Nekira Sudacne wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:Nekira Sudacne wrote: If you can't consider any world book good if it dosn't tie in some way back to north america i'm sorry but I find that to be a very bad way to structure world books
Your findings are incorrect.
When you're writing a game that has a key setting, as Rifts does, then you flesh out that key setting FIRST, and fill in the superflua LATER.
I suppose we disagree on how superflous things like japan or russia actually are. to me, for a setting like rifts, having multiple areas fleshed out where you can have different flavored and themed games is more important than fully fleshing out the CS.
Why?
To me, that's putting multiple settings into one game, when the first setting is incomplete.
As far as I can tell, Rifts Japan could just as easily have been written up as a separate RPG, with its own core book- because it's that isolated from the main setting of Rifts.
So I don't see how that could be important to the game of Rifts, any more than Splicers (which could have just as easily been a pocket dimension or city/territory on Rifts Earth) is important to Rifts.
I have absolutely NO idea why you think that there should be entire books devoted to those places when the main area STILL isn't fleshed out.
I suppose i'm not sure what exactly you want fleshed out about the CS that hasn't already been. they only thing they havn't given us is a map and I wouldn't use it even if they did.
Okay, I'll ask you a few questions about CS cities. Only use information from the books, not information that you've made up yourself:
1. What is the average population?
2. What is the most common form of city government?
3. Is this the only form of city government, or are there others? What kinds?
4. How many access points are there to each city?
5. Are the walled cities
domed, or are they open to the sky?
6. When cities are referred to as having "levels," does this mean that the cities are set up like giant buildings, where each floor is a neighborhood complete with its own buildings, and the next floor as a ceiling?
OR are the cities more conventional in construction, with normal blocks and buildings, but the buildings are taller, and the higher levels of each building comprise the different "levels" of the city?
Or something else entirely?
7. Do they have phones? Pay phones? Cell phones? How common are each?
8. Do they have phone books?
9. What are the computers like in CS cities?
10. How common is it for a city-dweller to own a computer? What kind(s)?
11. What are the most common forms of transportation in CS cities? (Cars? Busses? Hover-cars? Hover-busses? Mono-rails? Tubes? Jetpacks?)
12. If there is mass transit, how much does it cost?
13. Are there book stores? If so, what are they like?
14. Are there libraries? If so, what are they like?
15. Are there schools? If so, what are they like?
16. Are people expected to pay for their own doctors, or is there universal health care of some kind?
17. Are there churches? If so, what are they like?
18. Are there stores in the CS cities? If so, how do their prices compare to the black market prices? What do they sell?
19. Is there television? State-owned, independent, or both?
20. What kinds of foods are popular?
21. What kinds of music are popular?
22. Are there ambulances? What are the EMTs like? What kind of gear do they have?
23. Are there fire-fighters? What are they like? How do they interact with the ISS and the military? What kind of gear do they have?
24. Are there gangs? How many? What kind? How pervasive are they, just in the lower levels, or have they infiltrated some of the upper levels as well (or been sponsored by them)?
25. Is there organized crime? What kind? How pervasive is it?
(That enough for now?)
more seriously, I think north america is TOO fleshed out. I like a game to give me a great setting and theme, some starting points and most importantly a lot of blank canvas to work with. the more north america is "fleshed out", the less blank canvas I have to work with, and the harder it gets to actually design a game for it.
a fleshed out setting is like a bell curve. at first, the more and more details and fleshing out you get goes up and up...but after a certain point, it reaches it's peak, and more details begin to slide down and actually detract from how useful the setting as a whole is. I feel a game NEEDS blank, undefined areas where GM's can plop down their own cities and nations without contradicting established cannon, and that's been getting harder and harder to do in north america.
That's a good argument for leaving Japan blank.
Not a good argument for leaving key adventure zones blank.
Huh? "It's a part of the world of Rifts Earth that Palladium fleshed out specifically.". okay. yes. that's true. And?
And the rest of the stuff I said, which you chopped up and addressed separately.
But it's not like I'm picking my preferences randomly; this isn't arbitrary.
They're publishing books on unrelated isolated settings before they're publishing books on the main setting for the game.
That'd be like if they put out an expansion pack to Risk before actually finishing making the board for the main game.
I can see how that's a mark aginst the
company, but not those actual settings.
I count "It should have never existed in the first place" as a mark against stuff, in a lot of cases.
This is one of them.
Exactly the same kind of... un-mapped, undescribed, vague, "if you want to set an adventure there, you have to write it yourself" kind of mega-cities?
Somehow, that's not really addressing the problem, but rather compounding it.
the fact that it's unmapped and vauge is a strength, not a weakness. the more defined a city is, the less able I am to design a game for it.[/quote]
That's you.
For me, the less defined it is, the less I'm able to design a game for it... without a lot of work.
Moreover, it's a matter of compatibility between different game groups.
If we each design our own game worlds, that might be okay for us individually... but when we get together to talk about Rifts, we're not talking about the same thing.
And WHICH of these cities are detailed anywhere...?
I could have an easier time setting a campaign in a Xiticix Hive than I would in any one of those cities you refer to, because I know more about the layout, defenses, local government, and civilian population, than I do about any of the supposedly major cities anywhere on the planet.
It seems our thought processes for running a game are inverted. I come up with a goverment, population, layout, and defences first, then try to figure out where on rifts earth to best place it. the more defined a place is, the harder it is to adjust my premade vision to fit. if it's TOO defined, I become unable to run a game based there at all, because i'd have to change so much i'd lose the origional vision.
That's great for making up your own cities.
Not so much for describing existing cities, because you're the only one who will have that picture in your head.
If we're making up our own settings, we might as well just make up our own settings and be done with it, instead of using our time and talent to spackle in gaping holes in the official game world.
Are you under the impression that Dune, Sherlock Holmes, and Twilight are all part of the same setting?
No. but rifts japan and the coalition states are isolated from each-other enough I consider them distinct entities.
Then, once again, that would seem to run counter to the notion that the latter in any way needs or calls for the former.
If it's effectively a separate game setting, then there's no reason to put it in the same game.
Juarez is better fleshed out, as far as I can tell.
I know, I played a game set in it (I can't RUN a premade city like Juarez, ever, but I can play in it just fine). but as the game went on, the GM began scrapping more and more of the premade buildings and street layout in favor of his own visions.
and if it gets to the point the GM has to start mentally bulldozing and rezoning a setting like a derranged SimCity mayor, it's not a very good setting.
Since I've scrapped the entire Rifts Japan setting, and rezoned it as the group of empty islands it originally was, I guess that means it's not a very good setting either.
and by that logic, Atlantis as a setting ranks pretty far down on the list of useful books. Sure it has a lot of neat toys and a few interesting classes, and you can run into minions anywhere in the megaverse, but the fact is atlantis itself isn't a place i'd ever want to set a game in. the only stories you can tell there are "being a slave" and "being a slave trying to escape". it's completely one note.
Not true.
You can have visitors, you can have revolutionaries, you can have spies, you can have Gladiators... there's all kinds of interesting stuff you can do with Atlantis.
visitors by definition wouldn't be set IN atlantis, it'd just be a stop on a larger campagin.[/quote]
Not really. It could be a stand-alone adventure, or a mini-campaign, or a campaign that starts off with them landing on shore, and lasts for as long as they're visiting there... which turns out to be years.
gladiators are slaves, just better treated than most.
That depends on the kind of gladiator, really.
Revolutionaries are slaves trying to topple rather than escape.
Nothing about being a revolutionary means that you're a slave.
Spys I'll grant I didn't think of, but i've yet to find a group where everyone could play a spy without blowing their cover or getting bored.
I've never had a problem with it.
Uh, random rifts can lead to other places on Rifts earth just as easially to another dimension.
Only if they're not really random.
There's an infinity of dimensions out there, and only one Rifts Earth.
So the odds of any one rift ending up back on Rifts Earth are 1 in Infinity.
Or, if you prefer, you can go by continent, and say that there are 7 in Infinity, which nets out the same.
Or you can go by nation, and say that the odds are "Hundreds in Infinity, which still nets out the same.
Or you can go with towns, and say that the odds are "Thousands in Infinity"... but guess what?
That STILL ends up the same.
The odds of an inter-dimensional portal leading back to your own dimension, to your own planet, are negligible.
Or, at least, they should be.
For that matter, it kind of defeats the purpose of inter-dimensional portals leading to other places in your own dimension.
by that logic, 99.9999% of all random rifts should lead into the vaccume of space, making going into one a death sentance. even if your in an enviromental suit you have no way to get home.
Well, that depends on a lot of factors. Like how long the rift stays open. What race/OCC you are. What kind of powers you have access to. Whether there's anybody within SOS range.
And so on.
BUT since random rifts seem to open on nexus points, I don't think that you're entirely correct about the odds there.
While there are ley lines in space, we have no info on how many, or whether there are nexus points in space, etc. etc.
Ley lines in general lore tend to be well-traveled paths between places of power.
If they're well-traveled, there's a pretty good chance that somebody or something will happen along, even if you're in space.
a properly done random rift, as I said, would lead you into space. that's not much fun though.
Having had a number of adventures where that happened, I disagree.