Off the Shelf: Rifts

It was one of those moments when I feared I had lost them all.

A water leak in an adjacent room meant I could not get to my Rifts books, and I feared the worst. So they sat on a shelf while the carpets dried. I was worried about warped paper and ruined books.

All of them were fine. Not one warped page. Not one water-damaged cover. What are these things, indestructible? I have seen people's play copies of Rifts, yellowed pages, all the corners bent, a cover with more creases and bends than California fault lines, and yet still loved and used the day they were bought 30 or more years ago.

When Rifts comes around, people will still be playing Rifts with these same books.

So back in my room, on my premier game shelves, I put the copies right next to my SDC games. I do not care about the MDC thing; that is how we describe standing in front of a cruise missile in this world these days, or staring down the barrel of a tank. We have MDC weapons in this world; get used to it. Bombs, anti-ship missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, thousand-pound bombs, 30mm anti-tank cannons, and the other big things that go boom are circa 2026 MDC firepower. Even shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets dropped from drones with shaped charges count.

Does Rifts sit as a display game, or do I play it? I get the feeling that this time, I play. It slaps around the D&D multiverse by a good mile, making those worlds look soft and silly. These are true planar terrors, walking tanks that could crush you flat with a cough, or your skin falls off due to their bad breath. Rifts has always been over the top in all the best ways a game could be. The Rifts multiverse is the endgame of all games, including all games, superior to them all, more overpowered than them all, and giving back by making anything magic that stumbles into an MDC creature with MDC power. Even superheroes.

You get MDC! And you get MDC! Here's a six-shooter; even you get MDC!

Powergaming? Books full of OP items? Unbalanced OCCs that could crush some normal human OCC fool who stumbles through a rift from the 1880s? The whole "do we start a bar fight with MDC weapons?" problem. It is all here. Use what you want. Play a small, one- or two-book campaign. Do a one-shot, but it's likely MDC and will end the campaign with a successful hit. Import your favorite characters and kit them out with power armor. Drop your favorite superhero team in and make this world their new home. Everything has a place here. It's all good.

Back in the early 1990s, compared with the 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms, Vampire: The Masquerade, BattleTech, Cyberpunk, Dark Sun, a dead Greyhawk, Megatraveller, Twilight:2000, and the other settings of the day, Rifts was better than them all, with maybe Cyberpunk's Night City coming close to the cool factor. D&D and TSR were dying.

People were tired of all the settings we put on pedestals today. I remember the time the "first OSR" died and took TSR with it. Even in fantasy games, we had Palladium, GURPS, Rolemaster, RuneQuest, MERP, and a few others that "did D&D better." AD&D 2nd Edition got heavily sanitized, politically correct, safe for every audience, and nobody cared. The game blew up with splat books. The Vampire subculture started, and continues to this day, with the people angry at VTM 6th. They realize people base their lives around these Kindreds and identities, right? Don't mess with people's goth identities; they are sacred, just like My Chemical Romance is a religious experience.

The hardest part of playing and enjoying Rifts is letting go of other people's negative opinions. In that sense, it is just like GURPS. These games don't deserve the repeated nonsense that people endlessly adopt as false lived experience.

We had an AD&D 2nd Edition game going back in the 1990s, and it was fun, but Rifts was always the one we waited to play. Nothing compared to blowing everything up and laughing about it. You both got to live in utter fear and wield weapons that could level city blocks. The game was pure power fantasy. Did you feel weak with the last character? Ask your referee about playing something overpowered next time for a massive revenge kick. Play an MDC Dragon or Godling if you want. The Coalition will hunt you, but since when did they ever NOT deserve it?

Rifts was awesome and full of character. Any god could drop in, hop off their MDC motorcycle with the nova cannon and missile racks, and offer a mission. If you remember Image Comics and Wildstorm, yeah, that was Rifts. I use my MDC cyber-claws to tear the front of the building off. Roll an attack, give me damage; all right, the building has no front wall, bricks are all over the street, and the bad guys inside are surprised.

Today's games are far too careful and afraid of their own shadows.

Today's players are lost, believing they don't deserve to have it all. A carefully balanced game is good enough for me.

Why aren't you living life?

Why aren't you experiencing something awesome? Another balanced 5E book won't fix your boredom with the game. You will just be complaining about broken this or broken that. Sure, the majority of Rifts is broken, but it still works fine that way.

Why are you so afraid?

If you fear giving characters power, you will run from this game screaming. If you embrace the anime-inspired overpowered attacks and weapons that can slice a hillside in half, you will be right at home here. If all you know in life is carefully balanced D&D 5.5E, I feel sorry for you. That's not true power. Even at level 20, where you are single-turn nova-blasting encounters, that is nothing compared to this. You are still relatively weak on the cosmic scale of things, and your carefully planned alpha attack will bounce off a tank, and your character sheet and identity-gaming avatar will be literal red mist.

And no, this isn't the end-of-edition D&D 5.5E overpowered characters, which are only meant to break the game so everyone begs for D&D 6E to come along and save us from the end-of-edition OP subclass options. They have done this to every edition of D&D they printed; they blow out the edition in a fire sale of OP releases, people "have fun for a little while" but "eventually grow tired of all the powergaming," and then "please release 6E and fix this!" Planned obsolescence means breaking your own game and riding off the YouTube hype to sell the last few books before you replace them all.

We broke the old game; please buy the fixed one.

Is Rifts broken? Mostly. Do I care? No. Is it being so all over the place part of the fun? Sure, why not? I am a roleplayer; I could make a ham sandwich work as a rule system. I can have fun with anything. Part of the challenge is making it all work together. The characters are so cool I don't even care. And the game wasn't intentionally broken to get you to buy the next one. It is a big box of stuff you pick and choose from; most of it works together, some pieces are wildly overpowered, and you learn how to become a better Rifts GM by playing, and not by copying YouTube streaming shows.

Rifts is a game I keep walking away from but can never truly leave.

Rifts will still be here. Just like my books, the game is a survivor.

Just like you deserve to be, too.

I Was This Close to Buying Starfinder 2E

I like Starfinder 1e, and I played some of that and its throwback 3.5E science fiction. The combats were fun, and the adventures were memorable and enjoyable. I also liked the concept of "space fantasy," with classic fantasy races in a futuristic world. I liked the space drow, the star elves, the space orcs, the goblins, and all the other classic Pathfinder races "in space," and it felt cool.

Seeing Traveller 5E announced got me thinking about getting the new version of Starfinder, but I hesitated. For one, I bounced off of Pathfinder 2E pretty hard, and that game is in storage. Going back to one would mean I pull out the other. Also, the classic ancestries are no longer central to Starfinder, and I know the games are cross-compatible, but the universe feels different.

The core Starfinder races are what the settings and adventures will be about. I am free to put everything from Pathfinder 2E in there, and even the OGL version, but again, that is a lot of work for a game I am not really into. Pathfinder 2E is a good game, just not for me. Things are not the same.

It looked cool, but I didn't think I would play it much. I had the store pages open, but did not add the books to my cart. I read a few mixed reviews about it, saying the writing wasn't up to the standard of the original. So I backed off, and I will likely read up more on this. If the writing isn't there, I will skip this edition. Excellent writing is something I look for in a game, especially its adventures.

Some have expressed disappointment that the game wasn't taken further from Pathfinder 2E, like it was in the playtest versions. Compatibility with Pathfinder 2E ultimately won out, which is a smart business move, but the game lost some of its identity and feels more like an expansion. Others say the "ranged meta" won, and DEX is your most important stat, and melee feels secondary. I liked melee being important in Starfinder 1E, which made the game hit differently for me. The best way to do considerable damage was up close and personal.

What I want is gonzo, anything goes, science fiction plus fantasy. I want melee strikers to be on par with ranged attackers. I want the rules to have depth and substance. I want an anything-goes science fiction world.

That game is Rifts.

Rifts backs me up, too, letting magic inflict MDC damage, so my elven arcane caster can throw up an MDC shield and blast away at power armor with MDC fire bolts. This is good stuff, and puts them on par with the armored powerhouses of the setting, and elevates magic as an equivalent force in this world. Get a rune weapon, some magic armor, and you are close to becoming a minor god at this point.

You can stand toe-to-toe with MDC armored foes in Rifts with magic.

You can also adopt a melee style and absolutely slay up close with MDC melee weapons, and beat the heck out of power armor with a rune weapon or your fists. That's cool.

The next best option is to keep everything on the hit point scale and use White Star, with fantasy races pulled from BX. This is also a viable option that works well, and I have White Star on my most-played shelves. However, this is not as flat-out cool as Rifts. My proposed game will be a mod, magic is relatively low-powered, and it feels derivative.

Another option is a science fiction campaign using Stars Without Number, incorporating the magical classes from Worlds Without Number and importing fantasy races from BX. The magic in this system is better than BX, and allows for magical casting that recharges after a scene, so magic-using classes are not "one spell and the day is done." Still, this is another mod, and it does not feel right.

But if I am going to DIY fantasy science fiction in those games, I can DIY it just as easily in Rifts, and have tons of cool monsters and enemies to battle. Plus, since Palladium games are by their nature "make your own game with this," I can drop in a group of elves, an elven faction, a kingdom of elves, or a whole planet of them anywhere I want, for any reason I want.

Dark elves? They can be in the setting. I will just mod the Palladium Fantasy Elf and port them in from somewhere in the multiverse. Anything I want is here, and it fits in. If I want a planet of them and a few gods for them, fine, go ahead.

In Rifts, anything goes.

In Starfinder, I will usually need to wait for the book. Why am I buying into this again?

DIY games are superior to those that ship with default assumptions. Rifts are so open that anything I can imagine can be here. It may sound silly, but all Palladium games are supposed to be wide open, and it supports many power levels and campaign types. There is no "this game is made for dungeons, and everything is balanced against each other" feeling. Every class is overpowered in what it does.

I don't mind MDC armor either. Nobody in D&D complains about having to wear armor. Mostly, they just ignore it and take the AC value. The MDC system simplifies Palladium combat greatly, eliminating AR, and you are either hit or not. Don't subject the players to cheap shots, and you will be fine.

Not wearing armor is not advised, and primitive weapons are useless. But this is science fiction, like Heavy Metal, where the energies and forces you are dealing with are so powerful you need special forms of protection, either tech or magic. Some miss the lower-powered science fantasy. I don't mind it since you are slugging it out with mech suits as a caster, and that is awesome.

With most other games, I feel guilty for breaking the game or playing it not as it is supposed to be played. I get this with Starfinder 2E and Pathfinder 2E, now that the OGL content has been removed. I don't see the classic Pathfinder Dark Elves anymore, and I know they will never appear in adventures, so a piece of the world feels missing.

But a part of me misses the old Starfinder, as flawed and broken as it was, with the massive weapon lists that turned into run-on sentences and felt like something out of a video game. There was a ton of 3.5E cheese in this game, too, and some classes felt utterly powerless. But the mixed science fantasy world was fun, which was the best part of the game. This is a game where most of what you put up with is for the sake of the setting. Even 3.5E was okay, I didn't mind it, but I knew how to break the system.

Removing alignment in 2E, I did mind, and the entire aspect of playing chaotic or evil characters is now an afterthought and gone from the game. Rifts and Palladium? It has the best alignment system in the industry, and playing anything is on the table.

A lot of people love Starfinder 2E, so there is something here.

But I almost bought Starfinder 2E today. It is a game I miss. But I need to learn more before I make a purchase, especially these days. It is on my radar, but I have other games taking up my time currently.

I don't find much enjoyment in sifting through rules. Let a computer game do that for me. I want story and easier character builds and powers. I don't play a tabletop game to slowly work my way through a few hundred pages of rules to simulate a combat. If I do want that, GURPS gives me a better end result, and there are far fewer rules to follow if you follow them all.

Most of GURPS' rules are optional. Few of Starfinder 2E's are.

People like the "-Finder" systems, and I bounced off hard after trying them. Pathfinder 2E was not for me, despite how hard I tried. I may give it another chance. I may grab the PDFs and skip the books.

We shall see.

Mail Room: Rifts Ultimate Edition

Rifts is one of the best games and settings of all time.

You will either think I am crazy or agree. There is really no middle ground here. I know about Savage Rifts, and while that is a fun, game-balanced version of the game, it does not do it for me. You know that scene in Avengers: Endgame where Captain Marvel is flying through the ships of the enemy battlefleet and destroying them by treating them like she is flying through paper?

That is Rifts.

That is what it lets you do.

I have a softcover in the mail, and the hardcover is still out of print. It is nice to see Palladium selling out of books, and they deserve all the praise and success they can get. This is one of the OG pen-and-paper role-playing game companies, and they make excellent games that are still very affordable.

You can be that powerful, and there are enemies out there that can out-power-level you and crush you like an ant under a shoe. Forget D&D 5E and its "managed power levels" that only let you go so far. Rifts is roleplaying with the rails removed. Does your 50 SDC/30 hp super-character get caught without their MDC armor, and someone vaporizes you with a low-power 1d4 MD laser pistol? Tough luck.

It is like one of those Heavy Metal scenes where the main character gets vaporized, and the audience sits in shock. That's life. Deal with it. You should have done that to the other guy before they pulled on you. Live and learn. Oh, and even if your character has 600 MD of hit points like Captain Marvel, a battlesuit could roll up on her doing 1d6x1000 MD, and it is basically the same thing. That's life. Deal with it.

Take your fake assumptions of fantasy superheroes and throw them in the trash, this game ain't that. Even a level 20 D&D character rigged for maximum damage still is not doing that 1d4 MD per attack, so those power levels are laughable and small. Sorry to burst your ego bubble, but that "D&D balance bubble" is a tiny, small, almost insignificant thing to beings that can harness the power of suns and atomic fusion blasts.

Just like your level 20 D&D fighter could not stand in front of an M1 battle tank and block the 120mm APFSDS shell flying at them, Rifts teaches you "you ain't all that." One cloud of red mist later, you realize that was probably a dumb idea as 20 levels of XP get torn up with the character sheet, and tiny bits of magic armor go flying.

In Rifts? Well, magic gets naturally amped, so your fighter could bounce that 120mm round off their shield and redirect it into another tank or battle robot. You are just that awesome.

D&D is a fantasy superhero game that operates in a limited power envelope.

Rifts is a superhero anything game that operates in an infinite power envelope.

In D&D, you are being given a tiny power envelope to play in by the gods and the game designers, and you are expected to play nice. Some people cannot exist outside of that cave, and they need that illusion of balance to construct a mathematical framework of how the world works with its numbers. They need to know, well, an Orc can only do this much damage, and anything outside that is a reason to start a fight with the dungeon master. Suppose that Orc just did 1d6x20 hit points of damage with a longsword. In that case, the DM is a terrible person, not worth playing with, breaking the game for everyone, hurting the community, attacking online play, and needs to be called out online as a blight on the hobby.

In Rifts, none of that matters. That Orc could have been bathed in massive amounts of arcane power. He could be a very strange OCC, an arcane summoning swordsmith. In Rifts, not much is a "stock something out of a monster book," and roleplay comes first. You need to gauge your opponent's strength before the MDC goes flying. If your tails are getting kicked, you need an escape plan.

Rifts is extremely "roleplaying meta." Your characters from the Forgotten Realms? They could all be in here, converted to Palladium classes and MDC power levels. Here they are. Comic-book characters? Right over there, anyone you want, created in Heroes Unlimited or TNMT and converted up to MDC. Characters from movies and fiction? Right over there, anyone you want, created in Ninjas & Superspies or any other Palladium system that fits, and pulled into the Rifts world. Anime? Rifts has Robotcech in its design DNA, so it is one of the first anime-inspired roleplaying games.

Harry Potter meets Happy Gilmore? It works in Rifts!

Rifts is the ultimate roleplaying sponge. It will soak up every idea, character, movie, role-playing game, comic, anime, monster, music band, or idea it can and find a place for it.

Drow? You don't get these game designers telling you, "they aren't in our world anymore." They are in the SRD now, even the name, so get outta here. You want them? They are in Rifts, one of them or billions. Rifts doesn't care about game designers with control issues. The game was designed to give you control and put your ideas first. Even down to rules customization and how the game is played, your ideas come first.

Tiny little sandboxes, designers who have too much control over your world, games that feel more like tabletop MMOs, games that tell you that there is no room for your ideas, and surrendering your ideas of the world to a set of rules is what Rifts is designed to destroy.

The Rifts game is freedom.

And once tasted, it is hard to go back to anything less.

Palladium System: Two Attacks for Living?

Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, page 50

So I was looking through the pregenerated characters in the Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, and I saw a 4th-level ranger with ...five melee attacks? And a rate of fire of five with his longbow?

Then a sense of panic hit me. Five? Five! Where are they getting five?!

Am I getting all the attacks I should be getting?

This is critical in any Palladium game, and this is one thing D&D 3.0 stole from the system: the notion of your attacks per turn going up, and your damage naturally increasing as you level. Granted, in Palladium, attacks can be traded for defense, so there is a balance to the mechanic, where in D&D 3.x, they are just attacks. Wizards did a lousy job at implementing the concept they borrowed, again.

So, where do these attacks come from? Let's look at Palladium Fantasy.

The first two are easy: Hand-to-Hand Combat Expert starts with two attacks per round.

The next one is also easy. Since this character is 4th level, we look up the chart, record the bonuses, and see that at 4th level we get "one additional attack per melee round."

That is three of the five accounted for. Where do these two other attacks come from? We have an explanation on the forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=170392

Later revisions of the rules and game introduced the rule "2 attacks for living," which means that without any melee combat skills, you get two attacks, and these will stack on top of the HTH combat styles in the game. This was present even in some of the older books in the Palladium fantasy line, especially in NPCs and pregenerated characters.

The Palladium Fantasy RPG book needs updating, as do many of the other books in the line.

So this is our five melee attacks, and where they come from:

• 2 attacks for living
• +2 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

For ranged, this is where they come from:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

That HTH Expert extra attack at level 4 DOES apply to missile weapon fire! This may seem surprising, but multiple sources confirm it, and it aligns with the pregens.

And I have sources on the Palladium forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79257#:~:text=Do%20the%20attacks%20from%20HTH,a%20bonus%20to%20ranged%20combat.&text=Question:Within%20the%20new%20rules,tiny%20+2%20bonus%20from%20aiming?

This is a question that Google's AI gave me both answers for; it insisted the wrong answer was correct, said I was dead wrong, and after I found the official clarifications, it went back on its original answer and admitted I was right. AI can be dead wrong and insist it is 100% right, trying to provide facts and proof, when it is clearly NOT.

AI is a very persuasive liar when it is dead wrong.

This is why we need a human soul in any decision-making process.

And why we need skeptics and those who challenge us.

Be very, very, very careful and never trust AI! It is a known liar in some cases, will lie to prove itself correct, and bases its claims on incorrect sources, trying to use this as justification for the truth. Good luck playing with an AI DM, everybody over there in D&D land. Your character will die because the AI DM goes stupid on you and tries to use someone's incorrect rule interpretation on some forum somewhere as the official rule.

Also, they put a lot of work into making these AI systems sound super confident, which also helps sell the lie and justifies the billions of dollars they are pouring into it all.

In Rifts Ultimate Edition, which is the master rules update for all Palladium games from 2017 onward, the HTH tables were updated to the correct "4 attacks per melee round" value, and the unwritten "2 attacks for living" rule was done away with.

Also, the language for the level 4 bonus in HTH Combat Expert was changed in Rifts Ultimate. In Palladium Fantasy, it is:

• Level 4: One additional attack per melee.

In Rifts Ultimate, it is:

• Level 4: +1 additional attack/action per melee round.

This makes it clear that it is an "attack/action" per melee round, which DOES include missile weapon fire. Missile weapons fire as many times as the character has melee attacks, but some skills do have their own rate of fire rules that these HTH attack bonuses do modify.

So, by Rifts Ultimate, our melee attacks are:

• 4 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

And for our ranged attacks, by Rifts Ultimate, this is unchanged:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

As far as I am concerned, Rifts Ultimate is the master Palladium rules update, and it should be used with all Palladium games, including Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Palladium Fantasy, and every other game.

Palladium: MDC is Conflict, not a Mechanic

We have MDC in this world today. Once you are talking 120mm APFSDSDU rounds fired from M-1 tanks, you are in the realm of 2025 MDC weapons, and the effects blow turrets straight off enemy tanks, sending them hundreds of feet into the air. We see these things every day in videos from the war.

Getting rid of MDC is running back into the safety of the game designer's arms, begging for them to balance the game for you, and protect your character from one-shot kills for "fairness."

We are talking highly speculative science fiction here in a world gone mad. Parts of this world are already here, especially when you are talking about modern weaponry that can vaporize an entire ship or building in one hit. We see this almost every day on the news, and yet, we still pray for peace.

You can't remove the MDC in Rifts without also causing another problem. You will break the fundamental conflict in the game. MDC is not just a game mechanic; it is a part of the core conflict in the setting. Remove MDC, and you are removing the best part of the game.

Take the Coalition, the mostly bad guy, but also possibly good guy, favorite punching bags of the setting. In my campaign, the coalition's cities are strictly SDC settings, and even the police are rolling around in SDC armor, carrying SDC guns, with an "inside the megolpolis" vibe that's more like the pre-ruin world and how it used to be.

MDC quick reaction forces are always on the ready and can be called in at any time; all the Coalition Police need to do is make a call, and the flying suits and skelebots start rushing in. The Coalition is one of the largest users of MDC arms and armor, but there is a deeper philosophical issue at play here.

If the goal of the Coalition is to retake Earth and make things "like they were," then the citizenry should be able to live in a world "like it all was." The police use regular SDC guns and armor because, well, they could be stolen, but the reality they wish to create is one of normalcy, not of the MDC overlords coming in, acting like gods, and demanding fealty and servitude.

This is especially true when superheroes, fantasy monsters, and aliens can walk into this world and be instantly converted to MDC overlords, get drunk with power, and fall to madness. The MDC of the rifts is like booze, and you could imagine a group of "good guy" superheroes coming into the world of Rifts, getting drunk with power, and all of them turning into MDC demons.

Just because they were good guys in their world does not mean they will remain so in Rifts.

The alignment system and the ability to make alignment changes are core to the experience of playing any Palladium game. This is how the "good knight" falls to evil and dons the black plate mail.

Imagine the X-Men beginning to go mad with power, growing demonic horns, wings, and hooves, their skin slowly turning red, and the wickedness they begin to embrace as the raw power of MDC, magic, and super psionics corrupts their souls, and actual demons show up to smile and offer them more. Some of them realize what is happening and try to turn the tide and warn others, but it is already too late. They are sacrificed so the demons can further corrupt the rest.

Remove MDC, and you are taking the forbidden fruit away.

This is a story that can only be told in Rifts. It is an old-school game; if I want to instantly drop a character modification on a character, like a pair of demon wings, I can. In 5E? Forget it, you are centrally planned all the way to level 20, and that would break the game. People would want it to take a feat slot and limit the wings' flight. Don't laugh, I have seen this in so many race supplements for 5E, it is not funny. Flight breaks 5E in most cases. In Rifts, I can go there and do that without worrying about what game designers will think of me.

The story of the corrupted superheroes is a great tale to tell.

This is the core conflict in Rifts.

Power corrupts.

The MDC conversion puts a massive strain on the human soul, and it is still alien and abnormal to the world. MDC technology lacks a soul; it is merely a tool. But a Coalition that recognizes that "MDC everywhere" is a danger to what it needs to keep existing, families, a semblance of everyday life, children being born and growing up in safe environments, and soldiers fighting for their precious SDC enclave where they can feel normal, that is what "saving humanity" is all about.

How can an ex-soldier raise a family if they have to worry about punks with MDC laser pistols shooting up neighborhoods, or MDC police forces fighting back, and those stray shots flying through the walls of dozens of houses? If the world they fight for is supposed to be normal, then the interiors of these cities will be kept as normal as possible. It highlights the "fake nature" of reality, since everyone knows better. Still, this group depends on millions of people going about a typical day in schools, factories, service jobs, healthcare, and other professions.

Again, if an MDC user of magic teleports in, the MDC quick reaction forces are on a hair trigger, but the life this group needs to create is one of normalcy. And yes, being in the Coalition Police and only having SDC armor and weapons is a terrible job when an MDC something shows up, but that is life. It isn't always a perfect job in this world, and you need to duck and call for reinforcements since your partner was just vaporized.

Remove MDC, and there is little reason to play Rifts other than as "just another science fiction IP," which it is not.

The MDC versus SDC mechanic is a core conflict in the game, highlighting the struggle between outsiders finding a home here and those who want to preserve the way things were. And that, my friends, is a very topical and current conflict to explore.

The Little Things Matter

Thank you for ordering some of our products. We know times are tight, and yet you’re making a great decision to explore and play in the worlds we’ve created. Your purchase today means we can keep creating for you tomorrow. Be sure to tell your friends about Palladium Books!

I got the above on a shipping notification for a Palladium Books order, and I love the little things companies do to take a moment to thank you. I am rebuilding my long-ignored Rifts library from the early 1990s in a big way, and I bet they saw the orders today and their jaws dropped.

Thank you for keeping Rifts alive.

I hope people out there become fans, too.

Give them a chance.

I will do everything I can with my voice and blog to spread the word. The games you make are cool, equal to 5E in every way, and beloved by many. Even if Rifts is not your thing, check out Palladium Fantasy, Ninjas & Superspies, Heroes Unlimited, Beyond the Supernatural, Dead Reign, After the Bomb, TNMT, Splicers, or Nightbane.

Rifts Chaos Earth is cool too, and a new game in the universe with a different timeline where you play as "the Earth Defence Forces" and rescue people. This is a game where you play the "X-Com-like" group protecting the world from incursions and invasions, and you work to save people and do good. This is the Rifts' origin, but it is not tied into the Rifts timeline, so the outcome can be up to you.

I first ordered that, and it was so cool, I pulled the trigger on rebuilding my entire library.

Dead Reign is also a game that does not get enough attention. This is the best zombie game on the market, and it does things with zombies that no other game does. And there are so many types of zombies in here! There is always a new type of flesh-eater wandering around the next ruined building, and you have no idea what you are encountering next.

There is a game for you on the Palladium Books store.

I have something like this happen with Goodman Games earlier this year, with one of their warehouse people and convention personalities, DJ Foxy. Again, the same thing, it is little touches like this that turn me from a customer into a super fan.

And seriously, there is much more out there than the OSR and D&D. Palladium Fantasy is older than the OSR, and just as old as BX. You want "old school gaming?" Try this! It is just as easy to pick up as BX, and the characters are far more satisfying.

The Rifts game is cool. I am happy to be back on board in a big way. The books and world are among the best speculative, mind-bending, crazy science fiction ever put to paper. This beats any post-apocalyptic setting ever written, hands down.

Wake up! The 1980s were not just D&D and the OSR.

In the last season of Stranger Things, the kids should all be playing Rifts. That is what we did. It was either Rifts, Battletech, or GURPS 3rd Edition. The Rifts game was for the true geeks and nerds, and for the social outcasts who were the coolest kids in school. And the Stranger Things universe is closer to Rifts than it is D&D. Seriously, if your mom got you the RPG with the girls with the thongs on the cover, your mom was the coolest.

She knew, too, that Rifts was cool.

And she wanted her kids to be cool, too.

So she bought us Rifts.

And guess what?

We were instantly cool.

Other kids came over to our house to play Rifts.

Hell yeah.

I fell in love with this game in the 1990s, when it first came out, and I love just how vast and interesting every part of the world was painted. There are dangers everywhere. There is always something interesting going on. Humanity lives in small enclaves, fortress cities, and protected zones. I worked in the university computer lab, and used my paychecks to buy the expansion books, which were the first gaming books that I purchased with my own money.

And here I am, back again.

Instantly cool again.

Thank you, Rifts.

The SDC Cinematic Universe: Rifts & Other Supplimental Books

I am trying to keep my Palladium SDC worlds from being sucked into the Rifts universe. While I love Rifts, and I was a huge collector back in the day, it always overshadowed a ton of cool settings and places that I felt deserved a little bit more time in the sun.

Would I love to play a pure Palladium Fantasy game? Yes! Sure!

Rock around as a hero or villain in Heroes Unlimited? Wow! Never did that!

See what Beyond the Supernatural does differently than games like Call of Cthulhu? Wow! Yes!

See what the alternate universe of the 1990s would have been like if Nightbane had been popular instead of Vampire: The Masquerade? Of course!

Play in an alternate universe had we chosen Ninjas & Superspies instead of Top Secret? Yes!

Relive some of my TNMT fun with After the Bomb? Wow!

And check out the newer Dead Reign and see the different take on the zombie genre? Yes!

I know, this sounds like a Palladium advertisement already. But the fact is I collected the base books from all these worlds and used them as Rifts sourcebooks back in the day. I knew about the worlds and loved them, but never got to play in them to see what they were like pre-Rifts. They were always my Rifts sourcebooks and never fun games on their own.

Rifts is a juggernaut. It will steamroll playtime and attention for any game linked to it. It is a great universe and game, but I feel the base games deserve a non-Rifts universe of their own.

For now.

The 90s

Well, the question of "why play Palladium" came up when I started looking into these games again, and this all came up as a part of me reliving the AD&D 2e experience with For Gold & Glory, still a great AD&D 2e retro-clone. This was the 1990s, and I was collecting Rifts books. My brother and I moved our AD&D games into the 2nd edition, and we were having new adventures there in the (never touched by the novels) Forgotten Realms of our imaginations.

And I did have the Palladium Fantasy RPG book, and I always wanted to play that but we never had time. Never be that person who says, "We never had time." What happens is "we" becomes "I" and the regret sets in. So I want to make up for that a little and experience these games as they were meant to be played.

So I created an SDC Cinematic Universe (SDC-CU) of my own, and I am currently not playing Rifts.

While I like the entire idea of replaying AD&D 2e, my feelings on this are somewhat mixed. For one, doing this in Castles & Crusades feels like a more faithful and modern approach to the experience, while having a lot of new stuff to add to my game. I am still feeling this out and doing a lot of thinking, but Palladium is a game I really want to try regardless, and this just may well change my plans entirely.

Splicers?

Wait, where does the game Splicers fit into all this? MDC game as I read! Nope! Sounds fun but get over there with Rifts and Rifts: Chaos Earth. And I swear Rifts: Chaos Earth is how they are going to get me back into Rifts. But I am putting that aside! I am against introducing MDC class weapons and magic into the SDC-CU since I want everything to be on the same power level and scale.

The Splicers game probably deserves a look on its own, even as something apart from Rifts.

Inter SDC-CU Travel?

No idea yet if I will do crossovers between these universes without the MDC world of the Rifts. I have enough here to last me decades, but if it comes up it will happen through the rules in place for inter-dimensional activity. I am sure the PFRPG fantasy world and the superhero one may drive this, but it may happen.

There are superpowers, mutant powers, magic, Nightbane powers, and ley lines and rifts all over these worlds, so in theory, the groundwork is laid for "non-Rifts rifts" but we shall see.

Rifts Books?

Okay, now that we established the ground rules, what Rifts books are allowable? There is an easy one as my first choice, and that is Rifts Conversion Book Two: Pantheons of the Megaverse. Why? More gods for the Palladium FRPG fantasy world, and we get some good ones here like the Greeks, Romans, and Norse. We also have SDC stats, so these fit right in perfectly (once you get rid of all of their power armor and high-tech gear). These can be dropped right in and if you want more gods, this is an easy choice.

Rifts Conversion Book One is more for the rules updates than any really great SDC content or additions. There are rules for higher ability scores, pain modifiers, and dodging modern weapons that are worth having. The monster, spell, and conversion lists have SDC values, but they are mostly useful for going into Rifts (or as a summary list). There is a third Dark Conversions book that summarizes monsters from other games, so to me, it is not as useful since I am going to be playing and collecting the games covered here and will have those already.

If you want more demons for the fantasy world, two good pickup books are Rifts Dimension Books 10 & 11 for Hades and Dyval. Like Pantheons of the Megaverse, you can strip out the high-tech items, SDC values are provided, and these all drop into the Palladium FRPG seamlessly.

I am sure there are a few more Rifts books I could borrow from, like the Vampires, but a lot of these I would like to stay in Rifts as a part of that lore and world. The gods and demons are cross-world, so they are technically "from" the fantasy world so those should be a part of the PFRPG world.

Other Books?

Another notable book (not Rifts) is the 90's era Compendium of Contemporary Weapons, and this should be useful for my 80s and 90s based games.

The generic Weapons & Armor and Weapons & Castles books are good references, and also provide a lot of context and detail should you want to dive into what a certain piece of armor is called, get information on castles, and also have names and styles of exotic and historical weapons.

These are my top seven books, with the Pantheons book being my top pick for Fantasy, followed by the Hades/Dyval guides. For weapons, the Contemporary Weapons Compendium is nice to have for any of the modern games. The Weapons/Armor/Castles books come in behind those, followed by the Rifts compendiums one and three.