Palladium Games and Rifts General: Best RPA Edition. The world is a broken, post-apocalyptic wasteland destroyed by the eruption of inter-dimensional portals, rifts in the fabric of space-time and ley lines which crisscross the world. Demon & alien invaders have poured out of the rifts to destroy human civilization and claim the Earth. Now the wasteland has had 300 years to partially recover, and civilization has returned to the world; but not just human civilization: alien empires, monster kingdoms, lost time travellers, lands of mutants, demonic overlords and wizards have arisen from the ashes, all trying to rebuild the world in their own image!Talk about:>RIFTS(tm)>Heroes Unlimited>Palladium Fantasy>Beyond the Supernatural>Dead Reign>Robotech (lol)>TMNT & Other Strangeness + After the Bomb>Splicers>Nightbane>Savage Rifts>Resources, PDFs, links, podcasts, etc.:https://pastebin.com/nCtwd6Jw>official (highly-moderated) discord:https://discord.gg/xGkk75Z>Scholarly Adventures reviews and guideshttps://www.scholarlyadventures.com/blog>Thread Question: What's your favorite big robot or power armor?
New artist did some neat Rifts art in the style of Larry MacDougall:https://graphiteprime.blogspot.com/search/label/Rifts
>>92549356*G*L*I*T*T*E*R*B*O*Y*After that I like the Coyote cause it's so light yet strong & the Warlock Marine armor for being cool.
>>92551879>Warlock Marine armorWhich book is that from? Post pic.
>>92552558Phaseworld 1 or 2 I'm away from the books right now.
So do I learn to play rifts or just take the setting to another system?
>>92555307Learn the basic rules, ignore 60% of them, run it by the seat of your pants. -t A GM who converted it (twice)
>>92555307You also have the option of playing Savage Rifts, which is an official published Savage Worlds conversion. You do miss out on a lot of material though, because they've only converted about 4 books out of the 80+ that exist in the Palladium system. So you'll probably end up doing your own conversions later anyway.
>>92555307Don't listen to this faggot>>92555756RIFTS cannot be converted because too much old armchair military guy autism is written into the books to divorce them
>>92549356>What's your favorite big robot or power armor?
>>92556854Look at that beautiful fucking gun. Have you ever seen anything that looked that fucking nice in all your miserable fucking life? Two fucking BOOMGUNS fucking strapped together like they were always fucking meant to be. Fuck I love that gun.
Don't forget the basics!
Tq: The Leviathan Powerarmor from lemuria ist one of my favorites, with the CS Terrortrooper a close second.
>>92552558Dimension Book Three: Phase World Sourcebook
>>92557190Thinking about it, do TW armors still restricted in how many spells they can cast? Like, PCs can only cast two spells a round, right?
>>92557744>two spells a roundIn Palladium Fantasy, yes.In Rifts level 1-5 spells are a single action, level 6-10 spells are two actions, level 11-15 spells and Spells of Legend are three actions.Assuming you have the PPE for them, if you don't and have to cast it as a ritual instead it's minimum 10 minutes, likely longer due to the amount of time it takes to draw the amount of PPE needed for big spells.
>>92557033That's a nice reference, thanks. But isn't it 1-7 on ranged attacks is a miss, or is this chart just for H2H melee and there's another for ranged attacks? I'd like to remember what the rolls are for evading large numbers of micro-missile attacks.
>>92559512Not him, but yes, Ranged needs 8+ to hit.
>Look up former Palladium artists and writers>Most of them got jobs in entirely different fields with only a few staying artists>One of the guys who drew most of the art for Heroes Unlimited and generally a lot of amazonian built women for Palladium now draws hentai including futanari OCs and talks about playing CoC2On one hand, awesome.On the other hand, I am going to rethink how I see some of his art and NPCs now when looking at old books.
>>92557033How is initiative done in this chart using the 4-8 attacks that characters have? All at once?
>>92559543>now draws hentaiThat's disgusting! Which artist? Which one? Please elaborate, with examples.
>>92560813Wayne Breaux.Google will immediately fine his deviantart, wbreaux will find his hentai-foundry.He really likes drawing girl on girl and futa on girl.Which explains why the race of space amazons in Heroes Unlimited there is loads of art of their women but none of their men, when the book says they have men as slaves. Then you read the Rifter that has the less censored version, and it says that they exterminated all of their men after finding a scientific way to get around needing males. It then says they clone themselves. Then you read on the forums and learn that even the Rifter version was heavily edited and only a handful of people read the original version.So I'm just taking a shot in the dark here, but I think he wanted the space amazons to have futanari among them.
>>92561670Futa is gay
>>92561777Oh no!
Apart from The NORAD Duology adventures, what are the best Rifts adventures? Any good ones in Savage Rifts?
>>92562690Are there any Rifts modules?I know some books give hooks to adventures, but actual modules seem unheard of in Rifts.
>Campaign came to an end after a few short months because everyone agreed that it was a positive place to stop>New campaign is about investigating gravitonic disturbances in a sector of space that has been temporarily cut off from the rest of the galaxy>Have a Rogue Scientist>Elf Ship/PA Pilot>NightbaneWhat should I bring to round this group off?
>>92564016I dont want to suggest it off hand, but a Cosmoknight would be pretty good>>92562690Spoils of War. Also fuck savage rifts
>>92564401Sorry bros I left a name in there
>>92564401GM has previously expressed a Cosmo-Knight as being a viable option.How does it compare to a Nightbane? I have always been told Cosmos are ridiculous and I don't want to seem like I'm trying to one-up another PC.For what it's worth it is a Holy Weapon using Nightbane, and it's hard to really judge the Cosmo since they seem hardcore in some ways and very plain in others.
>>92555307Everyone in here saying to stick with the Megaversal system version of Rifts is lying. It's a shitty system. Fights are a fucking slog even at low level and get exponentially moreso the more powerful the characters get. God help you if there are a lot of enemies. The XP system was innovative for 1984 but sucks compared to almost anything else. Balance is dogshit, but not even in a fun or interesting way. The authors were just lazy. The skill system is shitty in like three different ways. I have played this game on and off since 1994 and I wouldn't play it again for money.Savage Rifts is liveable but Savage Worlds can't handle super high power stuff very well and this game has tons of it. It falls apart and makes combat into rocket tag.
>>92565081Cosmoknights have big numbers naked, but thats it. Other characters can get much bigger numbers if they invest properly. All in all they aren't THAT scary.
Moon warpers, furry friends or posers?
The discord are wondering if splicers could handle a xitic invasion.This is a tricky one mostly because, as all confrontations with splicers, it is dependant on how xiticic taste. There are ideas like engineered viruses, specialized hormones to mask troops, specialized Warmounts against xiticic, and so on but it really comes down to if troops can eat the bugs as they go. If a faction is fighting splicers and they are organic they will have to factor loses to cannibalism.
>>92559543>>One of the guys who drew most of the art for Heroes Unlimited and generally a lot of amazonian built women for Palladium now draws hentai including futanari OCs and talks about playing CoC2That reminds me of the Amazon RCC from south America. It's basically psistalker that eats regular food and better hair.Besides that working degeneracy is the lure to any artist. Draw a woman, draw a dick, get 200 dollars. Suck metaphorical dick to get a normal job for ten times the work with a quarter of the pay.
>>92549356>What's your favorite big robot or power armor?Quebec Violator SAMAS looks sharp, one of my faves. >>92556854Big Chungus aka the Phat Phucker. >>92557190Lemurian tech is primo sleek & sexy.
>>92566414derp, forgot pic
>>92565820>eat your enemies>shorten your logistics trainI never thought exthrosphagia would be a legitimate military strategy but for Splicers it really works.
Does anyone have a bigger version of this pic? Or the artbook from which it came (The Megaverse and Rifts: the Art of John Zeleznik)?
>>92565556That answers half of my question at least.I was thinking of bringing a mage so someone can be ready if anything goes supernatural, but holy fuck do Rifts mages suck until level 6+
>>92566092His art is (mostly) for fun, he has turned down loads of commission offers, Kev even lamented in one of the Rifters that WB refuses to draw for money anymore.
>>92565820Bugs taste good in the Cooking article in one of the rifters fried bug is a delicacy
>>92564401>Spoils of WarThanks, which book is that in?
>>92555307Learn the basics and just do what you want. Don't touch Savage Rifts, though, it's not good for it.
>>92549356>What's your favorite big robot or power armor?Splicers has warped my brain and I don't get to play Rifts much so I'm saying Grendel.
>>92566536That's because in the real world we are all human and humans taste not that great, so I hear. Operation Barbarossa would have been much different if the Germans could just eat the Russian farmers!
>>92573794One of the rifters
>>92575184>Operation Barbarossa would have been much differentNot really, the Germans mostly ran out of ammo and fuel, not food.
>>92575317Which one?>Rifter 40 and 41Thank you Rifter Index!https://rifterindex.netlify.app/
>>92565556>Cosmo-Knights>See people wondering if/when they'll get an update because the Demon Knights are just better>Know that Phase World is never getting an updateThey're like the Triax of space before Triax 2.Each one is supposed to be the equivalent of a capital class battleship, but the power creep has gone on so long now that their damage is shit and their bonuses are worse than most earth knights.
>>92565725I never liked how every mention of them is about them seducing humans.I get someone at Palladium has a fetish for wolf girls, but it's a bit much.
>>92578689WoD has desensitized me to fetish insertions into the books that things like that don't really register.
>>92565820Carnivore Host-Armors would have a party with all the buffs they would have for eating all day.
>>92579194I suppose part of the question is wondering what's better, someone being a blatant furry, or the loads of Amazon women in Palladium.
>>92581111Amazons are the cultivated man's choice.>it's called a happy trail for a reasonAlso nice quads.
>>92581258You have a point, I was actually wondering how many types of amazon there are in Rifts/PalladiumStaphra, Amazons, technically Atlanteans as their women get stronger from tats than men, Altara, Valkyries, I know Heroes Unlimited adds two more, but I'm curious how many more there are or is it just usually heroic female NPCs are described as tall/strong? Like the all female Juicer gang.
>>92581527Don't forget Shemarians. Numerous female NPCs. Like every other female NPC I've read is a psycho berserker warrior princess type.
>>92582165Ooh, forgot them.It's funny how there's that massive fan project for Shemarrians that have become sentient as well.
>>92582549>Shemarrians that have become sentient as well.Oh, where's that? Is it published?
>>92584517It's a thread on the forums, hundreds of pages of posts starting from the premise of a group of Shemarrians being infected with a sentient computer virus and becoming wholly new beings.Some of the ideas are neat, some are wank.
>>92561670I'm sure furry and futa porn art pays 10x better than Kevin ever did, so I don't blame him. But I do kinda miss the old artists: Ramon Perez, Keith Parkinson, Kevin Long, Apollo Okamura...
>>92587056I hear you.And yeah, he has since simply said he left for a variety of reasons, but I could almost swear one of his pages used to say getting paid on time was an issue with Palladium.
>>92587790Ouch. You gotta make sure the check gets in there on time.
>>92584813>>92582549>>92582165Crazy stuff:https://eshemarrian.fandom.com/wiki/Ecotroz_Shemarrians_(aka_%E2%80%98Shemar%E2%80%99)
Do you guys roll the stats for each monster/NPC the party encounters, or just eyeball an average? I find it difficult to parse OCC and monster stats without a fixed attribute value, when everything is presented as 3d6/4d6/5d6/etc. Got any tips for dealing with this kind of setup?
If anyone wants the full collection of The Rifter, issues 0 to 85, the torrent can be downloaded here:>https://ufile.io/o3pnqor5
>>92592053I do generic averages if it's a generic enemy3d6 = 114d6 = 14etc.If it's a special enemy I round the dice roll up, so 3d6 becomes 12, 4d6 becomes 16, etc.For dice rolls (PP/PE/ME) I just remember that (Attribute-14)/2 = Bonus to rollsThat isn't perfectly accurate for all rolls, but it's good enough for quick math.
>>92592053My npcs barely have stats outside of weapon armor & combat bonuses
>>92592053I average it all. I throw in a +2 defence against persuasion if they are merchants.
I noticed that Palladium games often have a very large number of players, with Kevin saying that's he's run games for 10-12 people at the same time. Pic related from the Spoils of War adventure is designed for >6-8 mid-level 4th-6th level charactersThat's a very large party! Do people really play in such large groups? I thought the standard D&D party was 4 players, so playing something with double that number seems... excessive, and difficult to manage. How many players are in your group?
>>92592437>>92593415Thanks, I was thinking of something similar. >>92592592Combat bonuses are derived from OCC levels and some attributes, like PP and PE (saving throws), so you need to have something there to generate the combat bonuses.
>>92593990>Do people play in such groupsYes, it's old school game design when you could have a big group of people around because it was a convention or other big gathering place, sometimes it was for tournament play as well.Most don't however.You will find some old D&D modules that are made for 8-14 players, but again usually written for conventions or tournaments.I usually run for 2-4 players depending on the campaign and schedules.
>>92594177No I don't. I just conjure up a believable number. Full wizards usually have 3d4x10ish PPE from their OCC & some change from other stuff. So this amateur is gonna have maybe 90. Let's futz with it to 86 boom done, rulings over rollings.
What does the CS think of Gods that are rooted in human history and culture?
>>92595605I imagine they don't think of them as "human gods" but rather "demons impersonating gods" and have the same shoot-on-sight policy as against any other demons. Half of them look like demons or magical monstrosities anyway. If the power level of these "gods" is too much to handle they would avoid them until such a time as the CS was ready to take them on. The only exception might be the Vanguard plotting with a human-supremacist god... but I can't really think of any out of mythology, except Allah (who told Mohammed to destroy all witches, magic, jinns, etc.)?
Over a month since Kevin Sembieda's partner passed away and no weekly updates from Palladium. How are things over there, anybody know? Is he continuing to run things or handing it over to Sean?
>least popular rift book ever
>>92595777I don't think anyone knows and everyone is afraid to ask.
>>92595722>Someone is coming out of the demon gate!>He's wearing robes, he's probably a damn wizard!>He's bringing peace and love, shoot him!>Remember to canoe the body. These DLovers can fake death pretty well.
>>92581527There's also the D'Yar "d-bees" who are basically amazons (but somewhat monstrous). From the Rifter 41.
>>92598197
>>92550028I like is punk like style
>>92596988Why is it unpopular, anyway? It seems like the xiticic are popular enemies and comes up a lot.
>>92598699Because it established a major threat that should be more ever present in a variety of books and greatly disrupt the balance of power as it fucks over the Michigan area's ability to expand and trade westward, while also fucking with the ability of Cyber-Knights to be one monolithic organization as the hives run near the areas their hidden monastery is at, but instead they're introduced as a big threat, and then get talked about as basically a joke every time they come up, with Coalition Wars being the icing on the cake where the CS has Coalition Mega Bug Spray (slight exaggeration, but only slight) to explain how they had all of their supply lines easily move through xiticix lands to better siege Tolkeen.
>>92598989Yeah, a super-threat that is constantly harped on in the books yet doesn't seem to affect anything in the game world is... no threat at all. Not to mention the ol' swarming space bugs trope is so overused and boring that nobody wants to deal with it. Same with the mechanoids, Kevin's early pet project that he tried and failed to shoehorn into Rifts.
>>92599834I also think metaplots are just a bad idea.If Palladium was printing 4 books a year and the setting was super fleshed out, seeing how a wrench thrown into things changes the status quo can be interesting.As it is it just serves to show how truly apocalyptic it is for reals this time, before showing how glorious and badass the CS are.
>>92599834>>92598989Maybe because it's overused no one really feels compelled to acknowledge them. It's also a bit basic: They are ants. They are big bipedal ants. They build a big nest and then attack their neighbors until they take over the planet. They aren't like the STI roach people who have a body double scheme, they aren't like the gargoyles where they are minor hellspawn that got a major boon, they are ants.Hell, they aren't even like the system collapse bugs who have electrical powers. They are just a horde of ants.
>>92602175>system collapse bugs who have electrical powersThe whatnow?
>>92589002>EcotrozHoly crap, that's a lot of lore! They should put that on the Rifts wiki. An enjoyable read regardless and worthy of it's own netbook.
>>92602445System failure. Basically a race of bugs that have telemechanic powers and can travel through electrical lines.
>>92602175That is also a factor. Most big bads in Palladium at least have something different about them to make them interesting to interact with or plan around.But all of the stuff in southern Canada or the northern US are just boring loads of MDC but 0 personality.>>92602445That's the power of talismnnHe posts regularly on the Palladium forums and has done so for years, he took a brief break because his ISP recently discontinued all dial-up services so he was forced to upgrade.He's written thousands of pages of lore for all sorts of projects related to Palladium and always writes in a way that invites others to also write, then incorporating their ideas into the projects so they all have a certain oneness about it.The Paladin Steel Catalog is another project he started and Jesus Christ is that something.
>Space Elves are described as aloof assholes>The Space Elf King is actually a cool dude who works with people and legitimately is a good/honest person>Space Dwarves look like the classic dug too deep and now using old tech dwarves>Actually have super advanced factories and the only reason they're not the greatest super power themselves is because of a natural disaster wiping out their home world>Space Mages initially described as demon worshipers and blood ritualists who hate cute things>Actually are legitimately one of the only good factions in space, and acknowledge the dark covens are a problem that they gladly accept assistance to purgeIt's a shame we'll never get a DB09
>>92555756Savage Rifts is fucking great. I'm starting up a campaign next week. Did character creation tonight, and the group looks super fun.>>92557190One of the characters is a Lemurian with this armor!
>>92605157This phaseworld or something?
>>92608418Yeah, three galaxies.The UWW specifically.
>>92603402The palladium forums are full of old school internet vibes & pages upon pages of dudes just adding to their works without much comment from other too. It's a fun place
>>92610596I've considered looking up how to make a web crawler just to download every post from those homebrew threads.There's a lot of shit on there and ever since NMI's black vault went down no one has tried to archive any of it.
>>92549356based
>>92610732That sounds pretty important, really. A lot of it is imbalanced but I'd say redeemed by working in the system.
>>92605157>>It's a shame we'll never get a DB09huh, why not?
Thread is autosaging, someone make a new one, plox.
