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[SalmonGod]

Heh... I remember I was enamoured with Palladium's stuff when I was in high school.  I thought the Rifts setting was the most amazing thing, then.  Now... not so much.

I still do think Palladium had some cool stuff, though.  Bits and pieces of good stuff here and there.  It's just their core system that was really fucking awful.  Their superhero game had a good feel to a lot of its set-up.  And I still think Nightbane is a ridiculously cool setting.  One of my lasting favorites.  I've often thought about translating it to a different system.  I have a friend who is putting the finishing touches on his own system that he's written from scratch over the last several years, and plans on publishing.  He lives a few hours away, so I've only got to play with it a couple times, but it's a fantastic system.  Versatile and friendly, without resorting to being overly rules-lite in order to make it so.  Maybe I'll port Nightbane over to that when he's declared a version 1.0 and try doing something with it.

[Ogdibus]

Made characters for Rifts tonight, a game I haven't played in probably 20 years.

There were literally 30 books on the table to work from. Almost the entire Palladium collection.

Three of the people knew this material like the back of their hands. I was the most experienced out of the other three, and I was pretty much overwhelmed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's the rage inducing part. Rifts is a terribly written game. From top to bottom, it's laid out like shit, its rules are contradictory and poorly explained and it's the most godawful amount of book keeping I've done in a while. And that's before you even sit down to play. It makes Fantasy Flight RPGs look downright streamlined.

And some of these guys have nothing but contempt for Fantasy Flight RPGs. They bitch a blue streak about it whenever we play. I'm not especially attached to the core rules system, but it happens to be the only system out there in which I enjoy 40k. But Rifts? Oh, Rifts is awesome. Despite being the epitome of a bad rules system, with just an asinine character creation system that doesn't help you....they love it. Because it's the game they played in high school. Kind of demonstrating to me that, it's not really about the rules. It's about how much time you've put in with the rules that dictates what you think is playable or not. I can be the worst rule set out there, but if it's a theme you like and you've played it enough  it's what you're going to go back to (They're also big fans of Hackmaster and know it almost carnally.)

That's the sad part of getting older. You get so much more set in your ways, where you cling to the things you know and after a while start to actively reject trying to learn new stuff. I pretty much did it tonight when I had an half page of scribblings that I needed to add back to my character sheet, before picking gear or magic or any of that shit. My numbers were wrong anyways because I'd forgotten Rifts hands out stat bonuses left and right during CC and you derive your important stats as the last thing.

I gave my Rifts book to one of these guys when I was 15, after reading it cover to cover multiple times and going "Yeah, there's no way in hell I'm ever going to run this." Cool universe, atrociously old school rules. Little did I know that choice would come back to mock me, the original book included, tonight.

What I truly came to realize is, no one likes playing a game in which they don't understand the rules. Being surrounded by other people, who are absolutely maxing out their options (one person basically just made a game tonight of coming up with the most broken OP characters and baiting the GM into banning them) just makes it worse. It kind of robs you of the desire to even learn independently. I can totally understand why people react like that to Fantasy Flight games now, because it certainly sucks being in a rules and content heavy game without knowing what to do. It's just kind of the hypocrisy of taste that kills me.

That was my first system. x3

I think it takes someone that understands everything you just said to run a Palladium game, especially if it's Rifts or Heroes Unlimited.  You have to compensate for the flaws constantly if you want the group to have any freedom.  It takes extreme micromanagement to keep characters in a group balanced with each other, and most people don't have time to do that on top of the normal responsibilities that are involved in running the game.

[nenjin]

And that was what also contributed to rage. These guys are true power gamers, love pushing things as far as it can go. In that environment, with as little knowledge as you have, how can you really have fun or catch up the point where you're making informed decisions? Rifts is really terrible in this regard because each Race/Class has pretty specific rules and bonuses, and some of what makes some combos the best is literally the multiplier on their MDC roll. It's the kind of thing veterans know to look for and newbies will pass right over without seeing. And there was every source book on the table to choose from. I managed to convince the GM to let me play a Nightbane at first, before everyone pointed out that his stat lines were going to be pathetic because he wasn't getting stupid crazy bonuses everywhere. I eventually picked a Godling, which was a good and a bad choice because I've basically got it all: Magic, Psionics, Stats, decent MDC, PPE and ISP pools.....and a ton of shit to write down. The choice of Mystic Ninja was totally arbitrary, it took me half the night just to settle on a race I thought sounded interesting.

Not being able to make at least semi-informed choices is pretty much the antithesis of a fun roleplay experience.

And the setting and the art is why I liked Rifts. As a game system, it never even began to get me excited.

[MaximumZero]

Guys, guys, chill. I'm working on it. :p

[Bauglir]

Guys, guys, chill. I'm working on it. :p

And so damn much more efficiently than me, too. I'll catch up one day!

[MaximumZero]

Guys, guys, chill. I'm working on it. :p

And so damn much more efficiently than me, too. I'll catch up one day!

Efficiently? Hardly. I've been at it a long while now, off and on. Unfortunately, it's been more off than on.

[Stuebi]

Just started playing on a Roleplaying-Server, and went trough the usual process of being uber-excited at first, and then slowly being pulled back down again when the usual problems show up.

First of all the usual amount of "That Guy"/"That Girl" in varying shades of awfulness. Its outirght _amazing_ what variety of people play on the Server, ranging from really good to "wth did I just read.". I hate this initial phase of getting to know everyone, making a list of people I like to play with or find acceptable, and on the other hand fill my mental "To avoid"-List with the worst offenders.

The actual rage inducing part: The Server has a form of "Tolerance Policy", meaning you're not allowed to actually completely ignore other Characters. On one side, I get this. It sucks if theres "Cliques" of people playing on their own, excluding and erasing everyone they dislike. It leads to some akward scenes when you talk to someone that only acknowledges half the people you regularly play with.

But its also infuriatingly difficult for me to play with some people who apply entirely different Standards to their Roleplay. Its hard to play a common Low-born Knight when there are Powerplayers around, with their 20 year old Paladin that inexplicably fights better than any Veteran, can shoot Light-Beams and writes like he smashes his head into the Keyboard.

[Dutchling]

Not really rage-worthy but somewhat annoying:
Pages loaded by using the back function (on Chrome) no longer load properly. The page is usually either blank or with un-clickable links.

[Yoink]

I am a fucking BUNDLE OF RAGE at the moment.

I had a whole venomous, multi-point rant worked out that I was gonna post on here, but I'm sick of staring at this screen and not really in the mood for lots of typing. Suffice it to say, FUUUUUCK.

[Gamerlord]

*bro hugs Yoink*
Scream it out mate, scream it out.

[Yoink]

Thanks, man.
Thankfully I have plenty of angry music to (somewhat paradoxically) cheer me up!

[Urist Imiknorris]

Once you've calmed down, be sure to tell us all about it.

[Cheesechomper]

I just had the worst fucking day. I woke up to my dad turning on all the goddamned lights. And rummaging through my room for his headlamp 30 minutes early. Then he left every light in the goddamn house on, and I hate lights in the morning. I can't go back to sleep, so I decide to just get up and take a shower. But no, there's no hot water, so I have to take a freezing cold shower. I go to eat breakfast and there's no cereal. I think that's fine, I can just pick something up on the way to school. No. My shitty pickup won't start and my mom won't let me use her car because fuck me. So now I have to walk to school in the freezing cold and the rain and all I have to wear is a paper thin school sweatshirt, not to mention, I can't go get breakfast now. I get to school 20 minutes pate and my 1st period teacher gives me a fucking Saturday morning detention, which I now have to get to without a car. My math teacher announces that wr have a quiz. Apparently she didn't tell me about it when I asked her what I missed when I was gone last week. I still had to take it and totally bombed it. She got pissed at me because I didn't 'study' so she gave me another fucking detention on a different Saturday. The rest of the day was equally terrible. When I was slogging home, my mom called me and told me to get her some conditioner. When I told er I couldn't she started screaming at me. Apparently that was enough so that she isn't going to help me pay to fix my truck which was the reason I couldn't get it for her in the first place. Then I learned that I got fired because apparently hr world hates me.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah... that's a pretty bad day.

[Lagslayer]

If you became a super villain, I wouldn't blame you.