[OSSR] Rifts World Book 9 - South America: 2
Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 8:21 pm
Set the wayback machine to 1995, True Believers, because we're making a deep cut. Rifts World Book 9 - South America: 2
You might legitimately ask: why does anyone care what Kevin Siembieda thinks? You might specifically ask why CJ Carella:
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=474139
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=29458&start=0
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55486&start=400
cares enough to write the best supplements for his dumpster fire of a gaming system?
Well, when the Palladium RPG came out in 1983, it was one of the few available games (RuneQuest came out in 1978, with derivatives such as Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu coming out in the early 80s) where players had access to magic that did something other than let them zap people. If you wanted a game where magic was interesting, it had something going.
The key selling points were the Summoner and Diabolist classes, combined with a game engine that, while a dumpster fire by modern standards, was at least better than RuneQuest. Your chance of identifying unknown fruits and berries was 62% + IQ bonus + 4%/level, but at least it wasn't 18%.
That is how bad the engine under Call of Cthulhu is, people.
Kevin, when he isn't trying vainly to out-douche Gygax, also comes up with some cool stuff. Future wizards in rebreather masks who teleport along magic ley lines? Those are cool. Psi-stalkers are cool. The war between Chaotic Evil demons and Lawful Evil devils was, I believe Kevin's idea that D&D stole back?
In 1994, Kevin Siembieda released the second volume of his post-apocalyptic South America gazetteer, which is also the ninth volume of the gazetteer series (now up to Rifts-World-Book-35-Megaverse-in-Flames - which includes an update on the aforementioned Minion War); because his organizational grasp on supplement titles makes as much sense as the way he organizes these volumes of D&D house rules that he binds and sells. Well, officially, he "edited" it, because the universe is a sick joke at your expense: it was written by Carlos J. Martijena-Carella ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.J._Carella ) who I know has been mentioned on the Den before, but he grew up bouncing around South America, so he gave South America all kinds of awesome stuff.
Like every Palladium book, we will start with a:
The book starts with an introduction in which CJ laments what isn't in it, including the second part of the adventure they started in the previous gazetteer which would've pissed me off if I'd been trying to run it.
Actually, no, it starts with a *table of contents*. Let me explain. No, there is too much: let me summarize. Rather than doing real indexes, Rifts books have a second, alphabetical order table of contents which will enable you to find specific robots or character classes. It's better than *not* having such a Quick Find Table, but it's not great; they serve as a useful summary for what these books contain.
In this OSSR, you can look forward to Blood Lizards (who are an entire species of post-morality psionic velociraptors that nonetheless want to ridden around on by dinosaur knights), True Inca Demigods, and cybernetic Fishmalks! Enjoy!
You might legitimately ask: why does anyone care what Kevin Siembieda thinks? You might specifically ask why CJ Carella:
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=474139
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=29458&start=0
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55486&start=400
cares enough to write the best supplements for his dumpster fire of a gaming system?
Well, when the Palladium RPG came out in 1983, it was one of the few available games (RuneQuest came out in 1978, with derivatives such as Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu coming out in the early 80s) where players had access to magic that did something other than let them zap people. If you wanted a game where magic was interesting, it had something going.
The key selling points were the Summoner and Diabolist classes, combined with a game engine that, while a dumpster fire by modern standards, was at least better than RuneQuest. Your chance of identifying unknown fruits and berries was 62% + IQ bonus + 4%/level, but at least it wasn't 18%.
That is how bad the engine under Call of Cthulhu is, people.
Kevin, when he isn't trying vainly to out-douche Gygax, also comes up with some cool stuff. Future wizards in rebreather masks who teleport along magic ley lines? Those are cool. Psi-stalkers are cool. The war between Chaotic Evil demons and Lawful Evil devils was, I believe Kevin's idea that D&D stole back?
In 1994, Kevin Siembieda released the second volume of his post-apocalyptic South America gazetteer, which is also the ninth volume of the gazetteer series (now up to Rifts-World-Book-35-Megaverse-in-Flames - which includes an update on the aforementioned Minion War); because his organizational grasp on supplement titles makes as much sense as the way he organizes these volumes of D&D house rules that he binds and sells. Well, officially, he "edited" it, because the universe is a sick joke at your expense: it was written by Carlos J. Martijena-Carella ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.J._Carella ) who I know has been mentioned on the Den before, but he grew up bouncing around South America, so he gave South America all kinds of awesome stuff.
Like every Palladium book, we will start with a:
On the plus side - because Kevin hasn't changed typesetting practices since 1980, everything is in a cleanly spaced, serif typeface. No slanted gray-on-gray background fiction in these books!Warning!
These books are stream of consciousness and written by people who don't bother to understand their own rules. In fact, I think CJ didn't use them but ran his own Rifts games using GURPS.
None of us at the den endorse a lack of editorial oversight, inaccurate indexes or a total failure of structure or typesetting.
The book starts with an introduction in which CJ laments what isn't in it, including the second part of the adventure they started in the previous gazetteer which would've pissed me off if I'd been trying to run it.
Actually, no, it starts with a *table of contents*. Let me explain. No, there is too much: let me summarize. Rather than doing real indexes, Rifts books have a second, alphabetical order table of contents which will enable you to find specific robots or character classes. It's better than *not* having such a Quick Find Table, but it's not great; they serve as a useful summary for what these books contain.
In this OSSR, you can look forward to Blood Lizards (who are an entire species of post-morality psionic velociraptors that nonetheless want to ridden around on by dinosaur knights), True Inca Demigods, and cybernetic Fishmalks! Enjoy!