England - kiss goodbye to that godawful King Arthur rehash, and you can say adios to the Ye Olde Druid character classes (those wastes of space started one of the worst trends ever to plague Rifts: worldbooks having useless magic OCCs based on ye olde local myth and folklore). Just cut back to the core premise of the British Isles as a strange and mysterious land of magic.
Wormwood - lovely place, but dear god the game mechanics! This really should've been an RPG in its own right rather than just being slotted into Rifts as an afterthought.
Psyscape - this book's unsalvagable crap. May as well ditch the mediocre world info and reprint it as the Rifts Psionics Index
Siege on Tolkeen #1 - because perhaps if it was different, books 2 through 6 would never have been written
Warshrike wrote:4 - England - More info on the different areas (more Wales)
Why does everything have to be so political!? Can't we have a simple conversation about Rifts books without some left-wing commie-simp liberal moonbat telling us to 'Save the Wales'!?
"If a child shows a particular abundance of pity for fools or an overwhelming disdain for jibber jabber he is plucked from his family and raised by monks in the T-emple."
Rallan wrote:So many choices. Some that stick out would be
England - kiss goodbye to that godawful King Arthur rehash, and you can say adios to the Ye Olde Druid character classes (those wastes of space started one of the worst trends ever to plague Rifts: worldbooks having useless magic OCCs based on ye olde local myth and folklore). Just cut back to the core premise of the British Isles as a strange and mysterious land of magic.
Wormwood - lovely place, but dear god the game mechanics! This really should've been an RPG in its own right rather than just being slotted into Rifts as an afterthought.
Psyscape - this book's unsalvagable crap. May as well ditch the mediocre world info and reprint it as the Rifts Psionics Index
Siege on Tolkeen #1 - because perhaps if it was different, books 2 through 6 would never have been written
What, no comment on Rifts Australia, oh master of the goon and the smoke?
Don't own Rifts Australia, so I can't really comment on how god-awful it may or may not be. I understand it has some sort of killer koalas though, so they'll have to go.
Warshrike wrote:4 - England - More info on the different areas (more Wales)
Why does everything have to be so political!? Can't we have a simple conversation about Rifts books without some left-wing commie-simp liberal moonbat telling us to 'Save the Wales'!?
Yep, I would defiantly re-write Dead Reign! What a stinker!
"If a child shows a particular abundance of pity for fools or an overwhelming disdain for jibber jabber he is plucked from his family and raised by monks in the T-emple."
Rifts Japan No traditional occs. The cyberoid and other cyber occs ok as people from the rifted dimensional pocket thing city. Feudal system non-existant. Evidence of any buildings from before rifts are rubble/ruins not actual buildings. People not from bubble are survivalists/demon hunters.
Rifts england
No knights, camelot, or any of that. Blood druids, monsters, loch ness stuff, dinosaurs, mystics, and british soldier survivor, imports from atlantis, sea creatures, and other strangeness live there.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. -Thomas Jefferson
DocS wrote:Rifts Africa and... (ah, the memories....) from a thread longtime back.
DocS wrote:Oooh, War with Nukes and the urge to use 'em... now we're cookin with Evil gas!
Each of the Horsemen needed some sort of ability to rain GLOBAL destruction. This is good for them as a menace and good to bring characters involved. I would think it fitting to have a worldwide plague of some sort that strikes all, human and deebee alike, shuts down everything else and has Pestilence as the center. No more of this 'Psychics have bad dreams so heroes are going to Africa', no no no no no. More like 15% of the CS dies due to some horrible virulent nastyness, and everywhere in North America, xiticix, Kittani, even dragons, are dying of this same thing, and the only lead is the one Psi-Bat plague survivor who just sits around mumbling and scribbling out a map of Africa...
Add some good Famine (or be a little more creative. A Worldwide drought or perhaps PPE shortage? What can be strangled to make Rift's Earth squeeze?). Make some sort of worldwide shortage that is bringing everyone to their knees.
Add the self destruction of formerly close allies. Why is Atlantis not taking over? For some reason, Splynncryth has a Kydian civil war brewing and he's trying to not have his little cash cow get destroyed by it! In fact, have Splyncryth take a holiday somewhere safer leaving Atlantis in less competent hands because things have gotten a little 'unstable'. Splynny is wondering if keeping Atlantis may become more trouble than its worth.
The Four Horsemen were supposed to be one of the Great Four Menaces of Rifts Earth, it would not have been overpowered to give them enough power to make everyone desperate! Well, everyone but The Lord of The Deep, perhaps The Lord wouldn't care, or does it have The Plague and is going even more insane and frenzied? It may die, but with its lifespan it will be the last one to go and in the meantime it's berserk.
For however long The Horsemen Ride, all differences are temporarily forgotten. If it doesn't get this bad, then there's no reason for the gathering of heroes. Now with all the World books, people can play with exactly how bad things would get in different parts of the world.
The whole 'necromancers siding with Death' idea... I don't like it. Being undead isn't so bad. I'd have Death be total and absolute ending of existence. Have Necromancers actually fearing this being. It doesn't consume you or possess you or any of that rot. Being killed, possessed or consumed, Necromancers can work with that. When this being is done with you, you simply do not exist any more. You're done, gone, kaput. Its goal is the total ending of all existence, living, undead, robotic, sentient, non-sentient, When universes die, this is the being that comes for them. For one glorious world book, have Murder wraiths and cyber knights agree, THIS BEING MUST BE STOPPED!
So, once every other continent is feeling like they're going through a whole new cataclysm, then the Heroes start to come to Africa because it's the only lead they got. Then you can make Africa the MEANEST, NASTIEST, continent. Why is it again the 'dark continent'? Because the Horsemens' presence has locked it off and the poor humans there are surviving in a permanent ongoing apocalypse which if continued will leave the entire place absolutely lifeless. It also needs a barrier of some kind. What fun is it if the party can go to Africa and run out again to grab bigger guns?
maybe that's Death's gig. He has linked with the land and he links with any living/undead/robotic/magical thing that steps upon it. If someone tries to leave it while Death is still present, they die. Now there's motivation to go down to wherever he is and try to put a nuke up his butt. Does it work on dragons? Yes. Does it work on Gods? Yes, which is why no gods will come anywhere near that continent. No one can radio out, people who come in are stuck, the whole continent is cursed. No more of this 'Thor could take War in a fight' malarky. Every pantheon has empty thrones which used to held by Gods who tried to stand against The Horsemen.
To this add the post-apocalyptic African ideas. It would, in this point, be fair to say the Africans are the meanest and toughest beings on the planet and no one knew because they were unable to leave the continent. Don't worry about the taking over once it's over. Since Africa is a perpetual killzone (and the fun would be making enough kinds of horrific killzones to keep every misbegotten inch of that place interesting), the population of Africa is far less than anywhere else. For those poor folks, The Cataclysm never really ended, it just went on for a century.
Here is where I'd have technology and magic working together since the endless horrors are beyond anything that one or the other can handle. Power armor pilots who wear magic fetishes, enchanted plasma guns, What remains of South Africa is a fascist dictatorship because it needs to be because things are just that bad! Human tech and magic alongside some Deebees who were unfortunate enough to rift in here and are stuck trying desperately to survive.
This would be the only place where I'd put a random encounter table. This continent *is* supposed to be so dangerous that you can't go three days of travel without something trying to kill you. And all of it is horrendous abominations that are really nothing but extensions of the nearest Horseman.
Now, how would one defeat these Horsemen? What would their weaknesses be (Millenium wood weapons.. LAME!!!)? Any suggestions? Ponder ponder ponder ponder....
Uh, isn't that what happens when the four become the one?
The only rewrite I'd do is for Madhaven. Make it much darker and evil, the kind of place where Zeus, Odin, Xy (not Thoth, but a reawakwned Xy), and Splyncryth would look st each other and say "Are you guys sure we need to go in there?" The kind of place where Mechanoids won't chase humans into, where Utu and Nxla both refuse to touch the souls of those who died there. Chaos demons get creeped out because they couldn't do worse. The kind of place that Steven King would refuse to write about because it gives him nightmares.
I'd like to see a few books without a population creep in them. I don't mind new demonic predators and such, but a post-apyocaliptic setting needs to have less civilized areas in it.
Comment: Lazlo and its supporters talk of Dbee rights. Can you even comprehend the plight of the untold billions of humans evicted from thier homes since their coming? What of their rights?
A gunman is a gunman, and a bandit is a bandit.[/quote]
Well it's not the best reason but, a solider is trained to be a solider not to draw a pistol fast and quicker then anyone else. Gunslingers and fighter are trained to fight one on one quick draw showdowns. Soliders are trained to fight in a army with other soliders at their side and excute orders they are given. With the logic a gunman is a gunman I'd have to say what makes a Seal any better then a Green Brette? When you really look at it, the answer is how they are trained and what they do to make themselfs stand out. Granted the New west could have covered why Gunslingers and Gunfighters get those mad bounses which would be my point of re-write How gunslingers train why they draw their pistols so much faster then anyone else. Also I don't like the highway bandit I agree with you on that one it was a filler class that realy didn't need to be added.
Rifts should simply write the standard fighter class and allow them to pick skills that let you mimic whatever it is that you want to be gunslinger/navy seal/green beret. What makes the green beret and seal different training. However the training isn't so fundmentally different that is requires a different OCC. If you want a seal pick more aquatic classes. You want a gun slinger provide for skills that mimic that. You want a green beret more lanuages and survival.
My big grip with the gun slinger on top of what's been said is the p[istols only rule. I train with a rifle and I don't get any bonuses but I specialize in a pistol and I do.
I think the best books done is Splynn marjet place and that should be a model for all the rifts books like pshyscape even the NGR that foucus on one power.
I remember days like this when my father took me to the forest and we ate wild blueberries. More than 20 years ago. I was just a boy of four or five. The leaves were so dark and green then. The grass smelled sweet with the spring wind...For us, there is no spring. Just the wind that smells fresh before the storm.
