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Review of Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market (Atlantis Two)
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So, what does Splynn Dimensional Market add to the game?
Well . . .
The book is actually a "sequel" of sorts to Atlantis, which was the second RIFTS World Book. It takes many of the ideas that were covered in Atlantis and expands on them. This expansion works with mixed results - some new concepts are interesting, and others seem like tired retreads of older material. Unfortunately for Splynn Dimensional Market, a significant amount of the material looks like the latter.
To its credit, Splynn Dimensional Market fleshes out some of the cities (and marketplaces - go figure) of Atlantis, providing the seeds for many potential adventures. The original Atlantis book didn't give much coverage to these bazaars. They were run by evil beings called the Splugorth, and characters could buy just about anything imaginable from the various traders in these markets. Apart from that, there weren't too many details. Splynn Dimensional Market actually covers what sorts of traders inhabit these markets, how player characters can barter goods and services for items, buying defective or fraudulent items, how players can sell their own items on the market, etc, etc. In fact, some of these topics could be applied to other game systems.
The major flaw that I found with this section was how some of the merchants in the markets were described. Specifically, in order to learn anything about some of the merchants, the reader is forced to get information from other RIFTS books. For example, in a blurb titled "The Feline Cages", a description is given regarding merchants who trade supernatural cats. There are reasons given why these cats would be desired by certain people, and rough estimates for the prices of these cats. However, in order to get any information on these cats, the reader is advised to consult RIFTS World Book Six: South America. I this was the only example of referencing another RIFTS book, this might not be so bad, but this happens constantly. "The Bone Merchant", which covers spell components desired by wizards and necromancers, advises the reader to consult RIFTS World Book Four: Africa. In order to make full use of the markets listed in Splynn Dimensional Market, the reader has to have access to a lot of other RIFTS books. I like sourcebooks for any game system to be relatively self-contained, so I found this extremely annoying. I could understand referencing the main RIFTS book for information. I could understand referencing the original Atlantis World Book. But Splynn Dimensional Market requires that the reader reference over a dozen other RIFTS books to get full use out of its material (and no, this is not an exaggeration).
Then there's tattoo magic and bio-wizard organisms. As originally presented in the first Atlantis sourcebook, tattoo magic is a potential gamebreaker. By selecting the right combination of magical tattoos, a player character can become obscenely powerful without having to reach high levels of experience. I was hoping this book would revise tattoo magic in some significant way, apart from the helpful-but-obvious suggestion that the GM limit the availability of tattoos to characters. No such luck. What surprised me, though, was that the magic tattoos in Splynn Dimensional Market were so generic. The same goes for the bio-wizard organisms (magic symbiotes that grant the user special powers). Splynn Dimensional Market didn't present any tattoos or bio-wizard organisms that stood out of the ordinary. In fact, some seemed like they were scooped off the cutting room floor of the original Atlantis book. For example, the original Atlantis book presented a bio-wizard weapon called the Staff of Eylor. Was it really necessary to present minor variations on this weapon called the Eylor Assault Staff, the Eylor Exploration Staff, and the Mace of Eylor, especially when the differences between all four weapons are minor, at best? There's a lot of bio-wzard organisms presented in the book - the sheer volume of them is quite impressive - but when they're mostly generic items, the number of items just doesn't matter. A few exceptional magic items would have served the book much better.
Other parts of Splynn Dimensional Market don't seem terribly inspired, either. The Tattooed Archer character class presented in the book is only marginally different from the Tattooed Warrior character class in the original Atlantis book. A piece of power armor called the Kittani Flying Fox is described in the book as "the ultimate match for the Coalition Super-SAMAS" . . . well, that might be because the Kittani Flying Fox essentially is the Coalition Super-SAMAS. There are some superficial differences between the two, but it is hard to see why a player character couldn't use either piece of powered armor interchangeably.
RIFTS World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market is a sourcebook with little to offer in terms of originality or excitement. (Unless, of course, your definition of "excitement" is massive amounts of firepower and nothing more. . . and yes, a lot of RIFTS fans probably do definite excitement this way.) Like a few other recent RIFTS releases from Palladium, it suffers from being mediocre. There's nothing awful about what's being presented, but there's nothing breathtaking about it, either. If you're a die-hard RIFTS fan . . . well, you probably already own the book. If you're running a RIFTS campaign set in Atlantis, it's probably worth your while. If you're running a campaign for another RPG that features the player characters wheeling and dealing in strange market places, the book might provide some new ideas. Otherwise, you'll probably want to pass on RIFTS World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market. The book offers a lot of new material, but most of it is bland stuff that RIFTS players simply don't need.
Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)
