Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 15, 2022, 05:38:16 PM
What really bugs me is that after the first worldbook, Siembieda went on a gobal jaunt, making world books for every major area of the world except north america. I feel like if he had focused on just one country, we could have gotten a more cohesive and rich setting. We still don't have a worldbook for one of the major powers in the NA area, Lazlo and New Lazlo.

The Lazlo Raw version of the book is out. From what I heard it is okay not great just has too much just WTF. For example Lazlo could make better or equal tech then all it's neighbour s yet chooses to make lesser tech to not antagonize its neighbours who got the most many want Lazlo dead. Again WTF.

Quote from: Chainsaw Surgeon on December 16, 2022, 11:58:15 AM
Savage Rifts has really made the setting shine.  Personally, I think the Tomorrow Legion is a crutch.  I get why they did it, but Palladium was doing plot points in their books before Pinnacle.  They just didn't call them that.  You could play the Siege on Tolkeen from multiple viewpoints and it would likely run different each time.

Agreed. The brief SW:Rifts game I ran (set in the New West) didn't bother with the Tomorrow Legion. I didn't see the need for it and it feels a bit off to me.

But SW:Rifts is a great system for all my Rifts stuff, even Phase World (although BESM is a good engine there as well). What I like about it is it showed what you can do by customizing a stock SW chassis. I haven't gotten SW:PF, but I get the impression it does something similar.

Quote from: Brad on December 15, 2022, 09:50:19 AM
Yeah the Coalition is "evil" in the sense that they hate dee-bees, the supernatural, etc. But honestly, they sort of have a point. I know I wouldn't want to be a normal dude just trying to scrape by under constant threat to be kidnapped and sent to Atlantis to do God knows what, or have my brain blown up because some psychic didn't like the chicken sandwich I made him. I wouldn't necessarily call them fascists; they're just heavy-handed for the most part because they have to be to create any semblance of a society. Chi-town is a police state because anything less means the normies get overrun by bandits, demons, dragons, whatever. Obviously the dudes at the top take advantage of their positions and throw their weight around irresponsibly, but show me any government where this isn't the case and I'll gladly accept the fascist label. Anyway...the original artwork/uniforms were great, I hate the revised ones. On to something else.

Lets not soft-sell the CS. Yeah, to some extent the anti-DB and anti-magic prejudice is understandable. I think they carry it too far, but it's understandable in context. But the CS has other issues. Only something like 15% of the CS has any real formal education, for example, and the CS likes it that way. They have an entire slave race they've bred almost exclusively as soldiers. Even setting aside the slavery, they are an extremely class-based society, with elites, plebs, and everyone else.  There's no concept of "rights" in the CS, it's basically everyone is subsumed into the military-state, or pooly-educated laborers, or scum/fodder.

Their uniforms have skulls on them. Yes, Hans, they are the baddies.

Not that I haven't played my share of CS characters. Although I admittedly have a real soft spot for dog boys.

Is every single Dbee, psyker, mutant or alien evil?  Of course not.  However, if the Coalition told their soldiers that, they'd stop and analyze what threat the encountered actually pose, and the Coalition would have no soldiers, they'd all be dead, enslaved, zombified, etc.

The Coalition's methods are brutal and can be cruel.  They're also working.  The Coalition is clawing humanity back from the brink, as is the New German Republic who has similar policies.

Lazlo has the luxury of being able to be a Post-Apocalyptic Athens.  They don't constantly fight the Federation of Magic, Atlantean Slavers, Xiticix, and a thousand other threats all while holding down the mega rift at Old Chicago.

Is the Coalition filled with functioning Sociopaths and Psychopaths?  Sure.  So is Corporate America. 
Do they have soldiers who want to commit genocide on all aliens? Yep, and they kinda have a point. 
Does the Coalition use propaganda on its citizens?  Every government has and does, even Lazlo.

The Coalition also has people working and fighting for the survival of humanity every day against truly EVIL supernatural and extra-dimensional beings.

The argument is not and never has been "the coalition are ineffectual ninnies".

Coalition States creed is pretty simple.  If it wasn't here before the Rifts came, it needs to go. 

There is damn near zero chance that they can succeed at that goal. 

Of all the things the Coalition States needs, Atlantean Stone Magic would be the most important.  That's the only thing I know of in Rifts Lore that can actually stop Rifts in a real and substantive way.  Build a pyramid on a nexus point and lock that shit down.   

Until there is some technology that can compete, it would seem the best anti-magic defense is magic itself.

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 16, 2022, 07:23:57 PM
Their uniforms have skulls on them. Yes, Hans, they are the baddies.

And so on...

The discussion around the Coalition usually comes around to this, after literally decades. It's not freaking hard. The Coalition are the baddies, but they're also the baddies keeping the worse baddies at bay. Thus you get interesting drama and situations for your role playing game sessions.

People who defend the Coalition a little too much are just as annoying as those who reject the idea that not all Coalition are slobbering monsters.

I guess it's like the Star Trek vs Star Wars debate. Nerds gonna nerd out.

    Coalition as illiterate is another big speed bump as well....super high tech ... but we can not read?  Very stupid.  If we are going to parallel Nazis...they were extreme but not illiterate.  People can follow a bad path and still be educated and smart.  College campuses have been showing us that for a few decades now.  The CS are considerably LESS extreme than say the imperium of man in 40k as well.  I always took them as a KS version of the imperium of man he just is much more blatant with spelled out Nazi parallels.   The problem of course being writing a bunch of stuff about how bad it is to be extremely humancentric that humans are reading might not have the effect KS was looking for. 

  I put a lot of it aside in my Rifts games both Palladium and SW (I also dump the Tomorrow legion crap) and the CS operate in ways that the group may  work with or against like any other expanding empire.  I do not treat them as enemies to be attacked or shot and I do not mind if players want to be one of them (which SW seems to largely discourage versus palladium).

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 17, 2022, 12:37:06 AM

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 16, 2022, 07:23:57 PM
Their uniforms have skulls on them. Yes, Hans, they are the baddies.

And so on...

I think that was a reference to this excellent sketch from Mitchell and Webb

 

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 16, 2022, 07:23:57 PM
Lets not soft-sell the CS. Yeah, to some extent the anti-DB and anti-magic prejudice is understandable. I think they carry it too far, but it's understandable in context

On an individual level, sure. On a policy level... the entire Earth has been devastated not only by magic, but by humans engaging directly in magic on the infernal level. So much so that even the main body of magic-users - the Federation are susceptible to those infernal corruption tactics. And in secret the "True Federation" is directly in league with the lords of Hell.

The question is: To what degree is anything in all-out war permissable? The answers are pretty clear, and yes it means that for poor "benign" magic-users, you're in deep shit. The fact that merely knowing magic isn't necessarily "evil" doesn't preclude the fact that the most powerful magic-entities in Rifts, and apparently across the Megaverse are *inhumanely vile and evil* and use dark magics to corrupt those very people.

That said - I don't think they should keep their people ignorant of the state of the world. Again, to me (and you) it's very understandable. This is a war of true existential crisis on several fronts. The CS is justified, but I'd agree there might be places where there can be more efficient policies that might have cut-outs for DBees.

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 16, 2022, 07:23:57 PMBut the CS has other issues. Only something like 15% of the CS has any real formal education, for example, and the CS likes it that way. They have an entire slave race they've bred almost exclusively as soldiers. Even setting aside the slavery, they are an extremely class-based society, with elites, plebs, and everyone else.  There's no concept of "rights" in the CS, it's basically everyone is subsumed into the military-state, or pooly-educated laborers, or scum/fodder.

This ties in directly with why the CS keeps people illiterate. And while that might seem "ghastly" to you and the rest of us. Consider the reality of Rifts - where knowledge *can* actually corrupt you. They use basically Emojis to communicate which apparently works, and yet it's not precise enough to learn magic. I think it's kind of genius. Most kids today have a shit-vocabulary compared to children of the Depression-era, which is funny considering those kids in the past live probably closer to the CS standard of living in the Burbs than modern kids who are less informed.

And it's not true that everyone are slaves bred to be soldiers. I just finished reading the Coalition War and Secrets of the Burbs - there is *nothing* in those books that indicates life in the CS or the Burbs is anything like that. Shockingly, the CS troops are *volunteers*. I'm not downplaying their ruthless policies in practice. But even the Burbs have *tens of thousands* of DBees that would rather live there as second-class citizens than live in the wild frontier. Regular people are inside the CS Fortresses living their lives quite nicely as citizens. Outside in the Burbs - it depends on the Burb. But people set up businesses, they trade, some Burbs are very genteel (and bigotted against Dbees like all get-out), because the carrot being dangled is citizenship.

It's easy to paint the lives of the plebs in the CS as "shit". Honestly it looks more like the Roman Empire and as long as you follow the rules, and avoid badmouthing the Pogrom, you'll do fine. As a Dbee? Probably not so much. But getting out of the CS is one thing. Surviving making it to another place where you'll be accepted is quite another.

Life in the CS is *way* more complex than people think. Sure at a 30k-ft view you can make these claims (and you're entirely not wrong) but the sauce of the game is down on the ground.

One of the things I'm kind of enjoying is the idea that Emperor Prosek is getting slowly undermined by his son in terms of policy. Joseph Prosek seems to be more "soft" on the Dbee/Supernatural thing - but only insofar as it makes the CS stronger. He seems to lean much more in favor of Psionic than Magic... naturally. Does anyone else feel this way? Or am I reading into things. PSI-Batt has full blown fucking Mind Melters on staff. That's a HUGE decision... perhaps they don't realize how freaking powerful Melters and Bursters are? Or maybe they do and are finally leveraging it for the CS under Joseph's orders?



Their uniforms have skulls on them. Yes, Hans, they are the baddies.

Not that I haven't played my share of CS characters. Although I admittedly have a real soft spot for dog boys.
[/quote]

Quote from: oggsmash on December 17, 2022, 05:41:40 AM
    Coalition as illiterate is another big speed bump as well....super high tech ... but we can not read?  Very stupid.  If we are going to parallel Nazis...they were extreme but not illiterate.  People can follow a bad path and still be educated and smart.  College campuses have been showing us that for a few decades now.  The CS are considerably LESS extreme than say the imperium of man in 40k as well.  I always took them as a KS version of the imperium of man he just is much more blatant with spelled out Nazi parallels.   The problem of course being writing a bunch of stuff about how bad it is to be extremely humancentric that humans are reading might not have the effect KS was looking for.

The GENERAL populace is kept illiterate, using their sophisticated emoji-speak and audio-queues. Technical folks are educated normally. Plus a LOT of their technical needs are maintained by robotics. Remember they churn out Skelebots in the *hundreds of thousands* to supplement their forces.

Yeah it's probably stupid to keep the masses illiterate. But then after seeing all the propaganda that's proliferated through our own culture, how much worse could it be if doing so allowed people to accidentally sell their souls the Dyvals and Demons? HAHAHAH

Quote from: oggsmash on December 17, 2022, 05:44:25 AM
  I put a lot of it aside in my Rifts games both Palladium and SW (I also dump the Tomorrow legion crap) and the CS operate in ways that the group may  work with or against like any other expanding empire.  I do not treat them as enemies to be attacked or shot and I do not mind if players want to be one of them (which SW seems to largely discourage versus palladium).

Same. In fact when I run my first CS campaign, I intend to make some "changes" to policy. Maybe I'll have Joseph take the throne as a starting point...

Quote from: crkrueger on December 16, 2022, 07:39:18 PM
Is every single Dbee, psyker, mutant or alien evil?  Of course not.  However, if the Coalition told their soldiers that, they'd stop and analyze what threat the encountered actually pose, and the Coalition would have no soldiers, they'd all be dead, enslaved, zombified, etc.

The Coalition's methods are brutal and can be cruel.  They're also working.  The Coalition is clawing humanity back from the brink, as is the New German Republic who has similar policies.

Lazlo has the luxury of being able to be a Post-Apocalyptic Athens.  They don't constantly fight the Federation of Magic, Atlantean Slavers, Xiticix, and a thousand other threats all while holding down the mega rift at Old Chicago.

Is the Coalition filled with functioning Sociopaths and Psychopaths?  Sure.  So is Corporate America. 
Do they have soldiers who want to commit genocide on all aliens? Yep, and they kinda have a point. 
Does the Coalition use propaganda on its citizens?  Every government has and does, even Lazlo.

The Coalition also has people working and fighting for the survival of humanity every day against truly EVIL supernatural and extra-dimensional beings.

Exactly. It's WAY more complex. And for me that's where the fun in the gaming is. In fact I think it makes gaming more compelling rather than dumbing it down. While the Tomorrow Legion smells of that on the surface, it does provide an option for something to exist in the mix, literally between two very polarized fronts of the Federation and the CS.

And while it's not really interesting to me, I can see how some people new to Rifts would like it. But I don't like broadstroking the CS as "just the baddies" when as you said - there are some true horrible horrors out there the CS are taking the fight to. We can settle up with everyone else after. I don't think it's propaganda to claim "humanity is at risk" in the Rifts world... And consider the things the CS *doesn't* know about... even their most hyperbolic propaganda might not even rise to those needs if they did know.