These are the EXACT arguments I imagine happening in back rooms of bars in the Burbs... before the CS Troops walk in. HAHAHAHAH!!!

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 19, 2022, 03:25:04 PM

Though not strictly forbidden, the CS frowns upon formal education and literacy for the masses. It prefers to keep the majority of it's people ignorant and unable to read so that it can spoon feed them whatever it wants through spoken and visual presentations on television, radio, and pictures. [snip for brevity] The concept is that if the majority of people cannot read, then they can't be as easily influenced by outside forces and different (corrupting) ideas. Isolating people inside a fortified paradise where they and there families are safe, and the written word is not important, helps to enforce their goal of 90% illiteracy.

Rifts: Chi-Town Burbs: Forbidden Knowledge, p.21-22.

Well, nice. That's how I usually play the CS and literacy/illiteracy. Read enough to do your job, even if that amount is zero. Anything else is suspicious.

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 20, 2022, 08:51:47 AM
As much as I love Palladium, their in-house system is kinda shit. I think a lot of players over the years have either house-ruled the system down into something more manageable, or switched to universal systems. Sadly, finding universal systems that can handle the... diversity... of RIFTS can be challenging. Savage Worlds is probably one of the better candidates, as much as I'm not personally fond of it.

I'm surprised there's never been an OSR RIFTS-alike that tried to create a codified, streamlined, and less janky system that would still be similar enough that bringing stuff over from the published books wouldn't be a huge hassle. Then again, I wouldn't envy anyone the headache.

Some of the jankiness is built in. One of the Juicer signature abilities is Auto-Dodge, and the concept of not having to use an action to dodge is integral to the Palladium/Rifts combat system. Likewise with MDC/SDC and how it's an actual factor in world building.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 20, 2022, 09:17:12 PM

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 19, 2022, 03:25:04 PM

Though not strictly forbidden, the CS frowns upon formal education and literacy for the masses. It prefers to keep the majority of it's people ignorant and unable to read so that it can spoon feed them whatever it wants through spoken and visual presentations on television, radio, and pictures. [snip for brevity] The concept is that if the majority of people cannot read, then they can't be as easily influenced by outside forces and different (corrupting) ideas. Isolating people inside a fortified paradise where they and there families are safe, and the written word is not important, helps to enforce their goal of 90% illiteracy.

Rifts: Chi-Town Burbs: Forbidden Knowledge, p.21-22.

Well, nice. That's how I usually play the CS and literacy/illiteracy. Read enough to do your job, even if that amount is zero. Anything else is suspicious.

This is basically how Hive cities operate in Warhammer 40k. The comparisons track on many levels between the CS and Empire of Man. The primary difference of scale aside.

If you wanted another system that could run Rifts, that would be tough. 

I stick to the Palladium rules. 

There is one caveat.  I think the first Rifts rulebook is actually better than the Ultimate Edition.

There was only ever two house rules we used. We x10 the damage of the Cyber-Knight psi-sword to make it more useful, and we only allowed dodging ranged attacks when you can fly, have super speed, or you had cover.  We also let a lot of mundane things stop MDC shots as a result.  I would probably use the 1 MDC = 10 SDC rule from the conversion book, but it never really came up.  Using cover like this meant it probably should be used or everything is worthless cardboard. 

We did ditch a lot of the combat options like simultaneous attacks, roll with impact, or the max missile barrage you can dodge was 4. 

Simultaneous Attack was one that we had to ditch.  It was prone to abuse.  As written both combatants cannot dodge or parry.  If one massive combatant fights a team of smaller guys, the big guy can just use simultaneous attack every time and flatten everyone with free hits.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 22, 2022, 08:26:20 AM
If you wanted another system that could run Rifts, that would be tough. 

I stick to the Palladium rules. 

There is one caveat.  I think the first Rifts rulebook is actually better than the Ultimate Edition.

I agree.

QuoteThere was only ever two house rules we used. We x10 the damage of the Cyber-Knight psi-sword to make it more useful, and we only allowed dodging ranged attacks when you can fly, have super speed, or you had cover.  We also let a lot of mundane things stop MDC shots as a result.  I would probably use the 1 MDC = 10 SDC rule from the conversion book, but it never really came up.  Using cover like this meant it probably should be used or everything is worthless cardboard. 

We did ditch a lot of the combat options like simultaneous attacks, roll with impact, or the max missile barrage you can dodge was 4. 

Simultaneous Attack was one that we had to ditch.  It was prone to abuse.  As written both combatants cannot dodge or parry.  If one massive combatant fights a team of smaller guys, the big guy can just use simultaneous attack every time and flatten everyone with free hits.

Thankfully I didn't have players who abused simultaneous attack. I did use the MD/MDC = 10 SDC houserule, and usually some damage multipliers, especially for the really low powered melee damages.

My current houserule set is full of that kind of stuff. Little nudges to get the game from being completely wonky.

F'rinstance, I allow spells to affect people in MDC armor/robots, with a decent save bonus for spells that specify "Cannot affect targets in MDC armor, power armor, etc."

The Coalition State's evil, but it's an evil state that keeps people alive in a world overrun in horror.  If you're sitting around in the burning ruin of your house with your surviving family and your options are to go live in an evil dictatorship or get your blood sucked out by some alien abomination or outright eaten by the cannibal gang down the street, well, I know which option I'd be going for.  Their hatred of the supernatural and alien is hardly an unreasonable position given all that's gone on after the rifts, the problem just boils down to the leader being a megalomaniac and an asshole.

That's a thing I like about Rifts as a setting, "survival but at what cost" is a common sort of theme it explores, without flinching from the realities of the situation.  It has some unambiguous goodies, and a lot of unambiguous baddies, but the bulk of the setting is shades of grey.

There are places where Magic and Tech go together which makes for more open-play (their concerns of course are different or more immediate than the CS's which are scalar issues).

I'm a big fan of Arzno. It's a little nook of comically cool wild-west + tech and technowizardry. It's like Deadlands on Mega-'Roids. The CS doesn't even know it exists (and it would be a big problem if they did). It's a perfect sandbox that is very different than a CS/FoM based campaign where you can justify nearly anything. Plus it's a great jump-off point to deal with their main issue: Vampires.

The Vampire Kingdoms are pretty cool too.

Quote from: tenbones on December 23, 2022, 10:02:12 AM
There are places where Magic and Tech go together which makes for more open-play (their concerns of course are different or more immediate than the CS's which are scalar issues).

I'm a big fan of Arzno. It's a little nook of comically cool wild-west + tech and technowizardry. It's like Deadlands on Mega-'Roids. The CS doesn't even know it exists (and it would be a big problem if they did). It's a perfect sandbox that is very different than a CS/FoM based campaign where you can justify nearly anything. Plus it's a great jump-off point to deal with their main issue: Vampires.

The Vampire Kingdoms are pretty cool too.

That is a good topic, what other bastions of humanity are there in the world and how do they deal with a world overrun with horror differently than the CS?  I'm not fully up on lore on that, I don't know what Japan is like or Africa dealing with the actual four horsemen, or what sort of society the remnants of the US Navy actually has.

Quote from: tenbones on December 23, 2022, 10:02:12 AM
There are places where Magic and Tech go together which makes for more open-play (their concerns of course are different or more immediate than the CS's which are scalar issues).

I'm a big fan of Arzno. It's a little nook of comically cool wild-west + tech and technowizardry. It's like Deadlands on Mega-'Roids. The CS doesn't even know it exists (and it would be a big problem if they did). It's a perfect sandbox that is very different than a CS/FoM based campaign where you can justify nearly anything. Plus it's a great jump-off point to deal with their main issue: Vampires.

The Vampire Kingdoms are pretty cool too.

Vampire Kingdoms is my favorite worldbook. The vampire threat is sufficiently Rift-y. Monsters that don't need or want technology. They're immune to most forms of damage, and force characters to think outside the box. There's a kingdom that's downright hospitable to humans, and a kingdom that's horrific in how they treat their human livestock.

One thing to consider, and I had this thought while thinking about Beyond the Supernatural, but it applies to vampires in Rifts as well. Siembieda likes to quantify, name and explain things a lot. This does a good service for RPGs, where the GM has to know enough to run the creatures and societies in it, but the players and especially their characters may not understand that the reason Vampires are vulnerable to water and wood is because it's elemental nature. Or that staking a vampire doesn't necessarily destroy it, or even that vampire intelligences exist and are the source of vampires. That kind of stuff doesn't have to be spelled out right away, or at all if the characters never discover it. Play up the unknown part of the supernatural for as long as you can.

Quote from: Manic Modron on December 23, 2022, 11:52:39 AM
That is a good topic, what other bastions of humanity are there in the world and how do they deal with a world overrun with horror differently than the CS?  I'm not fully up on lore on that, I don't know what Japan is like or Africa dealing with the actual four horsemen, or what sort of society the remnants of the US Navy actually has.

Offhand... I've got most of the books, but some of them I read more than others, so some high points...

Japan is a complicated situation. It didn't fare too well with the coming of the Rifts. 99%+ casualties. There's a couple of pockets of remaining old-world tech that have formed sort of little city-states unto themselves, but the primary human political group is - or was - The New Empire, which has gone sort "back to the old ways"... Think Amish by way of the Japanese. They've deliberately reverted to approximately Edo-era technology, and gone back to a divine Emperor, a caste based society, etc. However, there's also, now, the Republic of Japan. The Republic of Japan is the result of a pre-Rifts science experiment being conducted at the exact moment the ley lines surged. A 100-mile wide sphere of Japan, centered on Hiroshima, basically ceased to exist, and was sent forward 300 years. As a result, they're probably the highest single tech level nation on Earth, having all pre-Rifts technology and education intact. The Republic is now the major power in Japan, although it isn't hostile to the Empire. As far as how they handle things - The New Empire has embraced magic, although they haven't gone gung-ho with it, and Dee-bees are... tolerated, but are considered eta. The Republic of Japan is still getting a feel for things, and doesn't really have any official stance on the issue yet.

China is a complete demonic hell - literally, with the Yama kings parcelling it up into their own hell-kingdoms. There is, however, the Geofront, a hidden subterranean city formed before the Riifts by the PRC. It's managed to go mostly undetected, and they've begun trying to slowly fight back on the surface, covertly. They've got pre-Rifts levels of technology too, but they weren't as advanced as Japan or America going into it. They're paranoid isolationists, though, for good reason, and keep magic and dbees out. Otherwise, while it's a military police state, it's actually reasonably a nice place, with good education, and fairly comfortable lives.

South America has a ton of little kingdoms and city-states, only a couple of really big ones. In broad strokes, you can find almost any time of group in South America. And almost all the major types of dee-bee threat, too.

Australia has two basic "regions". Perth and Melbourne has become humanocentric cyberpunk police states. They allow some psykers and such, but are mostly humanocentric and tech-over-supernatural. The two cities together could be a reasonable force to be reckoned with, but they are very insular. They do dream of eventually retaking Australia, but they haven't made much progress at it. The rest of Australia is collectively "the outback", and it's a post-apocalyptic mix of aboriginal tribal communities, Mad Max style nomads and scavengers, farming communities, and whatever pockets of civilization can pull themselves together.

England is... hooooboy. England is not doing well, from a humanity perspective. It's still got humans, plenty of them, but there's not really any major power groups except Camelot, which is "fine", but is lead by Mrrlyn, ultimately, who is an evil alien intelligence. So yeah, no real bastion of humanity there to talk about.

Africa is even worse. It's a complete write-off as far as humanity is concerned. There are still humans kicking around, but technology is gone, it's purely mystical stuff.

Russia is a war-torn land of various independent warlords each running their own kingdoms. There's about a half dozen of them. They vary in outlook and methodology, but they are technological, anti-magic, and to the extent they tolerate dee-bees, they use them as slaves. (Warning: There's a new book on Russia out now I haven't read yet)

The US Navy exists now as Nemo's New Navy. It's got a large undersea base and at least one surface port, too. Although they're militaristic, and everyone contributes to the state, they're reasonably decent sorts, and have universal education. They can produce a lot of pre-Cataclysm technology, but not all of it. They aren't a large faction, but they're growing slowly. But they've got their hands full with their own concerns, and outside of the oceans, they're basically non-players. They don't really have much use or interest in magic, but they do accept dee-bees to some extent - in fact, a dee-bee/human hybrid created from a rift encounter called Sea Titans are sort of turning into an elite caste within the Navy, they look human, but are basically better in every way, and immortal. (Not unkillable, but they never die of old age).

The NGR, of all the major human groups, is probably the most together, efficient, and effective. They aren't the biggest - that would be the CS - but they're not as... ramshackle and stratified as the CS. The NGR controls a good chunk of old Germany yet, including most major cities, they had a good pre-Cataclysm tech base to begin with thanks to Triax Industries, but recent alliances with CS and Free Quebec have given them some extra toys, like the ability to build Gitter Boys. The NGR didn't used to be anti-dee-bee, but that changed somewhat recently. Officially, dee-bees are "tolerated" now, but they are not and can never be citizens of the NGR, and must be registered. Other than that, the NGR is pretty... well, for Rifts Earth, practically egalitarian. It's got a functioning government, it's not a pure military state, it values literacy and education, and the average quality of life is pretty damned good. The population is spread out more than in many areas, with a few big cities and a lot of smaller villages. No real magic. The NGR would be sort of a great place... except that they're basically the major bastion of humanity in Europe, surrounded on all sides by dee-bees, and at war with the Gargoyle Empire, so despite everything seeming rosy, they're actually in a somewhat precarious position... One of the reasons they want an alliance with the CS.

... Ooof, gotta get back to holiday stuffs. Might post more later if anyone cares.

Quote from: Bruwulf on December 23, 2022, 05:47:53 PM
... Ooof, gotta get back to holiday stuffs. Might post more later if anyone cares.

Bruwulf, that was very interesting, thank you for the summary!