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having just received mine yesterday, the bonus material is:

"Blue Zone Demons" (seen in Rifter 30, provides additional demons and monsters for use alongside the ones from Creatures of Chaos)
"The Army of Scorched Earth" (seen in Rifter 35, provides a non-NEMA human group as well as versions of the US Marine equipment from rifts WB7)
both are still listed as "optional material"

Honestly i wouldn't have minded if they'd have included the preview of the older psychic storm material, but since that has been completely superceeded by the newer and upcoming Psychic Scream sourcebook (by a different author), leaving it out isn't surprising.

other than that, the rest of the CE material in the rifter has been either previews from the initial release or alternate setting material ("Britain in Chaos" from rifter 27, "The Moons of Jupiter" from rifter 39, or the recent Nebraska material from 80 and 81) so that didn't leave much material to work with. (especially since some of the stuff from the preview which otherwise might have been useful liek the magic users article in rifter 19, got superceeded by the Rise of Magic sourcebook.


if anything, this bonus material makes this edition fo the CE main book a little more useful.. the blue zone demons, even without the full rules from Creature of Chaos, give GM's a useful set of starting enemies that normal edition lacked, and the US Marine material (weapons, vehicles, and an OCC) will be very useful in giving games variety even if the Army of Scorched Earth itself isn't used.

Well, it is what it is: a nice reprint of an old book with a couple of goodies inside. One thing you missed was a nice piece of art that's on page 113. In the paperback this page, the one across from the experience points lists, was just a generic Palladium advertisement (yawn). The hardback has a great black/white picture of some sort of horror flying over a ruined city and dropping some sort of explosive ordnance on an unlucky team of NEMA infantry! That's a great improvement that has be wondering if there are any more hidden goodies in the book.

PS- I would LOVE the stats or the name of the nasty in that picture!

I just wanted to say thank you for this review. I appreciate when people give details about books so I can decide whether it is worthwhile to me to possibly purchase them. I wish someone would do so for the RIFTS and other special editions. Thanks again!

tgunner91 wrote:Well, it is what it is: a nice reprint of an old book with a couple of goodies inside. One thing you missed was a nice piece of art that's on page 113. In the paperback this page, the one across from the experience points lists, was just a generic Palladium advertisement (yawn). The hardback has a great black/white picture of some sort of horror flying over a ruined city and dropping some sort of explosive ordnance on an unlucky team of NEMA infantry! That's a great improvement that has be wondering if there are any more hidden goodies in the book.

PS- I would LOVE the stats or the name of the nasty in that picture!

i hadn't had a chance to do a page by page comparison (not even since then.. work has taken up a lot of time this year), so i probably have missed a fair bit of new art or improved text.

but since the rifter material is part of the promotional stuff for this version, figured it would be good to list that stuff.