Tag Archives: ttrpg

Rifts Africa: A Review

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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 insanely 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.

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Fixing the Realms: Part One

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So, I’ve been banging on about the state of the Forgotten Realms for some time, culminating in the Tomb of Annihilation multi part review.[1] While talking with a friend of mine, he asked what I would do to address the issues with the campaign setting, and what approaches I would take to it that didn’t involve throwing it all out and ignoring hat it ever existed. So, after a lot more discussion, and a lot of thought on the matter, I’ve decided to embark on a new series of posts called “Fixing the Realms”. In part one, I’m going to look at the world building that went into it, and how that has left us in the position we’re in today.
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Unpacking After the Bomb

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In the 1980’s, underground comics had a bit of a revolution, and one of the lead, definitely not Comics Code Authority friendly, titles was Eastman and Laird’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. A rough, gritty comic packed with death, violence, and lacking in pizza obsession, it had little resemblance to what it would become as an animated adaptation aimed at kids. This property was picked up by Palladium Books, then an up and comer in the RPG industry, and turned into the now cult TMNT and Other Strangeness RPG (TMNTOS). However, Kevin Siembieda, the head of Palladium Books, had a moment of clarity then. Realizing that licences don’t always last forever, he tasked Erick Wujcik with coming up with an in-house property to use the systems they’d developed for TMNTOS. The result was After the Bomb, a post apocalypse RPG.
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