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When I first played Rifts, the main book 8 or 9 years ago, it had wonder, excitement,it even had easy character development, nice o.c.c's, and it was playable universe. By that I mean, a glitterboy pilot at least had a fighting chance against the hellish creatures popping out of interdimensional holes. Now fast forward a few years later I walk into my favorite hobby and comic book shop Dragon's Den.

I see Rifts Russia, Japan, Psycape, New West, Mystic China, and Worldbook ad nauseum. I looked at the content of the books for some time and none of them had anything original. Worse, most of the books character O.C.C'S were regurgitations and enhanced versions of old o.c.c's found in earlier books. One of the other reasons I gave up on the game is what I mentioned earlier about the glitterboy, a standard mech . The characters that evolved in later books like the Splugorth of Atlantis, The Kittani, the Four Horsmen of the Apocalypse with their 80,000 M .D.C, could kick the bejesus out the glitterboy, leaving nothing in their wake.

The creators forgot that humans that exist on this world could never triumph against the creatures here, not even the entire Coalition, and their nukes could stop the onslaught. This once great game stopped focusing on creative strategies and became in essence a power game. Who has more M.D.C than than next guy and armor can squash his opponent and vice versa.

Then, another imbalance came forward, the Rifts book and its successors are a Megaverse, meaning GM'S could conceivably take characters from all their books HEROES UNLIMITED ETC.And go from there..wrong..Structural Damage Capacity (S.D.C) versus (M.D.C) CAME INTO PLAY. You see their rules state that certain character from an SDC universe don't change when they cross over into The RIFTS universe.

So unless they get armor with an MDC rating real fast they're dead.Don't people feel gyped when they puchase a book that has juicers only to buy a book that has juicer-borgs,or a Palladium Ninja/Superspies book to find out there is a Ninja/Juicer/Crazy waiting in the next book that comes out that just invalidates all the cool stuff in the previous books.

That's why I came to the realization one day, that you don't need to buy books to tell a great story, all you need is imagination and perhaps a borrowed rule system or one of your own devising. The publishers of these books are afraid of the day when books like these aren't bought, because imagination and creativity of individuals like you and me has made a comeback.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Rifts
Author: Chris Mais Category: game Company/Publisher: Palladium Line: Rifts Capsule Review by Chris Mais on 10/18/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Horror Far_Future Post-apocalypse Vampire Superhero	When I first played Rifts, the main book 8 or 9 years ago, it had wonder, excitement,it even had easy character development, nice o.c.c's, and it was playable universe. By that I mean, a glitterboy pilot at least had a fighting chance against the hellish creatures popping out of interdimensional holes. Now fast forward a few years later I walk into my favorite hobby and comic book shop Dragon's Den. I see Rifts Russia, Japan, Psycape, New West, Mystic China, and Worldbook ad nauseum. I looked at the content of the books for some time and none of them had anything original. Worse, most of the books character O.C.C'S were regurgitations and enhanced versions of old o.c.c's found in earlier books. One of the other reasons I gave up on the game is what I mentioned earlier about the glitterboy, a standard mech . The characters that evolved in later books like the Splugorth of Atlantis, The Kittani, the Four Horsmen of the Apocalypse with their 80,000 M .D.C, could kick the bejesus out the glitterboy, leaving nothing in their wake. The creators forgot that humans that exist on this world could never triumph against the creatures here, not even the entire Coalition, and their nukes could stop the onslaught. This once great game stopped focusing on creative strategies and became in essence a power game. Who has more M.D.C than than next guy and armor can squash his opponent and vice versa. Then, another imbalance came forward, the Rifts book and its successors are a Megaverse, meaning GM'S could conceivably take characters from all their books HEROES UNLIMITED ETC.And go from there..wrong..Structural Damage Capacity (S.D.C) versus (M.D.C) CAME INTO PLAY. You see their rules state that certain character from an SDC universe don't change when they cross over into The RIFTS universe. So unless they get armor with an MDC rating real fast they're dead.Don't people feel gyped when they puchase a book that has juicers only to buy a book that has juicer-borgs,or a Palladium Ninja/Superspies book to find out there is a Ninja/Juicer/Crazy waiting in the next book that comes out that just invalidates all the cool stuff in the previous books. That's why I came to the realization one day, that you don't need to buy books to tell a great story, all you need is imagination and perhaps a borrowed rule system or one of your own devising. The publishers of these books are afraid of the day when books like these aren't bought, because imagination and creativity of individuals like you and me has made a comeback. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 2 (Sparse)