Ridiculous things in the books

[flatline]

I'm reading through RUE, and I found something in the Crazy OCC description that was, well, crazy. As in dumb. So I thought I'd start a thread where I and anyone else who finds something worth ranting about in the books can post.

RUE p55 in the Crazy Special OCC Bonuses and Powers:
"The acute hearing gives the Crazy an automatic dodge on all attacks; even from behind and surprise attacks."

I can understand that having good hearing would make you more likely to be aware of attacks which would then let you dodge them, but why would having good hearing allow you to dodge without consuming actions?

And why would good hearing give you an autododge against all attacks rather than just attacks that can be heard? For instance, if a sniper shoots a Crazy with a laser rifle, any sound created would get to the Crazy seconds after the laser has already hit (since light travels faster than sound), so why would the Crazy's enhanced hearing give him the ability to dodge this surprise attack?

If good hearing is all you need to have a autododge, why don't all borgs with amplified hearing get an autododge? They, too, can hear a twig snap at 300 feet like the Crazy.

Makes no sense.

--flatline

[The Beast]

The GI Joe rule, & the No-Armor-For-Mages rule.

[Giant2005]

The most ridiculous thing in the Palladium world has to be the forced OCC change that goes with Augmentation.

[jaymz]

The most ridiculous thing in the Palladium world has to be the forced OCC change that goes with Augmentation.

I am with Giant on this one.

I do not use the Juicer "OCC" or Crazy "OCC". I allow the conversion then give a list of OCC's that those with that conversion would likely be ie Mercenary Soldier, Wilderness Scout or even Vagabond.

Calling it the Juicer OCC is saying all juicers get this training along with the conversion which to me makes no sense.

Why can't you have a Juicer Scholar? He'd be good a combat by default and with his ability to be awake and alert more/longer he can also learn and disseminate more knowledge.

Edit - I was going t make a crack/joke along the lines of "pages 1-375 but not page 376" but I like Rifts too much to do that

[Nightmask]

The most ridiculous thing in the Palladium world has to be the forced OCC change that goes with Augmentation.

I am with Giant on this one.

I do not use the Juicer "OCC" or Crazy "OCC". I allow the conversion then give a list of OCC's that those with that conversion would likely be ie Mercenary Soldier, Wilderness Scout or even Vagabond.

Calling it the Juicer OCC is saying all juicers get this training along with the conversion which to me makes no sense.

Why can't you have a Juicer Scholar? He'd be good a combat by default and with his ability to be awake and alert more/longer he can also learn and disseminate more knowledge.

Edit - I was going t make a crack/joke along the lines of "pages 1-375 but not page 376" but I like Rifts too much to do that

Well the Juicer Scholar would have trouble concentrating on the scholarly pursuits for one, one of the effects of the drug cocktail that they're being fed constantly. But I agree he shouldn't automatically become a Juicer OCC just because someone caught him and converted him because they wanted more gladiators for their blood sport arena.

[jaymz]

Well the Juicer Scholar would have trouble concentrating on the scholarly pursuits for one, one of the effects of the drug cocktail that they're being fed constantly.

That only means things that require concentration. I bet Juicers can speed read like the dickens and if they have a high enough IQ retain most of what they read. Now just have them lovers of history and you have A scholar but not neccessariyl one that requires high levels of concentration per se

[Armorlord]

RUE p55 in the Crazy Special OCC Bonuses and Powers:
"The acute hearing gives the Crazy an automatic dodge on all attacks; even from behind and surprise attacks."

Another case of RUE adding and/or phrasing something odd. It's should be listed in the same context that Juicer does or how they used to phrase the section on Crazies: "Heightened reflexes, agility, and senses."
Put together, those certainly cover the needs for Automatic Dodge. Hearing by itself is pretty odd, though combined with their reflexes in general could work, but the original point was that all their senses were jacked up, their reflexes were jacked up to match, and they had the agility to back up those reflexes.

[Pepsi Jedi]

The GI Joe rule, & the No-Armor-For-Mages rule.

The mage armor thing works fine for me. I understand where they were going with that one. The channeling of magic and focused use of PPE requires the mage to project it in a fashion (Magic) that is hampered by heavy armor.

Also as a matter of game balance it fits and keeps mages from being unbeatable super men. It's there on purpose.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'm reading through RUE, and I found something in the Crazy OCC description that was, well, crazy. As in dumb. So I thought I'd start a thread where I and anyone else who finds something worth ranting about in the books can post.

RUE p55 in the Crazy Special OCC Bonuses and Powers:
"The acute hearing gives the Crazy an automatic dodge on all attacks; even from behind and surprise attacks."

I can understand that having good hearing would make you more likely to be aware of attacks which would then let you dodge them, but why would having good hearing allow you to dodge without consuming actions?

And why would good hearing give you an autododge against all attacks rather than just attacks that can be heard? For instance, if a sniper shoots a Crazy with a laser rifle, any sound created would get to the Crazy seconds after the laser has already hit (since light travels faster than sound), so why would the Crazy's enhanced hearing give him the ability to dodge this surprise attack?

If good hearing is all you need to have a autododge, why don't all borgs with amplified hearing get an autododge? They, too, can hear a twig snap at 300 feet like the Crazy.

Makes no sense.

--flatline

Agreed.
"Heightened senses and reflexes" make sense as a reason.
Hearing alone doesn't cut it.

[Pepsi Jedi]

For myself, the "Ridiculous thing" I've found is the Airline in Merc Town.

Up till merc town we're told again and again ad nausium that "Travel between the single glimmering lights in the wilderness of the world is the most dangerous thing"

Moving from City to City is all but unheard of, and is soo hard. SOOOOoooOOOOoooOOOoooOOoOOoo many things out there would kill, kidnap, inslave or just eat you that people 50 miles appart might as well be 500,000 miles apart. That travel is soo hard and the wilderness is SOOO Dangerous, and the communities that 'Are" are islands of civilization amists seas of deadly dimensional spawned danger. Everything from dinosaurs to alien beasts and everything in between.

That's why it's so impressive when Player char's do it. And why there's not just millions of people going around doing the same job YOU'RE doing. You're one of the FEW that brave those distances in the wilderness

The major powers that be, are by and large major powers because they've got the strengh to move in numbers and be albe to carve out their kingdoms from the wild. The CS have their death's head transports, ect.

It's SOO dangerous that even flying above the land is dangerous because countless monsters can fly and will fly up and pluck you out of the sky if you do it too far or too long. (( Tempting fate)

So that's a huge part of the setting, then... on some page in the middle of Merc town, just buried down in the other stuff they mention an airport with daily flights to all the major points in north America. Northern gun, Lazlo, New Lazlo, On down the list. Just... Daily flights.

Then move on to something else. Just. Poof. Just like that.

The entire section is maybe 2 or 3 paragraphs? And they move on like it's no big thing.

That is one of the -----few----- things from Cannon, that I just hand wave and go "not in my world.'

[Killer Cyborg]

Why can't you have a Juicer Scholar? He'd be good a combat by default and with his ability to be awake and alert more/longer he can also learn and disseminate more knowledge.

I think that part of the reasoning is game balance, in that Juicers/Crazies have certain XP tables compared to other classes.
Also, Juicers and Crazies might not have the attention span for scholarly studies.

[Armorlord]

Why can't you have a Juicer Scholar? He'd be good a combat by default and with his ability to be awake and alert more/longer he can also learn and disseminate more knowledge.

I think that part of the reasoning is game balance, in that Juicers/Crazies have certain XP tables compared to other classes.
Also, Juicers and Crazies might not have the attention span for scholarly studies.

Aye. Part of the reason I've taken such a shine to the 'Dual Class' Mega-Hero rules from the Rifter for strange cases like that, the combined experience tables help stuff like that balance out better.

[glitterboy2098]

For myself, the "Ridiculous thing" I've found is the Airline in Merc Town.

Up till merc town we're told again and again ad nausium that "Travel between the single glimmering lights in the wilderness of the world is the most dangerous thing"

Moving from City to City is all but unheard of, and is soo hard. SOOOOoooOOOOoooOOOoooOOoOOoo many things out there would kill, kidnap, inslave or just eat you that people 50 miles appart might as well be 500,000 miles apart. That travel is soo hard and the wilderness is SOOO Dangerous, and the communities that 'Are" are islands of civilization amists seas of deadly dimensional spawned danger. Everything from dinosaurs to alien beasts and everything in between.

That's why it's so impressive when Player char's do it. And why there's not just millions of people going around doing the same job YOU'RE doing. You're one of the FEW that brave those distances in the wilderness

The major powers that be, are by and large major powers because they've got the strengh to move in numbers and be albe to carve out their kingdoms from the wild. The CS have their death's head transports, ect.

It's SOO dangerous that even flying above the land is dangerous because countless monsters can fly and will fly up and pluck you out of the sky if you do it too far or too long. (( Tempting fate)

So that's a huge part of the setting, then... on some page in the middle of Merc town, just buried down in the other stuff they mention an airport with daily flights to all the major points in north America. Northern gun, Lazlo, New Lazlo, On down the list. Just... Daily flights.

Then move on to something else. Just. Poof. Just like that.

The entire section is maybe 2 or 3 paragraphs? And they move on like it's no big thing.

That is one of the -----few----- things from Cannon, that I just hand wave and go "not in my world.'

and yet it has never actually been said the setting is that dangerous, or that flying is. in both the RMB and in RUE, erin tarn talkes about "the savage wilderness" and all the monsters and such the rifts spew out... but also talks about the main reason no one travels much is the lack of roads, how her group will travel for hundreds of miles (over several days) without seeing anything but the local harmless plantlife, and how most animals, even the predators, will avoid intruding travellers.
oh sure, she talks about travelling for days seeing nothing, but 'hearing strange unknown creatures lurking just out of sight', but it's presented in the same way as a kid sees monsters under the bed or a soldier sees an ambush at every corner. not really as constant trailing by monsters, but rather as an over active imagination reading more into random sounds, shadows, and feelings. to steal a phrase from a classic novel, 'there is more Gravy than of Grave' about these claims. she even points out that you get false impressions about commonality from 'rumors and stories', meaning game book entires, which create the impression your going ot run into lots of alien races and such because there are hundreds of thousands of them.. when in fact your unlikely to run into them because there is so much area involved.

and flying over Rifts earth has never been addressed. people just assume that since the ground is 'jam packed with monsters' that the air will be too. but we don't have all that many flying monsters in the books, just a small fraction of all of the types out there. and nearly all of them fly far slower and far lower than even WW2 aircraft. so even if you were to run into a flying monster, all you have to do is push the throttle all the way forward and pull up, and you'll generally escape.

people keep talking about this hyper-lethal ecology of rifts earth, and i'm just not finding any canon to support it..

[Pepsi Jedi]

For myself, the "Ridiculous thing" I've found is the Airline in Merc Town.

Up till merc town we're told again and again ad nausium that "Travel between the single glimmering lights in the wilderness of the world is the most dangerous thing"

Moving from City to City is all but unheard of, and is soo hard. SOOOOoooOOOOoooOOOoooOOoOOoo many things out there would kill, kidnap, inslave or just eat you that people 50 miles appart might as well be 500,000 miles apart. That travel is soo hard and the wilderness is SOOO Dangerous, and the communities that 'Are" are islands of civilization amists seas of deadly dimensional spawned danger. Everything from dinosaurs to alien beasts and everything in between.

That's why it's so impressive when Player char's do it. And why there's not just millions of people going around doing the same job YOU'RE doing. You're one of the FEW that brave those distances in the wilderness

The major powers that be, are by and large major powers because they've got the strengh to move in numbers and be albe to carve out their kingdoms from the wild. The CS have their death's head transports, ect.

It's SOO dangerous that even flying above the land is dangerous because countless monsters can fly and will fly up and pluck you out of the sky if you do it too far or too long. (( Tempting fate)

So that's a huge part of the setting, then... on some page in the middle of Merc town, just buried down in the other stuff they mention an airport with daily flights to all the major points in north America. Northern gun, Lazlo, New Lazlo, On down the list. Just... Daily flights.

Then move on to something else. Just. Poof. Just like that.

The entire section is maybe 2 or 3 paragraphs? And they move on like it's no big thing.

That is one of the -----few----- things from Cannon, that I just hand wave and go "not in my world.'

and yet it has never actually been said the setting is that dangerous, or that flying is. in both the RMB and in RUE, erin tarn talkes about "the savage wilderness" and all the monsters and such the rifts spew out... but also talks about the main reason no one travels much is the lack of roads, how her group will travel for hundreds of miles (over several days) without seeing anything but the local harmless plantlife, and how most animals, even the predators, will avoid intruding travellers.
oh sure, she talks about travelling for days seeing nothing, but 'hearing strange unknown creatures lurking just out of sight', but it's presented in the same way as a kid sees monsters under the bed or a soldier sees an ambush at every corner. not really as constant trailing by monsters, but rather as an over active imagination reading more into random sounds, shadows, and feelings. to steal a phrase from a classic novel, 'there is more Gravy than of Grave' about these claims. she even points out that you get false impressions about commonality from 'rumors and stories', meaning game book entires, which create the impression your going ot run into lots of alien races and such because there are hundreds of thousands of them.. when in fact your unlikely to run into them because there is so much area involved.

and flying over Rifts earth has never been addressed. people just assume that since the ground is 'jam packed with monsters' that the air will be too. but we don't have all that many flying monsters in the books, just a small fraction of all of the types out there. and nearly all of them fly far slower and far lower than even WW2 aircraft. so even if you were to run into a flying monster, all you have to do is push the throttle all the way forward and pull up, and you'll generally escape.

people keep talking about this hyper-lethal ecology of rifts earth, and i'm just not finding any canon to support it..

Ehh.. the material DOES Say that towns and stuff are few and far between, but it ALSO states that the travel is dangerous due to all the stuff that's out there. As for the flying creatures, when a dragon pops up and grabs hold of you there's a bit more than just pushing throttles and flying past it. Not the least of which is 'Where you going to land"

When you add in the other groups that have the ability, such as half the power armors that both can fly, and have missles. Ect it does get that dangerous. We don't have a 'Rifts: Aces high" or anything yet, but it is implied that the travel is hard, dangerous (( Else why woudl Tarn need all her defenders including a personal high ranking cyberknight? Among others? Why would they take rifts to cross territory that end up dropping them on strange planets in otther dimensions?

I do know that most predators give humans a wide swath to pass, but we don't have the MD stuff here, or the alien stuff here, or the dinosaurs here, ect. When something the size of an action figure could be an MD Fairy that can blow a hole in a tank, that makes it dangerous. It's not so much that every step of your trip is frought with peril, it's that on your 100th step if you run into ANY of those MD critters, you're in all kinds of peril.

It's not just the critters you gotta watch out for either. Other humans are just as dangerous. Those one's that could launch one mini missle or a few laser shots and bring down an airliner. It's not like they can dodge. Add in Splugorith, or other bad guys, demons that CAN fly and would kick airliners out of the sky just to watch the people burn, and it IS that dangerous.

You don't 'SEE' it much, because even with the danger implied and stated out right, 60% of any rifts book is power armor, or weapons or magic spells. about 20% of it is new OOCs, and the rest is setting, and those setting parts often focus more on the 'New power block" being rolled out than the area around it.

The ones that do vary from this, DO show dangers. Dinosaur swamp shows a ton of them (( one or other of the books)) Canada. ect. If they aren't focused on the new city/base/powerbock/ect then those dangers do tend to get more play time. It's just that shiny guns, power armor and endless pages of spells get more word count than "The 500 miles between this place and the other place has unnumbered dangers" As those dangers are where the GM gets his story from... or.. not at all. (( If you travel 500 miles with no threats, you just skip the travel all together.))

[glitterboy2098]

i'm sorry, but i'm still not seeing. yes the books like to mention 'hazardous travel', but no where do they say anything to imply the degree of hyper-lethality people imply here on the forums. rather, it comes across rather like modern africa or central america. dangerous? yes. especially to those not prepared for it. and like modern africa or south america, the stories you hear about the enviroment generally give a much higher impression of lethality than it work out as when you look at the dangers actually found in there. entries for creatures ,especially dangerous creatures, are filled with mentions of "rare" and "uncommon" and "not often encountered". even the stuff not indicated as rare are not said to be so common you'd always encounter one. even the earliest books seem to go out of their way to show that monsters aren't everywhere and travel isn't that dangerous..even while claiming such elsewhere.

it doesn't help that players, as a natural course of running a game, are inheriently Plot magnets who can stumble over wierd, dangerous, or outright bizzare no matter where they go. but that doesn't mean there is a tiger behind every tree, vampires in every brothel, or bandits on every road. yet so many people seem to assume that such a state is true for everyone in a setting, not just the palyers.

[jaymz]

people keep talking about this hyper-lethal ecology of rifts earth, and i'm just not finding any canon to support it..

[Pepsi Jedi]

i'm sorry, but i'm still not seeing. yes the books like to mention 'hazardous travel', but no where do they say anything to imply the degree of hyper-lethality people imply here on the forums. rather, it comes across rather like modern africa or central america. dangerous? yes. especially to those not prepared for it. and like modern africa or south america, the stories you hear about the enviroment generally give a much higher impression of lethality than it work out as when you look at the dangers actually found in there. entries for creatures ,especially dangerous creatures, are filled with mentions of "rare" and "uncommon" and "not often encountered". even the stuff not indicated as rare are not said to be so common you'd always encounter one. even the earliest books seem to go out of their way to show that monsters aren't everywhere and travel isn't that dangerous..even while claiming such elsewhere.

it doesn't help that players, as a natural course of running a game, are inheriently Plot magnets who can stumble over wierd, dangerous, or outright bizzare no matter where they go. but that doesn't mean there is a tiger behind every tree, vampires in every brothel, or bandits on every road. yet so many people seem to assume that such a state is true for everyone in a setting, not just the palyers.

Well I beg to differ. It's there to find if you look for it. I'm not personally going to go through 50 books to catalog it. It's there, both in implication and direct statements.

Again you're not wrong that there's not a tiger behind every tree, but part of the post apocolyptic setting that exists is that inherant danger out side the towns and cities and Rifts, has those dangers in 1000s of ways. Sure you might go 10 miles and not see one. or 50 miles and not see a soul. Or you could stumble over one every 500 feet.

On Page 9 of the RUE, it goes into it.

"Imagine each state, Provence and Country an alien enviroment. One place may be beautiful woodland, another is an alien jungle, another is dominated by humanoid insect people, another is filled with dinosaurs. Over here is land filled with fairies and dragons. Over here is a place at war with itself. Some lands shift and change daily, others strattle two or three realities at the same time.

At one location people thrive locked away inside a massive fortress city of technology. Robots and black armored Sentinels patrol it's streets and strike down anything not human. At another location is a city of magic and wonder. Dragons and 100 alien races live in harmoy with human beings and share the secrets of magic and alien science. Across the sea is a land of wonder, magic and monsters who trade in alien technology, dark magic and human life.

Elsewhere are vast reaches of forested wilderness. Within it's shadowy confines are barbarian tribes, aboriginal people, aliens and monsters. Another stretch of wilderness is dominated by monsters, and elsewhere, castles in the sky drift over grassy plains and bands of monster riders. Beyond the haunted mountains, who knows?"

That's just three paragraphs taken from (( Fittingly)) "The Setting" on page 8 of RUE.

It describes... pretty much what I've been saying. Yes, rifts earth is dangerous and when you go out side the mega cities.. well. *Motions up* There's a pretty long list just in three paragraphs with out even diving deep into detail.

So yes.. it IS in the books. And it's not 'hidden'. You just have to look.

[jaymz]

That doesn't seem to cover teh airways though...

[Killer Cyborg]

Plus, the CS launches missiles at any unauthorized flyers that go through their airspace.

[flatline]

Plus, the CS launches missiles at any unauthorized flyers that go through their airspace.

Where is that behavior described?

I'd be curious to know if their standard operating procedure requires CS air units to identify the target before missiles are fired or if the missiles are just blindly fired at anything that isn't broadcasting the appropriate IFF codes.

If the later, then launching weather balloons might be a cheap and effective way to cause the CS to use up expensive ordinance (not that economic considerations have ever been very important to the Rifts setting).

--flatline

[Killer Cyborg]

Plus, the CS launches missiles at any unauthorized flyers that go through their airspace.

Where is that behavior described?

I'd be curious to know if their standard operating procedure requires CS air units to identify the target before missiles are fired or if the missiles are just blindly fired at anything that isn't broadcasting the appropriate IFF codes.

If the later, then launching weather balloons might be a cheap and effective way to cause the CS to use up expensive ordinance (not that economic considerations have ever been very important to the Rifts setting).

--flatline

Unfortunately, I don't recall where I read that. Perhaps CWC, or CS Navy.

I see no reason to assume that they'd fire blindly, though, no need to shoot at ducks or balloons and such.

[Nightmask]

Plus, the CS launches missiles at any unauthorized flyers that go through their airspace.

Where is that behavior described?

I'd be curious to know if their standard operating procedure requires CS air units to identify the target before missiles are fired or if the missiles are just blindly fired at anything that isn't broadcasting the appropriate IFF codes.

If the later, then launching weather balloons might be a cheap and effective way to cause the CS to use up expensive ordinance (not that economic considerations have ever been very important to the Rifts setting).

--flatline

Unfortunately, I don't recall where I read that. Perhaps CWC, or CS Navy.

I see no reason to assume that they'd fire blindly, though, no need to shoot at ducks or balloons and such.

They do have that 'destroy with extreme prejudice' order for that one Golden Age Weaponsmiths carpet bombing style bomber, and are said to destroy it even hundreds of miles outside of stated CS territory, the idea that they have a kill order for other aircraft that are not in possession of valid codes is quite believable. Obviously they don't manage to get all of them but that's standard military procedure (although some countries at least try and give such craft a chance to not get blown up).

[glitterboy2098]

yes pg 8 says that. but pg 13 talks about how city states and communities are poppingup everywhere. which is hardly a sign of a hyper-lethal enviroment.
pg 17-18, under "the savage wilderness", pays lipservice to the whole 'dangerous enviroment', but the actual details say otherwise. mention of villages and towns being islands of safety in a sea of unknown danger is presented with so much hyperbole it's pretty obvious the dangers have been exaggerated. after all, if things were really that dangerous, if monsters were really that common..how the hell are there villages and towns? the man-eating monsters would have wiped them all out by now, since such small communities couldn't provide any effective defense.
Pg18 spends more time talking about how hard it is to travel due to the lack of roads and the issues of terrain.. which is a valid reason for most people not travelling more than to the next town. there is also mention of travelling for days without encountering anything. the description of it says things "may" be lurking in the shadows just out of sight.. but the presentation is basically the same kind of bogeyman stories frontiersmen in the 1600's, 1700's, and 1800's told to city dwellers about the indians. "yep, didn't see a soul the whole time. but them injun's were hiding just out of sight the whole time, i could tell"

pg 18 through 41 goes into what kinds of tribes and creatures live in various regions, but it's like me saying "gorillas, leopards, chimpanzees, and man-eating pymies live in central africa". doesn't tell us squat about how common those are. you can spend months in central africa looking for those with knowledge of thier habits and ranges and not find them. just stumbling across one without trying to darn rare. all of the regions described in pg18-41 are huge areas. so there are tribes of simvan in the midwest. how big is a tribe? how spread out are they? etc. we don't know. even the simvan entries in various books don't say.

and page 19 has a very pertinent passage.
"i have had city folk question how it can be with all the fabled towns, tribe, clans, dbees and monsters they hear about, that one doesn't stumble over one hiding behind every tree. it doesn't work that way.
the wildlife hides from intruders like us, the innocent animals run to avoid becoming hunted, and the predators watch from a nervous distance waiting at least until they are ready to strike. people hear there may be hundreds, or thousands, even tens of thousands of a species, but they forget that number is spread across vast expanses of land, or that perhaps as few as one or two or a dozen may live in any given area. a predator like a mountain lion, for example, wil lconsider 100 to 200 square miles (259 or 518 sq. km) as its domain or its hunting ground, and only it and its mate prowl it (along with other species of predators). thats a large area that city dwellers can't adequately picture, and such a range is tiny compared to the sweeping wilderness that is our land."
she then goes on to point out she only calls it a "savage wilderness" because the land is not "a parkland", and does have such creatures in it.

so the "savage wilderness" KS writes about is about as real as the 'powerful, long range weapons' used by Rifts vehicles. all bluster, no reality.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

Oboy where to start........

Should I go book by book?....

[The Beast]

Plus, the CS launches missiles at any unauthorized flyers that go through their airspace.

Where is that behavior described?

I'd be curious to know if their standard operating procedure requires CS air units to identify the target before missiles are fired or if the missiles are just blindly fired at anything that isn't broadcasting the appropriate IFF codes.

If the later, then launching weather balloons might be a cheap and effective way to cause the CS to use up expensive ordinance (not that economic considerations have ever been very important to the Rifts setting).

--flatline

Unfortunately, I don't recall where I read that. Perhaps CWC, or CS Navy.

I see no reason to assume that they'd fire blindly, though, no need to shoot at ducks or balloons and such.

Wasn't it from one of the CS's aircraft entries in RM?

[Pepsi Jedi]

That doesn't seem to cover teh airways though...

lol. Well it does mention dragons and demons and monsters, but no it didn't directly mention the air.. Of course.. all that stuff was on the first page under' setting' of the entire game. *G* I didn't look deeper.

[glitterboy2098]

i can think of only a few places such might be mentioned, but IMO i think this is one of those issues where people assume something that isn't in the books.
i'd check in;
CWC
SB4 CS navy
Rifter Index & adventures 1
Rifter Index & adventures 2
Mercenaries

you might also want to check the Seige on tolkien books.. there might have been a mention of CS surface to air defense in the tolkien theatre that people misunderstood to be CS wide.. (in a theatre of war, if a plane doesn't have the right transponder and can't give the right responses when challenged over the radio, the policy of all militaries tends to be "shoot first, apologise to widows as needed".)

[Pepsi Jedi]

yes pg 8 says that. but pg 13 talks about how city states and communities are poppingup everywhere. which is hardly a sign of a hyper-lethal enviroment.

Kinda.. the sentence is there, but when you read the rest it's talking about the CS. And that sentence about them popping up everywhere was right after talking about the 300 years of dark ages where the monsters just flat out ruled.

Yes the CS does exist and they defend their turf but that doesn't mean that travel out side the CS protected area's is any easier.

pg 17-18, under "the savage wilderness", pays lipservice to the whole 'dangerous enviroment', but the actual details say otherwise. mention of villages and towns being islands of safety in a sea of unknown danger is presented with so much hyperbole it's pretty obvious the dangers have been exaggerated. after all, if things were really that dangerous, if monsters were really that common..how the hell are there villages and towns? the man-eating monsters would have wiped them all out by now, since such small communities couldn't provide any effective defense.

Wait now.. now your counter to "They never say that the wilderness is that dangerous" is... "They've said it's SO dangerous they must be making it up!"?? Doesn't that prove they DO say it's dangerous like I said?

As for how.... again, *points up to the CS* There's a major reason. Another reason is, a pretty large chunck of humanity now is psionic. Some others have magic. Now that the dark ages are past there are more 'Adventurers' out there. They can hire groups (( like ours)) todefend them or take out threats.

You can't in one breath go "There's no evidence like you said that it's dangerous" and then in the next breathh go "Ok the time they say it IS So dangerous they're just exaggerating." The second proves tthat they DO say it. Right?

Pg18 spends more time talking about how hard it is to travel due to the lack of roads and the issues of terrain.. which is a valid reason for most people not travelling more than to the next town.

Did you miss The second paragraph on page 18 where it talks about the elimination of humans and the repopulation of earth by "Aliens, DBees and monsters, True Monsters"

Or the fourth paragraph where it speaks about Rift's continuing to disgourge an endless supply of alien creatures, reality warping energy that changed the landscape into alien vistas from what it once had been." and ____"It also filled the new wilderness with every conceivable danger"____ Then lists off Dinosaurs, confused alien creatures from other worlds, Demons most foul, evil spirits and dark gods from across the megaverse. Creatures of magic, like Dragon, Sphinx, unicorn and others" make their homes there and "where we humans and our DBee cousins have become their prey victoms and playthings"

These are all from the page you pointed out, that it spoke more about just the lack of roads.... that's a bit.... Selective in what you saw there. It even goes on to point out the technological resurgence has carved out some towns and cities and almost true nations.. but makes it a point to tell you in the same breath that they are "More akin to an oasis in a savage land than a true dominating force" Their emphisis.

It goes on to speak of those towns. Talking about curling up next to the fire with frienss and the ILLUSION OF SAFETY. About how "it's easy to forget about unknown lurking in the wilderness just a few 100 yards away" and "However the monsters are never far from the door and one must be ever vigilant or fall victom to trechery and sudden death"

Paragraph after paragraph hammers it in. Just on THIS ONE PAGE. It goes on talking abouth ow the CS is mighty but is pretty much unkown in most places out side their own sphere of influence.

"No matter how large or powerful the kingdom, it's surrounded by unpredictable and unrelenting wilderness" and talks about how the farm mightbe a few miles away or "Several hundred miles of hostile wilderness"

I quote this way so I don't get in trouble for pretty much typing the entire page. It's there for anyone to read though. Time and time and time again talking about the dangers in the wilderness. yes it does mention there's not always roads but that's one sentence amist 100s of them talking about how dangerous it is.

there is also mention of travelling for days without encountering anything. the description of it says things "may" be lurking in the shadows just out of sight.. but the presentation is basically the same kind of bogeyman stories frontiersmen in the 1600's, 1700's, and 1800's told to city dwellers about the indians. "yep, didn't see a soul the whole time. but them injun's were hiding just out of sight the whole time, i could tell"

No.. when one opens the book and reads it, it reads like a warning from one that's been there. She's not writing storys to frighten people. Shes laying out how wild and woolly that wildness is. Speaking of many of the horrors. You're down playing it but it's hit on and hammered in time and again. Just as I said it was.

You call it hyperbolic.. I think it's trying to adequately describe just how scary and dangerous it IS out there. The point is you said it wasn't there. You didn't see evidence and the evidence ___IS___ There, right where I pointed. and it's not just once... maybe twice. It's over and over and over.

pg 18 through 41 goes into what kinds of tribes and creatures live in various regions, but it's like me saying "gorillas, leopards, chimpanzees, and man-eating pymies live in central africa". doesn't tell us squat about how common those are. you can spend months in central africa looking for those with knowledge of thier habits and ranges and not find them. just stumbling across one without trying to darn rare. all of the regions described in pg18-41 are huge areas. so there are tribes of simvan in the midwest. how big is a tribe? how spread out are they? etc. we don't know. even the simvan entries in various books don't say.

But previously it takes time to tell you. "It's not like earth was" It points out that the wilderness of Rifts earth is vast and many times thicker than 'our' earth. They point out that OUR wilderness was not like theirs, and we only had 18% wilderness while theirs is 90%. It's an entire paragraph on page 17, but to directly quote "The wilderness of our past is nothing like the savage wilderness we know today"

It directly addresses the threats you talk about.. and says theirs is many times worse.

and page 19 has a very pertinent passage.
"i have had city folk question how it can be with all the fabled towns, tribe, clans, dbees and monsters they hear about, that one doesn't stumble over one hiding behind every tree. it doesn't work that way.
the wildlife hides from intruders like us, the innocent animals run to avoid becoming hunted, and the predators watch from a nervous distance waiting at least until they are ready to strike. people hear there may be hundreds, or thousands, even tens of thousands of a species, but they forget that number is spread across vast expanses of land, or that perhaps as few as one or two or a dozen may live in any given area. a predator like a mountain lion, for example, wil lconsider 100 to 200 square miles (259 or 518 sq. km) as its domain or its hunting ground, and only it and its mate prowl it (along with other species of predators). thats a large area that city dwellers can't adequately picture, and such a range is tiny compared to the sweeping wilderness that is our land."
she then goes on to point out she only calls it a "savage wilderness" because the land is not "a parkland", and does have such creatures in it.

Yes... and lets finish the paragraph shall we? Yes. Lets.

"Home to man eating plants, wild animals, giant insects, demons and a host of inhuman creatures, spirits, ghosts, and supernatural beings."

LOL you're ------very----------- selectively reading and presenting here Glitterboy. Usually you don't do that but in this case it's a shame. You're picking one sentence out and purposefully leaving out the next that proves my point.

so the "savage wilderness" KS writes about is about as real as the 'powerful, long range weapons' used by Rifts vehicles. all bluster, no reality.

No it is. It just looks the way you describe when you've purposefully ignored.... about all the stuff written except for your few sentences. I mean come on. Just above you mentioned the part 'Savage wilderness because it's not parkland" but the paragraph had two sentences in it.. Yours.. then the one I posted, directly after it, Home to man eating plants, wild animals, giant insects, demons and a host of inhuman creatures, spirits, ghosts, and supernatural beings"

You try and say 'Oh she says it's not like that' but the -------very next sentence-------- says it is. lol

Most of us have the RUE, we can open it up and read the pages. They do NOT read like you're making it sound. yes the sentences you quote are there but are out of context and that context backs up what I've claimed.

[glitterboy2098]

yes pg 8 says that. but pg 13 talks about how city states and communities are poppingup everywhere. which is hardly a sign of a hyper-lethal enviroment.

Kinda.. the sentence is there, but when you read the rest it's talking about the CS. And that sentence about them popping up everywhere was right after talking about the 300 years of dark ages where the monsters just flat out ruled.

Yes the CS does exist and they defend their turf but that doesn't mean that travel out side the CS protected area's is any easier.

except that if the enviroment of rifts was as dangerous as people say, you'd never have towns and villages outside the major nation-states. much less tiny villages that have been described in so many books. if things were as dangerous as people claim, not even having a 'protector' would be sufficent to stop such small communities from being wiped out by predator monsters.

pg 17-18, under "the savage wilderness", pays lipservice to the whole 'dangerous enviroment', but the actual details say otherwise. mention of villages and towns being islands of safety in a sea of unknown danger is presented with so much hyperbole it's pretty obvious the dangers have been exaggerated. after all, if things were really that dangerous, if monsters were really that common..how the hell are there villages and towns? the man-eating monsters would have wiped them all out by now, since such small communities couldn't provide any effective defense.

Wait now.. now your counter to "They never say that the wilderness is that dangerous" is... "They've said it's SO dangerous they must be making it up!"?? Doesn't that prove they DO say it's dangerous like I said?

As for how.... again, *points up to the CS* There's a major reason. Another reason is, a pretty large chunck of humanity now is psionic. Some others have magic. Now that the dark ages are past there are more 'Adventurers' out there. They can hire groups (( like ours)) todefend them or take out threats.

You can't in one breath go "There's no evidence like you said that it's dangerous" and then in the next breathh go "Ok the time they say it IS So dangerous they're just exaggerating." The second proves tthat they DO say it. Right?

sorry, the CS can't be the reason. the CS sure isn't protecting the heinland and carter freeholds, for example. two tiny settlements in the middle of the dinosaur swamp. no more than 2 dozen people, who have lived there for over two decades. they live in a land of giant dinosaurs, freaky ghosts, man eating plants, and other weirdness... and they don't have massive defenses or tons of defenders. just a pallisade wall and some guns.

there are plenty of other examples. most of the towns in rifts canada, for example, including the fury beetle ranch, barely have any defenses. and the CS shure doesn't protect them.

and while almost a quarter of humanity might be psionic, most are only minor psi's, with one or two powers.. and there aren't many offensive or defensive powers available to minor and major psi's. lots of sensing powers and healing stuff, some useful tricks, but not much in the way of damage dealing. those babies are in the 'super' psionics that minors and majors can't get too..and people with super Psi are by canon supposed to be fairly rare.

so if the CS is allowing all these non-CS communities to pop up, it's becuase they're killing any creature they find continent wide. at which point things are no longer a wilderness.

Pg18 spends more time talking about how hard it is to travel due to the lack of roads and the issues of terrain.. which is a valid reason for most people not travelling more than to the next town.

Did you miss The second paragraph on page 18 where it talks about the elimination of humans and the repopulation of earth by "Aliens, DBees and monsters, True Monsters"

Or the fourth paragraph where it speaks about Rift's continuing to disgourge an endless supply of alien creatures, reality warping energy that changed the landscape into alien vistas from what it once had been." and ____"It also filled the new wilderness with every conceivable danger"____ Then lists off Dinosaurs, confused alien creatures from other worlds, Demons most foul, evil spirits and dark gods from across the megaverse. Creatures of magic, like Dragon, Sphinx, unicorn and others" make their homes there and "where we humans and our DBee cousins have become their prey victoms and playthings"

These are all from the page you pointed out, that it spoke more about just the lack of roads.... that's a bit.... Selective in what you saw there. It even goes on to point out the technological resurgence has carved out some towns and cities and almost true nations.. but makes it a point to tell you in the same breath that they are "More akin to an oasis in a savage land than a true dominating force" Their emphisis.

It goes on to speak of those towns. Talking about curling up next to the fire with frienss and the ILLUSION OF SAFETY. About how "it's easy to forget about unknown lurking in the wilderness just a few 100 yards away" and "However the monsters are never far from the door and one must be ever vigilant or fall victom to trechery and sudden death"

Paragraph after paragraph hammers it in. Just on THIS ONE PAGE. It goes on talking abouth ow the CS is mighty but is pretty much unkown in most places out side their own sphere of influence.

"No matter how large or powerful the kingdom, it's surrounded by unpredictable and unrelenting wilderness" and talks about how the farm mightbe a few miles away or "Several hundred miles of hostile wilderness"

I quote this way so I don't get in trouble for pretty much typing the entire page. It's there for anyone to read though. Time and time and time again talking about the dangers in the wilderness. yes it does mention there's not always roads but that's one sentence amist 100s of them talking about how dangerous it is.

and this is written from the voice of Erin tarn, who goes on to point out that monsters and such are spread out widely and your not likely to encounter them. the danger is pretty clearly being exaggerated for effect. the effect being to point out to city dwellers (like we are, here in real life) that the world of rifts earth is not civilized, it's largely uninhabited and there are forces out there that can cause lots of trouble. buit it doesn't say that every community is beset by such forces all the time, like people seem to be assuming.

there is also mention of travelling for days without encountering anything. the description of it says things "may" be lurking in the shadows just out of sight.. but the presentation is basically the same kind of bogeyman stories frontiersmen in the 1600's, 1700's, and 1800's told to city dwellers about the indians. "yep, didn't see a soul the whole time. but them injun's were hiding just out of sight the whole time, i could tell"

No.. when one opens the book and reads it, it reads like a warning from one that's been there. She's not writing storys to frighten people. Shes laying out how wild and woolly that wildness is. Speaking of many of the horrors. You're down playing it but it's hit on and hammered in time and again. Just as I said it was.

You call it hyperbolic.. I think it's trying to adequately describe just how scary and dangerous it IS out there. The point is you said it wasn't there. You didn't see evidence and the evidence ___IS___ There, right where I pointed. and it's not just once... maybe twice. It's over and over and over.

and in my studies of real history, i have read plenty of first hand accounts of things from 'people who were there' that were just as hyperbolic. yes she is writing about horrors and wild wooly wilderness... but like similar first hand accounts of the wild west, or the first hand accounts of the 17th century settlers, or the first hand accounts of settlers in the spanish carribean, she's writing about the possibilities of what could happen, not the realities. most settlements in the wild west were not attacked by indians. nor the ones in the 17th century. but such attacks did happen, and there are plenty of records of of such attacks. and if you plot them against known settlements, it's a relative drop in a bucket. but those stories were spread and printed and hyped up, especially to people looking ot settle, because people needed to be aware of the potential for danger, no matter how unlikely. and back then, the assumption was also "settlers are always gonna be attacked by indians," hostiles were seen behind every tree. and if it wasn't indians it was bears and cougars and wolves and snakes, etcetera etcetera etcetera. forget the fact that most people wouldn't see one of them unless they went looking for them, people thought the life of a wilderness settler was one of constant unrelenting danger. thats part of where the whole 'frontiersman' mystique came from.
the reality was much different. not much danger, except for the (usually not talked about) dangers of bad crops, illness, or bad weather. lots of hardship, but you could live comfortably with some reasonable precautions taken.

pg 18 through 41 goes into what kinds of tribes and creatures live in various regions, but it's like me saying "gorillas, leopards, chimpanzees, and man-eating pymies live in central africa". doesn't tell us squat about how common those are. you can spend months in central africa looking for those with knowledge of thier habits and ranges and not find them. just stumbling across one without trying to darn rare. all of the regions described in pg18-41 are huge areas. so there are tribes of simvan in the midwest. how big is a tribe? how spread out are they? etc. we don't know. even the simvan entries in various books don't say.

But previously it takes time to tell you. "It's not like earth was" It points out that the wilderness of Rifts earth is vast and many times thicker than 'our' earth. They point out that OUR wilderness was not like theirs, and we only had 18% wilderness while theirs is 90%. It's an entire paragraph on page 17, but to directly quote "The wilderness of our past is nothing like the savage wilderness we know today"

It directly addresses the threats you talk about.. and says theirs is many times worse.

my point was that the region entires just give lists, not rarities. those regions are huge. like, before european settlement huge. yet those lists don't provide any kind of information on how common they are.

and page 19 has a very pertinent passage.
"i have had city folk question how it can be with all the fabled towns, tribe, clans, dbees and monsters they hear about, that one doesn't stumble over one hiding behind every tree. it doesn't work that way.
the wildlife hides from intruders like us, the innocent animals run to avoid becoming hunted, and the predators watch from a nervous distance waiting at least until they are ready to strike. people hear there may be hundreds, or thousands, even tens of thousands of a species, but they forget that number is spread across vast expanses of land, or that perhaps as few as one or two or a dozen may live in any given area. a predator like a mountain lion, for example, wil lconsider 100 to 200 square miles (259 or 518 sq. km) as its domain or its hunting ground, and only it and its mate prowl it (along with other species of predators). thats a large area that city dwellers can't adequately picture, and such a range is tiny compared to the sweeping wilderness that is our land."
she then goes on to point out she only calls it a "savage wilderness" because the land is not "a parkland", and does have such creatures in it.

Yes... and lets finish the paragraph shall we? Yes. Lets.

"Home to man eating plants, wild animals, giant insects, demons and a host of inhuman creatures, spirits, ghosts, and supernatural beings."

LOL you're ------very----------- selectively reading and presenting here Glitterboy. Usually you don't do that but in this case it's a shame. You're picking one sentence out and purposefully leaving out the next that proves my point.

"home to" just means "these things are found here" it provides no infomation on rarity in itself. your being selective in choosing to ignore the paragraphs talking about how its rare to encounter things because of the sheer size of the wilderness in favor of one line that provides no actual information of commonality.
that passage describes why you don't see all these monsters and predators and dbees and stuff in the wilderness. thats all it does. it never says they aren't there, just that they're spread out really thinly over the huge wilderness. 'like butter over too much bread', to steal a phrase from the lord of the rings.

if your not seeing all these monsters and predators and such in the wilderness because of how spread out they are, it means the hyper-lethal ecology people keep talking about doesn't exist. it's just a potentially lethal ecology, which while worth preparing for is not as bad as people are making it out to be.

[Pepsi Jedi]

yes pg 8 says that. but pg 13 talks about how city states and communities are poppingup everywhere. which is hardly a sign of a hyper-lethal enviroment.

Kinda.. the sentence is there, but when you read the rest it's talking about the CS. And that sentence about them popping up everywhere was right after talking about the 300 years of dark ages where the monsters just flat out ruled.

Yes the CS does exist and they defend their turf but that doesn't mean that travel out side the CS protected area's is any easier.

except that if the enviroment of rifts was as dangerous as people say, you'd never have towns and villages outside the major nation-states. much less tiny villages that have been described in so many books.

The ones you describe are few, far between, often destroied just before or just after a pc group goes through (( if not destroyed BY the PC group)) and often have a reason for existing. Dragon that lives there in secret... out law gang hide out that they frequent, some guy is an ex merc with guns to protect them, or a mage, or a group of druids. ect.

if things were as dangerous as people claim, not even having a 'protector' would be sufficent to stop such small communities from being wiped out by predator monsters.

It's likly a combination of factors. 1) being too small to matter much. 2) having protectors of some kind, be it innate magic, or psionics, or 5 or 6 guys with laser rifles, or a dragon, or a group of thugs that use it as a base, and 3) The wilderness __IS__ So vast, that even with the threats out there, as you point out, it's hard to find um. Not every predator is going to cross territories and what not. The predators around town A might get.... a virgin sacrifice every few years. where town B might save up for a few years to buy their protection, ect.

pg 17-18, under "the savage wilderness", pays lipservice to the whole 'dangerous enviroment', but the actual details say otherwise. mention of villages and towns being islands of safety in a sea of unknown danger is presented with so much hyperbole it's pretty obvious the dangers have been exaggerated. after all, if things were really that dangerous, if monsters were really that common..how the hell are there villages and towns? the man-eating monsters would have wiped them all out by now, since such small communities couldn't provide any effective defense.

Wait now.. now your counter to "They never say that the wilderness is that dangerous" is... "They've said it's SO dangerous they must be making it up!"?? Doesn't that prove they DO say it's dangerous like I said?

As for how.... again, *points up to the CS* There's a major reason. Another reason is, a pretty large chunck of humanity now is psionic. Some others have magic. Now that the dark ages are past there are more 'Adventurers' out there. They can hire groups (( like ours)) todefend them or take out threats.

You can't in one breath go "There's no evidence like you said that it's dangerous" and then in the next breathh go "Ok the time they say it IS So dangerous they're just exaggerating." The second proves tthat they DO say it. Right?

sorry, the CS can't be the reason.

To be fair I said 'a major reason'. In the section you were pointing to, it was talking about the growth and expansion of the CS.

the CS sure isn't protecting the heinland and carter freeholds, for example. two tiny settlements in the middle of the dinosaur swamp.

Nor was that section talking about them. If you look that part was relating to the stuff growing out of the CS's solidified might.

no more than 2 dozen people, who have lived there for over a decade. they live in a land of giant dinosaurs, freaky ghosts, man eating plants, and other weirdness... and they don't have massive defenses or tons of defenders. just a pallisade wall and some guns.

I point you to the OOCs in the book. If Memory serves. "Dinosaur hunter" is a major one? And they have a few sorts. Those are more likely for THAT place.

there are plenty of other examples. most of the towns in rifts canada, for example, including the fury beetle ranch, barely have any defenses. and the CS shure doesn't protect them.

No, the CS isn't hte only reason, it was one of (( note that. ONE OF)) The major reasons for the part you were pointing to. As for Canada. They have Tundra rangers and magical tribes, and Free Quebec, ect. It's still little drops of civlilsation in huge vast stretches of monster filled wilderness.

and while almost a quarter of humanity might be psionic, most are only minor psi's, with one or two powers.. and there aren't many offensive or defensive powers available to minor and major psi's. lots of sensing powers and healing stuff, some useful tricks, but not much in the way of damage dealing.

And when you have thhose weaker powers? What do you do? you learn to use them for best effect. Thhose sensing powers nad healing stuff? You sense the danger coming, you hide. You evade, and when needed you heal. You don't have to engage every problem to win. Most times if people/things are too much trouble, 'Bad guys' will meander away. Few are the sorts that will expend huge ammounts of money/time/resources to track down every single living thing and put it to the blade. If they come to a small village and it seems abandoned because the people sensed them coming and flee, using psioniccs to keep one step ahead.. the bad guys might loot the town, but they don't hunt down every single man, woman and child. (( unless they're truely evil... then... sucks but happens.))

those babies are in the 'super' psionics that minors and majors can't get too..and people with super Psi are by canon supposed to be fairly rare.

Indeed, but even if they're 1 in 100, a village of 100 could have 1. (( or a few)) and one guy throwing MD Fireballs is nothing to sneeze at.

so if the CS is allowing all these non-CS communities to pop up, it's becuase they're killing any creature they find nation wide. at which point things are no longer a wilderness.

Not in evidence, but the CS does patrol and engage many of the baddies mentioned. But not so much as to take out dozens of pages describing them, just in the first chapter of the first book. lol

Pg18 spends more time talking about how hard it is to travel due to the lack of roads and the issues of terrain.. which is a valid reason for most people not travelling more than to the next town.

Did you miss The second paragraph on page 18 where it talks about the elimination of humans and the repopulation of earth by "Aliens, DBees and monsters, True Monsters"

Or the fourth paragraph where it speaks about Rift's continuing to disgourge an endless supply of alien creatures, reality warping energy that changed the landscape into alien vistas from what it once had been." and ____"It also filled the new wilderness with every conceivable danger"____ Then lists off Dinosaurs, confused alien creatures from other worlds, Demons most foul, evil spirits and dark gods from across the megaverse. Creatures of magic, like Dragon, Sphinx, unicorn and others" make their homes there and "where we humans and our DBee cousins have become their prey victoms and playthings"

These are all from the page you pointed out, that it spoke more about just the lack of roads.... that's a bit.... Selective in what you saw there. It even goes on to point out the technological resurgence has carved out some towns and cities and almost true nations.. but makes it a point to tell you in the same breath that they are "More akin to an oasis in a savage land than a true dominating force" Their emphisis.

It goes on to speak of those towns. Talking about curling up next to the fire with frienss and the ILLUSION OF SAFETY. About how "it's easy to forget about unknown lurking in the wilderness just a few 100 yards away" and "However the monsters are never far from the door and one must be ever vigilant or fall victom to trechery and sudden death"

Paragraph after paragraph hammers it in. Just on THIS ONE PAGE. It goes on talking abouth ow the CS is mighty but is pretty much unkown in most places out side their own sphere of influence.

"No matter how large or powerful the kingdom, it's surrounded by unpredictable and unrelenting wilderness" and talks about how the farm mightbe a few miles away or "Several hundred miles of hostile wilderness"

I quote this way so I don't get in trouble for pretty much typing the entire page. It's there for anyone to read though. Time and time and time again talking about the dangers in the wilderness. yes it does mention there's not always roads but that's one sentence amist 100s of them talking about how dangerous it is.

and this is written from the voice of Erin tarn, who goes on to point out that monsters and such are spread out widely and your not likely to encounter them. the danger is pretty clearly being exaggerated for effect. the effect being to point out to city dwellers (like we are, here in real life) that the world of rifts earth is not civilized, it's largely uninhabited and there are forces out there that can cause lots of trouble. buit it doesn't say that every community is beset by such forces all the time, like people seem to be assuming.

but it's not. her books are written as primers to educate. Not fairytales to frighten. It's very clear, when you don't cut out the huge chuncks describing the dangers, for the one sentence you're aiming for, she --is-- describing just how dangerous it is out there, for people that live safely behind the walls. Seriously. Your original claim is 'There's nothing in the books toback up the danger you're saying is there" and there's dozens of pages right here saying it over and over again.

You're saying "oh she's just being fanciful for effect. She's not. It's there. lol it just doesn't agree with your point.

there is also mention of travelling for days without encountering anything. the description of it says things "may" be lurking in the shadows just out of sight.. but the presentation is basically the same kind of bogeyman stories frontiersmen in the 1600's, 1700's, and 1800's told to city dwellers about the indians. "yep, didn't see a soul the whole time. but them injun's were hiding just out of sight the whole time, i could tell"

No.. when one opens the book and reads it, it reads like a warning from one that's been there. She's not writing storys to frighten people. Shes laying out how wild and woolly that wildness is. Speaking of many of the horrors. You're down playing it but it's hit on and hammered in time and again. Just as I said it was.

You call it hyperbolic.. I think it's trying to adequately describe just how scary and dangerous it IS out there. The point is you said it wasn't there. You didn't see evidence and the evidence ___IS___ There, right where I pointed. and it's not just once... maybe twice. It's over and over and over.

and in my studies of real history, i have read plenty of first hand accounts of things from 'people who were there' that were just as hyperbolic.

Nope. Not allowed to cite "real history" as a way to try and relate to a game and then link it to being fanciful. It's written as fact by one of the greatest scholars of the day. Personal account. Not fanciful embelishment as you're making out. "Erin Tarn" ___IS___ The well traveled scholar of Rifts earth. You're making it out like she's a huckster and charlitan, when nothing in the books presents her that way. (( The CS paint her that way but it's clear that they do so to discredit her, and that their PR campaign against her is lies))

yes she is writing about horrors and wild wooly wilderness... but like similar first hand accounts of the wild west, or the first hand accounts of the 17th century settlers, or the first hand accounts of settlers in the spanish carribean, she's writing about the possibilities of what could happen, not the realities. most settlements in the wild west were not attacked by indians. nor the ones in the 17th century. but such attacks did happen, and there are plenty of records of of such attacks. and if you plot them against known settlements, it's a relative drop in a bucket. but those stories were spread and printed and hyped up, especially to people looking ot settle, because people needed to be aware of the potential for danger, no matter how unlikely. and back then, the assumption was also "settlers are always gonna be attacked by indians," hostiles were seen behind every tree. and if it wasn't indians it was bears and cougars and wolves and snakes, etcetera etcetera etcetera. forget the fact that most people wouldn't see one of them unless they went looking for them, people thought the life of a wilderness settler was one of constant unrelenting danger. thats part of where the whole 'frontiersman' mystique came from.
the reality was much different. not much danger, except for the (usually not talked about) dangers of bad crops, illness, or bad weather. lots of hardship, but you could live comfortably with some reasonable precautions taken.

Yet the book takes clear difference between the wilderness we (( you and I and our lovely readers)) know and the 'Reality of rifts earth" and how it's SOOO much more dangerous.

Again, you're acting like Erin Tarn is a conwoman, blowing things out of porportion to sell books. "In the rifts world" she's not. She's known as one of the greatest most well traveled people on the planet.

pg 18 through 41 goes into what kinds of tribes and creatures live in various regions, but it's like me saying "gorillas, leopards, chimpanzees, and man-eating pymies live in central africa". doesn't tell us squat about how common those are. you can spend months in central africa looking for those with knowledge of thier habits and ranges and not find them. just stumbling across one without trying to darn rare. all of the regions described in pg18-41 are huge areas. so there are tribes of simvan in the midwest. how big is a tribe? how spread out are they? etc. we don't know. even the simvan entries in various books don't say.

But previously it takes time to tell you. "It's not like earth was" It points out that the wilderness of Rifts earth is vast and many times thicker than 'our' earth. They point out that OUR wilderness was not like theirs, and we only had 18% wilderness while theirs is 90%. It's an entire paragraph on page 17, but to directly quote "The wilderness of our past is nothing like the savage wilderness we know today"

It directly addresses the threats you talk about.. and says theirs is many times worse.

my point was that the region entires just give lists, not rarities. those regions are huge. like, before european settlement huge. yet those lists don't provide any kind of information on how common they are.

It does in other parts. Not percentages, but the rest of the text taken as a whole indicates the dangers are present. It DOES say you can go distance with out seeing anything. But just as likely you can have demons suddenly fly over you while walking down the road. You never know.

and page 19 has a very pertinent passage.
"i have had city folk question how it can be with all the fabled towns, tribe, clans, dbees and monsters they hear about, that one doesn't stumble over one hiding behind every tree. it doesn't work that way.
the wildlife hides from intruders like us, the innocent animals run to avoid becoming hunted, and the predators watch from a nervous distance waiting at least until they are ready to strike. people hear there may be hundreds, or thousands, even tens of thousands of a species, but they forget that number is spread across vast expanses of land, or that perhaps as few as one or two or a dozen may live in any given area. a predator like a mountain lion, for example, wil lconsider 100 to 200 square miles (259 or 518 sq. km) as its domain or its hunting ground, and only it and its mate prowl it (along with other species of predators). thats a large area that city dwellers can't adequately picture, and such a range is tiny compared to the sweeping wilderness that is our land."
she then goes on to point out she only calls it a "savage wilderness" because the land is not "a parkland", and does have such creatures in it.

Yes... and lets finish the paragraph shall we? Yes. Lets.

"Home to man eating plants, wild animals, giant insects, demons and a host of inhuman creatures, spirits, ghosts, and supernatural beings."

LOL you're ------very----------- selectively reading and presenting here Glitterboy. Usually you don't do that but in this case it's a shame. You're picking one sentence out and purposefully leaving out the next that proves my point.

"home to" just means "these things are found here" it provides no infomation on rarity in itself. [/quote]

But they ARE there. You make it sound like they're not. Your sentence "Only calls it" savage wilderness and what not, completely ignoring the laundry list of things that can obliterate you. So much so that you purposefully leave out the very next sentence which named off 8 catagories. (( Not 8 things. 8 different catagories)) of things just there.

your being selective in choosing to ignore the paragraphs talking about how its rare to encounter things because of the sheer size of the wilderness in favor of one line that provides no actual information of commonality.

No no. I'm pointing out dozens of PARAGRAPHS of information, repeatedly pointing out the danger, and then pionting out your one sentence amist all that that points out you 'can' go for a distance and not see them.

Possibility doesn't indicate rarity. I can go from here to town sometimes, a 30 mile trip and not see a human but there's 1000s of them out there.

erin tarn describes exactly why your not likely to encounter much of those things in any given area in that passage.

And in the same breathh says it's just as likely to run into a list of them.



Look. You started this by saying there's nothing in the books to point to the dangers described. I've pointed out that just in the beginning few dozen pages of the RUE there ____IS____ stuff in the books pointing to the dangers.

You're saying it's all made up and trumped up by a charliton. I'm pointing out she's concidered the most well traveled scholor on the planet.

Point is, with only opening one book. The BASE book, my point is proven. _____AS WRITTEN______ Rifts is 90% dangerous wilderness with an endless supply of dangers that list in to tthe millions of different kinds.

Are you going to meet one every step out side your door? No, but every step after that yourchancce of running into SOMETHING gets larger and larger and larger. Sooner or later you do. And chances are, it's not going to be friendly and invite you for tea.

That's the setting as written. To say it's not, is to pretty much ignore the 50+ books we have on Rifts.

[Shadowfyr]

Besides, the wilderness is gotta be dangerous anyways, for when us the players are actually playing we need the Gm to be willing to toss these creatures in our ways for fun things to happen, otherwise its just tedious free roaming travel. I completely understand you arent gonna find something all the time. But thats where us the GM take that information from the book and weave it in whatever way we want. Everything from finding Simvan Riders, to Dinosaurs and other creatures in the New West, to encountering Xiticix in the North, or even some awesome Psi / Magic animal in the east. Its all there to create a story with, whether its common or not.

[TechnoGothic]

Traveling without md/mdc protection is the dangerous thing.

[Athos]

Having your coGM give an ATL-7 to a Russian Mystic Kuznya to mount on her vehicle and then say the nuclear engine powers it... and this is in a north american game with no trade to south america...

Makes me say the dumbest thing ever in Rifts is the ATL-7. 3d6 x 10 + 20 MD !!! More than a boom gun.

I mean seriously, why did they ever approve that? If it truly could only run on eclips, maybe. But even then, they made it easy to recharge eclips... so you can fire it at half speed by replacing clips every other action.

The most ridiculous thing in the Rifts game is not having an editor that actually plays the game who can point out things like the ATL 7 and say, hey this isn't going to work because of XYZ. Players look for cheese, they love to exploit stuff that is broken, it's the game designers job to keep too much cheese out of the system. Otherwise the game designer is forcing the GM to be the bad guy and that gets real old, real freaking quick. If the game designer never plays the game, he is out of touch and will make screw ups like the ATL 7.

[TechnoGothic]

Having your coGM give an ATL-7 to a Russian Mystic Kuznya to mount on her vehicle and then say the nuclear engine powers it... and this is in a north american game with no trade to south america...

Makes me say the dumbest thing ever in Rifts is the ATL-7. 3d6 x 10 + 20 MD !!! More than a boom gun.

I mean seriously, why did they ever approve that? If it truly could only run on eclips, maybe. But even then, they made it easy to recharge eclips... so you can fire it at half speed by replacing clips every other action.

The most ridiculous thing in the Rifts game is not having an editor that actually plays the game who can point out things like the ATL 7 and say, hey this isn't going to work because of XYZ. Players look for cheese, they love to exploit stuff that is broken, it's the game designers job to keep too much cheese out of the system. Otherwise the game designer is forcing the GM to be the bad guy and that gets real old, real freaking quick. If the game designer never plays the game, he is out of touch and will make screw ups like the ATL 7.

Look in Mutants in Orbit for the GB Mark IV, Particle Beam Canon inflicts 4d6x10

[Sureshot]

To the Op too many imo. So I'm going to start with a few.

CS being able to continually hire mercenaries even when they have a reputation for wiping all and any who have any CS tech, DBs, or any other undesirables. When realistacally the would be blacklisted by many if not most such organizations. Who wants to work for someone who may kill you to the last man for owning a CS pistol.

The habit of the writers of oncluding silly thing such as turnip people and animals such as ducks and expect you to take such creations serioulsy and keep a straight face. Sorry but I was told flat out that if I include a sentient turnip in my games that the players are walking out and never coming back. As for silly animals the Lurduuk from Dimension Book 14 is a good example. I don't care if it quaks out the planet killing beam from the death star or if it has a Horror Factor of 30. It's a duck. They are not scary and people eat them. Giving it a bony ridge on it's head and lightning abilites. It's still a damn duck. Give us something scary and cool or nothing at all. Once again I or any other player in my group will walk if anyone tosses in such a creature because no amont of disbeleif is going to make us do anything but makes us laugh so hard that we will have tears in our eyes.

The ridiculous prices for certain items. Either something is overpriced, underpriced or just going into the "let's see how many zeros I can add to the right of this number" territory.

The annoying habit of how certain items in an attempt to make sure that the players cannot get them through the Black Market or something similar always have the "not avaliable on the Black Market only available to army XYZ". Making it seem like every soldier in the Triax or CS armies as an example is some sort of paragon of virtue and would never accept a bribe to part with the weapon. BS. Anything with reason should be avaliable on Rifts Earth. With less legal restrictions and less organizations to keep a careful eye if anything their should be a thrving black market. One that should be as powerful as the Cs if not a few levels below. A CS soldier refuses to give codes to the armory the Black Market kidnaps his family. Or if he's single he dies in an "accident" and is replace by a more "favorable " one to the BM. Which has me worried for the upcoming BM sourcebook as PB makies them to be less effective then thy are in real life imo.

The absured range and damage value of hand weaposn vs vehicle and robot weapons. I get that they wanted to give the guy in the sut of armor a fighting chace of surviving. Yet when it's to the point of nerfing weapon damage values to the point that a rifle can outdamage a robot. No way. One guy in a suit of armor against a robot in my games is dead or hurting badly. Hopefully in a eventually new edition they will fix this because it's becoming a recognizable feature o the game in gaming community./ Not a very good one imo.
That it for now.

[Dustin Fireblade]

Plus, the CS launches missiles at any unauthorized flyers that go through their airspace.

Where is that behavior described?

I'd be curious to know if their standard operating procedure requires CS air units to identify the target before missiles are fired or if the missiles are just blindly fired at anything that isn't broadcasting the appropriate IFF codes.

If the later, then launching weather balloons might be a cheap and effective way to cause the CS to use up expensive ordinance (not that economic considerations have ever been very important to the Rifts setting).

--flatline

Unfortunately, I don't recall where I read that. Perhaps CWC, or CS Navy.

I see no reason to assume that they'd fire blindly, though, no need to shoot at ducks or balloons and such.

Wasn't it from one of the CS's aircraft entries in RM?

CS air defense systems is on page 146 of Mercenaries.

[Killer Cyborg]

CS air defense systems is on page 146 of Mercenaries.

That's the stuff.

[Lenwen]

The GI Joe rule, & the No-Armor-For-Mages rule.

The mage armor thing works fine for me. I understand where they were going with that one. The channeling of magic and focused use of PPE requires the mage to project it in a fashion (Magic) that is hampered by heavy armor.

Also as a matter of game balance it fits and keeps mages from being unbeatable super men. It's there on purpose.

It does not fit , as space mages .. are in entire space ships .. battle ships with more MDC then anything on Rifts earth .. yet they are able to cast magic effecting the enviorment outside .. of the craft they are in ..

[Pepsi Jedi]

The GI Joe rule, & the No-Armor-For-Mages rule.

The mage armor thing works fine for me. I understand where they were going with that one. The channeling of magic and focused use of PPE requires the mage to project it in a fashion (Magic) that is hampered by heavy armor.

Also as a matter of game balance it fits and keeps mages from being unbeatable super men. It's there on purpose.

It does not fit , as space mages .. are in entire space ships .. battle ships with more MDC then anything on Rifts earth .. yet they are able to cast magic effecting the enviorment outside .. of the craft they are in ..

Not talkin' about ships. Talking about personal armor. The stuff that encases you like a second skin, mucking up your ability to channel the magic.

[Dr. Doom III]

The GI Joe rule, & the No-Armor-For-Mages rule.

The mage armor thing works fine for me. I understand where they were going with that one. The channeling of magic and focused use of PPE requires the mage to project it in a fashion (Magic) that is hampered by heavy armor.

Also as a matter of game balance it fits and keeps mages from being unbeatable super men. It's there on purpose.

It does not fit , as space mages .. are in entire space ships .. battle ships with more MDC then anything on Rifts earth .. yet they are able to cast magic effecting the enviorment outside .. of the craft they are in ..

The mage heavy armor rule is there for one reason. Players who ignored the "mages prefer light armor" section in the OCC descriptions.

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

Not-locked-count-1

people who let their players run wild and choose weapons and equipment from every book deserve to wind up with eyelor modded ATLs.
Crazies, and many other classes, could use better wording, palladium is known for occasional poor editing and proofreading.

but the only thing i find silly or stupid is how sad the magic and psionic systems are. I had to rework them to make them worthwhile. everything else is gm's not putting the foot down, munchkins running free, and bad/unclear writing/editing/proofreading.

in my game, psionics and magic are capable of being stand alone. they don't need technology to fall back on. other than that, i dont really have to change much.


Scratch that. military vehicle and robot MDC and Damage. WAY TOO LOW. but the simplest of scaling math fixes that. so aside from magic and psioics in general, and military vehicles/robots stats, i think the books are just about perfect.

[Nightmask]

The GI Joe rule, & the No-Armor-For-Mages rule.

The mage armor thing works fine for me. I understand where they were going with that one. The channeling of magic and focused use of PPE requires the mage to project it in a fashion (Magic) that is hampered by heavy armor.

Also as a matter of game balance it fits and keeps mages from being unbeatable super men. It's there on purpose.

It does not fit , as space mages .. are in entire space ships .. battle ships with more MDC then anything on Rifts earth .. yet they are able to cast magic effecting the enviorment outside .. of the craft they are in ..

The mage heavy armor rule is there for one reason. Players who ignored the "mages prefer light armor" section in the OCC descriptions.

I'd say that's because they weren't ignoring it. It says 'prefer' it doesn't say 'can only wear'. Just as Techno-Wizards like to dress up in aviator outfits but it doesn't mean they have to dress that way exclusively.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Well to be fair, Mages CAN put on heavy armor and pick up a laser rifle too. Their magyness just suffers for it. Cuz... they're not supposed to be the guys in the heavy armor blowing things up with laser rifles, AND throwing fireballs. lol

It's a priority thing. I'm sure every now and then a Mage DOES put on heavy armor if they need the protection (( if they don't have magey protection)).

It's one of those, "You can have one, or you can have the other. It's your choice. You just can't have 'EVERYTHING" all at once." The game puts a limit in there on purpose so your'e not in heavy MD armor with a rail gun blowing up things, with Magey armor of Ithan on over it and throwing fireballs and flying around and opening up the ground to kill them, and and and and.

The people that get bent about Mages not being able to wear heavy armor AND be 100% as mages.... well. *Shrugs* They're easy to pick out of the RP lineup.

[Giant2005]

Well to be fair, Mages CAN put on heavy armor and pick up a laser rifle too. Their magyness just suffers for it. Cuz... they're not supposed to be the guys in the heavy armor blowing things up with laser rifles, AND throwing fireballs. lol

It's a priority thing. I'm sure every now and then a Mage DOES put on heavy armor if they need the protection (( if they don't have magey protection)).

It's one of those, "You can have one, or you can have the other. It's your choice. You just can't have 'EVERYTHING" all at once." The game puts a limit in there on purpose so your'e not in heavy MD armor with a rail gun blowing up things, with Magey armor of Ithan on over it and throwing fireballs and flying around and opening up the ground to kill them, and and and and.

The people that get bent about Mages not being able to wear heavy armor AND be 100% as mages.... well. *Shrugs* They're easy to pick out of the RP lineup.

A level 1 mage can't possibly survive with his 10 MDC Armor of Ithan.
If a low level mage wants to survive, he has to give up his magic abilities and wear armor, making himself a guy with a gun and armor who just isn't quite as good at it as everyone else.

[Nightmask]

Well to be fair, Mages CAN put on heavy armor and pick up a laser rifle too. Their magyness just suffers for it. Cuz... they're not supposed to be the guys in the heavy armor blowing things up with laser rifles, AND throwing fireballs. lol

It's a priority thing. I'm sure every now and then a Mage DOES put on heavy armor if they need the protection (( if they don't have magey protection)).

It's one of those, "You can have one, or you can have the other. It's your choice. You just can't have 'EVERYTHING" all at once." The game puts a limit in there on purpose so your'e not in heavy MD armor with a rail gun blowing up things, with Magey armor of Ithan on over it and throwing fireballs and flying around and opening up the ground to kill them, and and and and.

The people that get bent about Mages not being able to wear heavy armor AND be 100% as mages.... well. *Shrugs* They're easy to pick out of the RP lineup.

A level 1 mage can't possibly survive with his 10 MDC Armor of Ithan.
If a low level mage wants to survive, he has to give up his magic abilities and wear armor, making himself a guy with a gun and armor who just isn't quite as good at it as everyone else.

Gun-wise with how Palladium handles things he'd be as good with the gun as anyone else who has (or doesn't have as the case might be) skill in it. A 1st level Special Forces OCC and a 1st level Ley Line Walker OCC each with WP Energy Pistol are going to shoot with the same bonuses (at least I don't remember the SF having any extra weapon bonuses).

[Giant2005]

Well to be fair, Mages CAN put on heavy armor and pick up a laser rifle too. Their magyness just suffers for it. Cuz... they're not supposed to be the guys in the heavy armor blowing things up with laser rifles, AND throwing fireballs. lol

It's a priority thing. I'm sure every now and then a Mage DOES put on heavy armor if they need the protection (( if they don't have magey protection)).

It's one of those, "You can have one, or you can have the other. It's your choice. You just can't have 'EVERYTHING" all at once." The game puts a limit in there on purpose so your'e not in heavy MD armor with a rail gun blowing up things, with Magey armor of Ithan on over it and throwing fireballs and flying around and opening up the ground to kill them, and and and and.

The people that get bent about Mages not being able to wear heavy armor AND be 100% as mages.... well. *Shrugs* They're easy to pick out of the RP lineup.

A level 1 mage can't possibly survive with his 10 MDC Armor of Ithan.
If a low level mage wants to survive, he has to give up his magic abilities and wear armor, making himself a guy with a gun and armor who just isn't quite as good at it as everyone else.

Gun-wise with how Palladium handles things he'd be as good with the gun as anyone else who has (or doesn't have as the case might be) skill in it. A 1st level Special Forces OCC and a 1st level Ley Line Walker OCC each with WP Energy Pistol are going to shoot with the same bonuses (at least I don't remember the SF having any extra weapon bonuses).

That is true but most men-at-arms would take Sharpshooting which a mage can't get.
It is also possible/likely that the average man-at-arms will have more attacks.

[Nightmask]

Well to be fair, Mages CAN put on heavy armor and pick up a laser rifle too. Their magyness just suffers for it. Cuz... they're not supposed to be the guys in the heavy armor blowing things up with laser rifles, AND throwing fireballs. lol

It's a priority thing. I'm sure every now and then a Mage DOES put on heavy armor if they need the protection (( if they don't have magey protection)).

It's one of those, "You can have one, or you can have the other. It's your choice. You just can't have 'EVERYTHING" all at once." The game puts a limit in there on purpose so your'e not in heavy MD armor with a rail gun blowing up things, with Magey armor of Ithan on over it and throwing fireballs and flying around and opening up the ground to kill them, and and and and.

The people that get bent about Mages not being able to wear heavy armor AND be 100% as mages.... well. *Shrugs* They're easy to pick out of the RP lineup.

A level 1 mage can't possibly survive with his 10 MDC Armor of Ithan.
If a low level mage wants to survive, he has to give up his magic abilities and wear armor, making himself a guy with a gun and armor who just isn't quite as good at it as everyone else.

Gun-wise with how Palladium handles things he'd be as good with the gun as anyone else who has (or doesn't have as the case might be) skill in it. A 1st level Special Forces OCC and a 1st level Ley Line Walker OCC each with WP Energy Pistol are going to shoot with the same bonuses (at least I don't remember the SF having any extra weapon bonuses).

That is true but most men-at-arms would take Sharpshooting which a mage can't get.
It is also possible/likely that the average man-at-arms will have more attacks.

True but in general the mages in Palladium can be far more comparable to the man-at-arms sorts when it comes to use of weapons and hand-to-hand combat compared to many other systems that work to keep spell-casters as glass cannons compared to the fighters. It's more like super-hero comics in that regard. Dr. Strange for example is just as physically fit and capable of taking damage and fighting as any other human who gets plenty of exercise and has some hand-to-hand training. Go to AD&D and suddenly mages can barely handle anything even if they max their dice for HP and Constitution. I much favor the more balanced go Palladium has in that regard.

[Pepsi Jedi]

There ARE armors that a mage can wear. They're just not the super heavy full environmental stuff.

And if you're playing a mage, part of playing the mage, is learing ."Hey I'm a glass cannon. I can throw out the big bad spells, but if I get hit, I shatter"

That's why you team up with the Juicer, and the borg and the Grakeltooth.

Mages are (( Typically if not stereotypically)) one of the "Thinking man's classes" (( I know I know any class can be and there's just as many idiot mages.)). But you're SUPPOSED to go "hey, I'm not a front line hulk smash char. I have to use my brain and spells creatively while not getting my face lazed off"

Just remember. "Shoot the Healer/caster first" Is an axiom for a reason. *Grins*

[Giant2005]

There ARE armors that a mage can wear. They're just not the super heavy full environmental stuff.

And if you're playing a mage, part of playing the mage, is learing ."Hey I'm a glass cannon. I can throw out the big bad spells, but if I get hit, I shatter"

That's why you team up with the Juicer, and the borg and the Grakeltooth.

Mages are (( Typically if not stereotypically)) one of the "Thinking man's classes" (( I know I know any class can be and there's just as many idiot mages.)). But you're SUPPOSED to go "hey, I'm not a front line hulk smash char. I have to use my brain and spells creatively while not getting my face lazed off"

Just remember. "Shoot the Healer/caster first" Is an axiom for a reason. *Grins*

This is all true. Well it is supposed to be true at least.
There are ways for a lowbie mage to survive by exploiting cover and such but I have played with many GMs and every one of them has essentially thrown out those rules or misinterpreted them to the point that there is very little you can do to minimize your chances of being shot.
Mage Armor works but it is also kind of pointless. Why bother removing the ability of Mages to use Armor if you are going to patch up that weakness by giving them other Armor to wear? It is applying a band aid to a band aid.

[Pepsi Jedi]

There ARE armors that a mage can wear. They're just not the super heavy full environmental stuff.

And if you're playing a mage, part of playing the mage, is learing ."Hey I'm a glass cannon. I can throw out the big bad spells, but if I get hit, I shatter"

That's why you team up with the Juicer, and the borg and the Grakeltooth.

Mages are (( Typically if not stereotypically)) one of the "Thinking man's classes" (( I know I know any class can be and there's just as many idiot mages.)). But you're SUPPOSED to go "hey, I'm not a front line hulk smash char. I have to use my brain and spells creatively while not getting my face lazed off"

Just remember. "Shoot the Healer/caster first" Is an axiom for a reason. *Grins*

This is all true. Well it is supposed to be true at least.
There are ways for a lowbie mage to survive by exploiting cover and such but I have played with many GMs and every one of them has essentially thrown out those rules or misinterpreted them to the point that there is very little you can do to minimize your chances of being shot.
Mage Armor works but it is also kind of pointless. Why bother removing the ability of Mages to use Armor if you are going to patch up that weakness by giving them other Armor to wear? It is applying a band aid to a band aid.

It ties back to the reasoning behind mages and heavy armor. The reason OUT of game is to help preserve game balance.

In game it's that channeling of PPE and stuff.

Therefore mages can use some armors, that are specially designed to allow them to channel that PPE. Why allow it? Because those armors themselves have a number of factors. 1) They ain't cheep. 2) They're going to be harder to repair, 3) They're not nearly as common and 4) they're not as strong.

Those built in limitations make it harder for the mage to just throw something on. It helps with that 'out of game reason'. To help preserve over all balance.

Use them till you don't "NEED" them as much. Or... Hide behind the Borg and Juicer.

I understand some people DO want to be able to do it all, but this is part of the "mage package'. Crying over it or ignoring it would be like goin "i'm going to play a crazy, but I'm going to ignore the crazy stuff. I don't like it" or "I'm going to play a juicer, but I'm going to ignore the 'You're gonna die in4 years' thing. That's just lame. Why penalize my juicer or my crazy! They don't penalize Cyberknights like that. (( yes CK's have other down sides but I'm making a point))

Mages... can't wear the heavy armors or it messes with their magic.
Crazies..... are crazy.
Juicers..... are supermen with a built in expiration date.
Cyber knights..... have their code and the restrictions that come with being a CK.

It's just one of those things, ((Mages/armor)) It's there, not to just 'pick on the poor mages' it's built in balance for the overall game. You can surely ignore it. Just like you can ignore the crazies' insanity... but in doing so you're changing the class away from 'as intended' to "What suits me to get everything I want, at no cost".

If as a GM or player you're cool with that. Cool. But it's not a 'Ridiculous thing in the book'. It's intentional, to pre..... ok it doesn't prevent twinks/munchins... but it helps to curb them juuuust a little bit.