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I've been asked to help get the ball rolling on Rifts! How does one describe the Rifts, and indeed the Palladium books games in general. This is an sad but true way of descriping them. Someone said to Me in game store when I was asking about Rifts books and it's been stuck in My head ever since. Palladium books has been around for a long time, and many games have taken from it and it from them. The original Robotech, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness games came form Palladium books thought both titles are currently discontinued (but there is a lot of talk of restoring the Robotech label). Battletech stole most of it's mech designs and mechanics straight from the Robotech games, to the point of an exact copy of some of the pictures of the mechas. The current D&D psionic system, is based off how Palladium first did psionics in their fantasy setting games. Heroes Unlimited is arguably second only to Mutant and Master Minds as a super hero RPG. So why then has no one ever heard of Palladium? The Palladium books marketing machine is like that of the late Sega game systems... very poor, and they are one of the few that did not switch over to the D20 system when it became an open game liceanse. Palladium also tries to make things realistic, but still fun achieving a strange mix of both, not totally realistic but still fun to play. This means the games can be as complicated or as simple statistic wise as the DM or GM in this case, desires. However the extra math as always tends to make for more realism but slow down things in play. However, this also means the stories and game mechanics are much more variable than a D20 system, making skills more important to use and aquire, player and social interaction can take as much or as little a focus as wanted, where D20 by design gives social interaction a bit of a back seat. (Yes I'm sorry but no matter how you spin it at heart D&D is and probably always be a hack&slasher, though I do love it lol)

So the point of this post, will be general questions about Palladium and Rifts, what sort of adventures are there, what's a typical group like, how are munckins avoided, how bad can one min max or power game it? etc. I will cover things like Settings and mechanics and detailed game info in future, seperate posts. So fellow gamers, there is a large blue tear in time and space before you a portal to infinite realms and dimensions away from the safe known comfort of the D20 system, dare you step in?