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Part of the problem with Palladium's series of RIFTS World Books is that they usually offer only a few items that actually relate to each other. If the campaign is designed around the players traveling extensively around the remains of the world, or if there's a lot of NPC visitors and threats travelling to see them instead, the books can be made to work together. However, if the campaign is based in the remains of North America, for example, there's usually not that much use for books features the likes of Japan or England. Can they add some flavor to a campaign like this? Sure. But there's no deep sense of connection between the books.

RIFTS World Book 11: The Coalition War Campaign was great because it finally expanded on the campaign setting of North America and the evil Coalition that was touched on in the first two RIFTS books before being abandoned in favor of the other wonders of the world. RIFTS Lone Star should have been able to further expand on this. A whole book dedicated to a new, relatively unexplored Coalition State? Sounds like it can't miss . . . but it does.

In actuality, Lone Star is disappointing. There's so much promise to the concept, but the book doesn't really live up to its potential. The Coalition State of Lone Star is supposed to be the scientific stronghold of the NPC bad guys, dedicated to experimentation and advancing genetics in the name of humanity and the Coalition States. What the game presents instead is a description of Lone Star that hasn't been expanded much more that what had been previously touched in the original RIFTS book and the Coalition War Campaign book. The scientists and military personnel are brilliant, ruthless, evil, and utterly one-dimensional. There's never a good explanation as to why the major NPCs are almost all sociopathic maniacs, nor how so many of them could have risen to power in the exact same little political state.

As for the laboratory experiments being performed by Lone Star, well, they seem bland. Most of them are just variations on the Dog Boy character class from the original rulebook -- genetically reconstructed dogs with near-human intelligence and who have humanoid form. True, I was more or less expecting this. The variations are okay -- one of them, the enhanced bat creature, looked somewhat interesting. Problem is, they're all predictable. Nothing jumped off the page as radically different or innovative -- in short, there was nothing that couldn't have already been done by a competent GM who made a few "house rules" regarding the Dog Boy class. I was waiting for a few of these new mutations to be wildly different character classes, something cool and unusual. Instead, they were all conventional. Too bad.

The surprisingly good aspect of RIFTS Lone Star, actually, has next to nothing to do with its Coalition namesake. The book details the so-called "bandit kingdoms" that surround Lone Star. While the section dealing with these kingdoms doesn't give a great deal of attention to any specific kingdom, there's enough there to give both GM and players a sense of the towns and cities beyond the immediate reach of the Coalition. There's enough given to add faces to the wasteland towns between the Coalition settlements, faces that may or may not be friendly to characters. Unlike the Coalition NPCs, these towns and the characters residing in them seem to have personalities that range beyond power-hungry maniacs. The idea of the "bandit kingdoms" is good, well thought out, and unfortunately confined to a small section at the end of the book.

RIFTS Lone Star isn't a bad supplement for the RIFTS campaign. Its main flaw is that it happens to be predictable. There's no campaign concept, no new set of character classes, no storyline that will make either a GM or a player do a doubletake or think that there's something special about the book. It's not bad; it's not great. It's perfectly mediocre.

Which isn't necessarily good, either.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)

RIFTS World Book 13: Lone Star
Author: Kevin Siembieda Category: game Company/Publisher: Palladium Books Cost: $16.95 Page count: 176 ISBN: 157457-000-5 Capsule Review by Mike Ferguson on 02/16/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Post-apocalypse	Part of the problem with Palladium's series of RIFTS World Books is that they usually offer only a few items that actually relate to each other. If the campaign is designed around the players traveling extensively around the remains of the world, or if there's a lot of NPC visitors and threats travelling to see them instead, the books can be made to work together. However, if the campaign is based in the remains of North America, for example, there's usually not that much use for books features the likes of Japan or England. Can they add some flavor to a campaign like this? Sure. But there's no deep sense of connection between the books. RIFTS World Book 11: The Coalition War Campaign was great because it finally expanded on the campaign setting of North America and the evil Coalition that was touched on in the first two RIFTS books before being abandoned in favor of the other wonders of the world. RIFTS Lone Star should have been able to further expand on this. A whole book dedicated to a new, relatively unexplored Coalition State? Sounds like it can't miss . . . but it does. In actuality, Lone Star is disappointing. There's so much promise to the concept, but the book doesn't really live up to its potential. The Coalition State of Lone Star is supposed to be the scientific stronghold of the NPC bad guys, dedicated to experimentation and advancing genetics in the name of humanity and the Coalition States. What the game presents instead is a description of Lone Star that hasn't been expanded much more that what had been previously touched in the original RIFTS book and the Coalition War Campaign book. The scientists and military personnel are brilliant, ruthless, evil, and utterly one-dimensional. There's never a good explanation as to why the major NPCs are almost all sociopathic maniacs, nor how so many of them could have risen to power in the exact same little political state. As for the laboratory experiments being performed by Lone Star, well, they seem bland. Most of them are just variations on the Dog Boy character class from the original rulebook -- genetically reconstructed dogs with near-human intelligence and who have humanoid form. True, I was more or less expecting this. The variations are okay -- one of them, the enhanced bat creature, looked somewhat interesting. Problem is, they're all predictable. Nothing jumped off the page as radically different or innovative -- in short, there was nothing that couldn't have already been done by a competent GM who made a few "house rules" regarding the Dog Boy class. I was waiting for a few of these new mutations to be wildly different character classes, something cool and unusual. Instead, they were all conventional. Too bad. The surprisingly good aspect of RIFTS Lone Star, actually, has next to nothing to do with its Coalition namesake. The book details the so-called "bandit kingdoms" that surround Lone Star. While the section dealing with these kingdoms doesn't give a great deal of attention to any specific kingdom, there's enough there to give both GM and players a sense of the towns and cities beyond the immediate reach of the Coalition. There's enough given to add faces to the wasteland towns between the Coalition settlements, faces that may or may not be friendly to characters. Unlike the Coalition NPCs, these towns and the characters residing in them seem to have personalities that range beyond power-hungry maniacs. The idea of the "bandit kingdoms" is good, well thought out, and unfortunately confined to a small section at the end of the book. RIFTS Lone Star isn't a bad supplement for the RIFTS campaign. Its main flaw is that it happens to be predictable. There's no campaign concept, no new set of character classes, no storyline that will make either a GM or a player do a doubletake or think that there's something special about the book. It's not bad; it's not great. It's perfectly mediocre. Which isn't necessarily good, either. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average)

RIFTS World Book 13: Lone Star