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Yes; one of the most unique settings in all of Palladium canon.

HOWEVER: you may find several differing opinions as to the best way to enjoy it. Myself, I prefer it to be run as an entirely SDC world, with as little connection to Rifts and Phase World as possible. others like to take things from Wormwood and liberally transplant them into different dimensional settings...

But no matter what, I believe it is worth having.

If JRR Tolkien was a headbanger, he may have written Wormwood. If HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were merged into a mutant being capable of typing, they would have definitely written Wormwood.

It is a fascinating setting with very cool character concepts. You could strip the high-tech out and have a truly exceptional fantasy game that would be ripped out of the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. I am deeply looking forward to running a Wormwood campaign next year. The more I read into the setting, the more exciting it becomes.

Just a tiny taste of the cool bits:

Wormwood has an OCC who was once a willing slave to the demons who use humans as PPE batteries but now fights for the side of Light. He wears a mask so distrurbing that it scares demons, but few humans actually believe he's redeemed himself.

Wormwood has a demon who flies about with a wicked "fishing pole" that snatches people off the ground, swings them around and then uses the victim as a battering ram against his own friends.

Wormwood has Knights Templar riding TW motorcycles with freaking lasers who try to outwit the corrupt Priests of Light within their own Cathedral!

gadrin wrote:okay, so I just grabbed Wormwood off my shelf...

I'm going to read it...

cover to cover...

And in the background, you should be listening to these guys... LINK

That was a cool video! Thanks for sharing it Braden!

I'd say Heavy metal is an apt description.

That's what ear plugs are for during the show. That way you enjoy it and don't go deaf!

It makes sense...........right?

Yeah as others have said, running it with the rules as written doesn't really work well (the whole "all MDC" thing just doesn't work, and a lot of critters have unbalanced stats) so you'll want to pretty much declare a do-over on the stats everything gets and seriously consider giving everything SDC stats and running it entirely seperate from Rifts.

Its worth noting that the setting also makes it better as a standalone rather than a Rifts thing. Wormwood is pretty much entirely isolated from the entire rest of the megaverse. Virtually nobody on Rifts Earth or in Phase World (or anywhere else for that matter) is even aware that Wormwood exists, and the major Wormwood powers aren't trying to do anything major in other dimensions (the Host because they can't, the Cathedral and Worldgate because taking over the universe isn't their style). Wormwood does its fair share of trade (and outright theft and raiding) with other dimensions, but it keeps itself secret and so far hasn't come to the attention of other dimensional trading powers. Even the Splugorth (who seem to know about everything) are unaware the place exists, and apparently its a very hard world to accidentally stumble across through random dimensional travel. About the only folks from outside who know about it seem to be the Dimensional Raiders (who are so common some people mistakenly believe they come from Wormwood) and the Sunaj (who are barely mentioned in the book, but who we can assume are keeping it secret from their Splugorth masters just in case they ever need to do a runner).

The way I'd personally run it would be as an SDC setting unrelated to Rifts, and basically as a bleak, dark fantasy/steampunk setting with little if any futuristic technology (there's not much anyway, so the setting won't be radically changed if you scrap future tech stuff). Have it linked to a modern-day Earth that's blissfully unaware of the supernatural, and run with it.

Or if you're ambitious, try and figure out a way to run a Wormwood/Nightbane crossover. There's a lot of suspicious parallels between the two settings and with a little work you can have a viable crossover campaign. Perhaps Dark Day comes to Wormwood instead of Earth, the Cathedral are starting an inquisition to destroy the newly spawned Nightbane in their midst (who are obviously an insidious attempt by the Host to corrupt mankind, at least according to the Cathedral) and grappling with the seemingly angelic but suspiciously disloyal and critical Guardians who've begun manifesting. Meanwhile the Nightlords have seized a few cities hundreds of miles away from everyone else and are planning to destroy not their ancient foe the Host, but eventually want to kill the Living Planet. Or alternatively, have Wormwood accidentally develop a strange link to Earth during Dark Day, and the Nightlords and Nightbane discover that a mysterious new force - the Host - are quietly trying to infiltrate the world of men and set themselves up as would-be conquerors who dare to challenge the Nightlords.

Depending on the setting it is.

Very true!