Our second session started a bit more punctually, and as everyone had at least a passing understanding of the Rifts system there was less to keep us from rolling straight into the game. I try my best to kick a session into high gear early, it becomes very easy to let the first hour or two of a session flit by while people get “warmed up”. Since we have relatively extended breaks between our sessions (this one was roughly a month), and only do six hours at a stretch, I think it behooves our group to try and get into the thick of it quickly and maintain a good tempo. I’m not entirely happy about this kind of abrupt start and pressure to stay on task; however, it’s my job as GM to make sure that we accomplish certain things in each session. Such is life.
Session 2: No Rest for the Wicked
The Bandit Camp
As we resumed play I reminded the players that there was still an important choice for them to make, what road they would be taking to reach the nearby mining encampment of Calico. Time was something of an issue, as there were still wounded survivors from the crash that needed medical attention. Not to mention the probable arrival of Coalition forces to investigate the crash and search for survivors. Seth, the Justice Ranger who had led the party away from the crash site to their current position at one of his regional safe houses, had volunteered to safeguard the wounded and the player’s vehicles and equipment while the party went for help in Calico. Vincent, reluctantly, agreed to leave his valuable package hidden with the group’s gear in a nearby abandoned mine shaft under Seth’s watchful eye. He didn’t like the idea, but lugging around a coffin sized package weighing half a ton would have slowed the group’s progress dangerously. The majority of the players in the group had voted to approach Calico by way of a nearby bandit encampment which lay at an intersection of two pre-Apocalypse highways north of Calico. This choice made combat an unfortunate inevitability; but if they were successful it would be the fastest road south to their destination.
Seth provided the players a map of the region, and they chose an overland route through the hills of the badlands on foot. It would be slow going over 10 miles of rough terrain, but it would ensure they avoided bandit patrols on the roads, and reduced any chance of their vehicles energy or sound signature being detected before they were ready to strike. Complicating things further, the players were still exhausted from their tribulations at the crash site and having fought and run without rest for close to 24 hours. Despite this, they still set out at dusk in order to reach the encampment a few hours before dawn. I forced all the players except for Ivan the cyborg to make a physical endurance test. Carlin, Izzy, and Eve failed; the group would still make it to their destination by dawn, but these players would suffer an exhaustion penalty to their rolls. As the group approached the bandit encampment, they set up a hasty launching point from which they would recon their objective.
The bandits had made a rough fortification out of an old highway rest stop where a north/south highway had intersected an east/west highway which ended at the intersection. Three buildings comprised the main encampment; a two story faux-adobe building atop of which the bandits had placed their radio equipment, an old gas station with a series of hoses running from the old pumps under a closed garage door, and a small circular building with broken glass walls that might once have been a visitor center which the bandits appeared to be using for storage. Around these buildings, and the three highways which intersected at them, the bandits had created rough walls out of scrap vehicles which they had overturned and stacked atop each other. It wasn’t a very effective barrier, but it was defensible and allowed them to control road travel. They had rolled an old RV across the northern road; and two tractor trailers across the east and south roads, to create improvised gates which they could roll off the side of the road to permit passage. One bandit was standing guard atop each of the gate vehicles; there was no sign of other bandits within the compound with the exception of lights coming out of the main, two-story building inside the camp. Vincent used his psychic ability of astral projection to quickly recon the buildings, but the time constraint imposed by astral projection at his low level kept him from finding out much more information of value.
The players decided that they would attempt to assault the compound from each of the road directions in an attempt to coordinate a strike which would, hopefully, neutralize the three sentries before an alarm could be raised and give them a chance to knock out the bandit’s radio equipment before they could call for help from another larger camp to the north which Seth had warned them of. Eve was to eliminate the southern sentry, Vincent and Izzy would deal with the eastern sentry, and Max would target the northern sentry with Carlin’s assistance. Ivan, unable to prowl or move stealthily due to his cybernetic modifications, would hold back out of sight until combat began and then move in to support the group ( delay of one combat round once the action started). Carlin, having made his character along the lines of a techno-wizard marksman, would take a position halfway up the rocky slope of a hill approx. 500 meters northeast of the encampment. Before he could take position, they would need a distraction. Carlin did not have a climbing skill, or a sufficiently high enough physical prowess (i.e. dexterity), to climb down the rock face to his firing position without risking a fall which could injure him and give the party away. Ensuring everyone was in position and ready was crucial to success.
Unfortunately, not everyone passed their prowl tests (prowl is the Rifts version of sneaking around unseen). Eve had managed to make her way around to the southern sentry, and Izzy/Vincent were in position a few hundred meters from the eastern sentry. A thin tree line ran along the base of the hill northeast of the camp; Izzy/Vincent had used it to get into position, but as Max was trying to maneuver into 100 meters of the northern gate he gave himself away by stepping an old, dry branch. This alerted the northern guard, who dropped down off of the RV blocking the road and made his way over to investigate. Max had quickly ducked behind an old fallen tree, but the guard was making straight for him. Carlin, seeing the guard distracted, used a levitation spell to ease down the rock face into his firing position. As the guard rounded the fallen tree Max tried to prowl again in an effort to evade him, but failed. The guard raised the alarm and shouldered his rifle.
With combat initiated the group went into action. Ivan started making his way south to help Max assault the northern gate. Izzy and Vincent prepared to strike the eastern guard, who was now attempting to visualize the disturbance at the northern gate through the scope of his rifle. The southern guard, distracted by the warning on the radio, did not see Eve slide underneath his position on the old semi-trailer. The northern bandit hastily cracked a shot into the main body of Max’s armor, taking his breath away but hardly putting him down. Max answered with a pyro blast to the bandit’s unprotected face, with a successful called shot he burned away everything but the cybernetic implants above the bandit’s neck. Izzy and Vincent began to place well aimed shots with small arms at the eastern guard, quickly depleting his armor as he reeled at the sudden assault. Eve, carefully climbing up the side of the southern sentry post unnoticed, dispatched her target by sliding her implanted vibro-blade through the back of his skull while he tried to make out what was happening north of him. With the northern and southern posts compromised the eastern sentry appeared ready to fall back, Izzy obliged him by unleashing a magical bolt of energy which sent his smoking carcass hurling back towards the main building. Max slipped over the northern wall just as Ivan arrived, and saw three more bandits come rushing out of the main building and take cover behind a rough sandbag wall they had built around the main entrance. Carlin, scanning for targets from his sniper’s perch, noticed another bandit fling open a roof access panel and make for the radio equipment which would bring even more trouble to the fight.
Carlin attempted to put the roof bandit down with his enchanted rifle, but his shot went wide. He did succeed in making the bandit more concerned with him than with calling for help, as using the radio would have exposed him to more fire. The bandit crouched behind the low wall around the roof’s edge, and the party had an additional round or two before he tried to call for help again. Ivan, using his immense strength to push the RV blocking the north road out of the way, drew the attention of the three bandits behind the sandbag wall. Focusing their fire on the giant cyborg north of them, they took little notice of the slight figure of Eve carefully making her way to cover next to the old visitor’s center. Vincent, having remotely summoned his robotic horse, mounted and made for the eastern wall which Izzy was hastily climbing up. As the bandits focused their fire on Ivan, Max snuck around the back of the gas station and the main building in the hopes of finding an unprotected entrance he could use to surprise any bandits which may still be inside. While the damage Ivan was sustaining would have likely killed anyone else in the group, except Vincent the cyberknight, he calmly took out his Northern Gun plasma ejector and took aim at the barricade the three bandits had assumed cover behind. He rolled a natural 20.
The impact incinerated the barrier, and threw all three of the bandits on their backs (GM note: The barricade was NOT an MDC structure, so you can argue that this shot should have killed/wounded one or more of the bandits behind it, but as Ivan was intending to break the bandit’s cover I did not transfer damage to them apart from making them lose a melee action from being thrown backwards). Carlin, wanting to ensure there would be no reinforcements from the north, called a shot on the radio equipment on the roof and succeeded. The roof bandit tried to return fire, but did little more than scar the rock face over a dozen meters from Carlin’s position. With the barricade broken, Eve had a clear shot on one of the bandits trying to get back to his feet. Her shot caught him the full in the chest, but did not kill him. Izzy took careful aim and wounded another bandit from atop the eastern wall as Vincent, atop his robotic steed, vaulted the eastern barricade and began to charge the bandit’s position. Max had used this time to pull down the boards blocking a back window and started to climb hastily into the building. Carlin succeeded in putting down the roof bandit, though the magical charge in his rifle was now dangerously low. One of the wounded bandits managed to crack off a hasty shot which clipped Eve, but her follow up shot finished the work of her first and he crumpled to the ground with a smoking hole through his chest.
Ivan attempted to bring his plasma ejector back into play, but rushed his shot and only succeeded in spooking one of the two remaining bandits, who dived back into the building in desperation. The last bandit remaining outside fired wildly out towards Izzy and Vincent, and Izzy ended his resistance with another powerful magic bolt. Vincent, having built up a full charge on his mount and unaware that the roof bandit was down, vaulted off of his horse in an impressive leap and managed to catch the edge of the roof and haul himself up. As the rest of the group closed on the main building, Max heard the rushed footsteps of the last bandit running up the stairs to the second floor and slamming a door shut. Vincent, jumping down through the roof access panel, now joined Max outside the door the bandit had fled to. As he kicked in the door Vincent was met with an unusual sight. The last bandit was sitting calmly on the edge of a cot, with his pistol in one hand and a thick book in the other. He gave Vincent an oddly serene look.
“He said you’d come.”
The bandit’s last words echoed in Vincent’s ears as he put the barrel of his pistol to his temple and ended his own life. The engagement ended, no other bandits were coming in the immediate future and the party began to look around and discuss their options. They needed to reach Calico quickly, especially since they had no idea when the bandits to the north might come to check on their compatriots unusual silence, and Carlin figured he could get the RV the bandits used to block the north gate running again using scrap parts from the cars in the barricade. While he worked on that, Ivan attempted to check the garage for anything they could salvage and sell later. He walked over and flung open the garage door of the gas station, triggering the explosives that the bandit’s had planted to booby trap the most obvious entrance to the facility where they stored their vehicles and fuel. No one in the party was harmed; as they were busy elsewhere and regular flame was nothing more than an inconvenience to a cyborg. This did, however, mean that the party would not have access to the weapons/fuel/ATV I had put in the garage as their reward for dispatching the bandits. At least, it was supposed to be their reward as long as no one tripped what was going to be an obvious trap if anyone even attempted to check for it. Max and Izzy, both having powers which allowed them to extinguish flame, tended to the fire while Ivan dusted himself off.
As Carlin finished his repairs, the party explored what was left of the compound. Surprisingly, it bore little resemblance to the usual bandit dens that littered the wasteland. There were no drugs or liquor, and the bandits appeared to have kept their living quarters in a relatively clean and organized state. One of the rooms on the bottom floor of the main building even looked like it had been made into an impromptu chapel, with chair circled around a central podium made from a section of the old café counter. Vincent perused the book that the last bandit had been clutching, and found it to be a strange account. Its bound leather surface bore an embossed crucifix on the front, but it also looked as if someone exceptionally strong had taken a gear and forcibly pressed it into the leather so that its outline was superimposed upon the cross. While it was just a standard bible by design entire passages in it had been crossed out, and annotations in the margins referred cryptically to “new prophet” and a “third testament”. For the time being, Vincent had decided to keep the bible to himself. The RV was finished, but as the group prepared to leave Vincent insisted on staying behind. The bible, and a strange sense of foreboding, had piqued his interest. While the main party headed south for Calico, Vincent attempted to explore the area further. Despite his efforts he could find nothing else; with daylight on the horizon he hurried back to the group, catching up with them shortly before their motley convoy arrived on the outskirts of Calico.
The Clockwork Preacher
The party’s first view of Calico is underwhelming. It is a dirty collection of ramshackle and war-torn pre-Apocalypse buildings and prefabricated modules which look cobbled together hastily. It is less a community than a work camp hastily assembled on the bones of a long dead ghost town. In truth there is only one building, a large concrete garage standing in the center of the town, which appears remotely habitable. Towering above the hovels of Calico are five battle worn Triax Forager combat robots, each over 20 feet tall and bristling with turrets and missiles. Their turrets swiveled to face the sudden arrival of the party, and one lumbered in their direction with deafening footfalls. A voice over a loudspeaker ordered the group out of the RV, and demands to know their business. Carlin and Izzy explained that they are survivors of a nearby crash, and need medical attention for the wounded remaining with Seth. In short order a Big Boss ATV arrives, and a surly man in his late fifties steps out. He has his grey hair cut in a military style, and wears a well-worn robot pilot’s jumpsuit. Besides him a slender young woman peered at the party, she might have been attractive if not for the network of veins which spread out from her temples like a spider’s webs.
The man introduced himself as Winston, the leader of the mining camp at Calico. He had Carlin repeat the story of the group’s arrival, scowling deeper at the mention of Seth’s name. Gruffly he explained that he found the party’s sudden appearance out of the north, a region most of the bandit attacks on Calico originated from, to be highly suspect. The woman beside him, his daughter Mina, would probe Carlin’s mind to verify his story. Winston warned that if the party wanted access to Calico he would have to know that they were telling the truth. Carlin begrudgingly consented, though he had no idea how deeply Mina intended to delve. As a mind melter, the most powerful psychics born into the new world, Mina almost tore Carlin’s psyche apart to ensure he was not lying or hiding something from Winston. In the process she also learned a bit more than Carlin wanted her to, especially about Carlin’s history and his mission to escort Vincent and his precious package. Satisfied that their story was true, Mina and Winston led the party to the concrete garage in Calico to discuss the situation.
Once safely inside Winston gave the party a brief history of Calico. Most of the residents were aging veterans of one of the many companies of mercenaries who offered their skills in the many conflicts which plagued the New West. His group’s specialty was robotics, and they had amassed a formidable arsenal and reputation. As the company aged, however, their thoughts turned to quitter lives and retirement from the field of battle. During one of their many campaigns Winston had managed to find a data recorder with old geological survey data indicating there was a rich copper vein beneath Calico. The advent of mega damage materials, high impact plastics, and composite metals had made raw materials like iron relatively undesirable. Copper, though, was still valued highly for its use in the wiring systems for robotics and cybernetics. Winston contracted a group of cyborg miners and prospectors who would extract the ore while Winston’s men provided security in the hostile wastes. They had been digging at Calico for nearly two years, supplied by a TK Iron Horse (read: magic train) every month when the full moon activated a ley line that ran from the Colorado Baronies to Calico. Profits were pouring in, and Winston had hoped that they would have enough to buy land outside the Barony of Hope in the next year.
There was a problem, though. A problem named Uriah Fray. According to Winston he was a full conversion cyborg who had wandered out of the wastes preaching a strange gospel about cybernetics being the path to redemption. As Mina could sense no ill will in him, he allowed Uriah into Calico. The trouble began within days, Uriah had been preaching to the cyborg miners every night. He had criticized Winston’s company, saying that he did not value the effort and risk that the miner’s faced pulling the ore from the rock below. Two days before the party’s arrival, Winston was about to have Uriah thrown out of Calico when the miners disappeared. He sent men to the mines, where he found the entire mining work force assembled. There would be no more work until Winston ceded control of the mine and an equal share of the profits to the miners. Within the close confines of the mine Winston’s robotic strike teams were useless; even if they could get a force of power armor troopers in the mine the cyborgs were essentially walking tanks without cannons, it would be costly to take the mine back by force. Uriah had further warned that any hostile efforts by Winston would end with the miner’s detonating all the remaining explosives they were using to excavate ore and seal the mine forever. Winston refused to negotiate, and the situation had been at a stalemate ever since.
Winston had no love for Seth, who he labeled an “instigator” who was more interested in using people to further his own idea of peace and justice in the area than with trying to help anyone in Calico. He even suggested that Seth had likely pushed the party to assault the bandit compound, as he had been trying to enlist Winston’s help dealing with it since their arrival in the badlands. Winston would not turn his back on people in need, but he was still a mercenary and expected that any effort on his part would be reciprocated by the players. If Winston was going to retrieve the wounded crash survivors and equipment from Seth’s safe house he demanded that the players find a way to end the situation at the mine. He didn’t care how the players managed the situation; he just needed the mine back in operation by the next full moon in less than a week, though he did express an interest in keeping the miners alive. Winston arranged for one of his armorers to attend to the party’s equipment (for a fee, of course), and allowed them to park their RV behind the garage to rest for the night. The player’s traded the armorer what few supplies they had scrounged from the bandit camp and had partial repairs done to their equipment.
That night the group discussed their situation. Vincent explained that he had found the mysterious bible at the bandit camp, and that he had stayed behind briefly in the hopes of finding more evidence of what might be transpiring. Carlin and Izzy had both heard of cults who preached about a “third testament”, but only one was well known in the New West. They had little concrete evidence, and none of them had met a member before. The general knowledge they had was that the founding principle of the cult was that god had sent the Apocalypse to punish man, and that only through cybernetic enhancement could a person transcend their mortal bodies and serve the will of god. There were vague stories of violence against psychics and magic users, and a paranoid hatred of D-Bees and the supernatural. The group discussed options, and came to the conclusion that their best option for negotiation lay in Ivan (as a full conversion combat cyborg) and Eve (who had partial cybernetic reconstruction). Without knowing how the miners, or Uriah, would react to the magic users and psychics in the group it was the best option available.
Shortly after first light the players travel to the outskirts of Calico, Ivan and Eve would travel the remaining half mile south to the mine while the rest of the party stayed here and observed the negotiations through an uplink to Ivan’s eyes. The pair made their way to the ominously quiet mine; several large prefabricated buildings for the processing and packaging of the copper ore surround the central access building for the mine. As the party approaches, a single cyborg with a massive drill in place of its left forearm and hand steps out from the steel access doors. Ivan and Eve, hoping to avoid disclosing their true purpose, informed the cyborg that they had heard of a man preaching about a third testament in Calico. They had travelled to hear more, and hoped to speak with this new prophet. The miner silently turned and led them into the main access building. As they stepped inside two more cyborgs advanced out of the shadows on their flanks. The first miner led them to a large platform set on rail tracks which led downward into the primary shaft of the mine. He remained silent as the platform lurched into motion and descended into the darkness of the mine.
After several moments of descent the platform lurched to a stop, Ivan and Eve had reached the central cavern from which the miners staged their digs. It was a hewn cavern over a hundred meters high, and at least that much in diameter. Three smaller mine shafts branched off of it, assorted equipment and carts full of ore surrounded a central switching platform which could be rotated to allow carts to be directed to and from the different shafts of the mine. The switching platform slowly rotated to give the party their first look at Uriah Fray, the clockwork preacher, seated atop a pile of mining equipment like a king upon a throne. He was a full conversion cyborg, but did not wear the heavier armor that most cyborgs donned; what little was visible of his body revealed the pistons, wires, and gears which surrounded his metallic skeleton. Instead of armor he wore the black garb of a New West preacher, and around his neck hung a steel crucifix upon which a gear had been welded. The only piece of armor he had chosen to wear was a strange silver mask bearing the unsettling likeness of an effeminate face with closed eyes and a faint smile. He asked if Ivan and Eve had come to seek the gospel, at which point Ivan held up the bible they had captured at the bandit camp. Uriah laughed, and with grand gestures he launched into a sermon.
He spoke of a new revelation, and how god had sent the Apocalypse to punish his children for their failings. The Old Testament had spoken of god’s stern paternalism and wrath in man’s infancy, and the New Testament had spoken of god’s love for his children when his anger could not lead them to salvation. The Third Testament, Uriah extolled, spoke of god’s abandonment of those who could not see his grand design. God, despondent that his wrath and his love had both failed to save the children of Adam and Eve, had left man to its own devices. Only those who were willing to “armor themselves like the archangels” could find redemption, only those with sufficient discipline and faith to “forsake their flesh” in the name of serving god would be granted entrance through the gates of heaven. God had given man his ingenuity in order for man to find a way to transcend the limitations of their frail bodies, and rise anew to meet new challenges in “the New Eden” as armored soldiers of the faith. This, Uriah explained, was the true path. Those who succumbed to “the Devil’s ways” through magic and psionics were heretics who had surrendered themselves to false idols and the ways of witchcraft. Ivan and Eve expressed skepticism at this, pointedly asking how someone of faith could make threats and hold the mine hostage.
Uriah, descending from his throne, explained that the faithful did not concern themselves with the criticism of those blind to god’s word. These miners, he claimed, bore the true burden of the mining camp. Yet Winston only gave them 10% of the mine’s profits, any attempt to keep them from an equal share of the mine’s profits was a slight against the faithful which must be answered. Carlin, back on the edge of Calico, contacts Winston and confirms that the cyborgs were indeed only receiving a fraction of the mine’s profits (a detail he had conveniently left out of his original description of the situation). Carlin tries to reason with him, but Winston asserts that the mercenaries on the surface were the reason the mine existed at all, and that their continued protection merited their overwhelming share of the mine’s profits. Back in the depths, Uriah asks to see the bible which Ivan had brought. Slowly walking circles around the pair, Uriah flips the pages of the bible as six more mining borgs step from the shadowed mine shafts and surround them. Uriah holds the book aloft, shouting that he had spoken the truth. The men of the surface had sent false messengers among them, like wolves among the sheep. Uriah knew who had owned the bible before Ivan, and knew that he could not have come across it by any means except force. He informed Ivan and Eve that he had foreseen their arrival, and knew that they had truly come to serve Winston’s interests. In an instant all of the mining borgs in the mine shaft activated their drills as Uriah spread his arms like Jesus upon the cross.
The players back in Calico, suspecting that things were taking a turn for the worst, hastily scrambled to race toward the mine. Uriah, however, informed Ivan that he would allow the pair to return to the surface unharmed. He would not strike first against a fellow cyborg, even if he was not a member of the flock. Escorted by the same cyborg which had led them in, Uriah sent Ivan and Eve back up the primary shaft to the surface. While on the platform, a small sound caught Ivan attention. The cyborg escorting them had opened a hidden compartment in his arm and allowed a small chip to fall out onto the floor. Eve snatched it from the floor of the platform, and secreted it away. Cast out from the mine, the cyborg warned them not to return before closing the main doors to the mine with a thunderous boom. The negotiations had ended, and as the players gathered back at the garage in Calico they discussed the events down in the mine as Carlin, Ivan, and Max inspected the strange chip that the miner had dropped. It was a small metallic circle, not unlike a camera battery, with the cross and gear engraved on one side. Though none of the players were skilled in cybernetic medicine, they did recognize the chip as a neural translator. It served to encode the electrical impulses of the human brain into easily identifiable signals for the cybernetic body. Another realization dawned on the party as they reviewed the footage from the mine. All of the cyborgs, with the exception of their escort, had been operating in perfect unison. Every motion and every step had been in perfectly timed; Uriah was controlling the miners through their neural translators.
The group was still stuck at an impasse though. A frontal assault against nine full conversion cyborgs was suicide. Even if they succeeded, Uriah would likely blow the mine. How had Uriah known they were working for Winston? How had he warned the bandits at the encampment of the party’s impending arrival? Why would Uriah need to enslave the miners if he was claiming to be representing their best interest in a share of the mine’s profits? They needed more information. Vincent volunteered to venture back into the astral realm to see if he could learn more of what was happening in the depths of the mine. Slipping between worlds his disembodied form flew down into the depth. There, he again felt the strange and unsettling presence of something else, just like he had felt at the bandit encampment. At the base of the primary shaft, where Ivan and Eve had confronted Uriah, Vincent noticed a ghostly light at the end of one of the mine’s secondary shafts. He followed it, but as the farther he went the dimmer the light became, until he was surrounded in utter darkness. Suddenly, the familiar voice of Uriah spoke up behind him. Floating in astral space, Vincent turned to face a black figure which seemed to draw the shadows into itself. The only things to stand out from the darkness of the creature’s body were silver tears which tracked down the emanation’s face. Vincent fled, tracking back the thin silver cord which connected his astral form to his body. The thing, however, was drawing him in. As the session ended Vincent was struggling desperately to free himself…
GM Notes: Spoiler Alert
1. Rifts has a plethora of gods and demons, many of them derived from current and past faiths, from which a GM can choose. Siembeda avoided mention of the god of Abraham though, likely due to the intense criticism PnP games faced by conservative Christian groups of the 80’s and 90’s when Rifts was published. I always felt that it was a treasure trove of great stuff to build a story out of though, so I figured if he wouldn’t do it I’d do it for him.
2. Before I started this campaign I considered some of my past failings as a GM in previous campaigns. I realized that in many ways I am a very liberal GM with regards to loot, but a very conservative GM with experience. I’ve been making a concerted effort to track and catalog skill uses and contributions to rectify the latter, and intentionally planted a bomb at the bandit encampment to at least justify a generous reward if the players had the sense to check for booby traps first. I think it’s a good balance so far, especially since I wanted the player’s journey out of the badland to be a bit of a nail biter since there would be no ideal place to repair weapons/armor, or restock equipment.
3. Palladium has a shit system. I had forgotten just how difficult it is to accomplish even simple skill or attribute tests without frantic book searching. In the interest of continuity and momentum I resorted to assigning arbitrary numbers for some rolls using my best judgment. There are so many different modifications and rule adjustments scattered throughout the five million sourcebooks that it is a monumental undertaking to figure it all out. I have limited time to research and plan given my professional career as a paramedic, I find it very difficult be authoritative in regards to rules and structure when I’d rather focus on the story. I guess I just need the time to research a few rules better.
4. I like the idea of arc stories and recurrent villains. Uriah Fray will be the first that the players have to contend with. One of the fun things about Rifts is that the villain does not have to be what they seem on the surface; even an innocuous character could be hiding immense power. This same fact, well known to the players and anyone familiar with the setting, can also result in players reading TOO far into events and assuming something is far more powerful than it is. I’ll be interested to see if the players can figure Uriah out.