So Far, So Good

I collected about 4 years' worth of my best Palladium articles from the SBRPG blog, ran them through my grammar checker, and reposted them here in a massive collection. This is an excellent start to a game-focused blog, focusing on different Palladium games and serving as a home hub for my thoughts on the games and their worlds.

I started Rifts back in the 1990s when it first came out, and I was drawn in right away. There was nothing like this game, and the visuals, books, and covers were mesmerizing. Everything about the game screamed "this was cool" to me, well worth my time, money, and attention, and I loved every book.

I have no idea where most of my Rifts books are now, likely in a box somewhere, so I am rebuilding my MDC collection book by book. I have a complete collection of the SDC books I gathered over the Pandemic, and those have never left my gaming shelves. I love the SDC systems on their own, and I keep a separate SDC-only mirror universe on one side of my Megaverse for crossovers and lower-powered gaming.

On the other side, of course, is Rifts, and anything goes here. Someday they may meet, but for now, I am happy to keep my focus on the SDC side as Rifts slowly trickles in and I build a nice gaming shelf with my new books.

I am looking forward to the TNMT reprints!

The Rifts game was always there for me. While my brother likely thought I was a bit Rifts-crazy with how much this came up during our games, the universe felt like the be-all-end-all of game universes, the ultimate universe for the ultimate game. Everything in Rifts was so much cooler than any of the crossover worlds.

This was far better than the D&D Planes, the DC or Marvel universes, any science fiction universe, Star Wars, Star Trek, comic books, or any movie ever filmed. If someone from Rifts showed up in a crossover, things were hitting the fan, and even my brother started to pay attention after some of the iconic NPCs from Rifts made appearances in some of our more plane-hopping games.

Full stop. They were so cool. Everything from the dragons to the gods was these god-like beings that could step into a scene and take over the narrative. Even normal people from Rifts were a few levels cooler than people from other realities. They just did not survive the Rifts; they lived here.

Rifts characters were the universe's secret butt kickers, and everyone knew it.

If you wanted true power, you would have immersed yourself in this world and become a godlike being. Any way you could do it, through powered armor, magic, DB powers, or any other route to power - you took it. You dived off the cliff and into the well of maximum power. You struggled, fought, nearly died, and survived.

Forget level 20 in any version of D&D; the entire framework and concept are weak. You are not a mega-hero who can slice down buildings with a 30-foot energy sword and fire volleys of dozens of missiles with a single thought. Rifts made you cool and backed it up. Even level 36 AD&D characters were weak compared to the hardcore Rifts characters. Sure, you have a wish spell, but it is still not helping you at all. I will force a concentration check on the casting of that spell with an energy beam that could slice a battleship in half.

Yet, you were still pretty vulnerable in Rifts, even if you were a god or power-armored freak. You could not blast your way out of every problem, and you needed to work those skills hard to avoid trouble and find better ways to solve them. There are times when you need to be out of that armor, and you need a safe haven.

There were times this game reminded me of the classic Car Wars game. Yes, you are an autoduelist with your 3 DP body armor and body underneath, and a total of 6 DP, but some of the weapons these cars have do 3d6 damage per hit, and many times those are dual-linked, and a ram could easily paste you with 8-16d6 damage. On foot, you were very squishy, and we ran a Car Wars campaign for decades with these rules. Characters got fired upon by vehicle weapons many times, and the near misses were always tense. Many just perished in a red mist. Car Wars was just as brutal as Rifts with vehicles versus pedestrians.

There were "SDC weapons" in Car Wars, too, including hand weapons, and plenty of them that dealt severe "MDC" vehicle damage. If you are playing Car Wars, you are already playing a "MDC lite" game, so Rifts is a touch higher-powered, but the same concepts apply. Don't get in front of vehicular weapons; it is bad for your health.

The most significant difference in Rifts is MDC hand weapons, which are many times more dangerous than they are worth to use as everyday firearms. One missed shot is blowing through several walls, attracting a load of attention, and likely killing innocents in a populated area. It was like this in Car Wars, too. A silenced SDC submachine gun is a hand piece of character kit in Rifts for dealing with touchy situations, with your MDC weapons on backup.

There may be enclaves where no MDC weapons or armors are allowed, especially in non-magical areas where the enforcers want to be the ones with the MDC firepower and armors, and they would also keep SDC weapons around to avoid massive collateral damage. A team of coalition inner-city police, equipped with SDC guns, MDC backup weapons, and MDC armor to make them immune to lighter weapons, is not out of the realm of possibility.

They could even have SDC armor if there is a black-market problem with MDC armor being stolen or sold off from police stocks. It is also possible that there are lower-level SDC-only police forces, and the MDC enforcers are kept in reserve, just to keep an area secure and seemingly normal. This is a post-apocalyptic dystopia in many places, so even the cops could be kept obedient, in line, and MDC-weapon-free, for fear they would challenge the government. A dee-bee with MDC superpowers will also attract a lot of the wrong kinds of attention.

It is possible to have a Robocop-style game with SDC-only weapons and armor in some enclaves. Owning MDC armor and guns will attract the wrong type of attention from those who like to keep control with an iron fist. At the same time, a shootout with SDC weapons in a rough area of the enclave may be ignored as gang activity and never attract the attention of the MDC military forces, leaving the weakly armored and armored street cops to deal with it.

Just because you are in an MDC world does not mean every game is an MDC combat. In frontier areas, of course, this is an MDC-happy place. But in enclaves? Think a little and use some worldbuilding to keep those SDC guns, knives, and fist-fights flexing the AR and SDC rules.

Also, remember, AR does not apply to MDC weapons or armored targets. You roll to hit, and if you hit, the MDC armor takes the damage for you. Even if it is a 50 MDC vibrarium bikini. Most armors in Rifts are full-body for the most part, but the rules are rules.

For the most part, your adventurers will be in light MDC armor, toting MDC weapons that do 1d6 to 3d6 MDC, with portable heavy armaments that do 1d4x10 MDC. If even one point of MDC gets through your armor, you are all but vaporized. Again, this is not too different from Car Wars, but in Rifts, characters have a better chance since they are, for the most part, wearing armor more like a Car Wars vehicle.

So Rifts is a more survivable game than Car Wars, by a long shot, since the personal armors and guns are so much better, not to mention magic. You can always stumble into something in Rifts that can paste you, like Glitterboy armor or vehicles. Still, your odds of surviving with imaginative play and a decent set of MDC body armor and weapons are far better than they are in Car Wars.

But I like how this blog is turning out, and I get the feeling Rifts and Palladium need some love, and this is the same love I have always had for the system for the last 30+ years.