rifts/robotech crossovers in canon?

[Astral_Explorer]

LOL

As popular as Robotech characters are in Rifts games I have seen you might. Officially I have no clue, but I do know they are very popular in Rifts games I have come across.

[Vrykolas2k]

You will probably see a book or two with Robotech stuff in them for Rifts
Will protoculture survive in the magic rich environment? I do not know...

[Astral_Explorer]

I think somewhere it was mentioned Protoculture could grow away from Ley Lines. Yep they can grow but not within 100 miles of a Ley Line.
As per Rifts Conversion Book pg 35.

[Pox]

Should I point out the veiled reference to the AGA-1JF's scatter-shot missile system from Macross II in Coalition navy?

or are we just focusing on Robotech?

[glitterboy2098]

Should I point out the veiled reference to the AGA-1JF's scatter-shot missile system from Macross II in Coalition navy?

or are we just focusing on Robotech?

actually, the scattershot is a mini-missile. the CS navy ASMRAAM is a medium missile.

but since robotech had a medium multi-warhead missile and rifts doesn't, you can bet the "alien robot" the CS found was a robotech mecha. maybe a VF-1?

the NGR also obtained anti-gravity from a crshed "alien ship", and look at all those NGR bots and the similarities to robotech mecha (down to the transformable sub). the NGR probably stumbled over a crashed garfish or something.


i doubt there will be a official cross over. if PB or HG loses the liscense in the future, that would cause some trouble. but i would bet on a section of the new robotech rpg about "using robotech with other palladium settings", just like they used to include in systems failure, N&SS, ect.

[Aramanthus]

That is a very interesting idea GB. I do see the connection you mentioned!

[glitterboy2098]

one problem with robotech/rifts crossovers as anything but a campaign is the fact that robotech and rifts have very different feels. robotech is a more epic game, while rifts is a gritty survivalist one.the attitudes of the RDF, ASC, and RDF are a touch out of place in rifts. this makes for great campaign play as the players find their faith in humanity threatened, but doesn't make for good permanent crossover material.

second is the power issue. despite what people think, robotech mecha are far morepowerful than rifts mecha. while they don't carry as much armor, their firepower is often roughly the same, and their mobility, agility, and accuracy are far better than most rifts stuff. their mecha have better avionics, computers, and power systems than a rifts bot, which makes them that much more lethal. (as evidenced by the fact that robotech mecha combat bonuses add onto the pilots HtH, usually with major bonuses, while rifts bot combat bonuses don't.).

add this to the superior training (better skill %'s and bonuses), and experiance (used to fighting overwhelming mechanized enemies that have a technological or numerical advantage), and the robotech forces are a major threat to reckon with.

and then you have the veritechs, which no other group has anything comparable. agile, able to serve as fighter, attack helicopter, giant infantry, capable of reaching distant troublespots at mach speed, and then able to engage the enemy on land, air, sea, space. they're worth twice their numbers in conventional rifts gear, 3-4x with competant pilots.


any human force coming through would greatly disrupt the balance of power in the game, as well as change the tone of it.

and the alien powers aren't much better. the zentreadi mecha might be weak, but the sheer #'s in just one of their ships, and their giant size, make them very potent in rifts. the robotech masters are much the same as the human forces, the bioroids and advanced technology would outmatch most rifts units due to mobility and agility. and they'd quickly adopt rifts weapons tech to make for the weak drum weapons they typically use. few people use protocultue, so the invid aren't a serious problem to the rifts world, and they'd have to show up somewhere out of the way to avoid being slaughtered by an orginized rifts military. unless they arrive with dozens of hives and thousands of mecha, at which point your just playing invid invasion with rifts robots.

[Aramanthus]

I know about the different feel. Although one of my players had their Legios shot down and captured by the CS. They had to infiltrate a secret CS base ......(IE ...... Area 51)

[Mech-Viper Prime]

there is a mention about a 50ft giant with mecha in the 2nd conversion book, but one character coming from a robotech-like world

[glitterboy2098]

there is a mention about a 50ft giant with mecha in the 2nd conversion book, but one character coming from a robotech-like world

There are two Robotech mentions in that book, actually. One is the wizkid who built his own giant robot and implicitly survived the Zentraedi Rain of Death. Another is a 50 foot blue skinned giant with a strange alien mecha.

the robot the one kid built even has design similarities to the VF-1 in battloid.

[DocS]

one problem with robotech/rifts crossovers as anything but a campaign is the fact that robotech and rifts have very different feels. robotech is a more epic game, while rifts is a gritty survivalist one.the attitudes of the RDF, ASC, and RDF are a touch out of place in rifts. this makes for great campaign play as the players find their faith in humanity threatened, but doesn't make for good permanent crossover material.

I humbly disagree. The folks in Invid Invasion would be right at home on Rifts Earth, in fact, they may not even notice for the first couple days or so that they had been rifted over. Xiticix, Invid, all they know is them bugs are hunting them through ruins.

Anyways 'stranger in a strange land' is a perfectly reasonable campaign idea.

second is the power issue. despite what people think, robotech mecha are far morepowerful than rifts mecha. while they don't carry as much armor, their firepower is often roughly the same, and their mobility, agility, and accuracy are far better than most rifts stuff. their mecha have better avionics, computers, and power systems than a rifts bot, which makes them that much more lethal. (as evidenced by the fact that robotech mecha combat bonuses add onto the pilots HtH, usually with major bonuses, while rifts bot combat bonuses don't.).

That's cuz Robotech mecha is *alive*. Which means it also would have PPE. And that's fodder for incredible amounts of fun! Don't fear it, embrace it! Reams of material could be written on the funky magic-like protoculture. Invid can do alchemy in a low-magic environment.... does the supercharged environment of earth also supercharge Invid alchemy? Are the Wizards of Peryton affected?

And so what if Robotech mecha is more powerful than CS bots, that's plot! When I ran my robotech/Rifts thing, one of the running themes was that the CS wanted their mecha, and was hunting them for it for exactly those reasons! And the party had fun, being the roughest robo-jockeys around.... and then have the enemies get smart and use traps, etc.

And what does a Disruptor do to a *magic* force field? Don't fear the differences, *work* em! the guy who chose the Disruptor felt like a tool at first, but once he saw what I had it do to mystic fields, literally everyone in the party wanted one...

Too bad they were isolated from the ship as a scouting party.

This works especially if you rift in a *small* robotech force. Its stuff is big, but there's maybe one ship in orbit with the small party down on Earth, who can only communicate up to The Mothership on rare occasions. Or if instead you use the Invid invasion idea, the Robotech group has been rifted in, isolated, and they need to survive this world. Yes, their mecha is one of a kind, which is good, but bad because if destroyed, it's, well, one of a kind.

[glitterboy2098]

actually, i agree with you mostly.

what i was argueing was that using robotech stuff in large #'s as a new faction doesn't work too well. the most i can see at one time is the compliment of a Garfish or a GMU and escorts, and even then, thats a major power.

anything more, like a small task force or a full fledged starship compliment (like from an ikazuchi) doesn't fit as well, and if made to fit, it just becomes RIFTS with more transforming robots.

though i've occassionally tossed around ideas for such factions. my plans usually wound up close ot the republicans from the new SB1, which is why i never actually used them, it would have changed the feel of the game. (plus, no one was interested in robotech. )


maybe i'll do a robotech into rifts crossover someday, not give them the choice.

[taalismn]

No official crossovers, but I expect a surge in fan crossover material....

[asajosh]

My current rifts campaign involves a little homebrewed kingdom whose leader has pirated a few Valkeries. Their military has reverse engineered the craft and are slowly producing their own. The best part is, they are incorporating tech wizardry into the robots! Hoping they will see some action with (or against) the PCs this session coming up!

[Arachknight]

One of my favorite characters is an REF Cyclone Rider who ended up in Lone Star. He travelled northwards to his destiny at Reflex Point, meeting strange new people and seeing stranger new mecha along the way. Given that Reflex Point and the Xiticix Hive Complexes are in roughly the same geographic location, he became convinced that the Xiticix were simply a new generation of invid.


Had a blast, racing the cyclone against those Juicer jump-bikes, learning how to turbo hop from a wilderness scout, dueling a Cyber-Knight with Cads-1, all sorts of things. He did some minor upgrades to the cyclone over time, nothing too big, just quality of life stuff like converting the gasoline "backup engine" to super-solar power, and retrofitting northern gun missile launchers so he could still use his basic weapons.


Was a real good time.

[Kelorin]

I recently re-acquired a copy of Invid Invasion, and in many regards, of all Robotech settings is the most proto-Rifts like environment. You can see it even in subtle details.

For example: Invid Invasion was the first setting to separate Rogue & Wilderness skills from Espionage into their own categories. Invid Invasion was the first setting to introduce mini-missiles and vibro-blades. The survivalist post-apocalyptic setting is definitely there. There is a definite design lineage for certain Rifts O.C.C.s that seem to go back to Invid Invasion (Wilderness Scout has similarities to Nomad Scout for example). And in terms of power level, Invid Invasion is very comparable in MDC values / damage output to the first edition of Rifts (4D6 rifles being the norm, with 1D4x10 being on the high end, MDC for man-sized powered armor in 200 MDC range)

[Mech-Viper Prime]

lets see in my rifts earth

SC/REF controls much of the South African region, and very hostile towards any other power in the region

REF controls Alaska region, but they have became mechinoid-like

couple of lone rdf/sc/ref roam the planet.

CS R&D has a few veritech fighters, alphas, destroids, and cyclone under study and working on their own veritech-type vechiles.

one group of characters has a rebuild GMP-Robot with N.I

then there is the stuff from macross 2 fightning in Europe against brodkil

[Nightshade37]

(as evidenced by the fact that robotech mecha combat bonuses add onto the pilots HtH, usually with major bonuses, while rifts bot combat bonuses don't.)

Rifts robot and power armor bonuses do stack with the pilot's other bonuses. RUE p351.

[Jason Richards]

Sorry guys, I don't think that you're going to see any canon crossover between the two. WAY too many legal entanglements.

[Jockitch74]

there is a mention about a 50ft giant with mecha in the 2nd conversion book, but one character coming from a robotech-like world

There are two Robotech mentions in that book, actually. One is the wizkid who built his own giant robot and implicitly survived the Zentraedi Rain of Death. Another is a 50 foot blue skinned giant with a strange alien mecha.

the robot the one kid built even has design similarities to the VF-1 in battloid.

Outcast Station apparently has 2 destroids or destroid-like bots

[asajosh]

there is a mention about a 50ft giant with mecha in the 2nd conversion book, but one character coming from a robotech-like world

There are two Robotech mentions in that book, actually. One is the wizkid who built his own giant robot and implicitly survived the Zentraedi Rain of Death. Another is a 50 foot blue skinned giant with a strange alien mecha.

the robot the one kid built even has design similarities to the VF-1 in battloid.

Outcast Station apparently has 2 destroids or destroid-like bots

Well, it says they CAN be Destroids. This was left open for GMs to pick a robot vehicle type dependng on what books they had at their disposal. Plus MiO is so thin we may have been better off not having it written at all...

[devillin]

That's cuz Robotech mecha is *alive*. Which means it also would have PPE. And that's fodder for incredible amounts of fun! Don't fear it, embrace it! Reams of material could be written on the funky magic-like protoculture. Invid can do alchemy in a low-magic environment.... does the supercharged environment of earth also supercharge Invid alchemy? Are the Wizards of Peryton affected?

I had a lot of this come up in my Phase World crossover campaign. The Alphas are just chock load of PPE. One of the players is a Techno-Wizard now, and he's having a field day retrofitting some of the fighters to use magic. The Invid that came over with them are just going to be scary. Especially since the jump in PPE allowed them to recreate a new Regis for the Phase World Universe. The two Perytons we have with us are a full-fledged Shifter and a Mystic, depending on their life outlook.

And so what if Robotech mecha is more powerful than CS bots, that's plot! When I ran my robotech/Rifts thing, one of the running themes was that the CS wanted their mecha, and was hunting them for it for exactly those reasons! And the party had fun, being the roughest robo-jockeys around.... and then have the enemies get smart and use traps, etc.

Yeah, that's a sub-plot that the group hasn't run into yet. They sold off a couple of Cyclones to a manufacturer early in the campaign for cash, they have no idea what they started.

And what does a Disruptor do to a *magic* force field? Don't fear the differences, *work* em! the guy who chose the Disruptor felt like a tool at first, but once he saw what I had it do to mystic fields, literally everyone in the party wanted one...

The Disruptor takes down all personal force fields. It puts holes in fields around buildings and spaceships. If yu've got a Phase World variable shield, you can just refresh your shield to bring it back, but if you have a standard shield, you've got a hole sitting there until you reset your entire shield.

[glitterboy2098]

i personally didn't consider PC powered mecha to have PPE, but i do think that protoculture and PPE are related., in a similar way to how PPE, ISP, Bio-E, and Temporal Energy are related


so you couldn't fuel magic directly off a Protoculture powerplant (Flower of life and unused cells maybe), but magic users, psychics, and supernatural beings/creatures of magic registered as protoculture users on the invid's scanners, albeit minor ones and with a unique signature.

basically the invid would gain an ability akin to a dogboys for detecting magic and psionics. human psychic's of all types would also be able to sense the invid coming, picking up their telepathic communications as a sort of 'presence'. sensitives would be better at it than others.

[Jockitch74]

there is a mention about a 50ft giant with mecha in the 2nd conversion book, but one character coming from a robotech-like world

There are two Robotech mentions in that book, actually. One is the wizkid who built his own giant robot and implicitly survived the Zentraedi Rain of Death. Another is a 50 foot blue skinned giant with a strange alien mecha.

the robot the one kid built even has design similarities to the VF-1 in battloid.

Outcast Station apparently has 2 destroids or destroid-like bots

Well, it says they CAN be Destroids. This was left open for GMs to pick a robot vehicle type dependng on what books they had at their disposal. Plus MiO is so thin we may have been better off not having it written at all...

Yup, hence why I said "destroid-like bots"

[Subjugator]

That's cuz Robotech mecha is *alive*.

Uh...since when?

Which means it also would have PPE.

Not necessarily.

/Sub

[Daniel Stoker]

Uh...since when?

/Sub

Since the beginning with Protoculture and their ability to respond and react? They're not really alive, but close enough to be *alive* and different from Rifts Robots.


Daniel Stoker

[Aramanthus]

That is an interesting thought! It is the flower of life held in stasis at the moment of germination. It should have some sort of PPE.

[Subjugator]

Since the beginning with Protoculture and their ability to respond and react? They're not really alive, but close enough to be *alive* and different from Rifts Robots.

So they're not really alive, but they're close to it.

OK - that sounds more accurate.

/sub

[Daniel Stoker]

So they're not really alive, but they're close to it.

OK - that sounds more accurate.

/sub

I figured that was why he wrote it *alive*.


Daniel Stoker

[glitterboy2098]

That is an interesting thought! It is the flower of life held in stasis at the moment of germination. It should have some sort of PPE.

actually, that is a mckinneyism. only in the novels. personally, i hate that idea

the FoL produces Spores, and a spore reproducing plant has no seeds. if you have one you don't need the other, as both are a means to reproduce. there are no spore producing flowers on earth, but an alien plant might have developed flower like features without developing seeds. looking at the FoL in the ruins of the SDF-1 in the show, the 'petals' could easily be oddly colored leaves, and the central 'stamen' looks alot like fern leaf structures.

the proposal that the spores are just stuff that mutates existing plants is something of a diversion by mckinneyists to preserve their seed theory. plus it fails the logic test too, if the spores can mutate plants to FoL, why bother with seeds at all? just put out more spores to convert more of the local flora to FoL. spores, seeds, and the 'mutation spores' would all be a way to spread the plants genome around, and evolutionary theory would push them to develop only one method to an optimum level. just like real world plants, where spores and seeds both exist, but you don't see both from the same plant.

i prefer the idea that Protoculture is a liquid fuel, made from FoL, used in fusion powerplants.

[Colt47]

So, will someone explain to me why Protoculture can't grow near leylines? Also, can someone please tell me what Protoculture is? I've only seen the Macross Movies, never seen any Robotech stuff.

[glitterboy2098]

So, will someone explain to me why Protoculture can't grow near leylines?

That's something that was introduced in the original Rifts Conversion book. It was probably created solely as a matter of powercreep control.

definately. i actually like the idea, but they over did it on range. can't grow within 100 miles of a ley line? that means somewhere in kansas there is one flower growing... that combined with remarks like "thousands of miles between towns" leads me to beleive KS doesn't quite realize how small the world is when looked at statistically, or how dense the ley lines are supposed to be in rifts.

limiting it to not growing within 10 miles would allow patches of the FoL to grow anywhere that isn't a magic zone.


as for why, no reason given, but i prefer the idea that the FoL is an ambient PPE sponge, and that ley lines 'burn out' the plant. sorta like if you overwater a houseplant.

Also, can someone please tell me what Protoculture is?

See the post above yours. In a nutshell, Protoculture is an alien power source needed to fuel Robotechnology, especially applications in mecha, starships, and cloning. It is a biofuel created from an ultra-rare alien flowering spore plant thingie.

exactly. the main reason no one can agree as to how it works is that they never explained it. the novels go with the odd idea of 'seeds under pressure', while a lot of the fans prefer the idea of a liquid fuel that somehow boosts the power of normal fusion. the debates over either version are long and intense, the subject of many a flamewar. anf harmony gold is unlikely to settle anything soon.

In Robotech, they took the term from Macross and switched the definition around to build a bridge between three separate anime (Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Mospeada). They did a good job of it, too.

well, as good a job as could be expected. the show has some gaping plot holes and some wierd lines as a result of them using lines directly from the orginals and then changing details later, but given that they rewrote and redubbed 80 episodes in the space of a few months, you have to expect that.

what usually drives people nuts is that HG has never, and still doesn't, have an interest in correcting those flaws, and instead seem to be interested in making them worse by just letting writers go nuts.

[glitterboy2098]

it's one thing to give writers freedom to develop idea's within a carefully created framework, but its quite another to rubberstamp any idea that they come up with.

guess which one HG's doing.
while they initially seemed to be on the right track when they declared all previous comics, books, and other merchandise non-canon, they don't seem to have changed any of their operating procedures. they're still rubberstamping, its just they put a new layer of wallpaper up over the old to do it on.