Planning for Rifts

With my 5e campaign winding down perhaps (or at least switching to a new phase) in the near future and the Bundle of Holding I mentioned before, I have been giving serious consideration to running Rifts. No, not the system; I left that behind in high school. The setting is what I'm looking at likely to be run with Savage Worlds as it offers the advantage of requiring little work to get started and the VTT support several of my players will desire.

It's been over a decade since I thought about what I might do with Rifts, and almost as long since I riffed off it. I think I will have a slightly different approach that what I imagined in 2014, partly because it's been 11 years, but mostly because I am now thinking about running it with a specific group of players in mind that I know well thanks to playing with them for a long time.

Here are my updated notes:

"I'm Different!"

Characters in should be distinctive and have their own niche. Having a lot of character types helps that but even characters of the same type ought to have their own signature style. This is a trait that makes Rifts sort of comic book-like, but of course it's common to all sorts of pulpier media.

Coded For Easy Identification

I feel like the setting at times suggests a sort of cartoonish, easy recognizability where inspiration is often barely disguised, if at all. This can be taken too far; I certainly don't mean in terms of racial/ethnic stereotypes in portrayals of non-U.S. countries. More that locations within the former U.S. ought to mix signifers of their flavor and the sort of adventures they support.  There ought to be a lot of cowboy hats in Lone Star and the West, and just sub-Firefly or Bravestarr Western cliches. The Dinosaur Swamp might mix a bit of hicksploitation with its saurians.

Totally 80s

In 2014, I suggested Rifts perhaps was best approached as an alternate history.  That may still be the best way to go, but I think I will focus on "this is the level of technology which has been recovered" and be vague about the past. And that tech level would by something like "1989+super science." Being somewhat post-apocalyptic, obviously, some of the late 20th Century tech wouldn't exist due to lack of suitable infrastructure, but the most advance places are just a projection from the 80s standard: broadcast TV, physical media, and a lack of smartphones or 21st century internet.

"I'm Making it My Business"

This isn't the only way to go, certainly, but the setting lends itself to rogues with hearts of gold setting out to make a buck and colliding with evil. Knowing my players, they will readily take to that approach. It's a mode with a lot of examples from Westerns and Space Opera that make "what are we supposed to do?" readily understandable.

Toyetic

Rifts has a lot of space devoted to gear and equipment. While the accumulation of too much stuff by the characters can be a problem in some games (and possibly here), I think it would be a mistake to too not have all the toys in the catalog available.

More Adventure than Survival

Post-apocalyptic media and games are often about just getting the basic necessities. Rifts isn't Oregon Trail, though. The game focus feels better placed on having cool adventures. I do think the setting should touch on that survival aspect, but it's largely window dressing.

Appendix Nth: Inspirational Media for Rifts

 The recent blast of Rifts related Bundles of Holding had me not only spending a bit of money (with 5 bundles one was bound to get me!) but also got me thinking about the lack of a sort of "Appendix N" documented for the game. In fact, so far as I can find on the internet, its creator has never really discussed his influences, though apparently he has said it grew out an earlier version called Boomers focused on the mecha pilots later called "Glitter Boys." The former name was abandoned when someone told him the term was used in Bubblegum Crisis (which rules that anime out as an influence).

So, I want to look back at the media prior to August of 1990 and think about the things that seem like plausible influences on Rifts. Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether any of these things actual were, but they'll be at least somewhat educated guesses, using what is known of Siembieda's interests. 

I'm going to stick to things with multiple points of applicability. Firestarter, for instance, might be an inspiration for the burster (or might not), but that's really the only Rifts-relevant point.

Film/Television

Planet of the Apes series (starts in 1968). Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) seems the most relevant as a post-apocalypse with evolved animals and psychic mutants.
Damnation Alley (1977) - post-apocalyptic with a team with a cool vehicle.

Star Wars trilogy (starts in 1977) - An evil empire with a toyetic flair, a lot of aliens; knights with energy swords.

Thundarr the Barbarian (1980) - post-apocalypse with super-science and sorcery; the sunsword.

Blade Runner (1982) - future city aesthetic, artificial humans.

The Terminator (1984) - robot, travel between "worlds" (or in this case, times)

Robotech (1985) - Mecha, aliens.

Akira (1988) - Dystopia with psychic powers, "city rats", and a future urban landscape. The manga Akira also started its American publication this year.

Comics

"War of the Worlds" (Killraven) (starts in 1973 in Amazing Adventures v2 #30) - Post-apocalyptic world conquered by aliens, features freedom fighters and mutants.

Deathlok saga (begins in Astonishing Tales #25 in 1974) - A government cyborg in a post-apocalyptic future, based in the Midwest.

Judge Dredd (in 2000AD from 1977) - future in a megacity in a dystopian future with psychics, robots, and mutants. Most Rifts-relevant is arc may be "The Cursed Earth" in 1978.

Dreadstar (1982) - A space opera team of sort of superheroes but not officially featuring a guy with a psychic sword, a psychic, a cybernetic wizard, and a cat man battle an evil empire.

Grimjack (1984) - features a pan-dimensional city where magic and technology co-exist.

Scout (1985) - Takes place in a dystopian future; a lot of guns, some mystic monsters, a few mechs.

Appleseed (1988, in English) - cyberpunk, mecha, cyborgs.

I am reliably told that there are a number of anime and manga whose designs seem to have influenced greatly Rifts artists. I haven't repeated those here because I'm not sure what influence they had on Seimbeida, and I personally am not familiar enough with them to do more than repeat what I've heard.

Rifts 1970

Rifts, arriving in 1990, is certainly a product of the 1980s. Could Rifts be scrubbed of its 80s chrome and be translated to another era? Why not? Let me pitch you Rifts 1970.

Now, you might say (but don't, because I will have already said it!): "Isn't Rifts 1970 just Gamma World?" Well, they're both post-apocalyptic games, but Gamma World is right down the middle of post-apocalyptic stuff, whereas Rifts wants to throw a kitchen sink at you: you've got cyberpunk, mecha, magic, Star Wars-style fascism, and the Rifts themselves that can get you pretty much anything else can appear.

In Rifts 1970, the mix is a little different, but there are analogous inspirations. Anime/Manga haven't really made a big impact in the U.S. yet, but there's kaiju films and Astro Boy. Fighting giant monsters would be a bigger thing in Rifts 1970, I think. Mecha would look more like Rog from the Doom Patrol, but the real Glitter Boy replacements might be guys with giant robot friends like Frankenstein Jr.

Cyberpunk hasn't arrived yet either, but computers have and concerns about the possibility of AI. Think Star Trek or Colossus: The Forbin Project. Cyborgs are already around like the Cybermen or the various Robotmen in DC Comics. Probably high tech equipment should be more T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents than Appleseed. This might push things in a bit more of a "superhero" direction, but there is an argument to be made that that's what it always has been.

Magic, of course, works well in either era. A distinctly Ditko-esque Doctor Strange vibe would set Rifts 1970 apart, though.

The Coalition and their not-stormtroopers, the Deadboys, become some other Nazi stand-ins, like HYDRA or any number of villainous comic book organizations or '50s comics alien invaders that were either Nazi or commie substitutes. Of course, Starship Troopers was written in 1959, and we saw how easy it was to paint those guys with a fascist brush in the film adaptation. Maybe the Deadboys can have their powered armor after all?

Thinking About Rifts

Blame Blizack over at Dungeonskull Mountain. His posts about Rifts have got me thinking about how I would tweak the setting for a game. It's likely this madness will pass, but here are some of the things I've thought about:

Rifts and Zones
The areas of rifts in the fabric of reality shouldn't be just gateways to other dimensions or sources of magical energy. They ought to be really strange and dangerous; A lot like the zones in Roadside Picnic. The rifts would be alluring, though, as sources of high technology to reverse-engineered. A lot of advanced tech might have been acquired this way. There would also probably be a cargo cult element to many human societies.

Retro-Future
Rifts was published in 1990 and in its DNA is material from 70s and 80s post-apocalyptic films and comics, 80s anime and manga, and the general genre zeitgeist of the age. It wouldn't change a lot, I guess, but it might be fun to assume an alternate history where our world of smartphones and mp3s never existed. It was the future of Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell that led to the world of Rifts. And that future looks like the Logan's Run TV series and the Kamandi comic filtered through the tech and style of Akira, Appleseed and Walter Jon William's Hardwired.

Comic book
The kitchen sink-ness of Rifts and it's big action have a real comic book sensibility. Not in the sense of superheroes (not as traditionally considered) but in the way that every character is distinctive and has their own look and schtick--and maybe even G.I. Joe style codenames. No PC should be "just a merc"--or even "just a vagabond."