Thursday, June 4, 2015

Rifts: BOFITNWOR part 2!

Hey all, I know it has been a while since my last post. I am sorry for that. I have been working on a lot of stuff recently and so my blog kind of fell by the wayside. To those of you who have followed my progress(and thank you much for your patience and support), I am still working on Trek to the Stars. I hit a bit of a snag dealing with the combat pacing mechanics and so that has been slow going of late. I am also finishing up a beta draft of Where the Antelope Play, which should be ready in about a month(ish). So that is exciting. I am finishing up the Jadetech series of books and all the text should be done by teh end of the month. Finally I am working on something for the Fate Codex, and I am very excited about it. I will let you all know when that gets closer to complete. As I said I have been busy. I also recently attended my first Miscon, and I had a blast. I fully intend on going back next year and running some games. Its going to be great, heck maybe I will be running a bunch of my games.

That said, I guess it would be a good time to talk about the next session of Rifts I ran for +Cameron Corniuk and +Bill Garrett. it was a few weeks back, but I think it is still relevant, It was pretty fun. I am utilizing a couple of rules fixes and tweaks in order to make the game run smoother. That said, the skill system is still pretty weak. The problems with the skills are twofold, there are too many of them and they are missing several key skills. I know right? How does that even? You know? I will break it down for you. The main Rifts book(not Ultimate edition, which has even more skills...like three times as many, seriously) has 128 skills listed. 128! For reals. So when I am using my simplification of the rules I still run into a problem. On average my players have something like 26 skills each. 26, out of 128, for reals. It means that in any given situation, there will most likely be a lack of skills. On the other end, you would think that with that many total skills there would be at least be a comprehensive list, yet there are large gaps in the skills. Things like persuasion and such are sadly lacking. In fact most of the skills revolve around combat and recovering from combat. Some skills are really difficult to get and some are so pointless as to never really be taken. In fact the more useful a skill is, the more difficult it seems to be to get. I really don't get the design choices in this game sometimes. On a related tangent, there are no rules describing how to use skills or anything. Not really relevant in my game, as I revamped the skills system, but man, that is just weird, right?

In this session our heroes set out to defend their town from this new invasive threat.They stuck around the cabin and searched for clues. There was some tree climbing and some sensor usage and they discovered a nasty new threat, and killed it. However it was not alone, there were many more and they were coming one. I interacted with Rifts' burst fire rules for the first time. Holy crap! that makes guns so very very dangerous. Seriously, I played Palladium games for nearly a decade and I had never used these rules. They increase the lethality significantly. After that, they headed back to town to discuss it with the people of Paradise. After some discussion they headed out to scout the area and get those who want it to the relative safety of town. Camden tried to convince his folks to head to town, but they were not having any of it. They convince the old wizard who lives in the hills north of town to come and help. They also had to try and deal with the representatives of both the Blackfoot and the Salish nations, who were in town for purchasing lizard meat. They made a deal for magic weapons from the Salish, and made a deal to defend the town's retreat, should they lose, with the Blackfoot. Leo gets that second concession by defeating the leader in a boxing match. It was epic, like Rocky vs. Drago...if Rocky had no muscles. Seriously, I think this is my favorite moment. You gotta see it, It's awesome.


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