Rifts is one of those product lines where I'm never actually sure if I'm happy, horrified, or some combination of the two as I read through them. Like I said, not sure I would pay for "new" Palladium games, but I can't bring myself to regret the past purchases.
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
yeah
I doubt I'll ever play it again and I don't have any interest in new Palladium stuff as long as Kevin Siembieda insists that there's nothing wrong with the Rifts rules, but I also don't feel like my time and money spent on it are wasted
To be fair, the RRT campaign focused heavily on Ninja Division doing the heavy lifting, and allegedly '98% of the work was done'.
Luckily I recouped most of it selling off what I received in Wave One piecemeal, but they still owe my friends and I hundreds of figures all the same.
Also tangential to the conversation because I would not at all be surprised if the Savage Rifts kickstarter comments end up with at least a few RRT malcontents within. Not that I hope for it, or hold anything against Pinnacle, but ties to Palladium Books who has managed to burn a lot of bridges in the last 3 years or so aren't going to do them any favours. There was some controversy tied to that situation when Robotech Academy was being funded (before the project was cancelled) as well.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
What was the justification for having hit points and SDC? Was there one? Most monsters only had SDC/MDC if I remember.
SDC damage is essentially "only a flesh wound". As long as you're taking SDC damage, no matter how brutal, you're just taking relatively easy to heal cinematic injuries. Hit points are when you go from Michael Bay to Coen Brothers, movie injury wise.
From what I recall (it has been *years*), for non-MDC targets, SDC represented what punishment it could take without breaking, hit points are where you start doing substantial damage to the target. There's some fuzziness present, but the general stance was that losing SDC was bad but not awful. It's the action movie trope of just getting the tar beaten out of you but somehow that not really impacting ones ability to run/fight/do complicated things/whatever. Hit point damage had some variant rules (or at least uncommonly used ones) in the main book for debilitating injuries based on loss of HP (as a percentage of the whole or something). With Rifts, most SDC characters (un-augmented humans) generally died if something MDC looked at them funny, so it was usually a moot point; you were either in MDC armour/magicked up/etc and fighting, or you lacked that and died.
I believe SDC recovered more quickly than HP, and there were even a few attacks that bypassed SDC altogether, though this was usually more of a quirk than a viable attack method in many circumstances).
This led in part to my having human characters who were huge fans of redundancy; power armour pilots who wore MDC flight suits (Triax 'plainclothes armour' made this totally doable in the setting) with a backup mini forcefield on hand, stuff like that.
Again, it's been ages, but I'm pretty sure living creatures that weren't MDC usually had HP/SDC scores. Inanimate objects would just have SDC ratings. Rifts had little gradiation; a gifted GM might talk about something being damaged, but usually it was sort of a similar binary state; working (SDC 1 or more) or destroyed (SDC zero or less). MDC weaponry just made blowing up non MD structures really easy.
There were other variant rules about things like taking minor damage through armour (heat from a laser causing minor burns to the occupant, getting battered around while taking massive impact damage, etc) which I recall applying just to get some use out of my characters otherwise extraneous stats.
Sure, you could run adventures where the party had to disarm for plot reasons, but Rifts was always full of magic/psionics/hidden gear/whatever that meant you either had the most obnoxious series of restrictions in place, or just accepted that characters (at least in aggregate of the whole party) were ridiculously hard to fully disarm, barring running a 'human vagabonds, no cybernetics, no psionics, no magic, etc' game, in which case why even play Rifts?
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I think the thing that always hinders conversion to another system is MD. If you can sacrifice that sacred cow conversions are easy, but MD is just such an integral part of the game that it seems weird not to have it.
Just drop SDC all together. Pretty much any OCC or weapon that's limited to it is going to gimp the poor player who chose it anyway.
Vampires in Rifts are like my go-to example for, "See this? This is what you do not want to do in your homebrew RPG,"
They're so binary that it's ridiculous; they either completely take you by surprise because nobody was expecting Vamps, so it's probably a (slow, grinding, boring) TPK... or you knew you were going to fight vamps, so you bring squirt guns and mow them all down in almost comical fashion.
It also always bugged me a lot that not even a half-assed explanation was given for why Vampires got fucking annihilated by sunlight & some artificial lights, but not lasers. It's the same Goddamn thing, Siembieda.
I sold that world book years ago, but were there actual technological lights that affected them? I recall sunlight, magically created light, and some Techno-Wizard items (which is just magic wrapped up in a technological shell) doing that, but not plain artificial light. Or was there some kind of mixed tech 'flash bang' that basically got the same effect?
It makes a (TINY) bit more sense when keeping in mind that they have all of their series mashed together, so there's some mystical chi shit tied into the Sun and the Moon (if we're getting pedantic, moonlight is just sunlight bounced off our neighbour, if the former hurts them, shouldn't the latter as well? Or at least be uncomfortable, due to the reduced intensity).
And really, the setting is entirely "a wizard did it". Consistency has never been their strong suit, to the point of it being seen as a feature, not a bug.
That said, I agree. Their take on lycanthropes are similar, basically "have silver or powerful enough magic, or you're fucked". With a solid Game Master at the helm, I could see fighting a single Vampire (with at least some tools on hand to end up with a victory, or the opportunity to run away), led to a chance to arm up to face them, but at that point the characters have to build up an alternate arsenal just to handle one foe (and this isn't the only time it happens in Rifts). My group faced them back in high school, and by the time we were done we'd committed genocide against a vampire clan and were armed to the teeth in random techno-wizard shit.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Those sound like one of those thing if you start being logical about is utterly terrifying. Vampires are basically invulnerable unless their foes are prepared for them so they either avoid adventuring parties like the plague or they brutally attack and go to great lengths to leave absolutely no survivors to learn their weaknesses.
I sold that world book years ago, but were there actual technological lights that affected them? I recall sunlight, magically created light, and some Techno-Wizard items (which is just magic wrapped up in a technological shell) doing that, but not plain artificial light. Or was there some kind of mixed tech 'flash bang' that basically got the same effect?
Pure technological lights do bupkis (bupkiss?).
Artificial lights + something in the shape of a cross = free cross-shaped shadows tho
Those sound like one of those thing if you start being logical about is utterly terrifying. Vampires are basically invulnerable unless their foes are prepared for them so they either avoid adventuring parties like the plague or they brutally attack and go to great lengths to leave absolutely no survivors to learn their weaknesses.
The way vampire "society" is set up is actually pretty interesting and relatively well thought out for a game that otherwise features dinosaur-riding psychics battling cyborg banditos.
But the invulnerability to all but a very narrow band of attacks is straight out of AD&D, which the other mechanics in this game were clearly at least inspired by on some level. Armor Ratings, to-hit rolls, extra attacks as you level up, spell lists, etc.
Those sound like one of those thing if you start being logical about is utterly terrifying. Vampires are basically invulnerable unless their foes are prepared for them so they either avoid adventuring parties like the plague or they brutally attack and go to great lengths to leave absolutely no survivors to learn their weaknesses.
The way vampire "society" is set up is actually pretty interesting and relatively well thought out for a game that otherwise features dinosaur-riding psychics battling cyborg banditos.
But the invulnerability to all but a very narrow band of attacks is straight out of AD&D, which the other mechanics in this game were clearly at least inspired by on some level. Armor Ratings, to-hit rolls, extra attacks as you level up, spell lists, etc.
I do have to second this.
My first impression on seeing the Mexico Worldbook was, "There's no way this is going to feel right. Vampires aren't going to work in this kind of setting; it's the wrong atmosphere,"
But Siembieda's spin on the concept does fit in a pretty convincing way.
EDIT: For those not in the know, vampires in Rifts kind-of operate like some kinds of insect colonies. All of the lesser vampires are basically just drones, and the 'Master' Vampires could be thought of as princess ants / wasps - capable of 'breeding' (creating new vampires by draining victims), but still ultimately under the control of the hive queen: a Vampire Intelligence.
This provides a lot of internally consistent explanations for obvious questions (like, "Well, why doesn't one of the major factions in the game just go faceroll all of the Vampire Kingdoms with spotlight crucifixes & water cannons?"), because Intelligences are Lovecraftian puppet masters with a tentacle in every pie on the planet. It could reasonably be conjectured that, say, some of Prosek's most trusted advisors on the issue of Mexico are actually just Vampire Intelligence sockpuppet entities, or that most of the water gun trade is actually controlled by Vampire Intelligences, etc.
Those sound like one of those thing if you start being logical about is utterly terrifying. Vampires are basically invulnerable unless their foes are prepared for them so they either avoid adventuring parties like the plague or they brutally attack and go to great lengths to leave absolutely no survivors to learn their weaknesses.
The way vampire "society" is set up is actually pretty interesting and relatively well thought out for a game that otherwise features dinosaur-riding psychics battling cyborg banditos.
But the invulnerability to all but a very narrow band of attacks is straight out of AD&D, which the other mechanics in this game were clearly at least inspired by on some level. Armor Ratings, to-hit rolls, extra attacks as you level up, spell lists, etc.
I do have to second this.
My first impression on seeing the Mexico Worldbook was, "There's no way this is going to feel right. Vampires aren't going to work in this kind of setting; it's the wrong atmosphere,"
But Siembieda's spin on the concept does fit in a pretty convincing way.
EDIT: For those not in the know, vampires in Rifts kind-of operate like some kinds of insect colonies. All of the lesser vampires are basically just drones, and the 'Master' Vampires could be thought of as princess ants / wasps - capable of 'breeding' (creating new vampires by draining victims), but still ultimately under the control of the hive queen: a Vampire Intelligence.
This provides a lot of internally consistent explanations for obvious questions (like, "Well, why doesn't one of the major factions in the game just go faceroll all of the Vampire Kingdoms with spotlight crucifixes & water cannons?"), because Intelligences are Lovecraftian puppet masters with a tentacle in every pie on the planet. It could reasonably be conjectured that, say, some of Prosek's most trusted advisors on the issue of Mexico are actually just Vampire Intelligence sockpuppet entities, or that most of the water gun trade is actually controlled by Vampire Intelligences, etc.
There is also a group of vampires in South America which take this approach, hiring demons and were creatures, including a weather 'god' to help protect them. Also given that humans can be mind controlled by vampires a sufficiently pressed intelligence might just go shopping with the Nuari for some Super tanks of their own.
It should also be noted that Rifts vampires were not undead but a type of elemental. Other lesser elementals in Rifts could possess humans and their intelligence's could grant powers. Their weaknesses are fundamentally supernatural in origin, sunlight does not hurt them it is the symbol of what sunlight represents and such magic bs.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
The terrible irony of the vampire kingdoms is that pound for pound, the mexico city kingdom is actually one of the safest, most egalitarian and benign locations on the planet; non-vampire residents live their lives having jobs and and families and all manner of normal things while donating some blood once a week to a reserve that the vampires feed from.
Comparing that to pretty much any other corner of the world and it's damn near a paradise.
The terrible irony of the vampire kingdoms is that pound for pound, the mexico city kingdom is actually one of the safest, most egalitarian and benign locations on the planet; non-vampire residents live their lives having jobs and and families and all manner of normal things while donating some blood once a week to a reserve that the vampires feed from.
Comparing that to pretty much any other corner of the world and it's damn near a paradise.
...I dunno. I think I'd sell my soul to go live in the Coalition States or NGR and play Sega Genesis all day while eating cheeseburgers & chips.
'Yeah D-Bees are awful. Just terrible. Humans are the only way. Prosek is pure genius. Also I'd like a combo #4 with a coke, and maybe let's upgrade those fries from a medium to a large...'
The terrible irony of the vampire kingdoms is that pound for pound, the mexico city kingdom is actually one of the safest, most egalitarian and benign locations on the planet; non-vampire residents live their lives having jobs and and families and all manner of normal things while donating some blood once a week to a reserve that the vampires feed from.
Comparing that to pretty much any other corner of the world and it's damn near a paradise.
...I dunno. I think I'd sell my soul to go live in the Coalition States or NGR and play Sega Genesis all day while eating cheeseburgers & chips.
'Yeah D-Bees are awful. Just terrible. Humans are the only way. Prosek is pure genius. Also I'd like a combo #4 with a coke, and maybe let's upgrade those fries from a medium to a large...'
Jokes on you: all the games star Grampy Prosek and he's invincible for maximum historical accuracy.
No, the psi-stalker's fine. Though that's a pistol model I've never seen before unless they're just drawing the old coalition laser pistol in a weird way.
The wanted poster is for a Type-Red. That's going to be every third cyborg on the continent. That look is basically mass-marketed to wannabe bad asses.
Supernatural Enslavement: Not such a terrible option after all.
Welcome to Mexico! A land of beaches, margaritas, excellent and diverse local cuisine and surprisingly benign-yet-oppressive supernatural regimes.
And excitingly demonic statuary.
Congratulations on making it through the insulating band of drooling vampire savages that patrol the old border! Clearly you are an adventurer of means, or at least great luck. That barrier has held off even the likes of the Coalition to this point, so at the very least you can be proud of your proven superiority to those psychos.
It's basically just Spring Break '86 up there.
Or maybe you came through on one of the traveling circuses that are so popular among undomesticated humans. Was that it? Were you a juggler, perhaps? Or one of those bizarre fire-eaters?
I suppose you could call me a specialty act.
What's that, you say? Oh, you were brought here as blood-cattle for the Nightlords? Well, I suppose congratulations of a different sort are in order. Here, your housing assignment and details are on this form.
It's not what you'd call a great neighborhood.
Eat you? Why would we do that, human? No, no, we have other uses for you. Someone has to maintain the roads, after all, and do the gardening. Your services are needed, cattle, we won't be dismembering you and draining your limbs of precious fluids. Nothing so base as that, I'm afraid.
We're much more, ahem, civilized around here.
Oh, I see. You've been told stories of the other kingdoms. Yes, self-styled blood gods do rule in the backwaters of old Mexico. Taking up residence in ancient pyramid-temples and refering to themselves as Ixthktchlltl or some other clicking, vowel-depressed moniker. Nothing like that here in the great Mexican Empire, no sir. We're the civilized sort of extra-dimensional supernatural horror. Besides, all that showy sacrifice stuff wastes an awful lot of blood.
Precious, precious blood.
Here in the glorious Empire, we simply require your fealty and monthly tithes of blood to your betters. Well, that and your willing participation in an organized society, obviously. You humans are very resource intensive, and keeping you alive in the necessary numbers requires quite an impressive degree of organization and infrastructure, some part of which you will now be responsible for. In return, you will be allowed to live your life in relative peace and safety, certainly moreso than your still-feral cousins outside our walls.
Do you see how they are, without our steady hand?
Right now, you are thinking that you'll play along just long enough to start a resistance movement of some kind. Oh, don't look so surprised, it's not like we can't read minds. But even besides that, centuries of experience has shown us that these rebellious tendencies are indemic among your kind. For your own sake, as well as that of your species, you would do well to resist such self-destructive urges.
We have very strict stake-control measures in place. As you can imagine.
This is the best deal you and your kind are going to get, here in the ruins of what was once your world. Our benevolent protection keeps you safe from the true horrors of your new environment, without us you are simply food for someone else with less self-restraint.
And better pecs.
Or slaves to the Spluggorth. Yes, yes, I know, right now you're thinking that's just trading one slaver for another. Let me assure you, this is not the case. Under our rule you will be able to live out your life, have a family and eventually die in peace. With them, you're just as likely to end up with your soul, worthless as it is, powering some tentacle-based sex apparatus.
Oh yeah, baby. Undulate for me.
Ah hah, and now you're thinking about trading up, aren't you? Working your way into the system, getting bitten and worming your way into the ruling class. Let's dispense with that, shall we? It is, theoretically, possible for you to be initiated into the master race, but we have very tight controls on who we let in.
Debonaire, with a double side of creepy.
You see, our society is very well organized, and we can't have you outsiders just jumping in to throw it out of balance. Secondary Vampires, like myself, all answer to the Master, who in turn answers to the Intelligence. Our very existence is predicated on serving the will of our superiors and furthering their ends. Besides, if I were to turn you into a vampire, there is a very good chance you would be one of those feral monsters we push north toward the river. You don't want that, trust me.
The orthodontia costs alone will ruin you.
No, no, be happy with your place as a favored pet of the greatest Empire on the continent. And know that your lifetime of faithful servitude will help usher in the same sense of purpose and safety for yet more of your kind in the future. Subservience is strength, blood-slave. Remember that. By serving us, you strengthen your nation and our lord, the Vampire Intelligence. Blessed be his eye-mouths. With enough time, blood and servants, he may break through the walls of this reality and manifest here in his full, eye-tentacled glory. On that day, we will celebrate. Probably with a fountain spraying the blood of your friends and loved-ones, or their descendants. Try not to focus on that part, I guess.
And clowns. What's a party without clowns?
Ah, we just got your blood test results back and... you seem to be clear of any particular issues. Excellent. Though, your cholesterol is a bit high, maybe we should lay off the rhino-buffalo bacon, huh? Oh, who am I kidding. Enjoy your gruel, walking blood-sack. NEXT.
Welcome to Mexico! A land of beaches, margaritas, excellent and diverse local cuisine and surprisingly benign-yet-oppressive supernatural regimes.
I see that you skipped right past Montezuma's Revenge, Mexico Tourism Board.
Having your body possessed by a splintered alien intelligence that craves humanoid blood means never having diarrhea again.
I don't believe you. - Ron Burgundy
I know the fiber situation sounds kind of iffy, but all Secondary and higher vampires evacuate all waste directly from the colon into another dimension via tiny, self-contained rift.
Welcome to Mexico! A land of beaches, margaritas, excellent and diverse local cuisine and surprisingly benign-yet-oppressive supernatural regimes.
I see that you skipped right past Montezuma's Revenge, Mexico Tourism Board.
Having your body possessed by a splintered alien intelligence that craves humanoid blood means never having diarrhea again.
I don't believe you. - Ron Burgundy
I know the fiber situation sounds kind of iffy, but all Secondary and higher vampires evacuate all waste directly from the colon into another dimension via tiny, self-contained rift.
Glad our Rifts DM did not know that. Based on his unusual cruelty toward player characters, I fear that most of our adventures would take place in the Vam-piles Dimensions.
Welcome to Mexico! A land of beaches, margaritas, excellent and diverse local cuisine and surprisingly benign-yet-oppressive supernatural regimes.
I see that you skipped right past Montezuma's Revenge, Mexico Tourism Board.
Having your body possessed by a splintered alien intelligence that craves humanoid blood means never having diarrhea again.
I don't believe you. - Ron Burgundy
I know the fiber situation sounds kind of iffy, but all Secondary and higher vampires evacuate all waste directly from the colon into another dimension via tiny, self-contained rift.
Glad our Rifts DM did not know that. Based on his unusual cruelty toward player characters, I fear that most of our adventures would take place in the Vam-piles Dimensions.
The stuff is a remarkable fertilizer and in high demand everywhere to boost agricultural production.
In the halcyon days of 1988, the Berlin Wall still stands. Timothy Dalton is Bond. "Wu-Tang" is either some nonsense phrase on the cover of a kung fu betamax or the noise 4 year olds make when presented with space-race-based orange drink. It is a very different world from ours.
And yet somehow, so similar.
Ninjas & Superspies is the creation of Erick Wujick, the guy primarily responsible for TMNT and Other Strangeness, another of Palladium Books' trailblazing non-elf-centric RPGs. That's right, two of the flagship books for the fledgling, non-TSR gaming company included or strongly implied the word "Ninja" in their titles. However, whereas TMNT focused largely on the Mutant (and to a lesser extent, the Teenage and Turtles) portion of the source material with relatively little page-space given to the Ninja, this entry definitely delivered on the promise of its cover art.
And what a promise it was.
Inside these oddly orange, cheaply laminated covers is a 173 page love letter to Bond films, kung fu movies and, somewhat surprisingly, the 6 Million Dollar Man. Like another Palladium property that readers may be familiar with, Ninjas & Superspies is basically an everything plus the kitchen sink plus some more stuff we found in the yard plus this thing I bought off a guy in Koreatown RPG.
"Psst. Hey. You need S.D.C.? I gots some S.D.C.. Fell off a truck in Trenton.
I'll let Wujick himself describe the setting;
Ninjas & Superspies is a standalone RPG, using the Palladium Megaverse systems, with all that entails. A ton of the basic mechanics were cribbed straight from Wujick's previous effort with TMNT, which to long-time fans should be completely unsurprising. This is a company that was propogated the same typos through multiple decades of combat rules. It's not even shameless anymore, it's just expected.
At times, even oddly alluring.
Unlike its predecessor, all player characters here are assumed to be human, though nation of origin does typically prove to be fairly important. Most characters will automatically speak the language of their homeland, but any others will have to be selected as part of a Skill Program, which is a big block of skills, of which most characters only get a few. This sets up a number of weird, but still rather thematic, choices for characters that aren't some flavor of American (or Russian, depending on the campaign).
Sometimes it's good to be Communist.
O.C.C.s, handled basically identically to every other Palladium system, are organized into a few large groups.
This is not one of them.
Martial Artists are exactly what it says on the tin, with the option to be either the Dedicated student who picked up extra forms of kung fu as extracurriculars or the Worldly slacker who blew off third period Bonsai Sculpting to smoke behind the mantis shrine.
"Senior" has a different connotation in this school.
Mercenaries are highly trained soldiers, with the big choices being whether to specialize in big guns, learn an honest-to-Budha Martial Art or get a bunch of bionic limbs.
All about the Tubmans.
Agents are your Bond, James Bond types. Some are company men and women to the core, while others have spent some time wondering the world and picked up some Kung Fu while backpacking through Tibet. These folks often have some of the more bizarre cyber-parts as well, to aid in their espionagingness.
UNDERCOVER MODE ENGAGED
Gizmoteers are basically Q, with a much more limited skillset and the option of hitting the field when necessary. To various levels of effectiveness. And because this game was written in the late 80's, some of the things gizmoteers can do with their super science are now rather quaint.
I get that cell contracts are bullshit, but this seems like a lot of work.
Weapon Gizmoteers can admittedly do some very cool things with existing weapons, but they're not explained very well. Most of the stuff that is actually outlined is one-off improvised explosive weaponry, or the equivalent of something you could do with a can of hairspray and a lighter.
Cocaine is a +30% bonus to Gizmoteering.
The choices for character abilities at creation are typically Skill Programs, Martial Arts and gear, with each of those categories breaking down into a series of nested choices as you'd expect. Beyond that, some classes will get "cyber budgets" to build their artificial bits, choosing from a menu of options ranging from natural-looking prosthesis to hydraulically powered claw arms that fire lasers and/or can be thrown as grenades.
Other... prosthetics aren't really covered.
But seriously, the whole point of being a cyborg seems to be hurling bits of yourself at enemies.
"Ok, they're down. Now if someone could just lead me over to them, I'll cuff them with my feet."
Most of the cybernetics stuff is lifted straight from Heroes Unlimited, another earlier Palladium title. In order to get access to most of it, a character has to either have lost body parts or be willing to part with them. Once that threshold has been crossed, though, it's game on. Lose both your legs in a helicopter crash? The Agency can probably swing you a pair of plastic replacements with jumping servos. Did a rival sumo-wrestler tear off both of your arms after you refused to throw a match? Have we got the servo-claws for you!
Jazz Hands!
There are over 3 dozen martial arts in the book, many of them fictionalized versions of schools from the real world. With added mystical powers for extra awesome, obviously. Obvious inclusions like Shao-Lin Kung Fu are here, along with Tae Kwon Do and a couple of other things that are probably recognizable to normal people. Sumo and Judo are both available options, and they're both terrible. At least Sumo gets you 30 S.D.C. and a bunch of stat boosts for showing up, but it's got the lowest total number of attacks per melee of any martial art, all the way to level 15.
SF2 calls bullshit.
Judo is the "Hand to Hand: Basic" form in this setting. That should give you some idea of how the combat training goes in this universe.
Scared Old Man Fu
Each martial art comes with a list of moves broken down into somewhat relevant categories, and in most cases these list take up almost an entire page. It's not clear that having 4 different ways to kick someone for 1d8 damage is actually useful, but you can at least appreciate the loving care that went in to constructing these forms.
Also; Ninjas.
The writeups for the martial arts forms themselves reflected this same love letter quality, with multi-paragraph descriptions of fighting styles that often bore no real resemblance to the mechanics.
In amongst the weirdified version of real world stuff, there are some cool world-building setups. The Wui Wing Chun martial art is only practiced in secret, by women who are honor bound to help each other attain power in the world of men, but who must also compete for rank and knowledge within the sisterhood. Tien-Hsueh is an ancient Chinese martial art based on using accupressure to disrupt the chi of your enemies, causing them to waste to death over years if you cannot defeat them in a single combat.
*deathpoke*
Thai Kick Boxing is an Exclusive martial art (meaning that it can only be trained by dedicated martial artists, not fly by night agents or soldiers) that is apparently so popular as to lock almost the entire nation of Thailand into a single O.C.C.. It also has a special kata that lets you take all of your attacks at the very beginning of the melee round as your first attack. And a kick that skips S.D.C. and goes straight to hit points. It turns out, the best form of Kung Fu is actually the national sport of Thailand.
Though there are other strong contenders.
Tai-Chi Ch'uan is the national exercise program of China, though not it's official martial art. Training includes fostering a substantial boost to your own chi-levels, higher than all but a few other martial arts. Which is interesting, since the Chinese government considers the belief in or discussion of chi and chi powers to be dangerous and seditious. The official martial art of China, on the other hand, is Wu Shu, which fans of kung fu films might recognize as that really showy form with the back flips that doesn't actually hurt people. But it does get weapon katas with paired everything (including some weapons that don't exist in the book), meaning that even if it is a paper tiger, it still looks awesome. And it gets a kata that doubles the number of attacks it gets, as long as you don't use them to actually do anything. Substance is for capitalists.
Just ask the Communist Fonze.
Zanji-Shinjinken-Ryu (or just "Zanj" as we always called it) is an incredibly strong martial art with a ton of attacks, critical strike bonuses and death blow powers. With the only downside of having basically no ability to hurt things without a sword. Because 3 feet of curved steel is the optimal espionage weapon.
Not that subtlety is always a priority.
Martial artists also get access, via their choices of art, to a number of categories of mystical powers. Starting with the least ridiculous, Specialty Kata are basically melee-long patterns that can't be stopped once you've started them, but which shuffle around the bonuses and penalties of strikes and parries. Next up on our sliding scale of weird are Body Hardening techniques, which can give you minor physical stat bumps, extra S.D.C. and, in one case, allow you to spend chi to give yourself an armor rating, effectively making you sort of bullet proof.
Mountain optional.
From there it gets weird. Chi abilities let you spend points of this mystical resource to add damage to your punches, absorb impacts, heal yourself or flip around the room more efficiently. Characters with high chi can make themselves superhumanly powerful for short periods before their power runs out.
Image Unrelated.
Then comes the [spookyvoice]Arts of Invisibility[/spookyvoice], or as they're known to players "magical Prowl." Ninja, yes, they're real, and some other martial artists get access to magical powers that can make them literally invisible, or allow them to hide in a well-lit, empty room. Beyond that are the Zenjorik powers, which are just weird. Altering one's body weight, vibrating furniture apart, that kind of thing.
Also; yelling people unconscious.
All this is against the background of a sort of 'roided up Cold War. One where China is of supreme importance, as that's where a huge proportion of the mystical martial arts knowledge is kept. There are rules for creating a spy agency to put the player characters in, mostly revolving around determining their various budgets for spy-guns, spy-cars and spy-redshirts.
Along with Supervillain conference rooms.
Unfortunately, being a Palladium game, the rules really weren't set up very well for actually telling stories. The percentage skill system, and the absurd number of available skills, was very opaque and difficult to extract meaning or characterization from. Most of the martial arts forms really boil down to "how many attacks can I get and what cool powers are there", since the best way to kill the bad guys was almost always with guns. But you can play a dude with metal legs who jumps out of a helicopter he built out of spare parts and floats safely to the ground. So a lot of that gets forgiven.
Crane Kick always loses to Shotgun.
This game is a huge nostalgia bomb for me. I spent so much time leafing through it during my formative years, and some sizeable fraction of that time having weird kung fu adventures with my friends. RIFTS would eventually eclipse it as our primary outlet for crazy RP shenanigans, but there will always be a place in my heart for the game that let me build cyborg kung fu Wolverine and use him to stab my buddy's brainwiped communist chi terminator.
During my workout today, I came to the realization that, as presented in the book, I'm actually a Worldly Martial Artist. Down to the number of years trained and everything. I think I just traded some of my powers for Skill Programs.
Posts
I doubt I'll ever play it again and I don't have any interest in new Palladium stuff as long as Kevin Siembieda insists that there's nothing wrong with the Rifts rules, but I also don't feel like my time and money spent on it are wasted
As a backer: :-(
To be fair, the RRT campaign focused heavily on Ninja Division doing the heavy lifting, and allegedly '98% of the work was done'.
Luckily I recouped most of it selling off what I received in Wave One piecemeal, but they still owe my friends and I hundreds of figures all the same.
Also tangential to the conversation because I would not at all be surprised if the Savage Rifts kickstarter comments end up with at least a few RRT malcontents within. Not that I hope for it, or hold anything against Pinnacle, but ties to Palladium Books who has managed to burn a lot of bridges in the last 3 years or so aren't going to do them any favours. There was some controversy tied to that situation when Robotech Academy was being funded (before the project was cancelled) as well.
SDC damage is essentially "only a flesh wound". As long as you're taking SDC damage, no matter how brutal, you're just taking relatively easy to heal cinematic injuries. Hit points are when you go from Michael Bay to Coen Brothers, movie injury wise.
I believe SDC recovered more quickly than HP, and there were even a few attacks that bypassed SDC altogether, though this was usually more of a quirk than a viable attack method in many circumstances).
This led in part to my having human characters who were huge fans of redundancy; power armour pilots who wore MDC flight suits (Triax 'plainclothes armour' made this totally doable in the setting) with a backup mini forcefield on hand, stuff like that.
Again, it's been ages, but I'm pretty sure living creatures that weren't MDC usually had HP/SDC scores. Inanimate objects would just have SDC ratings. Rifts had little gradiation; a gifted GM might talk about something being damaged, but usually it was sort of a similar binary state; working (SDC 1 or more) or destroyed (SDC zero or less). MDC weaponry just made blowing up non MD structures really easy.
There were other variant rules about things like taking minor damage through armour (heat from a laser causing minor burns to the occupant, getting battered around while taking massive impact damage, etc) which I recall applying just to get some use out of my characters otherwise extraneous stats.
Sure, you could run adventures where the party had to disarm for plot reasons, but Rifts was always full of magic/psionics/hidden gear/whatever that meant you either had the most obnoxious series of restrictions in place, or just accepted that characters (at least in aggregate of the whole party) were ridiculously hard to fully disarm, barring running a 'human vagabonds, no cybernetics, no psionics, no magic, etc' game, in which case why even play Rifts?
Just drop SDC all together. Pretty much any OCC or weapon that's limited to it is going to gimp the poor player who chose it anyway.
They're so binary that it's ridiculous; they either completely take you by surprise because nobody was expecting Vamps, so it's probably a (slow, grinding, boring) TPK... or you knew you were going to fight vamps, so you bring squirt guns and mow them all down in almost comical fashion.
It also always bugged me a lot that not even a half-assed explanation was given for why Vampires got fucking annihilated by sunlight & some artificial lights, but not lasers. It's the same Goddamn thing, Siembieda.
It makes a (TINY) bit more sense when keeping in mind that they have all of their series mashed together, so there's some mystical chi shit tied into the Sun and the Moon (if we're getting pedantic, moonlight is just sunlight bounced off our neighbour, if the former hurts them, shouldn't the latter as well? Or at least be uncomfortable, due to the reduced intensity).
And really, the setting is entirely "a wizard did it". Consistency has never been their strong suit, to the point of it being seen as a feature, not a bug.
That said, I agree. Their take on lycanthropes are similar, basically "have silver or powerful enough magic, or you're fucked". With a solid Game Master at the helm, I could see fighting a single Vampire (with at least some tools on hand to end up with a victory, or the opportunity to run away), led to a chance to arm up to face them, but at that point the characters have to build up an alternate arsenal just to handle one foe (and this isn't the only time it happens in Rifts). My group faced them back in high school, and by the time we were done we'd committed genocide against a vampire clan and were armed to the teeth in random techno-wizard shit.
Pure technological lights do bupkis (bupkiss?).
Artificial lights + something in the shape of a cross = free cross-shaped shadows tho
The way vampire "society" is set up is actually pretty interesting and relatively well thought out for a game that otherwise features dinosaur-riding psychics battling cyborg banditos.
But the invulnerability to all but a very narrow band of attacks is straight out of AD&D, which the other mechanics in this game were clearly at least inspired by on some level. Armor Ratings, to-hit rolls, extra attacks as you level up, spell lists, etc.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I do have to second this.
My first impression on seeing the Mexico Worldbook was, "There's no way this is going to feel right. Vampires aren't going to work in this kind of setting; it's the wrong atmosphere,"
But Siembieda's spin on the concept does fit in a pretty convincing way.
EDIT: For those not in the know, vampires in Rifts kind-of operate like some kinds of insect colonies. All of the lesser vampires are basically just drones, and the 'Master' Vampires could be thought of as princess ants / wasps - capable of 'breeding' (creating new vampires by draining victims), but still ultimately under the control of the hive queen: a Vampire Intelligence.
This provides a lot of internally consistent explanations for obvious questions (like, "Well, why doesn't one of the major factions in the game just go faceroll all of the Vampire Kingdoms with spotlight crucifixes & water cannons?"), because Intelligences are Lovecraftian puppet masters with a tentacle in every pie on the planet. It could reasonably be conjectured that, say, some of Prosek's most trusted advisors on the issue of Mexico are actually just Vampire Intelligence sockpuppet entities, or that most of the water gun trade is actually controlled by Vampire Intelligences, etc.
There is also a group of vampires in South America which take this approach, hiring demons and were creatures, including a weather 'god' to help protect them. Also given that humans can be mind controlled by vampires a sufficiently pressed intelligence might just go shopping with the Nuari for some Super tanks of their own.
It should also be noted that Rifts vampires were not undead but a type of elemental. Other lesser elementals in Rifts could possess humans and their intelligence's could grant powers. Their weaknesses are fundamentally supernatural in origin, sunlight does not hurt them it is the symbol of what sunlight represents and such magic bs.
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Comparing that to pretty much any other corner of the world and it's damn near a paradise.
...I dunno. I think I'd sell my soul to go live in the Coalition States or NGR and play Sega Genesis all day while eating cheeseburgers & chips.
'Yeah D-Bees are awful. Just terrible. Humans are the only way. Prosek is pure genius. Also I'd like a combo #4 with a coke, and maybe let's upgrade those fries from a medium to a large...'
Jokes on you: all the games star Grampy Prosek and he's invincible for maximum historical accuracy.
This hurts me.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The wanted poster is for a Type-Red. That's going to be every third cyborg on the continent. That look is basically mass-marketed to wannabe bad asses.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
There's definitely a shot of that same borg working the lower jaw.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
That, all by itself, really makes me wonder if these people actually get RIFTS on any level.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
FTFY
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Welcome to Mexico! A land of beaches, margaritas, excellent and diverse local cuisine and surprisingly benign-yet-oppressive supernatural regimes.
And excitingly demonic statuary.
Congratulations on making it through the insulating band of drooling vampire savages that patrol the old border! Clearly you are an adventurer of means, or at least great luck. That barrier has held off even the likes of the Coalition to this point, so at the very least you can be proud of your proven superiority to those psychos.
It's basically just Spring Break '86 up there.
Or maybe you came through on one of the traveling circuses that are so popular among undomesticated humans. Was that it? Were you a juggler, perhaps? Or one of those bizarre fire-eaters?
I suppose you could call me a specialty act.
What's that, you say? Oh, you were brought here as blood-cattle for the Nightlords? Well, I suppose congratulations of a different sort are in order. Here, your housing assignment and details are on this form.
It's not what you'd call a great neighborhood.
Eat you? Why would we do that, human? No, no, we have other uses for you. Someone has to maintain the roads, after all, and do the gardening. Your services are needed, cattle, we won't be dismembering you and draining your limbs of precious fluids. Nothing so base as that, I'm afraid.
We're much more, ahem, civilized around here.
Oh, I see. You've been told stories of the other kingdoms. Yes, self-styled blood gods do rule in the backwaters of old Mexico. Taking up residence in ancient pyramid-temples and refering to themselves as Ixthktchlltl or some other clicking, vowel-depressed moniker. Nothing like that here in the great Mexican Empire, no sir. We're the civilized sort of extra-dimensional supernatural horror. Besides, all that showy sacrifice stuff wastes an awful lot of blood.
Precious, precious blood.
Here in the glorious Empire, we simply require your fealty and monthly tithes of blood to your betters. Well, that and your willing participation in an organized society, obviously. You humans are very resource intensive, and keeping you alive in the necessary numbers requires quite an impressive degree of organization and infrastructure, some part of which you will now be responsible for. In return, you will be allowed to live your life in relative peace and safety, certainly moreso than your still-feral cousins outside our walls.
Do you see how they are, without our steady hand?
Right now, you are thinking that you'll play along just long enough to start a resistance movement of some kind. Oh, don't look so surprised, it's not like we can't read minds. But even besides that, centuries of experience has shown us that these rebellious tendencies are indemic among your kind. For your own sake, as well as that of your species, you would do well to resist such self-destructive urges.
We have very strict stake-control measures in place. As you can imagine.
This is the best deal you and your kind are going to get, here in the ruins of what was once your world. Our benevolent protection keeps you safe from the true horrors of your new environment, without us you are simply food for someone else with less self-restraint.
And better pecs.
Or slaves to the Spluggorth. Yes, yes, I know, right now you're thinking that's just trading one slaver for another. Let me assure you, this is not the case. Under our rule you will be able to live out your life, have a family and eventually die in peace. With them, you're just as likely to end up with your soul, worthless as it is, powering some tentacle-based sex apparatus.
Oh yeah, baby. Undulate for me.
Ah hah, and now you're thinking about trading up, aren't you? Working your way into the system, getting bitten and worming your way into the ruling class. Let's dispense with that, shall we? It is, theoretically, possible for you to be initiated into the master race, but we have very tight controls on who we let in.
Debonaire, with a double side of creepy.
You see, our society is very well organized, and we can't have you outsiders just jumping in to throw it out of balance. Secondary Vampires, like myself, all answer to the Master, who in turn answers to the Intelligence. Our very existence is predicated on serving the will of our superiors and furthering their ends. Besides, if I were to turn you into a vampire, there is a very good chance you would be one of those feral monsters we push north toward the river. You don't want that, trust me.
The orthodontia costs alone will ruin you.
No, no, be happy with your place as a favored pet of the greatest Empire on the continent. And know that your lifetime of faithful servitude will help usher in the same sense of purpose and safety for yet more of your kind in the future. Subservience is strength, blood-slave. Remember that. By serving us, you strengthen your nation and our lord, the Vampire Intelligence. Blessed be his eye-mouths. With enough time, blood and servants, he may break through the walls of this reality and manifest here in his full, eye-tentacled glory. On that day, we will celebrate. Probably with a fountain spraying the blood of your friends and loved-ones, or their descendants. Try not to focus on that part, I guess.
And clowns. What's a party without clowns?
Ah, we just got your blood test results back and... you seem to be clear of any particular issues. Excellent. Though, your cholesterol is a bit high, maybe we should lay off the rhino-buffalo bacon, huh? Oh, who am I kidding. Enjoy your gruel, walking blood-sack. NEXT.
Unsavory elements, to be avoided.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Sell me to the tentacle sex monster.
Not enough skulls drawn over the skull-armor?
Besides, that's the old-style armor! What happened to the sleek, skeleton-looking getup?
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
the new style armor is probably too controversial in the rifts fandom, whereas everyone at least agrees that the old style is acceptable
Having your body possessed by a splintered alien intelligence that craves humanoid blood means never having diarrhea again.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I know the fiber situation sounds kind of iffy, but all Secondary and higher vampires evacuate all waste directly from the colon into another dimension via tiny, self-contained rift.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Glad our Rifts DM did not know that. Based on his unusual cruelty toward player characters, I fear that most of our adventures would take place in the Vam-piles Dimensions.
The stuff is a remarkable fertilizer and in high demand everywhere to boost agricultural production.
In the halcyon days of 1988, the Berlin Wall still stands. Timothy Dalton is Bond. "Wu-Tang" is either some nonsense phrase on the cover of a kung fu betamax or the noise 4 year olds make when presented with space-race-based orange drink. It is a very different world from ours.
And yet somehow, so similar.
Ninjas & Superspies is the creation of Erick Wujick, the guy primarily responsible for TMNT and Other Strangeness, another of Palladium Books' trailblazing non-elf-centric RPGs. That's right, two of the flagship books for the fledgling, non-TSR gaming company included or strongly implied the word "Ninja" in their titles. However, whereas TMNT focused largely on the Mutant (and to a lesser extent, the Teenage and Turtles) portion of the source material with relatively little page-space given to the Ninja, this entry definitely delivered on the promise of its cover art.
And what a promise it was.
Inside these oddly orange, cheaply laminated covers is a 173 page love letter to Bond films, kung fu movies and, somewhat surprisingly, the 6 Million Dollar Man. Like another Palladium property that readers may be familiar with, Ninjas & Superspies is basically an everything plus the kitchen sink plus some more stuff we found in the yard plus this thing I bought off a guy in Koreatown RPG.
"Psst. Hey. You need S.D.C.? I gots some S.D.C.. Fell off a truck in Trenton.
I'll let Wujick himself describe the setting;
Ninjas & Superspies is a standalone RPG, using the Palladium Megaverse systems, with all that entails. A ton of the basic mechanics were cribbed straight from Wujick's previous effort with TMNT, which to long-time fans should be completely unsurprising. This is a company that was propogated the same typos through multiple decades of combat rules. It's not even shameless anymore, it's just expected.
At times, even oddly alluring.
Unlike its predecessor, all player characters here are assumed to be human, though nation of origin does typically prove to be fairly important. Most characters will automatically speak the language of their homeland, but any others will have to be selected as part of a Skill Program, which is a big block of skills, of which most characters only get a few. This sets up a number of weird, but still rather thematic, choices for characters that aren't some flavor of American (or Russian, depending on the campaign).
Sometimes it's good to be Communist.
O.C.C.s, handled basically identically to every other Palladium system, are organized into a few large groups.
This is not one of them.
Martial Artists are exactly what it says on the tin, with the option to be either the Dedicated student who picked up extra forms of kung fu as extracurriculars or the Worldly slacker who blew off third period Bonsai Sculpting to smoke behind the mantis shrine.
"Senior" has a different connotation in this school.
Mercenaries are highly trained soldiers, with the big choices being whether to specialize in big guns, learn an honest-to-Budha Martial Art or get a bunch of bionic limbs.
All about the Tubmans.
Agents are your Bond, James Bond types. Some are company men and women to the core, while others have spent some time wondering the world and picked up some Kung Fu while backpacking through Tibet. These folks often have some of the more bizarre cyber-parts as well, to aid in their espionagingness.
UNDERCOVER MODE ENGAGED
Gizmoteers are basically Q, with a much more limited skillset and the option of hitting the field when necessary. To various levels of effectiveness. And because this game was written in the late 80's, some of the things gizmoteers can do with their super science are now rather quaint.
I get that cell contracts are bullshit, but this seems like a lot of work.
Weapon Gizmoteers can admittedly do some very cool things with existing weapons, but they're not explained very well. Most of the stuff that is actually outlined is one-off improvised explosive weaponry, or the equivalent of something you could do with a can of hairspray and a lighter.
Cocaine is a +30% bonus to Gizmoteering.
The choices for character abilities at creation are typically Skill Programs, Martial Arts and gear, with each of those categories breaking down into a series of nested choices as you'd expect. Beyond that, some classes will get "cyber budgets" to build their artificial bits, choosing from a menu of options ranging from natural-looking prosthesis to hydraulically powered claw arms that fire lasers and/or can be thrown as grenades.
Other... prosthetics aren't really covered.
But seriously, the whole point of being a cyborg seems to be hurling bits of yourself at enemies.
"Ok, they're down. Now if someone could just lead me over to them, I'll cuff them with my feet."
Most of the cybernetics stuff is lifted straight from Heroes Unlimited, another earlier Palladium title. In order to get access to most of it, a character has to either have lost body parts or be willing to part with them. Once that threshold has been crossed, though, it's game on. Lose both your legs in a helicopter crash? The Agency can probably swing you a pair of plastic replacements with jumping servos. Did a rival sumo-wrestler tear off both of your arms after you refused to throw a match? Have we got the servo-claws for you!
Jazz Hands!
There are over 3 dozen martial arts in the book, many of them fictionalized versions of schools from the real world. With added mystical powers for extra awesome, obviously. Obvious inclusions like Shao-Lin Kung Fu are here, along with Tae Kwon Do and a couple of other things that are probably recognizable to normal people. Sumo and Judo are both available options, and they're both terrible. At least Sumo gets you 30 S.D.C. and a bunch of stat boosts for showing up, but it's got the lowest total number of attacks per melee of any martial art, all the way to level 15.
SF2 calls bullshit.
Judo is the "Hand to Hand: Basic" form in this setting. That should give you some idea of how the combat training goes in this universe.
Scared Old Man Fu
Each martial art comes with a list of moves broken down into somewhat relevant categories, and in most cases these list take up almost an entire page. It's not clear that having 4 different ways to kick someone for 1d8 damage is actually useful, but you can at least appreciate the loving care that went in to constructing these forms.
Also; Ninjas.
The writeups for the martial arts forms themselves reflected this same love letter quality, with multi-paragraph descriptions of fighting styles that often bore no real resemblance to the mechanics.
In amongst the weirdified version of real world stuff, there are some cool world-building setups. The Wui Wing Chun martial art is only practiced in secret, by women who are honor bound to help each other attain power in the world of men, but who must also compete for rank and knowledge within the sisterhood. Tien-Hsueh is an ancient Chinese martial art based on using accupressure to disrupt the chi of your enemies, causing them to waste to death over years if you cannot defeat them in a single combat.
*deathpoke*
Thai Kick Boxing is an Exclusive martial art (meaning that it can only be trained by dedicated martial artists, not fly by night agents or soldiers) that is apparently so popular as to lock almost the entire nation of Thailand into a single O.C.C.. It also has a special kata that lets you take all of your attacks at the very beginning of the melee round as your first attack. And a kick that skips S.D.C. and goes straight to hit points. It turns out, the best form of Kung Fu is actually the national sport of Thailand.
Though there are other strong contenders.
Tai-Chi Ch'uan is the national exercise program of China, though not it's official martial art. Training includes fostering a substantial boost to your own chi-levels, higher than all but a few other martial arts. Which is interesting, since the Chinese government considers the belief in or discussion of chi and chi powers to be dangerous and seditious. The official martial art of China, on the other hand, is Wu Shu, which fans of kung fu films might recognize as that really showy form with the back flips that doesn't actually hurt people. But it does get weapon katas with paired everything (including some weapons that don't exist in the book), meaning that even if it is a paper tiger, it still looks awesome. And it gets a kata that doubles the number of attacks it gets, as long as you don't use them to actually do anything. Substance is for capitalists.
Just ask the Communist Fonze.
Zanji-Shinjinken-Ryu (or just "Zanj" as we always called it) is an incredibly strong martial art with a ton of attacks, critical strike bonuses and death blow powers. With the only downside of having basically no ability to hurt things without a sword. Because 3 feet of curved steel is the optimal espionage weapon.
Not that subtlety is always a priority.
Martial artists also get access, via their choices of art, to a number of categories of mystical powers. Starting with the least ridiculous, Specialty Kata are basically melee-long patterns that can't be stopped once you've started them, but which shuffle around the bonuses and penalties of strikes and parries. Next up on our sliding scale of weird are Body Hardening techniques, which can give you minor physical stat bumps, extra S.D.C. and, in one case, allow you to spend chi to give yourself an armor rating, effectively making you sort of bullet proof.
Mountain optional.
From there it gets weird. Chi abilities let you spend points of this mystical resource to add damage to your punches, absorb impacts, heal yourself or flip around the room more efficiently. Characters with high chi can make themselves superhumanly powerful for short periods before their power runs out.
Image Unrelated.
Then comes the [spookyvoice]Arts of Invisibility[/spookyvoice], or as they're known to players "magical Prowl." Ninja, yes, they're real, and some other martial artists get access to magical powers that can make them literally invisible, or allow them to hide in a well-lit, empty room. Beyond that are the Zenjorik powers, which are just weird. Altering one's body weight, vibrating furniture apart, that kind of thing.
Also; yelling people unconscious.
All this is against the background of a sort of 'roided up Cold War. One where China is of supreme importance, as that's where a huge proportion of the mystical martial arts knowledge is kept. There are rules for creating a spy agency to put the player characters in, mostly revolving around determining their various budgets for spy-guns, spy-cars and spy-redshirts.
Along with Supervillain conference rooms.
Unfortunately, being a Palladium game, the rules really weren't set up very well for actually telling stories. The percentage skill system, and the absurd number of available skills, was very opaque and difficult to extract meaning or characterization from. Most of the martial arts forms really boil down to "how many attacks can I get and what cool powers are there", since the best way to kill the bad guys was almost always with guns. But you can play a dude with metal legs who jumps out of a helicopter he built out of spare parts and floats safely to the ground. So a lot of that gets forgiven.
Crane Kick always loses to Shotgun.
This game is a huge nostalgia bomb for me. I spent so much time leafing through it during my formative years, and some sizeable fraction of that time having weird kung fu adventures with my friends. RIFTS would eventually eclipse it as our primary outlet for crazy RP shenanigans, but there will always be a place in my heart for the game that let me build cyborg kung fu Wolverine and use him to stab my buddy's brainwiped communist chi terminator.
Decades before it was cool.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
That's just weird. I have an O.C.C..
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
But judo as the basic hand-to-hand art? I'm not sure how I never played this but now I must.