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Hello another new post...
Newbie to the board....anyway...

I wanted some information on the differences between Rifts & Shadowrun...

how are they?

are they rules heavy or rules light?

Style of gameplay?

any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Pia.

Shadowrun is pretty moderate. The world hasn't changed that much and the only foreign influence is the recurrence of magic and magical races.

Rifts is a post-apocalyptic future with the ultimate kitchen sink of genres. There's mecha, magic, chtuloid monsters, people from Atlantis, aliens, whatever you can imagine.

This is a rather big contrast. Shadowrun is in the near future on purpose, so that you can see the differences from today. In Rifts, the current age is a bygone memory. No two stones left on each other.

Quote from: PiaevoHello another new post...
Newbie to the board....anyway...

I wanted some information on the differences between Rifts & Shadowrun...

how are they?

are they rules heavy or rules light?

I would say they ar both rules medium, but one persons medium is light or heavy to another. I grok the palladium system better though.

QuoteStyle of gameplay?

Rifts is much more dark since it is a post apoc setting where humans struggle to survive.

IIRC, Shadowrun is more cyberpunk with a heavy fantasy flavor.

Shadowrun is better.  Rifts is an interesting setting full of horrible mechanics.  Don't let any Palladium Fanboys try and tell you differently.

If you are looking at those two systems you should also look into SLA Industries.  Now the mechanics aren't perfect (hell of a lot better then RIFTS though).  It's also a dark grim future where serial killers and mutants run rampant.  The entire world is basically owned by a coporation and players play agents that go out to clean up and hide the corporate accidents.

Of the 3 games.

Shadowrun 4th edition has the best mechanics and offers a generally medium style of world.  By that I mean it's a futuristic version of our own and it's easy to visuallise the types of things going on.

Rifts has Terrible mechanics but it does have a vast volume of source books to draw from - each one more powerful then the last.  Powergamers will love RIFTS.

SLA Industries has probably the most interesting - yet fixed - setting.  If you want some grim and horror in your sci-fi SLA is the way to go.  There is supposed to be another new edition of it coming out some time so hopefully that'll clean up all the mechanical issues.  Currently it's sorta like D20 but using 2d10.  However it's also broken in some areas.

Quote from: kryystShadowrun is better.  Rifts is an interesting setting full of horrible mechanics.  Don't let any Palladium Fanboys try and tell you differently.

I'm glad you are the all knowing and one true judge of what is fun.:rolleyes:

Despite what people say the mechanics in Rifts work fine. Many thousands of people have played Rifts and have had no major problems with the system. yes, there are even some people her that actually like Rifts.

Anyway, IMO, the Rifts setting is superior.

Torg, Torg, Torg!

Rifts is a game set in a future where millions died and triggered mystic portals opening that brught aliens, demons, cyborgs, monsters. The general setting includes playing a variety of people from very high tech or high magical backgrounds thrown together to "adventure' in such a setting: from psychic knights, to powerful wizards, and people with vast psionics, to human scholars and human members of a fascist state dedicated to stomping out magic, and aliens, and anything not human. The mechanics, well they're not overtly complex: Pretty much a D20 for combat and percentile roll for skills. Most of the complexity comes from lots of skills that are marginally effective (low percentage numbers) different systems for magic and psionics (yet not really all that different or flavorful--both are "spell point" powered.) Rifts setting is a big huge mashup of a lot of SF (mecha, power armor, spaceships, aliens), fantasy (elves, ogres, wizards) and so on. The rules system is, not play balanced mechanically (which to be fair is not something I look for but other do.), and the recent edition actully seems to have short shifted some of the PC types over the previous Rifts game (making them weaker by comprison--Dragons, Cyberknights, forexample.)



Shadowrun posits a future where the (I think Mayan) date for the apocalypse--the world "turning upside down" coincides with a vast return of magic, along with a Native American dance designed to empower them against their opressors--the result is a lot of people change becoming fantasy creatures do to hidden 'tag's' in their genese that marked them as essentially descended from these supernatural like creatures. The world has move forward from this, corporations control a lot of power, magic has given back the Aboriginal/Native Americans a lot of power and control, combined with a future of cybernetics, hacking, and the so are are common--its tone is consistant (unlike Rifts which has dark areas, silly bits, wahoo bits etc.)--the rules set varies between editions (unlike Rifts) the 4th Edition is considered by many the most useful/clear, for me it marked a return to Shadowrun (I'd not played since 1E), it also vastly improved play balance in many ways and allows for characters even humans without cybernetics/magic boosts to actually be highly effective (high skills and a luck trait called edge combined) in general the setting is far more cohesive, well thought out than Rifts, it focuses pretty much on a singular mood as mentioned (near future cyberpunk mood) and its technology actually has been improved to fit closer to how networking modern computers works. (Rifts tech is pretty much superhero stuff mixed with 1980's ideas of cybernetics/computers from various cartoons)


If I had a choice system wise Shadowrun is much more elegant, cohesive and  well put together. It uses one mechanic and twists to that, for everything. While Rifts uses different mechanics (combat skills work different than non combat skills completely.) Shadowrun is not class based--albeit it has archetypes you can build whatever with its point based system. Rifts IS class based and has trouble doing things that fit concepts as opposed to its premade "class" ideas. Shadowrun is a bit more complex in terms of learning curve but once the system IS learned its a lot more straightforward--fewer special case scenarios, and odd rules that crop up and jump on you when you aren't looking.


Both can be fun games (both as a player and GM), I've run a Rifts campaign that started off with a group of ragtag travelers trapped on an island inside a forcefield hunted by a weretiger (based loosely on "The Most Dangerous Game". It lead to the PC's escaping with a serious enemy (not the weretiger they "won" his game without dying), and running away from a Pissed off Coaliton (Fascist/Nazi group) commander and his battlegroup, while exploring ruins (cyberdemons with railguns, trapped in an ancient labratory), discovering a wizard's tower (complete with dragon egg) and so on--leading up to a cube that transported them back in time to try and "stop" certian things from happenning then, before the Rifts openned (they couldn't stop that, just other things.)

I've also played a PC dragon a few times, a juicer (drug enhanced supersoldiers with a short lifespan), and an Elf cyberknight.

In Shadowrun, I've run a game where the PC worked as Newshounds--breaking and entering to get the story, and also a combat field hockey team, trying to survive the travails of sports endoresements, ultraviolence, and corporate espionage amidst a 'sport' backdrop. I've played a Troll Archer whose physical skill made even armored troopers worried about his great oriental bow, a combat mage with enhanced reflexes who was as quick with a gun as a spell, an orc street samurai named Scalpel, "I am the surgeon to the maligninancy you seek to remove, simply guide me to the tumorous growth, and I shall achieve the rest" , and others...


So you can do all sorts of things with either game, I like Shadowrun better thant RIFTS but that doesn't make Rifts bad.


the vast majority of people I've gamed with though have always said they'd play Rifts setting but wanted a different rules set. Take that for what its worth (second hand report of a group of gaming strangers..:) )

Actually the RIFTS Rules work, but require some effort on the GMs part.
look here  (http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1561)for a after play report of a rifts session, to see what you can do with it, and what kind of fun you can have.
In a nutshell:
Rifts is full of awesome,
Shadowrun is full of cool.

I gave up on Shadowrun when the 2nd edition book came out, so I may be hopelessly out of date with regard to how Shadowrun currently is.

One big difference is that Rifts is skewed toward wilderness adventures and wandering while Shadowrun is much more skewed toward urban adventures.

Both have heavy supernatural elements.  In Shadowrun, the supernatural is mostly neutral, or a tool to be used, and naturalism seems to be an overall positive thing.  In Rifts, while there are certainly instances of good or neutral supernatural elements, the supernatural is ultimately presented as something evil and negative, and a slippery slope towards absolute corruption.

Both games allow odd mixes of characters, but Rifts has the edge in that department for sheer character diversity and outright strangeness.  Both games have themes of racism in them.  Shadowrun pretty much paints racism as pointless, ignorant evil while Rifts paints racism as necessary evil, if not a good thing.

Another big thing is that in Shadowrun, magic is more or less a known factor.  In Rifts, it's an unexplained and random thing.  Shadowrun Earth is a much, much more tamed planet than the magic and demon overrun Rifts Earth.

Both can certainly be about mega-violence.

Shadowrun has much better rules.  Even though I quit SR at 2e because of rule changes, the 2e rules at least make sense and are playable.  With Rifts, you'll more or less end up making your own rules and reworking them whenever you buy a supplement.

Stay away from Rifts Ultimate Edition.  Remember when you had a project to turn in and you didn't want to do it, but you couldn't just ignore it because it was too much of your grade?  You waited until the Sunday evening before the Monday it was meant to be turned in.  Then you just copied a bunch of stuff from encyclopedias or other random books on the subject, and added your own little bullshit commentaries every few paragraphs to make it look new instead of copied.  Then you printed it out without proofreading it and turned it in the next day.  That's exactly what Rifts Ultimate Edition is like.

Thats a good summary. I think Rifts is better myself, but whatever.

Incidentally enough, I got it out and my son and I made characters for it just last night.

You know what the problem with Rifts is? It's completely disorganized, and probably needs a general rewrite for clarity. My son wanted to make up a Techno-Wizard, and we went through and made his guy, but there were a few points of confusion like adding powers to weaponry, armor and vehicles. Skills are kinda all over the place. This could easily make the game really hard to play, if you hadn't already played TMNT or the Palladium Fantasy game. The rules are not as 'hard' or as complicated as people make them out to be, and in general it works about like Basic D&D with a percentile based skill system works.  That to me is fairly simple.

I disagree with Gabriels assertion about racism. I think the Coalition --the quasi-racist (species-ist?) group in Rifts that wants to eliminate all but pure strain humans- is presented as villians in the main book, although it allows you the option of playing them as characters.

Quote from: McrowI'm glad you are the all knowing and one true judge of what is fun.

That's what I've been saying for years.  It's just a mater of time before more people recognize it.

QuoteDespite what people say the mechanics in Rifts work fine. Many thousands of people have played Rifts and have had no major problems with the system. yes, there are even some people her that actually like Rifts.
Anyway, IMO, the Rifts setting is superior.

The mechanics are terrible.  MDC is a bad idea, 5 attacks per round at level 1 is a bad idea, layering of multiple martial arts and other skills on top of each other is a bad idea.  Glitter boys mixing with Juicers and Technomages.  It's...it's like someone through up every conceivable Sci-Fi cheese factor into one setting and then figured because everyone has the same stat block we've achieved balance.

Is the setting interesting and rife with potential.  Without a doubt.  Is it a game where you can realistically pick up and play without starting to make exceptions allowances and twists of logic to make it work - no you can't.

Quote from: kryystThe mechanics are terrible.  MDC is a bad idea

And that's where you're entirely wrong.  The mechanics are a total trainwreck, and the rails haven't been cleared for 25 years.  But, there are good ideas.  Just about everything you listed is actually a damn good idea.  The problem is the implementation, one eyed Jacks are wild on Tuesdays style implementation.  You'd have an easier time playing Fizzbin with Captain Kirk than figuring out the Rifts rules because of their implementation.

Quote from: kryystThat's what I've been saying for years.  It's just a mater of time before more people recognize it.



The mechanics are terrible.  MDC is a bad idea, 5 attacks per round at level 1 is a bad idea, layering of multiple martial arts and other skills on top of each other is a bad idea.  Glitter boys mixing with Juicers and Technomages.  It's...it's like someone through up every conceivable Sci-Fi cheese factor into one setting and then figured because everyone has the same stat block we've achieved balance.

Is the setting interesting and rife with potential.  Without a doubt.  Is it a game where you can realistically pick up and play without starting to make exceptions allowances and twists of logic to make it work - no you can't.

So it hasn't occured to you that the game wasn't designed  to be balanced?

Balance isn't a requirement for a good game, you know.

Rifts Rules work. You just have to look up a lot of stuff. I made some tables to ease my workload. Apart from bad organization, it´s flows  quite mellowy during play.

Both are games.

That's about as similiar as they get.

I have to admit, I find MDC problematic- and I'd like to replace it with something like damage reduction:

DR: 20/Energy Weapons

or something similar

Do so. Even Kevin Houserules Rifts. It`s easy as eating pancakes.

QuoteI disagree with Gabriels assertion about racism. I think the Coalition --the quasi-racist (species-ist?) group in Rifts that wants to eliminate all but pure strain humans- is presented as villians in the main book, although it allows you the option of playing them as characters.

Some of the more recent sourcebooks have glorified the Coalition beyond a level I'm at all comfortable with.  It's like those WWII buffs you meet that are a little too obsessed with the Germans . . .

The mechanics are a mess.  And absolute nightmare.  Every single one of my friends who played at the time spent a very large percentage of their time trying to make sense of the ruels, or complaining about the rules, or complainging about how X OCC/RCC was horridly overpowered, and on and on.  The only reason we stuck with it at all was because of some of the group was just too stubborn to want to learn a new set of rules.  The rules were a mess, but they sort of knew them, and they'd rather stick with what they knew.

Quote from: McrowSo it hasn't occured to you that the game wasn't designed  to be balanced?

Balance isn't a requirement for a good game, you know.

Sure it is.   Doesn't have to be mechanical balance but there has to be some kind of balance, or at the very least a logic to why things are together.  Rifts is a wreck.  There answer to everything is by hand waving any argument with saying Ooooh it's a Rift deal with it.

Rifts works when you house rule it to fix some mechanical problems.  Then house rule a specific kind of campaign that you want to have.  If you just play the game carte blanche it doesn't work.

excellent feedback. thank you for all of the information.

im still on the fence on which to try out.

Shadowrun from the reply's seems to be a little smoother rules wise vs Rifts from what i am reading.

I like the idea of the setting of rifts universe vs shadowruns post apocalyptic world.

The good thing is that from the posts, i really cant go wrong with picking one over the other. Someone was asking my friend is he was interested in playing rifts (or if he had played rifts) so there seems to be some local interest in trying out rifts.

Are their sample PDF rules for each one?

anything else?

thanks,
Pia.

There's probably a sample/quick play Shadowrun 4th edition PDF out there somewhere.  I know there used to be a 3e version.

Palladiumbooks is deathly afraid that you'll steal their IP and is run by people who say that the printing press wasn't an important development (they're a wee bit technologically behind us), so you won't find any legitimate PDFs of Palladium products.

You really can't go wrong with either one if you're in it for setting.  I was never big on Shadowrun's world, but I know it grew exponentially since my days of slaughtering gangers, Lone Stars, and corps in Seattle.  I preferred Rifts's backdrop as it grabbed my attention more immediately.

For rules, it really depends on how much you want to do the work yourself.  If you like puzzles and dreaming stuff up on the fly, then Rifts's system will be a new playground for you.  If you expect a RPG to be playable out of the box, then Shadowrun is probably a better bet.

Quote from: PiaevoAre their sample PDF rules for each one?

anything else?

thanks,
Pia.

Rifts--No, they don't do PDF's (yet) that I'm aware of.

Shadowrun doesn't seem to have much either, just some sample character templates:
http://www.shadowrunrpg.com/resources/sr4/sr4_sampchar_combatmage.pdf
http://www.shadowrunrpg.com/resources/sr4/sr4_sampchar_weaponspecialist.pdf

There's no SR4 sampler on the official site, so I guess you're out of luck. And like Gabriel already said, the Palladium folks won't touch PDFs with a ten-foot MDC pole...

Generally, SR4 will be a cheaper system. You'll buy the game book and then you're better of not doing any other purchases. At least that was the rule with previous editions, almost anything you could buy made the game worse.  That's the general problem with a setting that isn't to distant from our modern world. Some of the setting material tended to get a little unbelievable, the meta-plot got quite annoying (Dunkelzahn...) and with every technology/magic book you had a new level of superiority, so the stuff from previous books was second-rate. Worse than with the D20 rush...

Now, Rifts has some problems with new classes from later sourcebooks. They don't neccesarily balance nicely. But the general setting material is much more inspirational. If you're playing Rifts, you basically accepted that it's a little over-the-top, so the suspension of disbelief doesn't get activated as much. Rifts is rather inventive, even when it uses some well-known genre, it usually has its own take on things.

Compare Torg to that, which had a modern earth invaded by rather direct genre versions (pulp, fantasy, sci-fi) most of the time. Apart from the Cyberpapacy, of course. Which was way cool...

While we're talking about genre-mesh settings, anyone ever had a look at "Nexus - The Infinite City"? There you had a huge (limitless?) city with multi-dimensional elements that slowly integrated with each other. Kinda like the KULT Metropolis on Acid.

Since Torg has been brought up, let me toss the following idea out there:

1) Order Torg (version 1 or 1.5)

2) Hunt down the original Rifts corebook, the grey one with the hentai monster and chicks in skintight outfits.  You REALLY don't want Rifts Ultimate Edition.

3) Put them in a mental blender.  Use Torg for the system and merge the setting ideas.

Quote from: SosthenesGenerally, SR4 will be a cheaper system. You'll buy the game book and then you're better of not doing any other purchases. At least that was the rule with previous editions, almost anything you could buy made the game worse.  That's the general problem with a setting that isn't to distant from our modern world. Some of the setting material tended to get a little unbelievable, the meta-plot got quite annoying (Dunkelzahn...) and with every technology/magic book you had a new level of superiority, so the stuff from previous books was second-rate. Worse than with the D20 rush...

I haven't really found that the case with Street Magic at all. In fact Street Magic is in some ways a better quality book than the core itself. Of course you don't actually need it to run a game, but still it's pretty cool. And no I don't mean that in a Rifts "more powerful than the last book" sense.

Street Magic is important if you want the full fleshed out canon magic background such as the normally-NPC baddies like bug spirits and shedim (the true "undead" in SR) and magic in far off places.

I'd definately pick up Runner Havens as it gives great detailed setting info for Seattle and Hong Kong, and a little more background of the world in general.

On The Run is a prepacked adventure if that is your thing. I haven't gotten it, though if you are interested in how a traditional SR adventure you could pick it up.  Or you could just use the adventures from Shadowrun Missions (Fanpro's shared world) that are free for the download somewhere on their site. They are set in Denver. One of the past issues of Fanpro's freebee quarterly Commando webzine had a 8 or 10 page write-up on the city's makeup to lead into those adventures.

Gee, converting Rifts to any other system is a huge task and would require either lots of work or enough hand-waving to last the next 500 british queens...

Quote from: blakkieI haven't really found that the case with Street Magic at all. In fact Street Magic is in some ways a better quality book than the core itself. Of course you don't actually need it to run a game, but still it's pretty cool. And no I don't mean that in a Rifts "more powerful than the last book" sense.

Like I said before, I don't know whether this is still the case with the current edtion. But I definitely _hated_ the magic supplement (Grimoire?) from SR3 (or was ist SR2?).

Freakin' initiates...

Quote from: SosthenesGee, converting Rifts to any other system is a huge task and would require either lots of work or enough hand-waving to last the next 500 british queens...

So is converting Rifts to Rifts.  ;)

Quote from: GabrielSo is converting Rifts to Rifts.  ;)

Touché

Quote from: SosthenesLike I said before, I don't know whether this is still the case with the current edtion. But I definitely _hated_ the magic supplement (Grimoire?) from SR3 (or was ist SR2?).

Freakin' initiates...

Initiation is in the core book now, with a couple of Metamagics (which aren't totaly freaked out power crazy, even in Street Magic). :)  Grimore was SR2, and I wouldn't know since I didn't read it.  Magic In The Shadows was SR3.  SR3 definately had a lot of power increase with the splatbooks, but that was mostly because FASA didn't bother to put the whole game into the core book. :pundit: Fanpro consciously moved away from that, trying to make the core book as standalone functional as possible.  So far they've mostly succeeded, the closest to failure is the weaker Matrix portion of the core book. Ironically the primary splatbook for that, Unwired, is slated to be written last.

While we are at it: Blakkie, would you mind writing some SR reviews for The RPG Site?