Review 3000: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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In 1984 and 1985, the breakout comic was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, written and drawn by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and published by their Mirage Studios. It was an independent black and white comic that told the adventures of the eponymous quartet of four genetically-mutated turtles trained under a pet rat, Master Splinter, to fight rival ninja, including the Foot Clan, and other threats, such as aliens. Combining humour and stories with a darker edge than Marvel Comics like Daredevil and The New Mutants, the comic book was a hit and not only continued to be published by Mirage Studios for the next thirty years, but was heavily licensed, pushing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the mainstream. Since 1987, there have been five television series based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and eight films. However, in the forty years since the first issue of the comic, there has only been one roleplaying game—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was published in 1985 by Palladium Games, a company best known at that point for 1983’s Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game and 1984’s Heroes Unlimited. It was designed—or rather redesigned in a matter of weeks after Palladium Games was unhappy with the original submitted version—by Erick Wujcik, who most notably would go on to create Amber Diceless Role-Playing. The result was a fast-paced, engaging, if imperfect roleplaying game packed with art from Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, that looked like it was a lot of fun. And if you were a teenager when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was released, it was, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was and were cool. Perhaps because of the speed in which it was rewritten, perhaps because it is a Palladium Games book, there is ‘cookie cutter’ feel to some parts of the roleplaying game—the alignment system, the equipment list, and the weapons—which all very feel imported from Palladium Games’ other roleplaying games that used the Megaversal system, like the earlier Ninjas & Superspies. There are certainly some parallels between the two, not least of which are the fact that they were both written by Erick Wujcik, but they do not feel like a natural fit to the comic book universe of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That aside, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness proved to a be a big hit for Palladium Games, selling very well until the release of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television series and the first film, when the toning down of the edginess and darkness of the original material meant that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was no longer cool.

Nevertheless, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was cool in 1985. At just one-hundred-and-twelve pages, it does not have a lot of space to waste. It starts by pointing out the animal characters are common to comics, if not roleplaying games, so the roleplaying game is giving players that option. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is designed as a supplement to Heroes Unlimited, the superhero roleplaying game published by Palladium Games, but can be played as a standalone game as it is complete. It also rationalises why it uses a random character generation system rather than a point buy system, which was then becoming popular, such as with Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes Roleplaying Game, Victory Games’ James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Steve Jackson’s Man to Man: Fantasy Combat from GURPS, the precursor to the full release of the system the next year. What this boils down to is that “Excellent players can role-play ANYTHING…”, the Game Master can create interesting villains as much the players interesting characters, and randomness reflects real life. This is followed by quite description of what a roleplaying game is before leaping straight into character creation.

A character in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is defined by eight attributes—Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.), Mental Affinity (M.A.), Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.), Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.), and Speed (Spd.). The base attributes range from three to eighteen, with results of sixteen or more granting bonuses, though low rolls do not impose any penalties. A character will also have Hit Points and Structural Damage Capacity or S.D.C., essentially stun points. He has an Animal Type, which be anything, including dog, cat, mouse, frog, monkey, cow, pig, chicken, goat, sheep, turkey, wolf, coyote, fox to elk, moose, boar, sparrow, robin, blue jay, eagle, owl, escaped pet bird, lion, tiger, leopard, baboo, camel, and buffalo. All animals found in North America, including those in zoos and safari parks. The list, of course, includes the turtle. He will have a Cause of Mutation, the reason why he is anthropomorphic and intelligent. This can be due to a random mutation or an accident, but will primarily because he was a research project of some kind, either growing up in a researcher’s home or even being deliberately trained as an assassin! This background will determine how many skills he will have and often, how good a combatant he is, and his basic attitude towards humans, the default attitude being one of distrust.

Creating a Player Character in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness involves fives steps. These are rolling for attributes, animal type, and cause of mutation (this will also determine the organisation that will have created the mutated animal and his degree of education), and then spending ‘Bio-E’ or ‘Biological Energy Points’ to mutate the animal. Each animal type has a pool of ‘Bio-E’ points that a player can spend to make it more anthropomorphic and give it hands that grip like a human, speech like a human, and stance like a human, as well as its own intrinsic animal abilities. For example, the aardvark has tunnelling and digging, and the elephant has a prehensile trunk, advanced hearing, and thick skin. ‘Bio-E’ points also account for size. So, if an animal is small, the player has to spend ‘Bio-E’ points to make it bigger, but is given ‘Bio-E’ points to spend if a bigger animal needs to be smaller. The aim here is to make the Player Characters roughly about the same size and of roughly the same capability. It was a way of balancing wildly different character types, but still left something to be desired. In addition, ‘Bio-E’ points can be spent on psionic powers.

After this the player chooses his character’s skills. These will include a variety of skill programmes, scholastic and physical skills, and secondary skills. From amongst these, a Player Character should definitely select a martial arts package, whether that is Hand-to-Hand Basic, Hand-to-Hand Expert, Hand-to-Hand Expert, Hand-to-Hand Assassin, Hand-to-Hand Martial Arts, or Hand-to-Hand Ninjitsu, since part of the roleplaying game’s title includes the word ‘Ninja’ and it does have an emphasis upon combat. Plus, there is a variety of Weapon Proficiencies for various weapons, many of the melee weapons drawn from Japanese culture and history. There are Modern Weapon Proficiencies too, but these tend to be the province of NPCs rather than Player Characters, in keeping with the source material, though there is nothing to stop a Player Character learning one. Lastly, the player selects an Alignment and purchases equipment. The process is not difficult, but slightly cumbersome. It does allow for players to create a group of similar characters a la the turtles of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Name: Aaron
Level: 1
Alignment: Principled (Good)
Animal Type: Aardvark
Mutation Cause: Rescued and adopted from a private company by a friendly researcher whilst it hunted him.
Human Features: Full Hands, Full Speech, Full Stance
Natural Weapons: Claws (1d6)
Animal Powers: Digging, Tunnelling
Psionic Powers: Sixth Sense

Intelligence Quotient 12 Mental Affinity 12 Physical Strength 19
Mental Endurance 12 Physical Prowess 16 Physical Endurance 18
Physical Beauty 07 Speed 29
Hit Points: 22
S.D.C.: 32

SCHOLASTIC SKILLS
Mathematics: Basic 82%, Read/Write English 60%, Speaks English 60%

MILITARY/ESPIONAGE SKILLS
Pick Locks 35%, Tracking 35%, Wilderness Survival 45%

PHYSICAL SKILLS
Acrobatics (Sense of Balance 65%, Walk Tightrope 65%, Climb Rope 82%, Climbing 44%, Back Flip 65%), Athletics, Boxing, Prowling 64%, Running

SECONDARY SKILLS
Automotive Mechanics 53%, Cook 65%, Computer Operation 65%, Dance 45%, First Aid 55%, Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts, Land Navigation 44%, Pilot: Basic – Automobile 80%

COMBAT BONUSES
Two attacks/round, +4 Damage, +1 to Strike, +5 Roll with Punch/Fall, +7 Parry, +11 Dodge, +2 Strike with Body Block/Tackle (1d4), +2 to Save versus Coma, Death, and Toxins

NOTES
Fearless of Heights

Mechanically, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness uses Palladium Games’ Megaversal system and is in general, quite straightforward. Skills are percentiles and cannot rise above 98%, with bonuses gained from high attributes, training in physical skills, and gaining Levels. Otherwise, the emphasis in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is on combat. Once initiative is determined, usually by a roll of a twenty-sided die, combatants roll to attack and defendants roll parry, dodge, or entangle, and so on. A roll of five or more on a twenty-sided die always hits. If the attack roll is less then defendant’s Armour Rating (either natural body or worn armour), damage is deducted from his S.D.C. only. If the roll is over the defendant’s Armour Rating, damage is deducted from his S.D.C. first and then actual Hit Points. A roll of natural twenty is a critical hit and inflicts double damage. If a defendant is hit, his player or the Game Master if an NPC, can choose to parry, dodge, or entangle the attack. This requires a roll greater than the attack roll. This can be done automatically if parrying, but dodging uses up one of a combatant’s attacks. Bullets and energy blasts can be dodged, but not parried. If the attack is with a blunt weapon or with fists, the player or Game Master can for roll for character or NPC to roll with the punch and if successful half the damage. Hand-to-hand combat allows for a variety of different attacks, including punches, kicks, jump kicks, leaps, throws, and so on, as well as the use of various martial arts weapons. The rules for firearms allow for multiple shots per round, since a round actually lasts fifteen seconds, and also automatic fire. They add some complexity to combat and are likely to slow things down whilst melee and hand-to-hand combat is going to flow back and forth a lot more easily.

For example, Aaron the Aardvark is out on patrol one night when he spots Bill the Burglar attempting to break into a house. Aaron’s player states that the Aardvark is going to sneak up on Bill the Burglar and attempt to knock him out. The Game Master calls for Prowling roll first, but Aaron’s player fails this by rolling 83% rather the 64% needed. Since Aaron has failed, the Game Master rules that since Bill the Burglar was being quiet too, he heard the sound of Araon’s claws clicking on the slabs of path. She calls for an initiative roll. The Game Master rolls 17, but Aaron’s player rolls only a 12. With the initiative, the suddenly shocked and frightened at the sight of a five foot tall aardvark Bill the Burglar reaches into his jacket and pulls out a 9 mm Smith & Wesson Model 59 and opens fire! Bill the Burglar has done time at the range and has the Weapon Proficiency: Handgun, but in his state, he opts to blast Aaron with a burst of shots. This gives him a +1 bonus instead of the +3 for an aimed short. Aaron is wearing a vest which gives him an Armour Rating of 10 and 50 S.D.C. The Game Master rolls 16 and one of the shots from the burst hits Aaron, meaning that the damage will be deducted directly from his own S.D.C. rather than the vest’s. Instead of taking the damage, Aaron’s player opts for him to Dodge the attack. Aaron’s player rolls the die and adds his Dodge bonus of +11. He rolls 16 to get a result of 27, meaning he leaps out of the way. This uses up one of Aaron’s actions. Realising that whatever this creature is that is in front of him, Bill the Burglar realises that just blasting away at it, is not going to work. This time, he takes an aimed shot, which gives him a +3 bonus to hit. This time he rolls a 3 for a total of six, which means that Aaron’s vest has stopped the round. Aaron’s player chooses not to Dodge, but instead pounces on Bill the Burglar with a body tackle. Aaron’s player rolls 19, adds +2 to get a result of 21, which definitely means he hits. Aaron’s player rolls for damage, a four-sided dice, +4 for his damage bonus, and inflicts eight points damage to Bill the Burglar’s S.D.C. that he is not fast enough to avoid. There is an oof from Bill the Burglar as Aaron slams into him!

One aspect of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness that is decently handled is Experience Points. Player Characters do improve going up Levels, and so increasing their Hit Points, Skills, hand-to-hand combat skills, and Weapon Proficiencies. Experience Points are awarded not just for killing or subduing menaces, but also ideas clever and useful, performing skills, endangering your life to save others, avoiding violence, and good roleplaying. There is a lot in the list that encourages good gaming.

There is a decent equipment list drawn from other modern-set roleplaying games from Palladium Games as well as an extensive list of Japanese and Ninjitsu weapons, plus equipment for the latter. The Game Master or player wanting more is recommended to check out Heroes Unlimited or The Palladium Book of Contemporary Weapons. The list does include energy weapons since they appear in the comics. A lot of the equipment is intended for use by the police or in espionage.

In keeping with the relative shortness of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, the section for the Game Master is also short. It is supported by helpful examples of combat and character creation, and there are some notes on matching the scenario to the capabilities of the Player Characters, creating villains and villainous organisations, and how to use Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness with Heroes Unlimited. The bulk of the Game Master dedicated to five scenarios. They include ‘Caesar’s Weasels’, in which the Player Characters track down a gang that has been looting meat packing plants; ‘The Terror Bears’ in which a gang of mutated bears have using their psionic powers to terrorise and then hide in a neighbourhood; ‘Doctor Feral: The Genius of Bio-Spawn’, which details a highly respected scientist who kidnaps mutant animals to vivisect them; ‘Terror on Rural Route 5’, in which mutant animals have taken a school hostage; and ‘The Leg of the Ninja’ which details a Ninja organisation that could grow into a major threat for the Player Characters. ‘Terror on Rural Route 5’ is intended as an introductory scenario, but to be honest, none of the five are actually full scenarios, but rather, set-ups. None of them are bad per se, but rather that the Game Master will need to develop each of them further. Of the five, ‘The Terror Bears’ is the most memorable, since it introduced the four anti-Care Bears—Pain Bear, Fear Bear, Doom Bear, and Nightmare Bear—that parodied a popular animated series of the day. One thing that all five scenario seeds did was provide the Game Master with good range of sample threats.

Rounding out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness are the stats and write-ups for characters from the comic. This includes the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, their friend April O’Neil and others, Shredder, the leader of the Foot ninja clan, and the T.C.R.I. (or ‘Techno-Cosmic Research Institute’) aliens, as well as the Sparrow-Eagles, the sample team characters outlined earlier in the book.

Physically, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness feels a little scruffy around the edges, and not quite up to Palladium Games’ usual neat and tidy standards. That may be due to it being rushed or the artwork that sometimes intrudes into the page. It is engagingly written and what really stands out is the artwork. This is either taken from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic or drawn for the roleplaying game and it really is good, including as it does a couple of short strips, one of which depicts the origins of the turtles. The artwork also gives the book a sense of energy and excitement like you really want to take up your katana and battle ninja in the sewers or aliens on the rooftops of New York. Lastly, it is short—at barely more than one hundred pages—and if not quite as well organised as it could be, its short length makes everything easy to find. It also suffers from none of the bloat or utter lack of organisation that have plagued books from the publisher since, most obviously, Rifts.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is not perfect. One problem is character generation, which though fun is very far from balanced because it is entirely random. Only very high attributes provide bonuses of any kind, and whilst taking some physical skills will improve them, any Player Character with attributes high enough to provide bonuses is at an advantage. The end results can also vary, so that one character might be a relatively mild manner creature with a college level education or a wild creature with barely any, whilst another is a super-soldier assassin killing machine trained by the military. This in addition to some Player Characters who might look humanoid, others not, and maybe not even able to talk, and given a roleplaying game as heavily focused on combat as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, the super-soldier assassin killing machine trained by the military is what everyone wanted to play. Another problem is that focus on combat, means that other aspects of the game may suffer such as roleplaying. The advice for creating NPCs is underwritten and the Game Master wanting to create ordinary humans will need to work out how to do that. It is not difficult, but advice would have been useful.

Unfortunately, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was not free of controversy. In the first printing of the roleplaying game, it included the option for a Player Character to start play with a form of insanity or gain a random later in play as the result of trauma, for example, demonic possession, near-death experience, or torture. Under the list of insanities, it included a list of sexual deviations, which notably featured paedophilia and homosexuality. The idea here was that one of the effects of the trauma was to compel a Player Character to change his sexual orientation. Another bizarrely, was that the Player Character would want to retrain as a psychiatrist! Even so, at the time, this was a tasteless, even offensive, treatment of sexual orientation, especially as homosexuality had been officially declassified as a mental illness for over a decade in 1975. At first, the offending section was covered up by Palladium Books, but then excised from later printings.

Alignment in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is also a potential problem. An Alignment represents a Player Character or NPC’s attitudes and moral principles and can be one of seven options divided into three categories. ‘Principled’ and ‘Scrupulous’ are both ‘Good’; ‘Unprincipled’ and ‘Anarchist’ are ‘Selfish’; and ‘Miscreant’, ‘Aberrant’, and ‘Diabolic’ are ‘Evil’. The problem, specifically, is that of torture. Only the ‘Principled’ character or NPC will never resort to torture, whereas even the ‘Scrupulous’ will, but “Never torture for pleasure, but may use muscle to extract information from criminals or evil characters.”; the ‘Unprincipled’ will “Not use torture unless absolutely necessary.”; and ‘Anarchist’ “Will use torture to extract information. But not likely to do so for pleasure.” The ‘Evil’ Alignments are worse, and this treatment of Alignment was common to all roleplaying games from Palladium Games, but that does not excuse in any way the suggestion that a Player Character should or can use torture.

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Marcus L. Rowland reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 78 (July 1986). He did not come to any clear conclusion, but said, “Fans of the comic will already know what to expect, other readers will need enlightenment. The heroes are exactly what the title implies: large intelligent turtles, trained in Oriental martial arts, and equipped with a variety of Ninja weaponry. Apart from this central joke, the comics pretend to take themselves very seriously. To reflect this, the style of play is completely deadpan, setting intelligent and deadly animals against a background of urban terrorism, gang warfare, juvenile delinquency and random violence.” A more positive comment was made by Robert Neville in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 83 (November 1986) when he reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures!. He opened the review by saying, “TMNT has been one of the surprise hits of the last year, with multitudes of gamers snapping up copies of the rulebook as fast as importers can freight them over to the UK.”

Scott Dollinger reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 44 (November/December 1986). He awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of five, said, “What is unusual is that Eastman and Laird have not taken the easy route to fast money and licensed the characters to a combat [sic] that would produce a hastily-made product to cash in on the current popularity of the characters. Instead they have maintained the high quality of the comic by licensing the characters to a smaller but well respected gaming company that takes their time and produces an excellent product. In this case the game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was created by Palladium Books and the results are fantastic.” He also added that, “…[T]he $9.95 price tag makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness one of the best buys on the market.”

Arcane magazine and editor Paul Pettengale had reason to examine Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness not once, but twice. First in Arcane Issue Twelve (November 1996) in which he made it the subject of the magazine’s regular ‘Retro’ department. He said, “Of the random character generation system and its consequently random results he said, “You can imagine how much potential this had for farcical situations.” whilst of the layout, which he said were badly organised, he added that, “The layout of the rulebook could have been clearer (the martial arts section was together with the skills rather than the combat).” Yet despite this, his conclusion was positive: “…[I]t was a quick and easy game to learn, and the rules for character generation are good ... together with Paranoia, TMNT&OS was one of the most fun, and funny games I have played.”

This was followed in Arcane Issue Fourteen (December 1996) by its inclusion in ‘The 50 favourite RPGs of all time’ based on a reader’s poll at position #36. Arcane’s editor Paul Pettengale commented that, “The rules are badly laid out, but the principles are easy to learn and combat is fluid. So, fine on that score. It’s a superbly fun game to play because of its quirkiness, and the fact that the post-apocalyptic setting has most of California under the ocean. Fantastic fun.”

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was a big hit upon release. It was the roleplaying game that everyone wanted and just like the comics it was based on, it was cool and it was fun. Tonally though, there are elements of the roleplaying game that are at odds with the comic, even though that comic is grim and gritty and full of cartoon violence. But remove them—and at least Palladium Games removed some of them—and there is still potential for a lot of fun in its pages. If you can get them roughly balanced, then the range of character options based on the eighty animals it includes is huge and the rules are straightforward, if only a little rough. Which to be fair, is an amazing achievement for a roleplaying game designed in five weeks! It is not the greatest roleplaying game or even the best roleplaying game of 1985, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness opened up the world of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to roleplaying and let you roleplay strange mutant animals sneaking around in the shadows, fighting crime, stopping alien invasions from other dimensions, and facing off against ninja. Which was very definitely cool in the eighties, and if you want to whisper it to yourself now, it still is forty years later.

1983: The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure set in Ancient Egypt has the distinction of being the first roleplaying game to explore the idea of roleplaying in Ancient Egypt, the first historical roleplaying game published by Palladium Games, the only boxed roleplaying game from Palladium Games, and the only roleplaying game from Palladium Games to not use its Megaverse rules. Published in 1983, the result is a game with a surprisingly simple and straightforward rules system, plenty of solidly researched background and historical material, and some superb illustrations and maps. However, even by the standards of the day, it suffers from cheap production values and a lack of development. Unlike other titles from Palladium Games, such as the Mechanoid Invasion Trilogy, it has not been reprinted. Consequently, The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt has remained a historical curio, little remembered by anyone.

The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt is a boxed set. Inside is a fifty-page, black and white rulebook, a full colour map of Ancient Egypt, and several sheets which depict the Nile Valley, routes across the deserts and ‘Nomes’ (a regional division of the country), city fortifications, house floorplans, the True Pyramid, the Step Pyramid, the Temple of Hatshepsut, and more. In the roleplaying game, players take on the roles of members of Egyptian society who go and well, not adventure exactly. Society in the setting is described as stable and as is made clear in the ‘G.M. Notes’, “…[T]he government will not allow a band of marauders to plunder the countryside (at least not within Egypt proper).” Instead, it is suggested that the adventurers undertake business trips or pilgrimages, perhaps be representatives of noble or merchant patrons. Alternatively, there are ruins to explore or military ventures to engage in beyond the borders of the country, even though none of Egypt’s enemies are detailed, but suggestions as to what the Player Characters might do in a scenario or campaign are really only covered in the barest of details. In some ways this parallels the feel of an earlier roleplaying game, Empire of the Petal Throne, which has always had the repetition of being dense and impenetrable and not easy to run from the material contained in the rules. That said, an experienced Game Master will be able to develop an adventure from the material in the book.

A Player Character in is, of course, Human and Egyptian. He is defined by his Caste, Attributes, Hit Points, Occupation, and Skills. There are four Castes—Nobility, Clergy, Bureaucracy, and Commons—and each Caste suggests possible Occupations and gives an Attribute bonus. For example, the Occupations for the Clergy Caste are Priest and Scholar and its grants a bonus to the Power Attribute. The five attributes are Strength, Speed, Intellect, Power, and Persona, and these range between three and eighteen. Hit Points are equal to double the Player Character’s Strength. There are five Occupations—Soldier, Priest, Scholar, Merchant, and Thief. Skills are given as percentile values, and come from a Player Character’s Caste and Occupation. To create a Player Character, a player rolls for his Caste, Attributes, selects an occupation, rolls for the number of Caste skills and selects them, and then picks four skills from those available from the Occupation. Oddly, the rulebook does not include a list of names. The process is quick, but not necessarily clearly explained. For example, Priests and Scholars can learn spells, but it is not how many they know at game’s start.

Akhethetep

Caste: Bureaucracy

Occupation: Scholar

Strength 06 Speed 09 Intellect 18 Power 16 Persona 14

Hit Points: 12

SKILLS

Agriculture 20%, Gaming 26%, Law 18%, Magick 32%, Philosophy 18%, Reading 18%, Swimming 09%, Writing 18%

SPELLS

Clairvoyance, Detect Truth, Illumination

Mechanically, The Valley Of The Pharaohs employs the percentile system. A player rolls under percentile dice against a particular skill to succeed. Beginning Player Characters are thus far from being very skilled and one of the stated aims of play, at least mechanically, is to improve skills. Skill improvement is done at the end of each session and is done with a roll over the skill as in other percentile systems. A Player Character can also gain training in a skill. Combat is different and uses a twenty-sided die. To attack an opponent, a player rolls the die and adds bonuses based on the character’s Speed Attribute and Combat Skill. The Valley Of The Pharaohs differentiates between the Combat, Military Combat, Shield, Archery, and Throw Skills, and the higher the skill, the more bonuses provided. If the player rolls higher than the Resistance Factor of the target’s armour, which can range from six for simple clothing and eight for padded to eleven for leather and fourteen for scale, then the character is successful in penetrating the armour. Damage is then rolled for and applied directly to the target’s Hit Points. However, if the roll is equal to the Resistance Factor and up to five less than the Resistance Factor of the armour, the attack hits and damage is applied to the armour’s damage capacity before the target. A defending character, though, does have the option of parrying or dodging, which requires a player to roll higher than the attack roll. Either way, a roll of a natural twenty is a critical hit and inflicts double damage.

In comparison to the combat rules, the base mechanic and the rulebook’s explanation of it are woefully underwritten. The combat rules are given much more detail and have a bit of cut and thrust to them with combatants able to parry and dodge as well as attack. Soldiers do feel more skilled though, because there is direct correlation between a Warrior’s skill and what he can do in mechanical terms. As he gains in skill, he has more attacks, bonuses to attack and parry, and more. So even the average warrior is going to have two attacks per round and a bonus to parry if he has the Military Combat skill, although it is not clear what the difference between the Combat and Miliary Combat skills are. 

Magic uses the Magick skill to determine both how well a Player Character casts spells and what spells he might possibly know. His Magick skill is rolled against whenever he wants to cast a spell as per the roleplaying game’s skill mechanic. Its value is also used as the level of a Player Character’s magical knowledge in that a Player Character might know or be able to learn and cast all of the spells of a level under the value of his Magick. Thus, a Priest or Scholar with a Magick skill of 25 might only know the Illumination, Detect Truth, Clairvoyance, and Move Water spells, which are levels ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five, respectively. Spells have a Magic Point cost to cast, a duration, and a casting time, ranging from two to twelve combat rounds, such as with the spells Portal and Speak with Gods, depending on spell level. A caster can also extend a spell and attempt to ward or counter a spell if he knows the spell being cast at him. Characters of all types have access to passive magick through amulets, wax figures, Ushabti, magic pictures, and more. Amulets provide minor bonuses, such as the Serpent’s Head, a red stone amulet that protects the wearer from snakes and to a certain extent from magical snakes, whilst Ushabti resemble objects in the real world which come to life and magically perform tasks that their real-world equivalents would. For example, a bull Ushabti could come to life and plough a field or a soldier Ushabti protect its owner. In the case of amulets, the more someone wears, the less effective they are. Of the two, the passive magic of the amulets and similar objects is much more interesting and much more immersive than that of the active magic. This is not to say that active magic is not powerful, but it is not as flashy as in other fantasy roleplaying games, there are a limited number of spells, and there are few if direct combat spells. Another issue is that the spells feel generic, rather than being specifically tied to the setting of Ancient Egypt, its priesthoods, and its gods, and that is not the case with the passive magic. 

In terms of setting, The Valley Of The Pharaohs provides information on the history of Ancient Egypt, its society, government, law, slavery, army, and more. It pays particular attention to the clergy, which includes temples, medicine, beliefs, and of course, burial customs, plus the gods themselves. A bestiary gives stats for ordinary creatures such as crocodiles and baboons, and for monsters like great serpents and several unnamed man-eating beasts believed to inhabit the deserts. The range of monsters feels threadbare.

Rounding out The Valley Of The Pharaohs is a set of tables for random encounters and treasures, the latter slightly at odds with non-marauding style of play the author informs the Game Master is ill-suited to the setting. Even the limited number of spells with their even more limited number of direct combat spells enforce this style of play. Yet the advice for the Game Master is limited in terms of explaining what sort of games and campaigns can be run using The Valley Of The Pharaohs. In particular, military campaigns are severely curtailed because although the roleplaying game is set at a time when Egypt is conducting military campaigns beyond its borders, only neighbouring Nubia is mentioned, and then only in passing. So, no idea is given of who these possible rivals are and what their armies look like. Similarly, whilst priests are discussed in general, the only difference between them is that they worship different gods. So, it is not easy to develop scenarios involving inter-temple rivalries and factionalism because there is not enough information here. This is not to dismiss the amount of information in what is a forty-year-old roleplaying game just fifty pages in length, but rather it can at best be described as a decent introduction to the period—at least for 1983. An experienced Game Master would be able to overcome these issues with research, and there is a bibliography included in the back of the rulebook. Of course, there have been developments in Egyptology since, so even what is here may have become outdated by contemporary standards. Plus, research today is going to be much easier to conduct than it was in 1983. Ultimately in terms of a setting, The Valley Of The Pharaohs is almost too settled and too stable, so that there are no real tensions or rivalries or differences which might drive adventure, conflict, or obvious story.

Physically, The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt manages to both please and disappoint at the same time. The production values are disappointingly poor, the quality of the paper a significant factor in that—especially for the various separate maps and illustrations, which consequently feel flimsy. The rulebook’s text is also small and cramped and not easy to read. Yet the artwork, the maps, and so on are really particularly good, strong, bold, and really capture the feel of the setting.

—oOo—

The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt appears to have been reviewed just the once. This was by designer Jonathan Tweet, in the ‘Game Reviews’ department of Different Worlds Issue 45 (March/April 1987). He wrote, “The biggest obstacle to running a Valley of the Pharaohs campaign is the lack of motives for adventuring. The rules sanely remind gamemasters that armed adventurers freelancing as monster exterminators do not belong in 'the civilized, orderly land of Egypt but do not offer alternatives to the kinds of adventures players usually enjoy. If the game was designed so that the scholar, merchant, and soldier characters could have exciting adventures in civilized country like Egypt using all the noncombat skills described, Valley of the Pharaohs would have been given a better rating, but the game left me with no excitement as to the possibilities for scenarios.” before concluding that, “The Valley of the Pharaohs, then, would be a worthwhile game for those with deep interest in ancient Egypt and for those gamemasters with enough energy and imagination to synthesize historical background and basic game mechanics into an original and exciting campaign. Good luck to those of you who try.” He awarded The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt just one-and-a-half stars.

—oOo—

The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt has all of the right substance—solid, if basic rules, a decent amount of background and history, and plenty of excellent illustrations and maps, but where it comes up short is application. What exactly do you do with it and what sort of scenarios and campaigns do you play? The basic advice that The Valley Of The Pharaohs is a stable and settled society does not leave the Game Master with a great deal to work with in terms of setting up a campaign or even a scenario. There is no denying that there is the basics of a solid enough roleplaying game in The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt, but in terms what adventures can be run, it is underdeveloped and leaves a lot of work for the Game Master to do. One might say that it is all ‘Valley of the Pharaohs’ and not enough ‘adventure’.

[Fanzine Focus XXX] All That Glitters Is Palladium

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. And then there is All That Glitters Is Palladium.

All That Glitters Is Palladium: A Short History of Palladium is different. Published by Yaruki Zero Games, All That Glitters Is Palladium is a short history of the publisher best known for the roleplaying game, Rifts, or rather, “[A] short, tongue-in-cheek overview of one of the weirdest tabletop RPG publishers.” Within a handful of pages, it looks at the fifteen or so roleplaying games published by Palladium Books since its founding in 1981, as well as the entire Palladium Books Megaverse, explains the Megaversal RPG system which underpins the majority of the publisher’s titles and its general strangeness, discusses the publisher’s presentation style and values, and provides a detailed examination of Rifts, before coming up to date—at least in 2019—with the Robotech RPG Tactics Debacle. All with a dash of humour and a very knowing tone from someone who has played a lot of Rifts.

All That Glitters Is Palladium opens with an introduction that makes clear that the company is very much Kevin Siembieda’s and that he brings a “[G]onzo kitchen sink sensibility and boundless enthusiasm” to his books and also himself, often rewriting books when authors have already followed their brief. This is followed by detailed examination of the Megaversal RPG system, highlighting how the stats only really matter if they are very high, the inclusion of skills—often with surprisingly low chances, how the differences between Mega Damage Capacity and Structural Capacity, how even in the twenty-first century, a Science fiction/Science Fantasy roleplaying game like Rifts is using an Alignment system. In terms of production values it points to the publisher’s unwillingness to adapt to prevailing technology—the use of desktop publishing and the publication of PDFs in particular; the peculiar writing style with its use of underling, exclamation points, and ALL CAPS.

Although is best known for Rifts, Palladium found its fortune with two licences—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and Robotech. Consequently, All That Glitters Is Palladium begins its overview of the publisher’s major roleplaying releases with those titles and they receive more coverage than other modern titles like Ninjas & Superspies or Beyond the Supernatural. They receive more coverage of Palladium’s other games—The Mechanoid Invasion, Recon, Palladium Fantasy, Systems Failure, and others. These latter titles barely receive a paragraph each, which is something of shame because some of these are still interesting, if only from a historical point of view. It is Rifts though, which receives the most coverage, four pages in all. The author describes it as an “[O]verwhelming stew of kitchen sink post-apocalyptic science-fantasy horror” and charts its development from the core through some thirty-six World Books, eighteen sourcebooks, fifteen Dimension Books, three Conversion books, and more. It is noted here that a lot of the written content is artwork driven, that is, written to provide stats and background based on a piece of artwork rather than the other way around as is usual in the industry. That said, the overview concentrates on the first two or three books beyond the core rules, and consequently, the overview is fairly broad at this point. The section on Rifts closes with a section on Savage Rifts, of which the author is particularly positive in terms of the writing and the layout, labelling them both as competent.

All That Glitters Is Palladium comes to a close with the author delving into the ‘Robotech RPG Tactics Debacle’ and despite raising over a million dollars failing to deliver quite what was promised. The piece is again brief and provides the lightest of overviews. The author speculates that the licence will not get renewed when it runs out, and leaves Palladium awaiting lawsuits, its future uncertain… In between all of this, All That Glitters Is Palladium pokes fun at its subject with the humorous list or five. For example, ‘Odd Palladium Skills’ like ‘Lore: Cattle & Animals’ and ‘Microfilm/Microfiche/Microdot Technology’; ‘Questionable Magic Spells’ such as ‘Magic Pigeon’ and ‘Curdle Milk’; and ‘Dumb Superpowers’ from Heroes Unlimited, including ‘Alter Physical Structure: Rag Doll’ and ‘Clock Manipulation’.

Physically, All That Glitters Is Palladium is simply laid out and lightly illustrated. It is written in a very light and personal style. And that really sums All That Glitters Is Palladium up. This is all one person’s opinion upon Palladium Books, its history, its failings, and its idiosyncrasies. Consequently, it is not really a good history of the company and its books. Much of what it covers is already known and the author does not add that much more. It is clear that he knows the Megaversal RPG system and Rifts, but the joy he got from playing them in his games never really comes through. Nor it is a real history. Despite the author giving it both criticism and praise, there is no balance here because there is no voice from Palladium Books. So ultimately, whilst All That Glitters Is Palladium: A Short History of Palladium is far from uninteresting, the definitive history and assessment of Palladium Books is yet to be written.

1990: Rifts

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

It is all but impossible to start a review of Rifts and not acknowledge the problems it suffers from being published by Palladium Books. In terms of physical design, Rifts is a terrible roleplaying game, first because it is organised in such a fashion as to make it difficult to play and second, because it has no index. Now these are standard features of any book from Palladium Books, but in a roleplaying game which is as badly organised as Rifts and therefore needs an index to make it easier to use, the designer’s stupidly stubborn refusal to include one is nonsensical. Similarly, there is no character sheet, but to be fair, no character sheet could encapsulate just how much information a player has to note down when creating and playing a character in Rifts. This is of course, a given with all Palladium Books, but in a roleplaying game with as many separate elements as Rifts, it is an extraordinarily big given. That given aside, Rifts remains physically imposing, a slab of a softback book, neatly, cleanly, and tidily presented throughout, with uniformly, if cartoonishly good black and white artwork and excellent fully painted inserts. The standard of presentation—if not the organisation—was very good for 1990.

So what is Rifts? It is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set hundreds of years into the future which combines big robots, magic, psionics, and bruising combat on an incredible scale. It is a roleplaying game in which Glitter Boys piloting big mecha suits, chemically enhanced Juicers, psionic Cyber-Knights, ley-commanding Ley Walkers, Techno-Wizards, Dragons, psionic Mind Melters, and more combat the ‘Dead Boy’ soldiers in their deaths head armour, Spider-Skull Walkers, and Sky Cycles of the evil Coalition States as well as supernatural monsters, D-Bees (Dimensional beings), and the instectoid Xiticix from other dimensions. It is a future in which a golden age was destroyed by nuclear conflagration as billions died, their Potential Psychic Energy—or P.P.E.—was unleashed as surges into the Earth’s many, long forgotten ley lines, coming together at nexus points and causing rifts in time and space to be ripped open. As the planet buckled under the psychic onslaught, millions more died and fed more energy into the now pulsing ley lines, causing a feedback loop which would grow and grow. The oceans were driven from their beds to wash over the lands, Atlantis rose again after millennia, alien beings flooded through the rifts, and magic returned to the planet. 

In North America—the primary setting for Rifts—the land consists of feudal states, though the Coalition States, a hundred-year-old, mutant-hating, magic hating, psionic-hating totalitarian empire is spreading its influence out of Chi-Town near the old ruins of Chicago. Its current target is the city of Tolkeen which stands astride a ley line nexus on the bones of the pre-rifts city, Minneapolis, and is home to many wizards; the Coalition States operates the Lone Star City, a huge pre-rifts military complex with the most advanced manufacturing, animal genetics, cybernetics, bionics, and robot facilities on the planet, whilst the rest of the former state is new frontier across which high-tech desperados range; the remains of Georgia and Florida are marshlands populated by dinosaurs; and the former St. Louis is a demon infested no-go zone dominated by two hundred ley lines and thirteen nexus points. Elsewhere, Mexico is aid to the home to Vampire Kingdoms; England, Scotland, Wales have become a Realm of Magic; and the Germany of the ‘New Republic’ is as advanced as Chi-Town.

So what can you play in Rifts? Here a player is faced by a deluge of choice. Rifts is a Class and Level roleplaying game, and the Classes are either Occupational Character Classes or Racial Character Classes. Occupational Character Classes are further categorised into Men of Arms, Scholars and Adventurers, and Practitioners of Magic, whilst Racial Character Classes are natural psionics—although many characters other than Racial Character Classes can be psionic—and actual separate species like Dragons. The Men of Arms Occupational Character Classes consist of Borgs—bionic superhumans or cyborgs; the Coalition Grunt is the Coalition States’ infantryman, Coalition RPA Elite or ‘Sam’ Coalition its pilots of robots and vehicles, the Coalition Military Specialist its espionage and reconnaissance specialists, and the Coalition Technical Officer its military technicians; Crazies are neurologically enhanced through nano-technology, a process which physically enhances them, but sends them literally crazy; the Cyber-Knight is a psionic paladin, complete with psi-sword and a chivalric code; the Glitter Boy pilots the famous Glitter Boy power armour complete with its ‘boom’ gun; the Headhunter is a bounty hunter and warrior for hire; and the Juicer is super-chemically enhanced at the cost of a much shortened lifespan. The Scholars and Adventurers Occupational Character Classes consist of the Body Fixer—a medical doctor, the City Rat—dwellers of a city’s lower levels and sewers, the Cyber-Doc—a cybernetics specialist, the Operator—freelance engineer or technician, the Rogue Scientist—scientific explorer and researcher, the Rogue Scholar—seekers and teachers of knowledge, the Wilderness Scout—hunter and guide; and the Vagabond Non-Skilled—the equivalent to the ordinary person in Rifts.

The Practitioners of Magic consist of the Line Walker who draws energy from and can ride ley lines, the Mystic—a sensitive and healer who combines magic and psionics, the Shifter who open up dimensional portals and summon creatures from the other side, and the Techno-Wizard who combines magic and technology to create and power wondrous devices. The Racial Character Classes start with the Dragon—the creatures of myth, but from an unknown dimension and merely weeks old at game start and is followed by the Psychic Character Classes. These consist of the Burster or pyrokinetic, the Psi-Stalker who hunts and feeds on other psionic-users, Dog Pack—genespliced canines used by the Coalition States to hunt wizards and psychics, and the Mind Melter—a superpowered psychic!

That is a total of twenty-seven characters Classes!

Every Class comes with its own abilities and skills, plus a choice of other occupational skills and secondary skills. Suggested equipment is given as well as starting funds and cybernetics—if any. Many also come with supplementary mechanics. So for example, the Crazy Occupational Character Class includes for how the Crazy’s madness expresses itself—covered in five pages compared to the two devoted to the actual Crazy Occupational Character Class, and six pages of Techno-Wizard gear in comparison to the two pages devoted to the Techno-Wizard Occupational Character Class.

A character in Rifts is defined by eight attributes—Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.), Mental Affinity (M.A.), Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.), Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.), and Speed (Spd.). The base attributes range from three to eighteen, with results of seventeen or more granting bonuses, though low rolls do not impose any penalties. A character will also have Hit Points and Structural Damage Capacity or S.D.C., essentially stun points. To create a character in Rifts, a player rolls three six-sided dice for his character’s attributes, rolls for his Hit Points and S.D.C., rolls to see if he has psionics, selects an Occupational Character Class or a Racial Character Class, chooses equipment and rolls for money, and lastly looks at rounding out the character. 

Cyber-Knight (Level 1)

Alignment: Scrupulous (Good)

I.Q. 13

M.E. 13

M.A. 08

P.S. 22

P.P. 18

P.E. 17

P.B. 11

Spd. 20

Hit Points: 12 S.D.C. 107

Save versus Coma/Death +5%

Save versus Poison & Magic +1 

Psi-sword Damage: 1d6 Mega-Damage (M.D.)

Automatic Kick Attack: 2d4

Body Block: 1d4 (Opponent must dodge or parry to avoid being knocked down; lose one melee attack if knocked down.)

Pin/incapacitate on a roll of 18, 19, or 20. 

Crush/Squeeze: 1d4

Attacks per Melee +4

+7 damage in hand-to-hand combat

Initiative +1, Parry +5, Dodge +5, Strike +2, +8 to roll with punch or fall

W.P. Blunt +1 Strike, +1 Parry

W.P. Knife +1 to throw

W.P. Sword +1 Strike, +1 Parry

Psionics

Base P.P.E. 23

Saving Throw versus psionic attack: 12 or higher.

I.S.P. 24

Psionic Powers: Object Read, Sense Evil, Sixth Sense

O.C.C. Skills

Anthropology 40%, Athletics (General), Automotive Mechanics 25%, Basic Electronics 35% Bodybuilding, Boxing, Climbing 67%, Cook 40%, Detect Ambush 40%, Gymnastics (Sense of Balance 60%, Work Parallel Bars & Rings 68%, Climb Rope 77%, Back Flip 80%, Prowl 40%), Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts, Horsemanship 59%, Intelligence 36%, Land Navigation 52%, Language (American) 96%, Language (Dragonese/Elf) 96%, %, Language (Euro) 75%, Language (Spanish) 75%, Literacy 55%, Lore: Demon 45%, Lore: Fairie 30%, Paramedic 55%, Pick Lock 35%, Pilot (Automobile) 54%, Pilot (Motorcycle) 64%, Sewing 45%, Streetwise 24%, Swimming 65%, Tracking 30%, Wilderness Survival 35%, , W.P. Automatic Pistol, W.P. Blunt, W.P. Knife, W.P. Energy Pistol, W.P. Energy Rifle, W.P. Sword, Wrestling, Writing 30%

Equipment

Suit of personalised, heavy, M.D.C body armour, suit of light M.D.C body armour (Crusader Full Fibre Environmental Body Armor, M.D.C. 55), set of dress clothing, set of black clothing. Gas mask and air filter, tinted goggles, hatchet for cutting wood, knife (or two), sword, modern handgun (NG-S7 Northern Gun Heavy-Duty Ion Blaster 2d4/3d6 M.D.) and rifle (L-20 Pulse Rifle 2d6 M.D. single shot/6d6 burst) and three extra ammo clips, first-aid kit with extra bandages and antiseptic, suture thread and painkiller, tent, knapsack, back pack, saddlebags, two canteens, emergency food rations (two week supply), Geiger counter, and some personal items.

Money: 300 credits, black market item worth 4000 credits

Cybernetics: Cyber-armour (A.R. 16, 50 M.D.C.).

This process is not an easy one, nor is it quick. Some of the shorter Occupational Character Classes and Racial Character Classes may take half an hour to create, others an hour or more, all depending upon the particular elements of the Class and what extra elements the player needs to choose. Further, a lot of cross referencing is required as both Class abilities, hand-to-hand combat styles, and skills can sometimes enhance a character’s attributes. Then there are options too, for example the finishing touches to creating a character is a player choosing his character’s Alignment. The tables for birth order, disposition, and more are all optional…

Mechanically, Rifts is quite simple. Combat is handled by rolls of a twenty-sided die, a player having to roll high to hit, usually four or more. Mechanically, Rifts is also quite complex. If a target is hit and does not avoid the attack, the player whose character is attacking rolls to beat the target’s Armour Rating. If he does, the target take damage, if not, the armour takes damage. However, not all armour has an Armour Rating. This is because where Rifts gets even more complex is because characters will find themselves fighting on two scales—Structural Damage Capacity and Mega Damage Capacity. Both measure the amount of damage that an object or a person can take. So for Structural Damage Capacity, this is the amount of damage that a car or a house or the character can take before being destroyed. Mega Damage Capacity—previously introduced in Palladium Books’ Robotech roleplaying game—represents high-tech armour like Glitter Suits and vehicles such as Coalition Spider-Skull Walkers and dinosaurs and supernatural creatures. Only weapons which do Mega-Damage can inflict damage on anything with a Mega Damage Capacity.

Roughly, one hundred points of Structural Damage Capacity is equal to one point of Mega Damage Capacity. So a single point of Mega-Damage actually inflicts the equivalent of one hundred points of Structural Damage. However, anything which possesses Mega Damage Capacity cannot be harmed by weapons or attacks which just do Structural Damage. Conversely, anything or anyone hit by a Mega-Damage attack which does not have Mega Damage Capacity is essentially obliterated. Fortunately, whether through weapons, beweaponed suits of armour, magic, or psionics, most characters have the capacity to inflict Mega-Damage. Yet this means that Rifts is really fought on two levels and unless everyone does have access to Mega-Damage attacks and Mega Damage Capacity armour, then they cannot really play at that level. This divide is really present between those Occupational Character Classes which have this feature, for example, between the Men of Arms and the Adventurers and Scholars. That said, it does lend itself to interesting situations where the player characters might have to solve a problem or engage in a fight where Mega-Damage attacks and Mega Damage Capacity armour is inappropriate and that is all they have…

Rifts is a game about augmentation as much as it is big stonking battles against robots and strange monsters, and what it offers in terms of augmentations is bionics and cybernetics, magic, and psionics. In terms of magic it provides some one-hundred-and-fifty spells across fifteen Levels and powered by a spellcaster’s Potential Psychic Energy—or P.P.E. Psionics only offers some sixty or so abilities, divided into the Healer, Physical, Sensitive, and Super Psionics categories, some of which are particular to certain Classes, but all are powered by a character’s Inner Strength Points—or I.S.P. In terms of bionics and cybernetics, Rifts lists some hundred or so implants, some available to purchase freely, some only available on the black market. Many of these upgrades and implants will be familiar from the Cyberpunk genre with the protection that various items provide capable of withstanding damage by Mega-Damage attacks and inflicting Mega-Damage. In the case of magic and psionics, many of the powers and spells can be powered up to provide from and inflict Mega-Damage.

In terms of background, Rifts actually includes quite a lot, some twenty pages providing a potted, sometimes detailed overview of the former states of the United States, Canada, and Mexico along with thumbnail descriptions of places around the world. It focuses mainly on Chi-Town and the Coalition States as the primary enemies in Rifts. This is accompanied by full colour maps of North and South America. In general, there is a lot of room for the Game Master add her own content, but there are some details which she will have go digging for because they are in other sections. In terms of advice for the Game Master, Rifts is sorely lacking, the half page of advice just telling Game Master and players alike not to be put off by the magnitude of the game. Now there is a set of tables for creating monsters quickly and stats for the Xiticix and various generic NPCs, but there is no advice on running a campaign, on what sort of games could be run, no campaign ideas, or anything else. For a roleplaying game with such big ideas and concepts, it is so frustrating not to have such small details. So for example, the Shifter Occupational Character Class is all about opening up portals and summoning things through them and doing to other dimensions, but there is not a single discussion of what these dimensions are like anywhere in the book. Essentially, a Class has been designed with a cool feature and then that feature has been ignored.

Of course, the lack of advice for the Game Master might have been less of a problem for anyone attempting to run Rifts for the first time, had the roleplaying game included a starting scenario. Which of course, it does not. So the Game Master is left wondering what to do with a disparate bunch of character types, working out why they are together, and then write a scenario which will satisfy one or more of them. However, the designer does acknowledge that, “This is not a beginner’s role-playing game, nor one conducive to hack and slash gaming. Like many of our games, Rifts is a thinking man’s game. Perhaps the hostile environment makes it all the more important that one uses his head.” The fact that Rifts is not a beginner’s is undeniable, but whether it is ‘a thinking man’s game’ is debatable, given the emphasis in the roleplaying game upon combat and the amount of playing called for by combat, with Player Characters having multiple attacks and options and very many different combat abilities.

The other reason why Rifts is not a beginner’s game is because of the way it is organised. So the rules for psionics follow the Psychic Racial Character Classes, but the rules for magic do not follow the Practitioners of Magic Occupational Character Classes, but some eighty pages later after the Psychic Racial Character Classes, the rules for psionics, and some background. Likewise, the rules for bionics and cybernetics are placed over a hundred pages after all of the Character Classes at the back of the book. Then the relatively few pages of background are squirrelled away in the middle of the book. It simply makes no sense. 

In terms of design, there is a certain identikit feel to Rifts in that so many of its elements are pulled from other Palladium Books roleplaying games. So the Mega Damage Capacity rules are from Robotech, the bionics and cybernetic rules from Ninjas and Superspies and Heroes Unlimited, the magic rules from Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game, and so on. Although that said, the magic rules have been tweaked up for Rifts. Notably, the stats for the various mundane weapons—melee weapons and guns (the latter all dating from pre-apocalypse of Rifts)—seem to have been reprinted from just about every Palladium Books roleplaying game and have an oddly seventies feel to them. Part of this is intentional, to make Rifts part of the whole Palladium Books family of roleplaying settings and genres, part of its Megaverse.

—oOo—

Rifts was reviewed in Challenge 48 (January/February 1991) by Eric W. Haddock who said, “A preponderance of organizational problems and simple editorial errors (like incomplete sentences and spelling) all detract from the overall quality of Rifts.”, followed by “Without a doubt, Rifts is one of the most abysmally organized books I’ve seen. It is extremely difficult to find rules within a section easily and quickly when one needs to. A GM should not expect to start running a game and assume that whatever rules he isn't clear on can be looked up during play. In the games I played and ran, it took more time to find a rule than it took to read it, despite the Quick Find Table.” Despite this, he ended on a positive note, “I highly recommend Riffs because of its setting and potential for great scenarios, which can have as much connection with other Palladium games as the GM wants. However, until the Rifts Conversion Book comes out, not everything in Palladium’s previous games can be put directly into a Rifts campaign. There is enough here, though, to keep any GM busy thinking up new scenarios and creating new archvillains for players for quite a while.”

Rifts was subject to a Feature Review by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook in White Wolf Magazine Issue 26 (April/May, 1991). He said that, “The only real problem with Rifts is that inexperienced game masters are left almost completely in the dark. Although the book is over two hundred-fifty pages long, the most the game master gets is a couple of creature charts and the setting. As it is so aptly stated, “...that initial set-up is likely to take a bit of effort...” In short, it is a lot of work to run the game. However, the atmosphere is so rich with ideas for adventure that intriguing plots and stories shouldn't be difficult to develop. In fact, some may discover that it is very worthwhile and rewarding to create a campaign working from such a blank slate.” He concluded by saying that, “Overall, Rifts is an incredible roleplaying experience, and its setting seems to be as original and fun to play as the recent multi-genre games, Shadowrun and Torg. Those who are into bleak worlds, hi-tech magic, twisted rituals, fascist empires, brutal weaponry, min-boggling power armor, and fantastic stories should really give it a try.”

Rifts would appear in the twenty-second slot of ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ in Arcane #14 (December, 1996). The article described it as “It’s the ultimate in old-style high-energy RPGs. It uses a class-and-level system, and its supplements are full of new character classes, as well as weapons, robots and power armour. Fantasy-style creatures are a bit less common, and tend to be rather conventional elves and orcs - although it’s perfectly possible to play a baby dragon. One of the key concepts is ‘mega-damage’, which is important when you're playing with giant robots and such. This is the game for people who want to have everything possible in their campaigns - and then to blow a lot of it up with cool super-weapons.”

—oOo—

Rifts is not a subtle game. It is a roleplaying game for those who want to play a game in which everything goes ffizzacckk!, bada-bada-bada-bada-bada, boom!, and really, really BOOM! It presents a fantastic array of character options which should make players champing at the bit to get their gaming—if not their roleplaying—teeth into. In terms of the rules, Rifts is workable, but there are a lot of numbers and stats to keep track of—by the players as well as the Game Master. The background works as a decent enough backdrop whilst still leaving room for the Game Master to add her own content. But then, Rifts does everything it can to undermine its potential. Not just with the illogical, nonsensical organisation and idiotic lack of an index, but with the lack of advice for the Game Master and the failure to explore or discuss what to do with everything it gives the Game Master and her players, to get them to work together. Plus there are elements of the setting left undeveloped which relate directly to the Occupational Character Classes, and so on. 

Rifts is essentially the kitchen sink of roleplaying games, but without any advice as to how to turn the taps, which of course, have been put on backwards. And of course, people have played and loved and bought the eighty odd books published for it. Just think how much better it would have been if…?

—oOo—

With thanks to Doctor Andrew Cowie and Matt Ryan for providing access to a copy of White Wolf Magazine Issue 26. 

Dead Dull Game. Dead Dull Publisher.

In some strange compulsion, every few years I buy myself an RPG published by Palladium Books. It is not even as if I really like the publisher’s titles anyway. Oh I do like some of its games – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and Systems Failure, the bug invasion millennium RPG for example, but several factors about each of Palladium Books’ other titles irritate me intensely.

The lack of an index is not only an irritant; it also shows that the publisher fundamentally does not know what a roleplaying game actually is. As an artefact itself, an RPG is two things – a work of fiction and a technical reference manual, so in an ideal world it needs to be easily and quickly referred to whilst at the game table. Which would then take something as easy as an index and some kind of logical layout. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world, because in nearly thirty years of publishing, Palladium Books has yet to release an RPG with either.

The very latest RPG from Palladium Books adheres to these, self imposed low standards. The layout might be clean and tidy, but the contents are organised according to some form of logic only understood at Palladium, because no other publisher employs it. The effect of which, when combined with the absence of an index renders the task of finding anything in Dead Reign: Zombie Role Playing Game with any semblance of haste akin to… well if Heracles had been given a thirteenth labour, this would be it. Further to keep Dead Reign to Palladium’s undemanding standards, it also does not come with a character sheet – oh wait – it does come with a character sheet. Now that is an improvement. An unexpected improvement. Pity though about the lack of advice for the GM about running the game, but to expect too many improvements… Anyway, this is a zombie game and we have all seen a zombie movie or two, so who needs advice about running a zombie game?

So yes, Dead Reign is a game set in a post apocalyptic America – and only a post apocalyptic America – following the rise of the dead. These are not the traditional brain munching zombies that spread their love through a bite, but rather they feed on the spark of energy that makes the living human. Should a victim fall prey to their clutches, the zombies will kill them and feed on this energy, released when the victim dies, the new dead victim rising moments later as a member of the corpse cortege. For most of the time, the typical zombie remains dormant, but noise and irregular activity will attract them, and once a zombie can sense that spark, he will let out a moan that will awaken other undead to join the hunt.

The majority of the zombies encountered in Dead Reign are “Slouchers,” shambling and mindless bar the call of the hunting moan. Other more rare types include the limbless “Crawlers,” “Fast Attack Zombies,” and “Flesh Eating Zombies,” for those that like their more traditional shambling undead. Some mimic what they did before they rose, the “Pattern Zombie,” which constantly repeats actions it performed in life, whilst the “Mock Zombie” not only clings to some semblance of its former life, but also believes itself to be still alive. Lastly the “Thinker Zombie” is self aware and capable of using tools including firearms. What these offer is variations upon a theme, and what connects them is not just their collective desire to feed on that special energy that makes us human, but also the fact that you can bash, hack and shoot the crap out of them.

And this being a Palladium Books title, then there are rules and rules, and then some more rules for bashing, hacking and shooting members of the cadaver cavalcade. With the SDC (Structural Damage Capacity) or hit points that don’t matter given for every location coupled with rules for called shots (not sure where they are exactly, because there is no index, but I know I read about them) and lengthy weapon lists and everyone can get really particular about where exactly they want to bash, hack, and slash. Of course this is necessary because the zombies are difficult to stop, the easiest method being to take out the brain.

Zombies are not the only dangers that survivors face in the Zombie Apocalypse. Aside from the obvious – death, disease, and dog packs, Retro Savages are survivors who believe that the Zombie Apocalypse is the wrath of god and spurn their use of modern age technology. Worse still, they consider the zombies to be “God’s Children” and willingly sacrifice survivors who do not hold to their creed to the undead. Even worse are the Death Cults that actually worship the zombies themselves, not only sacrificing to them, but interacting with and controlling them.

For players, Dead Reign offers seven O.C.C.s or Occupational Character Classes. The Hound Master uses loyal dog companions to hunt, forage, search, and fight and defend, whilst Reapers are bikers who are expert zombie killers. Both Scroungers and Shepherds of the Damned are hunters. The first does so for useful items that he can use or trade, while the second sneaks into towns and cities in search of survivors who can be guided back out to Safe Havens. Where the Reaper is dedicated to hunting and killing zombies, the Soldier is defender first, zombie killer second, and lastly, the Survivor represents the ordinary person who has to fight in the world of the Zombie Apocalypse.

Perhaps the most interesting of the seven O.C.C.s is the Half Living – someone who has survived a near-death encounter with zombies and in the process loses some of his former personality and skills. Although most zombies will ignore a Half Living, he much prefers the company of humans and actually hates to be away from them. The Half Living, although very loyal to humans, is not always trusted as once killed he will rise up as a full zombie. The Half Living is available as a full O.C.C. that can be rolled up at game’s start or as a new O.C.C. that can be adopted following an already existing character’s all too close encounter with death via zombie.

The process of creating a character is cumbersome – after all, the last thing a Palladium Books RPG is known for is its finesse – and is hampered by the idiotically illogical layout. The actual rules for character creation are on pages 146 to 159, the actual O.C.C. descriptions on pages 70 through 96, the skill descriptions between pages 189 and 218, and the equipment descriptions start on page 107 and end on page 126. So no logic applied there.

For the player short of time - for the page flipping back and forth does take its time – quick character creation rules are provided. It advises that this should cut the process down to between ten to fifteen minutes. Which begs the question, why does it have to take so long in the first place? After all, a player is merely creating a character through which he beats up the undead, not crafting something via Method Acting. The other benefit of using the quick character creation rules is that they will provide a character with at least one attribute high enough to grant a bonus. An attribute has to be 16 or higher to give any kind of a bonus, and well if an attribute is 15 or below, it really doesn’t have all that much of an influence or use in the game… If you consider the cartoonish nature of the game and the low possibility of high attributes with the normal generation method being to roll three six-sided dice, and there is a disconnect between what the characters are and what they represent in the setting.

There is also something of a design disconnect between the character types. Several of the Zombie Apocalypse O.C.C.s clearly state that what a character did prior to the rise of the dead no longer matters, whereas the Survivor O.C.C. only concerns itself with the skills gained prior to the apocalypse. Which begs the question, to become one of the Zombie Apocalypse O.C.C.s, does a character have to suffer from memory loss?

In terms of support Dead Reign provides a big list of equipment, one hundred encounters, and one hundred things that could be found on a corpse. The encounters do suffer from repetition, but they are nevertheless useful. Before it dives into its extensive equipment list, Dead Reign gives reasonable advice on useful resources, including the use of the telephone directory and maps as well as vehicles and various places in towns and cities.

In terms of background though, Dead Reign is unfocused and underwhelming. It begins by suggesting various reasons behind the rise of the undead -- through biological means, the Wrath of God, and dark magic. In the aftermath of the risen dead, American society (Dead Reign only deals with the USA and even then barely) has collapsed and left the survivors coping in the best way that they can. One group that has survived the Zombie Apocalypse are the Reapers, a biker gang that fought its way into Chicago, earning the reapers both notoriety and respect, although not enough for such a well known event as the “Battle of Chicago” to be mentioned until page 75. Since then the Reapers have been using printing presses to publish and distribute the “Reapers Survival Guide,” a survival handbook and guide to destroying zombies. Extensive excerpts from this Reapers Survival Guide are interspersed between the rules, including advice on fighting zombies, (and repetitively so), choosing the right equipment, and so on. The problem is that this is more advice than it is setting or background material, and coupled with a lack of GM advice, and Dead Reign is all so underwhelming…

Physically, Dead Reign is neat and tidy, inside the artwork is mostly cartoonish in style, though some of it is moody and effective. The cover though, is very good.

Lastly in his afterword, Kevin Siembieda decries he fact that some people’s response to zombies would be to claim that everything has already been done with them. Well Mr. Siembieda might disagree with them, but they are in fact correct. Everything has been done with zombies before, and whilst the publisher might deny this, the fact is that Dead Reign offers nothing either new, or beyond that anything that might attract the fan of zombie gaming is proof of that. Were Dead Reign to come with some kind of background and some kind of advice for the GM then it might have been different, but what Dead Reign offers – as written – is the cartoonish slaughter of the undead and no more.

And that cartoonish nature is why I keep coming back to titles by Palladium Books. Not because I want to be playing in that style, but because I want to discover that the latest title is a sign that Palladium Books has grown up. Unfortunately, Dead Reign is not just cartoonish, but immature, and a sign that whilst I might have grown up, Palladium Books and its books have not.