This link leads to be video review of the book.

Rifts Ultimate Edition

Imagine if you watching a race – a peculiar race. Before you is the large circular track and lined up at the starting line are two Olympic level athletics, a 1965 Ford pickup, a 1999 Camero with a nitro burner modification for the engine, a guy on a pogo stick and for some reason a sailboat, lying on its side. And even the Nostalgia Chick's Robot.

The race begins... and somehow the boat wins.

Right, "Rifts"...

"Rifts" is a setting published by Palladium Books and it is also a modification of the rules system employed by Palladium Books. Since it first appeared, "Rifts" has been Palladium Book's most successfully line, selling well enough to help the company survive some deep troubles and even enjoying flirting with Hollywood. The setting enjoys a wide fan base.

In other news, the Edsel is actually an aesthetical pleasing vehicle.

Rifts, as a variation on the Palladium Books mechanics and a setting appeared in 1990. It, like most works from Palladium Books, was the brainchild of company founder and circus master Kevin Siembieda.
Palladium Books released Rifts Ultimate Edition in 2005 and Siembieda intended the work to serve as a basic introduction to the setting, a compilation of some of the best works of the line and story update to the setting.

Rifts Ultimate Edition internal arrangement is horrendous and considering it is worse than the internal arrangement of the original Rift books, unforgivable. The table of contents is accurate – to a degree – but given that shotguns produce more coherence than this books possesses, the table of contents manages to be both vital and within spitting distance of useless. Going over the index – which is actually part of the table of contents – makes me want to sharpen my hatchet and clean my guns.

To reiterate something said before, a work might be home to a brilliant idea, but if the work is badly organized and difficult to navigate, then that idea does no one any god damned good. That is, sadly, this book in fucking spades. Responsibility for the internal organization lies solely at the feet of Siembieda, who also apparently did the lion's share of the writing.

Moving on... the art is glorious. The art ranges from average and good to great and occasionally stunning. For example, the dragon image on page 351 is a mediocre piece by the standards of Rifts Ultimate Edition, the image on 343 is among the greats as are the wonderful full color images. The art, by the way, comes from Kent Burles, Kevin Long, Matt Thompson and April Lee, among many others. The art should be better placed through the work, as there are too many gray pages without art, but this is the responsibility of the layout people and not the artists themselves.

In story terms the setting is another post apocalypse, though one of the better examples of that genre. Specifically humanity grows socially, economically and technologically for another century or so, when a war destroys the world as we know it through not only the devastation of science fiction weapons but by the accidental unleashing of a magical Armageddon. This horror opens portals to other worlds and dimensions, in addition to burning down cities and ruining everyone's account at Netflix.
300 some odd years on, some civilization has been rebuilt, some by wizards, some by robots, some by aliens that want to plant eggs in your brain and some by a fascist government called the Coalition. Everyone thrashes against everyone as they all inch by inch try to take over the world... and run across ruins inhabited by monsters and demons and mimes and other face-eating horrors.

Some of the nominal villains of the setting are those Fascists in the Coalition. They have a bigger skull motif than did the Nazis, their emperor's name is Prozak – which is awesome – and while they might have a stick up their ass, they are dedicated to humanity on a world crawling with crawling things that want to eat humans. Pick your poison and the Coalition is one of the lesser poisons.

Also, in my home games in the setting I replace the skull motif with a happy face motif, because I think it is creepier to have the human-zealot kill crazy solider running around wearing great big yellow happy face masks.

• Evil Overlord Rule 29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

I am not a fan of post apocalypse settings, but Rifts does that part well and the setting is actually sweet. Whatever you may about post apocalypse settings, at least they spare us commercials.


Now we move on from the art and story aspects of the setting to the issues of game mechanics.

Where to begin with the mechanics....

No one creates a game in a vacuum; all tabletop role-playing games are to some degree a response to other games. The Palladium Book system – also known as the Megaversal system of some version of it is employed in all of their books – is apparently a vague recreation of AD&D in many respects, including the appearance and use of classes, the basic idea of character skills and attributes, how experience points work and other aspects in the Palladium Book system.

Since Rifts appeared on the market, the Dungeons and Dragons system has undergone three renovations and is in the process of another. For that matter, White Wolf's original Vampire the Masquerade, which appeared about a year after Rifts, has also undergone several renovations to make the game mechanics more user friendly. However, 20 plus years on and the Palladium Books system still feels like a more user hostile version of AD&D. Please think about that for a moment.

Character creation in Rifts is a punishing exercise in both math and page flipping. The table of contents and index will be of little use to you in the process.

A standard D&D group will have fighters, magic users, thieves and healers. Supporting game balance is not asking for all of them to be equal down to the metric milliliter. However, in a straight battle between the classes a D&D fighter would only probably win as compared to definitively win. Further, the fighter, the magic user, the thief and the healer have important functions. The healer might not get much love, but a party without one will either be going through the healing potions quickly or be dead quickly.

By comparison, there is no attempt at any kind of balance in the classes for Rifts, or a compelling reason for all the classes. The ones called OCC, or occupational character classes, are relatively sane in terms of powers and abilities. The RCC, or radical character classes are not and including everything for cyborgs, dragons to killer robots. Siembieda has said that in the real world a person on will not last long against a tank or attack helicopter. This is true – but what other games make those not vehicles with a rare use, but out right characters on their own? This is much like taking the Terminator robot and then pairing it up with Merry and Pippin and then being surprised when the group implodes people comment on the utter lack of game balance.

In many instances, the rules are not clear when they should be clear. For example, it takes several readings to understand how psychic combat actually works. The skill system is pointlessly obtuse and there are redundant types of hit points that slow combat as a game function. To be fair, some of the rules here do make sense and do work on the first reading – this includes the Horror Factor, a save against a difficult if your character faces something horrible man was not meant to see, such as a tentacled thing from another dimension or even worse, 4chan.

The inefficient, badly laid out rules do actually work, after a fashion, but they require much more work than is required – or at least they required much more work than most other systems available on the market today.
Simple systems are easier to adapt and use than wonky and complicated systems. Engines such as Savage Worlds, True20 and even Fate do not provide all the answers to all mechanical questions, there is an expectation the participants, the players, and the game master, will hashing things out. This does not detract from the relative simplicity and elegance of these systems.

However, Palladium Books – which is to say Siembieda – is aggressive in fighting the distribution of fan-made conversions of his games to other systems. So Siembieda, who enjoys a reputation as a capable game master because he plays loose with the rules, fights people attempting to make the rules and the setting more user friendly.

Where does this end?

It ends with me giving Rifts Ultimate Edition a 5 on a d20 roll. Good art and good ideas in the book are not enough to save the work and for that matter not enough to earn the work a 10. Rifts Ultimate Edition marked the 15 anniversary of the line but it shows little to no improvement over its first appearance on any level.

A retread of old complaints does not a review make. Sorry, but I see a lot of opinion and not a lot of objective information. That read like every Palladium thread on RPGnet ever.

Regarding game balance, I see the wild disparity in power in the Rifts character class roster, and I consider it the ultimate argument against the cult of game balance über alles. This is a game in which a dragon and a mecha pilot can team up with a hobo and a scientist (not even a mad scientist or super-scientist. Just a scientist), and still there's room for everyone to do their things if the GM has a minimum of imagination.

Still, I agree with the essential idea that RUE was a huge missed opportunity for a major clean-up. I think the Palladium system isn't really as bad as it's often made out to be, just abysmally edited and laid out. PFRPG 1e had skill levels and hand-to-hand combat modifiers laid out as tables rather than level-by-level increments, which was an order of magnitude easier to read and sped chargen considerably. God only knows why they went with the current presentation.

The lack of balance in rifts is one of the main selling points for me. The people who always crow the boring old "if this class and this class fought one on one, it wouldn't be a contest." It's a dumb argument and lazy.

Classes in Rifts don't compliment each other? You have Fighters (Glitter Boys, Dragon Hatchlings, Headhunters), Clerics/Magic Users (Line Walkers, Shifters, Warlocks, etc), Healers (Body Fixers, Cyber Docs, Operators), and Thieves (City Rat, Vagabond).

I've run Rifts games for nigh on 20 years and never had a problem with "balance."

Also, his name is Prosek, not Prozac. RCC stands for Racial Character Class (because they are non-human races), not Radical Character Class.

And as the author says (and encourages) throughout the book, Game Masters should use and not use whatever they want. Everything is optional.

I completely agree with you about the layout and organization. It's, to be frank, fucking appalling. I also like the idea of smiley faces instead of skulls.

I agree that this is a fairly crappy review.  It certainly wouldn't encourage me to send any material for review to the author.

That said, I do personally strongly prefer the original edition to the "ultimate edition" of RIFTS.

I'm not accepting valuations of how much Rifts sucks from anyone unless they can suggest another system which would let me run a Rifts game that works as well or better.
The race analogy was entertaining though.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;634953I'm not accepting valuations of how much Rifts sucks from anyone unless they can suggest another system which would let me run a Rifts game that works as well or better.
The race analogy was entertaining though.

Almost any system at all. Savage Worlds and True20 come to mind.

Read my review at The Banning Place and see if you like it better.  

JG

Quote from: GrumpyReviews;635019Almost any system at all. Savage Worlds and True20 come to mind.

I'm fond-ish of Savage Worlds (played/ran about 10 sessions, went through a superannoying fanboi phase) but I'm not sure about running Rifts with it.
I'm in an online Rifts/Palladium game at the moment that we've considered switching to SW, as it happens, but its something that I would have reservations about because its hard to build Rifts power level characters (e.g.  SW spell users have far fewer powers, having lots of hit points doesn't convert well with damage rolls exploding). Also, bennies and the lack of a non-combat skill system grate me a bit.

True20 I don't know - not familiar enough with it to say. I'd grant that possibly you could run Rifts with say M&M, though not really to my taste.

Quote from: James Gillen;635038Read my review at The Banning Place and see if you like it better.  

JG

Seems OK, maybe needs more mega-damage

Quote from: RPGPundit;634932I agree that this is a fairly crappy review.  It certainly wouldn't encourage me to send any material for review to the author.

That said, I do personally strongly prefer the original edition to the "ultimate edition" of RIFTS.

I do as well, but I can run either pretty easily. You just ignore the stuff you don't need, same as any RPG. That's a basic gamemastery skill that seems to be overlooked a lot.

FWIW, I enjoy the lack of balance, and find the rules extremely simple in actual play. I like to call Rifts "the place rules lawyers go to die".

A question for the reviewer: how much actual play experience do you have with Rifts? Just curious.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;635046I'm in an online Rifts/Palladium game at the moment that we've considered switching to SW, as it happens, but its something that I would have reservations about because its hard to build Rifts power level characters (e.g.  SW spell users have far fewer powers, having lots of hit points doesn't convert well with damage rolls exploding). Also, bennies and the lack of a non-combat skill system grate me a bit.

I did a brief stint with RIFTS under a customized D6 system, and capturing the feel of the system was a huge issue.  We had mega damage problems, and character balance issues.  While SW seems to have more structure for its power system and more examples to use for conversions, I'm not convinced it wouldn't have the same exact issues.

There's 'something' about that mess that is, at its core, 'awesome'.  RIFTS reminds me of this girl I knew from the next town over.  She was so attractive, so easy, and oh so much fun, but it never felt 'right' with her.  Guilt, I guess.

Can't speak for everyone, but the sheer imbalance between classes is a huge part of the Rifts experience for me. When you convert the game to point-buy mechanics or to carefully balanced systems, you no longer have the subversive professor and the mecha pilot, or the dragon and the hobo adventuring together.

Once the characters are "balanced", "balancing" their opponents inevitably follows. Big gun parties of Dragons and Glitter Boys will tend to take on cosmic menaces, probably missing out on much of the post-apocalyptic experience of e.g. protecting a struggling community from bandits, monsters or the Coalition. Little guys will see to these problems but will be way out of their league when facing off against the Splugorth or other heavyweights of evil. Having a mixed party allows everyone to experience a bit of both IME.

This review reads more as some sort of "why this game is not for me/why I think RIFTS sucks" than an actual review.

RIFTS's great if you are into the post-apoc gonzo trip with "whatever goes" throwing ninjas and mutants and mechas and all sorts of shit together and making it a coherent campaign on your own, and "we'll make this shit up as we go" rather than "carefully balanced this" and "streamlined" that. People who want the former will like RIFTS, people who want the latter will just glare at the pages wondering WTF it's all about.

I like RIFTS out of sheer contrariness.

Quote from: Piestrio;635463I like RIFTS out of sheer contrariness.

I think one would have to.

JG