How would you fix Rifts, if you suddenly came into possession of this intellectual property?

There's better games to do it in I think. Rifts best offering is its setting so if you move away from that you may as well just go elsewhere.

Hey Joe

Stop production of the books, revoke the licenses of online retailers, and crack down on pirated copies, then shut down the production of any new books (confiscating them where possible). Finally, I'd take all (physical, print, etc) information about the game including all those confiscated books, and put them to the torch.

Rifts is a huge piece of shit, and I'd relish the chance to rid the world of it.

Reset the metaplot and setting back to what it was in the original main book.

Base it's mechanics off of GURPS.

Somebody's already done that:

shirosrpg.blogspot.ca/p/rifts2112.html

You can't. It's fucked too deep. You would actually have a better chance of fixing D&D at this point.

Easily.

I'd make an OGL version of it just to piss off all the RIFTS shitters. Add assloads of furry races and even try to get weirdos like trancy MICK in on it. Also I'd find the most fetishistic furry artists on the net, ala the late great Doug Winger, to do all the art. I'd give all the furry races ULTRA-DAMAGE CAPACITY™ so they couldn't be hurt.

reddit """opinions"""

IF YOU DON'T LIKE PBTA GAMES YOU ARE A SEXIST HOMOPHOBE TRANSPHOBE RACIST NAZI FUCKING NAZI I HOPE SOMEONE HITS YOU IN THE FUCKING NAZI SKULL WITH A BIKE LOCK

Oh wait I thought that was a request

Use Microlite Platinum.

lol no, inb4 you ask yourself what that is so you have an excuse to post it

Rifts is too complicated, and the combat is a chore. Power creep also made it way to easy to accidentally ice/ace/murder-death-kill players. Random encounters were such a drag. It needs to be much simpler.

All the random ass skills (tie your shows... average)... they were a lame mechanic.

However my main change, rather than like, say radically skewing towards 3d6 for attributes and a D20 for all checks like contemporary D&D systems (which I would probably do), I'd like to White Wolf it up, make the game more about interpersonal interactions, deal making, power brokering. My players always enjoyed character interactions in Rifts worlds, and the amazing NPCs they met. The violence was essential to the universe, but mechanically dull.

I'd find ways to make the game more about interpersonal interactions, whether price negotiations or politics. Politics of Rifts would be fun as hell.

Coalition secretely selling humans as slaves to Atlantis for rare tech, which is of course completely illegal but they'd do it anyway. NGR having critical human rights stances on CSA. etc etc.

Make it simpler, ditch MDG and SDG system, and give PCs something akin to a humanity scale.

It's just a hack of an early edition of AD&D, right? I'm thinking we go back to the roots of the thing and try hacking better editions of D&D.

I've been looking into hacking Fantasy Craft for this purpose. Already basically has PP points, the skill system isn't fucked, and I think it's modular enough to be a decent scaffold.

Wow, your ideas are terrible!

Codify and Clarify most of the rules, streamline some of the clunkier mechanics
Condense the Skill List down to like 20 skills by getting rid of duplicates like all instances of Pilot down to one for example
Separate Races and Classes into two distinct things
Make it very clear that while you can have a high powered MDC robo-fucker and a street urchin with a pistol in the same party you might want to stick to one of those extremes until you have more experience with the system

>pilot jet aircraft and pilot tank should be the same skill
Brilliant.

And Rifts being Rifts, there should also be a pilot jet tank (also separate).

There is, just not jet "tank" because a heavy hover vehicle is a heavy hover vehicle

Yeah we need the dozen or so versions of Horsemanship that exist in RIFTS too right?

I don't know anything about Horses, but clearly combining all the pilot skills was a retarded idea

Would separating it into types stop it from triggering your autism. Just make it Pilot: _________ and fill in the blank as appropriate with your specialty
>Pilot: Ground Vehicle
>Pilot: Air Vehicle
>Pilot: Sea Vehicle
>Pilot: Space Vehicle
>Pilot: Mech/Robot

>we should combine all the pilot skills into one skill
>and since that's retarded my alternative is to leave them exactly the same way they are now but with different formatting
You are a genius.

>Base it's mechanics off of GURPS.

That fact that OP used the word "fix", strongly implies he wants RIFTS to be improved. Nothing about that idea is in any way compatible with GURPS.

Then what do you suggest, keeping the 200 useless skills we have now?

The easiest thing to do is to lower the skill list down to just Broad catch all categories with maybe some bonuses for certain specializations or specific actions

Take this pdf and just look at the Groups and that's the number of skills I'm talking about, only 17 as opposed to 134

>I have nothing but bad ideas but you didn't offer an idea so we have to use mine!
Nope

We don't have to do anything
But you popped into the thread called my idea shit and then offered no alternative or criticism other than just "it's shit"

My suggestion for skills is purely to up the abstraction by having some broad sweeping general skills that can do a lot instead of drowning the player in the minutia of keeping track of over a hundred specific skills that can only do one thing.

If you would like I'll add this, Reduce the shill list down to around 17 like I said in Now depending on your class you get bonuses to roles for specific actions that are a part of that skill, for example
> A Leyline Walker gets a bonus to all Magic Lore roles that pertain to Rifts and Leylines

If you have any suggestions please go ahead, if not then please continue to shitpost and criticize my ideas while ultimately contributing nothing to this thread or I'm sure society in general

Wow. This is bait right? this has to be bait.

>if you refuse to describe why you won't take sixteen bites out of this whole wheat roll from subway filled with a huge steaming turd without using the words "it's shit" then it isn't shit!!!!
No need to panic just because you can't come up with anything good

Keep the art and most of the setting (though I bet it could use some pruning at this point) and replace all the mechanics with another system entirely.

Here (you) go, take this for your trouble
This, this post right here is where I bow out of this charade and stop feeding the troll
Congratulations please literally get cancer

It's entirely compatible with GURPS, GURPS is one of the best systems for a setting like RIFTS that includes everything.

It would just add balance which would narrow player options.

>It's entirely compatible with GURPS

GURPS is shit, objectively so, and therefore can't be a "fix" for anything, much less Rifts.

>being this assblasted that combining a skill which represents driving a truck and a skill which represents flying a plane is a bad idea
It must be hard to be so wicked smart that everyone just doesn't seem to understand you

Scrap the mechanics entirely and rebuild from the ground up. Maybe liscense a generic system like Genesys or Gurps to work off of.
Hire a fleet of editors to par down the fluff and get rid of the extraneous shit, and then have it rewritten and recompiled by competent writers so we can start updating the world books.
Get a licensed comic or better yet maybe a netflix (mini)series to coincide with the release of the new edition. Push advertising hard. People outside of hobbyist circles need to hear about it.
Maybe get Obsidian or someone to do a game. That would be pretty cool

>par down
>so we can start updating the world books
I like my world book update team to know that the expression is "pare down"

How is it shit?

GURPS would be a perfect fit for it. It's detailed enough to handle all of the fiddly business you find in RIfts, and perfectly tailored to handle a "high-powered yet gritty" game, which seems to be the tone of the early Rifts books.

>shit nobody is replying better reply to myself

Yeah, GURPS would work fairly well, especially with the rules from Transhuman Space, which had space ships, mecha, powered armor and all that stuff.

Don't know if Steve Jackson would want to be associated with such a tainted game though, especially with the toxic fans like the troll in this thread who calls everything shit and doesn't know how to count unique responders.

Ah, more nebulous unexplained or uneducated GURPS hate. Thanks for taking the time to poop in the thread.

Not that dude, but fucking how is it a bad idea? RIFTS is dogshit for "realism" or "verisimilitude" or whatever the fuck you want to call it, and I've never seen a pilot archetype that was substantially different from a driver archetype in any pen and paper RPG-- It's just that if you actually separate "pilot" and "driver," they fucking suck at their role more often than not due to not having the appropriate tools around. And you can't have a competent support character, ever, in any system, or faggots like you cry hard.

>How would you fix Rifts, if you suddenly came into possession of this intellectual property?

Keep the fluff, fix the rules. It's that simple.

Of course, fixing the rules involves completely shitcanning anything Palladium came up with and building something entirely new from the ground up.

>autistic screeching

Ignore the troll. It's Jeff Ruiz, a notorious Palladium fanboy and shitposter. Also a very lonely human being who spends half his time on the internet attacking people who criticize his beloved Rifts and his beloved leader, Kevin Siembieda.

Poking idiots and watching them sperg out is the closest thing to interactive content on this board now that quests are gone, though.

>crying because he doesn't have an argument

Kek.

>200 useless skills

Last I checked Rifts had over 500 useless skills, according to the Rifts skill netbook.

This list is pretty handy for trimming that hot mess down.

Hero is a much better fit for Rifts than GURPS. Just as well Mutants & Masterminds might work even better because it is more similar to Palladium than Hero and with a few more tweaks can bridge that gap further.

Hey Joe, how's Salem these days?

And he always thinks he's talking to one guy named Joe (whoever that is), even when the poster count is in the dozens! He's hilarious.

Please, Jeff, describe your Nemesis Joe to the rest of us.

How anyone done or seen any conversions other than the official Savage Worlds one, and that GURPS one?

That's for BRP, though

We'll need a full system rebuild from the ground up.

Percentile skill/combat is fine, no problems there.

I like class-based systems, but classic Rifts takes it too far and ties EVERYTHING to classes. I think the setting/system is better served with a fusion class/point-by arrangement.

First thing first, separate the character creation section into discrete sections, no flip-flopping back and forth to continually stack bonuses.

Step two, dissect the classes into their component parts. Assign point values to these components. Given the massive number of classes and abilities, this will be a huge undertaking. But this would allow us to eliminate redundancies. This also applies to skills.

Step three, set down the procedure for character creation.

>Phase One, the GM tells the players what point budget they're working with. This determines whether the players are making barely-armed human mercenaries and archaeologists, or cosmo-knights.

>Phase two, each player selects an Archetype. Magician, Psychic, Engineer, Scholar, Pilot, Soldier, Brawler, Thief, Survivalist. Each of these would grant a small discount in the points cost of certain types of traits. The Psychic archetype is *ONLY* available if you select a psychic race in phase three. Some of the aforementioned abilities, and even skills, are gated behind certain archetypes. Only a Scholar will ever achieve the highest skill ranks in Quantum Physics, only a Magician will have access to spells above second level, etc.

>Phase three: Determine stats. Each stat is rated 1-100. One tenth of the stat's rating is applied to skills relevant to that stat. Each stat starts at 15, then has 1d20 added to it (roll in order) and is modified up or down based on race. Stats can be rerolled for a cost of 15 build points each, or modified up and down at 1% per build point spent.

>Phase Four: Race. Each established species will have a set building point cost based on its bonuses. Some species are naturally psychic, others (like humans) must pay a small optional surcharge for that privilege. This is also the phase in which mutations are chosen. You can earn extra Building Points by taking negative mutations, and spend Building Points on positive ones. Not all races can take mutations, read the entries carefully.

>Phase Five: Choose a class. This determines your specialty. There will be a lot of these, though not as much as before. They determine which skills are available and provide a discount for some abilities/powers/skills.

>Phase Six: Choose a history package. Each one will be a generic 'how I got where I am today' thing like "Exiled noble" or "Dimensional Refugee", and be accompanied by two 'background skills' added to the character. These cost no Build Points.

>Phase Seven: Choose Powers and Abilities.

>Phase Eight: Choose Skillsets and training. Each skill starts at 20% competence, and increases 5% for every additional point spent on it.

>Phase Nine: Convert remaining Build Points into Credits (at a rate of 1000 credits per BP spent) and purchase equipment.

So let's run through a basic character creation. The GM declares this will be a high-power game, and tells the players they have one thousand points to work with (the max). Donnie the Dipshit has no originality and immediately decides to make Totally-Not-Batman-he's-Dark-Avenger-a-completely-original-character. He's got his BP budget, so the next step is Archetype. Donnie has never actually read a Batman comic so he puts down Brawler as the Archetype for 'Dark Avenger'. Whatever. Then he rolls his stats. He leaves them all alone, not wanting to spend BPs on them. Next he selects a race, Human, obviously. That costs him 5 points. Next he selects a class: Martial Artist (provides a discount on skills tagged with the Martial Art tag). Then Donnie selects the 'Tragic Loss' history package (giving him the basic Sense Deception (used to tell when someone is lying to you) and Perception (used to notice small details) skills. Next he selects no powers, since Dark Avenger is just a skilled and well funded human, but spends 250 points on Martial Arts abilities to increase his physical stats and buff up his unarmed combat. Each of those abilities normally costs 5 each, but is reduced by 1 from Brawler and further by 2 from Martial Artist, so Donnie takes every martial art style that exists. Then he spends 245 of his remaining build points on skills. A wide variety of languages (5 points each), basic scientific skills (five points each) like Forensics and Mechanical Engineering, etc. Then Donnie takes the last 500 points and converts them to Credits, purchasing a ridiculous amount of weapons and gear, a high-tech vehicle, and a solid suit of Mega-damage armor. 500,000 credits goes a long way.So Donnie's 'Totally Original' batman knockoff is finished.

Let's try again with someone who isn't an idiot. Steve's GM tells them that he wants to run a low-mid power game set in the Australian Outback. Steve is given 200 points to build his character. He decides he wants to play a rogue doctor and engineer helping tribes of mutants and DB refugees survive and civilize themselves. He selects the Scholar archetype. He rolls his stats, but notices that his Int is a bit low (he rolled a 1). So he goes ahead and spends 30 points to bump that up to 46. He selects his race as Human, but takes a negative mutation Tender Flesh (-5 toughness, +4 BP) to offset the cost of the racial selection. He reasons that his physical and genetic deformity give him an 'in' with the mutants. He takes the Doctor class, and the 'Exiled Noble' history package (Granting him the Financial and Etiquette skills). With 169 points left, he spends 15 on basic survival abilities like Direction Sense and Resistance to Toxins. He then drops 145 points into skills like Medicine (Discounted from both Scholar and Doctor), History (Discounted from Scholar), and Civic Engineering (Scholar). He spends 5 points on basic Ranged Combat. He then spends his last 4 build points for 4000 credits to purchase medical supplies, textbooks on well-digging, plumbing, and basic architecture, and a cheap revolver for emergencies.

Finally, Step Four: Experience points would be directly analogous to BPs. No leveling up, just gradual increases in skill and competence of the characters.

And that's how I would fix Rifts.

That's quite comprehensive. Looks like GURPS though.

It looked more like Shadowrun to me.

1. Take Savage Rifts.
2. Add ritual magic rules from the Savage Horror companion.
3. Extend the duration of most spells outside of combat to something reasonable, so you can cast Chameleon on something you're hiding and not have it expire thirty seconds later.
4. All power armor reduces AP by 4, all giant robots reduce AP by 6, monsters reduce AP by 2 to 6 depending on size. Also give really large things additional wounds.
5. Rebalance weapon damage and robot armor so handheld megadamage weapons have a chance at wounding power armor and power armor weapons have a chance at wounding giant robots without weapons being a guaranteed 3 wounds if they hit.

Those both have the same problem of not doing low-powered, gritty things all that well.

GURPS assumes a basic human power level and moves up from there. Hero and M&M both assume supers by default.

Honestly, the current Heroes of Humanity story line is exactly what I'd do. So, release D-Book 9 and make it focus on two or three minor factions instead of one. Flesh out MiO and why they treat Rifts Earth as shit. Maybe even create a book for "Nexus Worlds"- rift earth like world's.

We need some sort of unified field theory for rpgs. Something to bridge GURPS' quantum mechanics and HERO's general relativity. Something that can handle everything without being wishy washy or super rules lite

So your talking about a system that could handle high intrigue court drama, gothic horror, four color superheroes, sci-fi, fantasy, gritty, cinematic, street level and world shattering campaigns and who knows what else all without missing a beat or changing the core rules while also not overwhelming the player with the sheer number of rules and mechanics or being so rules lite as to be almost freeform

Good luck with that

It's the holy grail of Veeky Forums-dom. The perfect system.

You'd still get anons decrying it regardless man

Oh of course. And people would still insist that their personal set of house rules for 3.pf is totally more balanced and capable of handling the cold war espionage campaign you pitched. But still, it's a goal worth aspiring to

Yes, it's GURPS.

But fuck GURPS.

...

Shorter path:
1. Launch Kickstarter promising new edition of Rifts
2. Profit
3. Write an elaborate series of excuses for fun instead

...

Kekerinos

...

A little of both, with a dash of classic World of Darkness. It's hard to come up with new or innovative systems, because everything has been done before. But since so much has been done, you can easily take the parts that work best for a given idea and re-arrange them to get something effective for the task at hand.

...

>Skills: melee
>Archery
Ummmmm...