glitterboy2098 wrote:thank you. and sorry about the tone of the post. a lot of times people on these forums tend to let their personal opinions and such rule the discussion, which they believe is in books but can never seem to be found. it happens enough that i tend to get a bit annoyed by it.
No worries, it did seem a bit combative, but my post(s) might have seemed that way as well (they aren't).
glitterboy2098 wrote:on those entries, i will suggest they could be read as intercontinental/ultra-long-range travel is very dangerous, which certainly would be true. the use of "thousands of miles" and "long range", along with the context of getting to a place like japan is what suggests it.
Yeah, I think I wrote above that it's 'long' range travel that is the issue in the books, and it's all about what 'long' counts as. In Japan, 'long' is anywhere outside of Japan trying to get TO Japan, but I'm relatively certain if I flip through it that it also mentions Japan hardly travels (by air) outside of their controlled land area/off their own shore, and Japan isn't a very 'big' place, so it's all relative.
In the same way, people don't seem to have a problem fighting with jets, helicopters, SAMAS, ect., in pretty much every single book, nor doing short jumps with Jetpacks and things of the same type. I really think it's supposed to be true 'travel' by air that was supposed to be hindered in the early game concept in the same way that it's often mentioned in the early books in-universe that travel by Rift/ley-line is also extremely dangerous on-planet/from place to place on planet.
glitterboy2098 wrote:and it would be dangerous. with pretty much nowhere to stop for repairs if a problem occurs, lots of mystic triangles and storms and such to face, unknown dangers in the wilderness.. yeah trying to fly between continents would be pretty dangerous, even i you have a nuke-powered plane. if your still using fuel, your really out of luck.
It really seems like the majority of the danger is supposed to happen from Rifts/Ley line storms, ley line triangles, dimmensional anomalies and the like (with the illusive 'flying monster' being a vague, secondary concern). The problem, of course, is that we as readers first of all know exactly where the triangles are and how they work, so wouldn't have any problem plotting around them, whereas the NGR or the CS or another group would only have in-universe knowledge and no real hope of avoiding them, and secondly that there's really no mechanic for 'how many miles do I have to travel at speed X before I run into a random dimmensional anomaly/open Rifts/Ley Line Storm?'
We know by looking through the info on Ley Lines and Rifts what times these things occur, what their chances are, ect, and so travel SHOULD be pretty safe as long as we avoid those, but the in-universe effect seems to be that Rifts pop open at random at the perfect time to always foil people (or almost always), transport them at random to new worlds (which just might be the next Dimmension Book to be released), and other things that, if you were to do it re-occuringly to a party as the GM, would get people mad at you for being 'unreasonable' and making (what the books imply are) rare occurences happen so oftn.
glitterboy2098 wrote:so shorter range travel, like say just around the Domain of man in North America, i'd say air travel would be rather safer. you have more chances to get to a safe haven if something goes wrong, and you tend not to have to worry about things like dimensional storms and mystic triangles as much. though you would have to take into account various nation's territory and how they'd treat people crossing into it.
The fact that we really don't know what the Ley Lines look like in North America (and that they seem to work differently in the background than how they are presented in the rules) makes considering travel routes out of game hard (for me at least). Although their are 'demon triangles' at sea, I'd think there would have to be some on land as well, plus the normal Nexus points, super nexus points, ect.
It really does seem like a 'cheap' out to say 'well, you can't do X because there are Rifts', but that's really how it's presented, and that's because there aren't any other legit options given for why it is apparently SO dangerous. I really, fully do think it's another of those 'loose threads' in Rifts that just exists the way it does because that's how KS imagined it, and that when you start looking into it, and realizing theres really no reason presented for WHY it works that way, the whole thing starts to come unraveled. If newer books want to just ignore that loose thread and say 'it does work because there's no reason presented it shouldn't' (isn't there a commercial flight service in one of the NG books?) then I don't have any problem with that, the vision behind RIFTS seems to have shifted mightily over time (and actually pretty early on as well).
