FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

theironjef posted:

Straight up that. I didn't come to this nerdlife through D&D like a normal child ought to do.

Same here. *looks at all the pictures of guns making Beavis noises*

Loved the South America books too, they showed a lot of imagination. Dimension hopping psychic Mutant Capybaras for life.

Edit:
Picture a bunch of teenagers arguing over which sort of RPG game they want to play. The GM says, "gently caress it, let's play all of those at once," and then a Rifts game happens.

BerkerkLurk fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Apr 1, 2014

# ¿ Apr 1, 2014 21:35

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# ¿ Sep 19, 2024 09:52

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

[*]Resurrection: This says it�s the only resurrection ability in Rifts, but I wouldn't bank on it. You have to be 5th level, and it has a 10% chance + 3% per level beyond that. Yes, that means it never goes beyond a 40% chance of success, and you only get one chance per corpse per priest. I suppose it beats nothin', but not by much.

Good instincts: off of the top of my head Air Warlocks from the Conversion Book get the Breath Of Life spell.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 18:10

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

The Herminator TW Rail Gun got a chuckle out of me at the time, so that makes it the funniest moment in Rifts. It's oddly humorless for a setting as insane as it is. Anyways, I'm enjoying the Rifts write-ups as always.

occamsnailfile posted:

For some reason it specifies that he dresses in �flowing oriental robes� because the Greeks didn�t have anything loose and breezy like that.

Why not a chiton? Poetic license, I guess. He always had an oriental flare to him, having advetured in India and was shown riding tigers or tiger-drawn chariots.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 17:23

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

But there's a later race that gets invented because they had art of some random D-bee by Tim Truman originally used way, way back in the original corebook, but they were never statted, so then they become an official race around forty or fifty books into the game line. Talk about scraping that barrel clean!

The Larmac? Probably one of my favorite pieces of Rifts art and a fun character type, so I was happy to see that.

A point about D-Bee's that the main book made that they started to overlook later in the game was that many D-Bee's are mostly indistinguishable from humans. Just people from a not-too-dissimilar time or dimension, so that's how I took the Quick-Flex Aliens (terrible name, though). They even had a random D-Bee table in the old Rifts core book (of course they had a table) and any differences from a normal human was mostly cosmetic, like you had a minor SDC bonus from scaly skin maybe.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 18:12

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

JohnnyCanuck posted:

At least they're not using the original insanity tables from their 80s games.

Isn't that when one of the random insanities was homosexuality? Ugh.

# ¿ May 19, 2014 18:56

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

I've used Gene-Splicers to good effect when they just create an interesting monstrosity and disappear, with the players dealing with the aftermath. One campaign I ran had them capturing and turbo-charging a Coalition Lone Star genetic experiment. But I can see dealing with Gene-Splicers directly would have been a high level challenge, if it's even possible.

I had a soft spot for Mindwerks, but the Gene-Splicers and Evil Millennium Tree are too difficult for most players, some of the R.C.C.'s I liked are done better in other books (D-Bee explorer cyborgs that DON'T need to be in an environmental suit 24/7 are in Coalition War Campaign) and Tarnow is unique, but they don't much that's interesting with it. That's ignoring the section about Mindwerks, which never had much appeal to me.

So if you buy a Rifts book and enjoy it, never use it! Problem solved.

# ¿ May 29, 2014 18:34

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

I played Rifts when I was a teenager and in college, plus recently I joined a play-by-post game. I have a weird affinity for Rifts. When I was younger I only ever played Palladium or White Wolf, so it didn't seem so bad. This was before they added a Perception ability, so my house rule was to roll a d30 against their ME+IQ to see if players heard or saw anything, IIRC.

Now that I'm playing again I'm noticing more of the quirks, like how useless the basic psionic powers can be. Everything has a sad 200 ft. range or less, in a world with 1000 ft. range (or more) energy weapons, which probably worked great for Beyond The Supernatural when you're creeping around haunted houses, but when you're rocketing around on a hovercycle it's a little useless.

I'm enjoying the Mercenaries write-up, it is one of my favorite Rifts books. The Liefield-esque art is cheesy, but not aggressively bad like half of Rifts art can be. I like the angle where you calculate the odds of having the stats to even make a certain character. Back in the day we'd just roll 8 stats and assign them where we wanted or stack your skill selections with physical skills to beef up your physical stats, but I realize this is technically against the rules.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 16:49

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

They had some misadventures before being rescued by the Colonel and he was recruited... even though he's a D-Bee? Well, wh'ev.

Since Ogres are proto-humans in Palladium Books, maybe he's "one of the good ones."

BerkerkLurk fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jul 29, 2014

# ¿ Jul 28, 2014 20:18

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

where theyr'e getting the depleted uranium is, as with Triax, a mystery.

Every vehicle or powered armor in the game has a nuclear fuel source, so I'm guessing from that (which raises the question of where they're getting the un-depleted uranium, but anyways). A lot of common vehicles can have gas or electric engines, but the none of the rules obligate you to chose those as your starting vehicle, so you'd be an idiot to not chose the engine that lasts for 10 years and gives your attached weapons a nearly endless E-clip.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

MP-23A Caseless SMG: An S.D.C. submachine gun, and if you put in depleted uranium rounds, it can do 1 Mega-Damage with a 20-round burst. Oh, joy. Only 700 rounds to take down some of the weakest armor suits! And only 5,000 rounds to take down a dragon hatchling! Congratulations, you just bought an expensive irritant.

I always loved the flavor of these weapons, since Rifts so rarely talks about the time between modern day and the apocalypse (until Chaos Earth, I suppose, which I never read). Advanced SDC weapons from the time before MDC became the norm was interesting to me, plus horray Fun Gun Pictures.

The problem is, of course, that SDC is mostly useless in Rifts. You still need it for hunting, even Rifts will tell you that, but even though the stats are a little hard to find (no giant porny gun illustration), basic SDC hunting rifles are very cheap and very plentiful. Plus a lot of laser weapons have an SDC setting.

Rifts again says some communities only allow SDC weapons, which is a weird distinction, especially since, as Mercenaries clearly spells out, you can cram MDC ammo into just about anything. However, as far as I can tell, they never mention any of these SDC-only communities in any of the books. So you're free to create one as a GM, I guess.

So what's left: maybe you can catch someone out of their armor and shoot them with your SDC gun. Or you can shoot them with your MDC weapon and finish the job in one shot. Hell, use a cheap laser pistol to minimize collateral damage.

BerkerkLurk fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Aug 11, 2014

# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 17:22

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Rifts: Canada gives us the Worldly Sasquatch O.C.C. so it rules. Bigfoot lured into the human world with the promise of sweets and jam.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 15:41

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

As for why the Domain Of Man is in the midwest, I think part of the Rifts apocalypse included a nuclear weapon exchange along with the coming of the Rifts. Plus Atlantis came back, which raised sea levels to the point that Australia has a big inland sea. Places along the coast got it the worst, like New York City is a flooded radioactive ruin full of the spirits of the dead and mutants. Unlike the Coalition, which, uh, just has mutants.

But then you have places like Utah that are radioactive wastelands (Rifts: New West) and not Chicago. I would think one of our largest cities would be on the shortlist for nuking.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 16:01

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

NE-030 Spy Drone

*cuts off Naruni salesman mid pitch* "Look, I just need something to tickle people with. Oh, splendid!"

# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 18:07

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It's interesting to see Breaux try and make his designs more dynamic, but I just keep squinting at him struggling with perspective, mostly, particularly with those complex designs.

Poor guy was really prolific and never seemed to improve much. I'll still take him over most of the new artists they've had since Perez stopped contributing.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2014 16:21

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Alien Rope Burn posted:

_{"Sir! The robot dinosaur is pissing on us!"}

For my money, this is the definitive example of Palladium Dick Guns. Love this picture.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 16:15

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

occamsnailfile posted:

Rifts Earth has Triax and the Coalition who are...nearly on-par with a lot of Naruni toys already and this worries them because clearly no other species has come close to this?

Kind of an aside, but this reminds me of the Kittani d-bees from World Book 2: Atlantis. They're a technologically advanced 100,000-year old society, basically the head engineers of the great multiversal Splugorth empire, and at least half of their weapons are explicitly knock-offs of North American weapons, made by barely space-faring humans waking up from a long apocalypse.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 16:51

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# ¿ Sep 19, 2024 09:52

BerkerkLurk: Jul 22, 2001; I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up

Cactus People were great NPC victims because their blood was delicious and hydrating, so thirsty bigots would always target them in the desert. They had more flavor than most Rifts D-bees (so to speak), love 'em.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 21:25

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