Pepsi Jedi wrote:Mech-Viper Prime wrote:Damian Magecraft wrote:Pepsi Jedi wrote:Well I'm sure there's going to be some stuff left hanging and 'unfinished' but buy and large there's going to have to be some resolution. It's the last book of the story arc. LOL
Agreed.
However the idea of the "next" meta-arc story intrigues me some...
It's space mega plot, CS space mobile marnies vs the Tolkeen mages of mars....
They're a bit reticent to totally invalidate books. If they went that way it'd make "Mutants in Orbit" obsolete (( At least by half))
I'm thinking they'll take a few years off from the meta plot after they 'shake things up" with this one. I mean Rifts is over 20 years old and it's only advanced 4 to 5 years in game.
Yes, and hopefully after this, they'll never advance it again. The best way for player characters to have an impact on the world is not to advance the timeline and create PC "huh????s".
Nothing screws up PC plans like advancing the timeline. Do you want to know what it's like to have to rewrite the second half of an entire campaign world because someone wrote some Forgotten Realms Novels and the company made them canon?
I can tell you. My players were angry, genuinely angry that the timeline had been advanced, not just because the timeline had been advanced, but because it had been advanced in a stupidly unbelievable way.
Many people, just based on the huge arguments on these boards, treat Siege of Tolkeen the same way. The solution is simple. Don't have event books. When a company sticks us with these, especially if we run several long-running games in the same world, we feel like we're getting it in the neck.
The thing that got me the most was that Siege of Tolkeen came out well before the ruining of the Forgotten Realms, and despite the evidence in front of their faces of what this did, and the arrogance of Wizards of the Coast saying "Ha, we are industry leaders! We don't need to watch case studies from a small company like Palladium," they went and did it anyway.
That's one of the reasons why I buy this company's stuff. Despite the fact that Megaverse in Flames is really delayed, far too late for it's own good, etc, Kevin learns from his mistakes. Wizards fires people, hires someone new, and makes the same mistakes AGAIN.
In order to understand why Kevin feels he must publish an event book and advance the timeline, this is the BEST choice he could possibly have made. Here's why. Delaying the product causes GMs like me and you to run our stuff, and set the level of Minion War involvement that we want PC's to have. I have two groups in 110 PA, everyone else is in 109.
What I have learned about Event Books from this is that for the small number of people who involve themselves in individual conflicts like the Minion War, these are big bugaboos. But Rifts has an advantage here that was the same thing in the Forgotten Realms.
What Rifts and the Forgotten Realms shared was this:
Over 50 percent of the people who were buying the books were not, in any way, purchasing them to run a game with.
huh???? How can that possibly be?
Well, the Forgotten Realms and Rifts are high-fluff, high-fantasy settings. Loads of people buy these books who NEVER play the game. They just want to find out everything about it because the setting is interesting.
So if you know that your chance of affecting any individual campaign is extremely small, you release event books because of your product demographic. I wish they wouldn't, because I actually run the game, but I can't stop Kevin from following up on his business model.
The converse to this is the possibility that the Minion War will have numerous hate threads like Siege of Tolkeen did, and I'm sure we'll get a few. The problem is common sense in the business model. Here's where we can be pretty sure nothing is going to happen.
1) Northern Gun: Northern Gun, nothing is going to happen because they're releasing 2 sourcebooks right now.
2) Lazlo: This is a projected product, so maps are already in the pipeline.
3) The Vampire Kingdoms: This one just got revised and rebooted. They won't do this twice.