Vampire Kingdoms, Rifts World Book One
Palladium’s first world book, Vampire Kingdoms covers the area of Mexico and central America. There is ample information on the Vampire Kingdoms that dot the Central American area, and are present in the dimensional-fluxing place called the Yucatan. The book has extremely detailed information on the few strongholds of humans left in the area (including Cuidad Juarez, El Paso, and others). This is one of the most detailed of all of the other world books. There really are scores of pages about the different peoples and nations of this area, and how they intermingle and compete with each other.
The book mainly focuses on the ultimate enemy, Vampires. There is a good amount of information on the undead, as well as tactics of killing them and items for such a purpose. Definitely not a stat filled book in that aspect though.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to a GM, to a PC it seems like it would just ruin a lot of secrets. The Vampires can be great enemies, and are really pretty good catalysts for some interesting adventures. And, they are given a back ground and reason for living, Palladium has really spent some time on writing up a great race, with many details and little things that help make everything seem very realistic.
Using this book in a “normal” North American campaign is pretty easy, the areas it covers are easily accessible for most, and the land is not unheard of to most adventurers (it’s even mentioned in the Main Book!)
The book’s art is OK. Long draws a lot of it, but I never was fond of his style with humans, he draws technology stuff much better. Seimbada also has a few drawings of his own here, I wouldn’t say his a the best artist, but he does pretty good drawing the vampires.
Noticable Interesting Picture, Quote, or Stat:
The Vernulians. A bad-ass d-bee race that isn’t just some lame-o human looking person with a ridged forehead. These guys are definitely NOT humanoid at all, they’ve got cool-looking tentacles, and are given some fairly interesting background inf. Plus, they’re not like all the wussy d-bee races that are just loser refugees on Rifts earth, the Vernulians have military OCCs, and are trying to colonize Rifts earth. Plus there is a faction of the race that is fleeing the military rule of their leaders. This race could be really cool, and it’s to bad they only get under 2 pages out of Vampires…
Noticable Lame Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Well, remember those “create your own super-hero group” rules from Heroes Unlimited? The book has many pages devoted to this, only now you’re making oh-so-exciting traveling shows. Some of the little details that they include are cool, but for the most part I always found the whole point system crap annoying. I mean, if I want a group, I’ll make it up my self, I don’t need some wacky rule system to help me.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
RiftsConversion Book Review
A very old review of conversion book I…
Rifts Conversion Book One
Another one of the old standbys, the conversion book has been around for what seems like forever. This book was written in response to the need at the time for many rules clarifications, and to release a plethora of new creatures and things into the world of Rifts.
One of the main aspects of the Conversion Books is, amazingly, conversions. Palladium has written information on how to bring characters from nearly all of it’s previous games into Rifts earth. Plus, there are many races and monsters that are taken directly from the Palladium Fantasy game, and Beyond the Supernatural. Does any of it actually fit into Rifts? Well, that depends. I am inclined to say most of the older games’ stuff doesn’t usually work to well in Rifts, it’s just to out of it’s environment. Some of the monsters and d-bee races would work, but Super Heroes, Martial Artists, and Null-Psychics? They just seem WAY out of their genre in the Rifts world. But Palladium seems to think that they do work (note the many “Converted” NPC’s that are from other worlds). I guess Rifts is a big inter-dimensional melting pot, but even then, I don’t imagine spandexed heroes and ninjas running around in the battle-torn continent of North America. It just wouldn’t seem very realistic, I mean I envision Rifts as being all gritty and hard-core, not full of smiling superheroes and crap.
But anyway, the book does include quite a few worth while things, some of my favorite include the warlocks, werebeasts, and the listings of haunting entities. Most of the demons are either WAY to powerful, or just pitifully weak. I mean, take a close look at the Balrog demon’s stats, they really are pretty crappy.
The rule clarifications are needed, but by now most people already know them anyway. The conversions of older games’ stuff usually just turns the characters into walking guns/suits of armor, unless the character has powers or something else that will be on par with Rifts stuff. I always have wondered if there are Nightbane conversions somewhere, but I have never found them.
Overall, the conversion book is definitely worth the money. At the time, it was really needed, and like many of the older books, it is usually regarded as and old-standby. No serious gamer doesn’t have this book, there’s just too much good info in here to go with out.
Noticable Interesting Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Can we say GREATER EARTH ELEMENTAL? And warlocks get a chance to summon these things! Now this is what the Coalition is afraid of, not some crappy Ley Line walker’s magic! The Greater Earth Elemental has 3d6×1000MDC!!!! It’s power punch does 4d6×10MD!!! It has 8 hand to hand attacks, or 6 Earth Elemental magic attacks! Earthquakes away! Just one of these mothers could take out an entire Coalition Heavy Mechanized Search and Destroy squad! Think they can’t have ranged attacks? Well they can throw stones 6000ft doing 1d4×10MD!!! Everything about these creatures kicks ass, plus the thing can summon many other elementals to it’s aide. Scary.
Noticable Lame Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Well, this book is full of wacky races and such, but I feel that one of the most annoying things in the book is the picture of the Cyber-horseman on page 112. The thing has a cyber-schlong!!! Was this really necessary Mr. Gustovich? Plus the picture has things like the never before released “Cyber-Tree RCC”, and “Cyber-Grass RCC”. Why is EVERYTHING in the picture cybernetic?
Rifts Conversion Book One
Another one of the old standbys, the conversion book has been around for what seems like forever. This book was written in response to the need at the time for many rules clarifications, and to release a plethora of new creatures and things into the world of Rifts.
One of the main aspects of the Conversion Books is, amazingly, conversions. Palladium has written information on how to bring characters from nearly all of it’s previous games into Rifts earth. Plus, there are many races and monsters that are taken directly from the Palladium Fantasy game, and Beyond the Supernatural. Does any of it actually fit into Rifts? Well, that depends. I am inclined to say most of the older games’ stuff doesn’t usually work to well in Rifts, it’s just to out of it’s environment. Some of the monsters and d-bee races would work, but Super Heroes, Martial Artists, and Null-Psychics? They just seem WAY out of their genre in the Rifts world. But Palladium seems to think that they do work (note the many “Converted” NPC’s that are from other worlds). I guess Rifts is a big inter-dimensional melting pot, but even then, I don’t imagine spandexed heroes and ninjas running around in the battle-torn continent of North America. It just wouldn’t seem very realistic, I mean I envision Rifts as being all gritty and hard-core, not full of smiling superheroes and crap.
But anyway, the book does include quite a few worth while things, some of my favorite include the warlocks, werebeasts, and the listings of haunting entities. Most of the demons are either WAY to powerful, or just pitifully weak. I mean, take a close look at the Balrog demon’s stats, they really are pretty crappy.
The rule clarifications are needed, but by now most people already know them anyway. The conversions of older games’ stuff usually just turns the characters into walking guns/suits of armor, unless the character has powers or something else that will be on par with Rifts stuff. I always have wondered if there are Nightbane conversions somewhere, but I have never found them.
Overall, the conversion book is definitely worth the money. At the time, it was really needed, and like many of the older books, it is usually regarded as and old-standby. No serious gamer doesn’t have this book, there’s just too much good info in here to go with out.
Noticable Interesting Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Can we say GREATER EARTH ELEMENTAL? And warlocks get a chance to summon these things! Now this is what the Coalition is afraid of, not some crappy Ley Line walker’s magic! The Greater Earth Elemental has 3d6×1000MDC!!!! It’s power punch does 4d6×10MD!!! It has 8 hand to hand attacks, or 6 Earth Elemental magic attacks! Earthquakes away! Just one of these mothers could take out an entire Coalition Heavy Mechanized Search and Destroy squad! Think they can’t have ranged attacks? Well they can throw stones 6000ft doing 1d4×10MD!!! Everything about these creatures kicks ass, plus the thing can summon many other elementals to it’s aide. Scary.
Noticable Lame Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Well, this book is full of wacky races and such, but I feel that one of the most annoying things in the book is the picture of the Cyber-horseman on page 112. The thing has a cyber-schlong!!! Was this really necessary Mr. Gustovich? Plus the picture has things like the never before released “Cyber-Tree RCC”, and “Cyber-Grass RCC”. Why is EVERYTHING in the picture cybernetic?
Rifts Mainbook Review
Again an old repost of the Main Book review I did a long time ago for my old site.
Rifts books,
An objective view of them and the world(s) they describe.
Skip to the other reviews
Rifts Main Book: What started it all.
This is the book that started Palladium’s most widely known (and played) RPG game. Using a slightly modified version of the rules of their previous games, Rifts allows players infinitely more possibilities in gaming, instead of the previous game’s basically real-life settings.
This freedom in my opinion is a mixed blessing. As a fan of actual role-playing, and not just hack n’ slashing, Rifts creates a dilemma. While most of Palladium’s other games take place in a world basically like today’s, Rifts takes place in the drastically transformed earth of around 300+ years in the future.
Unfortunatly, for GM’s who wishes to employ a lot of setting into their adventures, now just taking things out of today’s world doesn’t work. Rifts earth is more alien than ever. The remaining humans of this world are even hard to imagine, they’re way of life, thinking and society all permanently changed by the forces that ravaged the earth during and after the coming of the Rifts. And that’s just the humans! There are now countless other races now co-inhabiting Rifts earth with them. How can a GM know how to play out the actions of this Alien or than mutant? We may tend to just give them human tendencies, but never really think about the differences in psychology that there obviously should be between to races that grew up totally separate.
Plus, the world of Rifts itself is also totally different. Cities are nuked to radioactive dust, crushed to ruble, or covered by the invading seas. And, the remaining cities may look nothing like their previous selves, and probably no longer hold humans only, adding to their alien look. The water has expanded, and natural and unnatural disasters have literally reshaped the world in many places.
So, what is an unfortunate GM to do in these drastically different circumstances? Well, now you really have to rely on either Palladium, yourself, or the work of others to aide you in the stocking of this incredible new world. Is this a bad thing? No, personally I think that the world of Rifts kicks ass! But without actual world data, it turns into just and empty wasteland of stats (numbers). Making up the intricacies of the world is where I feel the prime difficulty lies, and the Main Book does make a valiant start at it, but it is only that, a start, a taste of things to come.
The book does an excellent job of giving the general setting of Rifts that chaotic, anything goes feel. The art truly goes miles in capturing a glimpse of what the earth transformed looks like. Nearly all of the character classes are detrimental to the playing and fleshing out of the world. There is the perfect (almost to little) level of technology, and of course Palladium’s slightly moded rules system, set to work with the new aspect of M.D.C.. Plus it gives quite a large amount of world data, that while general, does give you a pretty good feel for the world, and gives a GM a foundation to work off of (as was planed I assume).
Negatives of this book? Well, one minor one that always annoyed me was that there wasn’t quite enough of a conversion of the old rules to the new SDC ones in relation to bursts, but I know that that has been an ongoing argument, so I’ll leave it be for now… At the time the book was written it was assumed that more world data would follow shortly, but I’ll also have more on that later. But aside from all of it’s relatively minor problems, no one could argue with the fact that this is undoubtedly one of Palladium’s greatest works, and it deserves to be revered.
Rifts books,
An objective view of them and the world(s) they describe.
Skip to the other reviews
Rifts Main Book: What started it all.
This is the book that started Palladium’s most widely known (and played) RPG game. Using a slightly modified version of the rules of their previous games, Rifts allows players infinitely more possibilities in gaming, instead of the previous game’s basically real-life settings.
This freedom in my opinion is a mixed blessing. As a fan of actual role-playing, and not just hack n’ slashing, Rifts creates a dilemma. While most of Palladium’s other games take place in a world basically like today’s, Rifts takes place in the drastically transformed earth of around 300+ years in the future.
Unfortunatly, for GM’s who wishes to employ a lot of setting into their adventures, now just taking things out of today’s world doesn’t work. Rifts earth is more alien than ever. The remaining humans of this world are even hard to imagine, they’re way of life, thinking and society all permanently changed by the forces that ravaged the earth during and after the coming of the Rifts. And that’s just the humans! There are now countless other races now co-inhabiting Rifts earth with them. How can a GM know how to play out the actions of this Alien or than mutant? We may tend to just give them human tendencies, but never really think about the differences in psychology that there obviously should be between to races that grew up totally separate.
Plus, the world of Rifts itself is also totally different. Cities are nuked to radioactive dust, crushed to ruble, or covered by the invading seas. And, the remaining cities may look nothing like their previous selves, and probably no longer hold humans only, adding to their alien look. The water has expanded, and natural and unnatural disasters have literally reshaped the world in many places.
So, what is an unfortunate GM to do in these drastically different circumstances? Well, now you really have to rely on either Palladium, yourself, or the work of others to aide you in the stocking of this incredible new world. Is this a bad thing? No, personally I think that the world of Rifts kicks ass! But without actual world data, it turns into just and empty wasteland of stats (numbers). Making up the intricacies of the world is where I feel the prime difficulty lies, and the Main Book does make a valiant start at it, but it is only that, a start, a taste of things to come.
The book does an excellent job of giving the general setting of Rifts that chaotic, anything goes feel. The art truly goes miles in capturing a glimpse of what the earth transformed looks like. Nearly all of the character classes are detrimental to the playing and fleshing out of the world. There is the perfect (almost to little) level of technology, and of course Palladium’s slightly moded rules system, set to work with the new aspect of M.D.C.. Plus it gives quite a large amount of world data, that while general, does give you a pretty good feel for the world, and gives a GM a foundation to work off of (as was planed I assume).
Negatives of this book? Well, one minor one that always annoyed me was that there wasn’t quite enough of a conversion of the old rules to the new SDC ones in relation to bursts, but I know that that has been an ongoing argument, so I’ll leave it be for now… At the time the book was written it was assumed that more world data would follow shortly, but I’ll also have more on that later. But aside from all of it’s relatively minor problems, no one could argue with the fact that this is undoubtedly one of Palladium’s greatest works, and it deserves to be revered.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Rifts World Book Two Atlantis Review
Heres an old review of Atlantis I did. kinda funny
RIfts World Book Two: Atlantis
Atlantis. Just the name brings up many ideas, this place is not one of Palladium’s creation. With that in mind, lets look at how this mystical place is brought into Rifts.
First off, I’d like to say that this book has the possibility for more adventures and plots than many of Palladium’s others. It is simply filled with information and ideas that can keep a GM drooling for months. The Splugorth, their minions and conquered lands/dimensions, and the True Atlanteans are both great examples of the excellent quality of this book.
Atlantis is covered in enough detail to make it playable, there is plenty of good alien technology, magic, and rune weapons. The relations of many of the new peoples with the already existing people of earth is also covered.
The book’s art is pretty damn good. This is one place where the alien looking stuff applies, and a good job is done with the Kittani equipment. The many new races are also finely depicted. My personal favorites are Long’s Splugorth drawing, and the Rune weapon pictures.
Like most of the older books, this one is definitely an old-standby. The things in Atlantis do pop up in later books. Most players today have probably already heard of or used this book too. Do you really need it? No, it’s not needed, but man does it give a lot of great information! One of those books that you just get because you know it’s cool, even if you don’t necessarily *need* it.
My only misgiving with this book? Well, it was published in 1992. Back then it gave many tantalizing ideas, but Palladium has never really focused anymore on this great place!!! I mean, this book has plenty of places where Palladium could have done a lot more explaining. I almost felt they left to many possibilities and didn’t focus enough on giving actual information written in stone. Oh well, it’s still a great book anyway.
Noticable Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Frankly, this book is FULL of them, but after close consideration I picked out the cool idea of Bio-Wizardry. An interesting way to pump up characters, it can make them quite powerful but is very expensive and sometimes has negative side-effects. Also great for NPCs, now that “normal” looking gurgoyle isn’t so normal after all…
Noticable Lame Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Those odd looking Hawrk-whatevers. I guess the idea is sort of interesting, but I just can’t shake the fact that the second one looks like an angry chicken. It’s just not frightening at all…
RIfts World Book Two: Atlantis
Atlantis. Just the name brings up many ideas, this place is not one of Palladium’s creation. With that in mind, lets look at how this mystical place is brought into Rifts.
First off, I’d like to say that this book has the possibility for more adventures and plots than many of Palladium’s others. It is simply filled with information and ideas that can keep a GM drooling for months. The Splugorth, their minions and conquered lands/dimensions, and the True Atlanteans are both great examples of the excellent quality of this book.
Atlantis is covered in enough detail to make it playable, there is plenty of good alien technology, magic, and rune weapons. The relations of many of the new peoples with the already existing people of earth is also covered.
The book’s art is pretty damn good. This is one place where the alien looking stuff applies, and a good job is done with the Kittani equipment. The many new races are also finely depicted. My personal favorites are Long’s Splugorth drawing, and the Rune weapon pictures.
Like most of the older books, this one is definitely an old-standby. The things in Atlantis do pop up in later books. Most players today have probably already heard of or used this book too. Do you really need it? No, it’s not needed, but man does it give a lot of great information! One of those books that you just get because you know it’s cool, even if you don’t necessarily *need* it.
My only misgiving with this book? Well, it was published in 1992. Back then it gave many tantalizing ideas, but Palladium has never really focused anymore on this great place!!! I mean, this book has plenty of places where Palladium could have done a lot more explaining. I almost felt they left to many possibilities and didn’t focus enough on giving actual information written in stone. Oh well, it’s still a great book anyway.
Noticable Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Frankly, this book is FULL of them, but after close consideration I picked out the cool idea of Bio-Wizardry. An interesting way to pump up characters, it can make them quite powerful but is very expensive and sometimes has negative side-effects. Also great for NPCs, now that “normal” looking gurgoyle isn’t so normal after all…
Noticable Lame Picture, Quote, or Stat:
Those odd looking Hawrk-whatevers. I guess the idea is sort of interesting, but I just can’t shake the fact that the second one looks like an angry chicken. It’s just not frightening at all…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)