Mail Room: Rifts Ultimate Edition

Rifts is one of the best games and settings of all time.

You will either think I am crazy or agree. There is really no middle ground here. I know about Savage Rifts, and while that is a fun, game-balanced version of the game, it does not do it for me. You know that scene in Avengers: Endgame where Captain Marvel is flying through the ships of the enemy battlefleet and destroying them by treating them like she is flying through paper?

That is Rifts.

That is what it lets you do.

I have a softcover in the mail, and the hardcover is still out of print. It is nice to see Palladium selling out of books, and they deserve all the praise and success they can get. This is one of the OG pen-and-paper role-playing game companies, and they make excellent games that are still very affordable.

You can be that powerful, and there are enemies out there that can out-power-level you and crush you like an ant under a shoe. Forget D&D 5E and its "managed power levels" that only let you go so far. Rifts is roleplaying with the rails removed. Does your 50 SDC/30 hp super-character get caught without their MDC armor, and someone vaporizes you with a low-power 1d4 MD laser pistol? Tough luck.

It is like one of those Heavy Metal scenes where the main character gets vaporized, and the audience sits in shock. That's life. Deal with it. You should have done that to the other guy before they pulled on you. Live and learn. Oh, and even if your character has 600 MD of hit points like Captain Marvel, a battlesuit could roll up on her doing 1d6x1000 MD, and it is basically the same thing. That's life. Deal with it.

Take your fake assumptions of D&D fantasy superheroes and throw them in the trash, this game ain't that. Even a level 20 D&D character rigged for maximum damage still is not doing that 1d4 MD per attack, so those power levels are laughable and small. Sorry to burst your ego bubble, but that "D&D balance bubble" is a tiny, small, almost insignificant thing to beings that can harness the power of suns and atomic fusion blasts.

Just like your level 20 D&D fighter could not stand in front of an M1 battle tank and block the 120mm APFSDS shell flying at them, Rifts teaches you "you ain't all that." One cloud of red mist later, you realize that was probably a dumb idea as 20 levels of XP get torn up with the character sheet, and tiny bits of magic armor go flying.

In Rifts? Well, magic gets naturally amped, so your fighter could bounce that 120mm round off their shield and redirect it into another tank or battle robot. You are just that awesome.

In D&D, you are being given a tiny power envelope to play in by the gods and the game designers, and you are expected to play nice. Some people cannot exist outside of that cave, and they need that illusion of balance to construct a mathematical framework of how the world works with its numbers. They need to know, well, an Orc can only do this much damage, and anything outside that is a reason to start a fight with the dungeon master. Suppose that Orc just did 1d6x20 hit points of damage with a longsword. In that case, the DM is a terrible person, not worth playing with, breaking the game for everyone, hurting the community, attacking online play, and needs to be called out online as a blight on the hobby.

Also, this needs to be monetized as a D&D horror story on YouTube to feed the clicks, most of which are probably fake AI-generated users, which is why RAM is so expensive these days, as the advertisement market "pay for views and clicks" disintegrates in front of our eyes, as nobody will know who is real anymore. It is like those banks of phones with the robots all pressing the buttons, only now it is banks of virtual machines with fake users clicking on videos and ads and "watching" them all the way through. As a content creator who depends on views and engagement, your days are numbered, since others will game the system on orders of magnitude so hard you will never be able to compete with honest, human-created content.

AI is to 2025 as DDT was to the 1950s. Something that gets overused, overhyped, destroys ecosystems,  spreads toxicity, ends lives, and does more damage than we can imagine before everyone wakes up.

I mention AI since the helplessness you feel when dealing with that is the helplessness you should feel when living in Rifts. Some can deal with that, and some can't. Like Rifts and its power level, it makes your assumptions of certainty, predictability, and invincibility obsolete. Some enjoy that feeling and can "surf the wave" of madness and chaos. Those players will love Rifts and understand it, accepting that life is temporary and certainty cannot be guaranteed by rules in a D&D book. There is always someone bigger than you, and the goal is to get bigger than them. Or eke out a life in the shadows and cracks between the pavement, and hope you don't get noticed.

To play Rifts and accept the game, a part of you needs to let go of the notion of traditional game balance, designers guaranteeing safety and fairness. Even some superhero games are overbalanced slop, pretending to have cosmic power levels but never really delivering.

Rifts delivers.