Rifts

Huzanko

Hey guys.

I'm trying to get into the 'Rifts' RPG. I don't know how many of you have heard of it but, if you have, I'd like to hear what you have to say about it.

Stories of good games, tips for a Rifts GM, what you like about the game, what you don't like, things to watch out for while playing and running as far as the rules go, etc.

Stuff like that.

Comments will be much appriciated. Thanks.

Gaddez

Things I like: It's a crazy world where pretty much anything can happen and you can play just about anything from a superhero to a cyborg to a wizard to a dragon.

Things I despise: the number of world books (theres like thirty of the stupid things and not all are high quality) and the folks who don't like the system. You'll hear from them shortly rest assured. :roll:

laughingfuzzball

Definately restrict materials allowed to what's in the worldbooks pertinant to the campaign, and you may not want to permit all of those. The biggest problem is that you get too many unrelated themes going. Restricting materials allows you to reduce the number of themes, which makes it easier to make them all coherent.

RiemannLives

There also is a definite "power creep" going on in the RIFTS books. Each one seems to try and top the last in just how powerful the stuff inside is.

Its a great setting. The system was pretty good when compared with it's contemporaries (eg: 2nd ed D&D) but it seems pretty clunky nowadays. If you are prepared to play pretty fast and loose with the mechanics and don't have any rules lawyers it can be a blast.

This is not a good game to play with (competent) power gamers as they will break the fuck out of the system in the first five minutes. Unless that is what you are going for of course

Gabriel_Pitt

The setting is highly awesome, and the system was okay for it's time. Unfortunately, that time was twenty years ago (You hear that Palladium? How about a 2nd edition already you retarded tree monkeys!) My suggestion is to take what you want from the setting, and play it with a system you're already familiar with. I consider Palladium's books to be for 'advanced' gamers, because they tend to be so poorly organized and laid out that I'd imagine without a lot of motivation, they'd actually be a deterrent for anyone who is just getting started with gaming.

Huzanko

Thanks for the comments guys.

If I was to run Rifts for my gaming group - I'd be running for complete newbies who've never played Rifts before. I'm the only one in my group who has any of the books and the only book I own is the core book. I bought the core book at GEN CON 2006. Also, power-gamers, munchkins, and rules-lawyers are heavily restricted/moderated in my group. So, I don't think I'd have to worry about a lot of power-gaming going on right off the bat - at least not at first. Althrough, from what I've read so far, the system does lend itself, a great deal, to power-gaming.

I really like the setting and the character classes. The rules look...interesting and I'm fairly comfortable learning new systems but I can see where my group would go "What the hell is this crap? Why can't we just do D20?" and all that noise. I do like D20, I've played D&D for about five years now, but I like the complexity that other systems bring to the table at times.

Certain people in my group, including myself, are always trying to come up with their own systems or additions to the D20 system. So, I may have to do that with Rifts. Really, there is no reason one can't use the Rifts settings and classes and then use the D20 system for the actual game play. What do you guys think about the HERO System? I was tossing around the idea of using that system in my Rifts game as well.