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Jason Rainville
March 1st, 2008, 12:33 PM
Yeah I'm a nerd. I don't really care :)

Anyone heard of this, anyone play it? In highschool I was first introduced to DnD. It was alright, but a lot of the rules and stats didn't make sense to me and it always felt restrictive. Then my friends showed me rifts, and I was hooked.

The setting is earth, hundreds of years after a super-high-tech world war, so it immediately has a post-apocalyptic vibe with the wilderness overtaking the land, major cities in ruins, violence and banditry at an all time high etc.

But it's much more than that. Inside each one of us is PPE - potential psychic energy. Each time we die abruptly, it is released and DOUBLED. So when billions of lives were lost in that world war, too much of that energy was released. Ley lines resurfaced and shot across the earth, creating huge rifts where they met. Out from those rifts poured trans-dimentional beings. Humans eventually retuned themselves to their latent psychic abilities, and because magic on the earth was once again abundant, humans relearned the ancient art of magic.

There are giant wolves in italy, dinosaurs in florida, huge anthopods in alberta, and good natured and evil aliens across the globe.

The coalition of states, with its human supremacist tendancies is in control of north america, uniting the old texas, chicago and sudbury kingdoms. The new german republic with the most adcanced human technology on the planet fights a desperate war with gargoyles. and atlantis has returned from its dimensional cocoon, filled with wonderous alien technology and inhuman overlords.

So yeah, it's diverse. The best thing about it is the huge amounts of skills, combat techniques etc that amount to really unique and free gameplay.

Since going to college, all of my friends who played it have left our small town, so it's hard to even try to get a game going. I miss it a lot, just because of the crazy situations we'd get ourselves into. I miss it so much actually I'm still thinking of trying to get a group of people together to build a little video game of it from the ground up ala mount and blade. I know nothing about game development though, so I'm treating this dream as overly optimistic.

So, any rifts gamers? any crazy stories?

Kamikazebob
March 1st, 2008, 07:54 PM
Sounds pretty cool, Jason. No rift stories on this end. I ended up getting hooked on tabletop games (Warhammer fantasy/40k) but Now I'm in the Iron kingdoms universe. << thats not the point of this post.

This is.
OpenRPG. Its an open source online tabletop engine. http://www.openrpg.com/
Its a great system and I've gotten in touch with some friends and until recently we played IK on it. If other people play Rifts on oRPG then chances are someone typed out the rules in a txt and all can play. if not w/e. If we can agree on a game to play and get some more people, I'm down for a game or 2

Jason Rainville
March 1st, 2008, 09:44 PM
Sweet, I'll check that out.

Hookswords
March 2nd, 2008, 01:13 PM
I played Rifts back in High School. I havent looked at any of their books in awhile, but it seems to have gotten a little out of hand. Meaning, there is a ton of source books and what not, but that goes for most franchises that have been around for awhile. Its not a horrible system. They books always had some good art. There was one cat that had some especially tasty work, but I cannot remember his name.

Eric Lofgren
March 3rd, 2008, 01:50 PM
They books always had some good art. There was one cat that had some especially tasty work, but I cannot remember his name.

Scott Johnson, perhaps? I know he's done a lot of work for them over the years and eventually became the got-to guy for Rifts covers.

Jason Rainville
March 3rd, 2008, 02:08 PM
Scott Johnson, perhaps? I know he's done a lot of work for them over the years and eventually became the got-to guy for Rifts covers.

He did the cover for the ultimate edition, and it just speaks to what rifts is so perfectly. I wish I could find a bigger vresion, it's beautiful.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/Merchant2/catalog/images/800HC.jpg

Eric Lofgren
March 3rd, 2008, 02:55 PM
You can find a bigger version at his site. Yeah, he laboured over that one for a while.

DavePalumbo
March 6th, 2008, 03:51 AM
Man, i remember wanting to get into RIFTS back in jr. high. I liked alot of things about it, but I remember thinking that the combat seemed very off balance and clunky. In particular, the whole damage/mega-damage thing. In the end, we stuck with Star Wars and Cyberpunk (and, on occasion, Hong Kong Action Theater)

Jason Rainville
March 6th, 2008, 08:56 PM
Man, i remember wanting to get into RIFTS back in jr. high. I liked alot of things about it, but I remember thinking that the combat seemed very off balance and clunky. In particular, the whole damage/mega-damage thing. In the end, we stuck with Star Wars and Cyberpunk (and, on occasion, Hong Kong Action Theater)

Yeah, with all that crazy depth comes all those crazy problems :/

With my group we just made sure that our games were fairly powered (not overpowered) so that we'd never be cutting through SDC enemies with our MDC weapons, and we never really saw a lot of action outside of our armor. Ultimately we changed a bunch of rules about combat to make things easier. no -10 to dodge bullets etc.

I really REALLY want to get a project going to make an indie video game of it, but I have no idea where to start. I have some experience with texturing but thats about it :D

Hookswords
March 9th, 2008, 02:26 PM
Scott Johnson, perhaps? I know he's done a lot of work for them over the years and eventually became the got-to guy for Rifts covers.

Scott johnson did great stuff for them, but there was another guy. I dont even think he signed his works....it was like... three parallelograms or something.

Prometheus|ANJ
March 10th, 2008, 08:26 AM
I made some rifts related art (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=rifts) once. I like the Mega damage concept, where a handgun can blow up a small car. It's a fresh breeze compared to many modern computer RPGs where you can shoot people in the face with bazookas and do 5% damage (and all terrain is static). Developing my own RPG now though.

Jason Rainville
March 10th, 2008, 09:31 PM
I made some rifts related art (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=rifts) once. I like the Mega damage concept, where a handgun can blow up a small car. It's a fresh breeze compared to many modern computer RPGs where you can shoot people in the face with bazookas and do 5% damage (and all terrain is static). Developing my own RPG now though.

I saw that spider skull walker before and I KNEW it had to be yours :D

aylap
March 11th, 2008, 06:30 AM
Rifts? Hmm, I've never heard of it, but it sounds really cool :) I'll have to get my friends to try it out with me sometime :D