Going Back to the Beginning

[Bill]

Well, kind of. My newest Rifts series is for an entirely new group of players, none of whom have ever played a Palladium RPG before. In an effort to keep things relatively simple, I am only using the Ultimate Edition rulebook. No World Books, Dimension Books, or even Sourcebooks.

Session Zero
This was not an actual game session because we didn't play. Instead, I presented a very brief overview of the basic setting and the character classes that I decided would be best for an intro game; only the men at arms (not including the Glitter Boy) and the scholar/adventurers. I felt very encouraged when two of the four players selected the latter. The group composition so far is one cyberdoc, one headhunter, one juicer, and a rogue scientist. We finished out the night by reviewing the individual abilities and equipment for each character.

For session one, I have prepared handouts that detail each character's special abilities and their skill options. I've also generated a couple antagonist profiles, so we can get right to the game after skill selection is finished.

[flatline]

Why did you choose to exclude magic and psychic classes?

--flatline

[Bill]

To reduce the number of decisions necessary to complete a character and to focus on the combat subsystem. I let them randomly determine psionics though, and the cyberdoc did come up with major.

[Razzinold]

I find that New West is a good book to start with for setting, I mean everyone can relate to cowboys and the old west. That or Merc Town, it's fully mapped out and who hasn't seen Mad MAx? I find these two settings are very easy for new players to relate to and helps to ease the immersion into the "gaming world".

Just my two cents.

[Bill]

Cool. I've got some gamers I'd like to introduce Rifts to as well. What sort of adventure have you got planned out? Part of my problem is that the world is so huge, I have a hard time picking a starting spot.

For the first eight weeks we will be working entirely out of the core book. I polled the players and they indicated that they would prefer to be wandering adventurers over based out of any particular location, so mostly the setting will be the fringes of the American midwest. I'm planning to run them through simple encounters with mundane folk trying to scrape by in a hostile post-apocalyptic hellscape, rapacious thugs wandering the wasteland, and coalition forces attempting to pacify the region. I'll probably pull a lot of the ideas from my Adventure on Every Page thread, but I'm going to make an effort to put in some technological mysteries for my rogue scientist and opportunities for my cyberdoc to interact with cyborgs. Naturally I will inject some alien and supernatural threats, but it's not my primary emphasis.

After eight weeks, we'll talk about what we want to do. They may want to keep going with what we're doing, mix in some supernatural character classes, change up the setting, or go to another game entirely.

[St. Evil]

Cool. I've got some gamers I'd like to introduce Rifts to as well. What sort of adventure have you got planned out? Part of my problem is that the world is so huge, I have a hard time picking a starting spot.

For the first eight weeks we will be working entirely out of the core book. I polled the players and they indicated that they would prefer to be wandering adventurers over based out of any particular location, so mostly the setting will be the fringes of the American midwest. I'm planning to run them through simple encounters with mundane folk trying to scrape by in a hostile post-apocalyptic hellscape, rapacious thugs wandering the wasteland, and coalition forces attempting to pacify the region. I'll probably pull a lot of the ideas from my Adventure on Every Page thread, but I'm going to make an effort to put in some technological mysteries for my rogue scientist and opportunities for my cyberdoc to interact with cyborgs. Naturally I will inject some alien and supernatural threats, but it's not my primary emphasis.

After eight weeks, we'll talk about what we want to do. They may want to keep going with what we're doing, mix in some supernatural character classes, change up the setting, or go to another game entirely.

I like the 8 weeks and we talk situation, cause I can not tell you how many times I have been told this is how you make a character and play then it takes 4-5 levels or whatever to get a good feel for a game and you realize this is how you could have made a character more to your liking and what you want cause you just don't know the system. The last one I had tried to get him self suicided by bad guys so I could play the character I wanted and the GM wouldn't kill him. Fortunately we switched to another game.

[flatline]

Cool. I've got some gamers I'd like to introduce Rifts to as well. What sort of adventure have you got planned out? Part of my problem is that the world is so huge, I have a hard time picking a starting spot.

For the first eight weeks we will be working entirely out of the core book. I polled the players and they indicated that they would prefer to be wandering adventurers over based out of any particular location, so mostly the setting will be the fringes of the American midwest. I'm planning to run them through simple encounters with mundane folk trying to scrape by in a hostile post-apocalyptic hellscape, rapacious thugs wandering the wasteland, and coalition forces attempting to pacify the region. I'll probably pull a lot of the ideas from my Adventure on Every Page thread, but I'm going to make an effort to put in some technological mysteries for my rogue scientist and opportunities for my cyberdoc to interact with cyborgs. Naturally I will inject some alien and supernatural threats, but it's not my primary emphasis.

After eight weeks, we'll talk about what we want to do. They may want to keep going with what we're doing, mix in some supernatural character classes, change up the setting, or go to another game entirely.

I like the 8 weeks and we talk situation, cause I can not tell you how many times I have been told this is how you make a character and play then it takes 4-5 levels or whatever to get a good feel for a game and you realize this is how you could have made a character more to your liking and what you want cause you just don't know the system. The last one I had tried to get him self suicided by bad guys so I could play the character I wanted and the GM wouldn't kill him. Fortunately we switched to another game.

You're GM won't let you change characters if you're unhappy with your current character? That sucks!

If the character is important to his plans, give him the sheet to use as an NPC. You should never be forced to play a character you don't want to play.

--flatline

[Icefalcon]

Cool. I've got some gamers I'd like to introduce Rifts to as well. What sort of adventure have you got planned out? Part of my problem is that the world is so huge, I have a hard time picking a starting spot.

For the first eight weeks we will be working entirely out of the core book. I polled the players and they indicated that they would prefer to be wandering adventurers over based out of any particular location, so mostly the setting will be the fringes of the American midwest. I'm planning to run them through simple encounters with mundane folk trying to scrape by in a hostile post-apocalyptic hellscape, rapacious thugs wandering the wasteland, and coalition forces attempting to pacify the region. I'll probably pull a lot of the ideas from my Adventure on Every Page thread, but I'm going to make an effort to put in some technological mysteries for my rogue scientist and opportunities for my cyberdoc to interact with cyborgs. Naturally I will inject some alien and supernatural threats, but it's not my primary emphasis.

After eight weeks, we'll talk about what we want to do. They may want to keep going with what we're doing, mix in some supernatural character classes, change up the setting, or go to another game entirely.

I like the 8 weeks and we talk situation, cause I can not tell you how many times I have been told this is how you make a character and play then it takes 4-5 levels or whatever to get a good feel for a game and you realize this is how you could have made a character more to your liking and what you want cause you just don't know the system. The last one I had tried to get him self suicided by bad guys so I could play the character I wanted and the GM wouldn't kill him. Fortunately we switched to another game.

You're GM won't let you change characters if you're unhappy with your current character? That sucks!

If the character is important to his plans, give him the sheet to use as an NPC. You should never be forced to play a character you don't want to play.

--flatline

I concur with Flatline here. You should never be forced to play something you don't want.

[flatline]

We did have times when a GM (or other player) stepped in and said "No, that's not in character" when someone tried to get their character killed (or whatever), but since we were allowed to change characters whenever as long as you were willing to sit out while the GM figured out now to work the new character in (we didn't just "poof! new character in the party"), that sort of thing never really came up in this context.

Most abandoned/retired characters were donated to the GM for NPCs.

We went through lots of characters during a campaign (usually due to high mortality rate, but not always) and so each player always had several pregenerated characters ready. In fact, it was not unusual for the GM to say "hey, I need an cyborg/LLW/Psychic/whatever NPC. Anyone got one handy?" and then he'd use whatever was volunteered (after making his own customizations, of course).

It's really handy to have a library of fully fleshed out characters that the GM can just reach into, tweak, and use. Every group should have one.

--flatline

[Bill]

An update. Last week the shop was closed due to the owner having a medical emergency. I only had contact info for two of the five players, so I was unable to relocate the session. It was very frustrating. This week, I had two players cancel and I thought for sure the session would fail due to lack of interest. The other three were running late and I was uncertain that they would appear at all. So I did what any good GM does, I recruited more players.

I'm now at eight all together. Frustratingly, this means that I've been trying to get this game off the ground for three weeks and still haven't actually run a full session. We spent last night writing up characters for the three new folks, even after the other three arrived. On the up-side, I'll still have a full table if half of the group doesn't show up. Also, half of these folks have played Rifts with me before, so hopefully they can help the others learn the game.

My roster as it stands:
Ben: Rogue Scientist
Bruce: Juicer
Cody: Cyberdoc
Derick: Headhunter
Dylan: Borg
John: Wilderness Scout
Nick: Crazy
Rachel: Rogue Scholar

[Bill]

Three weeks and three sessions later...the game continues!

Session Two
Ben, Cody, Derick, Dylan, John, and Rachel finished up their characters and engaged in some discussion of the how and why this motley crew came together. I generally prefer for the group to establish that rather than dictate it to them. The gist of it is that the killers are following around the scholarly types in hopes of fortune and glory while the operator (Cody decided to go that way instead of playing a cyberdoc) is there with an axe to grind against the coalition. As an element of his back story, Ben decided that his character would be seeking scientific data on dragons. Somehow that ended up in the group asking around Ishpeming about where they could find a dragon. After the third or so NPC told them it was a bad idea, they started to get the picture. I also dangled the idea of a magical secret society under their noses.

Session Three
Ben, Cody, Derick, and Rachel muddled through the session. The group chased after the magical secret society hook, but didn't get very far with it. I had to pull the mysterious benefactor on them and had a masked man offer them a significant reward for information on the movements of a dragon known as Zerikanikar (one of my stock names). We left off with the group departing for Escanaba to search for a boat that would take them to the lower peninsula.

Session Four
Due to strange coincidences, no one in attendance this week was present last week. I took the opportunity to run Dylan, John, and Nick through a side adventure taking place before the group departs for Escanaba. These three, the borg, crazy, and wilderness scout, left to their own devices decided to find a quick bounty to make some cash. Listening in on one of Ishpeming's three FM stations, they determined to seek out Freddie's Financing; a local pawnbroker.

Freddie offered them 15K to find Chester A. Arthur, who had taken out a million credit loan. Freddie also offered them a 10% finder's fee if they brought back the money. To get them started on their little detective story, Freddie gave them Chester A. Arthur's last known address. There, they were told that the man's name was actually Martin VanBuren, and that he hadn't been back that a day.

The wilderness scout miraculously managed to pull off a tracking roll from the apartment that led to a small appliance shop with an illicit drug-den hidden in it. After convincing the counter-man at the appliance shop to let them in, they found that Martin VanBuren was known as Andrew Jackson and had purchased an unspecified item from the barman, an unknown d-bee or supernatural being. In the process of gaining that information, the wilderness scout became addicted to the supernatural influence of a strange alien intelligence. The barman told them that Jackson had said that he needed to see a man about a horse.

At a nearby robotic horse dealership, the three were told that the man's name was Thomas Jefferson and that he had put down a deposit on the MkIV Palomino (also available in green and gold!). They staked the dealership out and waited for Jefferson to return. The climax of our little story occurred when the player characters botched the attempt to prowl up on Jefferson as he returned to the dealership and had to chase him down in the crowd. A quick three-round fight ensued revealing Jefferson to be some form of magic user, Fluffy Bunny (the cyborg) was trapped in a net spell for practically the whole battle, and that the powerful item he had purchased as a bright red two-handed sword with strange symbols inscribed all over it.

In the end, the fugitive with the presidential aliases had his sword arm blown off by the crazy's plasma cannon. The player characters delivered him (heavily drugged) to Freddie and collected their 15K. They didn't bother to inform Freddie where his million had gone and the crazy is still carrying around a bright red two-handed sword inscribed with alien runic symbols.

[Bill]

Nice. How did you explain the tracking from the apartment to the shop, were the streets dirt?

And... I'm surprised that the $100,000 carrot was not more enticing! I guess they figured they'd better turn him over before he expired? Then he'd be JFK. ;(

I didn't explain it. Sometimes, you just gotta move the story along. They talked about trying to retrieve the money, but the wilderness scout was fairly adamant about not going back to the drug den. One hit off the fairy hookah was enough for him.

[Bill]

Pay no attention to the date...the game goes on.

Session Five
The rogue scholar and the cyborg are scouting the forest in the former's jeep, not far from Ishpeming when they are attacked by a deadly rhino-buffalo. The vehicle is destroyed, but the pair survive to make their way back to the city. Entering through a poorer quarter, they travel through a strange bazaar populated by aliens offering goods from unknown corners of the world and beyond. The rogue scholar's side arm is stolen by a goblin, who flees into an ally and vanishes.

Session Six
Details on this session are fuzzy for me. The important thing to note is that the crazy, the wilderness scout, and the rogue scholar accidentally stumbled onto an underground slavery operation run by a troll. They took down the villains and the crazy turned over the runesword to the authoritied while reporting the clandestine magical drug den.

We then went on a month-long hiatus while I was out of town.

Session Seven
Gus, Fluffy Bunny, Lance, and Snow Man (a juicer played by Bruce) take another bounty from Fat Freddy the pawn broker. This time, they are sent after John Wilks Booth. Admittedly, after the bit with the presidential names, I was pushing it. However, this time it was the actual John Wilks Booth! Fun was had establishing that only the rogue scholar knew anything about civil war history. JWB had been transported to this strange and horrible future before he met Lincoln, and was therefore from another timeline. Not being quite total suckers, the players opted to help JWB find a job with a local Ishpeming theater rather than try to send him back to his own time. Good roleplay was had in squaring JWB's debt with Fat Freddy, selling off JWB's antique revolver, and in general dealing with an anachronistic character in the setting.

Session Eight
Gus, Snow Man, Lance, a cyberknight (played by Mike) and Raza (a pregenerated city rat played by Camden), capture a goblin and force it to tell them where to find the rest of its circle of thieves. Led to a warehouse, they quickly identify and kill to goblins guarding a crate. Hidden under the crate is the entrance to a crude tunnel system. The group proceeds down into the warren until the encounter a patrol of six goblins, which they also dispatch quickly;leaving one survivor to interrogate. The living goblin tells them that they will find the Cobbler another five levels down, if they can get past the robots. Snow Man murders the goblin in cold blood and the group exits the warren with the fallen goblins' weapons as a reward.

Session Nine
Gus, Lance, Fluffy Bunny, an Operator (played by Camden), and Raza (this time played by Nick) decide to go into the shipping business. Using the operator's Big Bertha, they agree to transport a load of "agricultural products" for Fat Freddy; who they learn is not actually in Ishpeming, but uses telepresence to do business in several cities. Arriving at the Robertson Ranch, the group learns that they must move 500 tons of ostrasaurus eggs from Ishpeming to Manistique in 48 hours, with less thanthan ten percent breakage. Their first challenge is loading the cargo. They manage to do so by agreeing to transport two Triax labor robots from Manistique back to farmer Roberts' ranch, who then used his equipment to help them.

Given the choice of taking the old highway or pushing through the wilderness the players elected to take the former option. This required them to travel into the vicinity of Marquett. This is as-yet undescribed territory in canon, so I decided last week that the site of Marquette was at one point overrun by a xiticix hive city. The hive has been abandoned for mysterious reasons, but the alien structures remain. Rumor around Ishpeming is that the city is heavily haunted, infested with all manner of demons and monsters, a haven for evil sorcerers, and a battleground for several tribes of psi-stalkers.

The old highway dead ended into the xiticix resin construction. Rather than risk the hover truck becoming trapped or their encountering the rumored demons, the players chose to skirt the hive city's border. This worked well until they encountered a collapsed structure barring the easy path. Faced with the choice of blasting a clear path around the obstacle and attracting the attention of whatever might be living in the abandoned city, the players decided to construct an earthen ramp over it. Fluffy Bunny and the operator's labor robot went to work while Lance, Gus, and Raza kept watch.

After an hour Lance spotted a lone human figure walking out of the ruins. As she came closer it became.obvious that she was unarmed and a psi-stalker. Introducing herself as an emissary of the Blue Death clan, she informed the group that they were trespassing on Blue Death territory and demanded to know what their cargo was. Lance blurted out that they were hauling eggs and the woman announced that her clan did not need food. She asked what they would give as tribute and Lance offered her his furs (worth 8K credits on the black market). Accepting his offering, she left. Shortly, six more psi-stalkers arrived and helped to construct the ramp. On the other side of the obstacle, six hours later, she introduced herself as Sathan of the Blue Death tribe and suggested that they bring better tribute the next time they came this way.

Irregular attendance is part of running a drop-in game. I am still enjoying myself, so I expext to keep going;at least until I'm not.

[scottypotty]

Open conversation between players and GM is great. Many players forget that it's not the GM's world alone, it's a collaborative story that they all take part in. Although not having a small core of dedicated players makes I hard to do a longer cohesive campaign. But I like the way you've approached the game.