Is this a good system?

Yes.

Oh. Well, I stand corrected.

Let me answer your question with another question: Would you play a game that had more than 30 different saving throws?

No spoiler needed: the system is very bad.

The setting is awesome, however, and should be played with pretty much any other system.

Pic related. The setting is great, but the system is hot garbage. Fortunately, there's a Savage Worlds version out now so you can use all of the great fluff with a much better system.

It's absolutely terrible but goddamn if I don't have fun with it anyway.

It's at least playable, the biggest problem is just atrocious mechanical balance, skill bloat, and the fact that the rules are so far spread throughout multiple books that if woe be unto you if you forget something and have to look it up.

Yes, it's so painful to reference rules in this game that whenever a point of rules contention arises I just have the player roll a d20, and if they "roll high" it goes their way. Saves probably 1/2 hour of arguing and searching every session.

Savage Rifts.

If you already like savage worlds, you're halfway there to begin with. If you don't like savage worlds, then at least you have to admit that its a system intended to be used by human beings rather than the nigh impenetrable clusterfuck of the so called multiversal system.

Yeah, this. I mean, not even Kevin Siembieda uses his own system. Apparently, when he runs games in his worlds, he uses some homebrew mishmash that bears only the vaguest resemblance to the published systems.

It's...passable. its not nearly as shit as everyone says, but by God it's not good in any sense. The setting however is fantastic in a really stupid sense. It's a giant cluster fuck of ideas that the authors found cool all jammed together without such petty things as logic or reasoning. Kinda like 40k. Really if you like 40k, Metal Hurlant, etc, goull love RIFTS

It also has Chuck Walton's art in some books. Which is pure sex

I have a simple rule for the RIFTS system; The less you try to use at the same time the less shit it is overall. Group is all of one similar style? No Problems. But when you have a leyline walker, a psychic, a mech jokey, a mutantzerker and a dragon for a party yer gonna have a REAL bad time with rules management

Rifts is like the only system where people nearly got sued for making it less broken.

Wait...what?

Why would any sane person get upset at somebody trying to make a system LESS broken?

Apparently, they're very... sensitive about their IP.

That aside, I have to echo others comments - it's a mess of a system, but the lore can be decent and fun in the right hands.

Kevvy is VERY protective of his IP. He's still stuck in the 90s mode of DESTROY ALL FAN WORKS! Hopefully he'll die soon so the IP can be sold off to someone competent.

isn't that a bit legitimized paranoia? I remember there being a thing a bit back where someone almost successfully robbed palladium blind and got away with it.

Yea, people like to ignore that previously WotC basically copy and pasted the entire Rifts PHB or that White Wolf did a hatchet job on him who then proceeded to clone the everliving fuck out of his game mechanics for promethean.

Nah, that was physical theft of books and cash, not theft of IP. Kevvy has trouble keeping track of his shit, last year someone made off with a bunch of his "retirement fund" of shitty comics and anime cels.

Kevvy is still in the 90s when it comes to dealing with the internet. That is a big step up for him though, his game design is still stuck in the 80s.

People kept posting conversions of Rifts to other systems with all the artwork and fluff intact to competing companies forums, often including material from several splats as well.

He had a right to be upset.

Back in high school, I wrote a conversion of Fifth Element stuff to Rifts. I got a cease-and-desist from Palladium over it. In undergraduate, I wrote a d20 conversion of Rifts. I got another C&D, this one signed directly by Maryann Siembieda herself--who also emailed me and made a bunch of legal threats. That pretty much soured me on Palladium as a company.

The WotC thing is a *serious* exaggeration. I have a copy of The Primal Order, and all it has is a set of guidelines to convert their "playing gods" mini-game to Palladium's house system. The White Wolf thing sounds fake since Promethean is nothing like anything Palladium has put out. Honestly, White Wolf would have way more reason to be mad at Palladium, since they basically made their own World of Darkness game with Nightspawn/Nightbane.

The only significant theft Palladium has ever suffered was a physical theft--by one of their own employees, to boot. Palladium's constant disdain for its fans, especially in the form of its crazy-restrictive conversion policies, is one of the reasons I gave up on the company even though their settings are some of my favorite.

Maryann is a maniac. She and an inner circle of sycophants used to run the forums like their personal gulag. You weren't even allowed to talk about hypothetical conversions haha...

That is pretty messed up. It is funny that WotC and Paizo, despite being the biggest fish in the pond, are super cool about conversions thanks to OGL. As was mentioned earlier, hopefully the rights to Rifts get sold off to a nicer company.

>but the system was so bad they made a version for Savage Worlds.
And they could not possibly have chosen a worse system to reboot Rifts than Savage Worlds. I mean, it's hard to pick a system worse than Savage Worlds in the first place. In terms of generic systems there are FAR better options: GURPS, Cortex, and FATE, to name a few. Savage Worlds is a badly designed system with terrible meta-mechanics that encourage not only metagaming but ending session early, it also makes it near impossible for characters to fail at anything. The gun mechanic are broken, and literally do not make sense. The only thing it is good for is being a miniatures wargame, and it even sucks at most of that. Exploding dice make stupid shit happen constantly, the damage is way overkill for 90% of the threats allowing characters to one-shot massive creatures with tiny weapons. On the other end, characters literally cannot fail, because they have three bennies per session which allow them to reroll whatever the fuck they want (not damage rolls, to be fair, but still). And the GM is told he is a piece of shit if he doesn't hand out more bennies for "good roleplaying" (in other words, stupid nat20-lolz bullshit). Also the characters get to roll a wild die with their normal roll and take the wild die if it is higher, thus making them even less likely to fail at anything. Not to mention the cancer of the bennies being basically a safe-space for retarded character actions, CAN and WILL spread to other RPGs you play with this group. Just count down the sessions until your character asks during D&D after failing a roll "can I have a bennie"? No, get fucked faggot. Failure is an important part of RPGs and Savage Worlds throws that shit out the window.

Still better than actual Rifts. Hopefully Kenny kicks the bucket so we can get the Rifts setting ported to a bunch of other systems.

No, but it is a lot of fun to play with the right group. Don't take it too seriously and you'll be fine.

It's a fun look at older game design. They made them quite a bit more complicated and hands on back in the day and they've been peeling it back ever since.

>Failure is an important part of RPGs and Savage Worlds throws that shit out the window.

Failure isn't fun. If you're not having fun, then why bother playing in the first place?

If Savage Worlds is not to your taste then use either Hero System or Mutants & Masterminds. Either one will build whatever you want and still be a better game system than Palladium's.

Dont be that way. Tension is actually fun, and without the threat of failure tension can be hard to build.

Its like you are trying to bait a shitstorm conversation regarding the validity of power fantasies. Dont do that.

I love savage worlds, but its really a silly pulpy game and legitimately has problems building tension and is designed to generate wild feeling encounters that players usually survive.

You've never had a more entertaining scenario emerge from failure in a roleplaying game? It's not fun to have characters rendered ineffective or bashed repeatedly, but always having things go your the player's way is just a different type of railroading.

I just hate the word "Bennie". It digusts me.

Or they can just remake a RIFTS system that is actually good.

>use shitty overcomplicated realism engines instead of a shitty overcomplicated realism engine
Ok.

>Failure isn't fun.
Wrong.

Agreed. The game is full of shit that panders to a wild west theme (i.e. Deadlands setting, which is what the game was originally built for) despite being a ""generic"" RPG.

I heard he's still in the 80s about printing shit too. He typesets entire books by himself.

At least, that's what one dude who got fired by big K alleges.

RIFTS is good for one thing and one thing only.

If you run the game in a different tone and refluff a few things, it is THE perfect RPG for the kirby superstar setting.

You're accusing Hero and Mutants and Masterminds of being "shitty over complicated realism engine" and yet you endorsed GURPS earlier?

As someone who has played Savage Worlds this is 100% pure bullshit. I have failed and my players have failed many, many rolls. And exploding dice rarely comes up. You know it has a 1/X chance of happening, right?

Yeah, Savage Worlds battles consistently are the most nerve wracking of any system I've played. People seem to be under the impression that you spend a benny and you automatically win. Not at all.

First of all, they mostly just let you reroll. They let you try to prevent damage, but even that is dependent on your stats.

Secondly, you only start with 3 bennies.

Thirdly, the GM has bennies too, so they're being used against you.

In the last Savage Rifts game I played in, only two characters survived the 4 month session. And we still had to roll on the death and defeat table at one point in the campaign, it's just that we were able to ultimately escape.

>are super cool about conversions thanks to OGL
They absolutely aren't, the OGL doesn't cover any fluff and they've previously C&D'd fan conversions and projects.

>as someone who X
I don't give a fuck. Stop using your shitty ethos.
>I have failed and my players have failed many, many rolls.
Sure. If you roll 1000 rolls and only fail 1/10th of the time you'll still fail "many many" rolls. Go look at a game like Dungeon World that makes failure interesting and you'll see what you're missing out on. But you won't cause you're a closeminded faggot.
>rarely
>10% of the time
I don't think you know what half the words you're using mean. That's okay, I'm sure you can go back and try to finish high school a 3rd time.

First of all, stop Reddit-spacing. Second of all, if you do a soak roll with even a d6 vigor you've got a 75% chance of soaking at least one wound. Third of all, the GM is supposed to give you more bennies as per the RAW so actually no you get far more of them, not to mention edges that give you even more. I don't give a fuck if most of the characters in your RIFTS game where 6d10 damage is thrown around like a hat, that doesn't mean shit about the actual game system so fuck off. Yeah D&D "works" too if you let fighters deal 9d12 damage with a longsword, you stupid fuck, but that doesn't mean it's a good system.

> Palladium is a realism engine
> M&M is a realism engine

virtpasta has this special shit flavour

don't like it, but its recognizable. Good call putting it in a rifts thread though, gonna get a bunch of bites

The system is good enough, but there is a lot of bloat so as a DM you have to houserule a lot of stuff.

>First of all, stop Reddit-spacing
Here's a thread from almost a decade ago. Wow, look at all that double spacing, wow, huh, weird.
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/750189/

It's what happens when you get your legal advice from harmony gold