The 12 Days of Rifts-mas: Day 5, Beyond the Supernatural

I never got into Beyond the Supernatural as deeply as I wanted, but I always loved this game. This is an X-Files meets Call of Cthulhu meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Ghostbusters sort of game, where the big bad guys are:

  • Spirits, Ghosts, and Wicked Folklore
  • Supernatural Monsters
  • Demonic Servants
  • Ancient Evils
  • Alien Intelligences
  • And the wickedness of humankind.

This is a solid setup for supernatural investigators against the world. This was first published in 1988 and had a second edition in 2005, so, being rooted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it feels right for the genre. Call of Cthulhu had "modern play options," but the monsters were, for the most part, Lovecraftian. They had classic horror monsters in CoC and supported those, but BtS leaned hard into the "everything else" category and brought that SDC and Palladium charm to the table.

Unlike Call of Cthulhu, you have powerful psychics and psychic mechanics on your side, wielding a full array of psychic powers and weapons against the enemies of humanity. Where in CoC you go slowly insane and die, in BtS, you are the hunters, and you go in to kick butt and take names. You can still go insane, but you can fight back and dish out the hurt on the spooks.

This is: Spook Hunters: the RPG, and it rocks.

Why this game wasn't more popular defies logic. This is a Call of Cthulhu where you can and should fight back. While that takes some of the supernatural horror away, it does feel good when you blast the Swamp Beast from the Delta back into smithereens. You exit the cabin you were trapped in all night, and the day breaks, and you realize that for all your suffering and sacrifice, one less creature of darkness walks the night.

And it is back to a somewhat everyday life: a detective agency or a paranormal-hunter group that specializes in the odd jobs found on early BBSes, the Internet, and Usenet discussion boards. This is text-based computing on University systems, Compuserve, Genie, AoL, text-only email, BBS systems, and other places. Someone may send you a low-resolution picture from an early digital camera as an attachment, but there are no smartphones in this world. Video over the Internet? Are you insane? 320x200 short clips in 256 colors, but nothing high-quality, and they would take hours or days to download in multiple parts that could be corrupted and never stitch together right.

Yeah, this is your parents' Internet, and it sucked.

A phone call via a landline is still the best way to go. Mobile phones are radios with pull-out antennas and only work in big cities, and are the size of a loaf of bread.

Oh, and an omission to be aware of. BtS does not have a complete list of weapons or gear. You are stuck with using Ninjas and Superspies and the Palladium weapon books. It is a minor omission, huge in some people's eyes, but Palladium, being Palladium, intends you to steal from your other books freely.

Yes, that means creating a martial arts master with Chi, and joining the Ghostbusters to use Taekwondo on Slimer, kicking the green freak's floating body back to the netherworld with a Chi Strike.

Or hiring a cyborg soldier.

Or finding a mage.

Or a superhero lost in the Megaverse drops in.

Or the Ninja Turtles show up.

Whatever you want can happen, happens.

Seriously, the psychics in this game rock, and should be enough. They look fun, and the powers are extraordinary.

But you can always do whatever you want and pull from any Megaverse game. Even monsters can be ported in, and even Rifts creatures if you just set MDC = SDC, which is super easy. Reskin them, pull in a dragon from Palladium Fantasy, and do what you want. Vampires, lycanthropes, bog-beasts, whatever you want, you can have.

BtS is fun, a throwback monster hunting horror game with infinite possibilities.

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