Thailand on Rifts earth?

[Shades of Eternity]

indochina area would seriously rock.

ankor alone would be fascinating.

[shadrak]

It exists...Wilderness and monsters...possibly 1 tech kingdom. Possibly Horune pilots.

[shadrak]

RUE states that indochina exists...nothing specific on Thailand...just throw something together. We can't expect a worldbook any time soon.

[Aramanthus]

I thought you were working on this Darkmax! I was hoping you'd answer the question!

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

No. I'm not aiming at Rifter, though what it will become will be out of my hands. I need to finish it and let KS see if it is worth anything to him.

Palladium doesn't accept unsolicited manuscripts out of the blue, except at the Open House. Thus, any submission you turn in is "aimed at the Rifter" by default.

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Sounds like you have some cool ideas.

~ Josh

[grandmaster z0b]

indochina area would seriously rock.

ankor alone would be fascinating.

Yeah the Angkor Wat temple complex would surely have to be a nexus point(s).

I presume Northern Thailand would still exist, might be a bit of civilization left around Chiang Mai.

[nilgravity]

I think there is actually a robotech book that covers the area. Has Giant ants if I recall.

I also found this which has some stuff in the region http://riftsindonesia.tripod.com/main.htm

[Killer Cyborg]

I got the idea for Thailand from an old 80's song "One night in Bankok" and my PC's love for chess and general dislike for anything fun. I thought it would be interesting to take him to a place like that in search of a relic.

Good source for inspiration!

[taalismn]

I got the idea for Thailand from an old 80's song "One night in Bankok" and my PC's love for chess and general dislike for anything fun. I thought it would be interesting to take him to a place like that in search of a relic.

Good source for inspiration!

Of course, post-Rifts Thailand, you're going to have to take more than your pleasures cerebral; you're going to have to both think AND act if you're going to survive. I can think that area's going to be a hothouse of supernatural activity.
Everything from rampant spirits to giving communal mind jungles able to eat cities(or hide them).

[SolCannibal]

Don't know how it gells or not with other people's style, but when cooking up stuff about remnants of a country on Rifts Earth, i try to find native fantasy or sci-fi writers, between 2-5 of each, just to mine for imagery and concepts one might not get from a straight reading on history, geography and folklore. Sometimes you get some entertaining surprises from the mix.

[SolCannibal]

On the subject of mining local writers for weird ideas to add to a Rifts version of their homeland, even if that work does not relate to their country per se, in a quick google search i just found out that S. P. Somtow, the author of Mallworld (already mentioned here) among other works, is of thai descent.

Possibly also of interest might be Courtship in the Country of Machine–Gods, by Benjanun Sriduangkaew, who, much to my surprise i already knew under another identity.

Just a quick look at a review of another short fiction work of hers, When We Harvested the Nacre-Rice, brings to mind images of a place where cyber and psychic warfare mix up and the separation between enhanced natural and evolved artificial intelligences becomes hazy like fog, a city or region where beings like Angel of Death and Archie might meet, hook up or war, sometimes all at the same time.

Anyway, do whatever you will, read or not, but looking at some corners can offer you some stuff to completely surprise your players with.

[Nox Equites]

I concur that an SE Asia book is a great idea. You can always have some real world concepts like a fair number of residents are from China and thus you have opportunities to have Demon Quellers and other OCCs to fill in some of the pages and you'll need to consider how the local kingdom(s) interact with China and other regions. The Buddhist religion is touchy to cover without being potentially offensive. You could borrow monastic ideas from DB1 if they didn't cover something close in China books. Don't forget the option of reptilian d-bees or anything that evokes jungles. Brightly colored avian sentients would fit in well. The effects of the high humidity will have drastic effects on equipment, even MDC gear might suffer from high heat/humidity for extended periods. Most coastal people will probably be fisherfolk mixed with rice farmers. Advanced settlements might have some power equipment, but without massive overfishing destroying your fishing grounds, do you need trawlers to feed a village? The Mekong is a massive river for the region and you know there will be catfish that can swallow small boats as a regional concern.

[SolCannibal]

I concur that an SE Asia book is a great idea. You can always have some real world concepts like a fair number of residents are from China and thus you have opportunities to have Demon Quellers and other OCCs to fill in some of the pages and you'll need to consider how the local kingdom(s) interact with China and other regions. The Buddhist religion is touchy to cover without being potentially offensive. You could borrow monastic ideas from DB1 if they didn't cover something close in China books. Don't forget the option of reptilian d-bees or anything that evokes jungles. Brightly colored avian sentients would fit in well. The effects of the high humidity will have drastic effects on equipment, even MDC gear might suffer from high heat/humidity for extended periods. Most coastal people will probably be fisherfolk mixed with rice farmers. Advanced settlements might have some power equipment, but without massive overfishing destroying your fishing grounds, do you need trawlers to feed a village? The Mekong is a massive river for the region and you know there will be catfish that can swallow small boats as a regional concern.

There's room for a bunch of stuff certainly, that's part of the fun when it comes to Rifts, anything goes...

[Bood Samel]

Watch the movies the boxers omen, the protector, and the ong bok series for ideas! All I gotta say is MD MAUI THAI!

[SolCannibal]

Watch the movies the boxers omen, the protector, and the ong bok series for ideas! All I gotta say is MD MUAI THAI!

Well, the Japan and China worldbooks have some of that already, so i can completely understand looking out for some added layers & variety. But yeah, those movies are pretty nice and The Boxer's Omen in particular is indeed an awesome piece of classic martial schlock i wish had met decades ago!

[abe]

what occs would the people of Thailand have anyway?

[SolCannibal]

what occs would the people of Thailand have anyway?

Well, going by common cultural influences and relative geographical proximity, some of the OCCs from Rifts Japan & China should be usable with tweaks here and there - those that aren't tweaks of RMB OCCs like "ninja Borg/Crazy/Juicer" or "Republic something or other" already, that is. Monks or priests dealing with supernatural, martial artists and aristocratic warrior classes can be found in a form or other in the history of most countries of Southeast Asia. Chiang-Ku dragons have a look that fits quite well with dragons in asian myth, so their presence - and the spread of OCCs related to them as T-man, Undead Slayer and others variants is also pretty possible. Who knows, that Elixir of Power of theirs might serve as an excuse to make some variant juicers of one's own.

Most of the OCCs and RCCs in RMB should be usable, either as is or with a little tweaking - personally, i had some very nice results vanilla shifters as budhist monks with a capacity to see and reach upon other layers of reality through their enlightnement, Psi-stalkers with different animal empathy choices to portray spirit-touched warriors/savages and Mystic as wandering ascetics and practicioners of Yoga and other stuff - and with some surviving, repurposed or returned high-tech instalations, one has sufficient excuse to replicate/adapt even the CS OCCs. That said, TWs are supposed to be a rare thing outside North America, so PCs and NPCs with such are probably not native and/or taught in some other place (possibly dimension) and locales like Stormspire should be avoided - unless it is literally like Stormspire, a city-tower that can teleport or move across dimensions.

If in the mood to invent stuff, i would suggest adapting Nagas, as smarter hydra that breath water instead of fire, shapechange and - if really up to totally gratuitous homebrew - the vampire intelligence-esque capacity to give people powers by marking them with fragments of their essence, transforming them in a Dragon Juicer-like being.

Also, remember its Rifts Earth, where about 300+ years of weirdness have passed since the near-end of the 21st century, plenty of room for the place to turn quite different from its real life counterpart and any excuse enough for anything askew like japanese samurai or tantric catgirl ninjas, cossacks riding velociraptors, lots of D-bees, haitian zombie necromancer pirates migrated across the Strait (yes, strait) of Panama, escapees from the Atlantean alignement inverting asylum, etc, to get there and somehow settle down and make a community.

[SolCannibal]

And speaking of the power of the Rifts to make the previously unrelated into commonplace, something i found while hitting the books...

The chimera is another mythical beast from legends of Earth's past. The creature is part lion, part goat, and part dragon. In the Palladium world it is commonly found in the Yin-Sloth Jungles and the Western Empire. In Rifts Earth the creatures inhabit the continent of Africa and are also said to roam what was once the Middle East, the island of Madagascar, India, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam.

No idea if CB Revised keeps these references so they might not be canon anymore, but thought some people would like to see this kind of tidbit anyways. Personally i always like to catch these mentions on less well-known parts of Rifts Earth in the monster & RCC data.

Back on critters in Thailand and neighboring countries, beside the Chiang Ku, Serpents of the wind and Thunder Lizards might mix just as well in southeast asia going by similar looks alone and might easily be mistaken for each other by those who aren't monster specialists sages or such. Also, i think Wooly Dragons have a sort of resemblance to Chinese guardian lions aka "Foo Dogs", though YMMV, so that's another monster of poetential interest.

[Princedarkstorm]

I think it make a great worldbook !