Your Opinion: How Would Your Change the Rifts Setting?

EliBenedict · Unread post by **EliBenedict** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 11:48 am

If you were to recreate the Rifts core setting from the ground up, how would you change it?

There are five big changes I would like to see:

1-Resourcr wars. It's a post apocalyptic setting. The fact that nearly every single vehicle/robot has a multi-year nuclear power supply seems off. Having the various human nations all scrambling for fossil and nuclear fuels, and rare earth metals, to keep their ultra-tech running so they can fend off the demon hordes for another day would create a lot of adventure possibilities.

2-Similar to #1, more aging, junky, ultra-tech. The first riffs core book mentioned something about Free Quebec having a single factory that could turn out one Glitter Boy a month. That immediately gave you the sense of how rare and precious functioning ultratech items were. But then you've got Triax, Northern Gun, Bandido, H-tech and Ichto mass producing ultra-tech weapons. It just kind of lowers the stakes. I think After the Bomb did a good job of this. There were a bunch of adventures that focused on getting control of a single piece of pre-apocalyptic technology. I'd love to see the Coalition States in the position of the Battlestar Galactica fleet, jerry-rigging solutions to keep their ultra-tech war machine up and running.

3-Leaning into the price of power. The first Roft book had several occs that lifted up the idea of people accepting a price for the ability to defend themselves and make headway in a world gone mad. Borgs gave up their humanity, Crazies gave up their sanity, Juicere gave up their future, Shifters (some of them at least) gave up their souls. If you combine this with the first two items ab9ve it creates a really interesting dynamic. Players can either rely on scarce and failing technology, or accept the loss of some part of themselves to gain a more permanent kind of power. Maybe all the men of magic occs have to make a deal with the devil of some sort. And maybe the master psychics get lost in their own explorations of their mind, slowly going catatonic over the course of several levels, or something like that. I think it would definitely raise the stakes for role playing.

4-Lose the death's head imagery for the CS. Real world fascists are absolutely death dealing. But in terms of their personal propaganda and imagery, they try to portray themselves as emissaries of strength and vitality. Fascist aesthetics are usually severe and stark, but they're meant to portray power, not death. The Nazis didn't advertise the fact they had death camps. They tried to keep that secret. Their public propaganda was all about bringing strength and health to Germany. The CS's death head iconography explicitly telegraphs to everyone the fact that they're the bad guys. It's a little cartoony.

5-Stick to the North American Northeast and Midwest. The further the books got from that core setting, the more cringey and exotified they got. The less said about Rifts Africa, the better. Either that, or hire writers from those places to do the world books.

Your thoughts? Just curious. I promise not to argue with anyone this time.

darthauthor · Unread post by **darthauthor** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 1:21 pm

#4 Seems like a real world thing they would do.

NOTE to reader: I am not defending the Nazi party or their actions.

The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit svastika, which means “good fortune” or “well-being."

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the swastika on the site of ancient Troy. He connected it with similar shapes found on pottery in Germany and speculated that it was a “significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors.”

I believe they did not see themselves as the "bad guys" and the swastika they used was like the cross, was to them a symbol of their religion as well as cultural identity.

The CS as a nation is authoritarian ('Emporer' Karl Prosek), militaristic, orderly/strict (safety + security of the state is consider more imporant than the common citizens rights or freedoms), and xenophobic (afraid of that which is alien or at least foreign to it).
Their propoganda is they are the defenders of humanity. They want to come across as powerful and strong so no rainbows and butterflies. But they probably should not come across like a necromancer cult if they are fighting zombies and animated dead. So no names like "Dead Boys" and skelton images.

Symbol I believe would be good for their image would be associated with courage, endurance, ingenuity, and strength.
Perhaps a great human hero from the past (like spartans or rangers) or an animal the represents these qualities like a bear, lion or wolf.

Politically the leadership of the CS does want to dominate humans and eradicate all non-humans from the Earth. So maybe a symbol like the sun or fire or stories associated with it like Prometheus or some generic good guy label like the "Army of Light"

They see themselves as the good guys. They want their people and military service members to fight to the death believing it. So they would want to use a label and image that represents the "good" humans who are also the strong and power enemy of that which they are not.

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:03 pm

The CS is ultimately fatalistic in the way the see themselves. THATS why they use the skull. We in the 21st century cannot adequately understand the literal horrors the humans of RIFTS Earth dealt with, & continue to deal with. Humanity was absolutely pushed to near extinction & it was the meatgrinder all or nothing authoritarian policies & culture of the CS which allowed for humanity to regain a foothold. They are fatalistic. Just like you say, there is a price for power & the CS's price is death. Deadboys, Crazies, Juicers, Cyborgs. They all sacrifice to make their tiny slice of the world a bit more safer. So they embrace it. They decorate themselves in the iconography of the dead to highlight the cost, but to also herald the consequences to D-Bees & Demons of invading their homes. The human skeleton is largely unique to the monsters of RIFTS Earth so it becomes iconic. We are HUMAN. We don't fear death we embrace it.

As for the actual question... I dont like the idea of it being a "used" world because it's not. Things didn't go to rust, they got destroyed. Its comparable to the "dark ages". Infrastructures failed not tech. Tech continued to advance, we see NG & CS make new stuff all the time, it just can't always compete against the manufacturing processes & material sciences of the Golden Age.

My 5 things would be

1) Focus on Wilderness over military. I don't mind playing as mercs or soldiers but the introduction to RIFTS in the RUE paints a savage wilderness full of unknowns, but things don't usually play that way in game. Give us some mechanics & adventures of just exploring & cataloging stuff in the wild.

2) Your walls are strong as eggshells. It really should be focused on that any foray into the world is hard & just setting up what is basically a colony/frontier homestead is hard & a Fury Beetle could come & knock your entire town to pieces. That's what makes the CS so compelling. They are the only real human power that's "mastering/taming" the savage wilderness. The CS should be safe yet draconian.

3)More Federation of Magic stuff

4)More Republican stuff

5)More Technowizard stuff

darthauthor · Unread post by **darthauthor** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:00 pm

My compliment Aermas,

Well written. You have described what I did not weigh in an "El Dios Del los Muertos" way. From where they are coming from they are more about looking dangerous and fearless of death than looking like the "good guys."

I whole heartedly agree with you and #1. Wilderness is greater then the civilized.

On #2, I'm not sure how that does not work in the CS.

Does the Coalition go kill crazy in the territory surrounding their towns?

How does it work with Lazlo?

Federation of Magic?

Free Quebec?

NGR?

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 6:11 pm

darthauthor wrote:.
On #2, I'm not sure how that does not work in the CS.

Does the Coalition go kill crazy in the territory surrounding their towns?

How does it work with Lazlo?

Federation of Magic?

Free Quebec?

NGR?

So the books tell us that the CS is more safe than anywhere else, but as far as how that's represented..? It's not.

I would put more "lore" bits in & adventures with the themes of starting up new colonies & towns, or finding lost colonies & dead/failing towns. Show that reclaiming even a handful of acreage in RIFTS Earth is hard work, fraught with peril, but possible. Show us that civilization has to be won & once claim easily lost. D-Bee attacks, demon infiltration, slave takers, bandits, beasts & monsters, etc. The CS make regular patrols & stay in radio contact with outlying territories, industrially strip the land of deep forests so the monsters can't hide, they fly SAMAS routinely in the area. They send Psi-Stalkers & dog boys to track down creatures of magic in their lairs, etc.

Lazlo is a college town where everything is done by commitee & where human needs are just a single voice in a cachophony of the alien. They are passive by nature so dealing with any issue is going to take longer & the response will be delayed. If dealing with outside threats like d-bee raiders or monsters, they would probably not adopt a kill first, talk later approach which could be a problem. Loom at their responses to the Xiticix threat! There are a lot of Lazlo citizens who just want to relocate them instead of fight them for our very survival!

Federation of Magic really needs better exploration. We don't really know how it works as a whole. It's just a collection of powerful city states & tiny frontier towns like fadetowns. Most of the city states don't care about what happens outside of the view of their walls.

Free Quebec operates much like the CS

Northern Gun embraces it's rustic wilderness aesthetic & culture so it probably struggles to rend for itself & it probably trues to copy CS doctrine in a lot of ways but isn't nearly effective

EliBenedict · Unread post by **EliBenedict** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 8:23 pm

Aermas wrote: I dont like the idea of it being a "used" world because it's not. Things didn't go to rust, they got destroyed. Its comparable to the "dark ages". Infrastructures failed not tech. Tech continued to advance, we see NG & CS make new stuff all the time, it just can't always compete against the manufacturing processes & material sciences of the Golden Age.

That's actually not far off from what I meant. Massive destruction of infrastructure means a collapse of industry. Disruption of global supply chains (Rifts has always emphasized the nesr impossibility of recreating pre-Rifts globalization) precludes rebuilding production infrastructure (think about all the rare earth materials from all over the globe that go into making a single laptop.) i wasn't thinking so much of a used world, as a disrupted one, where tech isn't rusting, it's wearing out, and broken supply chains means repair and replacement is difficult. Salvage and recycling becomes essential. Tech still advances, so the CS would be turning out some things beyond what was possible at the Golden Age, but these a prototypes, limited run items for elite teams, or secret weapons for use in emergencies only.

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 8:38 pm

EliBenedict wrote:That's actually not far off from what I meant. Massive destruction of infrastructure means a collapse of industry. Disruption of global supply chains (Rifts has always emphasized the nesr impossibility of recreating pre-Rifts globalization) precludes rebuilding production infrastructure (think about all the rare earth materials from all over the globe that go into making a single laptop.) i wasn't thinking so much of a used world, as a disrupted one, where tech isn't rusting, it's wearing out, and broken supply chains means repair and replacement is difficult. Salvage and recycling becomes essential. Tech still advances, so the CS would be turning out some things beyond what was possible at the Golden Age, but these a prototypes, limited run items for elite teams, or secret weapons for use in emergencies only.

You don't actually need globalism to have those resources. North America has a ton of natural resources barely tapped by industrialization. The point of globalization isn't to acquire rare earth metals from say, Africa. It's so those in power can mine those rare earth metals for cheap with exploitable labor from third world countries. Plus, the Coming of the Rifts changed EVERYTHING they restored the forests, they could create all kinds of new crystal growths or cause metal to form in the earth, etc.

Also the BIGGEST advantage in that department is Earth Warlocks. An Earth Warlock can sniff out all the rare earth metals you need & even get little mud men to fetch it for you

darthauthor · Unread post by **darthauthor** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 9:29 pm

I just remember.

Was there not something about new names for the CS in the latest Manhunter book?

Like "Eagle" or something? Symbol for the CS instead of skulls?

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Thu Jun 15, 2023 10:15 pm

Some may say that a REBOOT of the setting from the ground up would mean it's not Rifts. Over the years, I've seen the response to Savage Rifts, let alone RUE, and there are some strong feelings held on all sides. That said, it would be interesting to see what folks come up with and so far there's been some really good ideas. Here's my contribution, which is focused on flavor and environment, rather than mechanics.

First off, I've heard Rifts described in the past as "post-post apocalyptic". I think this is fitting as it explains why there is so much industry and settled communities. If you want a post apocalyptic 'scratch in the dirt to survive' type game, I'd suggest running Chaos Earth set after 30 years. You'd have a whole generation who'd know nothing first hand about the Golden Age. That said, I wouldn't set the Rifts game 300 years after the Cataclysm either. People are resilient and I'd set the game long enough after the cataclysm to have gone through a period of anarchy, but not so long that much of the material artifacts (buildings, tech, paper books, etc,) from the Golden Age would have crumbled or rusted to dust - 300 years is a long time for metals, concrete and even plastic to decay. 30 years for a Cataclysm and another 70 for civilization to claw itself back should be enough. The Late Bronze Age collapse lasted for roughly 300-400 years, but they didn't have the resources that could be scrounged, recycled, and cobbled together that Rifts survivors have buried under the wreckage of the old world. As research grows, even the European "dark ages" are turning out to be a highly turbulent but productive time that may have been mischaracterized by historians. I'd say the same is true for Rifts - sure the planet almost tore apart, but once the LLs die down, whoever survived are the toughest and smartest of us and likely to maximize everything they can.

As a GM, I'd love to have more info on Rifts themselves. How many Rifts are open at any given time? How frequently do they open? Typically how many monsters come through? We're led to believe that DBees and monsters flowed out of Rifts to ravage humanity, yet the world is still strangely empty. I understand that many DBees that come through don't survive, but after 300 years you'd think the place would be awash in monsters and DBees, both newcomers and Earth-born. This should result in a lot more cities than are currently mentioned, metropolitan or exclusive to certain species/factions. However, if set only 100 years after the Cataclysm, then the emptiness could be explained. OR more info on the Demon Plagues of the Dark Ages - did these events cause periodic decimations of the population? Maybe expand the setting to include anti-magic zones or more detail about other dimensional anomalies beyond LL storms and fade towns. Like what happens when a large chunk of land is d-shifted from one world to another - do they swap? does one fall from the sky onto the other? do they somehow get squished together on the molecular level creating new and weird resources?

Even with 100 years, the wilderness would still rush in to reclaim the land. However, while there are lots of beasties from the Rifts, we don't have many plants or trees from the Rifts described. It would be nice to get some more detailed descriptions of what the wilderness actually looks like. Alien vines? Giant mushrooms? Glow in the dark pine trees? Shrubs that migrate in herds? I would not have had major changes to coast lines. Yes, water rose in massive tsunami... and then it receded. However, given the lack of any good maps, it is a royal pain to try figure out what is still under water. Which means Google maps or old paper maps are practically useless as tools if anywhere near a coast, except if presented to players as a Pre-Rift artifact. I've voiced my opinion on CS map mapping and other trading nations in Rifts elsewhere, so no need to repeat here.

A big part of the setting is the culture in which players are immersed. Saying the CS are human supremist fascists and illiterate says nothing about what life is actually like in the fortress cities, in larger towns or farming communities. I like to think of the quality of life in Megacities from Judge Dredd comics, but who knows. Splynn and FoM - same lack of detailed description. The info on Japan, NG, NGR, Ciudad Juarez and MercTown was helpful to GMs to craft what the experience is like for the adventurers to visit or base themselves out of these communities. Heck, other than ChiTown and its Burbs, there's very little info on what is going on regionally in the CS. Missouri is a black hole of info, as is Iron Heart. Arkansas is detailed in WB10 pre CS takeover and then nothing substantial that describes what expansion or changes came with statehood. Lone Star got a book of its own, but do we really know much about life there since much of it was spread thin between dog boys and the Pecos Empire? Free Quebec is decent but that's because it also got its own book. However, I would have expected FQ to highlight less hegemony or at least some internal struggle, as the book ignores that the Quebec of today is incredibly diverse, despite efforts to stereotype it as francophone, Catholic and independently nationalistic. Wouldn't it have been interesting to have certain minority communities ascend to power during the Cataclysm, reshaping parts of Quebec forever. Perhaps keep the Francophonie element, but so much more could happen in a few hundred years.

Montreal is a missed opportunity to move the concept of Madhaven closer to where players may hang out. I've found many players stick to at least the fringes of the Domain of Man so they can get resupplied easily. Travelling all the way to Manhattan is not their first choice. Move the Monster Kingdom from Calgary to Winnipeg. This creates a nice divide between the Plains and the East, while having the Kingdom perhaps play a role in relation to the Tolkeen War, perhaps contributing to Tolkeen's corruption. The Plains could then be ravaged by the Xiticix, as their current substantial overlap with Tolkeen is just too much going on in one place with little going on elsewhere. Rename the Tundra Rangers, if they are to be essentially the Texas Rangers North. Their southern base near Regina SK is sooooo far from tundra it is offensive, so drop the winter gear and snow mobiles. Canada usually only sees snow in winter (and maybe spring and fall depending) so please stop making Canada look like an open air freezer.

Conflicts over resources are there - they just aren't called out specifically as the meta story is focused more on high adventure and dramatic conflict. Not claim jumpers squabbling over a mine. There's an adventure in Mercenaries about that scenario if needed. However, if the setting were put only 100 after the Collapse, more could be done about seizing control of resources, exploring abandoned city ruins or reclaiming cities. That could also cater to the dungeon crawlers among us. The Black Market Sourcebook did a lot to flesh out not just the ubiquitous organization, but a lot of the societal context of crime that helps in world building. Having similar resources for industry/tech, trade, or urban vs rural life would go a long way. For all the robots, armor, guns, and vehicles in the books, a lot of world building detail is missing which can sometimes reduce Rifts to a game of Fortnite if folks don't invest the time and energy to detail out their own world.

Death's Head imagery... I'm on the fence here with no real opinion. Much has been said about it over the years, but the setting concept has succeeded in getting a reaction from GM and players, which is probably the point. Otherwise, the CS would be some generic baddies with no flavor.

I'd continue with world books, but by golly have them do something original. Turning Mexico into a Vampire realm was cool. However, Pharaohs and pyramids can be anywhere, not just Egypt. The land of beer and high speed highways could have been anywhere other than Germany. Same with every other cultural appropriation. I'm surprised Ireland isn't full of leprechauns... oh wait, it is... :roll:

Technology in the game is a lagging reflection of the times in which the books are written. Make it too futuristic and it might not resonate with players. Better to err on a baseline everyone can recognize. Problem is that the baseline in the 80s was very different from today and Rifts tech was using that baseline rather than building off of an imagined technology in the 2090s. So, in the earlier books, we have bionics, but no wireless internet or drones. If the setting were to be rebooted, I'd suggest imagining the tech of the 2090s and then see how that regresses after a few decades of neglect. Much might still be usable, but not understood or maintained properly. Also, explain the fundamentals - not in terms of stats, but in terms of some future tech so that we don't have endless arguments over why everything is nuclear, what's keeping hoverbikes in midair, and how come the laws of physics keep being broken.

Killer Cyborg · Fri Jun 16, 2023 12:02 pm

Most World Books would be Dimension Books.
New West, for example, would work better as a desert planet where Rifts Earth humans ended up getting sent to during The Coming Of The Rifts, than as something that happened on Rifts Earth.
Ditto Japan.

Rifts Earth should be the mostly-unpopulated post-apocalyptic land it was originally portrayed as.

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Fri Jun 16, 2023 2:08 pm

Killer Cyborg wrote:Most World Books would be Dimension Books.
New West, for example, would work better as a desert planet where Rifts Earth humans ended up getting sent to during The Coming Of The Rifts, than as something that happened on Rifts Earth.
Ditto Japan.

Rifts Earth should be the mostly-unpopulated post-apocalyptic land it was originally portrayed as.

THAT is an awesome simple idea on so many levels, KC! Bravo!

1. Each could then wave away any sciencey discrepancies in the books with "well, that's the physics of this world..."
2. Power levels between settings could be managed better by GMs since there could be less/more crossover depending on the nature of the campaign
3. Less concern about mismatching economies with setting backstories
4. With a dash of mechanics and a smidgen of metastory, the ideas in DB7 could be expanded to leverage transdimensional elements like temporal magic, Splugorth, Naruni, True Atlanteans, Minion War, and the Mechanoids to provide a way to go world to world for a price (dun dun duuuh!)... similar in flavor to the idea above re price of power to get magic
5. Dimensions don't have to be entire worlds as they could be pocket dimensions or astral domains linked by the Rifts, so world building can be done on a much smaller scale if GMs don't have the time or energy to put in the work
6. Habitation on Rifts Earth could focus around permanent and semi-permanent Rifts (reinforcing why the game is called "Rifts"), enabling travel offworld like mini PW Centers, with a surrounding wilderness that is just hostile enough to allow travel between Rifts Earth centers but not settlement/reclamation of the wilderness
7. More pages in books could be dedicated to fleshing out the uniqueness of each setting, rather than repeating/retconning info about stuff in other books
... and so much more.

I think I'll have to work this into my next campaign idea! Perhaps the Minion War truly exploded with some sort of dimensional doomsday weapon (an Old One almost awoken?) that sends ripples across the megaverse - the harmonics of which coalesce at worlds like Rifts Earth for a second cataclysm, randomly d-shifting current regions/communities back out into the megaverse, like droplets of water sprayed by the striking of a pond's surface with a pebble... do they ever come back together or are they forever drifting away from each other linked only through the Rifts?... potentially powerful megaversal opera there...

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Fri Jun 16, 2023 2:29 pm

Doesn't making all world books dimensional books kinda just make RIFTS Earth just another Phaseworld? Besides, I would still want to know what's happening in all the various places on RIFTS Earth

glitterboy2098 · Fri Jun 16, 2023 3:44 pm

as far as the CS and skull imagery goes, Fascists actually do love their skulls.. especially ones from the european derived fascist ideologies, who tend to have a love of the Totemkopf that borders on the pathological. the CS takes it a degree further than IRL examples, but honestly not by a lot. the CS probably ascribes to the same line of thought as Himmler did, when he directed the nazi propaganda efforts to promote the idea that "The Skull is the reminder that you shall always be willing to put your self at stake for the life of the whole community". thus skull markings, either alone or as part of a skull and crossbones, were fairly common in the nazi military, and many of their elite units used skulls for unit insignias, and in a few cases their literal unit names. and the CS is directly basing their fascism off Nazi germany.

so claiming that the CS would not use them because they are fascist shows a rather limited knowledge of both history and the nature of fascism.

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Fri Jun 16, 2023 4:05 pm

Aermas wrote:Doesn't making all world books dimensional books kinda just make RIFTS Earth just another Phaseworld? Besides, I would still want to know what's happening in all the various places on RIFTS Earth

I see your point - a self contained city encapsulating all the activity linking to other dimensions, with a world outside that no-one goes to.

As Killer Cyborg pointed out, the original premise was a vast wilderness with pockets of civilization. Well, the simplest way to get back to that concept is to just say the settings in the World Books (New West, Xiticix, China, Japan, Australia, etc.) were always other dimensions and Rifts Earth was always just wilderness - nothing but trees, rocks, beasties - and scale back CS, NG and other nations and factions to small enclaves scattered across the Earth. Perhaps populations reduced to 1% of what they are listed and say that it's always been that way since the Rifts came. They never grew in size because conditions would never allow their populations to get to a critical mass. But if a faction of 1m people are now only 10k, would they hold the same significance in the grand scheme of things? Would gods be popping by as often as the books suggest? Would the Four Horsemen show up, take one look in disgust at this backwater of a world, and pop off to another dimension with more people to kill? With only ~500k sentients in NA (ballpark number), you'd lose a large part of what can only exist if you have a population in the millions. That's a rather jarring retcon - actually very much in line with Rifts Australia which has only two cities and practically nothing between.

However, I'd argue that it could be rather different if you go with the Second Cataclysm idea. There's a lot of ways it could play out, starting small from a single premise.

For example, one way it could play out is if a CS fortress city or two (say, ChiTown and LSC) wake up to find semi-permanent Rifts in their basement (maybe opening monthly) and the cities not d-shifted. The LS Complex, the Burbs, their towns and farms, their other fortress cities, their navy, everything that makes them strong... gone. Just two cities that now need to find a way to connect, cooperate and rebuild. What if the Vanguard approaches them (openly or in secret) to say that they found Free Quebec in a pocket dimension. Would the CS embrace dimensional travel to reconnect with FQ or would they spurn the evils of magic? What if they dressed magic up as a false technology so they could maintain a façade of their ideology? Would FQ be glad to be finally on their own? What if Ishpeming, Stormspire and New Lazlo also survived on Rifts Earth. Would the great CS campaign against magic continue as hot wars or cold wars? You'd still have millions of people, but now cramped into a rather small space. The world outside PW Center is the domain of the Prometheans. However, the wilderness of Rifts Earth would revert to a truly uninhabited Wild. No reserves, no mini kingdoms, no secret factory complexes run by Wilks, Bandito Arms, or ARCHIE. Every glance out the window to the forest/jungle/desert beyond an affront to humanity. Encounters would be small and personal, not large companies of mercs or wandering tribes of Simvan.

That's the sort of dynamic storytelling you don't really get from PW Center at a glance. PW is more of a grand space opera. Yes, this version of Rifts Earth has elements similar to Center, but with a lot less tech, wealth, and splendor. More squalor and desperation. Center is a hub of a vast (relatively stable) galactic trade network where practically anything can be had or can happen, with aspects of a civilization tuned to the megaverse. But Rifts Earth would be more the equivalent of what happened to the True Atlanteans eons past, where there is a home world - Rifts Earth - and Earthlings need to decide if they find a way to return, settle where they are, or wander the megaverse. Do they trust the Atlanteans that offer guidance? Do Atlanteans see them as potential future rivals or a threat? Does the journey home change them as a people? Phase World is to this particular revisioning of Rifts, as Star Trek is to Battlestar Galactica.

But as I said, it could be revised any number of ways if the goal is to get Rifts back to its original premise. Heck, you could even keep the Rifts of today as is and built out a revised version as an alternate dimension through a series of conversion books, so we don't have to buy all the world books again.

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Fri Jun 16, 2023 4:25 pm

You could just run Nightbane, Chaos Earth, Systems Failure, etc. for those elements.

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Fri Jun 16, 2023 5:22 pm

Aermas wrote:You could just run Nightbane, Chaos Earth, Systems Failure, etc. for those elements.

Well, that's a given. Let's face it... most PB games are variations on the same themes and elements.

PFRPG - people fight evil and the supernatural with magic, psionics and swords
BTS - people fight evil and the supernatural with psionics and guns
HU - people fight evil with superpowers, magic, psionics and guns
Nightbane - world is invaded, people fight invading evil monsters with superpowers, magic, psionics and guns
TMNT/ATB - world comes to an end, mutants fight evil with mutant powers and guns
Chaos Earth - world comes to an end, humanity tries to survive against alien invaders with magic, psionics and guns
Rifts - world comes to an end, humanity trying to get back on track competing with alien invaders with magic, psionics and guns
Dead Reign - world comes to an end, humanity fights zombies with guns, baseball bats, and swords
etc. etc. etc.

If you play megaversally, all the elements are interchangeable for the most part. The difference is in how the settings are presented and the game worlds are designed. The original question for this thread was, starting from scratch, how would the Rifts world be changed. KC suggested going back to the original premise for Rifts from which a number of world books have deviated from. I offered one option. If elements from other games can be leveraged, great.

Perhaps it might be helpful to have more parameters as to what is open for change. Presumably there are rifts and ley lines. What else is fundamentally considered a baseline for Rifts that is not open for change? That way we know whether we should suggest tweaks or real changes to the setting.

Dustin Fireblade · Sat Jun 17, 2023 7:16 am

EliBenedict wrote:If you were to recreate the Rifts core setting from the ground up, how would you change it?

Number of years ago I started working on my own 'Rifts Reset' project. Filled up one of those 200 page, five subject notebooks.

1. I used those city creation guide from the Rifts Adventure Book to rebuild human cities. No big CS fortified cities anymore.

[*] Instead of Chi-Town, I used Dallas, TX as the home for the Coalition.

[*] I used "Old Bones" pretty much as is for Free Quebec as well, just used the guide to fill in some blanks. No Glitter Boy manufacturing

[*] Northern Gun survived in the UP - no massive manufacturing, but was home to pre-rifts militia and "preppers"

2. The new Coalition included other races, the Ojahee from South America, and the Noli and Grackle-Tooth. There is a human supremacy movement led by a Prosek though. He lead's the "Death's Head" power armor company.

3. Re-worked all the OCC's. Only 12 total. Heavily inspired by Systems Failure.

[*] Headhunter/Gunslinger type. Never settled on a name, figured there would be "regional variations"
[*] Survivalist/Hunter. Should be self-explanatory.
[*] Marshall/Sheriff. Should be self-explanatory.
[*] Sentinel (robot and power amor guys, these replaced the Glitter Boy OCC more or less)
[*] Shepherd (inspired by the class from Dead Reign and the NEMA Roscoe, this was a late add)
[*] Tech-Hound (replacing/mixing the Operator and Headhunter Techno-Hound)
[*] Egghead (all the science geeks and doctors)
[*] Shaman (a RCSG Scientist on steroids. With a little Shifter)
[*] Chosen (basically a witch)
[*] Inquisitor (basically a demon/magic hunter)
[*] Splicer (the super-soldier option)
[*] I won't list this one as it's a straight rip off from a popular media franchise (movies, books, comics, cartoons), but it's been around for a long time...

I did create some notes for "civilians" that would be a catch all that didn't fall into one of the above.

4. Psi over Magic. Magic is still around, but humans harnessed psi over magic within this reset. Mainly my players prefer Tech and Psi over magic. Didn't want to exclude it completely though. The ley lines are all still there glowing in the dark.

5. Didn't really worry about the rest of the world. Focused on US, Canada and Mexico. Made some vague notes that Japan would be the home of 'Techno-Wizardry' but other than that I wasn't worried about other locations too much.

ShadowLogan · Unread post by **ShadowLogan** » Sat Jun 17, 2023 8:42 am

Killer Cyborg wrote:Most World Books would be Dimension Books.
New West, for example, would work better as a desert planet where Rifts Earth humans ended up getting sent to during The Coming Of The Rifts, than as something that happened on Rifts Earth.
Ditto Japan.

Rifts Earth should be the mostly-unpopulated post-apocalyptic land it was originally portrayed as.

I've had a similar idea in terms of why Erin Tarn's assessment differs so much from what was actually put there in the World Books that I never got around to working out the specifics, but the basic premise was that you could access each of those "dimensions" based on your travel vector (example fly above certain altitude when you enter the region and you could find yourself in Japan of the WB8, but come in by sea and it's closer to what Tarn's guide in RMB would be). Based loosely around the concept of Psycape and the City of Brass (IIRC), with a smattering of Fade Towns and similar "dimensional displaced" locations.

guardiandashi · Sat Jun 17, 2023 11:19 am

one of the issues I have that was indirectly mentioned by some others. is if you read the writeups in the books, towns are supposed to be RARE and HARD to travel between like days or weeks/months to go from chicago to a town 20-30 miles away. (or even 100 miles away) so lets use the example:
today, if you want to go from Des Moines, IA to Minneapolis Minnesota you go get on the interstate and its about 3.5 hours (244miles) in the books you are looking at spending weeks for the same trip.
but you have robot vehicles, tanks, hovercraft and or flying vehicles that can go 60-300+ mph which means if you can hop a flying vehicle (skycycle) you can do the trip in an hour or less

I get it its not as simple as today, but personally a big part of the issue is the writers really don't understand the difference between the old west/frontier days when something that could go 5mph for an extended period was FAST

drewkitty ~..~ · Sat Jun 17, 2023 4:21 pm

I would change it to meet the original description of what Chaos Earth was going to be.

Blackwater Sniper · Thu Jun 22, 2023 6:45 pm

In no particular order:

Education – All Coalition Citizens are required to attend a Montessori-Style schooling system for 1st-12th Grades, or until they age out at 16 years old. Those who show an aptitude for STEM classes are allowed to go further. The Coalition cannot exist without an educated population.

SDC/MDC – MDC is 10x SDC not 100, but MDC armor has an AR to allow smaller caliber weapons to bounce off no matter how much total damage is dealt.

Coalition’s Attitude – They are more pro-Coalition Citizen then anti-monster. They know the only way to rid Earth of all non-humans would be to eliminate the Ley Lines and Rifts; it’s more carrot than stick.

Sambot · Unread post by **Sambot** » Sat Jun 24, 2023 6:50 pm

I never saw the skulls and death motiff as being fascist. I saw it as their way of striking terror into their enemies. A "You want death? We'll give you death!" kind of thing.

My five things would be;

1) Less complete illiteracy and more control of information. People do need to be able to read warnings, and manuals to learn how to do things. Sure some things can be memorized but not everything. So maybe literacy at a grade school level but higher levels depend on rank and occupation. Having proscribed reading material will still get you into trouble though.

2) Limited and very risky access to space. Something like the CS sending troops to Russia and South America. It can happen but it's risky and there won't be a huge benefit until later. Maybe. Like a Glitterboy Boy exchange program between Free Quebec and Freedom Station.

3A) More info on the civilian side of things. Some areas have a basic Civilian OCC but Civilians should be everywhere. Not only that but last I heard the CS was stretched tight. What are the quotas for farmers and factory workers? What kind of recruitment does the CS have for non military work?

3B) Change the non frontline side of the military. While the military does make use of independent contractors and non military employees they were a lot of military personnel doing the same jobs. I'd include all those and have a way to differentiate from military personnel and civilians doing the same jobs. Like reducing bonuses and adding skills for basic training for military personnel.

4) More lower tech. The emphasis in Rifts has drifted towards more massive wars against bigger opponents. Which is fine but if all the bad guys were massive MDC monsters there wouldn't be any small towns. Just a few really big cities. There needs to be more low tech and SDC threats as not every town is as advanced as Chi-town. As is there's still large distances between places and not every bandit or bad guy can afford the latest Black Market equipment. We need more companies like Chipwell. We also need companies making new items out of salvaged material.

5) RCCs can select OCCs if they have someone to train them. The selection may be limited by their form and stats. Default RCC skills/OCCs should be when they're trained within their community.

6) Not so much a change to the setting, more of an in Rifts conversion book which I think we could use now. It would have various generic OCCs with notes so they can be used in each of the various settings on Rifts Earth or in space. Like a Farmer OCC with modifications for CS, Japan and Russia. I'd also list which OCCs can be found where and what modifications they'd need. Beyond just language and literacy. Lots of books do do this but I'd make it more detailed.
I'd also have a list of COSs and MOSs and skills that can be applied to existing OCCs. This way existing OCCs can be easily updated/expanded. Like allowing the CS Technical Officer to take the Damage Control or Motorpool Mechanic MOS from Shadow Chronicles.

Dustin Fireblade · Sun Jun 25, 2023 11:03 am

Amazing how many people change the CS, and seem to consistently make the same changes

Killer Cyborg · Mon Jun 26, 2023 10:51 am

Aermas wrote:Doesn't making all world books dimensional books kinda just make RIFTS Earth just another Phaseworld?

Not that I know of.

Besides, I would still want to know what's happening in all the various places on RIFTS Earth

What SHOULD be happening on most places in Rifts Earth is "Nothing much; there was an APOCALYPSE, so everybody's dead except for some wildlife (native, DB, and/or supernatural)."

The desolation of the original setting was one of the appeals.

Killer Cyborg · Mon Jun 26, 2023 10:56 am

glitterboy2098 wrote:as far as the CS and skull imagery goes, Fascists actually do love their skulls.. especially ones from the european derived fascist ideologies, who tend to have a love of the Totemkopf that borders on the pathological. the CS takes it a degree further than IRL examples, but honestly not by a lot. the CS probably ascribes to the same line of thought as Himmler did, when he directed the nazi propaganda efforts to promote the idea that "The Skull is the reminder that you shall always be willing to put your self at stake for the life of the whole community". thus skull markings, either alone or as part of a skull and crossbones, were fairly common in the nazi military, and many of their elite units used skulls for unit insignias, and in a few cases their literal unit names. and the CS is directly basing their fascism off Nazi germany.

so claiming that the CS would not use them because they are fascist shows a rather limited knowledge of both history and the nature of fascism.

Yeah, I just go with the skulls, and maybe some propaganda about how the skulls "terrify our enemies" and also "represent an understanding of our own mortality," the latter especially among soldiers--aka Dead Boys--who are hyped into being willing or eager to die for the glory of the Coalition States.

Nazis and other real-world groups have used skulls.
Heck, many modern cops are running around with skulls in the form of the Punisher logo, and it's not because they see themselves as The Bad Guys.

Orin J. · Unread post by **Orin J.** » Mon Jun 26, 2023 4:23 pm

-get rid of alien intelligences
-make a build-a-town system that made it clear how the large, advanced nations are like that because they've hoarded all the production and refining tech, often at gunpoint and lets GMs handle entire campaigns without having to focus them around a major capital
-some more modern sundries and their prices to better establish how much "a cred" will get you overall
-pare down the amount of stuff the CS has (looking mostly at their huge glut of counter-magic stuff, but they could do with scaling back across the board)
-have erin tarn explode when she lands in england, no explanation. :clown:

i'm less interested in detailing the grand events in the rifts setting and more focused on giving GMs an easier time of things.

Jefffar · Unread post by **Jefffar** » Tue Jun 27, 2023 7:36 am

Walk back the timeline a few years.

Tolkien still stands.
The CS predominantly uses it's old style gear, only elite units use the newer stuff.
The 4 Horsemen still stalk Africa (and beyond).

Make the wilderness truly dangerous, but not mega damage dangerous as mega damage outside of major military forces should be rare.

(SHIFTY) · Unread post by **(SHIFTY)** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 1:15 pm

I would of liked to not have Rifts Japan about Ninjas and Samurai etc. I would of loved it to be more about the High Tech Cities, Bionics and Cybernetics. Just never liked the Ninja and Samurai OCCs in the book.

Killer Cyborg · Sun Jul 02, 2023 11:24 am

(SHIFTY) wrote:I would of liked to not have Rifts Japan about Ninjas and Samurai etc. I would of loved it to be more about the High Tech Cities, Bionics and Cybernetics. Just never liked the Ninja and Samurai OCCs in the book.

Same.

Although the only use I ever found for the book was to use the Ninja stuff to update The Foot Clan for the Rifts setting in North America.
:-D

But overall I found the Japan book insulting on multiple levels, one of them being the reduction of Japan to the 1990s stereotypes of the region.
It's a recurring problem in Rifts overall, pretty much from England on:
-England must have KNIGHTS and KING ARTHUR because ENGLAND!
-New West must have COWBOYS and INDIANS because WEST!!
-Japan must have NINJAS and SAMURAI because Japan!
-Russia must have BABA YAGA because Russia!
-Australia must have MAD MAX and DREAMTIME and KANGAROOS because Australia!!
-The Amazon must have AMAZONS because Amazon!!

Right on down the list; they took whatever modern vague first-impression stereotype popped into mind for a region, and Riftified it, and that's SO much more boring than stuff like looking at Florida and thinking "Dinosaurs!" or looking at Mexico and thinking "Vampires!"

In a post-apocalyptic world where anything could pop out of any dimension, it's pretty lame that so many places in Rifts are just "modern stereotypes of that place, plus mega-damage and/or magic."

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Sun Jul 02, 2023 2:37 pm

Killer Cyborg wrote:
(SHIFTY) wrote:I would of liked to not have Rifts Japan about Ninjas and Samurai etc. I would of loved it to be more about the High Tech Cities, Bionics and Cybernetics. Just never liked the Ninja and Samurai OCCs in the book.

But overall I found the Japan book insulting on multiple levels, one of them being the reduction of Japan to the 1990s stereotypes of the region.
It's a recurring problem in Rifts overall, pretty much from England on:

This!
However, some of the stereotypes stem from adapting to the environment. I get that a desert setting is going to have a certain flavor. Yet, it is when those stereotypes stem from cultural sources that the lack of imagination shows. Local myths can come to life, but the overarching "theme" of the setting doesn't have to be dependent on the myths.

Ideas for reimagining some of the books/settings:

Australia

Spoiler:

The Amazon

Spoiler:

England

Spoiler:

Japan

Spoiler:

China

Spoiler:

Wise_Owl · Unread post by **Wise_Owl** » Sun Jul 02, 2023 3:34 pm

Well this crops up ever few years... some of my answers here have been consistent since the 90's, some have changed over time but;

1) Define a consistent Tech Paradigm. They sort of had this initially; Atlantis and Triax were up here, the Coaltiion was behind them both by a hefty margin, then everybody else was a step down or more from the Coalition. I consider CWC to be the sort of biggest 'sinner' here, though we've all had discussions of power creep and so forth. You don't have to stick to it 100% obviously but...

2)Add more world building elements to make Coalition Apologia harder. Like realisitically the Coalition should be xperiencing continued internal protest they have to violently put down, mass starvation, anti-psychic pogroms they can't control, etc. I realize people are going to romanticize whatever they want to romanticize but I do feel the "CS is Cool!' element gets played up too much and while never vering straight into Fascistic apologia it gets way too close. Like the whole 'they are the savoirs of humanity!' things is, ,even within the canon, BS, the actual consequences of a totalitarian regime governed in the self-interest of one family should be made more apparent.

3)Better Global developement, especially of area's like Africa, Central Asia, the MIddle East, etc. Some World books have generated really solid and interesting idea's; A Mexico overrun with actual kindgoms of Vampires, Atlantis obviously, Russia, Undersea, elements of South America, etc. But the books do suffer from a very 'early 90's American Mid-West' world-view. Like pre-rifts had restored some kind of late 80's action movie 'status quo' to the world. WE've had more than a few threads about how Africa was given massive diservice, especially given the size and diversity of the continent, and their have never been world-books for India, the Middle East, SOuth-East Asia, ,etc. Like major, major parts of our world. I enjoyed the 'travellouge' style of the early world-books for RIfts, frankly the endless treading back in NA was something that got me not buying rifts book anymore.

4)Rifts is the Heavy-Metal Van of RPG's, and that needs to be leaned into and recognized. This is not a world befit with self-consistency. Attempts to do so will always break down and to that end I think leaning into the themes which can be over the top but still exist in an internally consistant way make sense; The Coalition are Skull-headed Fascists spouting a disgustingly hypo-critical rhetoric. Atlantis is a monstrous Amazon-com run by a multi-dimensional smooth talking god-entity whose in games the PC's can't even percieve let alone participate in. Demons roam the spaces between settlements and a single hero with the right weapon/spell/cyber-remote-control-cat could be all a small community can count on to save them from destruction.

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Mon Jul 03, 2023 2:15 am

Preempting this with; this is just my opinion, & it may not be the best opinion.
Personally I don't mind the ninjas & samurai too, much. Mostly cause I love the idea of cyberninjas, also, there are still plenty of media with ninjas & such still being made. Its part of the zeitgeist, & i dont see it as terrible. Heck, my own personal thoughts on Japan would be to add in Sentai teams. I think it would be cool to have Kamen Riders or Sentai warriors that are sort of Japan's take on cyber knights, but with hovercycles or a Robot Vehicle!

What I really don't like is England. I can't speak for them but do the English really care about King Arthur? I would make the land of England fallen to supernatural forces & so they took to living in floating cities with the RAF being a big thing. Lots of focus on flight & planes. I'd keep the Millennium Tree & new druids, but I'd have them fighting against Supernatural stuff as well as the flying fortress cities

guardiandashi · Wed Jul 05, 2023 1:04 am

i'm not completely opposed to some of the steriotype tropes from the various settings, but I wonder if it might be better if it were less blatant and included more "realistic" considerations for the biggest sin IMO which has to do with travel.

essentially it comes down to haves and have nots.

if you are a botom tier traveler, IE traveling on "shankes Mare" IE walking, its VERY problematic, and dangerous to travel between towns in a lot of ways its like reverting to the old west and or medeval travel. If you are using animal steeds it is essentially the same.

if you have vehicles, motor/hover cycles cars and trucks, or APC's robot vehicles etc. its a cross between modern travel, and cross country /exploration but instead of taking days/weeks to get places you are looking at hours/days so everything is effectively a lot closer

when you have rocket /sky cycles, samas aircraft, skyboards and the like most places are minutes to hours away, effectively the world is a lot smaller again.

with that in mind another huge change I would do is scale back the coalition a lot and make a lot of their "strength" "book strength" and have them massively overextended.
sure they CAN create millions of dog boys, for example, but they can't equip them because they don't have the resources.

the origonal dead boy and equivalant gear is commonly available because of 2 reasons, 1 they found warehouses of stuff that they could remake into the old gear, and decades of manufacturing. the new stuff is limited availability mostly because it was prototype stuff in 105 PA and by 108 PA they had basically switched all new production to the new gear, but they can only produce a trickle of it, because their stockpiles of raw material are mostly depleted, and they are using up resources faster than they can produce them.

some of the settings like the new west, is partially a "cowboys and indians" setting because of 2 things. 1 is some of it is a frontier mentality, the other aspect is a lot of people in the region found/read stories about the old west and embraced the tropes wholesale

slade the sniper · Thu Jul 06, 2023 3:12 am

I change Rifts causal event to the Rain of Death from Robotech. Basically I just add the REF to Chaos Earth, or add monsters and Rifts to Robotech.

The REF still leaves, the Southern Cross still defends Earth, but now there are monsters and magic instead of just the Robotech Masters.

The Invid still come and part of the reason they just build hives and only want the Flower of Life is that there are bunch of monsters on Earth.

The Coalition States are basically the same as they are in the core book, except they also really hate the REF/RDF/ASC since they believe that they failed in their mission to protect Earth (and they did, so it is justified at least). Mutants in Orbit is fairly close to what is already written, except for the presence of the REF is added. The REF makes the decision to just quarantine Earth and declare themselves the rightful leaders of humanity and continue on with their space-forward policies, massive cloning programs and emigration fleets. Only the highest ranks of the Coalition, Triax, Mindwerks, etc. remember the REF and the space based humanity that abandoned them, but other than perhaps a thousand people around the world, no one remembers anymore. Their knowledge is useless, since even though the Rifts allow unimaginable travel across space/time, the Rifts still can't get people off Earth to one of the colonies.

This situation isn't that uncommon as some of the Sentinels' races have had similar issues where their home planets were effectively destroyed (Peryton, specifically). The Haydonites are inserted as another race in the three galaxies who really hate the Splugorth, and the Neutron S missiles were intended to hit them.

Curbludgeon · Unread post by **Curbludgeon** » Thu Jul 06, 2023 5:13 am

Clumsily-quoted notes about Rifts Orbit, jammed together from a couple of posts three-something years ago. I'm sorry.

(P)re-Cataclysm Earth had less than 75 years of large-scale space industry

I for one think there's some value in the limping along nature of the MiO setting, but would see it subverted in Rifts. If I were to develop a game for Rifts Space, the stations would be entirely beholden to technowizardry, yet not recognize it as such. Here's some rough notes:

Tech:Left to their own devices, the LaGrange point stations would have suffered systemwide failures within 18 months folowing the Cataclysm, with lunar colonization scraping by for perhaps a generation before following suit. With the Earth appearing entirely overtaken by a supernatural infestation, as described here

(have suggested Rifts Earth be astride dimensions in a manner similar to the Yucatan. In games I've played the maximum safe altitude is often under 5000 feet, so as to foster both separation between regions and the use of hover vehicles and power armor over jet engines. Above that altitude these games took a hint from WWII RAF pilots and introduced various intangible "gremlins". The swirling morass of entities that malinger from the upper edges of the peplosphere to the Kármán line, while invisible from below are clearly visible from space, somehow refracting the light of ley lines. The reason the Orbital Community dare not return to Earth's surface is all they could see is a nearly 100km thick flickering blue maelstrom filled with distorted corpse-like apparitions. Similarly, all human operators could detect when directing satellite receivers towards the surface is a susurrus of murmuring punctuated with screams. This being a psuedo-psychic effect, it didn't affect fully computerized systems such as ARCHIE's satellite usage. Additionally, this effect would not effect transmissions from orbit to the surface, should anyone have bothered to send any out.)
there was no opportunity for reupping of supplies, nor the facilities for fully refining raw materials found in space. While many fell to despair a group of maniacally optimistic engineers refused to accept the reality of the situation so vociferously that their makeshift repairs miraculously worked.

Centuries later, this near obsession on perseverance is predicated on a long-standing heritage of orbital exceptionalism. The notion that a given solution will work because it has to is less a matter of necessity-driven innovation but an assertion of will. The engineering of Rifts Space, while building upon Golden Age understanding has lagged behind that of Triax, simply due to a dearth of human and material resources. Just don't let them hear you say that.

The Astrorigger(place-holder name) is a cross between a Technowizard/Gizmoteer and a Nega-psychic. They do not perceive what they create as being supernatural, and if it registers as such to traditional psionics/magic it is only barely. They are unable to cast spells outside of items. The spellist mainly draws from the utilitarian aspects of Space Magic, Incantation, and Biomancy. The OCC arguably could take a page from BtS, and have a smaller PPE/ISP pool which is multiplied during moments of stress.

AR items can usually work on their own without being activated, at some lesser effectiveness, and don't involve obvious magical elements like crystals. The items' activation costs are lower than they would be for traditional Technowizardry, and almost everyone in space has a larger-than-normal PPE pool with which they may use them. While some degree of cybernetics/bionics does not reduce the average tspacer's PPE/ISP pool solely in relation to activating AR items, and almost all spacers have medical implants to largely compensate for life outside a gravity well, P/FC Cyborgs do lose their personal PPE. This is compensated for by the creation of Talismans made from keepsakes important to the individual Borg, unknowingly recharged via long-established Humanity Reaffirmation routines.

Mars:I want to encourage a sword and planet style game here, where there's been 3 generations or so of explorers empowered by dead indigenous Martians, and after initial construction of the first habitats moves between the literary traditions of jungle adventure to weird fiction to Bronze Age comics, to be contrasted with the sorta-60's sci-fi feel of orbital space.

Nascent Martian terraforming efforts in the late 2080s were remarkably prescient, and designed for large-scale atmospheric alteration without further involvement from human agents. Following (whichever massive magnetosphere-protective public works sounds most possible) ammonia based nitrogen fixing allowed the cyanobacterial vats to keep churning out oxygen just as fast as polar ice was sublimated. By 2200 long-dormant lichens were introduced via automated rover, followed 50 years later by various grasses. By 2300 there was enough atmosphere at a high enough temperature that the first humans to land on Mars didn't require a hermetically sealed suit, and could make do with warm clothing and a gas mask.

Upon human contact with the modified lichen established on Mars a psychic connection was established with the long dead remnants of the Ancient Martian civilization, whom had lodged some aspects of their consciousness below the ice caps.

Politics and otherI don't have a big problem with the different groups as described in MiO. I think depicting Russians as Soviets is kinda lazy, but I'm ok with space communism. I'd probably get rid of most of the overt superpower options for the orbitals like Energy Expulsion, but leave sensory stuff and things that could arguably be genetic engineering. Modified animal-people are ok, but I don't think the setting needs to be furry-focused. On Mars there should be more power options available.

Killer Cyborg · Fri Jul 07, 2023 1:05 pm

slade the sniper wrote:I change Rifts causal event to the Rain of Death from Robotech. Basically I just add the REF to Chaos Earth, or add monsters and Rifts to Robotech.

The REF still leaves, the Southern Cross still defends Earth, but now there are monsters and magic instead of just the Robotech Masters.

The Invid still come and part of the reason they just build hives and only want the Flower of Life is that there are bunch of monsters on Earth.

The Coalition States are basically the same as they are in the core book, except they also really hate the REF/RDF/ASC since they believe that they failed in their mission to protect Earth (and they did, so it is justified at least). Mutants in Orbit is fairly close to what is already written, except for the presence of the REF is added. The REF makes the decision to just quarantine Earth and declare themselves the rightful leaders of humanity and continue on with their space-forward policies, massive cloning programs and emigration fleets. Only the highest ranks of the Coalition, Triax, Mindwerks, etc. remember the REF and the space based humanity that abandoned them, but other than perhaps a thousand people around the world, no one remembers anymore. Their knowledge is useless, since even though the Rifts allow unimaginable travel across space/time, the Rifts still can't get people off Earth to one of the colonies.

This situation isn't that uncommon as some of the Sentinels' races have had similar issues where their home planets were effectively destroyed (Peryton, specifically). The Haydonites are inserted as another race in the three galaxies who really hate the Splugorth, and the Neutron S missiles were intended to hit them.

Did you keep the rule that the Flower of Life can't grow within edit: [100 miles] of a ley line?

Killer Cyborg · Fri Jul 07, 2023 1:16 pm

Wise_Owl wrote:Well this crops up ever few years... some of my answers here have been consistent since the 90's, some have changed over time but;

1) Define a consistent Tech Paradigm. They sort of had this initially; Atlantis and Triax were up here, the Coaltiion was behind them both by a hefty margin, then everybody else was a step down or more from the Coalition. I consider CWC to be the sort of biggest 'sinner' here, though we've all had discussions of power creep and so forth. You don't have to stick to it 100% obviously but...

The CS is a weird situation, because they were originally described as THE best human tech in North America, but their gear often paled compared to what Wilk's and other companies sold.
Then power creep made the gap even worse, so CWC brought the CS up to speed a bit, but also cause more power creep because people want the CS to be loot pinatas instead of a deadly threat to their characters.

2)Add more world building elements to make Coalition Apologia harder. Like realisitically the Coalition should be xperiencing continued internal protest they have to violently put down, mass starvation, anti-psychic pogroms they can't control, etc. I realize people are going to romanticize whatever they want to romanticize but I do feel the "CS is Cool!' element gets played up too much and while never vering straight into Fascistic apologia it gets way too close. Like the whole 'they are the savoirs of humanity!' things is, ,even within the canon, BS, the actual consequences of a totalitarian regime governed in the self-interest of one family should be made more apparent.

Hm.
I don't think the CS would be regularly experiencing a lot of trouble with protests and such; their propaganda is too good, they've got too much of a cult-like hold on the population, and they actually DO tend to avoid killing humans.
But I do agree that the fact they're horrible should be played up more.
Instead of riots, I'd have examples of CS citizens obviously working against their own best interests in the name of patriotism. They live in squalor and desperation, and they're heavily oppressed, BUT they lick the boots that trod on them, and blame all their misery on Magic and D-Bees and such.

Resistance would, in my mind, be rather low and isolated, mostly consisting of individuals asking Too Many Questions and getting assigned to Reorientation Camps and whatnot.

3)Better Global developement, especially of area's like Africa, Central Asia, the MIddle East, etc. Some World books have generated really solid and interesting idea's; A Mexico overrun with actual kindgoms of Vampires, Atlantis obviously, Russia, Undersea, elements of South America, etc. But the books do suffer from a very 'early 90's American Mid-West' world-view. Like pre-rifts had restored some kind of late 80's action movie 'status quo' to the world. WE've had more than a few threads about how Africa was given massive diservice, especially given the size and diversity of the continent, and their have never been world-books for India, the Middle East, SOuth-East Asia, ,etc. Like major, major parts of our world. I enjoyed the 'travellouge' style of the early world-books for RIfts, frankly the endless treading back in NA was something that got me not buying rifts book anymore.

Yeah, one of my gripes about books like Rifts Japan is that the RMB set up an entire world to explore, and Japan was NOT in it. Japan had been effectively destroyed by the apocalypse.
But Japan got an entire book, when stuff like The Republicans, Shaedo, The Gateway Arch, Chi-Town, Madhaven, and a zillion other places did NOT.
It was like, "Hey... we told you about these cool places you want to know more about, and instead here's a book on the place we told you was unpopulated!

4)Rifts is the Heavy-Metal Van of RPG's, and that needs to be leaned into and recognized. This is not a world befit with self-consistency. Attempts to do so will always break down and to that end I think leaning into the themes which can be over the top but still exist in an internally consistant way make sense; The Coalition are Skull-headed Fascists spouting a disgustingly hypo-critical rhetoric. Atlantis is a monstrous Amazon-com run by a multi-dimensional smooth talking god-entity whose in games the PC's can't even percieve let alone participate in. Demons roam the spaces between settlements and a single hero with the right weapon/spell/cyber-remote-control-cat could be all a small community can count on to save them from destruction.

I can see that take.
:ok:

Killer Cyborg · Fri Jul 07, 2023 1:25 pm

Aermas wrote:Preempting this with; this is just my opinion, & it may not be the best opinion.
Personally I don't mind the ninjas & samurai too, much. Mostly cause I love the idea of cyberninjas, also, there are still plenty of media with ninjas & such still being made. Its part of the zeitgeist, & i dont see it as terrible. Heck, my own personal thoughts on Japan would be to add in Sentai teams. I think it would be cool to have Kamen Riders or Sentai warriors that are sort of Japan's take on cyber knights, but with hovercycles or a Robot Vehicle!

Part of the issues for ME personally is that while Cyber-Ninjas are pretty cool, Rfits came out in 1990 when the world was saturated with Cyber-Ninjas, and when America had some kind of Small Man syndrome about Japan. We'd spend the 1980s expecting Japan to dominate the globe economically, so every sci-fi setting even remotely cyberpunk had Nu-Yen in some form as currency, and Japan was better than the US at everything.

Robocop III epitomizes things for me (even though it came out in 1993):
The BEST US cybernetic technology is Robocop, a VCR-sounding Frankensteinian creation that's tough as heck, but CLUNKY, and he's so advanced we can't even reproduce him.
Meanwhile, Japan has cyber-ninjas that look pretty much human, are fast as hell, seem to be able to think like normal people instead of robots, and are still super-strong and super-tough compared to regular humans.

I was SICK of Cyber-Ninjas by the time Rifts came out, so reading that Japan was simply not a factor in this new world seemed like the perfect thing!
Japan wasn't superior.
Japan wasn't inferior.
Japan simply... wasn't.

I loved it!

If I wanted a cyber-ninja fix, I could play Cyberpunk 2020 or any number of other games/settings. Hell, I could play Ninjas & Superspies.
Rifts stood out as unique!

Then Rifts Japan came out and what did we get?
Cyber-Ninjas and Cyber-Samurai with better tech than North America, mystic ninjas with better TW gear (at least in many ways) than NA, and Ninja Crazies who are better than American Crazies.
Sigh.
:cry:

slade the sniper · Fri Jul 07, 2023 6:17 pm

Killer Cyborg wrote:Did you keep the rule that the Flower of Life can't grow within 1 mile of a ley line?

Ironically, protoculture plants can grow on Rifts Earth, though not within 100 miles of a ley line,

Conversion Book, pg 35.

I did keep that to explain why the Invid are on Earth, and very violent, but not as endemic as they "should be."

They have very specific areas that they have claimed as their own (rather like the Xiticix) and people don't mess with them, they don't mess with people... except for the rando slave colonies and genesis pit victims.

The Masters never really set up shop "on Earth" except where their ships landed, so they didn't really care too much about the monsters roaming around. Their motherships are powerful enough to not worry about most of the ground based monsters and the flying monsters probably are not numerous, fast and agile enough to threaten them. When the ships land/crash, they can hold out for a bit, but there are enough hungry monsters to wear them down eventually.

elecgraystone · Sun Jul 09, 2023 11:07 pm

Mainly, I'd toss out the ENTIRE Tolkien war as... well, I found it quite poor and the ending farcical to say the least [the number of logical inconsistencies is mindboggling IMO].

Minor issues would be removing high tech illiteracy. That and I'd update equipment to not be based a particular time period's pricing and abilities [no VRC's worth hundreds of computers with 256 MB of HD] but ranges [like outdated, poor, average, superior, cutting edge].

darthauthor · Unread post by **darthauthor** » Mon Jul 10, 2023 12:05 am

elecgraystone,

I like the idea of the Tolkeen War just not the way they did it.

I felt it was possible for the CS to win just not the way they did it.

The Xiticix encounter, I don't believe would have happened the way it did. The CS commander would not have done it or would have turned back. That or they would have died fighting the Xiticix.

IF the CS wins, it wins but using things like Nukes, germ/disease warfare, chemical weapons/gases. CS Assassins. CS Death Squads. CS terrorism (explosive devices).

Maybe, if I were to write it, the minion war would spill in and end it.

I also believe that certain groups of people in the Federation of Magic would take the opportunity to strike against the CS while they were busy and distracted. I suspect it would be less, for them, about helping Tolkeen and more about helping themselves and taking revenge against the CS while their back is turned (figurative speaking). Raid the supply lines and take take take. Destroy skelbots. Destroy CS tech.

I really feel the CS would not start a second war while they are fight Free Quebec.

I felt the war between Free Quebec and Chi-Town was over too easily. Tolkeen would not get involved. They would attack Chi-Town or the Xiticix or sheppard D-Bees and those with magic (etc.) to Tolkeen and its satellite towns/cities.

High Tech wins the battle.
High Magic wins the war.
Magic and sup

Wise_Owl · Unread post by **Wise_Owl** » Mon Jul 10, 2023 9:09 am

Killer Cyborg wrote:
Wise_Owl wrote:Well this crops up ever few years... some of my answers here have been consistent since the 90's, some have changed over time but;

1) Define a consistent Tech Paradigm. They sort of had this initially; Atlantis and Triax were up here, the Coaltiion was behind them both by a hefty margin, then everybody else was a step down or more from the Coalition. I consider CWC to be the sort of biggest 'sinner' here, though we've all had discussions of power creep and so forth. You don't have to stick to it 100% obviously but...

The CS is a weird situation, because they were originally described as THE best human tech in North America, but their gear often paled compared to what Wilk's and other companies sold.
Then power creep made the gap even worse, so CWC brought the CS up to speed a bit, but also cause more power creep because people want the CS to be loot pinatas instead of a deadly threat to their characters.

I think the problem is multifold here, but partially comes down to stats being just slapped on things and a lack of internal consistency which is both 'charming' but infuriating. CWC is my least favourite of the RIfts books and the first world-book I was actually like 'this kind of sucks', though I've mellowed on it over time. I think the thing is Rifts defines 'tech' in a very specific way but than ats like tech is narrative rather than proscriptive. i.e. in a narrative system this wouldn't be a problem, but the 'traditional' system makes for a constant repeating disconnect between the rules and 'stats' and the fluff.

Hm.
I don't think the CS would be regularly experiencing a lot of trouble with protests and such; their propaganda is too good, they've got too much of a cult-like hold on the population, and they actually DO tend to avoid killing humans.
But I do agree that the fact they're horrible should be played up more.
Instead of riots, I'd have examples of CS citizens obviously working against their own best interests in the name of patriotism. They live in squalor and desperation, and they're heavily oppressed, BUT they lick the boots that trod on them, and blame all their misery on Magic and D-Bees and such.

Resistance would, in my mind, be rather low and isolated, mostly consisting of individuals asking Too Many Questions and getting assigned to Reorientation Camps and whatnot.

The problem is multi-layered here and again, I have competing impulses between 'realism' and my point 4 of 'ROCK ON!!!!'. In this case the resolution for me is to lean into the distorpia. Oh sure, the upper levels eat four-course meals served by servants in pressed uniforms and hardly ever see much more than an officer occasionally on their levels, save for the semi-regular parades, but the people on the lower levels are eating government mandated rice and corn-meal, subjected to both mandated and unmandated police brutality. etc.

If you were going to do it realistically, North Korea might be the best model; a country where mass starvation is normalized and people are routinely put into concentration camps for little to no reason. The problem there-in is that makes the CS a terrible place to game in. That there is active resistance within the coalition seems part of the setting to me that is interesting.

A thing to remember on comparable levels though is that DPRK propoganda is near totalizing, and has it's effects, but is very easily distrupted(Again might be a solid model). People flee NK all the time, the same might be true with the Coalition, the Coalition just has an advantage in how it's land borders are arranged... and like the demons and stuff

.

3)Better Global developement, especially of area's like Africa, Central Asia, the MIddle East, etc. Some World books h
ave generated really solid and interesting idea's; A Mexico overrun with actual kindgoms of Vampires, Atlantis obviously, Russia, Undersea, elements of South America, etc. But the books do suffer from a very 'early 90's American Mid-West' world-view. Like pre-rifts had restored some kind of late 80's action movie 'status quo' to the world. WE've had more than a few threads about how Africa was given massive diservice, especially given the size and diversity of the continent, and their have never been world-books for India, the Middle East, SOuth-East Asia, ,etc. Like major, major parts of our world. I enjoyed the 'travellouge' style of the early world-books for RIfts, frankly the endless treading back in NA was something that got me not buying rifts book anymore.

Yeah, one of my gripes about books like Rifts Japan is that the RMB set up an entire world to explore, and Japan was NOT in it. Japan had been effectively destroyed by the apocalypse.
But Japan got an entire book, when stuff like The Republicans, Shaedo, The Gateway Arch, Chi-Town, Madhaven, and a zillion other places did NOT.
It was like, "Hey... we told you about these cool places you want to know more about, and instead here's a book on the place we told you was unpopulated!

INteresting, I had the exact opposite experience honestly. Which is probably just a different strokes/folkes sort of thing. My big critique of Japan was that it was so isolated and so long until they produced anything near it. It did really read like an extension of the late 80's/eary 90's japanese fetishism. I had a similar reaction to you to the West Books. Really liked Lonestar, but Spirit west and New West left me kind of cold. Even at the time I questioned the portrayel of the various Indian' groups, and I think resurgent natives could absolutely be a trope to run with, it wasn't given the care it needed and the combined with 'Well we want cowboys!' thing.

For me the big thing was that the early travelouge books, some were good, some were bad, some were middling, but it felt like a slow fleshing out of the world and then it just kind of stopped. It stopped witht he majority of the planet undescribed, with Japan this little island out in the Pacific with nowhere around it and no connections and Africa was a kind of force, but like India, China, Mesopotamia. I get the 'whys', basically worldbook sgot written on the basis of what people were interested in, or what Kevin had conceived and he had solid idea's for England, Europe, Atlantis, Mexico... other stuff got done as other people submitted stuff he accepted, but like, India is a huge sub-continent filled with history and mythology and is one of the worlds Great Powers at this stage with a rising technological class and historically a trade mecha between East Asia, Africa and the Europe.

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Tue Jul 11, 2023 2:13 am

Wise_Owl wrote:For me the big thing was that the early travelouge books, some were good, some were bad, some were middling, but it felt like a slow fleshing out of the world and then it just kind of stopped. It stopped witht he majority of the planet undescribed, with Japan this little island out in the Pacific with nowhere around it and no connections and Africa was a kind of force, but like India, China, Mesopotamia. I get the 'whys', basically worldbook sgot written on the basis of what people were interested in, or what Kevin had conceived and he had solid idea's for England, Europe, Atlantis, Mexico... other stuff got done as other people submitted stuff he accepted, but like, India is a huge sub-continent filled with history and mythology and is one of the worlds Great Powers at this stage with a rising technological class and historically a trade mecha between East Asia, Africa and the Europe.

I never really understood this mentality. Just because someone might view a place as "culturally rich" (this is actually a pretty problematic touristy entitlement thing, every single place in the world is pretty much equally rich in culture if you put a lense on it) or geographically, or economically, or socially, etc, important, that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. Especially in a world like RIFTS. India might be neck deep in chaotic magic which makes it a huge no fly/travel zone. Like the Sahara in Africa, or the vast northernwilderness of Canada, modern viewpoints treat them as a monolith of uninteresting land because most people avoid it because it's hazardous, but not in an interesting way either. There have been many jewels of civilization through history, everything changes. Babylon is no longer on the map. Neither is Sumer. England had its day, & it passed. Troy was a wonderful place, but no one even lives there anymore. Even the setting's own Atlantis changed hands & most True Atlanteans don't care.

Fact of the matter is that RIFTS was made by an American in Michigan & that's why most of the interesting stuff happens there, its unjust & unreasonable to demand for him to write at length about foreign countries. I don't see that as a problem. If the creators & writers of the setting can't think of something interesting to do in an area it's better to leave it blank than to make some kind of half *ssed attempt to fill in the map. I mean, that's probably WHY England is just Camelot 2.0, & the west is just cowboys. I know I don't know anything more interesting to put there.

slade the sniper · Tue Jul 11, 2023 11:23 am

The CS is evil and horrible and treats 99% of humans like trash (the 1% lives very safe, very nice lives).... the "problem" is that outside the CS everything treats humans like food.

If you are lucky enough to find a rando town of nice humans and d-bees that get along and everything is great... eventually... in a year or five, something will come along and destroy it. Monsters, evil humans, evil DB's, the Coalition, diseases, natural disasters, something...

So the choice is very simply live a hardscrabble life in the CS where there is a .0001% of making into the good life in the top levels of city (or within a generation or two of total dedication to the state starting with a hitch in the military [or being a snitch for the police])
OR
live a life of about 30 years running for your literal life every few years to not be killed just because
OR
give up on your humanity and become a cyborg, juicer, crazy, or absolutely evil as a junior bootlicker in some gang of monsters ("human" or otherwise).

When given those options, a lot of people will take abusive "safety" instead of a very unsafe short life of low tech scavenging and running away.

-STS

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Wed Jul 12, 2023 9:16 am

A large part of the core setting is the tech paradigm, as mentioned before. There was the struggle with computing stats being laughably out of date with real life, but the books addressed this. The setting can be forgiven for being written initially over 30 years ago when many scientific advances hadn't been commercialized yet and required a smidgen of research or foresight; however, there are a couple other things that are fundamental to the flavor of Rifts that I'd change:

"Nuclear"
The need for a power source that is compact, has abundant energy, and does not require refueling while wandering the wastelands is key to minimize the burden of accounting during gameplay. However, it makes no sense that there is so much refined fissionable material in use. I'd state from the outset that the Golden Age had developed a replicable exotic energy source (cold fusion, nano black holes, graphene nanoribbons, Green-E, etc.). This would allow for a lot of handwavium rather than getting hung up on a well known technology that doesn't scale well.

"Hover"
This seems to be an umbrella term for a series of ways the laws of physics are broken in Rifts to achieve a coolness factor. With anti-gravity not a thing on Rifts Earth (and for a setting with extreme high tech, why not?), that leaves a limited number of mechanical means for propulsion. A nuclear-powered micro-hover system in a 5lb sphere 6 inches in diameter that is silent is excellent fiction, but just bad science. Instead, I'd lean into using the known tech at the time of writing RMB, but in a way that is scaled up through the magic of Golden Age science. For example, hovercraft (SAMAS included) using ionized air thrusters that are jacked up to support the load of lightly armored fiberglass vehicles, not multi-ton weapons platforms. This would also limit altitudes of power armor and one- or two-person craft to tens or hundreds of feet, instead of thousands, on the precept that only so much air can be pushed through the thrusters. Lower altitudes would also mean leaving a trail of scorch marks from super heated air (justifying ride armor) and scattered debris from the exhaust. Mini-drones would be what we see today, which is an updated version of the RC vehicles they had when Rifts was written, with perhaps advantages from miniaturization we haven't anticipated yet.

Mini, Micro & Nanorobotics
Both had been theorized for decades by the time Rifts came out. While development of nanobots only started to really take off in the 90s, minibots and microbots were realizable at least a decade earlier. I chalk the misuse of the term "nano" to an abundance of enthusiasm for the term when describing the medical devices and such that make reference to nanobots. Either make the robots actual nanobots or rename them. While nanites seem a bit too advanced for Rifts Earth's setting, I'd opt to heavily lean into the use of minibots and microbots a lot more in the name of science fiction... ubiquitous spying/tracking devices, unlocking doors, projecting micro force fields, firing micro lasers, environmental reclamation/garbage disposal, engine maintenance, reconfiguring surfaces and moving objects, etc. as constant autonomous labor individually or as part of a larger swarm of units. This would allow a gestalt-like augmentation for Rifts, like a non-bio oriented cybernetic tech, that can control various types of microbots. If bio-comps were actually a network of minibots in/on the body rather than inert implanted chips, then when a Juicer runs low on their cocktail, that withdrawal feeling of something crawling across their skin may not be imagined - it may be the minibots trying to compensate.

Biology of DBees and Implants
Sci-fi and fantasy has been accused for a long time of simply slapping putty on a human and calling them a different species. In Rifts, that is often the case when it comes to cyber and bionics. What are the chances that a sub-demon brodkil has a nervous system that works in a similar way to humans, orcs, space minotaurs, etc. such that implants work? Even if one were to assume that implants can't be directly transferred between species, the concept of a device that connects to nerves, organs, or even to the brain itself presupposes the same biological macro constructs of the human body. This would mean there is more shared biologically between a human and a brodkil than a human and an octopus. ST:TNG at least proposed that many humanoid species stemmed from a common genetic source, but that is not a conceit in Rifts, nor would it be viable given the megaversal scale and supernatural aspect of the setting. Instead, the approach to limiting juicer technology to specific species makes a lot more sense. A similar approach should be taken with implants, or at least the tech could be qualified as requiring species-specific components/materials.

Killer Cyborg · Fri Jul 14, 2023 1:32 am

Wise_Owl wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:Hm.
I don't think the CS would be regularly experiencing a lot of trouble with protests and such; their propaganda is too good, they've got too much of a cult-like hold on the population, and they actually DO tend to avoid killing humans.
But I do agree that the fact they're horrible should be played up more.
Instead of riots, I'd have examples of CS citizens obviously working against their own best interests in the name of patriotism. They live in squalor and desperation, and they're heavily oppressed, BUT they lick the boots that trod on them, and blame all their misery on Magic and D-Bees and such.

Resistance would, in my mind, be rather low and isolated, mostly consisting of individuals asking Too Many Questions and getting assigned to Reorientation Camps and whatnot.

The problem is multi-layered here and again, I have competing impulses between 'realism' and my point 4 of 'ROCK ON!!!!'. In this case the resolution for me is to lean into the distorpia. Oh sure, the upper levels eat four-course meals served by servants in pressed uniforms and hardly ever see much more than an officer occasionally on their levels, save for the semi-regular parades, but the people on the lower levels are eating government mandated rice and corn-meal, subjected to both mandated and unmandated police brutality. etc.

I certainly agree that the Upper Levels would have a different view of the CS than the oppressed Lower Levels, but--without getting into real-world politics--I find it entirely plausible that masses of people could be oppressed, but still have utter faith in their leaders and put everything at the feet of The Bad Guys.

But I also like that some things are actually pretty darned good in the CS, like food and healthcare.
Part of the appeal of the whole setting of Rifts North America has always been that normal humans are caught up in a clash between Demons (and creatures as bad as) and what are basically Nazis, with the Nazis arguably offering a better chance at survival.
It'll cost your soul to join either side, but if you don't pick a team you'll probably get smashed in the middle.
It's pretty bleak in many ways, and I find it philosophically fascinating.

Granted, places like Lazlo are pretty decent in many ways too, for normal humans, but they'll likely be outmatched by the magic and monsters that run the city, so there'd be downsides as well. Lots of labor replaced by magic, countless strangers who could crush you like a bug--and who might actually do it.

This changed over time as more books added more places that had more advantages without the disadvantages.
It went from "Nazis, Demons, or Somebody Caught In Between" to "Nazis, Demons, Someone caught in-between, or Cowboys, or German Veritech, or Cyber-Ninjas, or mutant cats with super powers in their own nation, or...."
:lol:

If you were going to do it realistically, North Korea might be the best model; a country where mass starvation is normalized and people are routinely put into concentration camps for little to no reason. The problem there-in is that makes the CS a terrible place to game in. That there is active resistance within the coalition seems part of the setting to me that is interesting.

Well, there'd be some active resistance here or there, I'd assume.
The City Rat OCC was originally basically "cyberpunks living in CS Cities," anti-authority by nature, and prone to rebellion.
But much like the setting overall, it'd be a situation where your characters might be able to thwart specific plans of the CS, but never win the war unless the GM wanted to go WAY off book, because the CS is still going to be around in the official material for a LONG time.

If I were going to run an internal CS campaign, I think I'd mine Cyberpunk, Paranoia, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984 for ideas.
Particularly in the latter two novels, there IS resistance; it's just not about to really WIN, and it doesn't have a huge presence.
And like 1984, I think part of the problem with joining the Resistance would be finding the real thing instead of a government trap.

Actually, it might make an interesting campaign having the party working for "The Resistance" for a while, and making some headway as far as they can tell, only to discover that the CS (or a faction of the CS) has been using them to bump off political enemies and so forth.
Then let them get in with the real Resistance... but leaving them with some levels of doubt whether it's another ploy.

Playing around with having people try to figure out HOW to resist in a fascist nation where there's so much spin everywhere it's hard to tell who the real enemies even ARE, or what their real deeds are, might be... interesting.

But I get that most people would find it less fun than something like the original Star Wars trilogy where the bad guys and moral lines are all pretty darned clear.

A thing to remember on comparable levels though is that DPRK propoganda is near totalizing, and has it's effects, but is very easily distrupted(Again might be a solid model). People flee NK all the time, the same might be true with the Coalition, the Coalition just has an advantage in how it's land borders are arranged... and like the demons and stuff .

Yeah, that's a good point; people DO flee NK, and they'd probably flee the CS regardless of how effective they are overall, at least in some numbers.
We know there are renegade Dog Boys, and CS PCs are skewed to lean toward waking up to the tyranny and genocide, and turning away from the CS.

It reminds me of something Kevin once said at an Open House when somebody asked why Adult Dragons never just teleport into Chi-Town to tear the place up, or teleport bombs in and such.
He said something like, "I imagine they DO, that sort of thing does happen, but it's a mega-damage city full to the brim with mega-damage armored soldiers, so it's basically a suicide mission and doesn't necessarily have much effect."

I'd agree that people leaving the CS would most definitely happen.
But it'd be like when small percentages of people leave a cult--it doesn't have much affect on the cult itself, except maybe make them more suspicious of Unbelievers in their midst.
Might make a fun adventure, kind of a Rifts: The Sound Of Music.
:-D

Yeah, one of my gripes about books like Rifts Japan is that the RMB set up an entire world to explore, and Japan was NOT in it. Japan had been effectively destroyed by the apocalypse.
But Japan got an entire book, when stuff like The Republicans, Shaedo, The Gateway Arch, Chi-Town, Madhaven, and a zillion other places did NOT.
It was like, "Hey... we told you about these cool places you want to know more about, and instead here's a book on the place we told you was unpopulated!

INteresting, I had the exact opposite experience honestly. Which is probably just a different strokes/folks sort of thing. My big critique of Japan was that it was so isolated and so long until they produced anything near it. It did really read like an extension of the late 80's/eary 90's japanese fetishism. I had a similar reaction to you to the West Books. Really liked Lonestar, but Spirit west and New West left me kind of cold. Even at the time I questioned the portrayel of the various Indian' groups, and I think resurgent natives could absolutely be a trope to run with, it wasn't given the care it needed and the combined with 'Well we want cowboys!' thing.

I'm entirely with you for the Bolded portion.

Way back before New West came out, my own version of the Native American comeback thing wasn't actual natives, but my own ripoff of Mike Resnick's Great Souix Nation in his Birthright Universe; a group of everybody the main human government had pushed aside, mostly aliens, who came together under that banner and formed a pseudo-culture around old movies about Native Americans and their resistance to The White Man.
So my version was that sure, there might be some actual Native American descendants, but mostly it was escaped mutant animals, D-Bees, psychics, mages, and other people pushed out and away from CS territory, who had formed their own kind of coalition to fight back against CS expansion, and who adopted a lot of pop culture cliches/tropes around Native Americans.
The idea hasn't aged all that well, BUT I feel it's still aged better than what Palladium actually put out.
;-D

For me the big thing was that the early travelouge books, some were good, some were bad, some were middling, but it felt like a slow fleshing out of the world and then it just kind of stopped. It stopped witht he majority of the planet undescribed, with Japan this little island out in the Pacific with nowhere around it and no connections and Africa was a kind of force, but like India, China, Mesopotamia. I get the 'whys', basically worldbooks got written on the basis of what people were interested in, or what Kevin had conceived and he had solid idea's for England, Europe, Atlantis, Mexico... other stuff got done as other people submitted stuff he accepted, but like, India is a huge sub-continent filled with history and mythology and is one of the worlds Great Powers at this stage with a rising technological class and historically a trade mecha between East Asia, Africa and the Europe.

You're absolutely right about Japan's isolation.
For ME, with my North-America-centric setting tastes, the main issue was that there didn't seem to be any real easy way to GET there, and I was all about the extended campaign.
I wasn't into just rolling up new characters in a new part of Rifts Earth, playing a few times, and moving on to another region, and so forth.

One of my complaints at the time was "your average character in North America has a much better chance at falling through a Rift and ending up in an entirely different dimension, than of physically traveling across the globe to Japan."
Yes, yes... you could always fall through a Rift and end up in Japan, but that seems implausible to me.
I can't buy the odds that a portal that could potentially take you anywhere and maybe any time in an infinite megavers, would plop you right down on the same planet you started.
Fine for RARE use, but lean heavily on it, and it ends up plot-broken as far as I'm concerned, like how in Sliders every dimension they went to seemed to revolve around the same 4-5 main characters.
I just couldn't buy it!

And I agree with your assessment overall that there could have been a lot of cool stuff for the blank places on the globe, the major stuff like India and such.

I just wouldn't have cared personally, because my characters wouldn't likely have ended up there! :lol:

I tried to run a campaign before my friends went off to college, where we made use of all the World Books... but we never even made it out of North America, even though I had things mapped out to go to Atlantis, then Europe, then Africa to fight the Horsemen.
Every Rifts book has enough stuff to run years worth of adventures, and there are dozens and dozens of books!

I never got to fully explore all the parts of the world that hooked originally, so coming out with whole new parts of the world that weren't directly related, just never did much for me.

Like you say, different strokes for different folks!
:ok:

Grazzik · Unread post by **Grazzik** » Fri Jul 14, 2023 8:32 am

Killer Cyborg wrote:Might make a fun adventure, kind of a Rifts: The Sound Of Music.

"The hills are alive with... seriously people, RUN! The hills are ALIVE!" - an unknown Phlebus, just as their musical show is interrupted by the emergence of a swarm of Earth Elementals

Killer Cyborg · Fri Jul 14, 2023 11:45 am

Grazzik wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:Might make a fun adventure, kind of a Rifts: The Sound Of Music.

"The hills are alive with... seriously people, RUN! The hills are ALIVE!" - an unknown Phlebus, just as their musical show is interrupted by the emergence of a swarm of Earth Elementals

Wise_Owl · Unread post by **Wise_Owl** » Mon Jul 17, 2023 6:55 pm

Aermas wrote:
Wise_Owl wrote:For me the big thing was that the early travelouge books, some were good, some were bad, some were middling, but it felt like a slow fleshing out of the world and then it just kind of stopped. It stopped witht he majority of the planet undescribed, with Japan this little island out in the Pacific with nowhere around it and no connections and Africa was a kind of force, but like India, China, Mesopotamia. I get the 'whys', basically worldbook sgot written on the basis of what people were interested in, or what Kevin had conceived and he had solid idea's for England, Europe, Atlantis, Mexico... other stuff got done as other people submitted stuff he accepted, but like, India is a huge sub-continent filled with history and mythology and is one of the worlds Great Powers at this stage with a rising technological class and historically a trade mecha between East Asia, Africa and the Europe.

I never really understood this mentality. Just because someone might view a place as "culturally rich" (this is actually a pretty problematic touristy entitlement thing, every single place in the world is pretty much equally rich in culture if you put a lense on it) or geographically, or economically, or socially, etc, important, that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. Especially in a world like RIFTS. India might be neck deep in chaotic magic which makes it a huge no fly/travel zone. Like the Sahara in Africa, or the vast northernwilderness of Canada, modern viewpoints treat them as a monolith of uninteresting land because most people avoid it because it's hazardous, but not in an interesting way either. There have been many jewels of civilization through history, everything changes. Babylon is no longer on the map. Neither is Sumer. England had its day, & it passed. Troy was a wonderful place, but no one even lives there anymore. Even the setting's own Atlantis changed hands & most True Atlanteans don't care.

Fact of the matter is that RIFTS was made by an American in Michigan & that's why most of the interesting stuff happens there, its unjust & unreasonable to demand for him to write at length about foreign countries. I don't see that as a problem. If the creators & writers of the setting can't think of something interesting to do in an area it's better to leave it blank than to make some kind of half *ssed attempt to fill in the map. I mean, that's probably WHY England is just Camelot 2.0, & the west is just cowboys. I know I don't know anything more interesting to put there.

You don't understand the mentality that India is a hug esubcontinent with tonnes of awesome stuff about it and I might want a worldbook about it cause it could be awesome? I'm not sure I understand your objections here in the context of this thread, which was literally about how to change the Rifts setting. One of my main critiques is the over-focus, especially in later books, on North America at the expense of fleshing out the rest of the planet was a weakness that contributed to me not buying more rifts books.

After thinking about my conversation with Cyber I think part of the problem was they did it to themselves; The First World-books were Vampire Kingdoms, Atlantis and England. I really enjoyed each of those and they set up this sort of travelouge impression of the world. Expanding and setting new places, new things. Mutants in Orbit was similar. Africa was lack-lustre, but then Triax, South America, and Undersea's, which is debatably the best of the world books and set up a sort of travel paths between places and, at the time, suggested an upcoming book that would deal more expressly with the Pacific/Indian Oceans.

The First Nine Worldbooks were places other than the continental US and it wasn't until Juicer Uprising that we then had a seeming definitive shift in World Book production, the next Seven being various book in NA. Then two books on Russia, one on Australia, One on Canada... sorta...? the Splyunn Dimenisonal Market, then sort of flopping back and forth between NA and the WOrld.

My point in reiterating this is that Worldbooks produce alot of information about alot of the world, but left out HUGE portions of it, and still kind of do. Coupled with the broad failures of Rifts Africa, which I think have been discussed at length, well they are holes that to me, need to be patched.

Aermas · Unread post by **Aermas** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 1:14 pm

Wise_Owl wrote:
You don't understand the mentality that India is a hug esubcontinent with tonnes of awesome stuff about it and I might want a worldbook about it cause it could be awesome? I'm not sure I understand your objections here in the context of this thread, which was literally about how to change the Rifts setting. One of my main critiques is the over-focus, especially in later books, on North America at the expense of fleshing out the rest of the planet was a weakness that contributed to me not buying more rifts books.

After thinking about my conversation with Cyber I think part of the problem was they did it to themselves; The First World-books were Vampire Kingdoms, Atlantis and England. I really enjoyed each of those and they set up this sort of travelouge impression of the world. Expanding and setting new places, new things. Mutants in Orbit was similar. Africa was lack-lustre, but then Triax, South America, and Undersea's, which is debatably the best of the world books and set up a sort of travel paths between places and, at the time, suggested an upcoming book that would deal more expressly with the Pacific/Indian Oceans.

The First Nine Worldbooks were places other than the continental US and it wasn't until Juicer Uprising that we then had a seeming definitive shift in World Book production, the next Seven being various book in NA. Then two books on Russia, one on Australia, One on Canada... sorta...? the Splyunn Dimenisonal Market, then sort of flopping back and forth between NA and the WOrld.

My point in reiterating this is that Worldbooks produce alot of information about alot of the world, but left out HUGE portions of it, and still kind of do. Coupled with the broad failures of Rifts Africa, which I think have been discussed at length, well they are holes that to me, need to be patched.

It ultimately doesn't matter if it's huge, or "awesome" as you put it. The Ganges could have been hit with magic & made an entire ocean out of the subcontinent. A demon plague could have left it barren. It could have been teleported wholecloth to wormwood. Just because it's big or interesting to you doesn't mean it's going to be similar in RIFTS Earth. Could be just a bunch of boring places not doing much. Just because you are interested in it doesn't mean anyone else is, & it doesn't mean that it deserves a book. I would LOVE a France book, but its just not happening.

Yes it's focused on North America. Because it was written largely by North Americans who know about North America, not a staff of purposefully picked multinational writers with a focus of bringing every corner of the globe into a focus. There is nothing wrong with that.