do you ever catch yourself metagaming assuming characters know stuff they actually shouldn't ? ie Nukes causing Rifts?

[Plane]

I fear doing this sometimes because it's easy to confuse what players commonly know with what characters commonly know, if not paying attention.

One big factor for example is the idea that the Coming of the Rifts were caused by nuclear war.

This is just such a huge common element known to players since Siembieda told us outright on page 7 of the 1990 book under "Creating The World of Rifts" stating "Nuclear holocaust ignited the destruction of the world".

Yet if we look at the Ultimate Edition it reveals something important from one of Erin Tarn's newer works (Born in Darkness released 84 PA, on page 11 of Ultimate Edition, not to be confused with her 1st book Humankind's Rise from Chaos released 63 PA, 21 years earlier)

Tarn, who probably knows more than most, only says "No one knows what happened", insisting "if the cause for the Coming of the Rifts was ever known, it has been long forgotten"

This actually sounds pretty arrogant- who is Tarn to say there aren't people out there holding onto the memory? She's well aware there are centuries-old dragons with longer memories, more experience, probably better connections and research capabilities... why not simply say "I spend a lot of energy searching and couldn't confirm anything" ? Why go beyond this to insist that NOBODY else could possibly know.

Makes me think "Born in Darkness" is just a work of propaganda or a coverup. Surely SOMEONE out there knows there were massive nuclear exchanges which precedes all the earthquakes and flooding? Maybe there's even a way to prove it? Some pre-Rifts documents?

[Grazzik]

Metagaming - sometimes, but typically in my games this is mitigated by playing 6th level or higher PCs that probably have a broader world view than a 1st level yokel. So, if there is a slip up with metagaming on small stuff, it can be explained away as "background knowledge" or prior experience.

The bigger stuff is easier to catch and usually not a problem.

The fluff narrative almost never comes into play... it was written for dramatic effect and does not read like an academic wrote it. The example you call out is a great piece of opinion masquerading as a fact and you rightly call out that it is easily challenged. Which leads to either the writer didn't write the fluff to read like a piece of academic writing or the Tarn character (who never makes any appearance in campaigns I've been in) was actually a bad academic and more of a demagogue trying to sell books at the cost of real scholarship.

On the flip side, academic society and culture could have regressed to the equivalent of 18th and 19th century Europe where such absolute claims were common in academia. Sometimes, we players and GMs assume that the people of Rifts are the same or more sophisticated than us, just because of their tech. However, it could be that they are poorly equipped to handle the technological legacy they have inherited and that explains some of the meta stories in the books.

Either way, this is but one reason to ignore fluff when determining game rules and just do your own thing. If everyone knew that nukes caused the Rifts, does it really impact your goblin-busting adventurers?

[glitterboy2098]

the adventure guide has a section addressing the Mythos of pre-rifts times and the cataclysm (page 103-104), i'd take that as the common understanding by the less educated. i'd assume that the more educated would have an understanding that the cataclysm began after a nuclear conflict, but probably couldn't detail out the actual extent of it or which nations were involved. scholars like Erin Tarn probably could detail out that conflict, and do a fair description of the events following in general, but wouldn't necessarily be able to tell you why the nuclear conflict lead to the rest, though no doubt they've speculated about PPE releases from all the deal and such.

[Orin J.]

you can paper a lot of cracks like that with "urban myths", in my experience.

of course, i think erin tarn's fulla crap anyways, but that's how i handle it.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

Makes me think "Born in Darkness" is just a work of propaganda or a coverup. Surely SOMEONE out there knows there were massive nuclear exchanges which precedes all the earthquakes and flooding? Maybe there's even a way to prove it? Some pre-Rifts documents?

First of all, I doubt it would matter to anybody. What would they do, retaliate against the descendants of the nation(s) responsible, ~300 years later?

Secondly, the nuclear exchange was, to my knowledge, limited to South America. I just checked all the likely sources that would have experienced the Great Cataclysm first-hand and also had the wherewithal to survive it and study it (and record information) as it occurred or shortly after.

Archie 3 is a good candidate, as is Triax, Sovietski, and the Chinese Geofront. I'm sure there are others, but that's off the top of my head. When consulting each of those books, it looks like the waves of magic energy from the eruption of the rifts is what caused the vast majority of damage; not nukes.

Old Moscow, for instance, is a giant radioactive crater. But nobody knows how it happened. Getting hit with enemy nukes wouldn't make a crater; rather it's more likely a massive underground nuclear generator was blown up by magic energy and/or the earthquakes that reshaped much of the landscape.

Likewise, the Chinese Geofront exited their (magically protected) cave system and found some evidence of melted structures above, which made them think it was nukes; but I also read that some Atlantean pyramids melted during the first disappearance of Atlantis, and that was purely magic energy involved.

Point being: I don't think anybody who lived through the Cataclysm could reach any scientific understanding of what happened, and by now they don't care. What's done is done.

From a purely academic perspective it might be worthwhile to study it, but to what end? There's no need to worry about a repeat scenario, since the Earth's population is too small to cause the same chain reaction after another war. The Coalition States vs Tolkeen happened, and that had no global impact, despite the extensive use of magic and modern MD weapons.