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The late 80s and early 90s were an interesting time in RPGs and miniatures games, and to some extent science fiction in general. Over the decades sub genres such as Space Opera, Hard Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Tolkien Rip Offs and Not Tolkien Rip Offs (a genre that was more theoretical than actual in my experience) had grown up each with their own rules and conventions.
But the then people started cross the streams giving birth to several cross-genre games such as Shadowrun (Tolkien+Cyberpunk), Vampire: The Masquerade (We Don't Want Pay Ann Rice For the Rights+Moderns), TORG (no one remembers, no one cares), GURPS (see 33mb attachment) and some Tolkien Meets Heavy Metal In Space miniatures game whose name escapes me at the moment.
And also...
Palladium Books' Rifts!
(My copy, purchased at Compleat Strategist in Manhattan)
In the grim darkness of the moderately distant future there are only crossovers!
After a nuclear war kills billions, the energy of all those deaths reawakens magic, remakes the earth and opens portholes to other dimensions.
Power armor vs demons, what's not to love?
But in order to understand Rifts, you first have to understand the Robotech RPG
(also my copy, purchased at Discount Books in Jackson Heights)
Which was the first Palladium game to use giant mechs.
But to understand the Robotech RPG you first have to understand the Palladium Fantasy RPG.
Which I don't actually own. That's the Atlantis RPG from Bard Games, another D&D clone/upgrade/rip-off.
(Not actually my copy, I borrowed it from college roommate in 1991, maybe I should return it?)
But to understand the Palladium Fantasy RPG, you would first have to understand Dungeons and Dragons
(my copy but not my original one, I lent that one to my buddy and never got it back but I found one at a used book store in Falls Church so it all worked out)
And only then does it make sense how a D&D clone/homage/rip-off spawned a half dozen games from several genres only to be combined into an unholy monster that's been running 35 years and has 80+ books now.
So strap on your Bushman Full Composite Environmental Body Armor, pick up your C-27 Heavy Plasma Cannon, call up your favorite Dee-Bee Companion and let's go do some Mega Damage!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/10 16:39:38
However I did get to play the heck out of some Robotech and Rifts back in the day, until we replaced it with Shadowrun.
Can't argue... but will Say Rifts and Robotech, and TMNT... were my highschool friends go to game... as my best friend's mom thought D&D was the devil and wouldn't let him play d&d but had no problem with Rifts or Robotech. I still have all my Palladium books, biut mostly because they are not worth much as far as resale goes.
I had some of the best gaming times I ever had playing Rifts with my friends in high school.
I have a certain amount of appreciation for a game designer who has so little respect for the concept of "game balance" that he puts character classes like a Glitter Boy (who comes equipped with a massive suit of power armor) and a juvenile dragon (gifted with massive amounts of inherent magical power) alongside a Vagabond (gifted with the ability to "size up a fella") together in the same rulebook. Shine on you crazy diamond, Kevin Siembieda.
Interesting how perfectly the first few comments teed up the points I want to make.
In the early 80s D&D (and AD&D, don't even ask what the difference was or I'll have to sic a 36th level Immortal on you) ruled the roost. It's a classic game, wellspring of all the RPGs that have follow and also...
Kind of boring.
Especially at the lower levels you just have no options.
Combat is just roll to hit, roll for damage, take damage. Yeah sure you can do 'anything' - yell "Martha", play dead, run, negotiate, throw sand in his face - but for the mechanics of the game you roll to hit, you roll for damage, you take damage.
Spell Casters have a mighty one spell at first level, a mighty two at second level.
At higher levels you have more options - drink the potion of healing? cast one of my 16 spells? summon my warhorse? - but the mechanics stayed about the same.
So almost from the beginning there was a market for D&D upgrades, that used the basic concepts and mechanics but offered more options.
Which brings me to the Palladium Fantasy RPG
Same basic mechanics as D&D but added parrying, dodging, mana points, skills, new character races and classes, you get the idea.
Which led to Palladium extending the same mechanics to horror...
Superheroes...
We have the rights to the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles but Figure We Should Hedge Our Bets With a Similar Game.
And finally the Robotech RPG.
Robotech, if you don't know, was the unholy mashup of 3 (mostly) unrelated Japanimation (as we called it then) shows and one of the first big Anime hits in America. So a game that offered a chance to pilot an F-14, that turns into a robot, and flies in Space was pretty much a license to print money.
The art alone was worth the price. It was probably traced or copied from various Japanese mecha books but still. Gorgeous.
Did I mention that Jetfire sometimes put on an overcoat made entirely of missile launchers?
(Jetfire you see was a Transformer made from the molds from the Macross Valkyries which became the Robotech Veritechs, which meant that the Transformers had a better Robotech Toy than Robotech, but this is not a review of Robotech.)
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
In order to fit giant walking battleships and transforming F-14 into a game engine designed for D&D Palladium introduced the idea of "Mega Damage" where one point of Mega Damage Capability (or MDC as the cool kids liked to call it) equaled 100 normal points of damage. That way the mecha could play at their scale, the characters could play at a human scale and if they ever met... the human would go squish.
And there was even more - Ninjas and Superspies, TMNT, Mechaniods (space war), Recon (Vietnam), books of weapons etc. All of them using the same essential rules which were then cut and pasted from book to book.
And much like the licensed TMNT (as the cool kids called them) gave birth to the off-market 'After the Bomb' game so too the licensed 'Robotech' game gave birth to Rifts, a game that combined magics, psychics, superheroes, mecha, giant insects and whatever else was going through people's heads on that day.
And explains why they rules look and feel like early 80s D&D rules.
And why a game with power armor and rail guns, also includes an entire page of medieval weapons. A page that I would bet five mini-missiles is a direct reprint of Palladium Fantasy.
So that sets the stage, be back tomorrow when this Retro Review of Rifts actually looks at Rifts!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/09 17:25:15
...And there was even more - Ninjas and Superspies, TMNT, Mechaniods (space war), Recon (Vietnam), books of weapons etc. All of them using the same essential rules which were then cut and pasted from book to book.
So that sets the stage, be back tomorrow when this Retro Review of Rifts actually looks at Rifts!
So... I have "The Revised Recon" and it was not the same system. It didn't use Palladium's universal system... or megaversal, I forget what they called it. I remember getting it to use with TMNT and being disappointed it was not compatible.
But also remember that my friend had a typo in his Rifts core book, and level 3 of HTH martial arts said "+21" to hit... My book said "+2" and he tried to argue that his book was a newer printing so was correct. I ended up getting more support for my cause, but then he called shenanigans that my character had HTH Shaolin Kung fu from Ninja's and Superspies... as a Turbo Jockey from Phase World would not have access to a Shaolin Temple...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/09 18:56:05
The closest I ever got to Rifts was the TMNT book, which I only personally acquired in college. Big stompy (or fly-y) robots never really appealed to me, which is ironic since I was heavy into Warmachine for a time.
KK, feel free to milk this into a 21-part retrospective!
Quixote wrote: Was Shadowbane a Palladium game? That's what I remember the most being played at the shop...
Nightspawn, which was later changed to Nightbane because it was too close to the Spawn IP. Though I always looked at it as the "Nightbreed" rpg. I have the Nightspawn book, but it came out after highschool was done for me, and I was in Venezuela when it did... so never actually played the game. Don't think I ever made any characters for it...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/10 03:42:29
Quixote wrote: Was Shadowbane a Palladium game? That's what I remember the most being played at the shop...
Nightspawn, which was later changed to Nightbane because it was too close to the Spawn IP. Though I always looked at it as the "Nightbreed" rpg. I have the Nightspawn book, but it came out after highschool was done for me, and I was in Venezuela when it did... so never actually played the game. Don't think I ever made any characters for it...
Rifts was awful. Rubbish mechanics (mega-damage was super clunky), a vampire nation (great!), vampires you could kill with water pistols (what!?) and an utterly utterly appalling sourcebook for the UK, well, England, because Kev was too busy filing lawsuits to have time to do any research! Of all my '90s role-playing memories Rifts is the low point.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/10 10:00:36
There is a Polish kingdom… where the king has the power to touch any material and make it mega damage… so a dinner plate is suddenly harder than adamantine. That was a thing.
We loved Rifts. It was dumb, and the mechanics were not great, though none of us knew that at the time. There were some really good ideas and stories in there, but also some really wierd and nonsense ones. A personal favorite of mine was giant golems that a wizard could meld in to a use like power armor. Badass. Because otherwise why play a spell caster?
A soldier has body armor with 50 mdc and a gun that does 2d6 damage per shot and has 30 rounds. And he has 4 spare magazines.
A wizard has 40 Ppe (mana points) and can make magic armor that lasts an hour for like 10 of his mana.. and shoot lightning that does 1d6 electricity… for 5 ppe. So after 8 shots he is done for the day.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/05/10 13:56:35
Comments have been interesting, and I fully intend to spend time on the problems of Mega Damage, and the problems with Palladium Books, problems with Kevin Siembieda etc don't worry, but first...
Let's dive into the rule book!
Quite a cover! A disgusting slimy monster on a hover barge with an army of girls from the "Simply Irresistible" wow I can't wait to see what their story is!
In Rifts Atlantis. When it comes out in 2 years.
Ah well, I'm sure this book will have some cool stuff too.
So far so good.
Uh-oh. Trigger warning! I hope y'all can handle this.
OK what is Rifts, what is a role playing game, 3 pages of random charts for insanity, not sure I'd put that right up front but OK...
10 pages of skills, including "Boat Building", Pilot Jet Aircraft" (note that jet aircraft do not exist in the world of Rifts), Boxing (which is mandatory since it gives you +1 action, if you want make real money, open a boxing ring on an Palladium world, seriously), and MD in Cybernetics. The list is nothing if not comprehensive.
And entire page of missile types, not sure we need it this early but thanks.
And finally we get to the character classes!
OK, Borg, "Dead Boy" Grunt (might skip that one), Cyber-knight (sounds interesting), Dragon (!!), and Vagabond Unskilled (??).
What the hey?
I can tell game balance is not a major concern here.
Borgs are cyborgs, full or partial conversion. You start with a Mega Damage body, possible inbuilt weapons, improved senses, of course with the disadvantage you'll need a cyber doc to fix you and keep you running.
Also instead of a combat borg, you can play an escaped slave Borg! Yay!
The Coalition are the baddies in this game. Racist, anti-psychic, anti-magic and cover their armor in skulls. And you know, I would bet they drew on little to no inspiration from 40k. Racist skull-themed guys are just a natural trope. Their skull themed armor leads to the nickname 'Dead Boys'. Hrm, seems it might have been good to introduce the setting before introducing all this in the description for a character class. But who I am to judge.
Anyway cool design, can be played as evil fascists, deserters, abandoned infantrymen learning to tolerate mutants and psychics... And there are some pretty comprehensive role playing notes for them. Kudos.
And if a Dead Boy grunt doesn't appeal... how about a SAMAS pilot? Jet propelled power armor, rail gun, cool skull mask. Yeah.
The warriors known as Crazies are a cross between ninja masters and raving lunatics.
Brain implants, powers, and roll for insanity.
There's like 5 pages of insanity tables here, not to be confused with the 3 pages of insanity tables we had earlier.
Cyber Knights, cyber armor, psychic powers, and can conjure up a psi sword. Code of honor and mysterious origins of the order to go with it.
Glitter Boys!
Top of the line, pre-fall power armor with anti-laser (glittering) coating and a BOOM GUN! that not only blows away Mega Damage targets, it also deafens and stuns any allies who stand too close (like 200 yards too close).
Y'know that one guy in the group who just wants to be all powerful and screw over the rest of the party, yeah this is for him.
Headhunters, generic bounty hunters and mercs. Y'know if you're not cool enough to play a Glitter Boy.
Juicers, live fast, die young.
Players note: The Juicer character WILL die after five (5) years and 4d6 months of being a chemically induced super man! There are no exceptions!! No saving throws, no hope.
Scholars and Adventures including Body Fixers (doctors), City Rat (thieves), Cyber Docs (doctors of cyber), Operators (engineers and mechanics), Rogue Scientists (like scientists, but ROGUE!), Rogue Scholars (not sure what they do), Wilderness Scouts (who can scout the wilderness), and the legendary Vagabond Non-Skilled (uneducated AND unskilled!).
I have to say, it's an interesting selection, and if I were to run Rifts again I might limit players to these guys and really test their skills as they have to avoid and talk down the demons and cyborgs who could squish them in a minute. And some top-drawer art for all of them.
Practitioners of Magic - various flavors, some nice character designs. The Techno Wizard 30s pulp looking fella deserves special note, he can use magic to recharge your plasma cannon and all sorts of useful things.
Various psychics, including the Burster (pyrokinetic), the psi stalker (who stalks psis) and...
And the Coalition Dog Pack, genetically engineered dog soldiers, PSYCHIC dog soldiers. This is a Pixar film waiting to happen.
And finally...
For your buddy who thought the Glitter Boy was underpowered, why not play a full on dragon? Well OK a dragon hatchling but still. Mega Damage body, magic, flight, shape change, teleport, fire breath...
Or you can take another look at the Vagabond.
So that's a lot of awesome in just a few pages. Juicers, Crazies, Cyber Knights, Dog Soldiers any of those could support novels on their own. And like I said a bunch of normal characters in this world would be a fun role playing challenge. (Especially if the campaign was meant to evolve them into some of the more powerful classes).
And we're not even half done!
Play us out Robert Palmer!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/10 16:37:54
The character classes in the various Rifts books were a huge part of the game’s appeal in my opinion. Not all of them were slam dunks (I never saw anybody play a cyber-doc, for example) but most of them had something compelling about them. Character creation was fun in and of itself, though in retrospect there was excessive detail placed in apparently random places. “Oo, I have a +3% bonus to my Bonsai skill!”
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/10 17:20:35
Love the mysterious background on the cyber-knights.
"Somehow, the Cyber-Knights emerged."
Are the Glitter Boys the Larry Sues of the setting? Thought it seems like every class has multiple stacks of abilities on it, like a bunch of 8-year-olds fighting over who would beat up whom.
Coalition Dog Pack are straight out of a 90s Saturday morning cartoon. I can see the toys right now.
I should pause at this point and mention that character generation was not limited to the two dozen or so classes offered in the main rule book. Source books that detailed other regions quickly followed, as did Dimension Books that opened whole other worlds, and also the Rifts Conversion book that allowed you to folk in characters from their other games.
Momma Kyoto didn't raise no dummies so I knew the importance of Mega Damage. My first character was a superman expy using the Heroes Unlimited conversion rules. He had Invulnerability (700 MDC! That's up there with the Glitter Boy!) and regenerated. He could fly at Mach 1, fire plasma bolts from his hands and punch through steel! Take that Vagabond!
He was also completely useless. With no psychic or magic defenses he was routinely taken down with various paralysis attacks and the GM decided that while HE was invulnerable his costume was NOT and he was often stripped naked. Also guns did significantly more damage than his plasma bolts so he ended up wearing armor and carrying a gun anyway.
BALANCE!
So anyway with the rules and character classes out of the way, we get into the background (which probably should have come first. We're not here for your detailed Boat Building rules, we're here for power armor vs demons).
Nuclear war, billions of deaths, unparalleled release of psychic energy, magic activates, lay lines become literal crackling superhighways of energy and where they meet...
Dimensional rifts open!
Most of the world is wastelands, perfect for D&D-style murder-hobo adventures where you can meet in the "tavern", meet a "mysterious psychic", hear rumors of an ancient "bunker" and go exploring for lost "technology".
I should stop here and note the use of full color pages, still a rarity in RPG books and I think a first for Palladium who were always known for their higher page counts but lower production values (and reused art and rules)
Sigh...
Double sigh...
It's a shame since the book would actually have felt better without some of these reused pieces, including them makes a cool bonus feel cheap. Which is a shame because there was a lot of cool, new, art in the book.
The main focus is the Great Lakes region, close to Palladium's Michigan home (write what you know!).
Chicago, now called Chi-Town is a vast hive city surrounded by miles of shanty towns. Ruled by the Coalition (q.v.)
Where the wealthy (but illiterate) upper class lord if over the miserable lowlies.
It is noted in CAPITAL LETTERS that books are forbidden especially any pre-Rifts histories. Which is a neat adventure hook right there.
And the Coalition well... I don't want to use any banned search terms so let's just say they're fond of Roman Empire imagery, jackboots, deaths head insignias, genocide and...
Uniforms by Hugo Boss. I think we all know what I mean.
Giving players a ready made opponent who need punching.
There's also a quick overview of the rest of the world. Mexico is ruled by Vampires who can only be hurt by magic and, um, water. Literally water, not even Holy Water, no just water. Apparently an interpretation of the old 'cannot cross running water' rule for them.
Other factions get a mention and would later be filled out in entire books, from Dinosaur Swamp (Florida), to various magical kingdoms, including the shamelessly named city of Tolkeen.
A lot of survivor settlements a GM can flesh out.
As for my hometown...
A haunted uninhabited graveyard (is this some midwest vs east coast thing?), which nonetheless got a source book years later.
And then one or two sentences on various places around the world from Europe to Asia to Atlantis to Outer Space.
The nice thing is since Rifts is set on Earth you can pick your hometown and imagine what the post-apocalyptic, magical, psychic, cross-dimensional, mecha version of it might be like.
Hyderabad, now known as The City of Evil Hydras is threatened by the multiheaded snake beasts that burrow up from beneath. These creatures range in size from a Mack Truck (or Tata Truck) to a mile-long freight train and eat depleted uranium rail rounds for breakfast. Only the iron rule of the Cyber Nizam and his army of Sun Downers holds them back. But the city faces an ongoing threat from the Quantum Supercomputer that rules Bangalore.
So yes, I give them definite points for a cool world where anything goes, but it still had a cohesive feel. And I think 35 years and 100 or so source books back me up on this.
Come back next time for Magic, Psychics and Guns! Guns! Guns!
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/05/11 07:09:47
Next up we have 16 pages of PSYCHIC rules, which are fueled by your Inner Strength Points.
Which include everything from useful healing powers
Bio-Regeneration
Range: Self
Duration: Permanent
LS.P.: 6
Savings Throw: None
This the ability to mentally heal oneself of disease, poison, or physical
damage. Unfortunately, this ability is limited to the healing of oneself
and can not help others. The process requires one full minute of concentration,
meaning the character can not use any other psionic power
during that time. Bio-Regeneration does not restore missing limbs,
To telekinesis
Telekinesis
Range: Up to 60ft (18.3m) away.
Duration: 2 minutes per level of experience.
I.S.P.: Small — 3, medium — 8, large (over 201bs) — 8+1 per
every 10 lbs of weight.
Telekinesis is the ability to move objects without any other means
than directed psychic energy. The character can make an object hop,
fall, roll, rise into the air, suspend it there (hover) or make it fly across
the room.
(protip, telekinesis can be used to pull the pins off your opponent's grenades!)
To mental possession.
Mentally Possess Others
Range: Touch
Duration: 5 minutes per level of experience.
I.S.P.: 30
The Mind Melter can completely take over and controls another
person. The psychic essence of the controlling mind is transferred into
the body of another individual. While in the victim's body/mind, the
psionic retains all his own knowledge and identity. He can not read the
mind of the person he now possesses, nor access any knowledge from
the victim's memory. Only the physical body can be controlled, like a
living robot.
I should note here that for some reason the Psychic rules come BEFORE the world building stuff, rather than after where the magic and guns are. I have no idea why. And I'll bet you a full suit of Dead Boy Armor that these are cut and pasted from another game. Maybe more than one.
Then we get to MAGIC, which is fueled by Potential Psychic Energy, just to make sure everyone is paying attention.
One neat thing is characters are not stuck with the PPE they roll for. They can suck PPE from others (willingly or unwillingly) boost it by being near a ley line or nexus, and other tricks. The rules explicitly note that if you draw energy from someone at the moment of their death, the energy doubles!
Here again, it's a response to the very limited D&D magic system where you had your spell slots and that was it. This system is a built in adventure hook.
"We need to cast this spell to stop/summon C'thulhu but I don't have anywhere near enough energy! But if we stand at the Ley Line Nexus 100 miles from here, and you all give me your energy, and I drain this artifact, and it's the full moon, it just might work!"
We then get spells, level 1 (Cloud of smoke!) to Level 15 (Dimensional Porthole). I may get the Palladium Fantasy PDF just to see if these pages match those. I'd bet about 90% do.
One question that came up for us was, can you cast spells/psychic powers while in power armor? Ultimately we decided no, you had have exposed flesh, which led to our psychics and wizards walking around in full power armor, minus one glove. But we'll get to that.
And finally we are into the GUNS and mechs, and vehicles.
Hoo boy. The Glitter Boy gets all the glory but I do love the SAMAS. Nuclear power, fly 300mph, rail gun, missiles. What is not to love?
Other Coalition mecha get attention too.
From the Giant Crawling Skull Thing - technically the Spider Skull Walker, with a note saying "yes we know spiders have 8 legs"
To the Giant Flying Skull Thing
And various Mega Damage personal weapons which will instantly kill anyone not wearing MDC armor.
There are various personal armor suits, where the only important stat is how many points of MDC it has. And you'd better pack spares because armor does not heal.
A section on the Black Market even notes this
5. Body Armor of all kinds, including CS "Dead Boy" armor, usually repainted white, grey, green, or brown, is always available.
There's also various mechs and power armor from other sources than the Coalition. This puppy has less armor than the SAMAS but is faster and packs 12 missiles.
When it comes to getting around you have a rich selection of bikes and APCs.
And my personal favorite the Behemoth Explorer, for when you want to get around in style.
And of course the long-awaited Glitter Boy rules. 10' tall, 700 points of Mega Damage (versus like 200 for the SAMAS), half damage from lasers (the glittery part of the name), limited flight, 3 weeks food and water for the pilot, a gun with 2 miles range that deafens and stuns people near you and...
Four pages of art and technical diagrams!
Clearly this was meant to be the break out star. Poor SAMAS.
Then we wind down the book with more guns, bionics rules (including rules for salvaging and selling other folks' bionics).
A Typical Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are mega-damage creatures too, although, thankfully, not
as tough as most supernatural creatures.
Small, human size, predators: 3D6 M.D.C., Attacks per melee: Two,
Damage: Bite 1D4 M.D. or claws 4D6 S.D.C., Speed: 6D6.
Medium size, 12 to 20 feet (3.6 to 6.1 m), predators: 6D6 M.D.C.,
Attacks per melee: Two, Damage: Bite 1D6 M.D. or claws 1D4
M.D., Speed: 1D6X10.
Large size, 30 to 50 feet (9.1 to 15.4m), predators: lD4x 10M.D.C.,
Attacks per melee: Two, Damage: Bite 2D6 M.D. or forearm claws
1D4 M.D., feet claws 2D6 M.D., Speed: 1D6X 10.
Natural Abilities: Heightened sense of smell. Can track by smell at
60% efficiency. Can smell the scent of blood up to four miles (6.4
km) away. Can leap up to 30 feet (9.1 m).
P.P.E.: 4D6
A quick GM section/monster list and we're done!
That was... a lot. For your $25 dollars you got 250+ pages, some very cool art, a whole new world, a few dozen character classes, psychics, magic, mecha, punchable Not-Zs and a full set of rules. Yeah there's problems (see tomorrow's entry), so, so many problems, but don't let nobody tell you you ain't getting no value for your money here.
I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit I have every Rifts book that Palladium has put out. Played it loads back in the day and just kept collecting.
I also own many of their other books, but stopped after getting screwed over by them in the Robotech KS.
Nonetheless, I've a fondness for the setting and the art.
May get back to playing it one day, but unlikely as there are FAR better games out there.
grahamdbailey wrote: I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit I have every Rifts book that Palladium has put out. Played it loads back in the day and just kept collecting.
I also own many of their other books, but stopped after getting screwed over by them in the Robotech KS.
Nonetheless, I've a fondness for the setting and the art.
May get back to playing it one day, but unlikely as there are FAR better games out there.
I am the same... though I haven't gotten anything newer than like 2016 or so... I briefly debated getting the Savage Worlds Rifts... but ultimately decided against it. An old high school friend and I still play some Robotech whenever he visits... but it's like 6 years in between visits.
And… I still have this: my big book of palladium games characters. 99.., I was in Indonesia at the time. Had to make my own fun… so made a ton of characters… that never got played.
If it's not obvious I really liked this game. A game where you can play ANYTHING and start of with the firepower of tank battalion is just fun!
But I was never blind to its flaws.
Let's start with...
Mega Damage!
OK. So one point of Mega Damage is equal to 100 points of normal damage (which technically means it should be called Hecto Damage but I'll let that slide) and it was created so that mecha could play on their scale while the Squishys (as one player called them) played on their scale. Fine and good.
And it even gets a logical explanation. If I attack a car with a baseball bat or chainsaw or a .38 I will do some damage. But if I attack a tank... I'll be lucky if I chip paint. The crew inside won't even care until I take out the LAW rocket.
And that's fine as long as these guys
Only fight these guys.
But it becomes a serious problem when there are handguns with stats like this.
This is the cheapest, most common and weakest of the guns in the game. And it will instant kill any Squishy it hits (OK a high level character MIGHT have 100+ hit points and survive, if the attacker rolls a 1).
Worse yet, the game system, in an IMPROVEMENT over D&D, let's you pick specific areas to hit with a penalty to hit. So even if your character is wearing Mega Damage armor, a good shot can blow your head off.
Worse, worse yet, all those missiles I mentioned earlier have a blast radius, so your Mega Damage breast plate may survive but your arms, legs and head won't.
"You must have this much armor to enjoy the game"
So OK, treat this as a deadly combat game. Avoid fight, talk, negotiate, sneak around, don't get into straight up fights.
Except I want to be flying my power armor suit and fighting demons, if I wanted to play Twilight 2000, with its rules for dysentery, I'd play Twilight 2000.
Isn't it weird that Twilight 2000 is now a historical game? But I digress.
So, OK, we ignore the Squishy character classes and either play MDC creatures or stay in our armor 24/7. Which makes most of the cool character classes in the game nonviable. And your character's lifespan is determined by his current armor MDC.
And this would be SO EASY to fix. Make Mega Damage equal to 10 points of normal damage, still scary and deadly, but less so. Or just abandon the convention entirely.
Or since we already have cyborgs vs slimy monsters from Atlantis and the cast of Simply Irresistible, let's go farther. Add force field technology, and make it as common as dirt.
You can get your basic Paul Atreides 20 MDC force field for a few thousand credits, or invest in the deluxe Brainiac Five 100 MDC field or 1000 MDC, all numbers are made up and nothing means anything! They offer 360 degree protection (so no blast radius or called shots to the head killing you) and you can recharge them as needed. You can still wear armor under the force field, but now it's a back up, not your only protection. It's possible that one or more of the 80+ supplements offers that, but it should have been obvious from the start. It was to us.
Skills
This is a shorter rant but hey. Skills were strict percentages and you'd get an extra 3% or whatever with each level. But there were no target numbers, so when using my Boat Building skill I just had a 40% chance of making a non-leaking boat whether I wanted a raft or a kayak or a rowboat.
Worse yet the comprehensive list was cut and pasted from their fantasy and modern games, so many are meaningless in this game (pilot jet aircraft when there are no jets in the rules, there is one for hover bikes however). And there's very little in the way of guidance on what you need to repair armor, or patch up your Glitter Boy. Which, as mentioned, is the only thing keeping you alive.
Balance
Yeah, it's all over the place, which is fine as long as everyone knows this and agrees. A campaign of all Squishys could be fun, a campaign of all hulking Borgs and Dragons and the like can be fun. It's when you're mixed that it's hard for everyone to have fun.
GM-The bandits emerge from the woods armed with Wilks Laser Pistols Borg-I fire my plasma cannon Mind Melter-I melt their minds Vagabond-I run and hide Rogue Scholar-Me too! Glitter Boy-I fire one shot deafening and stunning everyone within 200 yards
All of which made Rifts a problem to run.
And then you add in 80+ World Books, Dimension Books, Conversion books and so on.
In Rifts Underseas not only are whales and dolphins playable character classes (with their own unique song magic) but they also have unique power armor. And you just KNOW someone is going to show up demanding to play their Dolphin Song Mage in Glitter Dolphin Armor.
Palladium Books and Kevin Siembieda
Palladium has a staff and a pool of writers and artist but is very much driven by Siembieda. And he has his eccentricities.
One is that their system has gone essentially unchanged since the Palladium Fantasy Game in 1983. That book, the Rifts core rules from 1990, and dozens of other books are still in print, unedited, with no updates or fixes. In fact, barring games like Robotech and TMNT which they lost the rights to, everything is in print or in PDF. Heck the Compendium of Modern Weapons that I wanted to get back in Junior High School is still in print (looks like it got an update though). If you enjoyed this review you pick up this 35 year old book in glowing zeros and ones or tangible paper.
In some ways that's nice, especially as you look at GW's eternal churn. But not when the rules have the obvious issues I already raised.
They did a partnership with Savage Worlds for a rules export a few years back, but I would guess at this stage they don't dare consider a serious rules change, since it would make all their inventory worthless.
It looks like Palladium's output in recent years is pretty anemic, they did a Kickstarter for the last Rifts book - Titan Robotics - and that was 2 years ago. There's a Rifts Antarctica "coming soon" but most "new" products are reprints, posters and the list. So Palladium may not be around much longer.
The Robotech Kickstarter
And of course I was one of the buyers for the doomed Robotech Kickstarter. I'm not as mad as some gamers, I mean we did get a game and half of the planned releases, and even credit for the undelivered Wave 2. But I'm still not happy.
And in conclusion
So yeah, by no means a perfect game. But then one day, the Robotech Cyclone Pilot fires his complete arsenal of mini missiles at the Balrog doing 120 to 720 points of Mega Damage and it's all worth it.
Hope you all enjoyed!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/14 16:24:50
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