The 12 Days of Rifts-mas: Day 6, Nightbane

If Beyond the Supernatural is Palladium's answer to Call of Cthulhu, Nightbane is the answer to Vampire: The Masquerade and the White Wolf universe of the 1990s. Instead of being a vampire or werewolf, which were fun in their own right, you can be anything in this game. Anything wild, vampires and werewolves included, but you could have a typewriter for a head, guns for arms, a minotaur, a snake-erson, or be a fictional character, some pernament space man with a rodent head, anything.

You have a human side to you, and then a nightmare form.

It is never clear which side is the "real you" - your human (facade) side or your your morphus. Your origin is "just out of highschool or college" so your training is limited. Your morphus side has supernatural strength, and can likely punch through doors and do all sorts of cool feats.

Psychics also walk in the worlds of Nightbane, so things are a bit mixed up.

You could totally make vampires, werewolves, fae, demons, ghosts, mummies, and other typical "White Wolf" style factions as major Nightbane factions in this world, and let anybody be anybody, and you would have a world closer to the familiar World of Darkness setup. You could even sub-faction the factions, and have a world that is even closer. Just alter the charts to include "more of the traditional forms" and let the others be more rare.

This would be sort of a bootleg White Wolf world, but it would work in a Megaversal way, and make sense. Just, in this version of the world, the classic horror monsters are dominant forces, and the other Nightbane exist on the fringes. You could even expand the "classic monster" pool with ones they skipped in with White Wolf-verse, with Frankenstiens, Lagoon Fish People, Blobs, Half Bats, green-skinned Martians from Mars, Elementals, Oompa Loompas, Toons, and other horror classics running around in here.

Yes, you could call yourself Nightbane Bugs Bunny and shift between than and a buck-tooth human form named Welsh Rabbit. The darkness does not have limits, so feel free to be whatever you want to be. That is the brilliance of this game.

Vampire and this game are some of the first forms of "identity gaming" where you got to be something radically different than yourself. You see this legacy today with the 1001 generic fantasy forms in most fantasy roleplaying games, but in Nightbane, those forms actually make a difference, and your powers reflect who you are. Vampire is different, but the same, with the powers reflected in far fewer forms, but the polotics and divisions of the factions taking center stage.

Who you are in this game is never clear, Human or Nightbane, but both are your true identity.

You could easily similate a White Wolf faction setup here by creating a group of Nightbane Lycans with evil alignments that want to destroy the world of the humans, take no prisoners, and be feral and vile monsters upon civilization. Good aligned Lycans could fight them, trying to co-exist in peace.

The same thing goes for vampires, Frankenstiens, Mummies who are ancient undying Egyptians, and so much more. Even a faction of evil Toons who want to destroy the world of the humans, led by Duck Helmet, human form named Mallard Black.

However you want to shape your world is valid and cool.

And all of them could show up in Rifts.

This is another amazing game I wished I was into, but I can appreciate the brilliance of it now, and reflect on the nightmares that could have been.