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Wise_Owl

Okay, two answers here... Simple Answer; Don't worry about it. It's space fantasy. Fire missiles, Missiles go Boom, people dodge or don't. Complex Answer: Maximum Speed makes no sense in Space unless you are talking about the speed of light. In an atmosphere on a planet, like earth, something with T...

Wise_Owl

This conversation is derailing this thread, with a conversation that has been going on ad infinitum since like 1996. It was tedious and a bit icky in 1996 for people to try and put forth the Coalition as the 'Good Guys' or 'Heroes, just doing what they had to survive!', in 2023 it's more than icky a...

Wise_Owl

Might I suggest that if you want to engage in a detailed defence of Facism that you 1)This thread isn't the place to do it and 2)Just don't.

Create a new thread in which I am a variety of others will be happy to denounce your Fascist apologia.

Wise_Owl

To try and keep this in line with the OP; THe Problem with the CS has a few layers, the biggest one being people portraying Nazi's positively. But honestly, alot of them stems from the fanbase and not the 'text'. People have been trying to paint the genocidal, actively described as basing their soci...

Wise_Owl

So the issue with the Coalition States is it's a unitary military state with a relatively tight top echelon... but that power structure is very unstable. It's unstable because, as even the 'cannon' elements of the CS attest to, you end up with various personalities that end up being corrupt, in oppo...

Wise_Owl

An obvious possibilkity would be something like this; Bradfords experimentation on humans is revealed; The Coalition works to suppress the news but it cannot be suppressed among the upper echelons who are horrified as it becomes clear the Proseks are protecting this Monster. The military fractures o...

Wise_Owl

It's always seemed a weird add-on to me(I can't even recall the first time I heart it, anyone got a date on when it became a thing?) When I was running rifts alot we created out own table for take more mega-damage than your armour can take'. Basically it involved limbs being vaporized, your face bei...

Wise_Owl

Nekira Sudacne wrote:
Wise_Owl wrote:Aren't the Kitanni naturally telepathic?

Nope, They're naturally psychic, but they all have the same six powers and none of them are telepathy,.

Been quite a while since I dived into the old World Book 2. Thanks for the correction

Wise_Owl

Aren't the Kitanni naturally telepathic? Draconic is the multi-verses 'natural' trade tongue for a few reasons. One it is magical in some regards, Dragons seem to be born speaking it, meaning unlike other 'natural' languages there is no risk of drift. That hatchling born eight minutes ago speaks the...

Wise_Owl

I'm with Killer on this one; it's a weirdly pointless rule that was ad hocced literally a decade into the product line. It never made alot of sense in the context of Rifts Magic and how Rifts Magic worked and getting rid of it is such a non issue... well because for a decade it was a non-issue.

Wise_Owl

I don't see how the inconsistancies are incomaptible with a facist regeime: Explictly contradictory ideas are nothing new. "All gods are false but ours, the one that doesn't grant demonic powers and witchcraft to people" seems like a viable line for them to take. No civilization is ever p...

Wise_Owl

To not put too fine a point on it; Rifts authors are bad on religion. Like there are inconsistencies in the portrayal of the CS that have gone back quite a while, and just dealing with 'religion' when it might touch on any of the beleifs of it's principal consumer audience in the US has always been ...

Wise_Owl

For me the big thing was that the early travelouge books, some were good, some were bad, some were middling, but it felt like a slow fleshing out of the world and then it just kind of stopped. It stopped witht he majority of the planet undescribed, with Japan this little island out in the Pacific w...

Wise_Owl

Back in the day I used to write the cross thing like this; Crosses Repelled vampires not for any religious reasons, but because they were a symbol related to the Great Old Ones and specifically the elemental affixations from which the Vampires Intelligence rose. Lesser Vampires, possessing parasitic...

Wise_Owl

Well this crops up ever few years... some of my answers here have been consistent since the 90's, some have changed over time but; 1) Define a consistent Tech Paradigm. They sort of had this initially; Atlantis and Triax were up here, the Coaltiion was behind them both by a hefty margin, then every...

Wise_Owl

Well this crops up ever few years... some of my answers here have been consistent since the 90's, some have changed over time but; 1) Define a consistent Tech Paradigm. They sort of had this initially; Atlantis and Triax were up here, the Coaltiion was behind them both by a hefty margin, then everyb...

Wise_Owl

Mega-demand is just one way of dealing with a common problem; Scale. In plenty of RPG's the scope of the 'scale' of things falls within a pretty limited purview. Most creatures are around human sized, Most weapons are human scale personal weapons meant to hurt/kill things at a human scale. Things so...

Wise_Owl

I generally find Zen to be an ill-fitting concept for a hybrid cybernetic psychic knight. Zen is a philosophy. "Zen Combat" is kind of a thing, in that the philosophy seems to underlie a number of martial arts, but in my understanding the interaction between Zen and physical combat is the...

Wise_Owl

IMagine there is a puzzle room. It's really hard to get into. It's nearly impossible in fact. But there are ways to get in. Some ways are easier; some peoiple are shown a way in by those already inside. Hell some people are born inside. A couple of the ways are more well trode; some are evne kind of...

Wise_Owl

The Coalition are Fascist. Fascists are Bad Guys. Always and everywhere. Fascists who become Good Guys stop being Fascists. Or maybe die pariahic victories against their former fascist comrades in order to save people. So to this conversation there are several layers, and because it needs to be stat...

Wise_Owl

People have largely covered it, but 'Session 0' is just a formal name for establishing expectations of play prior to the game actually commencing, often(though not always) mixed with elements of character creation. It's where things like 'this is what the game is about', 'tone', 'house rules' and so...

Wise_Owl

Can two atomic clocks be quantumly entangled? If so, what happens when they move at vastly different speeds? Two Quantumly entangled particles exist in a state of superposition until 'observed' in a quantum mechanical state, so I don't think they could be used to produce a clock, which is pretty mu...

Wise_Owl

a couple issues, relativity does NOT work the way you described, but I don't blame you it is a very common misunderstanding of what Einstein said. so you get in a rocket and head away from earth at lets say 90% of the speed of light (this gets you into a good relativity range) if you have a big tel...

Wise_Owl

Hmm, Time Travel you say, well let me dust myself off.... The short answer is this; Like most things in Rifts, concrete answers are not to be found. In this instance it is because 1)Rifts is Gonzo, and doesn't hold to anything resembling 'physics' or 'simulation of reality'. and 2)It doesn't want to...

Wise_Owl

This is a strong effort. Generating distinctions between the different regions of the continent is a great first step in writing alot of the wrongs. Area's I think would be the most interesting overal would be the west Coast(the area where-in the Sonjay and Mali empires once resided) and the area's ...

Wise_Owl

I'd get rid of all the racist stuff, and dial back on the stereotypes. Ok, to open this can of worms, what are the racist stuff and stereotypes that you refer to? I'm finding out more and more lately that I don't notice when something falls into this category and I just kind of accept that it is wh...

Wise_Owl

Suitcase Nukes are far more dangerous to a Tech-Only mega-city than to a Magical city. There are just to many ways for the thing to go wrong when your sending some-body with a WMD into a city filled with Psychics, Monsters, and literal Wizards. Given the way tech works in Rifts, if that things falls...

Wise_Owl

Well what is a 'Power Gamer'? Classically the answer to that question is some-one whose goal is seemingly to make the most powerful character ever, and will exploit the rules to do so. I would contend the first of these qualities is actually not necessarily a bad thing, but tends to lead to 'un-fun'...

Wise_Owl

I would imagine largely like people today react to internet surveillance. People are abstractly aware that 'hackers' can gain access to their Data, so they engage in low level activities to 'protect themselves' some of which are useful, others of which are as useful as wearing magic charms. Unless i...

Wise_Owl

moral complicity is far more common in the general population than people want to believe. Countless Germans, even after the war, fondly remember the years of 1933-1939 as 'The good Years'. People often compartmentalize whats good for 'them' as oppose to others. It's natural to compartmentalize bas...

Wise_Owl

moral complicity is far more common in the general population than people want to believe. Countless Germans, even after the war, fondly remember the years of 1933-1939 as 'The good Years'. People often compartmentalize whats good for 'them' as oppose to others. It's natural to compartmentalize bas...

Wise_Owl

My opinions on this topic have become more complex as time has gone on, but in a study of say, Nazi Germany, but also a study of other states commiting various atrocities and broad immoral policies, I think I've come to the conclusion that moral complicity is far more common in the general populatio...

Wise_Owl

Africa is.... ill served in it's present iterations in Rifts Earth. Africa is a HUGE place. It's larger than North America, and yet there is but one world-book for it, and one that features a very limited set of 'stuff' in Africa. Also making African the only continent that had a major human populat...

Wise_Owl

Shark_Force has the right of it ultimately; The CS isn't written as a structural component in an elaborately detailed world system. They are supervillains. You never need to know exactly how much Lex Luthor owns, or how he justifies to his board or his employee's how he's manufacturing a Kryptonite ...

Wise_Owl

Some basic investigation of the Topography of the Philippines indicates that Tsunami, while they are going to be devastating, will not 'wipe the place clean' unless they are well over a kilometre high. Bukidnon, one of the more popular provinces, and the countries bread-basket, averages over 900m ab...

Wise_Owl

Two Answers; 1) The Unsatisfacotry one, is that the CS is a Cartoon Villain. They exist and have the things they have to further their continued cartoon villainy. Trying to make them make sense in a world-building sense basically requires you to routinely violate 'Canon'. 2)If you want to ignore poi...

Wise_Owl

The short version is this; Rifts, to an extent, is written like a Comic Book. Like a late 80's/early 90's comic book. It's not about replicating the 'the real world', it's about replicating a half-dozen people busting into a secret base to destroy a secret weapon/rescue some-one/whatever and being a...

Wise_Owl

It's important to remember that Life Expectancy and Lifespan are two different things. The first is a mathematical average of the age at which everyone in a society dies. The Second is the age at which people who reach old age die in. While the later fluctuates HUGELY with social factors(Parts of Vi...

Wise_Owl

The Sword and you are one. Are you one with your gloves? One with your Cybernetic Hand? One with your Power Armour? Where does the Qi flow? The Legalist seeks to create a law that no-one can circumvent The Confucian generates a rule and trusts to Man's goodness to extent that Rule as it should be. T...

Wise_Owl

While it is clearly not original I have to go with Atlantis, WB2, being the best. It not only gives an outstanding description of the continent Atlantis, new magic, and great vehicles and weapons but the description of the Splugorth and their minions can be used on every part of Earth and throughou...

Wise_Owl

From the Early days probably Atlantis; while I loved a lot about plenty of the world-books, that one got a lot of use. Way more use than a book devoted to a place where a majority of PC's might be considered Lunch should get. The biowizardy stuff, the weird alien monsters, the more fleshed out eleme...

Wise_Owl

An Obvious answer would be to make it a work in progress. Something that was say, 40-50 percent of the way through construction when the Rifts hit and everything went sideways. Though even without that(I just like the visual really...) a Tech Republic around the Congo with repurposed Space Technolog...

Wise_Owl

So Yeah, the treatment of Africa in the original World-Book is... bad. Really, and kind of typically American bad. It treats Africa as if this massive continent is a single 'thing', like somehow the San[Pejoratively known as the Bushmen previously] roaming the limited Savana's to which they are now ...

Wise_Owl

odds are the reason he had so many monsters living at his castle was they were acting as his 'army' to keep that village and likely quite a few others in the area in line. using the more human looking ones to collect taxes (probably 'in kind'*) to support the castle itself, and using the more monst...

Wise_Owl

Others have covered how things changed over the years, for my part I'll put down how I generally 'felt' about Rifts over time, with the pre-amble that Rifts China 2 was the last book I bought and even that was entirely a combination Nostalgia/China is what I study sort of thing. Ahem. So going from ...

Wise_Owl

This has been an ongoing discussion all the way back to the early days of the Forum... I think people were having these sorts of discussions pre swanky-town for crying out loud. But in any case, let me climb down off my porch; There are plenty of issues within Rifts in terms of conventions, genre co...

Wise_Owl

I think it is worth noting that given the existence of mega-damage materials (including fabrics), it is not a stretch to imagine mega-damage storage disks, or even mega-damage paper for making books! Mega-damage fabrics at least would allow for the creation of amazingly retro mega-damage scrolls! C...

Wise_Owl

*Puts on his Archivist nerd hat* Given that you are looking at something several centuries into the future(and of course excepting the time-travel issues in Japan) the issue will mostly be a combination of 'what format is something in' and 'who deemed it important to preserve'. Information degradati...

Wise_Owl

Well boiling this down, what do we 'know' about the Nuclear Power Sources of Rifts Earth; 1. That they have a finite shelf life usually in the 5-10 year range 2. That they don't appear to need external refuelling during that time period(i.e. there is no indication that you have to buy fuel for them ...

Wise_Owl

As far as 'official' stuff, no there is virtually nothing. The stated reason is nonsense though. Palladium could easily publish a 'Rifts Arabia' in which the windswept deserts of the Arabian Penisula are occupied by Genies, Roaming Cyber-Bedoine and Magical Cities re-appeared after Millenia or whate...

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