Retrospective: Rifts

As I edge into my elder years, I’m struck by how persistent one theme has been across the more than half-century of my life: The End of It All. Popular culture has long carried the conviction that, for all our technological advances and sophistication, civilization was always teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Ice ages, global warming, acid rain, killer bees, the Jupiter Effect (remember that?), alien invasions, nuclear war –again and again we were told humanity is on a one-way trip to ruin. This apocalyptic sensibility seeped into everything: books, movies, television, even roleplaying games.

Deeper considerations aside, it's easy to understand why: apocalypses offer unique opportunities for adventure. The breakdown of the old order creates lots of space for heroes and villains who make their own rules, just as ruined cities are the perfect places for such people to loot and explore. The post-apocalyptic world might not be a great place to live, but it often sounds like a great place to play an RPG, filled as it is with danger, mystery, and the promise of carving out something new amidst the wreckage of the old.

Over the years, there have been many post-apocalyptic RPGs, some of which I’ve greatly enjoyed. As readers know, I’m currently refereeing Barrett’s Raiders, my ongoing Twilight: 2000 campaign, so it’s a genre that has long appealed to me. That’s why, when Palladium Books released its own entry into the field, Rifts, in 1990, I took notice. Written by Kevin Siembieda, like most of Palladium’s output, the game now feels like the perfect encapsulation of its era’s RPG culture: exuberant, excessive, self-confident, and utterly unconcerned with its own contradictions. Even more than three decades later, Rifts remains both instantly recognizable and difficult to pin down. To call it merely a “post-apocalyptic” RPG misses the mark, because Rifts was (intentionally) never just one thing. It was a collision of genres and ideas – science fiction, fantasy, horror, superheroes – whose very incoherence was what made it so compelling.

At the time of its initial release, I was already familiar with Palladium through a few of the company's earlier releases, thanks in large part to my college roommate, who was a fan. Consequently, I wasn't surprised when I saw a big rulebook filled with evocative, comic-style artwork and Siembieda’s signature blend of dense rules and poor organization. What I wasn’t prepared for was the scope of its setting. Here was Earth, centuries after a magical cataclysm tore open rifts in space and time, unleashing every kind of horror, wonder, and menace imaginable. Dragons and demons rubbed shoulders with cyborg mercenaries, mutant animals, and alien warlords. The North American continent was a patchwork of techno-dystopias, barbarian kingdoms, and wildernesses haunted by supernatural predators. Almost anything was possible in Rift by design, since one of its purposes was to provide a setting where elements from other Palladium games could be dropped in easily.

The original rulebook – the only one I ever saw – had a clear appeal. Its black-and-white illustrations (by artists like Kevin Long and Siembieda himself) were part of its appeal. Likewise, its cover painting by Keith Parkinson immediately communicated the tone of Rifts: over-the-top, bombastic, and larger than life. Rifts didn’t just allow for power fantasies; it practically demanded them. Whereas Dungeons & Dragons offered a gradual "zero to hero" style of advancement, Rifts lets you begin the game as a cyber-knight, a near-invulnerable walking tank, or a ley line–powered sorcerer who can bend reality. 

That excess was both the game’s great strength and its great weakness. The rules were built on the already creaky Palladium system, with its notorious combination of percentile skills, mega-damage mechanics, and endless lists of powers, spells, and combat options, not to mention character classes. "Balance" of any kind is effectively nonexistent. A city rat with a pistol could be in the same party as a dragon hatchling with spellcasting and mega-damage claws, but the game's overall approach was, more or less, that Game Master can make it all work somehow. Honestly, that's not necessarily terrible advice, though I'm sure it wouldn't satisfy many gamers, especially nowadays. 

Looking back, Rifts is a fascinating snapshot of where the hobby was at the time. By 1990, D&D had already begun its transformation into an ever more baroque monstrosity with a plethora of options and settings, while White Wolf was just about to launch its World of Darkness storytelling games, forever changing the face of the hobby. Rifts, by contrast, reveled in excess, giving players the keys to the toy store and daring them to see what happened. The result was chaotic, but, based on what longtime fans tell me, immensely fun. In the years that followed, the flood of supplements, world books, and sourcebooks only expanded the game’s already immense scope, making it simultaneously baffling to outsiders but also exactly what its fans wanted.

Rifts will never win any awards for being elegant or balanced, but, speaking largely as a disinterested party, I think it largely succeeds on its own terms. It offers a vision of roleplaying that is anarchic, imaginative, and gloriously insane. For many in 1990, Rifts was a passport to a multiverse where every idea anyone ever had from comics, cartoons, or science fiction could live side by side. That’s no small achievement, even if it's not for everyone, myself included.

Retrospective: Valley of the Pharaohs

I've said before that I have very little direct experience with Palladium Books or its roleplaying games. With the exception of my old college roommate, I never knew anyone who played any of their games, despite the fact that there seem to be a huge number of them. Even so, I was aware of the existence of Palladium and its products through the advertisements that regularly appeared in the pages of Dragon. One that particularly fascinated me was The Valley of the Pharaohs, which first appeared in 1983. Recently, a friend of mine pointed out to me that the game was available as an inexpensive PDF from DriveThruRPG, so I grabbed a copy and finally had a chance to look at it after all these years. 

In its original form, The Valley of the Pharaohs was a boxed set, consisting of a rulebook, a colored map of Egypt, and about a dozen other maps and diagrams. The rulebook is only 64 pages – short by contemporary standards perhaps but very much in keeping with many RPGs of its time. Written by Matthew Balent, who worked on a number of other early Palladium products, it's designed for adventuring in the political, religious, and mythological world of New Kingdom Egypt. Unlike Palladium’s more well-known roleplaying games, with their kitchen sink approaches to setting design, The Valley of the Pharaohs focuses on a rather more grounded, historically-informed presentation of ancient Egypt, though it does allow for supernatural elements such as magic (or magick, as the book styles it), the intervention of gods, and a handful of fantastic monsters.

In The Valley of the Pharaohs characters are built around occupations appropriate to the ancient Egyptian setting, like scribes, priests, soldiers, merchants, artisans, and so on. Occupations are largely distinguished from one another by the skills they provide the character. The game places some emphasis on social standing (or caste), as ancient Egyptian society was hierarchical, like most pre-modern societies. Caste determines which occupations a character can enter, as well as providing a bonus to a particular attribute. In a certain sense, caste is a replacement for race, since there are no playable non-humans in The Valley of the Pharaohs. 

Combat is fairly straightforward and leans toward the lethal, in keeping with the idea that violence is not always the best option in a world where political maneuvering and religious influence are just as important as swordplay. Players are encouraged to use guile, diplomacy, and careful planning to navigate ancient Egyptian society, since there are strictures in place that against as stops against typical "adventuring" behavior. The order and stability of the New Kingdom is repeatedly emphasized, as are the potential problems that come with the characters acting without sanction in a way that could potentially upend that order. 

The game's commitment to presenting ancient Egypt as a real place rather than simply a backdrop for fantasy adventure is readily apparent. The Valley of the Pharaohs provides details on daily life, religion, politics, and the role of different social classes. The gods of Egypt are an active presence, but they do not overshadow human action, nor do the limited kinds of spells available to player characters. Reading the rulebook, I couldn't shake the feeling that Balent was actually more interested in writing a sourcebook about ancient Egypt than he was in making a roleplaying game set in that time and place. This dedication to historical authenticity is a strength, as is its attempt to make social and political dynamics just as important as combat. At the same time, I can't help but wonder if this is what it's potential audience would have wanted from a game like this.

There is little in the way of extended campaign guidance and the adventure hooks provided are limited to the point of being skeletal. This would almost certainly make it difficult for a referee unfamiliar with ancient Egypt to know where to begin. It's too bad, because Balent packed a lot of genuinely interesting details in this short volume, but most of it tends toward the encyclopedic rather than the practical. When combined with the fact that The Valley of the Pharaohs has given only a limited amount of attention to fantastical or supernatural topics, its utility strikes me as limited. Who is this game for and what would they do with it?

On the plus side, The Valley of the Pharaohs is amply illustrated throughout, both in the form of black and white line drawings throughout the rulebook and separate maps. I really like the artwork, as it depicts lots of mundane aspects of ancient Egypt, such as clothing and wigs, that are important to both players and referees in establishing the setting. The maps and diagrams are similarly well done and useful for gameplay, particularly when exploring tombs and temples. In many ways, these are among the most important parts of Valley of Pharaohs, since gamers often need good visual guides of settings that deviate from the tropes of vanilla fantasy. 

The Valley of the Pharaohs is, so far as I know, a one-off book and received no additional support from Palladium. This makes it a fascinating historical curiosity, especially in light of the subsequent direction of its publisher. As someone with a lifelong interest in ancient Egypt, I'm glad that I finally got the chance to read this game, even if it's deficient in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot of competition within its historical niche. Ancient Egypt is, alongside ancient Greece and Rome, a go-to reference point for fantasy and, by extension, fantasy roleplaying. One would reasonably expect that Egypt would have had more RPGs inspired by it and yet that doesn't seem to be the case. How odd!

Retrospective: Verbosh

In my youth, I didn't have a lot of direct experience with Judges Guild products. Aside from the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, I can probably count the number of JG releases I owned or used on one hand. Partly that's because I was an unrepentant TSR fanboy and looked askance at third-party products, even those that were "approved for use with Dungeons & Dragons," as Judges Guild's were. However, an equally important factor is that, for whatever reason, I rarely saw JG books for sale at the bookstores and hobby shops I frequented. They didn't stock Tegel Manor or City-State of the Invincible Overlord at Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, or Kay-Bee Toys, all of which were my regular sources for RPG materials, the end result of which is that it would be years before I saw many of the products that are now considered classics by connoisseurs of old school roleplaying games.

In the years since, I've therefore made a point of trying to hunt down and read many of the Judges Guild releases which I've seen people discuss online, especially those about which the discussion is largely positive, like Verbosh. Originally published in 1979, Verbosh is an 80-page supplement by Paul Nevins and Bill Faust, two names I do not otherwise recognize. A name I do recognize, however, is Kevin Siembieda, who provides all the interior artwork for this product (the cover is by someone called Bob Hadley), as well as its maps. Siembieda, of course, is the co-founder of Palladium Games and designer of the eponymous The Palladium Role-Playing Game. This was still fairly early in his career, so these illustrations are still amateurish in my opinion, but a step above the Judges Guild standard.

In addition to being the name of this book, Verbosh is also the collective name for a village and fortification nestled along the banks of a river known "the Great Source." Long ago, the fortification was built by a self-styled lord, who named the place after himself. His descendants – all also named Verbosh – inherited his penchant for grandiosity and eventually styled themselves kings. Though some of them achieved genuinely great things, their line eventually "went steadily down hill," according to the text. The latest Verbosh (thirty-first of his line, who call himself "the Magnificent") has been reduced to running a shop that sells meaningless titles of nobility.

Both the village and the fortification are described through a series of keyed locations, in addition to random encounters for daytime and night. Nearly all these locations are shops or services, like an inn, an armorer, or a bakery. Each has an NPC proprietor, with D&D stats and information about his history and personality. Tonally, these descriptions are somewhat whimsical, or at least not entirely serious. For example, the baker is a hobbit who "will bake anything, but it is likely to be poor. His bread is like insulation (and is often used for the purpose)." Of course, the baker is also a polymorphed copper dragon "who thinks his baking is actually good." One's reaction to this reaction is a pretty good gauge of whether you'll like much of the content of Verbosh, which is filled with other examples of such things (e.g. Talc of Umpowder, a blacksmith)

Beneath the fortification is a three-level dungeon to explore. Also nearby is a shipwreck that serves as the basis for an underwater adventure. Taken together, this provides plenty to do for characters who've just arrived in the area. Many of the NPCs in Verbosh also have agendas of their own and can easily become sources of both rumors and employment. Some of these agendas point away from Verbosh itself and toward the wilderness outside the settlement. Naturally, said wilderness is filled with lots of encounters of varying complexity and difficulty. This includes another fortified town/castle named Warrenberg, which itself has a large number of NPCs and locales of a sort similar to those found in Verbosh. Taken together, Verbosh presents lots of opportunities for adventure.

As I said at the beginning of this post, my experience with Judges Guild back in the day was very limited. Viewing them now, what strikes me as how inconsistent their quality was, as well as how amateurish its production values were. This is especially true when compared to TSR's own offerings. At the same time, the better JG books offer the referee a huge amount of raw material from which to work. One might not wish to use any of the books as written, but, as foundations on which to build one's own scenarios, they can be quite good. That's certainly true of Verbosh in my opinion. The sheer magnitude of material in its 80 pages – maps, NPCs, rumors, encounters, and more – is staggering. Yes, a lot of it is much more tongue-in-cheek than I, as a notorious stick in the mud, would like, but it's very easy to ignore, for instance, Federico Fellini's Fast Food business if, like me, you find it a bit silly and use the rest with little trouble.

Retrospective: The Palladium Role-Playing Game

There's an old joke intended to poke fun at the aloofness of people who boggle at the election of a popular political candidate: "How did so-and-so get elected? Nobody I know voted for him." That joke seems to apply to The Palladium Role-Playing Game (now called Palladium Fantasy) and its spin-offs, because, for many gamers, it's absolutely true. Speaking for myself, in all my years of involvement in the hobby, I've only ever encountered one person whom I knew at the time was playing a Palladium RPG. This seems a common experience. Where are these Palladium players who've managed to keep these games alive and well for all these years? It's a mystery that I know I'm not alone in pondering, a mystery all the more baffling because I know that these games are actually quite popular -- or at least what passes for popular in the post-fad age of RPGs.

That enigma aside, Palladium has been around a very long time. I remember seeing ads for the company's products in Dragon in the early 80s, such as its weapons and armor guides, as well as for its fantasy RPG. And of course I was already familiar with Kevin Siembieda's name as an illustrator of many Judges Guild products. Despite this, I never actually picked up The Palladium Role-Playing Game. In fact, I never even saw a copy until the very late 80s, by which point my tastes for Yet Another Fantasy RPG had long since been sated. More to the point, conventional gamer wisdom (at least in the circles in which I moved) informed me that The Palladium Role-Playing Game was just a D&D knock-off -- someone's house rules masquerading as an original game. So I never made any effort to sit down and read the game on its own merits.

That is, until the mid-90s, when I'd become so disenchanted with the direction of AD&D that I started to cast about for alternatives. The original edition of The Palladium Role-Playing Game came out in 1983, with a revision in 1984 (and further revised and expanded in 1998). On a purely cursory inspection, I can certainly see why the game was viewed as little more than someone's D&D house rules. There are eight randomly rolled attributes, most of which are the standard ones renamed. There are hit points, races, and character classes. There are even alignments, which, though renamed, map pretty closely to those in AD&D. And there are lots and lots of random tables to determine many aspects of your character's background, training, and physical appearance.

There are plenty of differences too, from the way combat and magic work to the inclusion of skills, not to mention the world in which it is set, both explicitly and implicitly. I suspect that whether one views The Palladium Role-Playing Game as a unique creation or a mere ape of D&D depends greatly on what aspects of its rules one focuses on. There's no question that D&D exercised a strong influence over Siembieda in creating this game, but, then, how many early RPG designers can claim not to have been influenced by it, if only negatively? After all, what is Basic Roleplaying/RuneQuest other than a codification and development of the Perrin Conventions, which were house rules to OD&D designed to make them more "realistic?" Obviously, that's an extreme simplification of the matter, but I think that's the case with The Palladium Role-Playing Game as well. The D&D influence is there, but it's not the only influence. Moreover, there's more to the game than what it has in common with Dungeons & Dragons (and, by extension, many other early RPGs).

Re-reading the game recently I was struck less by its specific affinity with D&D and more by its connection to old school design principles more generally. The Palladium Role-Playing Game is not one that frets about "balance" or shies away from "swinginess" or any of the other buzzwords of contemporary RPG design. This is a game very much in the mold of the early days of the hobby, a joyous goulash, equal parts randomness and brilliance, that wasn't tailored to provide a particular kind of play experience. It's a toolbox, filled with more than any single referee could ever possibly need for a single campaign, but, since its designer doesn't know -- let alone mandate -- what each referee might need, he includes it all and allows the referee to pick and choose as he wishes. This is not a game that worries about being coherent.

I've never had the chance to play The Palladium Role-Playing Game in any version and I doubt I ever will. I already have D&D for all my incoherent fantasy gaming needs. Still, it's good to be reminded that, when Dungeons & Dragons was abandoning the Old Ways, Palladium was still there, keeping the faith and providing gamers with the kind of stuff that first attracted me to the hobby in the first place. The Palladium Role-Playing Game may not be my game, but I now feel a strange kind of kinship toward it and its legions of players out there whom I've never met.