Savage Rifts Kickstarter

[Daniel Stoker]

Well they've released a preview of the Glitter Boy and announced their updated stretch goals:

New Stretch Goals

Your incredible support has already unlocked a bunch of the additional Stretch Goals we had planned! You'll see those unlocked in the list below already. Thanks SO MUCH for spreading the word, backing us, and even helping playtest Savage Rifts® at conventions around the country.

Now on to the new material we're already working on and hope to create if the project continues to grow!

UNLOCKED! $50,000 D-Bee: Altara Warrior Woman We'll give you the race information for playing a Blind Warrior Woman gone rogue from the Atlantean Splugorth Slavers. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $60,000 NG-V7 Block IV Hunter Mobile Gun Full stats and description for this powerful upgrade to one of Northern Gun's more famous Robot Armor vehicles. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $70,000 D-Bee: Simvan The Monster Riders are a powerful threat to many who live in North America, but they can also be powerful allies. We’ll give you the race information for you to add to the Iconic Framework of your choice. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $80,000 X535 Hunter Robot Armor The venerable "Jager" is a popular and powerful option for your Robot Armor Pilot. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $90,000 D-Bee: Grackle Tooth Race information for playing one of the more beloved Rifts® D-Bees, the Mighty Grackle Tooth! (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $100,000 Playing a Dog Boy by Sean Patrick Fannon Fierce warriors and loyal friends, Dog Boys represent science-gone-wrong, yet somehow turned right. We’ll cover creating and playing a Dog Boy in Savage Rifts®. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $110,000 D-Bee: D'Norr The D'Norr "Devil People" are a much misunderstood, often maligned D-Bee race, but there's a lot of fun potential in playing one. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $120,000 T-10 Cyclops Body Armor Possibly Triax's ultimate contribution to personal defense technology, the Cyclops has all kinds of modular options for various mission profiles. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $130,000 Northern Gun Weapons Cache A nice collection of the arms manufacturer's best, including the NG-IP7 Ion Pulse Rifle and the NG-B50 Thunderer BigBore Combat Hammer. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $140,000 D-Bee: Fennodi The "Quiet Walkers" are a peaceful, inherently psionic race who generally do all they can to make their new home a better place. (PDF)

UNLOCKED! $150,000 Bookmarks! Each physical backer reward level (Print Player, Ultimate Player, "Just the Books" GM, Print GM, Merchant, and Everything GM) receives a set of four handy bookmarks featuring art from Savage Rifts®! (Print)

UNLOCKED! $160,000 Northern Gun Body Armor Set A set of three specially designed sets of Body Armor from Northern Gun: the Cannonball Ride Armor, the NG Maverick Riding Armor, and the NG Peacekeeper Armor. (PDF)

$170,000 D-Bee: Trimadore These odd-looking, generally peaceful humanoids are a race with a strong fascination with and affinity for technology. (PDF)

$180,000 Triax Weapons Cache Some of the best New German Republic engineering is found in this set of weapons, including the TX-22 Precision Laser Pistol and the TX-50 Rail Gun. (PDF)

$190,000 V61 Gunwolf Robot Armor One of Northern Gun's more evocative designs, complete with the wolf head, designed for monster hunting. (PDF)

$200,000 Tomorrow Legion Archetypes II We'll make a whole new set of fully fleshed out archetypes incorporating the new races and equipment you've unlocked (PDF)


Future Stretch Goal

One of the upcoming Stretch Goals somewhere above the $200K mark is a character folio (in PDF for everyone and print for those with print reward levels), so you can record all the details and adventures of your Juicer, Crazy, or other Iconic Framework!

Daniel Stoker

[Tiree]

They are close to hit the Triax Weapons Cache as of this morning, with only (318 dollars left to hit it). It definitely is losing some steam, and I do wonder if it will just stall.

[Daniel Stoker]

Maybe? I mean I guess it depends on what you mean by stall? They've got what, 3 more stretch goals left and as of now are only $7000 away from that one. So I figure at this point it'll probably be coming out with all the current stretch goals even with the one over $200K being kinda up in the air, but I do think we're not going to see crazy increases like on day one or day two again. (As I say this on day 3.)


Daniel Stoker

[Tiree]

The only big kickstarter I watched was the Robotech one. Where it was hand over fist money, to hit major stretch goals. These stretch goals feel tame to me, but then again, I am not sure how much is going to be in that "Triax Tech Package". So I am hopefully optimistic that it will be a 4-5 page (maybe more pages, if there is a piece of art for every item) set of tech goodies, and not something akin to source material.

[Shawn Merrow]

Kickstarters from what I have seen tend to start big, slowdown a bit and in the last few days spike again.

[kaid]

They are close to hit the Triax Weapons Cache as of this morning, with only (318 dollars left to hit it). It definitely is losing some steam, and I do wonder if it will just stall.

So far its on track with normal kick starter behavior initial burst and then some ebbs and peaks as new perks attract interest and as more people hear about it. Also a lot of the money from kick starters comes in the last few days once all the unlocks are known and seen.

[Daniel Stoker]

The only big kickstarter I watched was the Robotech one. Where it was hand over fist money, to hit major stretch goals. These stretch goals feel tame to me, but then again, I am not sure how much is going to be in that "Triax Tech Package". So I am hopefully optimistic that it will be a 4-5 page (maybe more pages, if there is a piece of art for every item) set of tech goodies, and not something akin to source material.

Yeah, I got the impression these are 5-10 page PDF's of stuff and stuff they had planned based on the earlier post when they blew up their initial goals. And even if it takes them an additional 6 months to get the Triax stuff out since it's a PDF you're not going to be waiting on that to get the rest of the stuff. Unless I totally misread how they handle stuff here.


Daniel Stoker

[glitterboy2098]

they have the glitterboy PDF sampler out for free download, you might want to look at that to get an idea of the contents of the stretch goals will be.

[Daniel Stoker]

And we have another update and more stretch goals:

We have an exciting new Stretch Goal for you! Actually, several.

After considering all the requests to print Stretch Goal PDFs like playing D-Bees and Dog Boys and Dragons (yes Dragons! see below), or additional weapons and gear, we decided to try making the Player's Guide BIGGER!

This is something we've never done before in our graphic novel format, but since this Kickstarter is really something special, we've decided to do something special too.

We can't promise all of the material being offered as PDF stretch goals will make it into the expanded Player's Guide, but we'll do our best. The retail price after the Kickstarter will be higher, but we don't know by how much yet. You fine folks backing our Kickstarter, of course, are not paying any more for the bigger book—that's why it's a stretch goal for $300,000. (And yes, of course there are more Stretch Goals before that!)

Our merchant level friends may be especially excited about this announcement since they now get a greater than 50% discount on their package if we hit $300,000. We hope this starts people playing Savage Rifts® in their store every week. So please tell your FLGS!

It's also another reason for your friends to back at the Player's Guide level: they get the book at retail price PLUS all the Stretch Goal material, including Bookmarks and Character Folio! So you do nothing to get a bigger book. Just tell all your friends and help us hit $300,000 goal.
Three Weeks

This will delay the books by 3 weeks. We're already working on the material and ordering art. We have a plan to make this work pretty quickly, but it's still a lot of extra work from all our team.

We figured the vast majority of you won't mind a potential delay in exchange for all this material worked into the print versions, but of course if that does bother you, we understand if you need to withdraw your pledge.
The EU Solution

As we've said for a while with both this and our previous projects, we are constantly looking at new shipping solutions to the EU. Even working with great partners overseas hasn't saved much once they add in the additional labor and freight. Companies with higher volume than ours get better rates, but we're still a little company and just can't get the same kinds of discounts that some others do.

But we do have at least a partial solution for our friends in the EU, and we're continuing to look for even more. We just don't want to promise anything until we know for sure it will work. (Sorry, Australia and Canada, we still don't have a better solution for you.)

What we have been able to work out means that customers in the EU pay no VAT or customs taxes. (We're paying it.)

For some of you, this means a savings of around $100 on the highest tier package. The process is this: we ship a palletload of prepackaged, prelabeled boxes to our friends in Germany and pay the customs as a publisher. They ship to you, if you live in the European Union. We reimburse them the postage.

Right now we have a little over 100 backers coming from the EU, but no way to tell if they are print or PDF backers. This is an experiment for us, and does not yet mean a reduction in the other shipping costs (we can't alter the reward levels anyway—Kickstarter locks them as soon as one person backs at that level, to protect you).

Do you know of a warehouse in Canada or Australia who will reship a palletload of boxes? Have them email Jodi at PEGJodi@gmail.com. So far it hasn't worked out with the usual suspects, but we'll keep trying for you.
New Stretch Goals

I bet you jumped down here to read the stretch goals already, didn't you?

$210,000 D-Bee: Quick-Flex Another very popular D-Bee race, the Quick-Flex live up to their names, excellent in combat and vehicle operation. (PDF)

$220,000 EX-5 Behemoth The "mobile home" of Robot Armor vehicles, the venerable and beloved Behemoth Explorer is a fortress on the move for your Tomorrow Legion team. (PDF)

$230,000 The Contamination Principle Adventure by Darrell Hayhurst Darrell Hayhurst has worked on Hard Vacuum, Ninja Crusade 2nd Edition, Codex Infernus, AMP Year 3, Torg Eternity with Shane, and now Savage RIFTS®. (PDF)

$240,000 D-Bee: N'mbyr Gorilla Man An iconic D-Bee race, found in many `Burbs around Chi-Town and elsewhere, and notable for its resemblance to Earth-born simians. (PDF)

$250,000 Character Folio in Print! Players and GMs alike, take note! This booklet will have a character sheet for filling out and pages for notes, character portraits, maps, NPC rosters, and more, so your character is ready to play anytime! Note: This Stretch Goal will be delivered to physical backers in print; everyone will receive a PDF copy.

$260,000 D-Bee: Lyn-Srial The Golden Ones are a winged race of protectors and peacekeepers, many earning their other nickname, the Sky-Knights. (PDF)

$270,000 Playing a Flame Wing Dragon by Sean Patrick Fannon The chance to play a genuine dragon is one of the legacies of RIFTS®. We’ll detail how to create and play a Dragon Hatchling, including special abilities and Edges for this unique Iconic Framework. (PDF)

$280,000 Murderthon PDF Adventure by Ross Watson Ross cranks out a second adventure! (PDF)

$290,000 Coalition Field Manual by Sean Patrick Fannon The armor, vehicles, weapons, and other gear of the Coalition States are some of the most coveted on the Black Market, and most despaired by any on the wrong side of a conflict with them. (PDF)

$300,000 Bigger Player’s Guide! (Print) We’ll add as many of the digital Stretch Goals into the Player’s Guide *in print* and into the final PDF. Retail price on the Player’s Guide at this point will be higher than $19.99, so backers are getting a more expensive book—a more comprehensive Player’s Guide—for free!

That's lots of news...please go share it! And thank you for your support.

Daniel Stoker

[Browncoat Jayson]

All of those stretch goals have been hit as well. Each $10k over 300k will generate a One Sheet.

For that reason, our next set of Stretch Goals will be our famous One Sheets. In case these are new to you, our One Sheets are short adventures, generally front and back (and sometimes a little over if it needs it), written by our staff or any guest designers who drop by. They're relatively easy for us to create, and are easy for you Game Masters to read, prepare for, and run on short notice. Maybe best of all, One Sheets let our authors explore lots of very different places and creatures they couldn't get to in the main books yet.

Here's a link to a ton of One Sheets we've released for our other games.

We'll do a new One Sheet for every additional $10K raised over $300K, and up to $400K. Our first two will be for Novice Rank characters, then Seasoned, then Veteran, then Heroic, then finally Legendary!

[kaid]

I am pretty happy with the unlocked stretch goals and also not getting to crazy with them. One big problem with kick starters is going nuts on stretch goals and then delaying everything horribly. I am happy they are expanding the players guide nice to get some/all of the basic unlock 1 page pdfs included just so I don't have a ton of lose pages flying about but for things like 1 page adventures that is totally fine just to have those as PDF.

[kaid]

They posted the first entry from the beastiary book the murder wraith today. It is interesting to note it itself does not appear to be MDC but does have a limited number of things it is vulnerable to. Also its melee weapon is MDC and its grenades are but everything else it has which are normal laser rifles/pistols and body armor appear to not be flagged as MDC. Interesting choice curious to see how it works in play when clearly a lot of player gear probably wind up SDC it seems other than anti tank type weapons and it appears melee weapons. I guess one strong incentive for getting up in melee with nasty opponents.

[PigLickJF]

I found this part interesting as well:
"No longer dependent on the bio-comp, they start any combat situation with this ability."

Sounds like there may some lag/activation time for Juicers to get at least some of their combat benefits.

Also the stuff about Cyber Knights and Mystics having holy/blessed weapons.

[Riftmaker]

Can't wait for this.

[Damian Magecraft]

I found this part interesting as well:
"No longer dependent on the bio-comp, they start any combat situation with this ability."

Sounds like there may some lag/activation time for Juicers to get at least some of their combat benefits.

Also the stuff about Cyber Knights and Mystics having holy/blessed weapons.

Savage Worlds is a toolbox system...
Don't read too much into it.

[PigLickJF]

Sorry, not sure exactly what you mean by toolbox system, nor which of my comments you were responding to, could you elaborate?

[Damian Magecraft]

Sorry, not sure exactly what you mean by toolbox system, nor which of my comments you were responding to, could you elaborate?

In a Toolbox system powers and such are generically named and then the most appropriate one is applied to a character and lightly modified as needed.

So Mystics and Cyber-knights being "holy" may not mean the exact same thing it does in PB for example.

[PigLickJF]

Ah, I see. I actually thought you were talking more about the first point, and wasn't quite sure where you were going.

I like that cyber-knights are getting some "holy" powers, although the mystic being included was slightly surprising. Not that I'm against it, it was just a bit unexpected.

[Damian Magecraft]

Ah, I see. I actually thought you were talking more about the first point, and wasn't quite sure where you were going.

I like that cyber-knights are getting some "holy" powers, although the mystic being included was slightly surprising. Not that I'm against it, it was just a bit unexpected.

For the mystic it has to do with how they get their magic (through intuition instead of study) so the best Arcane Background in Savage Worlds that fits that paradigm is AB: Miracles. The "holy" nature is a nice side effect.

[kaid]

Ah, I see. I actually thought you were talking more about the first point, and wasn't quite sure where you were going.

I like that cyber-knights are getting some "holy" powers, although the mystic being included was slightly surprising. Not that I'm against it, it was just a bit unexpected.

For the mystic it has to do with how they get their magic (through intuition instead of study) so the best Arcane Background in Savage Worlds that fits that paradigm is AB: Miracles. The "holy" nature is a nice side effect.

Yup it is the best fit for a savage worlds version of mystic and frankly them being holy men/women is okay for me as well.

[Slight001]

Interesting... so my old mystic destroyer (just what the group called him as I had negotiated a few non-standard bonuses like replacing the super-psionics with the master class grade cyber-knight psi-sword and physical instead of healing psionics and hand to hand commando...) would be some kind of holy warrior? That's funny because he hated religion and absolutely despised the gods even going so far as to reject their aid at one point while the rest of the group welcomed it...

Also Mystic Knights... not even talking about the White Rose ****, but the true Mystic Knights are somehow holy?

[Bill]

Holy as in spiritual, not necessarily a priest. Think ren fair fortune-teller or martial arts guru.

[Damian Magecraft]

Holy as in spiritual, not necessarily a priest. Think ren fair fortune-teller or martial arts guru.

this...
Don't over think it.
holy does not have to mean "of or by the gods."

[PigLickJF]

Also, there may be new or altered Arcane Backgrounds more suited to the world of Rifts.

[eliakon]

Also remember that since this is a conversion that there is a mechanics shift.

Every time you get conversion books between two games you will have to make some adjustments:

Some times its little stuff that is barely noticeable like when it is between to games by the same company using the same engine in almost the same world (Palladium and White Wolf's WoD are good examples here, where only slight adjustments are needed to help bring minor discrepancies into line, or point out sticking points in advance. )

And sometimes it gets pretty major (Many of the Conversion books between GURPS - <Other Game> necessitate all sorts of radical changes to make the adaptions work, and even then it may be a case of prioritizing certain portions of the flavor over others.)

I expect that this is going to be a case of the latter. Which to be honest is fine. I can live with that, and I honestly expected it. I didn't think I was going to see a faithful 1:1 replication of all the Rifts paradigms in Savage Worlds. What I hope to see though is the spirit of the game... And rules on how to bring material (or at least the spirit of said material) from one setting to the other.

[glitterboy2098]

Some times its little stuff that is barely noticeable like when it is between to games by the same company using the same engine in almost the same world (Palladium and White Wolf's WoD are good examples here, where only slight adjustments are needed to help bring minor discrepancies into line, or point out sticking points in advance. )

sometimes those minor adjustments can have big ripple effects to. old WoD can be a good example of this. i was in a LARP once where the storyteller refused to update the Hunter material (which used an older version of the system's mechanics) to the system that all the other books used. meant that the special abilities and stuff of the hunter characters, which were meant to give the hunters survivability in fights against all those supernatural nasties.. no longer worked properly. which led to few people wanting to play Hunters, even though the Metaplot for the long running storylines kinda required them. (also meant that the handful of players who stuck to playing Hunters despite the unintentional nerf, did some very epic things to try and achieve their goals despite their normal combat options having all the lethality of a newborn kitten.. though the storyteller had a tendancy to pull stuff out of his rear end if said epic actions threatened his personal favorites.. like when the tanker truck full of gasoline somehow extinguished a burning building when it crashed into it )

[Xar]

There's about 4 hours left to get in on this before the Kickstarter closes. It's approaching $420,000 and has blasted through about 40 stretch goals!

[blackwingedheaven]

Aaaaand we're done! Over $438,000 for the Kickstarter, which is unprecedented for Pinnacle, and pretty good for role-playing Kickstarters in general. Congratulations to everyone involved!

[eliakon]

438,076 out of 8,000 dollars...
...overshoot by 53 times the base, sweet.
Now to wait for ye old box o' loot to arrive. (What? Its Rifts, of course there's pirates)

[Fell]

Went well I'd say!

Look forward to getting it!!

After the hype and all I was wandering around Kick Starter and found this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/31 ... hexer-dusk

Not rifts but it is a dimensional other world story.

Made me think about Wormwood.....Truman used to do a comic with Ostrander ..... internet rabbit trial - I went down the hole got lost...

any way the Comic book looks good.

Eagerly await new rifts books from both PB and PEG!

[MASTERMIND]

Well, I probably spent more than I should have but I love Rifts as well as Savage Worlds. I can't wait to see the material when it starts rolling out. Enjoying reading lore in my Rifts books while I wait.

[PigLickJF]

So I ended up watching that gameplay video from update #14 last night, and gleaned a few things from it. For those who haven't watched it, it pits nine players - Mind Melter (I assume - I didn't hear him named as such, but he had powerful psychic powers), Techno-Wizard, Crazy, Glitter Boy, Cyber-Knight, Burster, Juicer, Wilderness Scout and Ley Line Walker - against a group of CS troops, including grunts, skelebots, psi stalker & dog boys, and a UAR-1.

Looks like they went with the anti-tech take on Cyber-knights from SoT - any technological attacks against him were at a big negative (I think -6, but I don't recall exactly). He of course had a psi-sword (with which he had a choice to make into a 2-handed sword with more damage/AP or two one-handed swords with less damage/AP but allowed two attacks) and some psionic powers. At one point he activated three powers at once, which I think was a special ability, but I don't recall what they were.

Juicers do seem to require some sort of action to gain all their benefits, but I didn't catch any details. It was just mentioned at one point something along the lines of he was already in combat so he was already getting all his abilities, or something along those lines. It also looks like your burn die increases as you age, so not only does your burn number get lower as time goes on, but your die gets higher, making it even more likely you'll roll above your burn. On the other hand, it also makes burn potentially that much more effective when used.

Mega-Damage just uses their default heavy weapon rules:MDC armor makes you completely immune to non-MD attacks. MD attacks allow you to damage MDC targets, but don't do anything extra to non-MDC targets (and have no other special effect/interactions on MDC targets). MD attacks/armor are much less common - I think the only player with "native" MDC armor was the Glitter Boy, and the Line Walker eventually cast an MDC version of an armor spell. The skelebots, Dead Boys, etc. were all non-MDC and only a few were armed with MD weapons. These are big changes for Rifts, but I think will probably work out better. I'd like to see at least some optional/suggested rules for MD weapons being more dangerous to non-MDC targets just to evoke the feel of OG Rifts for people who want it, but I think I kind of like these changes. The absolute lethality of MDC was always one of the tricky parts of Rifts.

I had other thoughts too, and if anyone has any questions I'll give them a shot, but this is probably long enough as-is for now.

[dragonfett]

I personally would propose that any MD level attack against a non-MD target that successfully hits does a minimum of the target's damage threshold. If the damage rolled for the MD attack is greater than that, then the damage roll would be used instead.

[PigLickJF]

That sounds like a decent way to go, that means you automatically get at least a shaken result. My thought was similar, but a bit harsher.

MD vs. SDC gets an automatic raise on their damage. So roll damage normally, then add a "level." Failure becomes a basic success (ie shaken, or a wound if already shaken). Success becomes shaken + wound (or 2 wounds if already shaken), success + raise becomes success + 2 raises, etc.

That being said, I'm new to the system so I don't have a good enough grasp to say how balanced that would be. I'm sure they tossed around/playtested a lot of ideas and decided on this one, so hopefully it works well, which is why I suggested an optional rule instead.

[Shark_Force]

their "behind the scenes" article suggests that they do not in fact use the exact same system as their heavy weapons. it even mentions that being their original plan, but says they decided it wasn't quite where they wanted it to be and so they didn't use that exact same system or something like that.

[PigLickJF]

I read that too, but that's not what's shown in the video. I believe the video is more recent than that behind the scenes article.

Sean Patrick Fannon (the GM of the game and Brand Manager for PEG, i.e. on of the designers) says pretty explicitly in the video that it's just their normal heavy weapons rules, and explains it explicitly several times. The only thing MD weapons do is allow you to hurt MDC targets.

Now it's possible the actual rules that are released will be different, but it's clearly how he was running his game.

Edit: I just went back and re-read that design diary. What he says is they tried/discussed a bunch of different ideas/concepts, but ended up using the regular SW Heavy Weapons rules. The change they did make was to make MD/MDC much less ubiquitous in Savage Rifts, so only a select few armors/weapons are MD rather than virtually everything being MD.

[Damian Magecraft]

I read that too, but that's not what's shown in the video. I believe the video is more recent than that behind the scenes article.

Sean Patrick Fannon (the GM of the game and Brand Manager for PEG, i.e. on of the designers) says pretty explicitly in the video that it's just their normal heavy weapons rules, and explains it explicitly several times. The only thing MD weapons do is allow you to hurt MDC targets.

Now it's possible the actual rules that are released will be different, but it's clearly how he was running his game.

Edit: I just went back and re-read that design diary. What he says is they tried/discussed a bunch of different ideas/concepts, but ended up using the regular SW Heavy Weapons rules. The change they did make was to make MD/MDC much less ubiquitous in Savage Rifts, so only a select few armors/weapons are MD rather than virtually everything being MD.

Yeah basic rule of thumb for if it is/does MD is "is it a tank?" and "can it hurt a tank?"

[Damian Magecraft]

So I ended up watching that gameplay video from update #14 last night, and gleaned a few things from it.

MD attacks/armor are much less common - I think the only player with "native" MDC armor was the Glitter Boy, and the Line Walker eventually cast an MDC version of an armor spell.

IIRC the Combat Borg is MDC as well.

[PigLickJF]

So I ended up watching that gameplay video from update #14 last night, and gleaned a few things from it.

MD attacks/armor are much less common - I think the only player with "native" MDC armor was the Glitter Boy, and the Line Walker eventually cast an MDC version of an armor spell.

IIRC the Combat Borg is MDC as well.

That would make sense, but I was only talking about the players in the game, which didn't include a borg. I imagine most/all power armors and other military-grade "vehicles" (including PA, borgs, etc) will be MDC, whereas body armor and civilian vehicles won't.

[kaid]

honestly its a pretty reasonable use of MDC too vehicle grade stuff is MDC armor and heavy/anti tank weapons are MDC. Normal rifts rules really can't do that even though it would make sense because SDC simply cannot survive vs MDC but given the more abstracted wound system in savage rifts it should work fine.

[PigLickJF]

I also wonder if, or how, they're going to handle armor repairs? Many games don't track armor damage and that's fine, but given the Rifts setting the struggle to keep yourself equipped and in good repair is (or at least can be), I think, an important part of the setting.

I'm guessing this probably won't be dealt with. The stock rules deal with vehicle damage which would cover vehicles and larger bots, etc., but body armor and PA will probably not be included in that - you either have it or you don't.

[Damian Magecraft]

I also wonder if, or how, they're going to handle armor repairs? Many games don't track armor damage and that's fine, but given the Rifts setting the struggle to keep yourself equipped and in good repair is (or at least can be), I think, an important part of the setting.

I'm guessing this probably won't be dealt with. The stock rules deal with vehicle damage which would cover vehicles and larger bots, etc., but body armor and PA will probably not be included in that - you either have it or you don't.

The impression Sean Patrick Fannon has given in interviews is thst there will be rules in place for this (possibly optional).

[PigLickJF]

Ah, nice to hear. I haven't listened to/read any of the interviews and podcasts and such.

Optional would be fine, since it's definitely not something everyone wants to deal with in a game, but it's nice to hear there will be something there to use for those who do want to play with scarcity, etc.

[kaid]

I also wonder if, or how, they're going to handle armor repairs? Many games don't track armor damage and that's fine, but given the Rifts setting the struggle to keep yourself equipped and in good repair is (or at least can be), I think, an important part of the setting.

I'm guessing this probably won't be dealt with. The stock rules deal with vehicle damage which would cover vehicles and larger bots, etc., but body armor and PA will probably not be included in that - you either have it or you don't.

I don't think savage worlds deals with it as much other than maybe a role playing issue. Their armor is not ablative or tracked like it is in rifts. Makes it less realistic in a lot of ways but lowers the record keeping necessary by a ton to speed up game play.

[PigLickJF]

I also wonder if, or how, they're going to handle armor repairs? Many games don't track armor damage and that's fine, but given the Rifts setting the struggle to keep yourself equipped and in good repair is (or at least can be), I think, an important part of the setting.

I'm guessing this probably won't be dealt with. The stock rules deal with vehicle damage which would cover vehicles and larger bots, etc., but body armor and PA will probably not be included in that - you either have it or you don't.

I don't think savage worlds deals with it as much other than maybe a role playing issue. Their armor is not ablative or tracked like it is in rifts. Makes it less realistic in a lot of ways but lowers the record keeping necessary by a ton to speed up game play.

Yah, that was my point. The default rules don't really deal with it, so I didn't expect it to be a part of Savage Rifts. Damian says the designer indicated it would be included (possibly as optional rules), though, which I think is for the best, as it can be an interesting/important part of the setting. Doesn't have to be of course, and I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with it at all, but I'm glad it will be there for those who want to take advantage of it. I prefer the gritty, desolate post-apocalyptic feel in Rifts, which has somewhat gone away in the more recent timeline (at least in the "core" areas of the former US), so something like this which emphasizes that is a good thing to me.

[PigLickJF]

Has anyone heard/seen anything about if there will be changes to how many power points (PPE/ISP) you have, or durations of powers? It strikes me that most powers have a base duration of 3 rounds, then some can be maintained but only by spending one point per round beyond that. Since characters only start with 10 pp and don't really get a whole lot more a they level up, that makes for some really limiting durations.

[Damian Magecraft]

Has anyone heard/seen anything about if there will be changes to how many power points (PPE/ISP) you have, or durations of powers? It strikes me that most powers have a base duration of 3 rounds, then some can be maintained but only by spending one point per round beyond that. Since characters only start with 10 pp and don't really get a whole lot more a they level up, that makes for some really limiting durations.

that is the base in the SvW core book.
Different settings use different base starting values. (rest assured the values will be appropriate for Rifts).

[Shark_Force]

Has anyone heard/seen anything about if there will be changes to how many power points (PPE/ISP) you have, or durations of powers? It strikes me that most powers have a base duration of 3 rounds, then some can be maintained but only by spending one point per round beyond that. Since characters only start with 10 pp and don't really get a whole lot more a they level up, that makes for some really limiting durations.

that is the base in the SvW core book.
Different settings use different base starting values. (rest assured the values will be appropriate for Rifts).

or, alternately, if they aren't, that seems like a relatively simple tweak to apply. if it should be 20 (or whatever), just make it that.

[PigLickJF]

I'm curious what types of starting values other settings have. It seems like it might take a bit more tweaking than just increasing starting power points to feel right. If you bump the starting points high enough to meaningfully sustain powers for a few minutes at a time, you might run the risk of then having too large a pool to meaningfully limit "one shot" powers. Each round is 6 seconds, so that's 10 power points per minute (for most powers, some have longer durations).

This is just me thinking "out loud" though. I haven't even played regular Savage Worlds, let alone Savage Rifts with whatever setting modifications it includes, so it may work out just fine.

[Damian Magecraft]

In the game I played at Con on the Cob 2015 my mystic had 40ppe and 30isp as a novice.