Rifts is my eternal problematic fave, and also a source of bizarre, contradictory, and confusing lore. However, something that’s easy to let fall through the cracks of the gonzo setting is that there are actually many survivor states in the post-apocalypse. That’s right, places that directly trace their lineage, governance, culture, and dominant populations back to the Pre-Rifts era. And this Backgrounder as an overview of them!
Cover image is property of Palladium Books.
The year is 1992, and Rifts is a breakout success. It’s the gonzo RPG experience that no one knew they wanted, and people are screaming for more. The books out are selling like crazy, but the world is still wildly under developed. World Books One and Two, The Vampire Kingdoms (Northern Mexico) and Atlantis respectively, were well received. 1993 is supposed to build on the successes of the last few years, with Dimension Book One: Wormwood, and the third and fourth World Books, England and Africa, planned for release. Things didn’t go as planned.
Palladium Books has staked their claim in the world of pen and paper RPG’s as the purveyors of disaster. No other RPG publication group has so thoroughly or reliably chosen “post-apocalypse” as a setting, or taken it in the same directions. Rifts, Chaos Earth, After the Bomb, Nightbane, Dead Reign, and System Shock; all post-apocalyptic games, and in different veins for the most part too. Sure, they have other game lines, like Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, and the fantasy based Palladium RPG, but it’s the post-apocalyptic games where Palladium truly shines. But what if I told you that a large segment of the Palladium Megaverse was actually interconnected? Well strap on your tinfoil hats, it’s theory time.
Read more
Rifts has long been a love hate affair for me as a gamer and as a GM. On one hand, I love the endless parade of crazy technology, the variety of enemies and challenges, and the vague meta plots that lay around for ages before someone does something about them. On the other hand, the world is broken as all hell, consistency is spotty at best, and the world mechanics of the entire thing leave a lot to be desired. So, what to do about it? Well, make it make sense!
So, I’ve mentioned in a previous post that when I was a kid, Rifts was *The* alternate game in my circles if we weren’t playing D&D. It only narrowly beat out Heavy Gear because while we played that more intensely when we played it, in retrospect we played Rifts more often. Rifts wasn’t without its own issues though, as I discussed briefly in that post as well. [1] Even with those issues though, I still get excited when certain things get released, like Triax 2, or the more recent Rifts Worldbooks, Northern Gun 1 and Northern Gun 2, so lets take a look at what we got!
Read more
You must be logged in to post a comment.