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Snagged from another thread, not wanting to derail it...

jaymz wrote:Rifts Scotland (and maybe package it with Ireland too) - would go a long way to supplementing England (considered by most to be the worst Rifts book there is) and making the entire area more playable for a lot of people if done right.

Wait, most people consider England to be the worst Rifts book? It seems like there was a thread not too long ago about the worst books and as I recall, even though there was general consensus that the whole New Camelot thing was lame, the Millennium Tree material, (some of the) druid OCCs, and Temporal Magic and Practitioners made England worth having.

Am I remembering wrong?

Edit: changed title.

--flatline

Among the books I own (and there are few Rifts books I don't own), I would say England is the worst.

Really? I would never consider England the worst. Short, simple, not filled with a ridiculous amount of unnecessary stuff, it gives you a map of the area, a solid breakdown, introduces plant and animal life that is unique to that place, the major human kingdom(s), the key NPCs, hidden dangers and storylines, ect. Additionally, the book provides things that ACTUALLY AREN'T done elsewhere. Not MORE variations of themes, and a book filled with 'new' OCC's that could easily have been original ones, but actual OCC's that don't have a comparable choice elsewhere.

I can see England not being too popular because it was one of the original books, and has a VERY different style than later books, much more similiar to Sourcebook 1.



Honestly, the worst book in the series should probably go to Xiticix Invasion, just because pretty much everything in it that is not a stat/NPC monster is ignored from there on out. Nothing it talks about happens, it's timeline is wrong, and it is all but ignored from that point on, except to reference new stats/NPC monsters/types of Xiticix.

After that, Pantheons of the Megaverse has got to be high up their for the same reason, just pretty much a book of things that will never get used. I enjoy it a lot, but yeah, not very usefull for most, probably one of the worst if you were just trying to buy books that mattered/were going to be used.



That's all my opinion of course. If you were going to work this question up a bit more, you should specify it a bit more, with questions like 'which is the worst edited/put together book?', 'which has the worst art/concept?' and 'which is the least useful?' This last one is how I judge things.

Eashamahel wrote:After that, Pantheons of the Megaverse has got to be high up their for the same reason, just pretty much a book of things that will never get used. I enjoy it a lot, but yeah, not very usefull for most, probably one of the worst if you were just trying to buy books that mattered/were going to be used.

Just to be clear here...when you say "were going to be used" do you mean by KS and crew in future releases from the company, as opposed to being used by your particular party?

Instead of focusing on any particular attribute as being the worst, how about this "which Rifts books is least worth having?"

For me, England is required since it's the book that defines my favorite OCC (Temporal Wizard). Even if the rest of the book were total drivel, I would still want to have it just for the Temporal Magic OCCs.

Of the books I own, the least interesting to me is Mindwerks. There's nothing in it that interests me as a player. It does, however, have lots of material useful to a GM, so it's not a total loss.

--flatline

I actually love several of the races introduced in Mindwerks...

Rifts: Australia. *Gags* Horribly done. Unfinished. Not followed up as promised, the follow up books on the Aborigines and magic of the entire continent, never done. Reasons I've gotten from this range from simple apathy, to much much darker accusations on the writer and his work.

Forgotten.

Best thing about it was the cover and some Perez art inside. The rest, I wouldn't even use to paper the bottom of my rat's cage.

The Rifts China 1&2 books.

After those two munchkin pandering books (2 more then 1) I would agree with PJ that Unless you plan to take your game there or start from there Australia book is a bit *shrugs* useless. Only having value to those "collectors" that just have to have ALL the books. *dusts off mine*

England is bad, though i'd put Spirit West as worst.

Africa. Hands down.

Afrika.....if it was not for the necromancer the whole book would be a loss.

To me england was one of the best, it had flora and fauna of the isle, it had plot, it had new magic, it had everything and was not just a list of diffrent rifles and crap.
I wish all world books would show the diffrent animals that came through and the odd plants of a region. What odd animals are there in russia? What plant life is there thats from the rifts? Who knows instead we have a crap ton of robots and classes that should have been .....see cs rpa and specialist with the addtion or subtraction of this or that.


All in all england rules!

Zamion138 wrote:Afrika.....if it was not for the necromancer the whole book would be a loss.

To me england was one of the best, it had flora and fauna of the isle, it had plot, it had new magic, it had everything and was not just a list of diffrent rifles and crap.
I wish all world books would show the diffrent animals that came through and the odd plants of a region. What odd animals are there in russia? What plant life is there thats from the rifts? Who knows instead we have a crap ton of robots and classes that should have been .....see cs rpa and specialist with the addtion or subtraction of this or that.


All in all england rules!

Sadly, when Mystic Russia reprinted and updated the necromancer, Africa lost even that distinction.

Marrowlight wrote:
Just to be clear here...when you say "were going to be used" do you mean by KS and crew in future releases from the company, as opposed to being used by your particular party?

Hm, i probably flip-flopped back and forth between the two options when writing previously, in all honesty. I suppose I mostly meant not often used by player groups, but rarely used/referenced by the rest of the game system is definately the more important distinction.

The EVENTS of Xiticix invsaion, namely the war with the bug-men that Lazlo was supposed to be undertaking at about the same time as the War on Tolkeen, just never happened, they were abandoned, and book is apparantly mostly dead in the water as far as timelines go. Pantheons is a mix of the two options, but filling the skies of RIFTS with gods, demons, and uniquely powerful groups, all of whom have their own plans for the world, and then never mentioning them again... Not a lot of need for that.

And I know Isis and the other Gods of Light get mentioned a few times in other books (Madhaven first on my mind) but they are a special case, they are uniquely important to Palladium's settings, as they are the gods of the Palladium World, and they aren't even IN Pantheons (as far as I remember), but Africa (there's a reason for that book, it has the single MOST often used and referenced group of gods).


Mercenaries could possibly fit here, though I love that book. It had a ton of OCCs that should have been used in books after that (kingdom X has Special Forces, see RIFTS: Mercenaries for details, City Y has *these* tanks, planes and APCs as it's army, see RIFTS: Mercenaries). In addition, it is also full of plot that is then later totally ignored. Remember the Mercenary groups that were going to fight in the War On Tolkeen? Whatever happened to those huge armies during that huge war?

Zamion138 wrote:
To me england was one of the best, it had flora and fauna of the isle, it had plot, it had new magic, it had everything and was not just a list of diffrent rifles and crap.
I wish all world books would show the diffrent animals that came through and the odd plants of a region. What odd animals are there in russia? What plant life is there thats from the rifts? Who knows instead we have a crap ton of robots and classes that should have been .....see cs rpa and specialist with the addtion or subtraction of this or that.


All in all england rules!

Dead on in my estimation. Russia has MDC horses. Because, you know, everything in the system has to be Mega-Damage, or it's not worth putting into the universe.


I don't have an opinion on Australia, I realize it is an unfinished book, I have never read it, don't care, and never needed it. One of my friends (a Mad Max devotee) loves it. I don't know if it's a 'bad' book, but it's definately not a 'necessary' book.


After that, it's really subjective to your taste in what you WANT RIFTS to be. I have no interest in Gunslingers with six shooting lasers fighting Super-Indians with magical awesome powers! Seems like a goofy joke, totally losing the seriousness that was in the original, darker, post-apocalypse/losing one's humanity that was apparant in the beginning. Not sure if they are good or bad books, taken a as a pair in a unique universe using the Palladium System, I suppose they make a neat game on their own, but they don't fit into RIFTS for me.

Alternatively, Shemarrian Nation might just be the 'worst' book. I think it's one of the best that has come out in some time, very usefull, very helpful, neat and well thought out and written. However, unless you are running games, there is no need to own it. No 'player' ever needs to own or really even read it.

The only good things oua the England book, Dabugahs and Temporal Magic the rest is pretty &n stoopid.

say652 wrote:The only good things oua the England book, Dabugahs and Temporal Magic the rest is pretty &n stoopid.

Really? Vampire plants(a cure for early on set vvampirerisum, Herbalism magic, millienuem trees(!!), a way to destroy rune weapons and objects(the couldruns) ,light mdc bugs and life, actual maps, nexus knights, cerriulium(sp) mystics the children of earth and light.
I guess we have differing opions on stupid.

Yeah, England is definately one of the more imaginative books ever made, probably has a lot to do with the fact it was early in the history of the game.

I suppose if it was filled with yet more laser rifles (doing between 2D6-4D6MD at 1600-2000ft range) and armour types, and more redundant OCCs, it would be more popular.

Eashamahel wrote:Yeah, England is definately one of the more imaginative books ever made, probably has a lot to do with the fact it was early in the history of the game.

See, for me, England is where the imagination begins to end. Now, I love Temporal Magic (Temporal Wizard is still my most played OCC across all the Palladium products), and the Druids are super cool...but we went from Mexican Vampires and the lost continent turned into a bazaar for all things gross and horrible to Druids, King Arthur, Lugh and crew, and the Fomorians. Slap a rich-robbing archer class that hangs around Millennial Trees and a juicer variant that boosts his mind as well as his body to solve crimes...and you've pretty much hit all the major generics.

I've never had problems with England, pretty nice book overall (other than yet another version of the Arthurian legend, this one where it was all an elaborate evil AI plot). I'm not sure which of those I've actually purchased (and therefor have knowledge of to criticize directly) is least worth owning. Other than perhaps the entire Siege of Tolkeen series for the railroading to push yet another unrealistic CS victory of evil empire growth.

See, I always loved the Arthurian stuff in England, because it's all a ploy. An Alien Intelligence has drawn from Earth's forgotten history to set up a false kingdom around itself as protection and for power, and it ONLY works because no one there even knows that it's all made up, because history has been forgotten and can be used against us.

One of the reasons I would think England would not be a big hit is that as later books came out, the whole premise doesn't work anymore. Clearly when Erin Tarn went to England she should have been able to figure everything out, as human history is open and well known, old slang and terms are available, as well as old stories, like Musashi. Really, it's only the 'Golden Age' that seems to still be forgotten.

CS Special Forces wrote:No love for Spirit West..dang that's one of my favs!

Ditto

best rifts source books are south america 1 and 2 the rest are kinda useless, yes even my beloved japan book pales in comparison to the SA 1&2.

I don't think I've ever used anything from SA 1 and 2.

Aren't those the ones that Kevin has stated need a 25% nerf to function with the rest of the line?

I can't believe there is a thread titled "Rifts book least worth owning" and Heroes of the Megaverse hasn't been mentioned.
It isn't even subjective really - it doesn't matter how much you hate a particular book, your hated book has to have more useful information than Heroes of the Megaverse does. HoM is a book entirely dedicated to one single item. Other than the description of that one item, it contains no information. The item isn't even one a player would ever expect to encounter, nor one a GM would likely want to introduce to their campaign.
The only positive thing that can be said about that book is that by lowering the benchmark by such a degree, it makes all of the other books look far more awesome.

Giant2005 wrote:I can't believe there is a thread titled "Rifts book least worth owning" and Heroes of the Megaverse hasn't been mentioned.
It isn't even subjective really - it doesn't matter how much you hate a particular book, your hated book has to have more useful information than Heroes of the Megaverse does. HoM is a book entirely dedicated to one single item. Other than the description of that one item, it contains no information. The item isn't even one a player would ever expect to encounter, nor one a GM would likely want to introduce to their campaign.
The only positive thing that can be said about that book is that by lowering the benchmark by such a degree, it makes all of the other books look far more awesome.

True....that book was horrid, i read it once....actual i read the first half once and skimmed the powers section

*I'm* impressed that not a single book from the siege on tolkeen series has been mentioned. those books are some of the most divisive and hated. you may find heroes of the megaverse useless, and i don't know enough about it to argue one way or the other (don't own, haven't read), but with the SoT series i felt like their existence was actually a detriment to the setting, which to me at least sets it ahead of a book that merely doesn't add to the setting.

there was so much derp on both sides, it was just horrendously painful. you had the side with much smaller numbers but nearly infinite options that decided it was a good idea to try standing in a line and shooting at each other, and never once tried to take the war to the other side's territory, or force their enemy to have to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory with defenses, and you had the side with seemingly infinite resources no matter what happened that didn't ever bother to take advantage of the fact that the enemy had only one important location, that location was known, and they didn't have remotely close to enough resources to actually defend it against even a half-hearted attack with the amount of resources that the much larger side should have had even without being given stupid amounts of everything they could ever possibly want.

after a series like that, merely not adding anything to the setting almost sounds like a welcome change.

I get a ton of use out of England because my group has an Herbalist in it. Super useful skillset in a group without a wilderness scout. Plus they basically have the plant equivalent of Telemechanics. You don't realize how much stuff in rifts is plant based until you have an Herbalist in the group.

Shark_Force wrote:*I'm* impressed that not a single book from the siege on tolkeen series has been mentioned. those books are some of the most divisive and hated. you may find heroes of the megaverse useless, and i don't know enough about it to argue one way or the other (don't own, haven't read), but with the SoT series i felt like their existence was actually a detriment to the setting, which to me at least sets it ahead of a book that merely doesn't add to the setting.

there was so much derp on both sides, it was just horrendously painful. you had the side with much smaller numbers but nearly infinite options that decided it was a good idea to try standing in a line and shooting at each other, and never once tried to take the war to the other side's territory, or force their enemy to have to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory with defenses, and you had the side with seemingly infinite resources no matter what happened that didn't ever bother to take advantage of the fact that the enemy had only one important location, that location was known, and they didn't have remotely close to enough resources to actually defend it against even a half-hearted attack with the amount of resources that the much larger side should have had even without being given stupid amounts of everything they could ever possibly want.

after a series like that, merely not adding anything to the setting almost sounds like a welcome change.

You're right.

World Books: Africa, hands down. Make one of your players buy it if they want to do the Necromancer, or make your own. Plus, I find the writeup on the native people's insulting.

But the Siege on Tolkeen? Ugh. I'd blocked that out. I could start with book one and give you a complete breakdown on how horrible each thing is almost book by book, what was wrong with the deployment, what was wrong with the strategies, the tactics, and WORST OF ALL, why everything given in the SoT books about why the war happened and how it happened the way it did was a complete crock politically, diplomatically, economically, everything.

Let's be honest, without the "SURPRISE MAGIC RAWR!" stuff Tolkeen would have been a smoking crater inside six days.

It would have looked like Desert Storm's ground invasion.

This is going to vary heavily I think based on where YOUR games are generally run. For me, I think Fleets of the Three Galaxies, Spirit West and Australia are all pretty useless, however, there are books that I have deemed so useless I haven't even bought, like Heroes of the Megaverse... So it's really thought to say.

worst for me? Let's see...probably dino swamp adventures -- did it really need a whole other book? I'm also one of those people who's bewildered by the lone star book -- bleh. I'm not a particular fan of Australia but without the follow-up books it's mostly worthless.

also I can't say in 20 years of playing that I've ever used anything out of Free quebec -- although the book has probably been around for a lot less time than I've been playing. I don't think I've ever used anything out of CS Navy or Mindwerks either.

Shark_Force wrote:*I'm* impressed that not a single book from the siege on tolkeen series has been mentioned. those books are some of the most divisive and hated. you may find heroes of the megaverse useless, and i don't know enough about it to argue one way or the other (don't own, haven't read), but with the SoT series i felt like their existence was actually a detriment to the setting, which to me at least sets it ahead of a book that merely doesn't add to the setting.

Fair enough, maybe it is a little more subjective than I thought .
I personally disagree however - I hate that war as much as the next guy but I do find value in those books. There is plenty of setting information and cool magical toys to bring into your games. I'd be willing to go as far as to say that for its setting information, Aftermath is one of my favourite books and I wouldn't be surprised if many shared that sentiment.
As much as I hate that war, I personally think those books are worth more to me than Heroes of the Megaverse and its single magic item that will never see the light of day in the vast majority of games.

Zamion138 wrote:Afrika.....if it was not for the necromancer the whole book would be a loss.

To me england was one of the best, it had flora and fauna of the isle, it had plot, it had new magic, it had everything and was not just a list of diffrent rifles and crap.
I wish all world books would show the diffrent animals that came through and the odd plants of a region. What odd animals are there in russia? What plant life is there thats from the rifts? Who knows instead we have a crap ton of robots and classes that should have been .....see cs rpa and specialist with the addtion or subtraction of this or that.


All in all england rules!

That would be pretty much my vote. Africa now that the mystic russia has the most complete necromancer OCC layout is pretty pointless. Very little usable world info to much devoted to the whole 4 horsemen thing.

England I can see some not liking it but overall it has some pretty useful things in it such as the temporal magic classes/millenium trees and some other goodies that get used a lot as well as a bunch of nice animals and plants.

It is also one of the reasons I don't mind spirit west. I think a lot of the OCC stuff have a bunch of issues with poor descriptions of the whole traditional/renegade stuff and what items they will actually use but overall it really does add a ton of good critters/spirits and supernatural things for north america and for that section of it alone its worth having .

Shark_Force wrote:*I'm* impressed that not a single book from the siege on tolkeen series has been mentioned. those books are some of the most divisive and hated. you may find heroes of the megaverse useless, and i don't know enough about it to argue one way or the other (don't own, haven't read), but with the SoT series i felt like their existence was actually a detriment to the setting, which to me at least sets it ahead of a book that merely doesn't add to the setting.

there was so much derp on both sides, it was just horrendously painful. you had the side with much smaller numbers but nearly infinite options that decided it was a good idea to try standing in a line and shooting at each other, and never once tried to take the war to the other side's territory, or force their enemy to have to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory with defenses, and you had the side with seemingly infinite resources no matter what happened that didn't ever bother to take advantage of the fact that the enemy had only one important location, that location was known, and they didn't have remotely close to enough resources to actually defend it against even a half-hearted attack with the amount of resources that the much larger side should have had even without being given stupid amounts of everything they could ever possibly want.

after a series like that, merely not adding anything to the setting almost sounds like a welcome change.

You apparently skipped my post then, since I did mention the Siege on Tolkeen series.

There are a couple books in the SoT series I am not super fond of but there were also some really good ones. The CS war book is pretty much a must have really well done cover to cover. The cyber knight book is overall pretty useful even if I am still not totally sold on the changes they did to the class but since those changes are consistent with the RUE the book is reasonably useful.

The others while not my favorite books are at least reasonably useful for ideas for games useful things to fight with the demonix and the tech wizard things.

Really my main complaint about any book for any game system is does it have useful stuff that can be thrown into a campaign or not. Overall the palladium books quality for usefulness of supplements is pretty consistently high even their misses are still pretty reasonable and useful books.

The africa book was one of their bigger misses but was still pretty useful for the witch and necro classes. Now that you can get those in the mystic russia book and the triax book for witches there is very little usefulness to the africa world book unless you want to run the four horsemen. Terribly limited world info the only two interesting OCC are better represented elsewhere and highly limited tech/magic toys to interest people. Hell if they had scrapped the rest of the book and just made the whole thing about the pheonix empire I think most would have been pretty happy with it.

Wow, just.. wow. I'm actually kind of blown away by the suggestion of some books that I think awesome, and in some cases iconic, Rifts books are among the least worth having.

There is, however, ONE Rifts book I have actively warned people to avoid, and that book is Vampire Kingdoms Revised. Just track down the original.
Seriously, **** that book. It actually makes me angry, and that's a shame, because I can easily love most Rifts books.

England is one of my favorite books. Xiticix Invasion gave me piles of info for running a big event without a metaplot. I reference Pantheons of the Megaverse regularly. Mindwerks adds a great deal to my games, fleshing out more problems for Germany, Russia, and beyond (also: One day I would really love to play an Ecto-Traveler). Australia is great fun, though the lack of follow-up on the Dreamtime has me supplementing with Between the Shadows and a touch of Spirit West.. which has worked out for me, actually. China is largely self-contained, but has massive depth to play with in there, and flavor is awesome. Spirit West another great, flavorful, book with some fun additions. Africa, my only complaint is that there is so much more you can do there, the place is fricken huge, and has a rich history as a place of adventure even without the Coming of the Rifts, but they had a basic start plus an epic quest to stop terrible evils. Mercenary Adventures and Vanguard are great resources. Etc.
I could keep going but this is going long I suppose. The only other books mentioned that I would have to acknowledge as having little use are the South America books, books that scarred and burned so many that even the other authors try to ignore them most of the time, books so overpowered that they are still a bit ahead of the curve of the power creep twenty years later. Otherwise great material. Those are books that we actually could use a revised edition of to bring back into the fold and maybe consider using after it buys us flowers and insists that it has changed.

But **** VKr.

I totally have to get SA1 and SA2.

I read lots of complaints about it, but all the complaints seem to revolve around the damage levels, not the meat of the presented materials.

--flatline

flatline wrote:I totally have to get SA1 and SA2.

I read lots of complaints about it, but all the complaints seem to revolve around the damage levels, not the meat of the presented materials.

--flatline

they're pretty high power level, but honestly, it's not like you can't buy a ridiculously powerful laser rifle in north america either.

some of the stuff can get a little bit crazy (there's a mammoth robot vehicle with boom guns for tusks, to give an example on the high end of the crazy scale - not that i have a problem with mounting boom guns on a massive robot that can take the recoil, mind you, it's just the mammoth robot with boom gun tusks that feels a bit silly). a few things need tweaking (like the OCC that lets you modify an energy weapon so that it costs 1 ISP to fire, regardless of how much energy that represents... in the same book as a laser rifle that does damage comparable to a boom gun and has the limitation of using up an entire e-clip for each shot)...

but honestly, a few tweaks, possibly some minor damage nerfs, and imo south america is just fine. most of the powerful stuff has perfectly reasonable explanations for why it's so powerful (high tech aliens, powerful magic-users from across the megaverse, interdimensional ex-slave mercenaries using technology from an extremely advanced race, golden age experimental mutants living in cities, true atlantean cities... i can't really argue that any of those shouldn't be more powerful than you'd expect the average person from rifts earth to be).

T-Willard wrote:

Shark_Force wrote:*I'm* impressed that not a single book from the siege on tolkeen series has been mentioned. those books are some of the most divisive and hated. you may find heroes of the megaverse useless, and i don't know enough about it to argue one way or the other (don't own, haven't read), but with the SoT series i felt like their existence was actually a detriment to the setting, which to me at least sets it ahead of a book that merely doesn't add to the setting.

there was so much derp on both sides, it was just horrendously painful. you had the side with much smaller numbers but nearly infinite options that decided it was a good idea to try standing in a line and shooting at each other, and never once tried to take the war to the other side's territory, or force their enemy to have to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory with defenses, and you had the side with seemingly infinite resources no matter what happened that didn't ever bother to take advantage of the fact that the enemy had only one important location, that location was known, and they didn't have remotely close to enough resources to actually defend it against even a half-hearted attack with the amount of resources that the much larger side should have had even without being given stupid amounts of everything they could ever possibly want.

after a series like that, merely not adding anything to the setting almost sounds like a welcome change.

You're right.

World Books: Africa, hands down. Make one of your players buy it if they want to do the Necromancer, or make your own. Plus, I find the writeup on the native people's insulting.

But the Siege on Tolkeen? Ugh. I'd blocked that out. I could start with book one and give you a complete breakdown on how horrible each thing is almost book by book, what was wrong with the deployment, what was wrong with the strategies, the tactics, and WORST OF ALL, why everything given in the SoT books about why the war happened and how it happened the way it did was a complete crock politically, diplomatically, economically, everything.

Let's be honest, without the "SURPRISE MAGIC RAWR!" stuff Tolkeen would have been a smoking crater inside six days.

It would have looked like Desert Storm's ground invasion.

While I agree that the war would have been over very fast. I think people are failing to factor a major point in, with that series. The books were not meant to represent a 'real' war. At very best (and I've said this in the past) It was some RPG geeks (No insult. I'm one.) With out any sort of military knowledge, representing an RPG war. The reason it went on so long with the back and the forth. CS winning.. Tolkeen winning.. CS winning.. tolkeen winning. CS WINS sort of thing, wasn't to be 'realistic' it was to -----Sell More Books----- Palladium is a book company and they make these things to put the bacon on the plate and the car in the garage.

"Realistically" the war should have lasted about 6 minutes. Time to key in the launch codes. Verify, and the flight time of the missiles only a few states over and Tolkeen was a glowing crater for a few 100 years. The 'hand of god, nuclear missile eater shield' was the only thing that stopped the 'war' from being a few paragraphs in another book.

The books were an 'event' and were made to make money. Not the best of the Palladium line but far from the worst. If you look at it like a sci fi tv show instead of as a 'real war' where both sides have to get their licks in for the 'viewing audience' it's alot easier to digest. Almost "Space opera" in it's application. I'm not saying it's great. I'm just saying I don't think it's often reguarded for what it was 'meant' to be. It's judged on something it simply wasn't.

flatline wrote:I totally have to get SA1 and SA2.

I read lots of complaints about it, but all the complaints seem to revolve around the damage levels, not the meat of the presented materials.

--flatline

It is actually quite good, and some really interesting ideas. Most of the burn was from just how wild the power jump was from other books at the time. My main beef with the writing was the vast power attributed to the Arkons and Megaversal Legion (ML being the overpowered group standing out in a book of high power) and how impossible it was for anyone to ever have their gear or do anything with them.
Which is a shame because they are really awesome and have cool stuff associated with them, but feel like a set piece of "These guys a totally awesome and have cool stuff, but they they just maintain status quo against these other crazy powerful guys and fight wars in other dimensions and unless you are a part of them there isn't much interaction you can have with them." While the Arkons are crazy powerful actual aliens from the space within Rifts Earth's own dimension.. that get beat down by ancient Inca magic and dimension-hopping foreign legion, and get used as a plot device to postpone the war between the orbital communities in a paragraph in another book. Both parties possessing unique technologies that no one else ever will have. (Other than young GMs letting people start with that gear in uncontrolled games because "It says 'of choice' so..". Which didn't help SA's reputation as THE munchkin resource.)

Looking at it today, there is still a few seriously broken things in there, and a number of questionable numbers, but when it came out it was just straight up huh??? powerful in comparison to the world at the time.

Hands down Africa is the worst book in Rifts, followed closely by the ENTIRE SoT Series, and that includes Aftermath, which is just about the worst case of cut and paste bull PB has ever done. Three pages of reprint for two or three lines of new info? Seriously? They should have paid me to read the thing not the other way around.

Africa has absolutely nothing useful for Rifts. It's one class that made the book worthwhile was done better in Russia(as everyone's said already). The Pantheon of Ra isn't really used all that much in rifts, I get why its in Africa, and it fits, it's just not useful for Rifts.

Other runners up at least for my games are Shimmy Nation, Mechanoids, The dimension books( Excluding Hades and Dyval), The Bug Book( Because everything in it but the bugs stats are ignored once it was published.), and the china books.

MaxxSterling wrote:This is going to vary heavily I think based on where YOUR games are generally run. For me, I think Fleets of the Three Galaxies, Spirit West and Australia are all pretty useless, however, there are books that I have deemed so useless I haven't even bought, like Heroes of the Megaverse... So it's really thought to say.

I can see the fleets of the three galaxies complaint. It is one of those weird things that is a really good interesting book but really hard to actually use in a normal campaign. Most groups you are dealing with 5-10 people so anything bigger than frigate size is probably beyond the scope of adventurers. One way to somewhat use it is as flight crew operations crew of a capital ship but even then you are typically going to be doing away missions and fighter strikes and what not and are unlikely to be engaging in fleet battles which renders most of the stuff in the book kinda moot.

Guys: Please, please, please- don't turn this into another Tolkeen War Armchair General Argument fight thread. We've got enough of those in our archives and this thread isn't about that.

Magic side has a pile of arguments, tech side has a pile of arguments.
Played to the hilt of devious player ingenuity, the battle on both sides could have been a lot messier.

Also it is worth noting that a war of MD technology vs Magic & TW had never been fought before.
And that there hadn't been an organized conflict of that scale in four to five hundred years, and never one with MD technology.
Some would say the Tolkeen campaign still wouldn't count, as written. Closest there had been would be the NGR's campaign that was happening around the same time, and, let's face it, Germans are much better with organizing things and had been holding the line against a relatively organised opponent for years.
Take that as my personal excuse for not going balls to the wall with the most optimal things either side could have done.

Properly on topic, the Tolkeen books are good to have, but you need to get them as a set. Just one or two in not worth owning because, in typical Palladium fashion, the whole story and plot information to actually run the Siege is spread across every book, with some of the most vital in the last book (so if you were trying to run the siege while the books were coming out you would have felt more than a little burned, which leads to some of the stronger feelings about it today). In terms of value, I'd say all taken together are great to have, and gives you the information you need to play during that time in the history of Rifts Earth -and just like choosing to play during WW2, or other historic conflicts, it can equip you to make "what if" choices and modifications to the conflicts if you so choose, and a feel for how to alter things going forward as a result.
If you aren't going to explore dealing with the event, the refugees, or the repercussions for the continent, then just give the whole set a pass and put it out of your mind. I would say you'd be missing out though, there are a lot of interesting possibilities to play around with.

kaid wrote:

MaxxSterling wrote:This is going to vary heavily I think based on where YOUR games are generally run. For me, I think Fleets of the Three Galaxies, Spirit West and Australia are all pretty useless, however, there are books that I have deemed so useless I haven't even bought, like Heroes of the Megaverse... So it's really thought to say.

I can see the fleets of the three galaxies complaint. It is one of those weird things that is a really good interesting book but really hard to actually use in a normal campaign. Most groups you are dealing with 5-10 people so anything bigger than frigate size is probably beyond the scope of adventurers. One way to somewhat use it is as flight crew operations crew of a capital ship but even then you are typically going to be doing away missions and fighter strikes and what not and are unlikely to be engaging in fleet battles which renders most of the stuff in the book kinda moot.

Fleets of the Three Galaxies was a fun read, but the only material worth coming back for was the space magic and new temporal magic spells. Too bad none of that made it into the book of magic.

--flatline

Tolkeen Siege series (all of it 'cept the expanded info on the cyber kannigits) was a waste of tree.

Followed soon after by the horribly edited and composed Africa.
Seriously, I'm tempted to just tear out the sections on the Appocalypse daemons (who are NOT the riders of the appocalypse...sadly) and use the rest of the book as fire-lighter.

Armorlord wrote:Guys: Please, please, please- don't turn this into another Tolkeen War Armchair General Argument fight thread. We've got enough of those in our archives and this thread isn't about that.

Magic side has a pile of arguments, tech side has a pile of arguments.
Played to the hilt of devious player ingenuity, the battle on both sides could have been a lot messier.

Also it is worth noting that a war of MD technology vs Magic & TW had never been fought before.
And that there hadn't been an organized conflict of that scale in four to five hundred years, and never one with MD technology.
Some would say the Tolkeen campaign still wouldn't count, as written. Closest there had been would be the NGR's campaign that was happening around the same time, and, let's face it, Germans are much better with organizing things and had been holding the line against a relatively organised opponent for years.
Take that as my personal excuse for not going balls to the wall with the most optimal things either side could have done.

Properly on topic, the Tolkeen books are good to have, but you need to get them as a set. Just one or two in not worth owning because, in typical Palladium fashion, the whole story and plot information to actually run the Siege is spread across every book, with some of the most vital in the last book (so if you were trying to run the siege while the books were coming out you would have felt more than a little burned, which leads to some of the stronger feelings about it today). In terms of value, I'd say all taken together are great to have, and gives you the information you need to play during that time in the history of Rifts Earth -and just like choosing to play during WW2, or other historic conflicts, it can equip you to make "what if" choices and modifications to the conflicts if you so choose, and a feel for how to alter things going forward as a result.
If you aren't going to explore dealing with the event, the refugees, or the repercussions for the continent, then just give the whole set a pass and put it out of your mind. I would say you'd be missing out though, there are a lot of interesting possibilities to play around with.

so tell me again why i would want to own a series of books where the entire premise of the books is something i have to retcon, and all the specifics of the books have to be ignored?

the question was what books are the least worth owning. i would say that a book where not only am i not making active use of the subject material, but where i am in fact actively rewriting the subject material to be something else entirely, is a definite competitor for "worst book to own".

and the funny thing is, while both sides of the "who should have won the war" argument think it should have gone differently (and so far, i've been trying to steer clear of arguing who would have won, in spite of people making statements that i disagree with on the matter - i'll readily agree we don't need to start that argument again), both sides usually agree on at least one thing: it shouldn't have gone the way it was written to have gone.

Shark_Force wrote:

Armorlord wrote:Guys: Please, please, please- don't turn this into another Tolkeen War Armchair General Argument fight thread. We've got enough of those in our archives and this thread isn't about that.

Magic side has a pile of arguments, tech side has a pile of arguments.
Played to the hilt of devious player ingenuity, the battle on both sides could have been a lot messier.

Also it is worth noting that a war of MD technology vs Magic & TW had never been fought before.
And that there hadn't been an organized conflict of that scale in four to five hundred years, and never one with MD technology.
Some would say the Tolkeen campaign still wouldn't count, as written. Closest there had been would be the NGR's campaign that was happening around the same time, and, let's face it, Germans are much better with organizing things and had been holding the line against a relatively organised opponent for years.
Take that as my personal excuse for not going balls to the wall with the most optimal things either side could have done.

Properly on topic, the Tolkeen books are good to have, but you need to get them as a set. Just one or two in not worth owning because, in typical Palladium fashion, the whole story and plot information to actually run the Siege is spread across every book, with some of the most vital in the last book (so if you were trying to run the siege while the books were coming out you would have felt more than a little burned, which leads to some of the stronger feelings about it today). In terms of value, I'd say all taken together are great to have, and gives you the information you need to play during that time in the history of Rifts Earth -and just like choosing to play during WW2, or other historic conflicts, it can equip you to make "what if" choices and modifications to the conflicts if you so choose, and a feel for how to alter things going forward as a result.
If you aren't going to explore dealing with the event, the refugees, or the repercussions for the continent, then just give the whole set a pass and put it out of your mind. I would say you'd be missing out though, there are a lot of interesting possibilities to play around with.

so tell me again why i would want to own a series of books where the entire premise of the books is something i have to retcon, and all the specifics of the books have to be ignored?

the question was what books are the least worth owning. i would say that a book where not only am i not making active use of the subject material, but where i am in fact actively rewriting the subject material to be something else entirely, is a definite competitor for "worst book to own".

and the funny thing is, while both sides of the "who should have won the war" argument think it should have gone differently (and so far, i've been trying to steer clear of arguing who would have won, in spite of people making statements that i disagree with on the matter - i'll readily agree we don't need to start that argument again), both sides usually agree on at least one thing: it shouldn't have gone the way it was written to have gone.

I agree with this.

I happen to like England for its diverse plot hooks. It hasn't got the diversity of equipment and classes that Atlantis and the later world books offer, but it's got potential for story at the post-apocalyptic level that most later books fail to deliver. That said, it could benefit from a significant revision. Were it my project, I'd be inclined to play up the rival small kingdoms and the role that knights play in territorial disputes. And, in spite of how hokey it is, I would leave the Camelot stuff in.

I'll cast my vote for Siege on Tolkein as least valuable book(s). I generally dislike advancing the timeline and that particular piece didn't seem to contribute much to the greater setting. I would have much preferred the pages to have been dedicated to more dimension books. I've always wanted more one-off dimension books like Wormwood.

Shark_Force wrote:so tell me again why i would want to own a series of books where the entire premise of the books is something i have to retcon, and all the specifics of the books have to be ignored?

You don't have to retcon anything, you can flesh it out more if you'd like, or leave it as is. If you choose to alter the timeline, that's your business, but it is good to know what you are changing.
Looking at the threads on the various angles, at the end of the day, even played to the hilt, you are looking at a similar result, a surprisingly even fight that can be tipped by fate or chance for a more decisive and dramatic end. Both sides had tricks to pull and counters. Though it is fairly well implied that, without the Quebec front to deal with, the CS ultimately had Tolkeen outmatched.

For me the least useful is Atlantis: a bunch of demons and devils get together and open a flea market...

The main book; Rifts: Ultimate Edition.

Follow me on this; it is because it only contains a general overview of the setting.

The other books typically detail areas well enough, and they aren't as general as the main book.

When I want details on an area, I look to the area-specific book. If an area doesn't have an area-specific book, I have to make my own details. The main book doesn't really offer a whole lot otherwise; it kind of feels like the table of contents to the stuff you actually want to read about.

So I figure the main book is the least worth owning.

Dog_O_War wrote:The main book; Rifts: Ultimate Edition.

Follow me on this; it is because it only contains a general overview of the setting.

The other books typically detail areas well enough, and they aren't as general as the main book.

When I want details on an area, I look to the area-specific book. If an area doesn't have an area-specific book, I have to make my own details. The main book doesn't really offer a whole lot otherwise; it kind of feels like the table of contents to the stuff you actually want to read about.

So I figure the main book is the least worth owning.

I am not fond of RUE at all. I consider RMB to be superior in just about every way. RUE gave magic a boost which brings it more in line with the house rules we always played by, but just about every other change was either unnecessary or a step backwards compared to RMB.

In my opinion, of course.

--flatline