Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;282564And pour in they did.

My solution is to just turn up and layer in the crazy.  Everyone knows that they are xenophobic and manaphobic (slightly less so for psi).  No one seems to take much notice at their quiet, but open, sexism.  (Few, if any, women in positions where getting maimed, crippled or killed is an occupational hazard; they're all kept behind tall, thick walls and guarded jealously by the men and their dogs- and they're not idle; they handle the staff work.)  Even fewer are at all noticing their quiet, covert racism. ("Pure" = "WASP"; this makes the bulk of Coalition subjects mutants, but acceptably so, which--combined with ruthless and pervasive propaganda and a truly illiterate population--makes it easy for their eugenics/genetics program to proceed unimpeded to recreate Humanity as an Aryan super-race.)  Only the Inner Elite knows that there is both an Inner and Outer Elite (following Strauss), and the Inner Elite holds all true power- they're the successors to the pre-Rifts imperialist elite in North America.

Why play it this way?  If you're going to have a synarchist power bloc as one of the big villains, don't go by half-measures.

The Coalition as a Straussian Utopia right out of Dick Cheney's wildest wet dreams. Very cool.

RPGPundit

Siembieda should have stuck with his Judges guild roots and offered the same fare in the form of an actual played adventures that work. NGR versus the gargoyles is a roleplaying game fantasy...literally. The cool bot weapons were useless to affect their prime enemy on equal footing (plus add in that robot vehicles can't lift their own weight if they're knocked down or dangling) and its a geometrically expanding game fix that has you doing a job that should have been done already. The NGR comic showed the game as it should be played (Wow! He actually shot and affected a gargoyle! What game is that? I want to play it!).

His heart was in the right place but in the end the whole experience was a low brow fantasy ranging from very good to very bad and actual game play nightmare. Especially when he relied so much on visuals with Long and then expected to do the same with a replacement who was drawing all this "crap-tech" and "animal head" dreck. It would have been nice if the game had books filled with "in world" support devices instead of endless "indifferent to player" cultures with tech that you have to smash the shit out of to acquire.

Quote from: RPGPundit;282540Well, RIFTS books underwent a kind of evolution, from good to bad to ok to good again; the last one to my surprise as I've just found this out now that I'm running a RIFTS campaign for the first time in 10 years.

RPGPundit

I for one would like to hear more about this campaign in detail.

If I see one more nameless demon from hell with a heart-of-gold turned to hooking on the mean streets of New York in order to pay for his girlfriend's boob job to impress her pervert father so he'll pony up to send her to veterinary school in order to give her the opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of her childhood pet kitty which she left in a rain barrel because it had worms and now it's a soulless zombie monster bent on revenge against all six year old blonde girls who play with GI Joes instead of Barbies and chew Fruitsplosion Bubblyum… well I'd do something drastic, that's for sure!

Quote from: Gene Weigel;282626Siembieda should have stuck with his Judges guild roots and offered the same fare in the form of an actual played adventures that work. NGR versus the gargoyles is a roleplaying game fantasy...literally. The cool bot weapons were useless to affect their prime enemy on equal footing (plus add in that robot vehicles can't lift their own weight if they're knocked down or dangling) and its a geometrically expanding game fix that has you doing a job that should have been done already. The NGR comic showed the game as it should be played (Wow! He actually shot and affected a gargoyle! What game is that? I want to play it!).

Huh? Sorry, where did it say that Gargoyles are immune to MDC attacks? I don't see that anywhere... did you perhaps confuse them with vampires?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Roman;282661



I for one would like to hear more about this campaign in detail.

I'm sure you will, but mostly over time.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;282864Huh? Sorry, where did it say that Gargoyles are immune to MDC attacks? I don't see that anywhere... did you perhaps confuse them with vampires?

RPGPundit

Where did I say that?

I'm referring to the NGR book where there was a short comic where a robot armored guy dispatches a gargoyle with a shot. No weapon could do that before they had a field day on your priceless armor.

Quote from: Kevin;282696If I see one more nameless demon from hell with a heart-of-gold turned to hooking on the mean streets of New York in order to pay for his girlfriend's boob job to impress her pervert father so he'll pony up to send her to veterinary school in order to give her the opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of her childhood pet kitty which she left in a rain barrel because it had worms and now it's a soulless zombie monster bent on revenge against all six year old blonde girls who play with GI Joes instead of Barbies and chew Fruitsplosion Bubblyum... well I'd do something drastic, that's for sure!

YES YES and most emphatically YES!!  ROFLMAO!!

Quote from: Sigmund;281987What's done to death to me is the sympathetic vampire. The vampire "good" guy (curse you Ann Rice). I don't mind vampires as stuff to be killed, especially if they're the evil, nasty, disgusting, terrifying monsters they're supposed to be. Angst my ass.

I definitely prefer vampires run more in the 30 Days of Night mode.

Vampires should not be something a player character aspires to become.

Alright, I just looked it up and its worse than I remember it was two "gurgoyles" wearing gurgoyle power armor that are taken out with one shot apiece. How is that possible? The whole "anti-supernatural for useless tech only" premise just fails unless you warp the whole game around and introduce new German/Coalition "WDC weapons" which not only do "whopper damage" but can only be fired by "dimensional purists".

Stuff that has been done to death - that I'm sick of hearing about at the game store:

"Yeah, man we're in an all-evil campaign. Its really Cool!"

"We're playing a Star WARS game - and we're ALL Jedi Knights!"

...same as above , except with this:

"....ALL Jedi Knight  ..who just turned to the Datrk Side because we think the Sith are cooler."

"Yeah, we're in a game where my charcter has wings and a tail...but its kind of a tiefling, but not a tiefling. Her character has got feathered wings because she's a visiting Angel that like leather abnd soda pop but we're trying to corrupt her character to more chaotic evil like the rest of us."

"In my game I play a Drow ...but sort of a Good guy Drow - you know like that Drist guy?"

"Dungeons and Dragons is kind of boring for me - there isn't enough killing and no submchineguns or tanks involved."


All of the above, or variations of those quotes have been said in the store at one time or another.


- Ed C.

Settings that you could easily sub-in human cultural groups for the non-human/demi-human races and the setting would plod along with nary a hiccup.

Magic vs. Martial with Magic always winning.

I am also not a fan of Magic vs. Tech matches where one beats the other simply because one shorts out the other. Lame.

Quote from: Sigmund;281987I think I'm agreeing with Pierce here, but with a further qualification. What's done to death to me is the sympathetic vampire. The vampire "good" guy (curse you Ann Rice). I don't mind vampires as stuff to be killed, especially if they're the evil, nasty, disgusting, terrifying monsters they're supposed to be. Angst my ass.

Yay!

-clash

I like my vampires to be the Twilight 'Ziggy Stardust' sort.  Makes aiming that much easier when they sparkle light that, and their angst just means they don't fight back as hard.

Quote from: Spike;282997I like my vampires to be the Twilight 'Ziggy Stardust' sort.  Makes aiming that much easier when they sparkle light that, and their angst just means they don't fight back as hard.

A rockstar vampire ? What's the improvement compared to Lestat ?