A Geek History of Time - Episode 278 - Paladium Games Part III - The Rifts Have Opened

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Item one, hit the grocery store. Item two, laundry. Item three, over through capitalism. You know, for somebody who taught Latin, your inability to pronounce French, like, hurts. Damn. Look at you getting to the end of my stuff. Motherfucker. But seriously, I do think that this bucolic, luxurious, live your weird fucking dreams kind of life is something worth noting. Because of course he had. I got into an argument essentially with

with some folks as to whether or not punching Nazis is something you should do. And they're like, no, then you're just as bad as the Nazis. I was like, the Nazis committed genocide. I'm talking about breaking noses. Drink scotch and eat strychnine. All right. You can't leave that lying there. Luxury poultry. Yes, yes.

Fancy chickens. Yes, fancy chicken. Pet, pet, fancy chickens. Pet fancy chickens. Pet Fancy Chickens? Pet Fancy Chickens. ["Pet Fancy Chickens Theme"] This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And last time we were together, I wound up talking a bit about my role playing history, you know, the foundations of my hobby dump.

And I wound up getting into a conversation with a friend of the show, Bishop O'Connell, as I was doing the research for these episodes. And I just remember the conversation. Um, we actually, we participated, uh, in a D&D campaign at our friendly local gaming store. When we were in eighth or ninth grade and we were two of the youngest people at the table. Um, our friend, Bobby James was with us. And the three of us were in what then was called a junior high school. And then a couple of

older guys who were in high school were at the table and at least one of them was a part-time employee of the game store. And the guy running the game in retrospect was probably a couple of years younger than I am now and he was very particular about the way he ran the game and the stuff that you know you could play. He did not allow non-human player characters. And in the world that he had created, he did some incredible world building that was really, really amazing for us as youngsters who

were new to this whole concept of, hey, you could create a setting for this. And as Bishop and I were talking about this game, I started making realizations. Bishop apparently had already made these realizations years ago. But I started looking back on this going, you know, I'm not comfortable with what we were doing back then. So this guy had a rule against non-human player characters. And in the world he had so meticulously created, elves were hunted for sport and for bounties.

You could make money by finding and murdering elves and taking their ears to the authorities which Like at the time oh man, that's that's edgy right now like that's disturbing on on Multiple levels. So there's that so So, okay, that's that's creepy and racist. And then it was it was an urban centered kind of campaign. We spent a lot of time in and around cities towns and in the big city that we wound up spending an awful lot of time in one of the recurring

jokes in the game was how much time our characters, various characters in our party, remember this is a game being played by teenage boys with a 40 something man running the game, how much time our various characters spent in a brothel that was very colorfully named the pink scabbard and haha that's funny how we get what that's reference to yeah great yeah okay being run by a 40-something guy with an audience of teenage boys right being awfully worried about you you know, these kinds of issues. And then Bishop reminded me of one other detail that had not occurred to me, and that was that it was highlighted to us at the table by our DM that if you patronized this establishment, the Pink Scabbard, you could choose whether you were with a woman or with a very young man, a boy, as a matter of fact.

And it was presented as, ha ha ha, look how decadent this is, ha ha, gay jokes, ha ha, it's 1992 and we're all, you know, idiots. And you know, now I want to go back and throttle, you know, 13, 14 year old me, like dude, that's fucked up. And you shouldn't be laughing at that. And I also want to go back and talk to the ownership of the store about like, are you listening to what he's saying up there? Like Bishop and I know, I know that Bishop and I got away without anything bad

happening to us, but like I realized, holy shit, this guy very likely could have been actually, no kidding, grooming somebody. actually no kidding grooming somebody like you know you survivor bias like you know yeah I got through it okay like no man I now I want to try to find some of the older guys that that we were playing with in that group and like man are you okay you know it was it was a very sobering and kind of Kind of disturbing realization that like oh shit. That was not normal Not only was that normal. That's a really bad kind of not like Wow so, um, I had that

sobering realization Earlier this week. How about you? What have you had going on? Well, I'm Damian Harmony. I'm a US history teacher up in Northern California. And Jesus Christ, that was dark. Wow.

Yeah, I'm getting it out of the way now. So, yeah. So yeah, so you can talk about other things with your therapist. So, wow. I mean, yes, so you can talk about other things with your therapist So wow, that's I mean yes everything you said that dude was clearly like, you know What I found is and this is all anecdotal evidence, but what I found is that in the world of D&D

Mm-hmm players. There is a deviancy from the norm and that deviancy squeaks out in weird ways sometimes with folks Yeah, and when it was far less mainstream Things would get braided together Yeah, the same thing seems to be true of people who study the classics there seems to be a higher degree of people who study the classics. There seems to be a higher degree of people who study the classics who are on board for Nazi shit on some levels, and or who are end up getting busted for lewd and lascivious.

So it's just a thing that happens. And I think, again, it's one of those, this is what happens when you veer from the norm and you weren't given a healthy way to deal with your own shit. And so the two braided together. Yeah. Because your oddness becomes currency

and your edginess becomes attractive to other people who also don't quite fit in. And therein, you could actually almost see somebody accidentally grooming someone and then kind of turning on the, okay now I'm doing this on purpose thing. So, that's awful. Let me tell you this. This will cheer everything up hopefully. Okay. I'm down for it. Trying to put sugar on shit here.

So, god damn. Hopefully, um, okay. I'm down for it trying to put sugar on shit here. Um, so So this today for dessert, um, I I Found on sale that it's it's were on sale and I normally buy the mint ones But they had the capes, you know ones for sale. I haven't had a cappuccino. It's it since I was 16 I can remember the last time I had it I was being tutored by Charlene on the senior lawn despite only being a junior in math and I was eating a cappuccino. It's it while trying to make sense of it. It tasted so much better this time around

Could just be yeah, I imagine the emotional loading was probably different different. Yeah But but yeah had a cappuccino. It's it let my kid try it she loved it So she might eat one of the the two that are left tomorrow nice, but yeah cappuccino. It's it is where it's at the the the Holy grail of its its is strawberry apparently because it's really hard to find strawberry its its No, oh, yeah, we'll see if if I were still working at my old site I Could probably hook you up because there in the town where my old site was located

Was the it's It essentially factory outlet. Right. I was going to say, yeah, that's pretty close to the nexus point for It's It. Yeah. And there may or may not have been multiple occasions on which I had enough time before the train arrived to come home that I stopped in there and made myself fatter with, with usually a cappuccino. Yep. That is the, that is the apex.

Yeah. Of the experience right there. It's yummy. That's it. It's actually the first time my, my daughter said that something coffee tasting tasted good, and it's because cappuccino Doesn't taste like the bitterest black coffee that her dad drinks so Yeah, that makes sense then she told me actually that she is one of a very few kids Who is in her grade who has not fallen in love with the various?

Sugarific Starbucks coffee drinks. Incoctions. Right. And that she's got friends who are very, very hyper all day long, like vibratingly hyper because their parents get them that on the way to school, which as a teacher, I can only say thanks. That's awesome. That's, that's, there's no forethought there at all and the other thing I

Mentioned was like wait a minute. I let you guys eat sweets when you want basically I don't really like everybody does everything within moderation anyway, so it's not a big deal I let you guys like do this and do that Your behavior never changes because the food you eat, because you know better. Yeah. And, you know, so we had a bit of a talk about what does that infer? So anyway, placebo effect, whatever.

The only the only note I will add to that is I have had students that I kind of wish their parents would do that Not because they show up to my early morning classes asleep But because they are ADHD out the wazoo. Oh, it helps refuse to give them Medication and like I'll tell you what can you give him a cup of coffee? Maybe right like something Like oh my god, like mm-hmm somehow. Yeah, that's all so when we left off last time, yes, I had just gotten to talking about the release of rifts in 1990 and to

And for our listeners who don't remember rifts is the so there was Heathcliff, but then there was rift wrath And he was the he was the second half of the cartoon. So the yeah Yeah, the tannish cat with the hat and the tie. Yeah. Yeah No, no No No. No. No. What Rift actually was, was take all of the other Palladium role-playing games, throw them in a blender, and then add post-apocalypse as a binder, and you get Rift. Oh, so Rift Chaff. That's... Yes. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. Rift chaff that's yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah rift amoli So and and So we we had previously just to just to kind of touch on what we're talking about throwing into this this blender we had Ninjas and super spies, which was a action adventure espionage martial arts game. We had Beyond the Supernatural, which was a psychic powers and horror genre game. Very early on we had the Mackanoids, we had the Palladium fantasy role playing game, and

we had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which had expanded into and it had expanded beyond the original milieu into the game after the bomb, which was its own post-apocalypse mutant animal adventure game. And so Rift took all of these things and, you you know bang them all together and then added a massive shot of post-apocalypse science fiction okay from the very moment you opened the cover of the book it was really clear this was something different from what anybody had put out before. Can you describe the cover? I can. As a matter of fact, I can hold it up.

I actually, I still have. Oh, okay. So it's that one. My original, yes. Okay. And this one, by the way, is first printing. Okay. This is it right here. Now, for the audience at home,

Yes. This is this is it right here now for the for the audience at home. Yes, uh, what you showed me was a a Looks like some sort of demon type creature Yes on a floating uh Mechanized it honestly it looks like if um, Cthulhu had sex with reed richards Cthulhu had sex with Reed Richards. Okay. Because you got the floating like four pod car kind of vibe thing going on which seems to have an eye in the front of it and like some sort of design.

The guy who is clearly the commander of the three or four people that are on it, he has tendrils coming off his back. Yeah. He has tendrils coming off his back. Yeah, similar to what you would have seen with Venom or Carnage when they were getting ready to jump ugly. Yeah, I think he had a gun in his hand. He has a scepter He's in his left clawed fist He's holding a staff with an orb on the top of it that has an eyeball floating in in fluid of some kind Okay, and then there are I think three

oddish 1980s Like like if you could take the main female protagonist or antagonist I forget which because I fell asleep during the movie But from Blade Runner and then mix that with the dancers on running man That's who you have here. Okay, okay all holding guns. It would appear I was gonna say that they look like the the backup Quote-unquote musicians in a Robert Palmer video. Oh

No, no, they're far more dressed than that or they're far less dressed than that. Yeah, that's true It's a good there's there's emphasis on their behinds despite this being the 80s and everybody wanting flat butts And then that that was a thing. That's why Cindy And she's admitted that she's like, yeah hit it just the right time Yeah, and then there are like floating or of fluids, which I can only describe as like dark wine versions of the Bomar monks from Jabba's palace without the waves. Nice, I like it, I like it, yeah. And those all have, if you look closely enough,

you can see all of those also have eyeballs in them. Right, and floating skulls atop them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a, the painting is by Keith Parkinson, who if you if you are a connoisseur or a fan of fantasy RPG art, Parkinson did a lot of work for TSR. Okay. And the fact that palladium could actually like get him Mm-hmm to the cover of the book shows that that they were they were now, you know They were firmly established in the big leagues, right?

Despite some of the things that you see on the inside of the book, but we'll get to that in a minute Yeah, so it's it's a it's a hulking alien monster He's got like an alligator kind of jaw with big lots of all pointy teeth And he's hulking and muscular like his arms are like he's ripped, right? He does not have any eyes if you look closely all of all of his eyes are on the platform that he's that he's attached to And on the on the floating platforms around him. Similarly, the women on the platform all have their eyes covered by what might be blindfolds,

what might be sunglasses or whatever. And everything that you pointed out is correct. What I will add though is he has obvious and very extensive cybernetic modifications. You can see big heavy like power cables on the insides of his arms. He's got what looks like plated armor grafted onto the front of his body and on his head there is a Kind of sim. It's almost like a helmet, but it's very clearly attached to his head that's all mechanical and electronic and And he is not holding a gun, but there is some kind of blaster looking thing

attached To his right arm like on his on his right wrist Okay, and Yes, your your commentary about the women on the on the barge are correct It's there they're essentially wearing one-piece swimsuits with big heavy gold belts around their metals and Funny looking gold helmets, and they're all carrying science fiction looking blasters. So this is magic, clearly there's magic involved,

there's clearly science fiction involved. All of this is floating over this rocky, you know, kind of barren landscape So this this this painting gives off a whole lot of vibes of what? What what this game is gonna be about right? This is there's magic. They're science fiction. There's a post post-apocalypse mishmash We're throwing everything together kind of vibe. Yeah, there's a darkness and a greasiness to it almost Yeah, I like I like your description of the greasiness There is there is clearly some kind of Slime or ectoplasm or something? He's the figure is holding his arms out kind of a Kimbo isn't quite the right word

Oh, but away from his body, and you can see there's like slime. Yeah Attaching you know linking his arms to his body And so yeah, and this is all so very 1990 just it Yeah, attaching, you know linking his arms to his body And so yeah, and this is all so very 1990 just it hurts like yeah Missing the mullet, but that's it, but that's that's the only thing that's not in there. Yeah And then when you when you open the book up and you and you look at the artwork in the book number one, it is no longer done by anybody with the reputation or price tag of Keith Parkinson, it's done by the in-house palladium staff artists.

So Kevin Long has a whole lot of work in here and a guy by the name of Dom Broski and a few illustrations are done by Kevin Shimbieta himself and all of the artwork inside the book is very comic book-esque. It is black and white with, you know, hash marks for shading. And there is a color insert inside the book. There's about, I gotta count, let's see, we got two, four, six, there's about, yeah, there's about, I'm sorry, eight pages in the middle of the book that are color plates to give us an idea because this is a brand new setting and we got to get a look at what this world looks like.

And so in here, there are several paintings that have been done by the same artists and then there's a couple of illustrations that have simply had color added to them that are much more in line with the rest of the book But what we see overwhelmingly is Everything is full of ruins and there's there's Stylistically a lot of the art emphasizes the dirt and the haphazard cobbled together feeling of the wastelands and

The paintings that are in that color insert show you know demons roaming freely through the shattered ruins of fallen megalopoli and full conversion cyborgs and power armored mercenaries you know stalking through those ruins after those monsters. And it's all…it's very evocative. It makes it very clear that, oh, hey, by the way, the world ended, and here we are. And you see images of ley line walkers riding glowing currents of pulsing psychic energy, line walkers riding glowing currents of pulsing psychic energy, beings from a hundred different dimensions calling Earth home. And there are a couple of images specifically of one of the few large and powerful technological human states that exists, and that is Chi- Chi town in the coalition states and I'm gonna talk more about Chi town. Okay as we get more into the setting

now the backstory of all of this is Now that are we talking the lore of the world or the backstory of how they came up? I'm talking about the lore of the world. Okay. Okay that I'm going I'm going kayfabe here Okay, so the the lore of the world. Okay. Okay that I'm going I'm going kayfabe here. Okay, so the the lore of the world is About a century before the present of the game

Earth was a high-tech whiz bang place Okay, huge cities were inhabited by Billions of humans who had developed incredibly advanced technologies. Giant robots and powered armor did construction and rescue work alongside cyborgs. Skies were full of jet bikes and there were colonies on the moon and on Mars and you know, they found a cure to cancer and like, you know, it was, it was We're hitting our stride and our apex.

Yes, but it was not a utopia. Okay. Nation states still had conflicts. And some of the technologies that we see in the game. Were developed by militaries. Okay. They're morally sketchy at best inhumane at worst. I'm going to talk about a couple of them later but the very existence of mega damage power suits and the glitter boy, which is

Yeah a power suit that has a rail that has the most powerful rail gun in the game That you can only fire once around and it's a whole thing but That all just the existence of those things point to the fact that the times before This was not a perfect society We we as humanity had not achieved utopia, but we were we were in this place of technological Advancement it was uneven at best Yes, and oppressive at realist. Yeah. Yeah, so an international crisis Now in the basic rule book, you don't know what year it is, but later on you find out that

2098 Okay international crisis 2098 yeah, so Well, no 2099 is what? 2098? Yeah. Not 2090. Well no, 2099 is what Ravage, Spiderman, Doom, X-Men, it's what Marvel did

in the mid-1990s. Early to mid-1990s. Yeah, and I kind of think that the decision for it to be 2098, I think they were like okay, we for it to be, no, it's 2098. I think they were like, okay, we want it to be far enough in the future that it's believable that, oh, hey, we figured all this stuff out. We don't want it to be too far in the future. And we're not going

to do anything like a 99 or anything. We need a number that feels a little bit more a little bit more random Yeah, so what it is also is that like we've seen with sci-fi Very often things are in the near future 40 years from now. So yeah within Your potential lifetime you'd be an old man checking it out 40 years from now, but there you go or Your children are definitely like know what this author is talking about. Yeah 2098 2099. Um, I mean I'd be 122 years old like yeah, I ain't lasting that long my kids would be

in their 90s like they're probably not lasting that long either. So it's possible that their children would be in their 60s. So like when my grandchildren are old ass people. So that's so far flung into the future that it's hard to conceive of. But it's also so close to the recent future or to the near future that it doesn't strain credulity like saying, you know, like in Warhammer 40K.

Yeah. Where it's just like, yeah, we're just making up numbers now. It's like, oh, who gives a fuck? Like, it's still using our calendar. Yeah. It is, I mean, it is a hundred years after 1999. You know, it's like that kind of a thing. So it's just out of reach, but it's still close enough that we would recognize. Yes, we recognize many of the things.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So in, we find out, I don't even remember how many source books down the line it is that we figure all this out But it was 2098 There is a crisis between two nations in South America And the basic rule book it doesn't say and I have not read the source book that if they've ever revealed What two nations at what I don't think they have but So anyway to two nations in South America Uh get into they have a crisis they get into turns into a war And then that war turns into a very brief but very poorly timed nuclear exchange

Now What then happens is, is psychic woo woo. In in this is this is a a holdover or a carryover better way of putting it from but beyond the supernatural. Beyond the supernatural explains when it gets into magic and psychic powers and all of that. And there's a similar explanation in the Rift rule book as a matter of fact, I think it might actually be just copy pasted out of Beyond the Supernatural But PPE a potential psychic energy which you remember I mentioned as being part of the mechanic for magic and spell casters, right? Right that gets doubled when a living being dies so your

your average animal is doubled when a living being dies. So your, your average animal is going to have eight or nine PPE points. Your average human is going to have 10 or 15 and I'm, I'm pulling numbers out of my, out of my right. Right. But it gets the idea across. But yeah, but sentient, sentient beings have more PPE than Donsensient the more complicated the nervous system essentially the more PPE you're carrying around okay, and so at the moment of death

Mm-hmm the a PPE doubles which is an explanation for and this is why Societies throughout history have used animal or even human sacrifice in rituals It's right is that's that's you got it. You got to get the juice to do this thing Yeah, cuz it basically like okay that the balloon has burst and you got to capture as much as what the pressure pushes out Yeah, okay So so number one at the moment of death PPE doubles what about a moment of orgasm? I mean in French. That's the little death Yes, I don't know like 1.1. Yeah, you know

Yeah, I I they never go into the oddly enough. They never go into that moment of sneeze Now I kind of want to I want to like micro. Yeah sure This out like okay. You get people like you want to buy some snuff like yeah Yeah, and and it just gives you a plus one what was it's wizards having a massive black pepper habit right like yeah, just The fireball yeah, know, just red hot Swami's sneezing at you. Yeah.

Like you get a little capsaicin, like you get there. Yeah. You get the pepper mage. Yeah. You know what? Certain celestial events also double PPE. Oh, sure like an eclipse or yeah an eclipse or solstice or planetary alignments So it's like mercury and retrograde fucks with people's PPE like it does now

Oh, you know they never got into they never talked about mercury retrograde But they're talking about solstice The solstice is the equinoxes and planetary alignment. So as it turns out... Having been born on a solstice, I can tell you what hogwash all of that is because I am the most shiftless lazy motherfucker. I am as mediocre as they come. Well, yeah, okay, no, but see, is potential Energy this is yeah, no apply fits like everybody had greater expectations of me. So yeah, see you were gifted kid Yeah, you know, yeah that they tested 11 times. Yeah

Yeah, so okay so planetary alignment so this this nuclear exchange happened on December 20th 2098 which was the solstice. Yep and I don't know and actually thinking about it now. This might have been the reason that it eventually turned out to be 2098 I don't know if they actually calculated it or not But there was there's also a whole planetary alignment thing that's involved so it's the solstice and a planetary alignment and several million people all being violently killed all at once oh my god you could have like almanac mages oh dude they're not they're not diviners. They just they read poor Richards. Yeah, I like it Church of Ben, you know, I Might have like if I ever play a Beyond the Supernatural game ever again

I might have to create the Church of Ben as a cult Oh, absolutely and just be like no no like to get to the higher levels you have to have contracted syphilis like Got you that was so close. Yeah, I know so close. I nearly spat beer So my god I love I love I love all of this idea cuz like You think back to like all kinds of magics that like it requires a little bit of blood or It requires the pain of the this or the agony of the that and it's like, okay, okay

I'm not here for the agony, but like I'll sneeze eight times until I'm worse And does that add up? Is it a stacking thing? Love the idea of like somebody who's just really got a low PPE They've got fucking like a bandolier of spices like They call me ancho, you know Yeah Hey, why do you guys keep calling him Cap? It's short for his nickname cap sason, you know, it's just oh my god

Why won't he stop crying? No, that's what his magic's at its toughest look out everyone watch out. Oh he harnesses the motion nope ghost pepper Well, and then you've got any factures the one-chip challenge you know oh yeah, yeah, but like it's like oh no He wants the pain. He just doesn't want stars. Yeah nice Yeah, the the one-chip challenge is what you gotta do to go from apprentice to journeyman right like oh, I love it Hot one that's good eyes like the hot wing show becomes like just a way of like hiding the fact that they're recruiting Celebrities to be nice ages part of part of their their spicy illuminati

Yeah, I would just love to see like some like a world full of sorcerers And then there's one wizard who just has just like the barely the fart essence of magic But he read so much that like okay. It's based on pain well You know it would be like out smarting Your lycanthropy by being really rich and then getting in a plane and flying against the Earth's rotation to avoid the full moon all night. Yeah, I like it. You know, or just like the person who realizes, hey guys, the moon actually reflects sunlight. Yeah.

So let's just hang outside and vampires can't get us at night anyway thank you like you know yeah yeah I just I love I love like having those people who are just like super low performers but like they figured out a way to say figure out the bonuses Yeah, and and they're in the most ridiculous of ways. Yeah, I am now unstoppable. Yeah. Yeah I'm on you walk into an organic food co-op. I am unstoppable and he's just got all these bags With the twist eyes with the label for what spell it is And it's got the skew number on it still. Yeah, well, of course Well, you got a big party no no to the vampire

What nothing huh? Plastic straight yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that So so all of all of the all of the bag everything lines of the planets aligned yeah, yeah, literally Yes, and this released in addition to the nuclear fireball. There was a firestorm of psychic energy sure like you do that energy reawakened dormant ley lines Which is another thing that got discussed in beyond the supernatural talking about lines, lines of psychic force across the planet. Like the Nazca lines kind of thing. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah.

There'd be spots throughout the world that are like more in tuned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so then those dormant lay lines. I'm sorry. Just, I want to to I want to redirect these ley lines. So I'm going to kill a bunch of algae. Like it's just you see you see him out there with like a really big magnifying glass, you know, because it's technically death, you know, and it just. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There are there are in universe explanations for why that particular tactic wouldn't work

But okay, I like but I like that. I like the spunk that yeah showing the moxie. I Like I appreciate the moxie But so then those those ley lines awoke which then like a nuclear chain reaction released even more PPE Into the atmosphere Which led to the universe itself cracking open. Oh man, that'd be like a rift Yes, mmm and and thousands of them opening up between earth and hundreds of other parallel dimensions Atlantis returned. Oh Off one one of the one of the points of the

Subcontinent semi-continent of Atlantis is actually one of the three points of the Bermuda Triangle as it turns out Okay, but anyway massive Continent shows up in the middle of the Atlantic causing massive sea level rise killing millions more people middle of the Atlantic causing massive sea level rise killing millions more people which then again it keeps self-replicating forces yeah on and on and on and on 80% of the planet's population died in the chaos alien beings some of them just alien and many more of them actively malevolent and literally demonic crossed over into our world Like on ships or just got tossed through the ether why got flushed some of them showed up in ships some of them

I mean through rifts all of this is coming from parallel dimensions. This is their own Shrestha yeah, some of us. Yes. Yeah Nice nice call back to your own joke there And the rift rafts came on rift rafts Yes, yeah, not all of them are rift rafts though. Some of them are half rafts. You're right Hmm. Well, some of them are you know, alien deities and and you know, anyway, I'll get into it in a minute so as of The first rule book mm-hmm the precise date isn't known

We know that it's been about a century sure sure since the great catalyst cataclysm pardon me And the remnants of humanity have all held on trying to survive and rebuild of humanity have all held on trying to survive and rebuild. The basic rule book gives us a broadly painted picture of the state of affairs in North America. Okay. Focusing on the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys extending into Texas. Okay. So so there's So there's a very, very strong middle of the country Midwestern focus, which makes sense because Palladium Books, that's the part of the country Palladium Books is in. I'm also just thinking like that's, you know, you get that would maybe encompass continental divide. Like you certainly are encompassing the Mississippi Divide

like natural rifts kind of not not even to make the pun here, but just like Conceptual rifts in people's minds, you know, hey the radio switches from w to k, you know, and yeah You know the states get a lot bigger, you know and showing that like like there's a lot There's a lot of things that define going on there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay So most communities are small and defended by champions who have access to mega damage equipment and or psychic and magical powers Okay DB's are dimensional beings. They are colonizers or refugees from alternate dimensions.

Elves, dwarves, giants, devils, demons, dragons, godlings, alien critters of all kinds all qualify. Okay. In the tumult of the Great Cataclysm, 80% of humanity died, but there were hundreds of thousands of DBs. So not nearly enough of them crossed over to bring the planet's population up to anywhere near what it was. Right.

But billions of humans died and hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of DBs crossed over. So their proportionality to the remaining is much greater than it would have been if they had just So legally seeking asylum Yes, so they're replacing us In the mid on who you ask in the setting Yeah

because There's there's a lot of stuff to talk about here. And many of them didn't show up voluntarily. Like Rift showed up and they fell through it, got sucked through it, or were running away from something worse and ran through it. However, there are plenty of them who are big bad powerful supernatural beings. It was like oh, hey This is a new world opportunity. This is you know So many of them are malevolent

Seeing humanity is weak and ripe for devouring or exploitation. Mm-hmm, but many of them are just trying to survive Sure, sure the magic zone the the very creatively named Magic Zone, where ley lines are powerful and prevalent and rift activity is frequent, extends from St. Louis in the west up through the Ohio Valley and through Appalachia. In this region lies the Federation of Magic, a hodgepodge of tiny kingdoms of magical creatures and practitioners of magic. Okay.

The largest of these is purported to be ruled by a powerful evil wizard named Dunskan. Okay. And he becomes important later on in the setting, but that's all we know about it in the basic rule book. Okay. Now there are other magic heavy kingdoms. They include Laszlo, which is named for a background character in the world of Beyond the supernatural I think kind of like Tobin from Ghostbusters Tobin spirit guide. Okay. Yeah, yeah Laszlo and Beyond the supernatural is like that games Tobin

He's okay. He's the he's the parent of the scholar of the paranormal who's is right? You know knows everything about all this stuff And then there's also new laszlo, which is also pro magic, pro diversity, open to humans, and DBS of all kinds, but is less pacifistic than old Laszlo. So there's old Laszlo, new Laszlo and Tolkien named exactly for who you think it is, which sits in the ruins of Minneapolis and is powerful,

both magically and industrially. So it's a kingdom or city state that has a very powerful, their ruling council is made up of various powerful supernatural beings and magic users, but they also have an industrial base and they have access to high technology at the same time, okay Kingdoms that are more technological include Northern gun and the Manistique Imperium Both who both of whom are in different parts of upper, Michigan Okay, and the several coalition states

Chytown Ironheart free Quebec and Lone Star Hmm so Chitown obviously we can tell where that is you know next to the ruins of old, Chicago Iron heart is out West of there if I'm remembering right and then free Quebec obviously Quebec and Lone Star is pretty clearly Texas or what what once was Texas right and the coalition states are are a very big part of the basic rule book and in order to picture the coalition states I want you to imagine

if the Nazis had taken the totenkopf and the death's head okay and made it not merely a major part of their aesthetic but like the defining feature of it CS soldiers body armor all have a skull helmet Okay, their jet bikes have fairings that are shaped like giant skulls Their biggest war vehicle their their giant crude by like three people like essentially their version of an ad-ad is Literally a giant skull on spider legs. Oh, wow So like Fritz obvious bodies, right? Yeah, like taking taking like all the way to 11, right? Right There in a lot of ways they're kind of reminiscent of the Imperium Aesthetically the Imperium drew very heavily on both Soviet and

Nazi like heavily on both Soviet and Nazi uniform cues and all that kind of stuff for the Imperial Guard. They're both defined by their xenophobia, literal xenophobia, their human supremacist. supremacist Both of them suppress Psychics both of them outlaw sorcery And and magic and magicians are literally demonized by by both by both Groups, okay in the first rule book Can we can we circle back to shy town real quick? Yeah, cool. So in my favorite

System for its lore. Yeah, I've not actually had a chance to play it Brave New World And in Brave New World, it's everybody has superpowers, right? And one of the reasons everybody has superpowers is because Everybody has superpowers right and one of the reasons everybody has superpowers is because Back in the day when not that many people had superpowers. It's an alternate future What if you know a superpowered person to try to kill JFK? Okay, they killed Jackie instead oh Okay becomes like this like perpetual dictator and then I think Reagan takes over form okay keep all that middle shit but one of the things that leads to there being a whole

bunch of superheroes yeah it's almost like an M day for superheroes in that okay there is a huge battle with the Patriot and I forget the bad guy's name But it's in the middle of Chicago and it blows up all of Chicago and takes out like all the superheroes and then like I Forget exactly because it's been 20 years. This is set. This is set in 1999 but alternate future 1999 right And this is when it was made. It blows it up and Chicago becomes known as Crescent City.

And again, Chicago is centralized in the telling of this tale. It is centralized in the lore. And I just find it interesting that now in all fairness, Matt for back the creator he is a Far Western or Midwestern fellow I believe he's from I don't remember where he's from but I think he has settled in Montana So I could see looking at it from that perspective of like what's the biggest city nearby? What do you know the best? You know? What do you want to you know base it on? What do you know the best? You know, what do you want to you know base it on? But I just it's it is interesting to me that now we are talking about two different properties that were created within a decade of each other

both heavily Center, Chicago I Think there's there's a few things going on I think in the case of rifts Number one I'm willing to bet that there is some level on which old Chicago and Chi town is a callback to the Buck Rogers TV series, because you'll remember in the Buck Rogers TV series, the new earth government that was established after the nuclear war, if I'm remembering all the details right, is based outside of, in a glittering new city that sits on the edge of the ruins of old Chicago, which is literally the same way it's described in in rift. And shy town is an archaeology gigantic archaeology city built just outside the ruins of old Chicago and the rabble, the oppressed DB population

of the state of Chaitown live in the burbs, which are outside the walls of the of the, of the orcology and they live in, you know, sprawling, horrible poverty and are, you know, constantly, you know, beaten down, no pressed by the soldiery of the coalition in order to, you know, keep them all beaten down and keep them under control. Right. It is and had done to itself to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think, I think there's that. I think Chicago has this place in the American imagination

as being for a very long time. I mean, it's referred to as the second city. It's, you know, like, you know, we don't want to do this in New York because that'd be too on the nose. So, well, there's also probably another big city that we can, you know, have it be the Mecalopolis. There's probably another thing of New York is the number one target, it's the number one city. L.A. would be on the other coast, so it would be the easiest target there too, right?

Yeah, yeah. And then all the fighting would start and they wouldn't get to the third one, which would be Chicago. So it kind of makes sense that Chicago would survive for that reason too. Yeah. So yes, Second City, which I mean, again, it's called Second City. But also there is there is good geographic sci fi explanation for it. Well, And, you know, it's, it's, it has a reputation for being, you know, an industrial hub, being close to the Great Lakes and, you know, Detroit and these other, you know, big industrial

kind of cities. I guess there's lots of reasons thematically why, why that could be. But so the, the rulership of the coalition states and Chi town is is the most powerful of them all. On on paper, it's like, no, we're all we're all in this. We're, you know, a coalition of, you know, independent industrial, you know, nation states, but really shy town is is holding the steering wheel And the ruler of shy town is Emperor Karl pro-sec Okay and so

In the in the first rule book we learn a lot about the coalition so There there because they are human supremacist they are strongly against MOM modification or juicer conversions which are the basis of two character classes in the game okay so you have those things you're kind of automatically suspect or automatically targeted even by certain people yeah yeah they're there if you if you try to go into kind of, yeah, if you try to go into a coalition city as a, as a juicer or a crazy,

because that's what you're referred to when you have the M O M implants. Um, you, you're gonna, you're gonna have to like register and they're probably gonna have somebody watching you the whole time you're there and they're gonna want to try to hurry you up to get out of town like right away and the cops are gonna hassle you and by cops I mean soldiers because they don't have they don't have a separate law enforcement arm like you know because both of these and and and the stated reason for their antipathy for these things is because both of these are Destructive to the human undergoing the procedures

Okay, so saving them from themselves by well, yeah hunting them down. So nobody else sees them as an attractive option Well, yeah, and and making those procedures illegal in order to prevent people from getting access to it. Yes those procedures illegal in order to prevent people from getting access to it yes as the setting progresses as the timeline moves on they temper their position a little bit as they start needing more soldiers later on because they get into a war with Tolkien okay and they decide you know what we still don't like crazies but juicers that that we can we can deal with that sure so they are The coalition are overtly described in the book as being fascists like like as a

Yeah, but this is amazing the 90s when no one believed that that was possible again. Oh, yeah, I know I know Yeah, they're but like no no it is a fascist state right Carl pro-sect the ruler of Chi town is Directly compared to Adolf Hitler, okay It's like no no this guy like the the in universe chronicler who talks about it Says I'm convinced he is consciously following the example of Hitler. Okay.

When and then she makes remarks about and almost no one nowadays knows who Hitler was because of the cataclysm. Okay. Sure. Like she's she's there's only a few people who are educated like that. Now, it's also worth noting that the average coalition citizen is semi literate. Okay, there is no there is no education within coalition states. There is no no state provided education within coalition states. Reading the reading level-provided education within the coalition states. Reading level for

a citizen would be first or second grade, third grade level. Yeah, actually like third or fourth grade level. You can read signs and when you join the army, you can read the instruction manual for your laser rifle. And that's all we really need you to know how to do. The upper classes in the coalition are very highly educated. Karl Prosek has a doctorate level education. So that's another part of that whole theme. And the coalition are the first really well-defined bad guy in the game Okay, they bully smaller nations and settlements. There's xenophobic human supremacists

Coalition states is a militarized dictatorship You know, there's a small political elite living in opulence while hundreds of thousands of poor citizens starve They wear all shiny black armor with prominent spikes and again the aforementioned Skullhead helmets like their card carrying bad guys right right right and The basic rulebook doesn't really provide for much else in the way of antagonists At the back of the book. There's a quick roll system for creating animalistic predator monsters and intelligent supernatural monsters. But it's not like, oh, hey, this is a specific kind of monster that you can use. Here is a different bad, you know, supernatural bad guy.

You can use like character that you can use. You know, it's just, oh, hey, when you need when you need something supernatural for your players to have to deal with Roll on these tables and right here you go or choose roll or choose off of these tables. You can do this thing There is an alien Dimensional alien insect race called the zyta kicks. They're slightly larger than man-sized bug aliens. And they're described briefly, but that's basically it. So out the gate, you're playing in a newly supernatural post-apocalyptic world full of magic and interdimensional monsters. There's

pages and pages and pages talking about psychic powers and spells and talks about how, you know, supernatural creatures are all mega damage because they're not from this dimension. So you have to hit them really hard to hurt them. But the big bad is the fascist humans. And it wasn't until the following year with the release of world book one vampire kingdoms That we see development of supernatural antagonists and that goes into real detail about vampire intelligences and how how vampire Hive minds get formed and like how the generator like goes into all the lore about this is how vampires work in rifts

And it's a head trip like it's not it's not what you think And it's pretty cool, and so now oh hey we have supernatural bad guys, but again basic rulebook doesn't give you that the Atlantis world book which came out in 92 Finally gave players stats for the monster from the front cover of the rule book And introduced the very clearly lovecraft influenced splugorth as high-level enemies. I love a name Yeah, it's it's very

evocative like splugorth There's all kinds of sounds and things that come in your mind You'd be unsurprised to find out it's a gigantic tentacle monster that spends most of its time in some kind of nutrient pool bath Has one gigantic eyeball in the center of its being And yeah like that name you look at the picture and you're like yeah, okay. I can see that totally sense Now in a game mastering level, this is a feature that that I think

makes rifts an intermediate to advanced level game. Because you have this amazingly evocative setting where there's like all this stuff going on, right? And that's awesome. But now you have to figure out what you're going to right and that's awesome but now you have to figure out what you're gonna do with that like right you know there's no there's no there's no and by the way here is here is you know the the big evil wizard guy like you know you get you buy the setting box for the Forgotten Realms, and it tells you,

oh yeah, by the way, that this is, this is the leader. This is Man Xun. He's one of the leaders of the Gentra Room. Here are his stats, and this is, this is how he plots. And by the way, here's all the stats for all, all his guys. And, you know, by the way, over here, you know, there's, like, you have a whole lot of like, re re provided or provided out of the box bad guys for your, for your characters to be heroic up against and storylines. There's all kinds of like, here are these plots that are in process or in progress and you can

jump into them however you want to rifts just says hey, here's the world Go have fun okay, and that's awesome, but if you're not a certain level of game master It can be really daunting So that's kind of my two cents on that. Okay. Now in the initial rulebook, we get brief mention of other parts of the world. And that scholar that I mentioned earlier who talked about how pro sec is like this is this guy's doing Hitler. Her name is Erin Tarn. She's a scholar and traveler from rift here in North America. OK. And she reports to us that China is a devastated, demon haunted wasteland.

The British Isles are saturated with magic. And in Britain and Ireland, people have given up on technology almost entirely. And they have made friends with the Fay folk and they live in harmony with nature and the druids have come back and they have magic that's all nature derived. Sure. Tell me she's based in Chernobyl. I wish, no. There are industrial nations in Western Europe besieged by hostile Gibi tribes. South America is dominated by bloodthirsty vampire intelligences. Africa is again the dark continent, mysterious and wilderness.

An unintentional side effect of this description. And like, as I was rereading all of this preparing for recording, I was, especially with what I'm studying right now for my masters, I was rereading all of this preparing for for recording I was especially with what I'm studying right now for my masters. I was just nerding the fuck out Because there's this wonderful side effect where as the game expanded a bunch of these regions got their own world books and We learned the gaps in Aaron Tarn's knowledge or what she had oversimplified or reported uncritically like well, you know, I've heard it from travelers that this thing and and That is that is so very much

Harking back to You know You know people people telling stories of griffins in Africa and right You know the legend of the unicorn because somebody heard about an Ibex Right and you know or a rhino or whatever sure, you know in the stories of you know And the natives of North America don't have heads their faces are in the middle of their chests like this Shit, it's it's the same kind of thing like as you as you get into the world books later on you're like oh yeah no

well that's I see why you fucked that up like I understand where that error came from but you know right so so that was that was really cool cool now on a on a even more meta level The the very scant attention paid to large parts of Asia Uh-huh, especially the one-line treatment of Africa that I quoted above right tells the reader an awful lot about the designers biases Yeah, like where where they are? I will be charitable where their ignorance is strongest. And I don't mean hateful spiteful ignorance, I mean just, you know, that was not taught to me.

And, you know, how do I show how disastrous this has been for the world? Ah, well, I know that Africa used to be called the Dark Continent. And so it's you know, it's that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And now to bounce back into the real world for just just a moment. At this point, we're still in the Reagan Bush era. OK. The Cold War hasn't ended yet. So you said this is 90, right?

Yeah. As the game is being written, the Cold War isn't over yet. The Berlin Wall fell in November of 89. Right. Rifts hit shelves in August of 90. Okay, so that, they would have been writing still. Yeah. Yeah, it would have been part of the zeitgeist

in their production history yeah okay Gorbachev called for multi-party elections in the USSR which were held in May of 1990 and in which Boris Yeltsin became president of the I forgot to look up what the name was but essentially of the Russian state essentially... Yeah, the state of Russia. Now, in 89 into 90, the US is still seeing economic growth, but the rate by that time had slowed to the point that later in 1990, the US entered the recession that ultimately cost Bush a second term. Yeah, it's the economy stupid

Yeah. Yeah now 1990 was an election year. Mm-hmm in which Democrats gained seats in the House and Senate They already had a majority right they gained seats in in both houses and at the time there was a lot of Back and forth over whether voters were anti-incumbent, whether the mood in the country was anti-incumbent. And I found a lot of articles and a lot of ink being spilled saying, no, they're not anti-incumbent because all of these Democrats held their seats. All of these Republicans held their seats. Everybody's pissed off, but it's not anti-incumbent. It's just we don't like Congress. Right.

You know. Well, and it's yeah, I don't like Congress can have a 14 percent approval rating. But that means I don't like other people's congressmen. I wish they fixed their shit. Yeah. Yeah. And that means I don't like other people's congressmen. I wish they would fix their shit. Yeah, yeah. And that's true everywhere. Yeah, historically, yeah.

There was all kinds of analysis done trying to figure out why voters chose what they did. At this point, there wasn't yet a massive culture war going on. Yeah, that wouldn't start until Buchanan in 92. Yes That's what I said that would have to wait for Clinton in 92 and the contract with America in 94 94. Yeah on TV Cheers Roseanne Murphy Brown and the Cosby show and it's been off a different world Were way up high in the ratings the Golden Girls and designing women rounded out the top 10 Nielsen shows in primetime.

Number one movie. Real quick, real quick. I recognize that ethnically there's not that much diversity, but in terms of, because you basically have all the black people gathered into two shows. like most shows were all one or another thing, right? But that being said you have a tremendous diversity in class being represented there you also have a fair amount of diversity in way of life being represented there. Yeah, and

You know way of life maybe is not the word I'm looking for. I'm looking for living situation. Yes. So you have retirees, you have set in a bar, you have working class family near Chicago, you have, you know, and on and on and on. You have like, you know, not just class diversity. You've got a living situation diversity on TV and yeah, that's interesting considering What would happen in the early to mid 90s with the the Friends explosion? Yeah, it got a lot less diverse Yes, all right, so you said the number one movie ghost

Okay, number one movie in the US box office number two is pretty woman mm-hmm the threat of nuclear war with the USSR showed up on screen in the hunt for red October oh that's right came in which came in at number five mm-hmm and in And in 1991, so shortly after Rift Camp comes out, the bulletin of the atomic scientists shifted the doomsday clock all the way back to 17 minutes to midnight, where it stayed for four years. Nice. Go us. That is the farthest from midnight it has been in the time that

the organization has publicized it, has projected it. And so we're at this moment where the the apocalypse is still there, right? It's still looming, but in the run up to and in the wake of the publication of Rifts, we see that threat kind of dissipating. And we have this brief wonderful optimistic moment after it. And this is, I think that Rifts kind of reflects the high watermark for post-apocalypse role-play. If you look through the major releases of the next 20 years in terms of what games like hit and got big, the idea of role-playing in a post-apocalyptic wasteland or living through an apocalypse disappears from the scene almost entirely until the popular imagination gets seized by zombies in the 2000s, 2010s, and then it's the specifically the zombie apocalypse. And so the specter of nuclear annihilation, it didn't go away, but it left the foreground of our consciousness.

It became much less. And so Rifts kind of hit at this moment where it wound up, it winds up in a very big way, standing by itself within the genre. Because like, OK, it is it is number one again, still this this crazy mash up. You know, what do you want to do? Well, you can do that because it's rifts. Right. Kind of kind of game. That explicitly works with a megaverse kind of concept. But beyond that, at the core of its identity is this post-apocalyptic vibe that nothing

else on the shelf, like to this day, really nothing else on the shelves kind of has the same has the same feeling to it has the same shading, maybe a big good way of putting it there. There are other games that have a post apocalyptic sense to them or post apocalyptic feel to them. But it isn't, it isn't a product anymore of the same kind of anxiety that created this apocalypse. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Because again, I'm looking back at the, um, the Brave New World and it has post apocalyptic aspects to it,

but that is the result of Superpowered beings doing superpowered shit and the focus is still on the superpowered shit Yeah, like it's it's not the focus is not on the apocalypse itself like or even getting long in a post-apocalyptic World it's okay. We found our way through that but really it's about these superpowers that you've got not you know it is a Aspect of a setting it is not the reason for the For the game if that makes sense yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's not it's not It isn't a core part of the game's identity mm-hmm

In the same way yeah Yeah and so So just as a side note as we're talking about this Due to the state of the world 33 years after all of this we're now sitting at 90 seconds to midnight Uh, and and right now we get all the existential dread without the clear dichotomy of a bipolar balance of power Right, so we have right. Oh, we don't know where some of these went

Yeah, we have we have a much more diffuse, uh Much more diffused sense of dread now, right? Oh, you know Maybe we could like elect somebody who's thoroughly irrational about it. Well, yeah Yeah, who wants to talk about the size of his fucking button? Yeah, let's let's let's that's a great idea, right? Let's let's do that. Let's Literally where where his staff spoke across the aisle on back channels with okay now that he's lost the election Get the nuclear football away from him Yeah now now please that is an actual legitimate concern not political points. No, and and his advisors were like, yeah, we're on that

We're already working on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We need we need to make sure he does not have access to that, please Yeah So now back to rifts earth, yes Mechanically the game winds up being a logical result of taking all of palladiums other games and mashing them together with a system that started out as kind of a close to begin with a PC start out the game with access to mega damage body armor and weaponry because supernatural creatures against whom they're gonna have

to fight like you know hunting monsters and taking their shit is still you know core to what the role-playing experience is right all of those are mega damaged creatures and the the the big bads of the game in the in the basic rulebook are all wearing mega-damage body armor and riding in giant robots that of course are shaped like giant skulls and so this means that even a first-level player character in rifts is wearing armor comparable to 20th century armor personnel carrier and carrying a handgun laser ion blaster and or a melee weapon, a vibro weapon or an enchanted item on par with an anti-tank cannon.

Okay. It leads to some scaling weirdness like magic using characters are throwing around spells that do MDC because again they kind of have to based on the way the setting works and MDC again is mega damage capacity. Thank you. Remember that one MDC point is 100 SDC points. So if for example I'm carrying a laser pistol pistol my laser pistol does 1d 6 mega damage Doesn't sound like a lot well, I get into an argument with I

Don't know a regular but an ordinary human like let's let's say for a moment that I'm I'm a murder hobo playing grifts Sure, I get into an argument with an ordinary human NPC I Get pissed off. I draw my laser pistol I Fire my laser pistol. I hit that NPC I roll Crap, I only do one mega damage point I Not only kill that NPC like like vaporize their upper torso PC, like vaporize their upper torso. But the laser goes past them and blows a hole through their house. Right.

Like, you know, there's actually in one of the first supplement books that comes out after this, there is another, you know, Kevin Shambietta special essay about, okay, now let me explain to you just exactly what MDC means. And he specifically uses the example of a dragon hatchling character, which is one of the basic classes you can be, you know, getting getting into a fight and and punching somebody. Right. And knocking their head clean off of their body because he's a supernatural being his hand to hand attacks do mega damage and he just punched an ordinary person who probably only has 12 hit points and maybe 20 SDC. SDC is structural damage capacity

Sdc was designed as a way to kind of Explain some of the weirdness of hit points working the way they did yeah, yeah, yeah so like Him hitting you even on his lowest role is going to do five times the damage that would that it would take to kill you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so so there's there's some there's some scaling weirdnesses. There's some there's some potential for really weird destructive outcomes. It's it's number one, that's a little odd. okay, we're playing a game. That's kind of intentionally bonkers, so okay Now as a player you go into the game having all kinds of options Amongst your choices for for what kind of character you want to play you can be a full conversion cyborg think RoboCop

Okay, yeah a crazy who is someone who's undergone brain augmentation that I mentioned before Called mind over matter augmentation literally, it's Nanotech devices that have been implanted into your brain to stimulate different parts of your brain to give you super strength Sure super endurance reflexes or whatever. Yeah, you've been juiced. Yeah Well, no, we're gonna to get to juicers in a second. You're a crazy, your brain has been tinkered with and the side effect of this is you have some kind of serious mental illness. You are, you have multiple personality disorder or You are manic or you know

Like some some level of delusion or some other kind of something is going on Now the other option that you unintentionally just mentioned are juicers juicers are Humans who have been chemically augmented so they have they wear a heart and injector harness that has flasks full of all of the basically think super steroids that make them stronger faster Increase their endurance to superhuman levels. What have you? but they are hopelessly addicted to all of these substances.

And at the start of the game, when you create a first level juicer, you understand that you have a lifespan that, if the campaign goes on long enough, you are going to die from the way you are burning literally burning out your body in somewhere between like four to six years there are also rifters who are magic users who can open and close portals to other dimensions mm-hmm they're kind of like fifth edition warlock the best way to think about

there they contact other planar entities and can you know make deals that kind of stuff right? Mind melters who are the most powerful psychic character class Size stalkers who are mutants who are psychic vampires who feed on magical or psychic beings sure and So you're you're a wizard hunter if you're a wizard hunter Harry and they they stalk supernatural creatures or psychics and They have to at least once a week You have to capture somebody and drain their PPE, drain their potential psychic energy.

And they go into detail about what that means. And you can be an ethical Psy Stalker and the the the target of what you're doing but you have to you have to harvest PPE preferably from a living creature like if you if you just sit near a ley line you can absorb it and keep yourself alive but it apparently has like a taste of sour milk to a Psystalker to do that. The good stuff is something you get from a living being. Okay, yeah. This is not unlike what you see, and I wonder if this is somewhat inspired by Rifts.

What you see in the Tales from the Cantina, from Star Wars, you get the guy who wants to drink their luck, the Anzatiati the guy with the hookah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He is looking you know he can smell the luck, and it's basically It's almost like um brain fluid But there's some sort of like aspect to it because you know it's it's sci-fi or it's it's space fantasy.

Yeah. And so like Obi-Wan Kenobi's is so incredibly fragrant but he knows not to go after that because that's a dangerous man. Then Han Solo walks in and he's like, oh yeah. I want that. Because Han Solo may not have the force at all, but that fucker has the force flowing through him. Like, you know, it's that kind of thing. So it's a similar thing of, you know, he's going to suck the luck out of them, drink

their luck. And it's a very similar deal. Yeah, yeah. Kind of makes sense they're also like you can you can play a character who is a Wilderness scout you know somebody who who you know makes their makes their living you know as a guide in the wilderness for people You can play a refugee who's just been thrown into the apocalyptic world having been a farmer or an ordinary person and now all of a sudden

you've got to try to survive. You can be a ley line walker, which is like a wizard. Basically it's a wizard. You can be a techno wizard, which is a pretty cool idea you you take potential psychic energy And you put it into devices and so you can build wing boards to fly Right and you can create mega damage weapons that instead of using a battery They have a magical psychic battery which is easier to recharge All that kind of stuff. Yeah and and You you can also out of the basic rule book, there are half a dozen character classes that involve being some kind of a soldier for the coalition states.

That's right. You can you too can play a trooper. You can also play a mutant dog soldier who's been bred by the coalition states to be used as a part of a pack to hunt down psychic and magic users as with a trained size stalker as your pack leader. So you can do that too. Okay. You can play a Stormtrooper.

Now, CMB in the rulebook has a mini-essay, because of course it does, explaining how this is workable on page 51. And I want to kind of go here and look at it. So he says, coalition soldiers as player characters, as I hope I have pointed out coalition soldier is not innately evil and can make an exciting and fun edition to any group of players. The soldier can freely associate with characters who might otherwise be considered criminals of the state. If he or she is assigned to reconnaissance spying observation or exploration of the wilderness and wastelands. This is acceptable for two reasons. One, if the characters are outside coalition territory, they are not under CS jurisdiction and can live by their own, quote, twisted, end quote, laws and morals. The soldier can live and work with these heathens, but is told to try to maintain his ethics

and do not accept these creatures as equals or friends. Secondly, it is crucial for the coalition to know what these rogues and the other wilderness people are doing. Thus, the soldier must tolerate their sinister or foolhardy behavior to learn important data that will preserve the CS. Unfortunately, many soldiers assigned to the outback come to see these other people as friends and allies. The soldier may even learn other values and reject the years of propaganda. This too is okay as long as he keeps his feelings to himself. If the coalition learns of the warrior's skewed views, he could be branded a traitor.

And then there's a big long section about like in role playing what'll happen to you if you quote-unquote go bad. Right, so okay. All right. We've got we've got some justification for that there So it's not so much like hey, have you ever wanted to play a toady? It's much it's it's much more Hey, do you want to play the guy who was you know who today realized he was on the wrong side and That's your origin like that. That makes sense that they would include all that in there honestly, and yeah um and so

Like I I played a character who was a coalition military specialist, which is essentially kind of like a green beret Who had already had a crisis of conscience and was working actively against the cs And then a friend of the show, Sean, when he and his friends were playing Rift, he created a dog boy, one of those mutant dogs, you know, used to hunt down psychics. Right. He created a dog boy based on his own beloved family pet, Dobie.

So interesting because like, number one you have the character Caliban, who gets turned into that for Old Man Logan movie. Yeah. And he even says that, he's like, I'm just basically a truffle pig. And two, in Brave New World, hounds are, the power you have is to be able to find other people

who are powered. Well there you go. So a lot of people are pulling a lot of stuff from this and I doubt that Rifts necessarily was the creator of it, but they certainly are codifying it in major ways. Yeah and the dog boy kind of rules are clearly again taken from a game that Palladium had already done. Like we've done mutant animals Here we go, right like applying TMNT to their own setting exactly you can do

And so Sean created his dogboy character to play on the moral and ethical questions involved in that whole concept It was all right., the boss says we got to get that guy. That guy's bad. Right. We got to do that. And then what, what Sean has on, on multiple, when I've been at the table with him, one of the things he has a true talent for doing is either kind of engineering a situation or taking a situation and and Turning it into a thing through his own character That he then turns to the rest of the party and effectively what he's saying is how moral are you?

Yeah, and putting everybody in this place of like oh shit He's willing to do it and like he's looking at us all like are you are you good? You know? So what you're saying pottery is I need to burn more stuff is one of his most famous lines From a fourth edition DDD game that I was running You wound up actually in that very conversation giving the clerk he was talking to a crisis of faith. Why did Mouradine put me in this position? So, but you know, I mean and that's something that you could do. Mm-hmm. Now with that being said, here's the opening list of character classes Nazi is an option would probably not work today

No Brand new game going up on shelves that would I mean would yeah Unless it's like there's there's a couple pages in front of it going if you play this You you realize that you have to break away. Yeah Yeah So now the other extreme, uh, I've already talked about, you know, an example that involved playing a hatchling dragon. Um, and as a hatchling dragon, you were literally, uh,

like the oldest you were going to be was like 2d six days old. Right. You are literally just out of the egg. Uh, you started with a number of different magical powers powers depending on what kind of dragon you were You did mega damage with your bare hands. You had a breath weapon and Depending on the kind of dragon you were you you potentially could fly sure Now there was also a mechanic with that Character class that meant you chose your alignment every in-game morning. Oh. Because you're just out of the egg and your outlook on the world hasn't

hasn't developed yet. Hasn't solidified therefore you're trying out new things. Yeah so super powered magical toddler was was was a was a base book option option now you didn't have to change your alignment every single day, but like You could you could wake up one morning and be scrupulous and be like no man I'm gonna I'm gonna try to be I'm gonna be a good you know Cooperation I'm gonna you know care care about other people and then depending on what happened that day you can wake up the next Morning being like No, fuck all of them, right? I hate people. I'm diabolic screw this shit, man. I want to watch you all burn You know and then whatever happened there. He'd wake up the next morning going alright that that you know

I went a little far. I went a little too far I Still say fuck all of you, but I'm not like actively gonna hurt anybody So I think I'm gonna be anarchist like you know and you could you could do that Alternatively you know you could just choose to fuck with the other members of the party by going yeah, no today I'm diabolic right right you know like shit now. We gotta keep you under control, right? Now the game's internal economy was bizarre. And like this is the thing with role playing games, the internal economy of a made up universe is almost always going to be wonky because economies are really really complicated and like no no nothing any one person

imagines is gonna is gonna wind up working right you know to match up with the real world but but this one was really strange and in our own group we basically just kind of ignored it like any anything that talked about like okay if you want to buy equipment okay we? We'll go with those prices, but like goods and services. That's ridiculous. No, we're not no And and the reason for it being screwed up goes back to PCs are all armed with super weapons, right? Recharging the batteries for your laser rifle or getting your armor repaired According to the book costs thousands of credits. OK, which OK, I mean, the repairing your armor part kind of makes sense

because this is all, you know, super high tech, you know, material science stuff from the future. So, OK, all right. It's going to it's going to require materials going to require whatever. But like your your your firing a laser that works All right, it's going to it's going to require materials going to require whatever but like your your your firing a laser that works with a battery like Right plug it in somewhere. Like why why does it cost? 10,000 credits to recharge a battery

like there's no That just didn't make sense. And it also meant that like you had to very carefully shepherd if you were using that economy for things, you had to really shepherd your resources in a way that for us just wasn't fun. And that that brings me to the question of okay, so Cyberpunk Okay, okay like this this is that right in terms of genres Well, it's certainly post apocalyptic. Okay, it has it has aspects of cyber cyberpunk isn't necessarily post apocalyptic All right cyberpunk is

There's post humanism cyberpunk is So this is this is post apocalyptic then it's not necessarily any any other thing, but You've managed to yet again make a world where Scarcity is the economy and That becomes Hey, it's an open world. But choo choo, like, you need credits. So you're going to work for these corporations,

or you're going to, like in Shadowrun, or you're going to work for this leech lord, like in any number of D&D settings like yeah yet again We have like in a fantasy setting. Yeah, it's gonna be capitalism as As Gabriel guy pointed out it is harder. It is easier to imagine The end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. I mean literally in this setting You have done it here and not the other and not the other. Yeah. Yeah So

Like in the game the heaviest the heaven in the basic rule book the heaviest body armor you could you could wear had 80 MDC So 80 mega hit points, right? If you took even one MDC over your armor's rating, you were insta-dead because of how MDC worked. So you don't need a healer in a Rifts game. You need an armorer. And that character class is frankly fucking boring. There was a, there is, in the basic rule book,

a character class that is, you are a roving mid called an operator. You are an engineer and a mechanic and you can travel from settlement to settlement to help people, you know, keep their shit working and build stuff and like, okay, great. Like in a less, in a less combat focused game, that could be amazing. Right. But that's not this game. Like, like, unless you do an awful lot in house in your own game, playing an operator, like everybody we always we always had it like okay We have an operator in our group, but that's like the party non-player character Mm-hmm that we have here to do this shit none of the rest of us want to do

We're all we're all gonna go off being you know power armored bounty hunters and You know cyborgs and wizards and shit because that's cool like right fixing stuff like that's a really great way to make a living like multiple in in the in the group of us that no end up playing rifts most frequently there were a couple of us that went to technical schools to to learn a trade like no no this is a real-world thing in the real world this is awesome but I don't want to do that around the gaming table that's yeah I mean boring why I didn't like uh never or not never one or water deep because it's like ooh zoning laws the game yeah fuck that yeah like oh god yeah well

and and again I would point out in both in both settings You've created a world in which you need to engage in this capitalist scarcity economy And that's not a fantasy that's just life Yeah, like that's the problem. That's why we're playing fantasy games. We want to get away from that. Right. When exactly did I sign up to play in a Papers and Paychex campaign? Right. This is not... No. I want to go off and do cool shit.

Like, can I... You know. Yeah. I want to deliver a divine smackdown I don't want to have to sit in the temple, you know keeping track of of the annual pilgrimage income, right There's there's other there's non non spell casting members of the clergy to do that I'm not here. There's NPCs. And if I wanted to play the character who was the equivalent of some sort of shipping clerk who realized the big conspiracy, you know what we're not going to focus on? Is my day-to-day, shit, I burnt my bagel again reality that leads up to that moment? It's going to be, I figured this out and now they're all out to get me

Yeah, and you know what's not gonna save me is my ability to scrape the carbon off the toast or Yeah, you know do the numbers. I'm going to carry the gizmo the MacGuffin Do the people who can figure it out, but it's all gonna be about that chase and maybe Be if I am down for it and if my DM is down for it, maybe the big reveal monologues Yeah, but it's not going to be All right, go ahead and roll to

Figure out this line of code Yeah, or go ahead and roll to figure out this line of code Yeah, or go ahead and make a roll to Figure out that if all these supplies are going in and no exports are coming out Yeah, no, none of that is is role play worthy. Yeah Yeah, and and that's that's when you get down to the to the economics of the way of the way the game works now the thing is This whole like oh man, it's gonna be really hard for me to replenish my resources Oh, man, it's gonna be really hard for me to repair my stuff If handled in a different way

Mm-hmm. It could have really played up the hey, you're surviving in the post-apocalypse. This is Mad Max time. Kind of vibe. That could have been, it could have been handled in a way that made that a part of the feeling of the game, but it really wasn't. And it was just, it sucked. It was just, it was frustrating. And another quibble that I have with the game that always bugs me and is one of the only reasons why, like I, as I was doing the research for this podcast, I was looking through the books, mostly just the basic rule book, but I was looking through it and going like, oh

man, you know what? I really want to sit down and play Rifts again. Cause this is, this is just fucking cool, man. Like the setting. You've got me interested enough that I'm like, all right, um, when do you want to set it up? Like, I'm not, I'm not promising that I'll do more than one, but you you know I'm down for trying the setting and I'm down for Filling up some whistle with some wacky shit. Yeah, um and let's let's do this, but yeah, yeah So you know but but then I think about it for a minute And I remember that that rules as written with unless you unless you house rule a bunch of stuff

Combat turns into a massive drag eventually Because even the measliest bandit who is like a near peer with the player characters Has about 50 MDC in his armor and again Armors your hit points and it's like your your actual hit points are an afterthought because Everything is mega damage and you're doing like with a laser rifle you're doing 3d6 maybe a hit on average At the same time those bandits are inflicted the same damage to the pcs and After the fight you don't rest to get hit points back

You don't have the cleric cast spells to get those back. You got to find a place to repair your gear mm-hmm recharge your high-tech weapons and The your character goes into combat And combat is there is never a a point at which Your character is injured There's never a point at which your character is injured. There's never a point at which your character is wounded. There are lots of points at which your character is looking at how badly damaged is my armor. But it always just bugged me that it was like you get into all these firefights. Nobody ever gets wounded You know it's it's this all or nothing you are Obliterated or you come out unscathed kind of thing

and Like if it was a mecha game like if everybody was wearing like if the PCs if it wasn't okay now We're all walking around in body armor if it was no no Body armor isn't gonna cut it. We actually need to be in like, you know Howard armor like we all need to be Iron Man or bigger Then it would then then like it wouldn't bug me so much like on a narrative level. It wouldn't bother me the same way But like that that just always felt

weird and off-putting to me and even even the smallest fight winds up taking a whole bunch of rounds right because of just the number of really big hit points that everybody has. And so there were also some issues that came up in power scaling. If what you wanted to do, if you wanted to do what the book literally said you could on the cover, it says on the cover, compatible with the entire Pall palladium books Megavirce, right? Mm-hmm if you just took your martial artist or mutant weasel or for that matter your fantasy warlock and Dropped them into rift earth Which was kind of one of one of the things that was the selling point of the game was like if you're playing any of

These other games you can throw your characters right in here and go wacky right right? And that's awesome, but you'd find very quickly that you were somewhat badly outclassed by the locals That kind of makes sense like you're either going to You're either going to have discovered a color that nobody has ever seen and therefore you are suddenly the most powerful creature ever to exist Yeah or Yeah, you're Yeah, you know we find out that yoda is the least of his race. Yeah

Yeah, you know, yeah, I like it. Yeah, so no, I I kind of get that. Yeah um So no, I gotta get that yeah No, this was especially notable if you were bringing Robotech Mecha out of Robotech and dropping them in middle of coalition states. Mm-hmm because Robotech was where mega damage got introduced and so the numbers were Relatively low right here the numbers around here every every man Jack is wearing mega damaged body armor and so the numbers are not bigger. So congratulations you scratched it. Yeah.

Like yeah. Yeah. No you know what it's funny because I've thought about doing like would Darth Vader be able to beat Batman? You know shit like that and yeah probably because he's all about the gadgets but would Darth Vader be able to survive in D&D and again yeah probably because look at the shit that he can do right yeah but you put him in like a Marvel world or against a DC hero who is not just gadgets yeah and he's gonna get his ass whopped. Oh, he's gonna get mollywhopped. Yeah, there's like, Spider-Man would beat the holy fuck out of him. Oh, Green Lantern

would be like, oh, that's all your powers do? Right. It's like, wow, are you robbing banks with that? Like, what do you- What kind of bush league got it. Oh, you got it. You got a glowing you got a glowing magic energy sword Yeah, ooh, oh, hey Look, you know look at look at fancy pants rich McGee over here, right so I think yeah, it's it's um I can understand somebody who was insanely dominant in their genre and then coming into this genre and it's like Go sit over there. Yeah, have a seat. Yeah have have all of a seat right? Yeah. Yeah, so um, and I think When I I think this is this is where I'm gonna cut this off here, okay

before getting into a bigger trend And well how the game how the game developed from there and kind of how that ties into Related trends within within role-playing game publishing around the same time. Mm-hmm. So Based on all of that, what are your thoughts? Well, like I said, you've actually kind of convinced me that it might be worth trying to play And part of me wants to be like okay and you and I don't play any games together anymore. Um Why don't we you know?

Why don't why don't we I come know, why don't we, I come over, we play that once, and then I come over some other time, and you know, again, gather, you know, herd your nerds, and you run one of those, and then herd them again a couple months later, and I'll try to run Brave New World, you know, or we can try to run a Scion together. Like, so just, I never liked the idea of Rifts prior to this podcast, and now you've kind

of actually convinced me. You know, you couldn't convince me of Dune, and I think there was something else where I was just like, nah, fuck that. Oh, Blade Runner. Blade Runner. Yeah, I've never succeeded. Never succeeded with Blade Runner. Yeah, I've never succeeded But I succeeded with Blade Runner, but I think this this could actually be something that I would find interesting based on your description of it I I do think it's interesting that

it's kind of a one-and-done in terms of Popular post-apocalyptic games and even that popularity is very relative Because yeah, it's at a time where role-playing games were very not popular So to hook up out of that it doesn't take much but at the same time To have lasted that long like it had to have had some some special mustard on it. So yeah. Yeah I I look forward to seeing where this goes from there, because now you've established,

like here's how the company got started and here's what they really banked on, and then it's like this beautiful mess of, honestly, it feels like Ready Player One on some levels. Like, hey look at all this stuff. We're gonna mash it all together. Go. And, yeah, the possibilities there are fairly endless and there's all kinds of silliness that can come from that. So, I like it. Cool.

Yeah. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. I have a feeling that I know what's going to happen, but I'm gonna hold that prediction until later Okay, tell you if I was right or wrong. All right. Oh, yeah What are you gonna recommend for people to read or imbibe or take in media wise? What what I am going to recommend for everybody to? to take in It has Bridgerton.

Oh, my, my, Lee, my wife has, has been binging, re-binging seasons one and two because season three, the first half of season three is out. And while she waits for the second half of season three, she's been re-binging one and two. And it is a period, it is a Regency period drama. It is gorgeous to look at. Absolutely. Like, it's amazing on the eyes. And you may be listening to this going, oh my God, it's a Regency period drama. It's like all about, oh God, whatever shall we do when our fortunes fall and we have to go to our country home and only have 11 servants.

I get that. That's a valid criticism of the milieu. But the dialogue is amazing. The characters are fascinating. And there are some characters in the show that face fates notably worse than that. So it's not all just, you know, it is rich people problems,

but some of those problems are in fact like, no, no, we're going to be homeless Right. I don't think you understand Hmm and in the midst of all of the melodrama there are moments that are absolutely Choke on your drink funny It's just it's wonderful. It's just fun Okay, really is and I never thought I would say that about a

Regency period costume drama, but it really is I highly recommend it I'm actually gonna This is gonna be a little weird For me to recommend no books no movies. No nothing like that, but I am gonna tell you if you have Instagram You should follow Blacklight, B-L-A-Q-L-I-G-H-T the all-powerful. He is a professional wrestler and he is a friend of mine actually but he's a professional wrestler who has been on my podge on my pun cat my puncho and he There is such an earnestness and a joie de vive of the wrestling that he does and the way that he does pro wrestling

It I would this is gonna sound weird. I would liken it to watching Bernadette Peters Doing a show. Like, you know how like when you watch her, she's just so attractive because she enjoys it so much? No matter what the character is, she enjoys it. Yeah, there is always an element of, like isn't this amazing that we're doing this? And that's his wrestling, and it's so cool. It's so cool. of like isn't this amazing that we're doing this.

And that's his wrestling and it's so cool. It's so cool. That's wonderful. That's awesome. I like that. So anyway, follow Blacklight and buy his merch. Fuck, get out there and buy his merch. It looks really cool.

So yeah, that's what I'm going to. His website is blacklight, again, B-L-A-Q, lightproductions.com and forward slash merchandise That's what I'm going to his website is black light again BLA q light productions comm And forward slash merchandise and you can find all his merch there. So Yeah Where can you find us? We can be found at wubba wubba wubba geek history time comm on that website You can find the archive of all of our episodes

Historytime.com on that website. You can find the archive of all of our episodes Find one find a topic you're interested in and listen to it bounce around Whatever you do though. Don't don't start in the middle of a series because we live in a society and that's just barbaric We can also be found on the Amazon Podcast app on the Apple podcast app, on the Apple podcast app, and on Spotify. Wherever you have found us, please take the time to subscribe and give us the five-star review that you know we deserve. And where can you be found, sir? Well, let's see. As of this recording getting dropped,

I'm going to recommend you go to the Comedy Spot on September 6th and if this has been dropped after that then I'm gonna recommend that you go on October 4th and if you see a pattern there it's because the first Friday of every month Capital Punishment is at the Comedy Spot selling out, doing incredible pun slinging. You might see a pro wrestler there, you might see a former guest on our show there any number of possibilities But you should definitely go and check it out. It's at the Comedy Spot go to the Comedy Spots website find the tickets

Buy them in advance so that you're not left out in the cold But yeah, come check us out my partner Justine and I have been doing it for well The show has been going on for eight years now. And holy shit, it just keeps getting stronger. Very, very cool. Cool. Well, for A Geek History of Time, I am Damian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock, and until next time,

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