Our first session had a bit of a delay before we got to gaming. Wes still had to put the finishing touches on his character, and the rest of the group was in the process of transcribing their characters onto the new folders I had made for them. Rifts requires a lot from its players; a lot of documentation, a lot of frantic book searching, and a lot of flexibility with a difficult system. As such I made five page folders with individual sheets for things like bio info/equipment/powers/vehicles/etc., as well as a quick reference sheet for important combat guidelines and my house rules. The group was still fiddling with them throughout the session, but it wasn’t too much of a distraction. I will be referring to individuals by their character name in order to make this a more efficient record of the campaign.
EDIT: At the request of one of my players I will be redacting portions of this blog to reduce the number of spoilers. It will be blacked like so: monkey. If you want to read it, highlight it.
Session 1: A Flight to Remember
The Setup
NOTE: One of the first, and hardest, things about being a GM in a new game is figuring out how to compel your players into forming a team. Telling players their characters have known each other for years is a working model, but it’s taking the easy way out. I like a challenge. Some of my characters I established a mutual history for, my plan for the rest was as follows:
Our players began in the city state of Kingsdale, an independent community on the southern edge of the Coalition state of Missouri. The players were split into two, initially, unaffiliated groups. The first was comprised of Eve, Ivan, and Max. Max and Ivan were on assignment from their black market employers to escort Eve to the New West. Eve was on the run with valuable intelligence she had stolen when she defected from the Coalition military. The second group was Vincent, Izzy, and Carlin. Vincent was guarding a powerful but peaceful D-Bee who had been placed in a magical state of suspension; his assignment from the cyberknight Order he served was to take this being West to keep it out of the hands of the Coalition and slave traders. Carlin and Izzy, both being members of a liberation front working against the Coalition and sympathetic to the cyberknight cause, had volunteered to accompany Vincent (Carlin, being a native of the New West, was perfect for the job). Both groups had booked passage on one of the few remaining commercial aircraft bound from Kingsdale to Tolkeen, with intention of travelling West after arrival.
Air transport in the world after the Apocalypse is a dangerous proposition. Apart from the supernatural beings which occasionally plague the skies, the loss of satellite positioning forces pilots to utilize archaic guidance systems and mapping. To make matters worse, the surviving defensive satellites in orbit have become hostile. No one knows who controls them, or why they target aircraft, but travelling above 10,000 feet elevation almost invariably results in targeting and destruction. This means that most aircraft must fly low and slow, lengthening travel time and danger considerably. The players are travelling in an AC-1000, a massive pre-Apocalypse military airframe that is part cargo hauler and part fortress. It was designed to forcefully punch through anti-aircraft and enemy aircraft to deliver battalion sized elements of ground forces into hostile territory. Only six of them survived the opening of the Rifts, this one owned and operated by an independent crew whose reputation is that they will deliver their cargo no matter the cost or interference. To avoid Coalition airspace the AC-1000 will be travelling west over what was once Kansas, and then turn north and cut a line towards Tolkeen in the former state of Wisconsin.
The Crash
NOTE: We needed a soft introduction to the saving throws and skill checks that Palladium uses. I also wanted a relatively low stress/noncombat setting for the players to begin to communicate with each other and establish their initial impressions.
The first two thirds of the flight passed unremarkably. However, sixteen hours into the flight a sudden jolt wakes the players from sleep. Ivan and Eve quickly tapped into the ship’s communication frequencies, and learned that a flight of Coalition sky cycles had intercepted them and were demanding that the pilot ground the plane. Despite repeated warnings, the pilot refused and the Coalition stated that if the plane did not set down they would be destroyed by anti-aircraft missiles. Ivan tried to get to the cockpit and gunner’s compartment, but was locked out. Vincent went to the cargo bay to protect his package, while Izzy and Carlin tried to find a crewmember. After an explosion destroyed one of the AC-1000’s engines, and blew part of its right wing off, the pilot came over the ship’s comm and ordered all the passengers down to the drop pods in the ship’s cargo bay. The drop pods had been designed to insert infantry into hostile areas, but had been inoperative for years. They were, however, the safest place to be if the ship did crash. All the players except for Ivan (whose cybernetic frame was too big for the pods) climbed inside as the plane crashed into the wilds.
The crash knocked all the players out except for Ivan, who became stuck underneath a vehicle in the cargo bay after the plane rolled. It took him time, but he worked himself free. As the players awoke they freed themselves from the drop pods, only to find that the pods were upside down. Only Carlin made his saving throw to avoid fall damage after opening his pod. The players, alongside nine other survivors, gathered outside the crash as the sun set against the horizon. They were in a dry lakebed, and wreckage was strewn over a mile around them. Only the fuselage, with the drop pods and vehicles, had survived with minimal damage. One of the AC-1000’s gunners, as the last surviving crewman, began to take stock and organize the survivors. Two were seriously injured, and were stabilized by Eve and Vincent (having Paramedic level medical training). After reorienting to their environment, the group salvaged their vehicle from the wreckage (which survived the crash…miraculously…sort of…).
The players discussed options and determined they needed three things. They needed a way to move the wounded/Vincent’s package. They needed shelter. And they needed to know where they were. They split into two groups to accomplish these tasks. Eve, Ivan, and Vincent would attempt to find the cockpit in order to salvage any navigational information they could find. Max, Izzy, and Carlin would stay behind to help build shelter and jury rig a trailer onto Carlin’s vehicle in order to move the wounded. Under Carlin’s engineering supervision, Max used his pyrokinetic abilities to scrap an old vehicle for its axle and weld a truck bed to it in order to craft the trailer they needed, they partially passed their skill checks so it would be late morning before they finished. Izzy used her first aid training to help keep the wounded stable. The other survivors gathered what debris they could to make a rudimentary shelter beside the destroyed fuselage. It amounted to little more than a large circle of waist high junk, but it was better than nothing.
Vincent, Ivan, and Eve managed to find the cockpit, and after breaking in Eve found three different computer systems which could have been the navigational computer, but couldn’t tell for sure which was which. Vincent used one of his psychic abilities, read object, to identify the nav computer, and then his salvage skill to pull it out. While the cockpit group was finishing their salvage work, the survivor group was settling in to rest after putting as much of the trailer together as they could. Carlin had taken up a guard position atop the wreckage of the fuselage while Max, exhausted from his work, walked 100m away from the shelter to relieve himself. A sudden hissing and guttural barking in the dark caught Max’s attention.
The Grigleapers
NOTE: I set up this encounter a certain way to make a gentle introduction to Rifts combat. The Palladium system is a great idea with pretty terrible execution, and despite my love for the setting I won’t sugar coat its flawed structure. I have strongly considered using an alternative system in general, and just using the sourcebooks for the setting. Regardless of my misgivings, I wanted a creature that was relatively easy to kill but could still present a threat to a party of new players. The grigleapers were a good fit, as they had a low damage threshold and relatively low damage output individually. Their pack presentation is what made them perfect as a threat. A single, dangerous foe could overemphasize the combat abilities of certain classes (like Ivan and Vincent), and make other players feel less involved (Rifts has a HUGE balance problem with classes). With a bunch of weak opponents, everyone can feel involved and equally important. The numbers game also lets me put some engagement rules in place the players weren’t aware of. There were 60 grigleapers total, in three groups of twenty. My event triggers to end combat and make the grigleapers flee were: A) Wound half of them to any degree, B) kill a quarter of them, or C) find a way, anything, to divert their attention. Oh yeah, according to the New West book the grigleapers are fearless. I made them afraid of light and fire, because I’m the GM and I get to do these sorts of things. This is how it played out:
Max, startled, lashed out with his powers and ignited a wall of flame in front of him. As the flames rose he saw, with horror, that a mass of writhing creatures had been silently approaching the wreckage. Grigleapers are the size of large dogs, and appear like a strange cross between an insect and a hyena. The use their massive back legs to leap upon their prey and drag it down. As far as Max could tell, there were dozens, and he began to sprint back to the shelter while Carlin took aim from atop the fuselage where he was keeping watch and began to fire on the handful of grigleapers which summoned the courage to leap past Max’s fire wall. Izzy raised the alarm on comms, and cast a globe of daylight spell to illuminate the shelter. The cockpit crew began to race back towards the rest of the group. As Max closed on the shelter Izzy cast a spell which enshrouded the area behind him in darkness in order to confuse the grigleapers. One made it through the shadows, but was met with a bullet from Carlin’s rifle.
Carlin, Izzy, and Max all assumed defensive positions and began to hold the wave of grigleapers at bay with small arms fire and pyro blasts as they began to cautiously enter the edge of Izzy’s illumination. My initial plan was to have the grigleapers hit the edge of the shelter and begin to drag off survivors, and award extra exp for each survivor the players saved. Izzy’s quick thinking with her daylight spell gave me a different idea. At the start of every round each group of the leapers would roll against a horror factor of 12. If they passed they edged closer, if they failed they stayed where they were. If any single group passed three checks they could begin to assault the shelter and drag off survivors. Singular grigleapers would make passes every now and then, but the players would only be at threat from multiple grigleapers at once if they left the light/shelter. Carlin, having taken position on the fuselage outside of both the light and the shelter, found this out when he saw three grigleapers had circled around and were climbing the back side of the fuselage to reach him. He shot one, and wounded another, but had his attention diverted down below. The gunner from the plane’s crew had failed his saving throw vs. horror factor, and in desperation he was trying to steal Carlin’s vehicle to escape. Carlin warned him once, but was forced to kill him with a precise shot when the gunner disregarded his warning.
Around this time the cockpit group had finally arrived back at the fuselage. Ivan, on his cyborg motorcycle, and Vincent, on his robot horse, charged into the flank of the grigleapers in an attempt to scatter them and buy the shelter group time. Eve came back to the shelter to help defend the wounded, but quickly began to question their chances at survival if they did not find a way to keep the grigleapers from swarming them. The other players agreed (a concern which they all knew but had not given voice to yet, I assume). While Ivan and Vincent bought them time, the following options were discussed: A) using a nearby barrel of fuel to ignite a fire which could kill or scare off as many grigleapers as possible, B) use the bodies of those who did not survive the crash to draw the grigleapers off. Vincent strenuously opposed the desecration of the dead, being a cyberknight, while Eve and Carlin argued for their use. As this occurred Ivan began to cut swathes through the leapers with his rail guns; and Vincent followed in his path with his psi-sword, carving through stragglers. Unfortunately, Vincent failed one of his attack rolls with a natural 1. A grigleaper managed to unseat him, and he fell heavily in the midst of the leapers.
Atop the fuselage, Carlin was locked in a struggle with the last leaper who had finally made it up to his position. While he wounded the creature, its leap attack had drug him down and he was struggling to keep its maw from his throat. Meanwhile Vincent, alone among the leapers, was fighting to keep the swarm at bay. Izzy and Max helped to clear those nearest to him with effective pyro blasts and pistol shots, but it was only a matter of time. Eve made the decision to retrieve one of the half-buried fuel barrels outside the shelter that had been thrown loose in the crash. She reached it quickly enough, but found herself quickly targeted by a leaper as soon as she left the protection of the light. Carlin, having thrown the leaper off of him, shouted to Eve to dislodge the barrel. As soon as she pulled it loose, Carlin used his telekinesis power to hurl the barrel into the midst of the main body of leapers attacking the shelter. Vincent used the time that Izzy and Max had bought him to remount his horse and ride hard away from the explosive barrel which had just landed only a few feet from him. Carlin, disregarding the leaper still threatening him, attempted to shoot the barrel. His shot, alas, feel short of his intended target. Max, seeing no other option, unleashed ignited a powerful pyro blast which ignited the barrel and over fifteen of the other grigleapers in a towering inferno. The group had worked together and achieved my event triggers, the remaining grigleapers fled. The group, exhausted and wounded, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Welcome to the Badlands
As the sun dawned, the players regrouped and finished their projects. Max and Carlin put the finishing touches on the trailer. Ivan kept guard as Vincent buried the dead. Izzy tended the wounded, and Eve used the navigational computer to roughly determine their location to be the South Dakota Badlands. As the morning gave way to noon, the group saw a single figure walking across the lakebed to their position. Carlin, Ivan, and Vincent went to meet this mysterious walker as the rest of the group stood guard. He introduced himself as Seth, a Justice Ranger who served the scattered communities in the area. He had heard the commotion last night, and made his way to the crash site at first light. Having empathically scanned the three, whether they liked it or not, Seth determined he could trust that they had no malicious intent (even if he took an immediate dislike to Ivan). He offered to lead the group and the survivors away from the crash to a nearby safe house he and his fellow Rangers used. Shortly after departing the lakebed, the group sees a flight of Coalition skycycles circling the crash site. They realized that their hasty shelter and the graves had betrayed the existence of crash survivors, and made haste to reach Seth’s safe house.
Having reached their new shelter, the group pressed Seth for details on the area, and how they could reach civilization. He confirmed that they were in the South Dakota Badlands, and informed them that the closest thing to civilization nearby was a mining town to the southwest called Calico approximately thirty miles away. The problem, Seth explained, was how to get there. To the north there was only further desolation, and wild creatures like the grigleapers. To the east ran a powerful ley line which was stalked by some malevolent power which led the locals to call it the Devil’s Line. To the immediate south was the grigleaper’s territory (where the plane had crashed), as well as the hunting grounds of the Gwylack, a species of mutated spider/scorpion hybrids of gigantic size whose favorite food was the grigleapers. An old highway which ran east/west bordered the northern edge of the grigleaper’s grounds. Taken west, this road ended at an intersection with a north/south highway which led straight to Calico if taken southward. Seth explained that a group of bandits calling themselves the White River Gang had an outpost with communication equipment at this intersection; and that the bandits regularly patrolled all the roads, especially the road north to a nearby settlement they controlled. West of the north/south road, on the backcountry path to Calico, was an expanse of the badlands claimed by a wild psi-stalker tribe.
Time was running out. The other survivors needed medical attention, and both Eve and Vincent could not afford to allow the Coalition to catch up to them. Seth promised to guard the wounded and other survivors for the group, as long as they sent help back from Calico. Vincent asked Seth to allow him to empathically scan him to ensure his intentions and claims were valid. Seth, however, refused. He had known many cyberknights in his time, but Justice Rangers have their own way of doing things. He was not in the habit of allowing his intentions to be judged, that was his job as far as he was concerned. Without trust in Seth, Vincent refuses to leave his cargo behind. It goes where he goes. Roughly half the party has argued for a direct assault on the bandit outpost, while Vincent argued strongly against this path as he preferred not to kill unnecessarily. As the session ended, the only thing left to choose was which path to take into Calico…