Types of people who come to Rifts Earth

[darthauthor]

Looking for insight.
Who did I leave out?

I wrote up 20 categories of D-Bees for being on Rifts Earth:

1. Explorers. To seek out new worlds and intelligent life (Anthropology, Archieology, etc)
2. Businessman. Perhaps a Merchant, trader, (un)skilled labor.
3. Summoned. A magic user summoned the being to Rifts Earth and they stayed.
4. Criminal. Looking for a score
5. Espionage/Scouts. for otherworldy invaders (or the invaders themselves)
6. Exile. Cast out to Rifts Earth as a way of dumping their criminals.
7. Run away. NEED to get away from where they are in hopes of better world.
8. Tourist. Here to sight see, food, culture, etc)
9. Big Game Hunters. Here be dragons
10. Accident. Caught in a Rift and has no means to get back.
11. B-bee looking for love in another dimension.
12. Prospector. Looking "gold" (mine materials that are precious in their home dim).
13. Bounty Hunter. Looking for people wanted in their dimension.
14. Scientist. Experiments in new dim (or on a test subject here). Ex. Gene-splicers
15. Being of magic/psychic/supernatural ability who just wants to be more powerful.
16. Student - Came to Rifts Earth to learn (an exchange student?)
17. Soldier of fortune. Came to Rifts Earth as merc in search of work or under contract.
18. Performer - They are an entertainer traveling the verse putting on shows.
19. Garbage man - Uses planet as a dump for whatever they don't want around.
20. Medical Tourist. In need of something they can't get in their dimension or they are saving credits by having it done on Rifts Earths.

Any archetypes I missed or you'd like to see?

[taalismn]

Nothing that can't be broadly covered by one of the above. 'Fugitive' maybe, but that can fit under 'Runaway'.

[darthauthor]

Nothing that can't be broadly covered by one of the above. 'Fugitive' maybe, but that can fit under 'Runaway'.

Well, I figured the exile would be a "fit" for fugative. I really didn't think that way when I was coming up with the ideas.

I was thinking more like trespasser into Rifts Earth. Also, was watching the news or something so immigrant was also on my mind.

I suppose "refugee" could also be used.

The list kind of sums up the motivation or profession for coming to Rifts Earth.
A criminal to steal, deal drugs, rob, etc.
A exile was cast out or abandoned or banished or serving a prison sentence.
A "runaway" is someone who leaves willingly like the criminal but is NOT there to rob. More like an illegal immigrant fleeing poverty and/or oppresion.
So, based on your feedback/idea I should make another label for fugative. The exile is punished (or at least put out of the way) by being put on Rifts Earth. The criminal is free to come and go. The "fugative" is wanted and is either in flight or hiding.

Feels a bit up in the air. I'm undecided. runaway vs refugee vs fugative
To me, the difference is whether or not someone is hunting for them.

Share if you think its best to keep them separate

[taalismn]

Weeeellll....If you wanted to differentiate them more exactly, you could make them separate listings, but if you wanted to use your list as a random roll chart, keeping it a dice-friendly number like 20 is best(otherwise you have start figuring out percentile, and what entries should be weighted more than others; for instance, you're more likely to have explorers and accidentals than 'looking to make a xxxeno love connection').

[darthauthor]

Weeeellll....If you wanted to differentiate them more exactly, you could make them separate listings, but if you wanted to use your list as a random roll chart, keeping it a dice-friendly number like 20 is best(otherwise you have start figuring out percentile, and what entries should be weighted more than others; for instance, you're more likely to have explorers and accidentals than 'looking to make a xxxeno love connection').

Your reply is AWESOME.

Love the joke. Xxxeno love connection. lol

I agree with your intelligent assessment. That being, if I want to create a nice and neat dice-friendly table, 20 is best.

I also agree that some are more likely to occur than others. On the dice bell curve of probability the average would be something like 10.5. So numbers like 10 and 11, over time, will be the most probable. I suppose I like the idea of that more people arrive on Rifts Earth by accident than invaders who come on purpose. Besides, half or more of the list would not come to Earth unless they knew it had something to offer them. Not knowing of Rifts Earth's existence (or at least whereabouts) the top 3 arrivers would be accident victims (Dorthy and the Wizard of OZ), explorers (star trek), and summoned beings. Everyone else comes believing / hoping they can find what they are looking for: love, fortune, and work

Even now I'm thinking of writing this up as a submission for the Rifter.

Now I have to write up Hook, Line and Sinker adventures for each of these "Archtypes"

Share if you have any ideas.

First one for me is a gambler, looking for a game.

[taalismn]

Magic-seeking beings and runaways(blind jumps of desperation) would come in the next broad group after Accidentals, Explorers, and Summoned.

Dimensional marketplaces like Splynn are the big attractors for categories like Big Game Hunters, Tourist, Mercenary, Medical Tourist(biowizardry), and the rest. Scientists seeking new lab space would also fall into this group because there are too many variables on Rifts Earth for controlled experiments....most science-types would be more like explorers, sampling and running. Those running lab experiments on Rifts Earth would either be very powerful(like Gene Splicers) or very ready to cut and run if their experiment went berserk.

[darthauthor]

Good points.

I agree that Splynn would be a destination.

Where we disagree is that I also see some travelers as being unaware of Splynn's existance or location. I imagine extra dimensional worlds where knowledge of Rifts Earth is either limited or if widely known, the means of travel to and from it are limited or restricted. Hey it's expensive to fly to Iceland.

However people figure out Rifts Earth exists and its location. Those who know it and can travel back and forth have power as long as they are the only ones in "their" world who can do it. There's an incentive to be the only one who can travel to and from Rifts Earth. Ah Capitalism. So to keep it to themselves they never take another magic user (or at least Shfiter) with them.

I am imagining now, an alternate dimensional shifter from a pre-rifts parallel Earth who brings over boxes of Tylenol (Advil, etc) and 21st century antiques to Rifts an returns with spare cybernetic parts and a cyber-doc maybe a MD energy pistol and MD armor.

Just the hook, line and sinker:

Hook: The black-market or a pharma corp in Rifts Earth wants to know how the fresh medications are hitting the market. A pyschic's object read reveals they are fresh from the factory/warehouse with on prior user/owner. The expiration dates on them are pre-Rifts but they won't expire for years and work fine.

Line: The adventures are hired to find the source. To do so they must back track the deliveries and use some rogue and investigative skills.
Alternatively, the adventurers could be hired to protect the deliveries and the source.

Sinker: The new distributor increasing the supply of medicine and undercutting the prices. Inexpensive over the counter medication (think tylenol in the 21st century) is over a 100 time more expensive in the future because it is not widely available or produce in as great a quantity and cheaply. See Rifts Madhaven. The Shifter uses the profits to buy cybernetic to sell in the alternate Earth whose bionics are centuries behind.
The client wants to control the supply so they can set the prices and keep them profitable without much work. Failing to learn or contain the source the mafia/corporation wants to disrupt the delivery of the medication by attacking the delivery vehicles and/or abducting or killing the source.

[taalismn]

...Meanwhile on the alternate Earth, the shifter's accomplices scramble to fend off investigators, auditors or inspectors from finding out that the 'factory' supposedly producing cybernetics, or batteries/e-clips Is actually a transshipping warehouse, not a factory(which would be subject to all sorts of regulations, environmental impact evaluations, tax and zoning , OSHA standards, etc.)...

Having a patent and a local means of producing some, if not all, of the RiftsTech stuff you're selling helps, a little, but it's nt as simple or cheap as buying all your stock cheap in one place and selling it for a heavy roll in the other...

[Fenris2020]

People like me, who would rather fight demons than deal with current politics.

[darthauthor]

People like me, who would rather fight demons than deal with current politics.

Fair enough Fenris2020,

I however, prefer more holistic games. I suppose its like instead of playing pure hero one sometimes wants to play anti-hero (punisher, etc).

So to, the story can become part of the action. It answers the why and the how. Also, introducing opponants that are less like villains and more like competition.

It is in those gray areas where ones identity and alignment get defined.

Plus I like the idea of Rift Earth characters romping around an Earth in 2020. Adventurers delivering medical supplies to remote villages to help them overcome flu and Pneumonia.

[taalismn]

...2020-era muggers suddenly discovering that 'Robocop' ISN'T wearing a costume....

[darthauthor]

It does sound cool!

[taalismn]

Full Conversion Cyborg: "Man, I just went out for McDondalds, and I keep getting jumped by bozos thinking I'm a 'cosplayer' and demanding I cough up the dough."

[hup7]

Just briefly - no single die tables are not bell curves. The probability of any ONE number coming up on ONE die is always the same. Yes, over time if you sum up the 'values' and average them out, the average will be 10.5 BUT that does not mean 10 or 11 will be more frequently rolled.

That said my 2 cents worth - it depends on what the purpose of the table is? Do you want them evenly distributed or not? If not use 2d10 or even 3d6. If you want to get really funky you could have one table but roll different dice based on circumstances. For example for an encounter completely random roll d20 (even distribution), but if near ley line roll 2d10 (more central distribution). To make this work you would put things LESS likely to occur near nexus at the bottom / top of the table and more magical likely near the middle. Alternately you could have certain encounters only likely to occur, say near water, at the top of the table and say roll d10+10.

This way you could have a very versatile table suited to different conditions. Just my opinion, nice table by the way - I have automated the ones from the DM screens myself but will augment them.

[Grazzik]

An obvious option that wasn't mentioned was the lowly settlers/colonists... folk who chose to simply (dimensionally) move, claim some land, and farm. No drama, no wild backstory, no forceful invasion. Just purposeful, peaceful, boring settlement. It's the locals they encounter that could be the source of drama...

[darthauthor]

Nice touch Grazzik.

I like it.

If you have any more ideas, please, share.

[taalismn]

An obvious option that wasn't mentioned was the lowly settlers/colonists... folk who chose to simply (dimensionally) move, claim some land, and farm. No drama, no wild backstory, no forceful invasion. Just purposeful, peaceful, boring settlement. It's the locals they encounter that could be the source of drama...

I completely overlooked that possibility...maybe because I didn't think anybody in their right minds would want to settle on Rifts Earth which is essentially a hellworld. It would be like investing your money in the 'Singsing Penal Credit Union'.

[darthauthor]

It depends on where you are coming from.

One persons hell is anothers paradice.

If your are right, from their point of view they don't know what it's going to be like when and where they get to be on Rifts Earth.

Maybe they heard rumors of Tolkeen before the war.

The dream of free land with freedom from persecution lives on even if it was never true. People believe what they want to believe.

It doesn't matter if Rifts Earth is like actual hell. In terms of Dbees coming, what matters is they believe they can move, claim some land, and farm. No drama.

[taalismn]

Or it could be a case of the situation on Earth being misrepresented by the sponsoring/advertising organization/pitchman(like Greenland was).
OR a deliberate effort to send undesirables off to a deathtrap/unsuspecting exile("Dislike you? Nah...we'll even pay to relocate you to a wonderful spot you can call your own in an alternate universe!")

[killgore444]

Sinker: The new distributor increasing the supply of medicine and undercutting the prices. Inexpensive over the counter medication (think tylenol in the 21st century) is over a 100 time more expensive in the future because it is not widely available or produce in as great a quantity and cheaply. See Rifts Madhaven. The Shifter uses the profits to buy cybernetic to sell in the alternate Earth whose bionics are centuries behind.
The client wants to control the supply so they can set the prices and keep them profitable without much work. Failing to learn or contain the source the mafia/corporation wants to disrupt the delivery of the medication by attacking the delivery vehicles and/or abducting or killing the source.

One of the players (RS) in my last game took Chemestry:Pharmaceutical and used a variation of the rules in Rifter 30 (skill modifying) to specialize in Pre-apocalypse over the counter medication. She would BE your competition.

...Meanwhile on the alternate Earth, the shifter's accomplices scramble to fend off investigators, auditors or inspectors from finding out that the 'factory' supposedly producing cybernetics, or batteries/e-clips Is actually a transshipping warehouse, not a factory(which would be subject to all sorts of regulations, environmental impact evaluations, tax and zoning , OSHA standards, etc.)...

Having a patent and a local means of producing some, if not all, of the RiftsTech stuff you're selling helps, a little, but it's nt as simple or cheap as buying all your stock cheap in one place and selling it for a heavy roll in the other...

Unless you were dealing with the military directly. Believe it or not, most people in positions of authority in the military aren't raging d***s (at least not in the U.S.), and even if they are, they can usually see long term advantage of getting way advanced tech at what amounts to a piddling cost.
"Son, are you telling me that we can get a rifle that weighs only 3lbs, can fire close to a mile, has 20 shots and can utterly obliterate a tank for 3 tons of anti-septic cream and 5 tons of band-aids? We could have got over 100 with what we threw away last month alone."

Or it could be a case of the situation on Earth being misrepresented by the sponsoring/advertising organization/pitchman(like Greenland was).
OR a deliberate effort to send undesirables off to a deathtrap/unsuspecting exile("Dislike you? Nah...we'll even pay to relocate you to a wonderful spot you can call your own in an alternate universe!")

Or just a random rift that happened to catch an actual colony group/ship.
"Honey, why can't we dial into the Thundercloud News Network?"
"Don't know Dear, but this planet sure doesn't look anything like the 'Grotwodly' that was in the brochures."

[taalismn]

"Son, are you telling me that we can get a rifle that weighs only 3lbs, can fire close to a mile, has 20 shots and can utterly obliterate a tank for 3 tons of anti-septic cream and 5 tons of band-aids? We could have got over 100 with what we threw away last month alone.""

And given how tough Rifts Earth plastics are.....

"Hell, those duraplastic toilet seats in your last catalogue offering? We use them as slat armor paneling on our AFVs."

[darthauthor]

Good Points People.

My compliments to killgore444. Your player would be competition.
It's good gamesmanship.

Given the market is huge there is plenty of business to go around. Besides, its cheaper to transport the over the counter meds than manufacture them.
Your player would build a big pharma corp.
Mine would have a shipping company.
I see it as the difference between Walmarts made in china product lines and made in USA factury
Win-Win for the people / customers of Rifts Earth.

[killgore444]

Good Points People.

My compliments to killgore444. Your player would be competition.
It's good gamesmanship.

Given the market is huge there is plenty of business to go around. Besides, its cheaper to transport the over the counter meds than manufacture them.
Your player would build a big pharma corp.
Mine would have a shipping company.
I see it as the difference between Walmarts made in china product lines and made in USA factury
Win-Win for the people / customers of Rifts Earth.

It was definitely an odd campaign. I've had players try their hand at business ventures before, but it's always been things like setting up trade routes from Comryr and Kara Tur, or the surface world to the underdark. Stuff that still requires the players to go on adventures. This was the first time I'd ever had a player set up a manufacturing facility and hire office workers. WAY outside my area of expertise.

Luckily, she only thought about the chemistry aspects, and hadn't taken any skills on engineering and construction of the facilities, so I was still able to get adventures out of it. It was so strange an idea for a campaign that I was struggling to find a way to make it fit. Oddly, it never even occurred to me to have transdimensional competition since I work under the assumption that that is what gives magical cities an edge over the CSs, the ability to trade with Phase World or something.

It was even stranger that the rest of the players just went with it. Even the 'young' ones. A definitive shift in the way most of the people I know play games I guess.


As a thread tax, you could have the people coming here be a religious group following some sort of prophecy.

Or you could have people from an alternate Rifts Earth show up. One that was even worse than the main storyline. In one of my old games for instance, my players managed to nearly destroy the CS with scrolls of create ley line and extend ley line spells. CS:El Dorado WAS destroyed (97% fatality rate), CS:New Chillicothe was nearly wiped out (40% fatality, 80% loss of structures) and even CS:Chi-Town suffered damage. So people from those settings seeing a chance to come to a world that the CS actually WON the war with Tolkien might just go for it hoping the grass really is greener on the other side while ignoring the fact the this worlds CS would see them as dangerous d-bees. Which could lead into some really interesting adventures as they start to realize just how bigoted the CS (and themselves) really is. Or, if your players ARE CS, making them wonder about all sorts of things. Like whether or not they should consider these people kindred, or aliens?

Just a few ideas.

[darthauthor]

I had an idea I wanted to try out.

1st thought was to create an Atlantean Stone Mage to build pyramids on nexus points to stop ley line storms and undesired Rifts.

Then I thought about playing the Stone Mage myself and how I could make a game session of it.

Depending on the environment I would need npc's or players to defend the stone mage and the construction site.

If in an existing city, like Merc Town, permision from the city leaders would be required as well as the various political and business factions. The basic question is, who is paying for it and who is profiting from it? A lot of people will take a "FREE" gift. Even if the stone mage did it for their costs of living the factions would argue like congress over who would get to "control" the pyramid. Dimensional pyramid being the start, followed by healing and electrical power. So a lot of the adventure is in politics, sabotage, "protection", union / labor disputes, permits (bribery or wait 6 months), campaigning to put the stone pyramid bill on the ballet and then the politcal race to get the votes (public and electorial), then there is the contract negotiations and secure transportation of "stone" from hijackers and mafia / gangs (they want their piece of the action and if they can't have it NO ONE can).

[killgore444]

I had an idea I wanted to try out.

1st thought was to create an Atlantean Stone Mage to build pyramids on nexus points to stop ley line storms and undesired Rifts.

Then I thought about playing the Stone Mage myself and how I could make a game session of it.

Depending on the environment I would need npc's or players to defend the stone mage and the construction site.

If in an existing city, like Merc Town, permision from the city leaders would be required as well as the various political and business factions. The basic question is, who is paying for it and who is profiting from it? A lot of people will take a "FREE" gift. Even if the stone mage did it for their costs of living the factions would argue like congress over who would get to "control" the pyramid. Dimensional pyramid being the start, followed by healing and electrical power. So a lot of the adventure is in politics, sabotage, "protection", union / labor disputes, permits (bribery or wait 6 months), campaigning to put the stone pyramid bill on the ballet and then the politcal race to get the votes (public and electorial), then there is the contract negotiations and secure transportation of "stone" from hijackers and mafia / gangs (they want their piece of the action and if they can't have it NO ONE can).

So is this Stone Mage from another world (the thread) or local? I.E. does he know anything about local politics (how likely is he to try and sell his services to the CS)? If you play him as an NPC who is a complete moron outside of the building part, it could be an interesting game. Just have his wife, who is traveling with him be smart enough to know they need local (planetary) guides, but not much more aware than that. Make them so they have NO survival skills, but were just (wealthy) do-gooders from another world who decided that the people of Rifts Earth couldn't survive without his/their knowledge. So the PCs are roped/hired into being their guides and protectors.

Of course, as a player I'd be cursing you to well beyond your grave.

Thread tax: In my above idea about alternate Rifts Earth, you could have the flow of migration work both ways, but the governments on both sides are sending agents as well. On the CS side, the main world version would want to know what the hell happened and how to avoid it while the alternate version would be trying to set up some sort of diplomatic ties (not an issue being D-Bees if you stay don't try and migrate or stay) so has to get back on their feet. The Tolkien government on the other hand would most defiantly be interested in helping out the fleeing casters and non humans as well as trying to disrupt the strong version of the CS. A transdimensional cold war.