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[Yoink]

Interesting. I've only been reading the lore/setting so far, haven't reached the actual crunch.
Are you guys directing these complaints to a particular edition, or just the game in general? I'll try to make a character and see how that goes.

[Sergius]

Interesting. I've only been reading the lore/setting so far, haven't reached the actual crunch.
Are you guys directing these complaints to a particular edition, or just the game in general? I'll try to make a character and see how that goes.

I'm not sure there's any actual difference between editions other than some cleaning up. I got my game in Y2000, so I have whatever edition was out at that time.

[Oneir]

Now, no promises this is at all balanced, but I did see Savage Rifts go by recently which ports Rifts into the Savage World system (also used by Deadlands). Anyone play with it?

[NullForceOmega]

Rifts only has two editions, the base game and the 'Rifts Ultimate Edition', both are built on the same mechanics.  RUE condenses around twenty years of expanded rules from the world/dimension/sourcebooks into one book and updates the default O.C.C.s, but is ultimately brought down by the same nonsense that plagues the older books.  There are gaping holes in the ruleset that have never been addressed, basic problems with the balance between the three main focuses, magic and psionics are both woefully underpowered in comparison to technology, especially bionics (certain full conversion 'borg chassis are so stupidly OP they might as well be walking WMDs.)  It really is just an absolute nightmare mechanically, to the point that I've pretty much abandoned all but the most basic combat rules and it can still take HOURS to carry out fifteen seconds worth of combat.

I haven't tried the Savage World system, but I've heard some mixed things about it, so I can't really comment on it.  My personal feelings are that the setting itself is good (barring all of Siembieda's writer fiat), and if you like it, it will be fun to play with, but the mechanics are completely godawful bad, and should be either houseruled into obeisance or you should use another ruleset entirely.

[Sergius]

*** WARNING: INCOMING RANT *** (also, comic sans)

I'd say there are three things about Rifts that really annoy me. The first two are completely superficial and are related to formatting, errors and tone. The last one is mechanics.

Going into specifics:

(spoilered because as I said, these 2 are really pet peeves of mine and don't reflect the actual quality of the rules. Those are terrible, but that's not spoilered)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

#1: the proofreading is terrible, author doesn't know the difference between distance, area and volume, instead measuring everything in "feet" for example (this is a minor nitpick, I guess). Multiple exclamation marks, "the sure sign of an insane mind" as Discworld would put it. Layout, order of chapters, some rules are just randomly mentioned in a completely unrelated part of the book - I can't exactly remember but I think the actual rules for punching or dodging or something are found only in the Giant Mecha section, even if you want to apply it to man vs. man combat, and some other global rule that should be somewhere central, can only be found in the class section for the Psycho, I think. Insanity, I think it was, even tho it could be caused by seeing a scary monster instead of just a side effect of being a Psycho.

#2: the tone of several sections is extreeemely condescending of other RPG game designers. The "15 levels" thing I mentioned, rambles on about how "other games" don't know how many levels are too hot or too cold, but 15 is "just right". Then there's the part of the Alignments was just shitting on other games tables while presenting the "correct" table of Alignments such as "is selfish" or "likes shellfish" or something like that.

EDIT: Also, why is everything just a dumb acronym? Like, you need to memorize what every ability score means and it's just 2 or 3 letters, often the same letters for different stats, like "Physical Prowess", "Physical something else". Neither is your strength, I think. And the stat that has "mental" in it isn't your intellect, it's your charisma or something. The stats that says "strength" are either your beauty, or your Psi points. P.P.E. is your magic energy (which is called "psychic energy", even though psychics don't use it). O.C.C., S.D.C, R.P.A., C.S... oi! Last time I encountered that it was a game designed by Derek Smart.

#3: here we get to the meat of the issue. Rules are a mess. They make no sense... character generation takes forever, to fill the skill lists for example. Classes aren't just unbalanced, they are not even fit for the same game. Like, one class comes from a 80's saturday morning cartoon and has the power of friendship and reading books, and the other is MurderKillRoboto that can one-shot buildings with nuclear missiles and is a dragon who also reads minds. And a Jedi. But has a 5% penalty to the Accounting skill so that balances out.

I thought I had more to say about the rules, but it has been a while since I actually read them. I do remember hating them a lot, and not even compared to other games that "did it better"... they just make me angry for some reason.

Arguably the best part of the game are the sourcebooks, like you can get the Japan book and make a cool full conversion cyborg with a dragon body, or there's some fun backstory about Brazilian leopard men and stuff. The "Rifts in Space" sourcebooks for Phase World are also really cool, but they apparently don't even take place in the same dimension as Rifts Earth or something because Rifts Earth outer space doesn't exist or something (or at least you can't get from one to the other except by some magic portal), so essentially it's its own game and characters shouldn't just transfer over. The core book mentions that "because of rifts, races from other Palladium books can also be in Earth" which is barely touched on. But this adventure booklet told me that character X was an Elf and I had no idea how to stat him (because I didn't own PFantasy), it was just completely out of place, because no effort is made at all to actually make you feel like there are dwarves or elves palling around with MegaDamage guns. It's almost a sidenote.

EDIT 2: Hm, there's this post at story-games that describes a lot of the stuff that's being mentioned here, so probably it's a good idea to just check this out and save some time: http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/9965/sell-me-on-wait-for-it-the-palladium-system-i-kid-you-not

[Quartz_Mace]

Alright, so it's been about a year since my last forum post. I can't remember why I left and I did miss it, so I'm back. During my hiatus I was able to try (4th edition) D&D and I've been loving it. I joined a D&D club at my school and, while the meetings have been short we've been having a lot of fun. I played through one full campaign, and part of a second one which we unfortunately didn't finish. With our only experienced DMs leaving, I volunteered to be DM for the next campaign since I have a little experience running combat from some PVP rounds we did when said DM couldn't make it on one occasion. Unfortunately, I've never made an adventure before, and I'm not sure what to do.

I've mapped out a heavily-Roman inspired (with notable exceptions) world, which features a country called the Merchant Republic of Formkatta. My original campaign idea involved the PCs toppling the current ruler who is a despot, but I figured this is too much for characters who are starting at level 1 and don't have much stake in the world, yet. My new idea is to run a shorter, local campaign in this country, while planting seeds for the power struggle campaign if they wish to pursue that afterwards.

As such, I want them to face a rather small, but still challegning and interesting threat. Here's my idea:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The PCs are in a tavern in a large city, Jelkalla (yes, I stole that from Mount and Blade) where there is a Bard Festival going on. While in the tavern, the PCs hear multiple bard and musician groups telling stories and singing. It's not long before one drunk dwarf bard starts playing the bagpipes, which is annoying for most people in said tavern. Unfortunately, a couple of other drunk dwarves know this song (the song of their homeland, and accompany his painful music with tone deaf singing so loud that the entire street can hear. After a little while of this, a magic dagger flies hilt first, smashing through a window and spinning as it flies and stabs itself into the bagpiper's neck. It immediately flies back out, into the hand of this cloaked assassin who then flees. The bard dies, and the PCs notice that the flesh around his wound is rotting as he dies of both severe bleeding and necrosis.

The barkeep, clearly unhappy about this situation, then hires out the party to find and kill, or arrest, the perp. He can't have this establishment known as a place where people are killed, especially during the busy season and with such high national taxes (imposed by the despot).

The PCs track down the assassin, and once they manage to kill or subdue him they get some gold, and a couple of interesting magic items. They have the assassin's dagger, and a blunt weapon (which will be adjusted based on the party's starting equipment so that someone can use it.

Once receiving their payment from the barkeep, he'll tell them that they should get these items appraised by an artifact emporium nearby, where they'll get a discount if they mention his name.

Upon apraissal, the PCs will learn how to use a couple of this dagger's minor abilities, and also that it has its own, wicked agenda. They'll also learn that the other weapon, let's say club for now, is called Swadiagûl, which means baby-seal-beater in Goblin and it's well balanced, slightly more accurate (+1 to hit) and does extra damage against restrained, unaware, or sleeping targets. They'll also be informed that the dagger bears the symbol of the God Zehir, the God of snakes, assassins, and poison who is worshipped by an assassin cult called the Boatmen of Styx, who have been known to take revenge for petty sleights, and as such the PCs should probably get out of town. At this point, I'm not sure how to proceed, though.

I've thought of a few possibilities. 1. The mayor hires them to help take out the cult and they work together, or 2. They flee to a small town and find cultists waiting to ambush them at the next inn.

How do you guys think I should proceed? I have about a month left to plan, but I'm panicking and figured this would be a good place to ask for help.

Also, I love the idea of having intelligent magic items, but I'm not sure how to make the dagger work. I'm trying to figure out how to have the dagger act in ways that are interesting and might complicate matters, but not frustrating. Like, the dagger wants to kill people and if not enough people are killed in a period of time it'll fly out of the hilt and randomly stab a passerby. I'm also not sure what should make it happy or sad. Here's me spitballing ideas.

Positive relations with dagger:
Killing someone
Coating it with poison
Cleaning it of blood (nobody wants to be dirty, right?)
A good sharpening
A prayer to Zehir?
Negative relations:
Too much time without killing
Sparing someone's life
Using it for menial tasks, like cutting bread. This magical assassin's weapon was made for better things.

Basically, I plan for more powerful abilities and better passive buffs to be unlocked as the dagger becomes more pleased with the user, and the appraiser will hint to these, without being totally overt, and I want to have subtle ways of the dagger letting them knows what it likes and doesn't like, like purring or growling, respectively.

What do you guys think?

Edit: Spoilered for length

[Tack]

I had a bundle of suggestions of "malice actions" on a table it could take like cutting through it's own scabbard or damaging unattended weapons, sticking fast in a dead body and requiring actions and checks to remove or attracting snakes.

There was a bunch of stuff around the idea of it getting more powerful as it gets more validated by positive actions, but also becoming more unruly.

But yeah. Lost the page. Will have to be contented with my tiny parahrwphS m

[Quartz_Mace]

Those are some good ideas, especially small things like getting stuck, and I hadn't thought about the snake angle. Thanks. I'll definitely use those.

Also, I don't feel my first post made the assassin's motivations entirely clear. He killed that bard for a few reasons:
1. He was trying to sleep and could hear the music from his house.
2. He's already an assassin, so what better way to fix the problem?
3. He hates bards. He goes out everyday and does honest, dangerous work. Bards sit around singing and telling stories and get paid to do so!

[andrian]

Hi everyone, relatively new to the forums, but I'm a huge fan of tabletop and DF.

I've wanted to combine those two ideas for awhile, using a system like DnD 5e or Pathfinder. I don't know how it'd work, really, but I think it could be fun. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to make that work?

[GiglameshDespair]

Hi everyone, relatively new to the forums, but I'm a huge fan of tabletop and DF.

I've wanted to combine those two ideas for awhile, using a system like DnD 5e or Pathfinder. I don't know how it'd work, really, but I think it could be fun. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to make that work?

The obvious answer would be to just set it in a Mountainhome. Players would all be Dwarves. You can use the guide in the DMG or just closest equivalent to make monsters from DF in 5e.
You lore could be taken from worldgen.
If you wanted to model alcohol dependency just homerule something like every player must drink at least one alcoholic drink a day or suffer a level of fatigue or something. Perhaps after three days to prevent undue annoyance. This stacks until the player drinks and cannot be cured otherwise.

[andrian]

Hi everyone, relatively new to the forums, but I'm a huge fan of tabletop and DF.

I've wanted to combine those two ideas for awhile, using a system like DnD 5e or Pathfinder. I don't know how it'd work, really, but I think it could be fun. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to make that work?

The obvious answer would be to just set it in a Mountainhome. Players would all be Dwarves. You can use the guide in the DMG or just closest equivalent to make monsters from DF in 5e.
You lore could be taken from worldgen.
If you wanted to model alcohol dependency just homerule something like every player must drink at least one alcoholic drink a day or suffer a level of fatigue or something. Perhaps after three days to prevent undue annoyance. This stacks until the player drinks and cannot be cured otherwise.

Ooh, I like that! I guess I'd have to play DF for a bit and write down designs for procedurally generated creatures like titans and forgotten beasts... or make up a table for generating them on the fly, maybe.

[wierd]

Datamining the game itself (legends mode + legends viewer) could provide a very useful basic package.

Gives you skeleton for campaign setting, bestiary of a sort, and a primer on local politics.

[andrian]

Part of what I would like to do is model the sometimes silly and nonsensical things that go along with DF... The players have to fight the monster because all of the town guard is attending a party, there's a pool of magma being held in a reservoir made of ice, etc. Of course there would be rumors of the ill-fated Boatmurdered...

Any other suggestions for that sort of thing?

Also, I'm wondering if I can program a procedural monster generator for 5e... Feed it all the Beast stats, and then some templates to modify them, and come up with an algorithm for putting them together.

[IronyOwl]

Asinine mandates lead to smuggling and hunts for said scum, important projects (grate to keep the crocodiles out) being put on hold, politicking regarding who is to blame for failures, intrigue trying to finagle the leadership into avoiding/pursuing specific mandates for a wide and mostly stupid array of reasons.

Dwarven justice and medicine in general.

Zoos containing actual animals and also invaders.

[Tack]

-

A lot of 'nonsensical and silly things' is just your input as a GM. A system won't help you with that.
Likewise a monster generator is all you.
I was going to suggest using BW to simulate your dwarfplayers, but you've said you're using DnD & PF.

So I'm not really sure what suggestions could even be offered.
Sounds like crazy fun though, good luck.

Edit: Pathfinder Kingmaker might help with settlement building.