cornholioprime wrote:vitae_drinker wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:"Fluff"...?
Yes, fluff. KS has said on many occasions that the RMB was NEVER meant to be a world sourcebook. It was a rules guide. So anything included in it was just to get people playing right away before any extra world information book(s) came out.
Frankly, I take the description of Japan as KS saying "Um, I'm not really sure whats there, so let's not really get into it."
You disagree, hey good for you, but the main thing I still don't get is why, if you disagree with the direction Palladium has gone, do you still buy Rifts releases?
That makes TWO of us.
There's simply no real way to extrapolate "nothing's there" from "quiet chain of wilderness Islands."
As stated before, "wilderness," as 'defined' in the Rifts Game Setting, encompasses everything from Bahia Island to the the Russian Steppe to the City Layout of the NGR...................
Yet when Erin Tarn describes other "wilderness" areas, she notes anything interesting in the area.
The complete lack of mentioning anything specific in Japan indicates that there was nothing worth mentioning.
She mentions that the entire world is "mostly wilderness with scattered little towns, villages, and outposts" on p. 137, so every place that she covers is presumed to have wilderness except as noted.
For instance, France can be assumed to be mostly wilderness (it is a part of the world), yet Tarn doesn't bring that up because it's something of a given.
Instead, she mentions ley lines, dozens of warring fuedal kingdoms, the technology level, and population estimates.
In Spain, which would also be mostly wilderness as a rule, she mentions nexus points and that the population and tech levels are about the same as France.
In "The Rest of Europe" she mentions once again that things are mostly wilderness (with the exceptions of small towns, villages, and outposts), and goes on to (again) note the places that are more than that (or less than that, in the case of Denmark).
In India, she mentions rumors of savage, cannibalistic D-Bees.
In Chin, she mentions demons and supernatural monsters, as well as the current human population.
In Egypt, she mentions the pyramids.
In South America she mentions pockets of civilization, and that Argentina has a handful of cities. She mentions that juicers, crazies, and 20th century technology is present.
In Japan, she only notes that it is "a quiet little cluster of wilderness islands." No mention of significant population. No mention of significant tech level. No mention of demon problems. No mention of anything of any significance.
Except, perhaps, for the word "quiet".... which implies that there's really nothing going on to speak of.