In an attempt to examine many gamers' prejudices- including my own- against the Palladium System in general and RIFTS in particular, I decided to review a friend's copy of RIFTS Ultimate Edition Main Book.  This is not the softcover with the classic Keith Parkinson picture of a Splugorth Slaver Barge, but the hardcover with another "alien intelligence" on the front and a large amount of new text, setting updates and several new pages of art showing scenes from all over the RIFTS Earth.

As with most Palladium books, this one begins with a list of Contents which is in order, more or less, including sub-headings under each subject.  However this is followed by a "Quick Find Mini-Index" which is an index in the same way that a Moped is a motor vehicle- it fits the technical definition, but it barely does the job.  For instance it mentions "Demons" but only under the heading "Demons, Controlling (see Shifter)".  Dragons are listed under "Dragons", "Dragon Hand-to-Hand Combat" and "Dragon Hatchlings" and only on four pages.  Psionics are referenced only under "Psionic Power Descriptions" and "Psionics: Cyber-Knight" even though there are more psionic classes, including those who have access to powers that Cyber-Knights don't get.

Then the main text begins.  The world is described as being a scientific paradise 100 years in our future, until an apocalypse occurs: "The movie The Day After Tomorrow meets Nightmare on Elm Street."  Lines of "blue energy" created dimensional rifts that not only allowed dimensional invaders to enter the world, but altered the land and spurred strange magical and psionic changes in nature and humans.  And then the setting skips ahead 300 years, when the RIFTS Earth has stabilized and become a nexus point for travel within the dimensional "Megaverse."

Starting from page 10, the setting is described from the first-person journals of one Erin Tarn, an amateur historian whose works are nonetheless important in an age when few people research history or even know how to read.  However page 13 also begins a short story, "Erin Tarn: Criminal or Heroic Visionary?"  This is set in a town called El Dorado where a town council debate was held on the subject of whether to join the Coalition States - the closest thing to a civilized government in post-apocalypse America, despite the fact that it crushes any dissent, demonizes not only monsters but even near-human dimensional refugees ('D-Bees') and deliberately patterned itself after Nazi Germany.  In the meeting it is pointed out that the Coalition doesn't allow people to have access to the historical records that would allow this and other facts to be made known, to which the Coalition's official spokesmen point out that because most people cannot read, that requires the historical record to be "properly" interpreted by means of visual presentations (propaganda) that are easily disseminated and viewed.  This argument ends up winning over a crowd that cares more about security from the monsters outside the walls than anything else.

I mention this piece because it gets at part of many gamers' love-hate relationship with RIFTS, which usually boils down to the statement, "I love the setting, I just wish it had a better system."  Because in the middle of all the Glitter Boys, Crazies, Mega-Damage and Dragon Hatchlings, there's an attempt at substance here and a willingness to raise serious subjects.  In this case, the fact that some things we now take for granted- free speech, democracy, the right to an education- can all be destroyed if the populace was never aware of them, or HAD them but willingly threw them away.  I dare say such a statement is all the more relevant to a modern American political culture where many people are more swayed by appeals to passion and hate than by appeals to reason and multidimensional arguments.

Of course, I could make the same points in defense of the Star Wars prequels, and we all know how those turned out.

Anyway, after that interlude, the text begins the presentation of A World Overview in which Tarn updates her unofficial observations of the world as of 100 PA (Post-Apocalypse?) and brings the record up to 109 PA.  The principal change between this and the travelogue that was shown in the original RIFTS book is that the Coalition (based in Iowa-Central Illinois) started a war with the magical city-state of Tolkeen (around the Minneapolis-St. Paul area) and destroyed that land despite its use of magic and monsters, due to the Coalition's overwhelming superiority in numbers, military hardware and tactics.  This "Coalition War" (detailed in several Palladium sourcebooks) is the principal event of the recent period, tipping the balance of power and building the hubris of an already dangerous and aggressive government.

Other than that the text is brief in most areas, and very brief in others.  Again, it is from Tarn's personal viewpoint, so much of the lands that she has no knowledge of are given only summary one-or-two paragraph descriptions, whereas the Great Lakes-to-Quebec area is quite detailed along with the "Magic Zone" dominated by the demoniac Federation of Magic.

In addition to some typographical errors (which, compared to a lot of games I've seen, really aren't too glaring) the text is also often marked by an odd trait that is apparently peculiar to Kevin Siembieda's prose.  It's where he starts with a sentence and then just ends it.  Continuing on to a related point using a separate complete sentence. When the text would be better constructed as an extension of the original sentence.  Perhaps linked by means of a comma.

There is also nothing in the way of "political" maps to help explain where the various entities are in relation to the modern map of the US and Canada.  This supplemental material is actually available in the RIFTS Game Master Guide, but as I've said elsewhere, that just raises the question of how something can be an "Ultimate" book if it ends up needing a sequel.

After all this, on page 41, RIFTS Ultimate Edition gets to The Characters.  That is, how to make them.  In this section, Siembieda begins with Game Designer's Notes in which he points out that gamers are more sophisticated these days "and seem to wonder about the construction and logic behind certain game mechanics, rules and design choices."  In the same way that many historians wonder why Napoleon didn't bring more winter gear to Russia.  But in the notes, the author states that when he first started role-playing, he'd observed that the best games and best systems were ones that put the player characters and their stories first- and so when he designed his own game, it had to be PC-centered in such a way that the system fell into the background and had a "strong, but flexible foundation" in order to accommodate all the possibilities of a game world, which is that much more important in the setting of RIFTS.  He also admits that: "If there is a downside to this character and story driven system, it's that the character creation process takes time.  I make no apologies for that, because it is intentional and  important to create the vivid gaming system I want to impart."  Which would seem to defeat the purpose of "rules (that) needed to be as subtle and invisible as possible" but what the hey.

In terms of the actual Occupational Character Classes, or OCCs, you have Men at Arms ('Note: Also see Coalition OCCs in the CS section'), Adventurers & Scholars (relatively normal guys), Practitioners of Magic, Psychics (again, the Cyber-Knight is not a Psychic class, but an example of a Man at Arms class that just happens to have some psionic powers.  Thus my issues with the pseudo-index) and Racial Character Class (of which the only example is Dragon Hatchling– so you've got a race which is actually an OCC) and the Coalition Soldier OCCs, which despite being soldiers are apparently not Men at Arms.

In reviewing the OCCs, two points come to my mind.  First, there is absolutely no attempt to make the characters balanced with each other.  To some extent this is intentional on the author's part.  He says, "Of course there has to be game balance, but complete equality for all characters, never.  Every character in Rifts is deliberately designed to have unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses."  Problem is that there seems to be a confusion of absolute equality with game balance, or more precisely a confusion as to how game balance works.

For instance the design notes refer to a setting rivalry between the Crazies and the Juicers, two latter-day variations on the perennial super-soldier project.  The Juicers are given a combination of nanotech and injected chemical boosts to make them supreme killing machines, at the price of suffering complete physical burnout and death before age 30.  Whereas Crazies shave their heads and get metal cybernetic implants fixed in their skulls, causing them to look like Lady Gaga at the Grammy Awards .  These implants tap bio-feedback mechanisms that increase the subjects' physical and psionic abilities, at the cost of making them more and more insane as they gain experience.  Again, much like Lady Gaga.

Which of these drawbacks is a more crippling "game balancer"?  One would think the Juicer's reduced lifespan, except considering that the GM can control the span of game time between adventures and thus drag out a Juicer PC's date of reckoning, whereas a Crazy's insanity progresses as he gains levels, which is a factor not necessarily related to time but is more relevant to ongoing game play.  It's sort of like how AD&D "balanced" vanilla Humans with the good-at-everything Elves by only allowing Elves to go up so many levels (which makes no sense considering their immortality) and allowed Humans to achieve any class and level, limited only by their mortality- when the length of most campaigns would barely allow a Human PC to become middle-aged, let alone elderly.

In other words, "game balance" is not necessarily a factor of what's in the rules, because what's printed in the rules doesn't always correspond to how the game turns out, and in the absence of GM-enforced campaign limits (which something like RIFTS seems intended to dispense with) you tend to have PC groups leaning towards the most powerful or "game the system" concepts.  If for instance you converted the RIFTS setting to HERO System- which I'm not actually recommending, by the way- it'd be giving everyone a chance to play the 100 pt. Normal characters with a few Skill Packages for post-apocalypse survival AND the superhero-level Dragon Hatchlings and full-conversion Combat Cyborgs.  Easy choice for most people.  I mean, yes, at one point the Justice League comic had Dr. Fate in the same team as the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, but that didn't last long and that doesn't mean it would work in an RPG.

The second point is that whereas some ideas are either truly new (the Elemental Fusionist, similar to the Palladium Fantasy game's Warlock) or necessary expansions of what came before (the rules for the Shifter's specialization in dimensional rifts and pacts with alien entities), most of this is the same as it was, only more so.  So now Cyber-Knights, in addition to being Men at Arms with their own skills and minor psionics, get a specialized "Cyber-Knight Zen Combat" style that amps their abilities against foes with electronic sensors.  In addition to the chance to play a Dragon Hatchling PC, the Dragon apparently has its own style of Hand-to-Hand combat.  Which of course is not detailed in the RCC's section, but in the much later combat rules- even though Cyber-Knight Zen Combat IS detailed in that OCC's section.
If the basic principle of the first RIFTS was to turn the volume up to 11, the Ultimate Edition is apparently about turning it up to 12.  Even when the amplifier in this case only goes up to 8.

At this point I was going to focus on the Psionics rules.  Which logically enough are presented after the rules for Psychic OCCs.  But also after the rules for the Practitioners of Magic.  Psionics rules are in turn before the rules for Magic spells but both are before the rules for Coalition Military OCCs.  I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.  Or rather, a complete lack of one.

In any case, a Psychic character uses a different game mechanic for his powers than a magic-using class.  The Psychic gets a certain number of Inner Strength Points (ISP) depending on his overall power level.  Powers are not organized by level like D&D spells, but by category: Healing, Sensitive, Physical and Super (the latter being especially powerful abilities used only by dedicated Psychics like the Mind Melter OCC).  These abilities in turn can be measured in power roughly by how much ISP they cost to use.  Resist Hunger, for instance, is 2 ISP for 6 hours while Mentally Possess Others is 30 ISP with a duration of 5 minutes per experience level.

Magic is similar but not identical in operation.  Magic-using characters have a certain amount of PPE or Potential Psychic Energy (even though this ISN'T the energy used for Psychic/psionic powers... which by this point, is just par for the course) and while spells are measured in terms of level (up to 15th, along with 'Spells of Legend') they can also be measured by how much PPE they need to cast.  In some cases the expenditure is in the three-to-FOUR-digit point cost, which in the fashion of swords-and-sorcery often takes special measures, like proximity to a ley line or the sacrifice of a high-PPE being, to procure that power for the spell.  In this case the use of spell level doesn't mean too much given that even a low-level caster might theoretically learn a 10th-level spell and cast it assuming he had enough PPE to do so.  However the rules assume that most Practitioners of Magic learn a certain number of spells of a certain spell level every time they gain an experience level.  (It is much more rare for Psychics to gain new Psychic powers after character creation, but then there are a lot fewer Psychic powers.)


"Hans, I've just noticed something... have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?  Are we the BADDIES?"
-Mitchell & Webb

After the Magic rules you get an extended section on The Coalition States, specifically the leading power of Chi-Town.  And while Siembieda through Erin Tarn points out just how dangerous it is and how much of a power-lusting despot its current Emperor is, he also gives several design notes where he expounds at length on how the Coalition could be considered the good guys, at least from their own surrounded-and-indoctrinated perspective.  The key here is in the author's statement on designing the Coalition as the main villainous force in the setting: "I wanted a human monster."  In this argument, it is possible to use Coalition NPCs to present shades of grey in the form of loyal soldiers who come to their own conclusions about the nature of the regime they serve, or even to play AS Coalition soldiers and be forced to encounter troubling and dramatic situations.  But then, you're still playing guys in black armor with skull motifs.  In addition to the necessary rules for both the Coalition Military OCCs (including the Dog Boys) and the Coalition Military gear, you also get similar lists for generic armor, weapons and vehicles from non-Coalition suppliers.

On 274 the section on Game Rules starts.  As in, the section where every other roleplaying game tells you what a roleplaying game is, and how it works if you've never played one before.  The book advises not to over-think matters, and just pick an OCC to build your character and get into the action.  And if you want to play a superhero or something else that isn't given here, you can convert, because "All of Palladium's games use the same basic rules".  Except that Heroes Unlimited (the superhero game), The Palladium Fantasy RPG and even the last edition of RIFTS were better organized than RIFTS Ultimate Edition.  Maybe they're thinking that you can put the "what is an RPG?" stuff in the middle of the copy because anyone reading this book has probably started with the prior edition of RIFTS or another game, but I don't know why you would make that assumption.  If you did, it would then beg the question of why you needed the introductory stuff at all.  This section also has a brief glossary of "Notable Game & Rifts Terms" which is about as incomplete as everything else.  It does however have a few pointers on the game basics.

Palladium's rule system is similar to both the old AD&D rules and the newer, streamlined approach of D20 System, only without the streamlining.  Characters get eight attributes: I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient), M.E. (Mental Endurance), M.A. (Mental Affinity, basically charisma), P.S. (Physical Strength), P.P. (Physical Prowess, or dexterity), P.E. (Physical Endurance), P.B. (Physical Beauty) and Spd (Speed, or character movement rate).  The book says the stats are supposed to be rolled with straight 3d6, in that order, except that if your first roll on an attribute is a natural 16, 17 or 18, you get to roll another d6 and add that, and do that again (but only once more) if that bonus die comes up 6.  As with D20 system, characters above a certain attribute score (in this case, 15) get bonuses to relevant abilities.  Unlike D20, the bonuses are not the same across the board (an 18 ME gives +2 to save vs. psionic attack but an 18 PS gives +3 to melee damage) and are not even the same kind of bonus across the board (an 18 MA gives a 50% chance to get an NPC to trust you but an 18 PE gives +6% save vs. coma or death AND a +2 save vs. poison.  Oh that reminds me, save vs. death and save vs. poison use two different game mechanics).  In RIFTS Ultimate there are also rules for attributes of 6 or under, or the "feeble, puny and disadvantaged" range.  These have the potential to really screw a character with relevant combat or non-combat skills, although the rules do assume that the character gets a one-time bonus to one of his other stats (compensating for his deficiency in one or more traits).

Which is the least of the complications here.  Some characters' PS is "enhanced strength", more officially referred to as Augmented Strength, enhancing damage capacity over that of a normal person with the same PS.  These include Crazies and Juicers.  Robots (including Glitter Boy powered armor sets) have Robot Strength, can have greater lift capacity than their PS rating (25 times PS) and do much greater melee damage, up to Mega-Damage level.  Supernatural beings (such as Vampires and the Dragon Hatchling RCC) get Supernatural Strength, which gets lift capacity of 50 times PS and normally does Mega-Damage with any attack.  Mega-Damage is literally a factor of 100 over not-so-mega damage, which in most Palladium games is a factor of Structural Durability Points.  Thus, most SDC attacks do little if anything to a Mega-Damage structure (including most supernatural beings...) while even a 1d6 MD attack can wipe out a target with 100 SDC or more.  Needless to say, a LOT of variant RCCs and even OCCs are considered "Mega-Damage beings" and having MD armor or shielding spells is rather required for survival.

(Which again leads to the irony regarding the issue of 'game balance.'  Most of these intermediate Strength levels are holdovers from the Palladium games before RIFTS, which were intended to operate on a more 'realistic' action-hero level.  Including Heroes Unlimited.  Or should I say, especially Heroes Unlimited.)

This also means that characters operate on two different scales in damage, where regular characters have both SDC and Hit Points.  For a character, SDC represents temporary pummeling damage that gets taken off first and heals more quickly.  SDC is usually a base determined by OCC with certain training bonuses.  Hit Points represent potentially lethal damage and are built from a base of the character's PE score, usually increasing by 1d6 per level.  Once SDC and HP are gone, a character might potentially survive at a number of negative HP equal to his negative PE.  In most cases recovery of damage is 2 HP and 4 SDC per day, or more with hospital-type treatment.

Mega-Damage, again, is a factor of 100, which means that SDC weapons that do less than 100 SDC per attack (almost all of them) cannot even dent an MDC structure- including the personal armor of Coalition soldiers.  Mega-Damage, however, inflicts its rating straight to an MD defense (MDC, or Mega-Damage Capacity), basically whittling it down to nothing.  There is a "last bit" rule that states that any MD attack that blows past the last MDC points still leaves the "squishy" SDC target alive, albeit with no MDC defenses at all.

In addition to all this, there is also an option to roll for psionics, which gives a 25% of having some level of psionic ability if you hadn't already picked a class with psionic features.  You are also obliged to pick an AD&D-style alignment, which in Palladium is an interesting take on the matter; Simebieda acknowledges vigilante-type good guys and "aberrant" villains with their own codes of honor, but you can't be Neutral, since (apparently) neutrality implies a complete lack of motivation.  Instead, morally grey characters are defined as "Selfish."  (Somehow these tend to be the more popular alignments in my group's Palladium games.)

Palladium games utilize a AD&D-like experience level system, because according to the author this "simulates real life and develops the characters in such a way that they become more vivid and three-dimensional."  He points out that in his own games he usually rewards XP for using your head or being imaginative, whereas negative or foolish actions should earn no experience points.  Most OCCs have their own XP tables or share tables with closely related OCCs.  This is on a scale where the Coalition Grunt takes 1950 XP to get past 1st level and the Dragon Hatchling takes 3000, and experience rewards range from 50 (for a 'minor menace') to 400 for a major menace (relative to compared levels and numbers) with several other types of XP rewards possible for good roleplaying or planning.  There are also several random tables here for things like character's birth order, attitudes towards the Coalition, attitudes toward D-Bees, etc.

Then you get the Skill Rules. Palladium games organize character classes (including RCCs) largely in terms of what skills they should get, with a character's primary skill set being his OCC Skills (which usually get bonuses),  elective skills being OCC Related Skills (selected off a small list, with some also getting bonuses) and another list of Secondary Skills.  The base OCC Skills list doesn't get any new skills with level but the OCC usually lists additional skill slots a character gets for the other two lists at given experience levels.

However, most skills rolls are on a percentile dice system with the skill having a base percentage plus x% per experience level (roll under a percentage, maximum chance of success is usually 98%).  When a character picks up a new skill after advancing an experience level he is considered to start that skill at first level proficiency; that is, if a given skill has a Base Chance of 36% + 4%, then the character starts with a chance of 40%, with 44% at second level, and so on, but if he picked up that skill at 3rd level, it would start at the 40% chance, not 48%.  Note that some skills, namely Physical skills, do not work on this system, with some of these (like Body Building & Weight Lifting) simply providing a straight bonus to attributes and SDC to reflect physical conditioning. Thus in my experience I'd recommend using one's initial Secondary Skills (which do not get any special bonuses) to load up on such non-percentile rolled abilities and recognize that the skill system works on a priority with one's "required" skills being in the base package with the highest bonuses and best percentages because you start at 1st level with them, with anything else being on a lower success chance because you learned it later or it was a lower priority for the character's training.  A master list of skills (with percentage roll bases) begins on page 302, with detailed descriptions following.

After the Skill rules there is also an extensive set of rules for Insanity, which the author stresses are optional, but appropriate for most Palladium games, especially RIFTS, where PCs are going to be encountering sanity-bending monstrosities on a regular basis, some of whom are not them.  I'm glad Siembieda emphasizes that these rules are an option, and not intended to simulate real mental illness, but in any case like a lot of mechanics that rely on random rolls, these have the potential to paralyze a  PC or make him a liability to others at the worst possible moments.  This section also includes rules for addiction and withdrawal, which are probably going to be more usable.

After all this the book gets to the Combat Rules.  As in D20, most combat rolls (including saving throws for effects like psionic attacks) are where you have to roll on a D20 and add bonuses to get above a certain number.  These rules include initiative rolls for each character, which may or may not get bonuses for one's combat abilities or OCC.  A character with initiative picks a target and rolls D20 to hit.  Note that the roll only needs to be higher than 4 to strike, but there are several other dynamics involved.

First, if the target is using SDC armor, the armor usually has an Armor Rating that you have to exceed with your attack roll, so that for instance if a thick suit of armor has an AR of 17,  you need to exceed that 17 with your attack roll to bypass the armor; if you hit the target but do not exceed the AR then your damage goes against the SDC of his armor and damages it until it gets beaten down.  (Of course in the Mega-Damage environment of RIFTS, this rule is practically obsolete, but ya never know.)

The defender also has the option to parry or dodge.  The difference is that a defender can technically parry melee attacks as many times as needed without using up one of his attack actions, assuming of course he has something to parry with (parrying bare-handed gets no special parry bonuses, parrying an MD weapon with an SDC weapon usually doesn't work, and parrying an MD weapon bare-handed REALLY doesn't work).  A dodge could be performed against any attack with no special requirements, but uses up one of the defender's attacks.  Parry and dodge also use different modifiers depending on the character's combat skills.  (The book also mentions the option to entangle or grab the attacker's weapon or arm, but it's not really specific as to how it works.)  There is also the option to roll with the attack, but this also takes up one melee action and requires the defender to beat the attacker's hit roll total.  However if it works, rolling with the blow cuts damage by half in most cases and also mutes the effect of most critical hits (which occur on a natural 20 and on some other occasions).

Note that in these cases one's base ability in combat is determined by the Hand to Hand Combat style the character took in character creation, with most characters getting the option of a Hand to Hand: Basic style with the option to improve it to Expert with one skill pick or Martial Arts ('or Assassin, if evil alignment') with two skill slots.  A few non-combatants and Practitioner of Magic classes start with no default Hand to Hand skill, in which case they don't even get the free parry ability other characters get.  Otherwise a given style starts with a certain number of melee actions per turn (usually four) and bonuses to relevant abilities like strike, roll, etc.  Styles above Basic level allow for the use of certain kick attacks, back flips and so forth at certain experience levels.  RIFTS Ultimate also includes the Commando style, Robot (& Power Armor) combat, and the aforementioned Dragon style, which is simply a list of the basic maneuvers available to a Dragon in its natural (and very large) form, like flying by a target and carrying it off in its jaws.  With the main styles, you get various bonuses to all of the basic maneuvers, like Parry, Dodge, and Roll, and they are also cumulative with other modifiers (for instance, PP usually adds to parry, dodge and strike).  So much like D20 games, you have to add up a lot of bonuses, but unlike D20, Palladium has a lot more factors, and they aren't quite so linear or organized as in D20 System.

Even with all these elements, I actually LIKE Palladium combat.  The emphasis is not so much on hitting the opponent (which is almost assumed) but more on what tactic the defender uses against the attack, with most PCs getting plenty of options within a turn.

After this the rules go back over recovery from damage and how damage works for Mega-Damage beings and structures, along with description of the history of Mega-Damage technology development on pre-RIFTS Earth and its redevelopment by the Coalition and private entities like Wilk's (a manufacturer which actually started out selling things like laser scalpels and branched out into weapons).  In his design notes, Siembieda addresses the matter of whether the MDC system makes combat "too uneven" (I imagine he gets that question a lot).  He points out, accurately, that most of us would be dead meat against something like a tank or assault helicopter.  But then that was technically the case in pre-RIFTS systems like Heroes Unlimited where such items existed before MDC rules.  (For instance, Heroes Unlimited has a combat fighter plane listed as being 450 SDC.)  So again, Palladium sacrifices its previous commitment to realism (however arguable the results) in order to produce the "mega" atmosphere of RIFTS and then turns to realism as a defense for why the results are too unbalanced.

There are also rules for ranged combat that expand on the given Weapon Proficiency rules: Proficiencies are bought as skill slots, and while there is no penalty for using a weapon without a proficiency skill, you also don't get the bonuses that accrue with that skill (which increase with level).  This section also stipulates that if you don't have proficiency with a modern weapon, you might not know how to reload it (which I suppose would be a factor with energy weapons).  This section also includes rules for called shots, shots behind cover, dodging energy blasts (usually -10 to dodge at point-blank/10 ft. range) and so on.  Given the existence of powered armor and vehicles, there are rules for things like missile barrage (which you could dodge, theoretically, although MD barrage will do massive property damage) and surviving an air vehicle crash.

Then the game answers the question of how Psychic Combat works.  Usually the psychic character cannot affect someone in a moving vehicle or sealed system, although this obviously is not the case with some clairvoyant abilities.  It is mentioned that using a psionic power takes an attack action, although in this book it isn't mentioned if a dedicated Psychic OCC (like Mind Melter) gets a specific number of actions only for psi attacks.  Thus such characters should buy some level of Hand to Hand Combat even if it isn't otherwise appropriate.  (The same could be said of Magic characters.)  There are also rules for Horror Factor (a difficulty number save against truly terrifying threats or some spells) and detection of magic and supernatural evils.  Palladium assumes that animals are naturally sensitive to such, which is why the Coalition developed the popular "Dog Boy" soldiers to assist in sniffing out magic threats.  On the topic of perception, the book also explains how to resolve sneaking attempts when the sneaker uses a percentage skill like Prowl and the target is using a D20-based Perception roll: The character with the percentage-based skill gets a bonus of +1 for every full 10 points in his skill rounded down, then he rolls off on D20 versus the target.  In the example, a guard with +3 to Perception is targeted by a character with 65% Prowl; the prowler gets +6 to his D20 roll and the guard gets +3 to his roll, and if the guard wins he spots the prowler.  It works, but of course since Prowl is used primarily in such circumstance it raises the question of why it's even bought as a percentage skill.

Finally, there is a sort of general advice section called Tapping the Infinite, in which Siembieda reasserts that "Rifts is truly designed to be limited only by your imagination."  The general tone is that given the range of choices possible in the setting you should just go ahead and try something that appeals to you and see how it works.  This applies to both the player selecting an OCC and the GM selecting a starting campaign area, although the core materials focus on the Midwest-to-Great-Lakes area (not coincidentally, the region where Siembieda and many of his writers live).  Accordingly this brief section is followed by a Resources list of specific Palladium RIFTS titles including the Coalition Wars: Siege on Tolkeen series.  In conclusion, Siembieda states that in revisiting the RIFTS core rules with the new edition, he wanted a mix of old and new elements to reflect on what came before and add new insight and surprises: "I'm always trying to deliver the Wow Factor in my books.  Hopefully, there are numerous places where you found yourself saying, 'wow', 'cool' and 'I didn't know that.'"

SUMMARY

To get the question out of the way: Did Palladium Games kill my puppy?

No.  But it's one thing to just say a game sucks but something else for a reviewer to explain exactly WHY and in what way it's unsatisfying or insufficient.

Palladium's system DOES work.  Not elegantly or well, but it does work.  It does have limitations from characters being locked into a certain class – which in Palladium more than in other games and in RIFTS much more than in other Palladium games means you get a whole lot of "splat creep" to build what should be unique characters as members of an obscure class because the class system can't handle certain concepts otherwise- but players have been dealing with such in many other game systems.  The combat system, again, has more interesting features than "we hit each other until someone runs out of hit points."

It's just that from my own experience, the whole thing is so damn additive and cumbersome in comparison to other games that are better organized.  About the only thing that compares to it is Hackmaster, which is of course INTENDED to be a satire of an AD&D analog with similar levels of author idiosyncrasies, over-complications and glaring holes.  And even as an AD&D analog, I, and several other people, are perfectly willing to deal with The Palladium Fantasy RPG, which uses the same basic system as RIFTS.  What's the difference then?  Because the basic game is rather slapped-together as is, but still works on that level.  The more complexity and elements you throw in the more stresses you put on the system.  That's why (In My Opinion) a game like Mutants & Masterminds could only work by tossing out the D&D class/level paradigm in favor of something more like the point-buy systems like DC HEROES and Champions, because while the D20 mechanic is sound, the use of class and levels just doesn't work for something like superheroes.  Otherwise if you tried to convert the WATCHMEN characters you'd get Dr. Manhattan as a 30th-level Atomic Demigod and Rorschach as a 8th level Grim Vigilante/2nd level Obsessed Randian prestige class or some such nonsense.

And yet: My gaming group likes RIFTS.  Loves it, actually.  And Palladium, despite its apparently annual Going Out of Business Sales, is still around and has a solid following.  My guess, again from experience, is that the game's technical roughness and lack of balances are thought of as features, not bugs.  And like other settings, the breadth of detail and lore really draws you in.

These are all factors that gamers have debated rather extensively in this forum and others, and the consensus seems to be that people are willing to take in all the crazy elements of the RIFTS setting, except that the system just isn't organized enough to handle them.  Which is why even the Palladium fans I know do not use the setting as-is, but come up with new rules for Perception and other things that the official system doesn't do very well, or at all.  I had even heard that Siembieda himself is a highly-praised GM, largely because he runs by the seat of his pants and dispenses with a lot of the rules that get in the way of fun and story- as he says in the text is how the system is *supposed* to work.  And I keep asking myself, "Why doesn't Kevin just come up with a simpler system that works more like the way he actually runs games?"

Even with some retrospective notes from the author's perspective, RIFTS Ultimate Edition still doesn't give me an answer.

Very good review. Your observations on the system are spot-on.

In the Beyond the Supernatural (the 1st ed anyway) you spent Potential Psychic Energy to buy psionic abilities that you knew: the name comes from that.
Rifts (original at least) still had blurbs about how the psychic RCCs spent most of their PPE developing psionics, just no mechanics around base PPE determination since its simpler to pick X powers, of course you're just going to squander all your PPE learning how to shmelt people if you're psionic.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;728673In the Beyond the Supernatural (the 1st ed anyway) you spent Potential Psychic Energy to buy psionic abilities that you knew: the name comes from that.
Rifts (original at least) still had blurbs about how the psychic RCCs spent most of their PPE developing psionics, just no mechanics around base PPE determination since its simpler to pick X powers, of course you're just going to squander all your PPE learning how to shmelt people if you're psionic.

Which only confirms the impression that RIFTS just piles all the previous Palladium system material together without properly integrating it.

JG

A little while back I tried re-reading Heroes Unlimited, because I remembered loving the random generation tables and thought they might even give me some good ideas for the planned robot and alien classes for H&H.

I couldn't even get through it. The text was so contradictory and poorly organized I just got too confused to go on.

When I played Palladium as a kid, the thing is I think we mostly played the way forum trolls used to accuse AD&D players of playing: we really just had our own accidental house-ruled version of the rules that we'd play, because trying to make sense of the RAW was impossible. We did all kinds of things 'wrong' because how do you know what 'right' is when the rules don't seem to either?

One of the reasons Palladium games are so popular is that they have absurdly robust character generation, but very easy in-play mechanics. Bordering on the absurdly easy to learn in game mechanics. Skills are percentile, attacks are d20. Add bonuses, subtract negatives. Roll damage.

Kev isnt joking when he says the rules are in the background. The character and their powers and gear are in the foreground.

Sounds though like the organization went to heck though. I actually liked the older games organization as it had a certain flow to it that worked.

Too bad about Tolkeen thogh.

RUE sucks a giant cock compared to the original book. I have never seen a more piss-poorly organized rulebook in my life, and that's no exaggeration. The powercreep evident in RUE is also annoying as hell. That said, you can get the 1990 version of Rifts for about a dollar and it's very playable and easy to comprehend. RUE was a bigass waste of money for me. Elemental Fusionist, oh joy! A crappy OCC! Throw in shitty new deadboy art (the original designs were far superior) and shitty dragon races. Annoying.

Honestly, the "Palladium system" isn't hard to understand at all, it just takes a good GM with a decent brain to run combats. But fuck if you could figure out how it works reading RUE...fuck. I cannot stress enough how disappointed I was by this edition.