An RPG that is human-kinds struggle for survival...

Qualifications & Experience
Since I was 10 years old I have been playing a wide variety of Role Playing Games. The first one I was introduced to was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) RPG back in 1986 and I was instantly hooked. I soon moved on to other RPG's including Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Robotech, Beyond The Supernatural (my personal favorite), Rifts, and 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (if you can believe it, they recently released a 3rd edition).

For the first few years I only played as a player in game sessions, but found myself much more interested in creating adventures and moderating games as the Game or Dungeon Master (GM or DM). So after a couple years of experience, I decided to start running my own campaigns & adventures. I still participated as a player, but never enjoyed it quite as much as being in charge.

The RIFTS RPG & Supplements
Within a month or two of Rifts being released in 1990 I had invested in my brand new copy of it. The price tag is actually still on it with the ink barely legible at $29. It was well worth the investment. 256 pages of jam-packed information including a wide variety of races, classes/occupations (known as Occupational Character Classes in Rifts), weapons, robots, world information, psionics and magic. Also included is character creation information, the experience points system, character attributes & skills and combat system rules.

In addition to the first general rules and information release, many other supplements have followed. The idea with the creation of the game was to have releases that profile different areas of the new world in the age of rifts such as Rifts: Africa and Rifts: Atlantis. I own a large number (around 20) of the supplements but I have not invested in any releases in the past few years. The great thing about this is much more detail can be put into each book with a single release focusing on a specific area

Earth in the age of the RIFTS
Rifts takes place many hundreds of years in the future. Beyond the 20th century mankind had moved into an age of peace and prosperity where all the nations in the world worked together to advance the race as a whole. Countries looked beyond their boundaries and differences, but they did not forget.

A developments race soon emerged and drove a spectacular age of science and medical developments. All countries participated but the playing field was very uneven. Soon animosities emerged between empires and a spark ignited the worst war in the known history of the planet. 99% of the worlds population was destroyed and it took 10 years for the planet to recover back to some level of organized civilization (scattered throughout regions of the worlds).

The new age is known as Rifts. Because of the massive extinction of life, huge amounts of "life-energy" (also known as "chi" in Palladium games) were released into the atmosphere. The result is pulsating lines of magic around the world... and where they intersect the energy is 10 times as strong - creating rifts in space and time, hence the name of the RPG.

Good stuff about the RIFTS RPG...
*If you have ever played the Palladium RPG games system before, then Rifts will be a breeze for you. Very little has changed with the rules system except for the use of a new statistic not commonly used in Palladium games, Mega-Damage Capacity (MDC, also used in Robotech).

*The system is not very complex at all. Although if you have never played a Palladium RPG or an RPG of any kind before Rifts might be a little confusing, it is not very difficult to understand. The bulk of the main Rifts manual is races, classes/occupations, weapons, equipment and a world overview.

*The world is boundless with many supplemental releases focusing on every area of the Rifts universe. There is tons of choice and lots of really neat stuff.

Bad stuff about the RIFTS RPG...
*If you have never played an RPG before this one has the potential to be overwhelming. There is so much content it can be difficult to even know where the best place to start is. A good idea to consider if you have never played an RPG game before is to stick with the main rules supplement until you are comfortable with the system and setting.

*The game can be very time consuming to create adventures with as the game master. There is also so much detail in the world of Rifts that a single large battle can take hours to execute. Some robots have as many as 15 places on them that can sustain damage and some robots and supernatural creatures can sustain huge amounts of damage when compared with typical player characters capabilities. Of course any campaign is only as difficult as the Game Master makes it.

*The game is very violent. With all the media hype about the impact of television, movies, and music on young adults today, this game is generally more suitable for mature participants.

Final Comments
The world of Rifts is massive with a wide range of excitement and potential at the fingertips of players and Game Masters. Although I would not recommend this game to beginners, it is certainly not impossible to pick up as a first experience. As with most Role Playing Games, the game if Rifts is only limited by the imaginations of the participants.


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