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Rifts Earth NPC-Style
August of the year 2561 CE (101 PA)
Scope
The motivation behind building Rifts Earth NPC-Style
This world data is a collection of all of the lore and details for my ongoing (and hopefully long-running) Rifts RPG campaigns.
The goal of the project
My hope is to finally bring all of the lore, rules, records, and more into one grand accessible collection.
Rifts Earth NPC-Style's Unique Selling point
Rifts Earth, My Way
I've always loved the Rifts setting, and yet always wanted to make my own personal mark on the world. My version of the world, as shown in my games, may very well surprise seasoned adventurers of the Rifts worlds. This take on Rifts Earth is extremely similar to the core canon of the printed game, but with enough personal changes to keep veteran players guessing at what is actually going on in the world.Theme
Genre
From Palladium Books:
Rifts® is a fascinating, pen and paper role-playing game that has delighted gamers for 20 years. It crosses and combines most game genres – science fiction, fantasy, horror, the supernatural, super-heroes, dimensional travel, magic, monsters, and more – in a wild, post-apocalyptic setting limited only by the imagination of the players. The Rifts® RPG defies convention. It masterfully blends a myriad of genres – science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, adventure, post-apocalypse, giant robots, alien invasion, superheroes and even space opera (see theDimension Books™ series and Phase World®) – into one seamless and plausible setting. Not only that, but the game lets you play any type of character and engage in any type of adventure. That means you can easily customize your Rifts® game to suit your own tastes.From 1d4chan:
RIFTS is a roleplaying game made by the Palladium Books publishing company. Rifts takes place on earth about 300 [NPC’s Note: 400+ in our version] years after a nuclear holocaust caused a magical reawakening and killed over two thirds of humanity. In the course of the apocalypse many things changed in the world, Atlantis rose out of the ocean which flooded most Atlantic coastlines (killing even more people), the four horsemen appeared in Africa (where they killed more people), the Lord of the Deep was awakened (He didn't kill anyone at the time), and most importantly Rifts began to open up which let numerous alien races spill out into the world. Where many of them were and are still being killed. Rifts, for which the game is named, are what makes Rifts Earth so incredibly crazy. These Rifts allow for dimensional travel and allow everything from friendly fluff balls to malevolent alien gods out for a stroll onto Earth. So all the while the people who thought their lives couldn't get any worse now have to compete with displaced extra-dimensional beings trapped here. Those not content with just being friends with everybody chose to fight even the nicest of D-Bee's (Slang term for dimensional beings). Thus the Coalition was formed. Made up of a bunch of pricks who managed to take control of ancient super-city/fortresses wage constant war against Aliens, supernatural beings and magic users. Meanwhile all kinds of other horrible things go on all across Rifts Earth. This is a really shitty place to live.From Me: Welcome to RIFTS Earth The current year is some 500+ years after our present real-world day. Some of you may find my vision of Rifts very familiar in many ways to the Rifts setting you have known for years. I have put my own spin on the setting, to add a bit of variety to the world, and a tad more realism (in some parts) as well. Don't worry, it's still gonzo post-apocalyptic awesome, just in a bit more of my own way. To help illustrate this, I've decided to put together this short write-up on the various themes of my version of the game world.
Reader Experience
Everything is Awesome!
Folks, this world is fucking awesome. Imagine Earth, with thousands of interdimensional portals pouring an infinite swarm of cool shit into the world. Imagine lasergun-wielding literal cow people riding dinosaurs on a prismacolor field of glass-sand that used to be called Wyoming. Imagine a horde of Valkyries riding flying motorcycles that leave trails of lightning, locked in battle with an endlessly swarming hive of all-consuming bio-mechanical insect men from an alien world. Imagine a family of migratory mountains, cities made out of crashed spaceships, translucent mermen swimming in quicksilver lakes, and giant robots punching dragons. And all the while an alien octopus plays a heavy metal cover of the Beegees' Stayin Alive. Atlantis has returned, King Arthur is out there somewhere, the First Nations are reborn, the Four Horsemen ride, and every god and myth and legend from every lost culture has found a way back to the world to play once more. And Gargoyles was renewed for another season, too. And yet despite all of this (and in many ways, because of it)…Everything Sucks!
And how! Not only is the world an extremely dangerous playground for all kinds of awful monstrosities. Many of these pour out from various dimensional rifts to run amok and generally fuck things up. But many others are either stuck here by accident, or have come here with legitimate desires to make this their new home. And regardless of origin, the vast majority of these outsiders probably want to murder and/or eat you. Not only that, but almost every aspect of life in general sucks butts, at least in comparison to the quality of life that we are used to as civilized citizens of the modern world. Inside the protective 'Burbs of the Coalition or other powerful kingdoms, a human (take note of this key word) can expect to live a pretty decent life, with relatively modern amenities and a reasonable expectation of ensured protection from the wild. Out in the wild, anything and everything can probably kill you, and usually in an epic gory fashion. And by "wild" I mean "anything not within half a klick of a protected settlement." And even within those settlements, there's a whole lot of opportunities for death and dismemberment if you're a non-human, or "D-Bee" as the slang goes. There's a whole lot of pro-human, anti-DB folks out there who see this as their world that done got invaded by the demons from the Rifts. The fact that you're a cute fuzzy friendly lemming-looking thing doesn't matter one lick to them.Other Quick Things to Know
Character Agency
I do my best to run my game world as open as possible. The setting is a sandbox for complete freedom of exploration.
Drama
Fascism is on the rise everywhere.
Humanity is fighting back against the inhuman forces that would destroy it. The line between "human" and "the enemy" grows dangerously thinner every day. Humans group together to protect themselves from non-human outsiders, which range from unfathomable monsters to sentient peoples almost indistinguishable from you and I. Is this always a good thing, though?
The distinction between the Powerful and the Weak is invariably determined by who is in possession of the most mega-damage weapons. These powerful tools of destruction can level towns and atomize populations of mortals in mere seconds.
Rifts®, The Rifter®, RECON®, Splicers®, Powers Unlimited®, Palladium Books®, The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, Phase World®, Nightbane®, Megaverse®, The Mechanoids®, The Mechanoid Invasion®, Coalition Wars®, Chaos Earth®, Dead Reign®, and After the Bomb® are Registered Trademarks of Palladium Books Inc. RPG Tactics™, Beyond the Supernatural, Coalition States, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Minion War, Mysteries of Magic, SAMAS, Thundercloud Galaxy, Three Galaxies, Vampire Kingdoms, and other published book titles, names, slogans and likenesses are trademarks of Palladium Books Inc., and Kevin Siembieda.
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