Rifter#50 : Psychic Storm intro...

[TechnoGothic]

Reading my Rifter #50's Chaos Earth introduction to Psychic Storm, Psychics for Chaos Earth.
Pretty good i must say. We only get two types previewed to us though. The Teke-Freak PCC is great, and extremely powerful i must say, which is great IMHO.

So Jason, how much of this book is finished ?
Cause I really want more Psychic material for Chaos Earth to use
Most to just fish up the Trio. Tech, magic, Psychic for the setting.

To be honest, my group does not want to play Technology characters in Chaos Earth for some reason. They instead want magics and psychics for characters. We have been putting off playing Chaos Earth for Years now, cause they want Chaos Earth unique psychic PCCs to use instead of Psyscape/Rifts PCCs. I can not blame them one bit though. We found the CE-core book to be kinda boring and it felt completely uncomplete as written. Rise of Magic helped cover Magics for CE, but we still wanted psychics for CE.

So WHY was Chaos Earth written to be uncomplete ?
Shouldn't have Chaos Earth did what Rifts did. Instroduce to us the most basic of the setting. Give us Tech Characters, Magic characters, psychic characters to start playing in the world right off. Then expand on the basic characters in later books, fleshing out the setting more with each book. That is what i would have done to be honest. Basics first, broad characters to play, rules, go play. Then release more later on.

Could You imagine if RIFTS had done it as Chaos Earth did, very narrow characters (NEMA), Some backstory, leave out major rules for magics, psychics, etc.. I bet RIFTS would have flopped as a rpg. Chaos Earth just feels Uncomplete to everyone i know who even knows about it IRL.

CHAOS EARTH needs a Second Edition, asap. Combining the best aspects like Rifts did years ago. Tech Users, Magic Users, Psychics. So groups can grab the mainbook, and play right off the bat characters they want to play.

[TechnoGothic]

Yes alot more psychic PCCs are needed.
I liked Psyscape, ...but..., it needed more space for Psyscape itself. The City Psyscape detailed somewhat with a simple map and what can be found there.

[strtkwr]

Reading my Rifter #50's Chaos Earth introduction to Psychic Storm, Psychics for Chaos Earth.
So WHY was Chaos Earth written to be uncomplete ?
Shouldn't have Chaos Earth did what Rifts did. Instroduce to us the most basic of the setting. Give us Tech Characters, Magic characters, psychic characters to start playing in the world right off. Then expand on the basic characters in later books, fleshing out the setting more with each book. That is what i would have done to be honest. Basics first, broad characters to play, rules, go play. Then release more later on.

Because the line of thought was that you can use the existing Rifts books for the missing elements. I don't agree with the reasoning, esp since it states that is a "Complete" RPG on the cover of the book.

[TechnoGothic]

yeppers. It was far from being a complete game.
As for Psyscape, yeah, the monsters, psi-cola, etc..wasted space.
However i liked the reprinting and updating of of the Burster and Mind Melter, and placed them in the PCC book with the other PCCs for our ease of use.
What i liked about the book was the Third-Eye opening bonuses.
But yeah, we needed more PCCs in general, more info on Psyscape itself. Less useless monsters.

Heck, i would have like to see Fantasy Mind Mages updated for Rifts. They are even badderass than Mind Melters, and i like the name better to be honest. Would have been great to see Burster-styled psychics which focused on say ... Telekinesis ... Hydrokinesis ... Electrokinesis ... Geokinesis ... just so we could have Psychic "Elemental" types.

Am I the only one to dislike the Psi-Ghosts ? Their mutant power is not even psychic in nature, its a mutant power.

[Spinachcat]

Chaos Earth is an incomplete game and does need a 2nd edition. However, you don't need to wait for any supplements. Just rip stuff out of Rifts, N&SS and System Failure for whatever you want and launch the campaign.

[TechnoGothic]

I'm actually hopeing to see "rough" version of Bursters for CE. They are a natural PCC to have a very Rough PCC origin version. Kinda like the Teke Freak but fire based...

[Jason Richards]

Reading my Rifter #50's Chaos Earth introduction to Psychic Storm, Psychics for Chaos Earth.
Pretty good i must say. We only get two types previewed to us though. The Teke-Freak PCC is great, and extremely powerful i must say, which is great IMHO.

I knew everyone would like the Teke Freak. Plus, it's my favorite character class name ever. A while ago a mathematical hiccup in one of the powers was pointed out, which I'll fix, but other than that I thought the classes all came out pretty well. Still, I knew the Teke Freak would be the fan fave.

So Jason, how much of this book is finished ?
Cause I really want more Psychic material for Chaos Earth to use
Most to just fish up the Trio. Tech, magic, Psychic for the setting.

I really want it to be done as well. To me, it was a tossup between which was needed more: psychics or expanding the character base beyond NEMA, and expanding the character base won out, hence my First Responders book.

As to how much is finished, not that much. Basically just notes beyond what is in Rifter 50. I'll pick it back up once First Responders goes to press. It will mostly be classes, powers, and some tech and D-Bees thrown in to round things out.

To be honest, my group does not want to play Technology characters in Chaos Earth for some reason. They instead want magics and psychics for characters. We have been putting off playing Chaos Earth for Years now, cause they want Chaos Earth unique psychic PCCs to use instead of Psyscape/Rifts PCCs. I can not blame them one bit though. We found the CE-core book to be kinda boring and it felt completely uncomplete as written. Rise of Magic helped cover Magics for CE, but we still wanted psychics for CE.

So WHY was Chaos Earth written to be uncomplete ?
Shouldn't have Chaos Earth did what Rifts did. Instroduce to us the most basic of the setting. Give us Tech Characters, Magic characters, psychic characters to start playing in the world right off. Then expand on the basic characters in later books, fleshing out the setting more with each book. That is what i would have done to be honest. Basics first, broad characters to play, rules, go play. Then release more later on.

Could You imagine if RIFTS had done it as Chaos Earth did, very narrow characters (NEMA), Some backstory, leave out major rules for magics, psychics, etc.. I bet RIFTS would have flopped as a rpg. Chaos Earth just feels Uncomplete to everyone i know who even knows about it IRL.

CHAOS EARTH needs a Second Edition, asap. Combining the best aspects like Rifts did years ago. Tech Users, Magic Users, Psychics. So groups can grab the mainbook, and play right off the bat characters they want to play.

I can't speak to why CE was presented as it was. I just have to work with what's there. So, my approach has been the opposite of Rifts. Where in Rifts you tend to have each book contain a wide cross-section of gaming material, my approach has been to write material that is focused on one particular aspect or another. This allows players and GMs to pick and choose what they want to use in their game. We've all purchased a supplement for some game or other that we wish we could have only paid for half of the pages, right? This way if you don't want to use psychics in your game, just don't pick up Psychic Storm. If you don't care about playing non-NEMA characters, don't buy First Responders. But, if those things interest you, you have a whole small, inexpensive sourcebook dedicated to the topic.

[Jason Richards]

I'm actually hopeing to see "rough" version of Bursters for CE. They are a natural PCC to have a very Rough PCC origin version. Kinda like the Teke Freak but fire based...

I'm sure this will happen, but not from me. I think that gamers out there are more than capable of adapting existing classes like the Burster for use in CE. If you're going to pay for a supplement, don't you want new material? Let's face the fact that 95% of all CE players and GMs out there own the Rifts RPG. You're talking about a niche setting for a relatively niche game.

Mostly I think the low-hanging fruit of redressing existing stuff is just not fun to write. Should I eventually get to write Psychic Storm, you'll see none of that. No reskinned Bursters or early versions of Psi-Stalkers or the same 30 or so psychic powers repeated. Notice how none of the Rifter 50 psychics used any powers selected from a list a la Rifts? Not even the minor psychics? That's what I'm going for.

I'd be excited to get to work on it, so email/PM/Facebook/etc. Kevin and tell him how much you're looking forward to First Responders.

[Axelmania]

This upcoming "Psychic Scream" supplement by Taylor White has a pretty similar title...
http://palladium-store.com/1001/product ... cream.html

The opening sentences are even "A storm has rolled in. A psychic storm."

Rifter 50 pg 51 credits Jason Richards though which I assume is who Technogothic is...

I'm hoping they credit you as a co-writer or at least for coming up with phrase 'psychic scream' for CE since they're using it and pretty closely adapting the title from the title of your Rifter supplement...

I forgot Rifter 50 had so much canon stuff in it, wanting to play your new psychic OCCs though. I just wish I knew the legality of using CE content in Rifts or vice versa. I don't know if you can just easily hop back and forth between this and Rifts like you might Rifts and BTS