The 12 Days of Rifts-mas: Merry Rifts-mas!

I hope you got everything you wanted under your Rifts-mas tree this year: all the excellent books and games in this system, the worlds we create, and, most importantly, the games we play together!

This year, I got a bunch of Rifts books to complete my collection that I started back in 1990, and the people in the Palladium warehouse were probably overjoyed to ship these massive orders to me. I was just as happy to get them and finally have a complete collection of Rifts books (minus the Rifter, which I have in PDF). It feels good, and this is the best Riftsmas that I have ever had!

And supporting such a great company, and one of the oldest non-D&D roleplaying games out there, is a plus too. Palladium is a treasure of the hobby and a pioneer in many areas. Please keep making great books, and I can do my part here on my blog to spread the joy of these great games.

I started my journey with Palladium back in college, in the 1990s, when I worked in the university computer lab as a tutor, earning money to buy the following few books, one at a time. I got them at the Fox Run Mall in Newport, New Hampshire. We were still living with Mom in college, and we would drive down I-95 to the mall. It was always a magical time around the holidays, especially pre-Amazon and pre-Internet, back when malls were a huge thing. We had Toys-R-Us, the mall's hobby store, and so many great stores to visit and buy stuff.

Going to the mall was still a huge thing back in those days.

Those were amazing places, full of the things you needed, wanted, and dreamed of.

I would have my wallet packed with cash. I did not have a credit card yet, so I just forked over real dollar bills for my Palladium books and left the mall with a giant paper shopping bag full of books. They would sit in the car for the ride back to Maine, the snow falling, slush on the roads, Mom driving, and me waiting to get them home and devour them in an all-night reading session.

We could stop for dinner on the way home.

Those are great memories.

Those were good times, and I miss them dearly. I miss my family, the people, the places, the snow, and that feeling of anticipation for Christmas Day. I miss the Genesis and Super Nintendo, Blockbuster, renting video games, the ocean, VCRs, monthly magazine subscriptions, MS-DOS, and cable TV. I miss not having a cell phone or the Internet. I loved that time in my life, and Rifts was a considerable part of it, my memories, and the gaming I did during college.

Rifts unlocked a secret world to those of us who knew about it.

I hope your memories from this Christmas season last a lifetime, and that you create new ones to hold onto as the years slowly pass. You may not think of them much now, that you are simply passing the time, but these moments you take with others, or even yourself, are special and precious things.

And enjoy your gaming, and have the best Rifts-mas ever this year.

And may the memories you make this year be the ones that stay with you forever.

Merry Christmas.

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