Ok, here's the scenario: let's say someone finally used "reason" (ie. a severe beating with lead pipes until obedience is achieved) on Kevin Siembieda and "convinced" him to come up with a new edition of RIFTS.

Now, Kevin gets some other dude to do the "rules mechanics" part of the game, so you don't have to worry about that, but he picks YOU to redesign the the setting.  

What would you do?
What parts of the setting/classes/races/stuff would you change?
Would you change anything?
How much of the world would you detail in the main book, and how would you detail it?

RPGPundit

The setting can remain as is, it's the ruleset that needs to be scrapped entirely.

Personally I'd go with something similar to Mutants & Masterminds 2E, where characters have the same Power Level, albeit expressed in wildly different ways. Thus you could play an unenhanced mechanic running around with a Glitter Boy and not feel thoroughly outclassed.

I´d change the skill system.
I´d introduce comprehensive tables for bonus advancement.
I´d keep the rest as it is.

Quote from: SettembriniI´d keep the rest as it is.

Really?  What about MDC?

!i!

Yeah, what about it? Works splendid for me.

Convert it all to D&D and make liberal use of Level Adjustment as a mechanic.

Rifts is, basically, already houseruled D&D, so there's really no reason not to just drop the broken mess and go back to it's roots.  The things that don't make sense for anything but D&D are already built into Rifts too, so you don't even get that same cognitive dissonance you get with most D&D conversions.  

The biggest problem with Rifts though, isn't so much the core system, though that's certainly not without problems and badly needs a total reorganization and rewrite, it's the class and races.

There's effectively no reason whatsoever to use a level mechanic if you're not even going to make a semblance of effort towards class/character balance.  The levels effectively become meaningless numbers and you may as well drop them.

Hence the level adjustments.  This this really probably should've been in Rifts eons ago, and it would go well towards smoothing out a lot of the character balance issues.

The other aspect would be actually bloody playtesting this shit, and getting people who actually play the game to edit as well.  There needs to be somebody keeping things in line, some behind the scenes guidelines for class/race balance or something.  The present approach of just slapping whatever badly thought out piece of crap the latest sucker of a freelancer can come up with into a book and calling it good, just ain't gonna cut it these days, not in the face of competition like D&D and WoD.  

A more open setting would be nice too.  No more declaring almost the entire United States to be basically uninhabited and uninhabitable, just to try and force all your players to play Coalition centered games.  One of the fun bits of a post apocalyptic game is imagining what your little corner of the world might be like after the fall of civilization.

Also, drop the creepy fascist love-in angle with the Coalition for fuck's sake.  They're villains dammit, leave it that way.  One of the things that drove me away, and kept me away, was a growing vibe around the Coalition centered books that reminded me of the WWII fan who's just a little TOO enthusiastic about Nazi Germany.  The US flags and shit were originally supposed to be ironic, but the authors seemed to forget that and instead started turning the concept into a far-rightist wet dream.

Make the rest of the world more interesting.  Yeah, I realize you've got limited schedules, but for fucks sake, basically every book that covered the rest of the world boiled down to one or two local factions, and a whole lot of bug fuck nothing.  The spent too much paper detailing every last possible profession in Organization X, when they could've been doing one or two classes from a whole bunch of different factions.

Alternately, consider much, much, much more generic classes.  Ultra-specific classes like Rifts' can work, but it means you're basically perpetually tied down to whatever classes are available in the books, unless you want to try and write your own.

Re-Hire the guy who wrote Phase World.  He seemed to do a much better job of coming up with interesting shit than a lot of the other sourcebook writers did.  Yeah it was a bit overpowered, even by Rifts standards, but honestly I always found the stuff in that book far more interesting than much of what was going on on Earth.  

And for the love of all that is holy, hire a real editor, and some real layout artists, and buy some actual computers.  Tell Kevin the Luddite curmudgeon angle isn't cute, it's just pathetic.  If my 65 year old grandfather can learn to use a computer, and my 70 year old grandmother can run her own office services business, then he can sure as fuck learn how to write a simple fucking email.

...okay...fine I'll bite.

 Keep the setting "AS IS"...but convert the whole thing to a "Powered by GURPS" series of books.

 Hell, several preople already want to do that and have tried to do web pages devoted to that . Palladium keeps thjreatening them.

Its close enough to the INFINITE WORLDS kind of thing already - it could work.

- Ed C.

Quote from: SettembriniI´d change the skill system.

That's the biggest thing for me. For starters, until RUE came out, how one actually used many skills was never actually explained in the Rifts rule books. Then, of course, you had to deal with the fact that there are essentially three kinds of skills -- those that rank ability with a percentile score, those that modify an ability, and those that do neither.

Frankly, this part of Rifts makes the vast majority of free RPGs look good by comparison (despite designing free-press game, I do not suffer from the delusion that all or most free games are what one might consider good). I mean, fuck -- unified skill mechanics (not the same thing as unified resolution mechanics, mind you) have been the norm since the late 1970s.

As for other things that I'd address. . .

Mega Damage. The concept is sound. What Kevin needs to do is pick a system and stick with it. Fuck this "Different MD rules for different supplements!" crap. The big problem with MD isn't that it's broke, but that it's handled inconsistently across the entire game line. Most of the actual "doesn't conform to physics" weirdness is something that Joe Gamer could give two shits about, as evidenced by Palladium's strong sales (well, up until the last three years or so).

I'd put the monster creation tables back in the core RUE book, for starters. And maybe tack on some Dee Bees to boot. As it stands, if you want your campaign to be about anything other than fighting facism in post-Rifts America, you're shit out of luck. And even then, without any write-ups for the subject of the Coalition's ire, the default setting is remarkably incomplete.

What possible good could crippling the utility of the core book do? I mean, aside from the glaringly obvious "Force consumers to buy supplements!" (which, despite whatever Kevin may think, has probably done more to drive away potential fans than it has to attract them). It's a marketing misstep that other companies who publish games with one core book learned to avoid the better part of a decade ago.

Next, while this may sound radical, I'd advocate dumping the Coalition States as the default setting. What was cool and edgy (sp?) in the early 1980s is now boring and culturally irrelevant. I think that the Coalition States should still be a part of Rifts, mind you -- but there are far more interesting locales (Atlantis, anybody?) to enshrine as the default setting. The Coalition States aren't the draw (to current fans or newcomers) that they once were.

Finally, I'd use some mother-fucking Adobe rather than a goddamn gluestick to layout and edit my printer's proofs. There are some things done better the old-fashioned way (e.g., distilling whiskey, tailoring suits, etc). Laying out books for mass production is not one of these things. That 1980s copy shop, lithograph, layout is ass.

Dudes, i specifically said that this wasn't a thread for talking about mechanics systems; its for talking about setting (and arguably stuff like layout and presentation).

If you want to start talking about mechanics, start another thread!

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditDudes, i specifically said that this wasn't a thread for talking about mechanics systems; its for talking about setting (and arguably stuff like layout and presentation).

If you want to start talking about mechanics, start another thread!

RPGPundit

Doesn't work like that, dude.

The mechanics of rifts are intricately intertwined with the setting, because by and large due to the approach of their sourcebook line, the mechanics ARE the setting.

See my comment regarding ultra-specific classes.

Sorry, I misread.

So why would you want to change anything in the setting?
It hasn´t got a metaplot, so it´s all yours to play with anyway?

Quote from: RPGPunditDudes, i specifically said that this wasn't a thread for talking about mechanics systems; its for talking about setting (and arguably stuff like layout and presentation).

By and large most people seem to be fairly satisfied with the Rifts Setting.

The mechanics on the other hand... only Kevin Siembieda himself attracts more dissatisfaction and outright hostility.

Quote from: SettembriniSorry, I misread.

So why would you want to change anything in the setting?
It hasn´t got a metaplot, so it´s all yours to play with anyway?

I missed that, too. My primary concerns (per my earlier post) are presentation issues (this is true when pertaining to MD and skills, as well). Namely, I think that the quality of layout sucks, and the presentation of rules needs to be far, far, more even across the game line. The only major setting issue I have is the aforementioned choice of the Coalition States as the default lay of the land (and, again, its somewhat poor support in RUE). But. . .

If pressed, I think that I might also choose to actually have some of the godlike entities on the planet start inconveniencing their peers. Remarkably, at the current time, most of the World Books seem to exist in a vacuum without any of the Nigh- Omnipotent Big Bads capable of affecting the world outside of their respective sourcebook. That has always caused me great difficulty when it came to suspending disbelief in Rifts campaigns.

Quote from: jdrakehIf pressed, I think that I might also choose to actually have some of the godlike entities on the planet start inconveniencing their peers. Remarkably, at the current time, most of the World Books seem to exist in a vacuum without any of the Nigh- Omnipotent Big Bads capable of affecting the world outside of their respective sourcebook. That has always caused me great difficulty when it came to suspending disbelief in Rifts campaigns.

I´ve always thought of this as a boon: Instead of Kevin telling me how the war of Egypt vs. Splynncrith goes, I can sort that out myself. So I´d definitely wouldn´t want that being adressed in publications.

Quote from: J ArcaneDoesn't work like that, dude.

The mechanics of rifts are intricately intertwined with the setting, because by and large due to the approach of their sourcebook line, the mechanics ARE the setting.

See my comment regarding ultra-specific classes.

You're right. If the mechanics change, the setting changes with it.