Any Rifts players here?  If so, what are your campaign models like?

For instance, I've found two models to work fairly well:

1) The Build a Civilization model

Most typically, this model begins with characters being dumped into the world of Rifts, but they have some kind of stronghold to defend.  It can either be characters rifted into an area with a large pre-cataclysm cache of stuff, or it can be something like an REF cruiser crashing in a area with little population.

Adventures are organized around surviving, scouting, and maintaining the settlement.  Common throwaway adventures are supernatural creature raids.


2) The World Tour model

This is one that I haven't personally ever done, but it does come up quite a bit in Rifts discussions I've had and generates a lot of player enthusiasm.  The idea is simply to start in a location and start visiting all the various Rifts World Books.

For a long time, I've kicked around an idea (inspired by the movie The Final Countdown) about a NGR carrier which finds itself on an inadvertent trip around the world after visiting Free Quebeck and CS installations in the Gulf of Mexico.  From there they encounter hints of the Vampire Kingdoms, the nations of South America, Horune Pirates, The New Navy, The Lord of the Deep, the pre-Rifts cities of Japan, and eventually conclude by returning home and confronting the Phoenix Empire.

The only campaign I played in RIFTS was a "world tour". It was a lot of fun too. We ignored most of the rules and just had fun going through Africa and South America. RIFTS is one of my favorite game settings, and I wish KS would allow it to be ported over to other game systems. I think a True20 RIFTS would be simply awesome.

You forgot the "blow shit up" model.  

only Rifts campaign I took part in was a mercenary campaign where the group worked as elite commando and special agents for Tolkeen, after the start of hostilities with the CS... it ranged from military objective scenarios (hold this position while we muster reinforcements, destroy the ennemy's entrenched missile launch facilities...) to adventures in search of artifacts useful for the war (like we found the Moebius, but had to give it to Zurvan for safekeeping... good thing Thoth is always tagging along with us, or some other artifacts we went to vamp haunted Mexico to fetch)

Quote from: KnightskyYou forgot the "blow shit up" model.  

The "blow shit up" model is certainly a valid and easy to use one for Rifts, and just about any version of Rifts will have some elements of that model.    Speaking for myself, that particular model never really worked for campaign play in my games.  It was great for one shots, though.

On the other hand, it worked rather well for me in Robotech.  Sometimes we could have a great game just by doing space battles with waves of Invid scouts to kill.  Of course, our characters in that game were better defined.

Quote from: Svartalfonly Rifts campaign I took part in was a mercenary campaign where the group worked as elite commando and special agents for Tolkeen, after the start of hostilities with the CS... it ranged from military objective scenarios (hold this position while we muster reinforcements, destroy the ennemy's entrenched missile launch facilities...) to adventures in search of artifacts useful for the war (like we found the Moebius, but had to give it to Zurvan for safekeeping... good thing Thoth is always tagging along with us, or some other artifacts we went to vamp haunted Mexico to fetch)

That's an almost unique thing to me.  I started Rifts back when it launched in 1990, and never really met anyone who did anything with Tolkeen.  Was this campaign before or after the SoT books came out?

Were all the PCs basically straight military tech types, or was there the typical Rifts rif-raff mix of tech, D-bee, and supernatural?

And here's a little something I wanted to throw into the ring that really didn't fit into a reply:


One problem I always had when trying to run Rifts was the sourcebook factor.  I'm told it exists for every other game, but Rifts is the only one I ever noticed it in.

To put it simply, the "sourcebook problem" is this:  A new sourcebook comes out.  The players see the cool new character types in the new book and get enthusiastic about it.  So, they suicide their existing characters (or otherwise endeavor to end the current campaign) so they can make new ones from the latest book.

AFAIK (I came in after it started, and moved on before it was done) it started after the SoT books came out, taking place withing the framework of the official war... what we did during the Wizards' revenge was not pretty.

and we were not military types, though many mempbers were outstanding combatants... we had an oni ninja from the 3 galaxies, a psi warrior, a gunfighter or gunslinger from the new west... and I was the most tech oriented type, being a psi tech (then again, as a demigod, I doubled as the resident line walker) ...

The sourcebook factor is also referred to as power creep, as in the power level creeps up and makes older books semi-worthless.  

It exists in many (most?) games.  For example, D&D, 2E.  Characters with good kits were better than standard characters.  Then the Skill & Powers rubbish came out and allowed much stronger characters.

I think what happens is that designers want to add cooler and cooler stuff to addons to attract buyers.

Quote from: GabrielOne problem I always had when trying to run Rifts was the sourcebook factor.  I'm told it exists for every other game, but Rifts is the only one I ever noticed it in.

To put it simply, the "sourcebook problem" is this:  A new sourcebook comes out.  The players see the cool new character types in the new book and get enthusiastic about it.  So, they suicide their existing characters (or otherwise endeavor to end the current campaign) so they can make new ones from the latest book.

Never noticed that... true, when the Unearthed Arcana came out for Ad&D1, a lot of new characters were created from it, and old characters were quick to use the new options and spells... but I never saw anybody in a regular campaign ditch an old and advanced character (in any game) so as to make a new one from the new stuff... When I was young, the customs in my city's gaming groups did not allow it (some extreme cases saw characters join high level groups at 1st level, and survive... and there was a definite bias against charactes joining the general pool if they had been created above beginner level)...  of course, with Rifts, each new book gave me ideas for interesting characters, but by the time I found a group, most of those were oldish... and I've given up palladium games until I find a group I really feel good with.

Actually, Nicephorus, the trouble mentioned by Gabriel is not power creep per se (the general evolution towards a high power game, even at relatively low level, from adding ever more powerful character classes, spells and abilities, equipment... and opponent) but a consequence from it in which players would ditch old and experienced characters to chreate, from scratch, new, high level from creation, characters, using the latest power creeped options ...

I've never witnessed it first hand and properly ... though I've seen my share of players who tried to play "toilet risen" characters in general games (but I never knew for sure) ... but I can attest to power creep in Rifts products (peaking in the Carella books which, interestingly, still managed to be among the best published) ... and I'm rather faithful to my fantasies about human looking Ogre maxi men from Atlantis, demigods, and characters from the three galaxy universe.

Quote from: GabrielTo put it simply, the "sourcebook problem" is this:  A new sourcebook comes out.  The players see the cool new character types in the new book and get enthusiastic about it.  So, they suicide their existing characters (or otherwise endeavor to end the current campaign) so they can make new ones from the latest book.

I am told that the reason D&D's prestige classes only come into play at later level is precisely to avoid, or at least mitigate, this problem.

Last time I played Rifts I was in high school.

DM let my play a great horned dragon :heh:

I liked the concept of Rifts.

The Games I have ran have been interlocking ones (within the same campaign universe, but with different character groups that sometimes interact) along the "Build a universe" model. In fact, the campaign started when there was only the first 3 books to work with, and was effectively a sequel to the 4 year long, covering the period 2016-Reflex Point, Robotech game I had just completed. One of the influences on the game idea was "Tunnel in the Sky" By Robert Heinlein (with a bit of the Lazarus Long universe's ideas woven into it).

It was 2052 in a post-Invid Robotech universe, and the children (and some grandchildren) of NPCs and PCs from my campaign were about to set out on a first contact mission to one of the few worlds of the Former Robotech Empire that survived the was between the Invid and surviving Zentraedi, post-Dolza.

What they got, however, was an encounter with a dimensional anomaly that dumped 12 4-person teams and the group's AI into Rifts Earth in December of P.A. 98. Two other teams escaped the anomaly, and a fifteenth team attempted to Fold out of the anomaly, and ended up in an alternate Robotech universe in 2014.

While a good deal of the story centered on the finding of a place to set up shop, and exploring this strange altered Earth, there were also a lot of personal stories going on within the teams - relationships starting and ending (or broken apart from the accident putting the persons in different dimensions), children being born, the search for communication back home, and accepting their place in the new world. Some of the Rifts PCs in the group were ones the group recruited as front people for their operations, or rescued from dire straits. A nice, comfortable mixture that could be as grunt-dirty or as sappy as the players wanted at the time of the game session, as each player controlled the 4 PCs from one of the 12 teams, as well as a smattering of "locals". By the time the campaign went on hiatus (we still advance things through discussion more than game play when 3 or more of us get together), there were some world tour elements, one group having visited South America and Tritonia (the former, through an Atlantean character being from Manoa). another to Europe.

Eventually, after about 7 years in-game time, events conspired to cause a crossover event with the team lost in the alternate Robotech universe, the team there (NPCs) having assembled a Dirty Dozen/Black Sheep type squadron that instigated major change - before discovering that the universe they were in had changed from thier world's history millenia before their arrival, and led to encounters with a group of semi-demonic-controlled Tyrolean spin-offs, bent on conquering the lost homeworld - and whom were trading in the Splynn Dimensional Market on Rifts Earth. The campaign was poised to become multi-dimensional at that point, but we lost several players, one of whom moved to Perth, Australia (but, frankly, he'd gotten so out of character with his characters, it would have been difficult to reconcile his actions).

My most recent attempt to write up these adventures and their settings in game stat form is located at Morlock Productions

Quote from: Basara_549The Games I have ran...

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The "Robotech Guys Crashing in Rifts" is almost a genre unto itself.  

I love stories like yours.  I hear them all the time, but they reek of so much fun.  Sometimes it makes me wonder if a greater number of people didn't approach Rifts like my group did, and you seem to have.

In other words, we looked at Rifts as an expansion for Robotech.  Come to think of it, the more Rifts has drifted into the realm of metaplot and further from the "bits you can drop into Robtech" the more I've had a problem with it and the less I've enjoyed it.

The longest term Rifts games I've run were actually extended (years worth of adventures) side trips of Robotech characters.