That's what I did for our group, since we have a 4 or so players who have never played Rifts or a Palladium RPG (and only two books for the group).  It's hard to find anything if you don't already know where to look.

I've been toying with an idea for a mini-series featuring an experimental all wolf Dog Pack.

Back in the day, one of the time saving things we always did when making our characters was to put the per level increase in a skill's percentage next to it's listing on the character sheet.  That meant when leveling up you just added the number on the sheet rather than having to flip through the book.

However, we always noted that the base skill percentages might as well have been random numbers.  There was no rhyme or reason to why one skill got 30% base and another got 50% base.  Plus, nearly all skills increased by 5% per level.

So, if I do the Dog Pack idea, the non-combat skills will be d20 roll high against TN just like in a d20 system game.  The basic bonus will be the character level plus 1 per 5% bonus from OCC or Other category.

That way the characters don't even need the skill percentage calculated, and one of the most tedious and pointless things about Palladium characters is removed.

I thought about making every skill a base of 5, increase by 1 per level. Roll below on a d20. Every 10% bonus would give another +1. I never implemented it though, because I stopped playing Rifts and moved on to other games.

Re-reading Sourcebook 3, Mindwerks. It popped out at me that Mindwerks and ARCHIE-3 have a few common ideas running through them.
Both are pre-Rifts underground facilities. Both had a period of darkness where they decided to wait out the worst of the cataclysm. Both emerged and made an attempt to bring help to the reconstructing communities. Both made some progress, only to see the patroned communities destroyed by Splugorth in the case of ARCHIE, and a stronger and more ruthless community in the case of Mindwerks. Both were then twisted by those events, and turned aggressive and "evil". ARCHIE decided that he should take over the world for it's own good, and the Angel of Mindwerks simply wants bloody revenge.

I think I want something simliar in my campaign. A secret pre-Rifts underground facility that somehow got twisted and turned malevolent. I'll be pondering exactly what.

Rifts does suffer from the good guys either getting screwed over turning evil. Or portrayed as being stubbornly stupidly independant without trusting anyone. So that none of the good organizations can ever take back Rifts Earth. The opposite can be said of the bad guys.

I loved Rifts when it was out. I quit buying during the Coalition War because...

Holy crap, Kevin, read modern combat theory and pull your head out of WW-II and quit quoting Vietnam statistics without any context or knowledge. I did buy the Chaos Earth stuff, mostly because I was resetting the campaign.

I ended up doing a HUGE write-up on the CS as a nation, it's territories, it's industrial capability, a "CIA-Factbook" entry on them, statistics for birth rate, death rate, average life expectancy, how many children a woman had, on average, over her lifetime, education rate, infant mortality, all of that good stuff, including running the numbers from Chaos Earth all the way into PA, keeping in mind enough to keep infrastructure and industry and agriculture running as well as population expansion matrixes.

I even did a new breakdown on the CS military, using stuff from the CALL and modern 4th Generation Warfare theories with some 3rd Generation stuff, stuff from modern and older military thinkers, and rebuilt the CS military from the ground up, basing it not around the equipment, but on how you'd build an MDC military to protect a large area of land with frequent insurgent insertions, terrorist attacks, and magical issues. Then I retooled the CS to be more like Starship Troopers with the "WE WERE HERE FIRST!" and moving everything into a bigger shade of gray by having CS broadcasts showing where Brodkil ran in and killed the 300+ agricultural workers at a sorghum agri-farm. Where Juicers and Mages ran in and killed the CS patrol guarding a sheep farm and killed the sheep wranglers and their families and just blew up the sheep with MDC weapons. I made it where the Federation of Magic, Tolkeen, and super-powered wanderers kept attacking the CS, the CS kept attacking DB settlements, both sides moving further and further up the atrocity scale and each atrocity just bolstering the ranks of those willing to fight.

I took the "99% of the population is illiterate" and made those who were functionally illiterate "iconoliterate" which meant they knew computer icons. See, one thing Sembedia made a mistake was with the illiteracy. He then talked about how there was smartware in the helmets allowing an AI to read written world to people, without understanding that YOU TEACH CHILDREN TO READ BY READING TO THEM! The other thing, is that a technologically advanced society makes literacy mandatory to prevent deaths and injuries.

I also junked a lot of crap that made it into his books because I knew that: A) None of the writers talked to each other; B) Sembedia would randomly edit and cut & paste people's works; C) Sourcebook one stated there could be THOUSANDS OF MILES between settlements so obviously things needed redone.

I had to junk the entire CS/Tolkeen War because that the worst use of technology and warfare in the history of RPG's (outside of maybe Bionic Commando) and had to completely redo it. I kept some stuff intact, like the march through the Xictix Hives, the last stand of Free Quebec, and other things. Mainly because Sembedia still doesn't seem to understand the whole idea of mission configurable munition loadouts.

And another thing: MDC LASERS WOULD NOT BE SILENT! Just because a laser pointer is silent, doesn't mean that a laser, transmitting a high amount of energy via visible light, would not be silent. If a lightning bolt commonly did like 1d6 MDC, a laser rifle doing 3d6 MDC would be 3X more powerful. Thunder is from superheating of air and it collapsing back into the energy channel. A laser shot would cause a CRACK as the superheated air collapsed back into the pathway of the laser.

But while I rip and tear the whole thing apart and do all kinds work to it doesn't mean I don't love the setting, the cool gadgets, the monsters, all of that.

Quote from: Warlord Ralts;916043I loved Rifts when it was out. I quit buying during the Coalition War because...

Holy crap, Kevin, read modern combat theory and pull your head out of WW-II and quit quoting Vietnam statistics without any context or knowledge. I did buy the Chaos Earth stuff, mostly because I was resetting the campaign.

Eeeeeh. 10 experts on 10 different fields will destroy any piece of fiction. (My running theory anyway) I'm not going to say to anyone "You can't critique X!", but in the end, discussing the tactical and strategic inaccuracies of an RPG compared to "real life" makes my eyes glaze over.

I am reading Chaos Earth, and it's pretty neat. I don't think I'd ever run a game of it, but it does have a lot of interesting material.

QuoteAnd another thing: MDC LASERS WOULD NOT BE SILENT! Just because a laser pointer is silent, doesn't mean that a laser, transmitting a high amount of energy via visible light, would not be silent. If a lightning bolt commonly did like 1d6 MDC, a laser rifle doing 3d6 MDC would be 3X more powerful. Thunder is from superheating of air and it collapsing back into the energy channel. A laser shot would cause a CRACK as the superheated air collapsed back into the pathway of the laser.

One thing I'm seeing reoccur, is Siembieda in one section appealing to real life, in another appealing to fictional conventions, and in a third appealing to "common sense". Lasers are slient because "real life", characters can dodge gunfire because "They're the heroes", shooting someone point-blank in the head only deals 2d6 SDC, but "Common sense, guys!" DM fiat the target into a coma.
It's like the guy can't just say, "This is the game, deal and/or change it."* He has to justify every problem with the system.

*Though he does do this in the 1st Conversion Book, regarding MDC vs SDC. It's that the justifications are all over the place.

There's an easy way to keep a population sedate, and still literate, give them a war to focus on.  Like all DBees being evil.  There, done.

Quote from: Warlord Ralts;916043epic post

Good stuff! You still got this CS writeup and numbers laying around? Because I'd love to look at them.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;916126There's an easy way to keep a population sedate, and still literate, give them a war to focus on.  Like all DBees being evil.  There, done.

Having the CS be censorious (is that a word?) works for me. I think I'd house rule (house fluff?) it that most CS citizens and soldiers simply don't care to be more literate than they need to be. Plenty of vids for entertainment and news. No need to read unless you have to for your job.
Janitors and factory grunts are probably as illiterate as the book says, and the more technical your job, the more literate you are. The top dogs in the penthouses actually read whole books on non-task related subjects, for [strike]propaganda[/strike] research. Ahem.

Quote from: The Butcher;916190Good stuff! You still got this CS writeup and numbers laying around? Because I'd love to look at them.

I wish. I did writeups on ALL the CS weapons at one point (including some Chaos Earth stuff, some WIlks, Some NG stuff) and posted it on the Palladium site, then got into armor and power armor, but the forum glitched out on me and wouldn't let me post anymore. Said I had split IP's or something because I was posting from two different computers at different times.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;916204Janitors and factory grunts are probably as illiterate as the book says, and the more technical your job, the more literate you are. The top dogs in the penthouses actually read whole books on non-task related subjects, for [strike]propaganda[/strike] research. Ahem.

Ah, here's the thing, a lot of high tech jobs need to have the Janitors and 'Factory' Grunts to be literate because of a lot of the caustic chemicals and other dangerous materials used, especially in car manufacturer's buildings in the real world.  Here's the thing, most people RIGHT now, only learn enough to do whatever job they have, and don't bother with anything else.  The CS would just enforce that a little harder than we do.