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Warshrike wrote:4 - England - More info on the different areas (more Wales)

Mephisto wrote:

Rallan wrote:So many choices. Some that stick out would be

England - kiss goodbye to that godawful King Arthur rehash, and you can say adios to the Ye Olde Druid character classes (those wastes of space started one of the worst trends ever to plague Rifts: worldbooks having useless magic OCCs based on ye olde local myth and folklore). Just cut back to the core premise of the British Isles as a strange and mysterious land of magic.

Wormwood - lovely place, but dear god the game mechanics! This really should've been an RPG in its own right rather than just being slotted into Rifts as an afterthought.

Psyscape - this book's unsalvagable crap. May as well ditch the mediocre world info and reprint it as the Rifts Psionics Index

Siege on Tolkeen #1 - because perhaps if it was different, books 2 through 6 would never have been written

What, no comment on Rifts Australia, oh master of the goon and the smoke?

DocS wrote:

Warshrike wrote:4 - England - More info on the different areas (more Wales)

Why does everything have to be so political!? Can't we have a simple conversation about Rifts books without some left-wing commie-simp liberal moonbat telling us to 'Save the Wales'!?

DocS wrote:Rifts Africa and... (ah, the memories....) from a thread longtime back.

DocS wrote:Oooh, War with Nukes and the urge to use 'em... now we're cookin with Evil gas!

Each of the Horsemen needed some sort of ability to rain GLOBAL destruction. This is good for them as a menace and good to bring characters involved. I would think it fitting to have a worldwide plague of some sort that strikes all, human and deebee alike, shuts down everything else and has Pestilence as the center. No more of this 'Psychics have bad dreams so heroes are going to Africa', no no no no no. More like 15% of the CS dies due to some horrible virulent nastyness, and everywhere in North America, xiticix, Kittani, even dragons, are dying of this same thing, and the only lead is the one Psi-Bat plague survivor who just sits around mumbling and scribbling out a map of Africa...

Add some good Famine (or be a little more creative. A Worldwide drought or perhaps PPE shortage? What can be strangled to make Rift's Earth squeeze?). Make some sort of worldwide shortage that is bringing everyone to their knees.

Add the self destruction of formerly close allies. Why is Atlantis not taking over? For some reason, Splynncryth has a Kydian civil war brewing and he's trying to not have his little cash cow get destroyed by it! In fact, have Splyncryth take a holiday somewhere safer leaving Atlantis in less competent hands because things have gotten a little 'unstable'. Splynny is wondering if keeping Atlantis may become more trouble than its worth.

The Four Horsemen were supposed to be one of the Great Four Menaces of Rifts Earth, it would not have been overpowered to give them enough power to make everyone desperate! Well, everyone but The Lord of The Deep, perhaps The Lord wouldn't care, or does it have The Plague and is going even more insane and frenzied? It may die, but with its lifespan it will be the last one to go and in the meantime it's berserk.

For however long The Horsemen Ride, all differences are temporarily forgotten. If it doesn't get this bad, then there's no reason for the gathering of heroes. Now with all the World books, people can play with exactly how bad things would get in different parts of the world.

The whole 'necromancers siding with Death' idea... I don't like it. Being undead isn't so bad. I'd have Death be total and absolute ending of existence. Have Necromancers actually fearing this being. It doesn't consume you or possess you or any of that rot. Being killed, possessed or consumed, Necromancers can work with that. When this being is done with you, you simply do not exist any more. You're done, gone, kaput. Its goal is the total ending of all existence, living, undead, robotic, sentient, non-sentient, When universes die, this is the being that comes for them. For one glorious world book, have Murder wraiths and cyber knights agree, THIS BEING MUST BE STOPPED!

So, once every other continent is feeling like they're going through a whole new cataclysm, then the Heroes start to come to Africa because it's the only lead they got. Then you can make Africa the MEANEST, NASTIEST, continent. Why is it again the 'dark continent'? Because the Horsemens' presence has locked it off and the poor humans there are surviving in a permanent ongoing apocalypse which if continued will leave the entire place absolutely lifeless. It also needs a barrier of some kind. What fun is it if the party can go to Africa and run out again to grab bigger guns?

maybe that's Death's gig. He has linked with the land and he links with any living/undead/robotic/magical thing that steps upon it. If someone tries to leave it while Death is still present, they die. Now there's motivation to go down to wherever he is and try to put a nuke up his butt. Does it work on dragons? Yes. Does it work on Gods? Yes, which is why no gods will come anywhere near that continent. No one can radio out, people who come in are stuck, the whole continent is cursed. No more of this 'Thor could take War in a fight' malarky. Every pantheon has empty thrones which used to held by Gods who tried to stand against The Horsemen.

To this add the post-apocalyptic African ideas. It would, in this point, be fair to say the Africans are the meanest and toughest beings on the planet and no one knew because they were unable to leave the continent. Don't worry about the taking over once it's over. Since Africa is a perpetual killzone (and the fun would be making enough kinds of horrific killzones to keep every misbegotten inch of that place interesting), the population of Africa is far less than anywhere else. For those poor folks, The Cataclysm never really ended, it just went on for a century.

Here is where I'd have technology and magic working together since the endless horrors are beyond anything that one or the other can handle. Power armor pilots who wear magic fetishes, enchanted plasma guns, What remains of South Africa is a fascist dictatorship because it needs to be because things are just that bad! Human tech and magic alongside some Deebees who were unfortunate enough to rift in here and are stuck trying desperately to survive.

This would be the only place where I'd put a random encounter table. This continent *is* supposed to be so dangerous that you can't go three days of travel without something trying to kill you. And all of it is horrendous abominations that are really nothing but extensions of the nearest Horseman.

Now, how would one defeat these Horsemen? What would their weaknesses be (Millenium wood weapons.. LAME!!!)? Any suggestions? Ponder ponder ponder ponder....