The Inside Scoop on Gaming

When Palladium first started publishing its line of RIFTS World Books, the Australian continent always seemed like a perfect subject for the game. RIFTS, after all, is a post-apocalyptic RPG that owes a lot to movies such as Mad Max and the Road Warrior as its influences. Done right, a RIFTS Australia book would seem to have a great amount of potential. The only question would be if such a sourcebook could live up to its influences.

RIFTS World Book 19: Australia manages to live up to its influences. It's an original, innovative book that stands out among other RIFTS books. Not only is the volume of new material impressive, it's refreshing. By the time you hit certain sections of the majority of RIFTS sourcebooks, you usually feel like you're reading rehashed material -- new names and faces given to old equipment or characters. Not in Australia. This book could easily be used with the rules from the original rulebook to create a great RPG capable of standing on its own, without needing any other RIFTS book or supplement. The way the book thoroughly covers its material is commendable.

Probably better than any other RIFTS sourcebook to date, RIFTS Australia describes the history and geography of its specific game background with great detail. The book covers how the Australian continent reached its present game-day state. Not content with just describing the NPCs in the gaming environment as a bunch of survivors of nuclear armageddon, the book actually gets into how NPCs got to their current positions in the campaign universe. A lot of Australians kept close to the ruins of their cities, hoping to build lives for themselves that try to match better times from long ago. I thought a nice touch was the section mentioning the aborigines, who were thrilled when the world erupted into apocalyptic times, as this destruction reduced everything to a more raw, magical state -- exactly what they had always wanted.

The extensive background allows any decent GM to create a campaign world rich in detail, and provides dozens of game-session conflicts that range well beyond good guys versus bad guys. Who controls the water supply in a local territory? Where can pre-RIFTS artifacts be found, and who would want them? The book covers a lot of material like this, offering more than the usual amount of adventure ideas for the GM.

One of the real strengths of RIFTS Australia is its section on outback communities. The sections gives a gamemaster enough material create an NPC community, or even a regular town for the player characters to live in. The sizes of these communities can range from small shanty towns to desolate cities. The section also explains how to assign the strengths and weaknesses of a town – whether or not its has adequate defense, what kind of medical facilities it has, what kind of natural resources it controls. By using this creation system, a GM can create towns and outposts than have more life to them than the local tavern or town square. Also, with some significant work, a GM can adapt this section to just about any RIFTS setting.

Problems with RIFTS Australia? There are two significant ones, and while they aren't big enough to drag the book down, they can't be ignored, either. The first is the extent to which the sourcebook isolates itself from the other RIFTS world books. RIFTS Australia goes to great lengths to explain how the Australian continent has been cut off from the rest of the world, and how completely isolated the territory has become. Assuming a GM chooses to follow this explanation, any existing campaign would have to be scrapped and a new RIFTS Australia campaign would have to be started. If the idea of isolation is ignored, then the GM has no sense as to how material from RIFTS Australia would fit into the rest of the RIFTS universe.

Either way, it can be an inconvenience, and it's also an annoying habit that recent RIFTS releases have acquired. It would be nice to see new sourcebooks with general information that could used in any RIFTS campaign setting, rather than focusing so tightly on new campaign settings that new material is virtually unusable in existing settings. Recent World Books have offered little material that can add any depth to existing game settings, and that's a shame.

The second problem with the sourcebook is its material covering magic, or rather the lack of material covering magic. After spending some time in the beginning of the book describing the resurgence of the aborigines and their magical ways (referred to as "the Dreaming"), RIFTS Australia proceeds to then completely ignore the subject. In fact, it barely covers the topic of magic -- any magic -- at all. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the RIFTS magic system has always been a weak spot of the game system. In addition, since the book offers so many other interesting possibilities, the lack of aboriginal magic is a forgivable error. What isn't forgivable, though, is Palladium's bland promise within the pages of this book to cover magic "in future supplements", since the current book failed to address the topic.

Another annoying Palladium habit in its recent publications has been to promise to cover material neglected or ignored in its sourcebooks in future supplements . These promises would be fine if these supplements were published shortly after the original sourcebooks, but they aren't. Literally, years can pass before these supplements come out (if ever). I would have rather seen all references to aboriginal magic and the "Dreaming" chopped out of RIFTS Australia. If a future book did come out to cover the topic, fine. At least I wouldn't have the nagging feeling that the current book was incomplete, and that I would be missing something important if I did run a game using the RIFTS Australia background.

Since Palladium bothered to bring up the subject of aboriginal magic in RIFTS Australia in the first place, the subject should have been given more than just a passing mention as something important. Either a small but detailed section should have been included in the book, or it should have been completely omitted. This is more an annoyance that a critical flaw in the gaming system, but it has occurred in other similar situations in other RIFTS books. The game designers at Palladium really need to address this problem.

Despite these two flaws (which for many people would be minor at best), RIFTS Australia is still one of the best-written RIFTS books available. The sourcebook just offers too much valuable and original information to ignore. Gamemasters and players looking to start a highly fun and inventive campaign or short series of adventures can get a lot of quality material out of this book.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

RIFTS World Book 19: Australia
Author: Ben Cassin Lucas Category: game Company/Publisher: Palladium Books Line: RIFTS Cost: $20.95 Page count: 224 ISBN: 157457-018-8 Capsule Review by Mike Ferguson on 04/08/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Far_Future Post-apocalypse	When Palladium first started publishing its line of RIFTS World Books, the Australian continent always seemed like a perfect subject for the game. RIFTS, after all, is a post-apocalyptic RPG that owes a lot to movies such as Mad Max and the Road Warrior as its influences. Done right, a RIFTS Australia book would seem to have a great amount of potential. The only question would be if such a sourcebook could live up to its influences. RIFTS World Book 19: Australia manages to live up to its influences. It's an original, innovative book that stands out among other RIFTS books. Not only is the volume of new material impressive, it's refreshing. By the time you hit certain sections of the majority of RIFTS sourcebooks, you usually feel like you're reading rehashed material -- new names and faces given to old equipment or characters. Not in Australia. This book could easily be used with the rules from the original rulebook to create a great RPG capable of standing on its own, without needing any other RIFTS book or supplement. The way the book thoroughly covers its material is commendable. Probably better than any other RIFTS sourcebook to date, RIFTS Australia describes the history and geography of its specific game background with great detail. The book covers how the Australian continent reached its present game-day state. Not content with just describing the NPCs in the gaming environment as a bunch of survivors of nuclear armageddon, the book actually gets into how NPCs got to their current positions in the campaign universe. A lot of Australians kept close to the ruins of their cities, hoping to build lives for themselves that try to match better times from long ago. I thought a nice touch was the section mentioning the aborigines, who were thrilled when the world erupted into apocalyptic times, as this destruction reduced everything to a more raw, magical state -- exactly what they had always wanted. The extensive background allows any decent GM to create a campaign world rich in detail, and provides dozens of game-session conflicts that range well beyond good guys versus bad guys. Who controls the water supply in a local territory? Where can pre-RIFTS artifacts be found, and who would want them? The book covers a lot of material like this, offering more than the usual amount of adventure ideas for the GM. One of the real strengths of RIFTS Australia is its section on outback communities. The sections gives a gamemaster enough material create an NPC community, or even a regular town for the player characters to live in. The sizes of these communities can range from small shanty towns to desolate cities. The section also explains how to assign the strengths and weaknesses of a town – whether or not its has adequate defense, what kind of medical facilities it has, what kind of natural resources it controls. By using this creation system, a GM can create towns and outposts than have more life to them than the local tavern or town square. Also, with some significant work, a GM can adapt this section to just about any RIFTS setting. Problems with RIFTS Australia? There are two significant ones, and while they aren't big enough to drag the book down, they can't be ignored, either. The first is the extent to which the sourcebook isolates itself from the other RIFTS world books. RIFTS Australia goes to great lengths to explain how the Australian continent has been cut off from the rest of the world, and how completely isolated the territory has become. Assuming a GM chooses to follow this explanation, any existing campaign would have to be scrapped and a new RIFTS Australia campaign would have to be started. If the idea of isolation is ignored, then the GM has no sense as to how material from RIFTS Australia would fit into the rest of the RIFTS universe. Either way, it can be an inconvenience, and it's also an annoying habit that recent RIFTS releases have acquired. It would be nice to see new sourcebooks with general information that could used in any RIFTS campaign setting, rather than focusing so tightly on new campaign settings that new material is virtually unusable in existing settings. Recent World Books have offered little material that can add any depth to existing game settings, and that's a shame. The second problem with the sourcebook is its material covering magic, or rather the lack of material covering magic. After spending some time in the beginning of the book describing the resurgence of the aborigines and their magical ways (referred to as "the Dreaming"), RIFTS Australia proceeds to then completely ignore the subject. In fact, it barely covers the topic of magic -- any magic -- at all. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the RIFTS magic system has always been a weak spot of the game system. In addition, since the book offers so many other interesting possibilities, the lack of aboriginal magic is a forgivable error. What isn't forgivable, though, is Palladium's bland promise within the pages of this book to cover magic "in future supplements", since the current book failed to address the topic. Another annoying Palladium habit in its recent publications has been to promise to cover material neglected or ignored in its sourcebooks in future supplements . These promises would be fine if these supplements were published shortly after the original sourcebooks, but they aren't. Literally, years can pass before these supplements come out (if ever). I would have rather seen all references to aboriginal magic and the "Dreaming" chopped out of RIFTS Australia. If a future book did come out to cover the topic, fine. At least I wouldn't have the nagging feeling that the current book was incomplete, and that I would be missing something important if I did run a game using the RIFTS Australia background. Since Palladium bothered to bring up the subject of aboriginal magic in RIFTS Australia in the first place, the subject should have been given more than just a passing mention as something important. Either a small but detailed section should have been included in the book, or it should have been completely omitted. This is more an annoyance that a critical flaw in the gaming system, but it has occurred in other similar situations in other RIFTS books. The game designers at Palladium really need to address this problem. Despite these two flaws (which for many people would be minor at best), RIFTS Australia is still one of the best-written RIFTS books available. The sourcebook just offers too much valuable and original information to ignore. Gamemasters and players looking to start a highly fun and inventive campaign or short series of adventures can get a lot of quality material out of this book. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)