Rifts General w/ focus on Savage Rifts

You could always houserule when you roll or give the Juicer some way to regain lost points in order to increase the characters longevity

Rifts is for fat ass 30-40 somethings with ADHD who can't focus enough to play in a more grounded setting.

I suppose I could. I do quite like it as a mechanic for making that aspect of juicers meaningful.

I kinda want to try and run this almost like a Rogue-like or X-Com in tone, if not necessarily in form. Sending players through hyper lethal situations that will wind up costing them characters as they struggle about trying to advance the cause of this Tomorrow Legion.

I really like it, The only thing I would do is change the time check from each session, to some fixed in game amount of time, like every month, or 2 months or more etc.

I think making it tied to sessions is a little meta and arbitrary.

I would even go so far as to make a Veteran level edge that gives a juicer back 1d6 burn.
Re-Juiced: Veteran

Hope you're using dragons and inter-dimensional beings as your bottom feeders. Savage Rifts characters are ridiculously overpowered and it takes some real beasts to threaten them.

Aren't Savage Rifts characters fighting other things like themselves? Or you that anti-SR troll from the last thread?

I can see where you'd have that opinion, but I personally prefer it focus on a form of meta-time. Simply because time in RPGs isn't a standardized thing. In theory one could have an entire epoch pass in a session (unlikely, but possible, regardless I'm sure you see my point).

Does Savage Rifts have an overpowered boxing skill that literally everyone will take? Because it's not Rifts without it.

Yeah... Maybe after a very active combat make the Juicer roll then.

Oh, Something I noticed.
In Savage Rifts it uses the option that lets you ignore rank requirements for edges at character creation.

You still need to meet all the prerequisites, but you could take for example, a lot of Legendary edges, like Followers or Sidekick at char gen.

Which is kinda neato.

Does anyone have a mega or something for the newer books? I'm having trouble finding CE Ressurection, the vampire sourcebook, and Heroes of Humanity.

I run Savage Rifts.... I'm just saying Rifts is a munchkins wet dream and it takes ridiculous power levels to actually challenge the PCs.

Any worse than Savage Worlds proper? Because with a few tweaks it could get fairly lethal if memory serves.

Its not that bad, everyone still has 3 wounds, and 3 bennies. You still rolls on the injury tables etc.

Is anyone else totally fucking in love with the M.A.R.S. option?

When I ran my first game, I tried to get my group on board with doing a MARS campaign first - even if it was a short one. But they were whiny bitches and all wanted to be Cyborgs, Glitter Boys, Bursters, etc. I think I'll try a MARS campaign on Roll20.

It is that bad - especially when the players are employing MD weapons vs non-MD armored npcs. None MD armored entities have FAR lower toughness. 6d6 damage might not sound like much until you realize the chances of aces when roll 6 dice. Then realizing you only need 1 wound to kill most npcs.

I'm just saying it throws the scale WAY off from what I'm used to in Savage Worlds. Every adventure has to be 'BALLS OUT WTF IS THAT BOOM BOOM' or else your PCs won't flinch. And then when you do employ such MD armored/damage creatures, the toughness and damage scales are so all over the place -- it ends up being episodes of rolling damage, not high enough, no damage. Roll damage, not high enough, no damage. BOOM EXPLODING DICE OH SHIT YOU JUST ONE-SHOT IT! Too much luck involved.

Well don't get me wrong, I can totally see the appeal of those other options, but there's just something delightful about the MARS options. It's like being given the option to play a space marine and opting to be an IG vet.

Whenever the broad disparity of strengths in Rifts has come up amongst players, or at least that I've personally seen, it was always said that it's designed specifically so everyone dogpiles on the most uber-strong stuff. "It's just that kind of game, so it's fine that everything is gonzo", sort of an attitude.

>It's like being given the option to play a space marine and opting to be an IG vet.
It's always seemed a bit off to me that Space Marines ultimately seemed lot more faceless than veteran Guardsmen.
Space Marines are Space Marines and do big bad Space Marine stuff, but a veteran Guardsmen is a recognizable person who also does people things. They're a human who was born to a family, raised, grew up, and has excelled.

>Is anyone else totally fucking in love with the M.A.R.S. option?

As someone who knows Rifts only a little, and knows SW not at all, what's the M.A.R.S. option?

Mercenaries, Adventurers, Rogues, and Scholars. It's something of a catch all for more "normal" characters in the Rifts setting.

It means you are one of the humans who survived the apocalypse by being born on a mars colony.

So you are a human, possibly with cybernetics, no magic and stuff like that.

>It means you are one of the humans who survived the apocalypse by being born on a mars colony.

Are you serious? This sounds wrong to me. There's a total space travel blockade.

He's fucking with you. It's an acronym for Mercenaries, Adventurers, Rogues, and
Scholars. It covers all the OCCs that aren't mages, psychics, or super soldiers.

I think if I ran a Rifts game, I might have the players each make two characters -- one MARS, one high-powered. Then we could switch off each adventure.

That's because, as you stated, imperial guardsmen are regular average joe humans who got wrapped up in a space war- something we can sympathize with and understand their thought process.

Space Marines on the other hand, are genetically engineered super soldiers with an extra dose of brainwashing to make sure they worked out all those pesky 'emotions.' They're about as relateable as superman, thus making them harder to distinguish.

>They're about as relateable as superman, thus making them harder to distinguish.

Not even. Superman at least grew up on a farm.

The archive from the pdf share thread includes the Vampire Sourcebook. Can't help you with the other two.

mediafire.com/folder/3wjc3rr9zqufo/Rifts

Heroes of humanity is only physical, for the moment

There are a few more books missing from that link included here:

fractal-cortex.net/rpg/RIFTS/Rifts BOOKS/

Those two together are still missing Shemarrian Nation, and the revised versions of Sourcebook One, Conversion Book One, and Vampire Kingdoms.

That's a sorry looking bunch of sad people (not one of them is smiling & they paid to sit in front of their gods throne), are they the fan friends who suck the pipe of the almighty KS who deny that KS/'PB did no wrong and misspent the $1.4mil Robotech funds. Truly a sad crop of fat miserable c units

Well... technically there are still super soldiers, cybernetic, magic and psychic abilities in the MARS packages (and the "Create your own" option). They just don't start out with quite as much power - but they get to start with 4 advances (seasoned) instead of rank 1. Some of the MARS builds can still be super powerful compared to the iconic frameworks - especially something like the Robot Armor Pilot.

I gotta love how shitvag worlds decided that more bad acronyms were necessary. How fucking sad.

>that autist that posts in rifts threads
Kill yourself

The revised books have disappeared into the aethers, haven't they?

803 Conversion Book 1 - [Revised].pdf
www97.zippyshare.com/v/ubbZvd7S/file.html
801 Sourcebook 1 - Rifts Sourcebook Revised and Expanded.pdf
www97.zippyshare.com/v/40kzo2cO/file.html
878 Sourcebook 7 - Shemarrian Nation.pdf
www97.zippyshare.com/v/8zO1uxCQ/file.html
802 World Book 1 - Vampire Kingdoms Revised.pdf
www97.zippyshare.com/v/JFBYWjpz/file.html

A miracle! user be praised!

google, douche

Thanks, hombre. A thousands MDCs to you.

>Protip for newbies using the old Palladium books for fluff: divide all the population numbers by 10.

My house rules for sensors:
There's an Observation skill. Each sensor on a vehicle, robot or PA adds +5% to the operator's Observation skill, if the sensor system is used successfully (all those Communication skills) and makes sense for the situation. In combat, each sensor system adds +1 to Strike, to a maximum of +5.

Which Palladium books are good sources for Demons and Aliens From The Rifts? I know Rifts Canada has some.

DB10 - Hades: Pits of Hell, and some of the space-themed DB's like Thundercloud Galaxy.

Rifts Conversion Books

Never saw those before, thanks.

How does dramatic tasks works? Maybe I'm stupid, but I've read rules two or three times an I still don't get it.

So I was just looking at the newer books set to come out.
Does someone at Palladium have a fetish for trying to push the coalition as people we have to begrudgingly accept as good guys?
Also why the fuck does the nation that tries to suppress all knowledge on the supernatural aside from "its bad" apparently have the only forces knowledgeable enough for dealing with literal demons from hell?

Do you have Triax 2 or NG2? Or Australia 2?

You may indeed be stupid.

Its just a net success system.

Defusing a bomb, you roll the assigned skill every round, trying to get x success before y time is up.

The ST sets the number of success you need, the time limit, and the difficulty if any to the roll.

You can spend bennies normally, and people can assist as normal.

Where on Rifts Earth do you guys play (or plan on playing)?

I was thinking a good spot would be the Federation of Magic, so that the contrast between robots/lasers and necromancers/demons is starker.

Is that a good spot for beginner players?

>Winners don't do drugs.

Looks pretty much like any Veeky Forums related event then.

>Kevin's illegitimate love child found

Yeah, the headhunter was always my favorite OCC from the Rifts core book because I loved the badass artwork of it as a kid. Would even fancy playing as a Wilderness Scout or a City Rat. Fun fact, according to the writer of Savage Rifts, the character who played the Scout usually ended the game with the highest killcount.

>"Ex..excuse me, do I have something in my eye? Like a tank cannon, maybe?"

>Also, SUCK MY GIANT MACHINEGUN DICK

Doug's Headhunter and other art pieces became so iconic that 10 years later Perez drew homages to them all over the place.

So, I'm a cranky old grognard that ran Rifts for about 20 years, and got used to the many warts and wiggly bits of the system.

I tried Savage Worlds once, and my experience was probably colored by an inexperienced or bad GM. I found combat in SW to be anything but fast or fun. Lots of "Welp, I'm stunned. Spend a benny! Oh look, I'm stunned again." and reliance on a double sided combat "cheat sheet".

Is that still the state of things? I love Rifts' setting, want to get new people into it, but I know using the original system just isn't something I can reasonably expect within the current RPG environment off of Veeky Forums.

I only played SW once too, so it's hard for me to say, but taglines aside it's important to emphasize that SW is medium-crunch, not rules-light. It still has a lot of rules and book-keeping...though less than games like Shadowrun or Rifts.

(You)

Go away homer, or answer my question.

I'm not busting SW's chops, I just want to know if my experience as atypical or not, so I can get the Rifts love spread.

You might want to start a general Savage Worlds thread then, I doubt you'll get a lot of SW veterans in this one.

Assuming you're , that was a response to , not you.

Hey grognard, would you care to summarize the Megaverse in Flames metaplot for us newbs?

I don't know if the books are worth getting. I heard bad things about the Siege on Tolkien metaplot.

Whoops, sorry about that. My reading comprehension and ability recognize numbers failed pretty hard there.

Probably should. Oh well, on a more Riftsy note. Larmac best race.

I would say, try to find a GM who knows what he's doing, and knows Savage Worlds well. If you play it under them and still finds the system to not be to your taste, then you might have to end up dropping it. Might not be what you want, but no one's having fun if they run or play a system they know they won't like.

Shaken rules have been updated. You no longer require a raise to remove a shaken status.

"Hey guys, how do we OFFICIALLY tie our major RPG lines together into one multiversal setting? Oh, I know, we take two different hell factions, and make them POOP ON EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE WOOOOOOO!" Demons in Palladium Fantasy, demons in Rifts, demons in Heroes Unlimited. 3-2-1 go Hell Everywhere!

Lots of neat toys and stuff in it. Get it if you want even more insane bits to add to Rifts, ignore the fluff. No, relaly. Only use it as a reference book for Vehicle X and OCC Y.

Get Siege on Tolkien. It's not amazing, (Think of it as a high quality Asylum Film or a good Made for Sci-fi special), but it's actually worth playing.

Do something reasonable and adult? Perish the thought! (You're absolutely right, of course).

Good to hear, that was one of my few complaints about the system. Are these rulesi n the Rifts stuff, or baked into the new Explorer edition?

Its called shaken grandad

How many versions of the Savage Worlds core rules are there anyway?

2

The older Explorers edition and the new and most recent Deluxe Edition.

You can play fine with either.

>OOP ON EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE WOOOOOOO!" Demons

That looks like a big, fat NO to me.

Thanks.

So is it possible to function in this game without EBA, or do you still have that "they might make a called shot on my exposed bit" thing going on?

The older edition has better (IMO) chase rules. And the older edition used flat bonuses for weapon damage (STR+2 for example) where now weapons have a die type as does your STR (STR 1d6 + Sword 1d8). Those are probably the biggest differences.

EBA?

Environmental body armour. Basically stormtrooper suits.

Most body armor is no longer MDC so that's not really an issue anymore. And the instagib disparity between MDC and regular weapons is significantly reduced.

>Good to hear, that was one of my few complaints about the system. Are these rulesi n the Rifts stuff, or baked into the new Explorer edition?

This was a rules update Pinnacle made around summer of last year. I'm not sure or not whether they've published a new edition of the rules since then, but if they haven't, the new shaken rules will be a part of it. So yes, this applies to Rifts since the Savage Worlds book is used.

peginc.com/shocking-shaken-shake-up/

peginc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SW_FAQ_May_2015.pdf

So these are like version 2.1?

It's written in the updated PDFs, but they've stated they don't have plans to print any books with updated shaken rules. But yeah, it speeds stuff up and shaken is a lot less of a headache. I'm stingier with bennies now, because the prime thing my players save them for now is soaking wounds. Before the rules update the bennies needed to flow constantly or else the players were in shaken hell through the majority of combat.

Is it me or is Savage Rifts going to cost quite a bundle?

At least 3 books to start:
Player's Guide, GM's Guide and Foes of North America. $20 a pop = $60.
Explorer's Guide needed for base rules = $20.

Then the Coalition splatbook to get CS gear = $20.

=$100 just to play what is in the core Ultimate Rifts book that sells for about $30. And these are small "96-page" books that would be about 48 pages in a normal-sized RPG book.

Not very good value. I'll probably buy it anyway.

>Before the rules update the bennies needed to flow constantly or else the players were in shaken hell through the majority of combat.
I think I would just remove this rule and bennies altogether. This is more realism than Cyberpunk 2020 or even Shadowrun has and it seems to bog down combat immensely.

I think you could probably play it well enough using just the Explorer's guide and the Player's guide.

More realism than Shadowrun isn't saying much.

Worst and Best Rifts books?

>BEST
>Atlantis
>Dinosaur Swamp
>Sourcebook One
>Federation of Magic
>Canada

>WORST
>Arzno
>Merc Ops
>Triax NGR
>Japan
>Africa

Well I'll be. THANKS!

>Triax NGR

I was going to disagree, but then I thought really hard about it, and it was actually kind of lame. "Here's a whole shitload of equipment you largely wont be able to buy if you aren't doing a Triax military campaign."

I disagree on the Japan one. Yeah, it was kind of weeb (like a lot weeb) but it was actually a really kickass sourcebook.

>Here's a whole shitload of equipment you largely wont be able to buy if you aren't doing a Triax military campaign
That;'s it exactly. I think Triax 2 remedied that somewhat, but the utility of both Triax and Japan is limited to having a game set in those countries. Most of it isnt applicable to any other game any where else.

Hi, I'm here because I want to run a campaign in the crossover style of classic fantasy like Tarzan visits Pellucidar, Conan fights shoggoths, and time-traveling angelic robots with machineguns join the party to save a space princess of mars. Downloading OP's files now, what else should I know to get started? Am I in the right place?

What are the adventure cards for?

You have a lot reading ahead of you if you want to use Rifts, but yes, generally this is the right place for these kinds of zany shenanigans.

>Tarzan visits Pellucidar,
Dinosaur Swamp.

>Conan fights shoggoths,
Rifts Atlantis.

>and time-traveling angelic robots with machineguns
Rifts England has time travel (temporal magic).
New West has sky angels (sky people) with robot armor

>save a space princess of mars
Phase World has all the space opera stuff.

Go wild!

...