also might be Kevin's problem. Somebody on this thread wondered if Kevin is a jealous man. I don't know about jealous, but he is definitely insecure, and I think it always bugged him how Nightbane (another CJ hit) really grabbed people while BTS didnt. Kevin used to gripe about how CJ didn't have an original idea in his head, but that just seemed like sour grapes to me. That CJ has since come out with a string of great horror games since he left Palladium only furthers my point. Elliott posted:I actually liked overpowered tech in CJ Carella's books the best. Because I think he designed the weapon damages and armor damages for faster combat, He saw that 3d6 vs 80 MDC would take a long time, so he made it 1d4x10 or 1d6x10. CJ Carella posted:Pretty much. When I started designing Rifts books, I had to grapple with the fundamental inconsistencies of the game. It made no sense to me that a man-portable weapon did the same (or more) damage than a vehicle mounted one. If a Boom Gun was so badass, why didn't some bright boy mount one in a tank turret, mated it to an autoloader, and turned it into a Boom Machinegun? So starting with Mercenaries (which by the way, was my personal homage to David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series), I tried to redress that discrepancy. It made a lot of people unhappy, of course, both inside and outside the company. Oh, well... Steve Conan Trustrum posted:CJ points out one of the biggest problems that was.is inherent to Palladium's primary problems: their books are so full of inconsistencies and contradictions that the various writers working on any given product line has to try to work within the limitations created by those problems, which usually led to a power creep. CJ Carella posted:Yup. And if you try to actually point out the inconsistencies, instead of working around them (as subtly as you can, btw), it pisses off the Powers That Be. The emperor, you see, is always fully clothed, and you'd better not say otherwise. The Formless One posted:Hey CJ, since you seem to be following the thread at least a bit, have you seen any of the new books for Nightbane to come out? Shadows of Light and Through the Glass Darkly? CJ Carella posted:I haven't gotten my hands on Shadows of Light (I feel a degree of reluctance to put any money in the company, to be honest). I've looked through TtGD: liked the magic ideas (another attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, IMHO), but thought the whole stupid moral relativism crap that the author injected at the end debased the world and was a rather annoying attempt to make his mark by pissing all over someone else's work. Steve Conan Trustrum posted:Bill speaks the truth. Even if you think your criticism is designed to help Palladium and is given with the best of intentions, Kevin will see it as an attempt to torpedo his products and will send you the industry's equivalent of a Dear John. Trust me on this. CJ Carella posted:Me three.
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Jan 2, 2016 12:32
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shades of eternity posted:Kevin was terrified of the ogl, so I wanted to see if mating the concept of rifts with d20 would be marketable. Well, honestly, a 1500+ page d20 rpg is pretty feedback-proof at this point; most RPG fans will have good idea if they want that sort of thing or not. Really what it comes down to is whether or not you'd want to invest in the work to take it to (digital) market - the covers are probably the first thing I'd bring up, you'd really want to either get better art or design on them if you'd want to catch readers' eyes. Beyond that, you'd probably want a professional editor or layout person, but that's probably not practical cost-wise for the size of the books and what you'd make back. The d20 market is pretty thick with material and standing out as a independent d20 RPG that isn't tied to Pathfinder and doesn't have a really unique take on the system is an uphill fight, I think. I do hope you find folks who enjoy it, and I hope you get to play and enjoy it as an obvious labor of love, but conventional d20 games are both polarizing and plentiful. Most of my commentary would go to the core of d20 itself, which is like pulling from the bottom of a house of cards if you've written that much material. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 19:55
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Well, it's a pretty generic D&D game, so it doesn't have any of the multi-genre tools that came out of d20 AFAIK. You'd be having to do a lot of work regarding things like rules for technology and whatnot. It also still has a lot of the drawbacks of d20 (that is, magic dominates over martial by mid-to-high levels, a lot of things are "balanced by feels", etc.). It's more elegant than d20 but you can't rely on it to cover edge cases without GM rulings like d20 generally did. I would look at it and make your own judgements, but it's not really a generalized system; whether or not d20 was is another story, but it'd require a fair deal of hammering to get what you want out of it.
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Jan 16, 2016 12:24
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Gear could just be a stunt or mega-stunt where it's relevant. The ones I've made below are a little weaker than your average stunt, since they'd be intended to just be small brand bonuses on top of whatever their damage rating would be.
TR-001 Titan Combat Robot Aspects
Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 16:48
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Demon_Corsair posted:drat you're good. Stunts are something I really struggle with I still struggle, but I've been practicing, at least. Stunts are kind of a place you can go sideways and do the complicated bits of design you otherwise don't see in Fate's core rules. Stuff like Atomic Robo and Breakfast Cult are my standout examples for good stunt design and ideas, but I still haven't explored Fate implementations extensively. If you want, I could share some of the preliminary ideas I put together for Rifts skill modes and the like. Warning: it's kinda dumb! But I did write some.
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Jan 17, 2016 00:20
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Demon_Corsair posted:I have been looking at inverse world fae for my inspiration. This is reliant on being familiar with Atomic Robo, but here you go.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:12
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Yeah, the "female race that's created to be fuckable" is a RPG trope but it's a bad one, generally. Rifts has stuff like the Altara Warrior Women or the Shemarrians but there's no purpose behind them all-female other than the implicit jerkoff quality of the design. Of course, Rifts has that sort of thing and yet at the same time wants to ignore the existence of sexuality, which makes it seem harmless and forgettable at first but then makes it seem stranger and stranger the more you think about it. It's probably best to think about how you present sex (or sexual violence) in a game, even if there's only a little of it. It's a bit of a funhouse mirror effect where a little can have a big effect because it defines that one thing. In Rifts, when it comes out, it's almost universally unhealthy. And that's pretty much a sign of the game's general immaturity, and while immaturity is part of the game's appeal, it almost never works where sex is concerned. Got kind of rambly but I hope there's a point in there.
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Jan 21, 2016 05:43
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The Altara are the blind warrior women who self-clone. How? Why? Who gives a gently caress, here's art of their monstrous master licking one. Shemmarians are robot warrior women devised by ARCHIE and Hagan Lonovich that are Lonovich's "own adolescent fantasies brought to life". So it goes.
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Jan 21, 2016 07:02
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Maybe this makes me weird, but I didn't get why ARCHIE and Hagan were supposed to be bad until I read that connection. Then it became clear. He's a creap, and ARCHIE is an amoral genius with no socialization. Like you'd expect. It mainly just turned out that Hagan - even though he does want to conquer the world with an army of robots - doesn't necessarily just want to see people murdered wholesale by the Mechanoids. He's megalomaniacal but not heartless, as it turns out. And thanks, I'm glad to hear it! My next review is in the works as well, Fallout kept me pretty distracted for awhile but now that it's over I should be able to focus more on writing (non-PbP) stuff again.
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Jan 22, 2016 02:17
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You're welcome! But yeah, it's kind of a microcosm of Palladium's whole "promise big, deliver small" unofficial company motto. Heroes Unlimited is probably the best side book to have for Rifts, I think if you cross enough books from both lines you end up with some unpublished edition of Gamma World.
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Jan 27, 2016 01:24
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To be fair, all the crowdfunding Palladium did outside of Kickstarter worked out fine- Lemuria and the Northern Gun books came out, even if NG2 was around 2 years late? The author who I'm sure is lined up for the project also has had a pretty successful kickstarter. Pinnacle has been good as far as I'm aware with their Kickstarters as well. That all said, Robotech RPG Tactics is infamous now, and Kevin is a notorious micromanager himself who's proven capable of loving up the unfuckable. I think if I were to bet on its success, I'd bet in its favor so far. But I wouldn't bet a lot. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 19:16
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I'm just hesitant to give Palladium money under any circumstance given their business practices, regardless of the risk. That's not to say I won't do it- I bought Rifts Ultimate Edition last year when it was on sale- but it's going to have to have some really compelling bonuses to get me on board.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:30
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The TG industry is in general so tight that getting into a fight is likely to piss off somebody you don't want to piss off, no matter what the reason. It could also be that there are elements regarding whatever happened that Ninja Division / Soda Pop doesn't want to see aired either, I've heard some unflattering comments on them from others in the industry, but nothing I can substantiate.
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Apr 13, 2016 02:40
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Well, it looks like they're focusing on the "iconic" d-bees the midwest, and those from Coalition War Campaign, the Simvan, and the Grackle Tooth would fill that out. The Triax stuff seems pretty random to me, but it's nice to see them include some of the newer material from the Northern Gun books, so it's not all just going back to decades-old material.
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Apr 28, 2016 17:31
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So, I gave the Tomorrow Legion Player's Guide a read-through this morning and wrote down my impressions. Some highlights:
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Jul 9, 2016 15:52
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Helical Nightmares posted:Will have further questions, but: To be fair, it always has. In the original game, they basically lost their psychic scent around a ley line (due to it being overloaded). In Lone Star, they added that dog boys are afraid of ley lines and are more likely to be struck by magical lightning... because? And finally, The Tomorrow Legion Players Guide upgrades that further to not only have them lose their psychic scent, but they get headaches and disorientation that causes a level of fatigue that won't go away until they leave the ley line's vicinity. Helical Nightmares posted:These character creation (?) random tables. Are they like Traveller? (I like that crazy system). Can you give an example? When you make a character, you select an "Iconic Framework", like Glitter Boy or Mind Melter, which gives you a bunch of fixed abilities, and each get a fixed number of rolls on the "Hero's Journey" tables. These always give you stuff, and there are eleven different tables. Let's say I was playing a Juicer, that means I get 1d20 rolls on each of the Body Armor, Close Combat Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Training, and Underworld & Black Ops tables. So:
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Jul 10, 2016 04:55
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Does this have something to do with their psyker scent?
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Yeah, I don't know why they call it "Hero's Journey", it's not really so much a journey as a grab bag. But hey, if you don't like it, you can exchange in two random rolls for one specific selection! That's what somebody wrote in a game released in 2016.
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Jul 10, 2016 23:19
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Well, the Savage Rifts Gamemaster Handbook dropped earlier today, along with some maps for the game. It's mostly a book that gives broad strokes on the US / Canada side of things and the power players in it, some GM advice (a lot more than any of the core Rifts books have had in the past), actual details on the Tomorrow Legion, random adventure / NPC / rifts generators, and details on adventure rewards. Overall, it's pretty solid, though still mostly working on a broad-strokes level, so it's not going to replace Palladium books for those looking for more  on various subjects. I don't know that I'd ever necessarily use a random adventure creator, but I suppose it beats having a sample adventure. The tendency to name the chapters after songs seems like a non sequitur - I'm not sure I think of James Brown, Big Country, or Genesis when it comes to Rifts, but it certainly tells me what decade the authors grew up in.
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Jul 15, 2016 08:25
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Helical Nightmares posted:Wat. Well, the Gamemaster's Guide has its opening sections titled "Danger Zone", "Living in America", "In a Big Country", "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", "Land of Confusion", and "It's the End of the World as We Know It." Thankfully, that's where that stops.  Helical Nightmares posted:Did they have any details on the West Coast specifically California that are new? Ha ha, no. It doesn't really do the regional breakdown, it's more focused on factions and the few key locations (like the Coalition and Lazlo) that are settled. There's no real new information if you're up to date with the metaplot as presented in Rifts Aftermath, aside from the Tomorrow Legion. Helical Nightmares posted:Tomorrow Legion? What's that. JohnnyCanuck posted:It's the Good Guy™ organization that Savage Rifts assumes all players belong to. Wandering heroes that do hero things. Pretty much, it's a faction formed by Erin Tarn, Lord Coake (head of the Cyber-Knights), and Dhara Hammerheart (a new dwarven hero) in Arkansas. They're pretty much like the Minutemen from Fallout 4, they're dedicated to helping out other nearby communities, encouraging them to band together with the Tomorrow Legion for mutual protection and trade with the aim of building a larger confederation not run by megalomaniacs, as well as trying to keep a wide eye for potential threats and disasters. It's pretty much assumed the PCs are part of a freewheeling special exploratory unit whose job is to explore locales, find resources, and investigate various situations at the Legion's request. The Legion has other groups the PCs could be a part of but that's their suggested one. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jul 15, 2016 |
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Jul 15, 2016 17:40
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This is new to me.
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I started reacquainting myself with the Savage Worlds rules, then went back to the Tomorrow Legion Player's Guide, and now looking at the numbers, it really has the issue that a lot of games do when they convert damage over from a generic hit point system to a damage resistance system that things get a lot more lethal when there's a strong difference in scale; i.e. robot vehicles are now going to paste the gently caress out of grunts in body armor. And that's fine, Savage Worlds is supposed to have combat that runs much faster, and it's nice not to see 30' robot vehicles be the paper tigers they usually are in the original game. Where this gets kind of hosed is with power armor in particular, since a number of them are given weapons you'd usually expect to see on robot vehicles... but by no means can most power armor hold up against that kind of firepower. The result is that power armor fights often can be rocket tag fights where the first to hit drastically wounds or kills the other. The epitome is with the Glitter Boy, where its rail gun does 4d12+6 (average 32) damage and ignores 25 points of armor, and the Glitter Boy has 18 points of armor itself. Now, power armor ignores 4 points of AP from projectile weaponry, but rail guns explicitly ignore that for... some goddamn reason. So despite having "... the highest M.D.C. rating of any armor known, even among robot armor vehicles." according to the book, its armor provides it less than zero protection from its own gun. Since it takes 16 points of overage on damage to take out a Wild Card (aka PCs and named NPCs) in one hit and most pilots aren't going to have more than 8 points in Toughness (which reduces damage but isn't subject to AP), the grand majority of the time Glitter Boy v Glitter Boy fights are going to boil down to whoever can land the first hit. So, yes, the Glitter Boy can't even remotely take a hit from its own gun. And no, nothing in the game so far even has close to 25 points of armor. What the hell, Pinnacle?
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Jul 18, 2016 15:32
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Yeah, I was wondering if I was getting something wrong, if Heavy Armor wasn't subject to the same AP rules... but looking on the Savage Worlds forum, nope, seeing very similar complaints. As it is, you're safer in a jeep (normal, mega-damage, it doesn't matter) than a Glitter Boy, since damage that punches through a jeep's armor almost always just takes out the jeep, while damage that punches through a Glitter Boy... almost always takes you out. I expected there to be some mess in the conversion but this is looking like more and more of a headache the more I look at the actual math and rules involved.
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Jul 19, 2016 01:05
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Some Palladium bits from GenCon. No big releases; the newest books they had were The Coalition States: Heroes of Humanity, which is the first of two books dealing with the Coalition side of the Minion War metaplot (and yes, that title is unironic, because Rifts) and a no-art preview version of Secrets of the Atlanteans, which didn't seem to be moving much. I get the impression Palladium may have overestimated the impatience of their fans in that regard, but who knows? Given they're bound like a regular Palladium book, they don't look cheap to print out, if not expensive. There's going to be an upcoming Kickstarter for a semi-cooperative Rifts board game in the style of Descent or Doom. Carmen Bellaire (a frequent freelancer from Palladium) is founding his own new company to do this and says he plans to make sure the art, minis, and rules are all complete before launching. Most players take up the role of an adventurer (they had 3D models for a glitter boy, juicer, grackle-tooth soldier, cyborg, and others to show off), while one player takes up the Coalition and runs troops and dog boys against them. It also had a space-marine style Coalition soldier with a jump pack as well, though I was told they plan to add stuff like SAMAS armor later on. Also, there's supposedly a Lazlo book coming out; they said the rough manuscript should be done at this point. Savage Rifts had some demos put together at the last minute but I didn't have the time to see them. The book wasn't out, but I believe Pinnacle was taking orders for people who wanted to have it shipped later. You really had to seek it out to know it existed at all. I inquired about the Glitter Boy rules above and they'd said they'd beefed up some of the monsters based on feedback due to that, but I haven't had the time to double-check. The actual Glitter Boy values haven't changed that I'm aware of, so it's mostly just a band-aid on my concerns about that. That's all I got from just my brief time at some booths, but there you have it.
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Aug 8, 2016 20:54
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Yeah, t's a long-running metaplot ("long-running" on account of only getting a plot-relevant book each year or every other year or so for the past decade) where apparently demons and devils- I'm sorry, deevils- go to war using various other worlds as battlegrounds. It ends with them fighting over Rifts Earth and the various factions essentially having to unite to keep either side from taking over. It seems more open-ended than Coalition War, but I can only assume they're going to have to give it some canon conclusion if they're going to reference it at all going forward. It's wrapped up now but that won't stop them from squeezing out two books of Coalition nonsense on account of it! It's mostly the product of freelancer Carl Gleba rather than Siembieda himself, though Heroes of Humanity is Siembieda-penned.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:37
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Getting whiplash from them repeatedly posting errata'd versions of the Savage Rifts books.
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Aug 23, 2016 01:03
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DancingShade posted:Will probably grab Savage Rifts once it's finished just for a read through. It's essentially done save a few stretch goals in PDF, though the printed version isn't out yet. Helical Nightmares posted:
If that's the reveal I'm thinking of, that's been in the game since the first supplement, even if not much was done with it for a long time after that. Though having the adolescent-minded creation of the book be an adolescent-minded creation of an NPC could have been an amusing bit if it wasn't played completely straight.
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Sep 26, 2016 01:11
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Since you have forgotten the metaplot, I highly recommend looking through Shemarrian Nation. I chuckled for a good 10 minutes once I got to the reveal.
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I finally got to read the Republican material recently, which probably would have been better off as a footnote than what they're quickly becoming. I don't mind a heavy retcon if it's really exciting but they... aren't, so far.
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Sep 29, 2016 23:09
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Demon_Corsair posted:Just got my books! Anyone played this yet? I'm currently running a PbP of it. EverettLO posted:I'm finally getting to read Coalition: Heroes of Humanity and holy poo poo did they just straight up make the nazis the good guys. I know people warned me about it but it's still a shock to see them directly portraying Prosek as a good guy with almost no reservations. I don't know what happened to Siembieda in the last 25 years but he went from treating nazis as the villains to portraying them as well as any propagandist ever could. I don't think this came out of nowhere. The first class we got in the first book was "Coalition Grunt", and there's been straight-up support for the idea of playing Coalition as an alternate campaign here and there. There's essentially fascist apologism as far back as Rifts Sourcebook, IIRC, suggesting that A) people aren't evil if they're too ignorant to know they're doing evil and B) humanity might not have survived at all without the Coalition's hardline militarism. Which becomes increasingly farcical as the line goes on, given the number of far more sensible human factions that pop up in later books. Heroes of Humanity takes the approach of putting them in a situation where they don't have the time to worry about enforcing their fascist nonsense and suggesting this might all undermine the party line in the long run, but it still stinks largely of apologism aimed at appeasing Coalition fans. Yeah. They're out there. And they're vocal. Ultimately, Siembieda wants the Coalition to be a morally complex dilemma but he's really, really bad at it. As long as they're the guys who cut Desmond Bradford a paycheck and built literal extermination camps, there's not much else you can say. Savage Rifts gets it right by putting them directly in the antagonists book and not even including their equipment in the player's guide. The Republicans are a leftover group of US government holdouts (mentioned in the very first book, but not expanded upon until Rifts Sourcebook Revised). They are pretty much the dull sort of faction you'd get from people who have essentially parked their rear end on a fence for 300 years. They're mostly designed as antagonists to ARCHIE and are currently singularly obsessed with reclaiming a frozen army he's kept under wraps. Also there was a retcon where they helped form the Coalition and are just kind of embarrassed as to how that turned out, and plan to find a way to put a bullet into Prosek's head... once they have that army to overthrow the Coalition with. They're really no less intolerant than the Coalition is, but they're at least more moderate about their intolerance, like the New German Republic or Free Quebec. And that's what makes them boring, IMO - there's not really anything in their platform that we haven't seen elsewhere in the setting multiple times.
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Feb 7, 2017 02:00
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Oh, geez, I haven't picked up any of the novels... I have a copy of Tales of the Chi-Town Burbs I picked up for a song, but I haven't done much but glimpse some of Siembieda cringe-worthy prose in that.
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Feb 7, 2017 16:02
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That publication order, by the way, is why you'll see me skip over Psyscape in the World Book reviews coming up, since I do them in publication order.  As I've mentioned elsewhere, Carella was supposed to write it and then left Palladium, kicking it way down the release schedule (but that release schedule is at least the order in which they came out IIRC). This is definitely the time that Siembieda took over the line in Carella's absence and wrote or "co-wrote" pretty much all the books in this period. The Palladium Old Kingdom books never emerged, I don't believe, I think Bill Coffin's Western Empire replaced them in the schedule. Recon just ended up being a compilation / reprint and not the promised rewrite. Everything else is relatively accurate.Ugh, I know too much.
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Mar 30, 2017 03:41
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It's... possible? I admit I haven't experienced it. I know there are some specialized builds that break the game, like a M.A.R.S. build that takes a bunch of armor options to end up with an armor rating in the 30s, or a Burster build that does 50+ damage. The balance in the game is to some extent by "feel" - Glitter Boys and Flame Wind Hatchlings get the most points for their packages, but the Glitter Boy does only one thing exceedingly well (do damage) and the Flame Wind Hatchling gets a poo poo-ton of advantages but isn't particularly great at anything. Mind Melters are the worst off on sheer points, surprisingly, but they have one of the broadest powersets. Of course, a lot of that is based on how Savage Worlds quantifies things and stuff like edges and drawbacks aren't super-tight in their balance. But yeah, you can do stupid things with M.A.R.S. builds if it's allowed, it's something I'd put the kibosh on if I saw it. But given the M.A.R.S. builds I've seen for my game are a perfectly reasonable cyber-warrior or a d'norr rogue scholar skill monkey, I'd say most M.A.R.S. characters will be okay unless they deliberately know Savage Worlds and try and do a degenerate build (and / or get great rolls for whatever they're trying to do).
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Mar 31, 2017 17:59
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I've heard that Robotech the Shadow Chronicles RPG is actually good. Is this false? As a game, it's still at the core the same Robotech that was released in 1986. It's unfortunately tied to Shadow Chronicles as well, which isn't exactly a great entry point for the franchise (it is, essentially, the deep end). It's got some better writing since it wasn't all done by Siembieda (though some of it was) but still has all of the essential issues - and how carries a bunch of system baggage loaded onto it from Rifts, and it also contains odd decisions like having the utter missile dominance of later Rifts books (very high damage values) for... some reason? It also inflates M.D.C. values as well, which will make fights more sloggy outside of missile barrages... I'd say it's false as far as mechanics go, with all due respect to CroatianAlzheimers' work on the line - I don't know about how the supplements shake out, admittedly. But at its heart it's a old, antiquated system that doesn't do much to live up to its source material that's had a variety of messy notions tacked out. I'd say if you really want to run it, buy it for the art and reference material, then run it with Battle Century G or any other mecha game of your choice.
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May 13, 2017 18:21
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Erick Wujick got a Lifetime Achievement Ennie and into the Origins Hall of Fame posthumously. I'm not sure but this may be their one of their closest brushes with an product award... wait, no! Rifts: Promise of Power won Gamespot's E3 2005 Best.of Show!... ... Best N-Gage Title of Show, that is.
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Jul 16, 2017 03:09
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If you have time on your hands, I did audio reviews of Rifts Game Shield & Adventures and Rifts Index & Adventures 1, which have bad adventures but can give an idea of intended play. Like Kai Tave said, Rifts' intended structure is basically a Points of Light D&D with mostly overland questing instead of a lot of dungeons (though there is the occasional dungeon-styled affair). Generally the two main campaign assumptions is either being a group of well-meaning mercenaries or working for one of the larger military factions as scouts or special forces (usually the - ugh- Coalition or New German Republic, but working for the New Navy or the Empire of the Sun or similar groups would be more palatable personally). It's hard to give advice on proper challenges because a lot of it comes down to the classes being played and the players playing them. For example, psychics and wizards generally don't deal out a lot of damage, but a cunning player can use their abilities to shut down foes entirely in other ways. Out of the corebook, the Glitter Boy and Dragon will distort the power curve the most - the GB because of their sheer ability to deal and take damage, and the Dragon because of their high ability to take damage coupled with a wide range of abilities. The worst classes in the corebook are those that are humans without A) a wide range of useful skills and B) any notable special abilities. In the corebook, this is typified by classes like the Coalition Grunt, City Rat, and Vagabond. Outside of the corebook, it's harder to say, but most broken character types tend to be high-power supernaturals of various sorts, but once again it often comes down to specifics - a godling or demigod can be amazingly potent if they're built right... or they can only be marginally better than other characters. I wouldn't expect most players to know enough about Palladium to properly break Rifts, in any case. Cosmo Knights are the most infamous class, but even they have some notable weaknesses. I would have people at least roll an extra d6 for stats in place of the bonus d6 they get for high rolls, personally (save for powerful supernatural creatures like Dragons, I'd leave their stat rolls alone). I could have trauma from reading statblock after statblock of published NPCs with statblocks that are statistical impossibilities, though. Personally when it comes to running Rifts I reduce the attacks (by about half) and M.D.C. (by about 80%) of "mook" NPCs and leave the full PC-style statblocks for named NPCs, and even give things like "boss monsters" bonus attacks. Palladium can really bog down when presenting equal opposition (which is usually what a Coalition troop is going to be for a group of largely human PCs) so I've played around with the power level of NPCs in the past to accommodate that when I've run it as a lark. Granted, I think there are a lot of interesting ideas one could pursue in the setting beyond just wandering heroes for hire, but this is long enough and I'll leave it at that.
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Jul 24, 2017 01:12
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You know, the MegaDumbCast hasn't been mentioned here, and I've been predictably rather enjoying it. It's a podcast covering Ninjas & Superspies and all the dumb things in it page by page. If you like my F&Fs you'll probably like it. If you don't like my F&Fs, you may like it anyway, who knows?
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Sep 25, 2017 11:55
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Some more Savage Rifts books coming out supposedly in 2018:Shane Hensley posted:Working titles are Rifts® North America: Empires of Humanity, Rifts® North America: Blood & Banes, and Rifts® North America: Arcana & Mysticism. I'd gotten to hear hints of all this at GenCon, but it's good to see it confirmed.
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Nov 23, 2017 18:18
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 04:59 |
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Belatedly, MegaDumbCast has been doing a daily coverage of Ninjas & Superspies articles from The Rifter until the new year as a fundraising effort for his upcoming long-form coverage of Heroes Unlimited. A donation page can be found here, for the handful for people whose fancy that tickles. Also, having had a copy of Aliens Unlimited fall into my lap, I have to say it's one of the most cringeworthy books I've seen from the company. Not because of anything particularly regressive, but just because it's bizarrely straightforward and dull to the point that it almost feels like self-parody. A race of dog aliens that are pretty much humans with dog-heads? Check! How about seven "different" races of aliens that are humans with dog heads? Also check! How about race names like "Canis", "Lupis", and "Wulf"? Check, check, and mother loving check.
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Dec 28, 2017 06:16
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