I don't want to open a can of worms, or bring Dumpshock to the attention of Palladium litigators, but I think it's safe to share my ideas here.

I think Rifts is an awesome setting and fun concept, but it's hampered by an awful, outdated system and runaway power inflation with every new sourcebook. I would love to see that game modeled using better rules. And upon reflection I feel the 4th Ed Shadowrun rules would model Rifts best -- it has solid rules for magic and tech, and upon that framework I think I can approximate the setting. I'm calling this hybrid monster ShadowRifts. I'm not talking about transplanting Rifts elements into SR (though there's potential with that, in moderation), but using the SR4 rules to approximate the Rifts setting. There are some good ideas in that game and I'd like to see them done justice, you know? Here are some of my ideas.

Character Options: First, I'm dumping OCCs and RCCs completely. People would be able to get MOM and Juicer conversions, but these will be cyberware/bioware "packages" with set effects and drawbacks. (A juicer, for instance, would enjoy capabilities exceeding that offered by normal 'ware through his BioComp, but might suffer a sort of spell-like "drain" effect when he relies on his powers too much, deteriorating his body and eventually killing him in a few years.) Characters like the mercenary, scientists, scout and the like could easily be built with the rules we have. The power level would be well above the SR default, I'm thinking 500 build points, at least.

'Ware: Use the RAW, as it's there and very adequate. Perhaps I'd include a selection of stronger cybernetics to reflect military advances. A full conversion 'borg would be Cybermancy-like creation.

Magic: I see no reason to mess with magic too much, though a category for spells that detect, affect and allow travel through ley lines (Nexus?) would be a must. Perhaps another dealing with detecting and opening rifts, though that could be folded into Nexus or possibly Summoning. If magic is connected to ley lines, I could see spellcasting on leys or nexuses could reducing drain for casters. Building traditions around the OCCs is a possibility, though I'd be comfortable just counting them all as hermetics. Not too many Rifts shaman-types in the books except among Native Americans and the like, though there's no great reason I see to follow the same assumption.

Psionics: Though psionics and magic are treated as separate in Rifts, it's not necessary to do so in ShadowRifts -- I'd just describe psionics as its own tradition. Perhaps I could cap spell ratings at 3, to reflect its lack of power in comparison with other magic, but reduce the drain code of "psionic spells" to compensate. I can totally see a Psi-Stalker being a weird psychic-themed Mystical Adept.

D-Bees and other Monsters: These would probably be built from scratch, using the metahuman templates and then adding changeling characteristics and qualities until we approximate what the I and/or the player want. A Dogboy could be built as a magician of the psionic tradition with some changeling traits or a mishmash of existing racial abilities. A dragon hatchling (*shudders to think of it*) could even be approximated this way, though once you get done buying the base stats and capabilities you wouldn't have a lot of room for customization. (But then, that's pretty appropriate for a newly born dragon; you could grow however you desire from then on.)

Levels: This is an artifact of the Palladium system, and there's no great need to include a level system in ShadowRifts. I suppose, using SR4's superior framework, one can patch a level system onto it. But what purpose would it serve? Hmm. Here's one way a level system could function in a skill-based game like SR: in the Elder Scrolls games, your skills don't increase via leveling; you level as a result of skill increases. Every ten skill increases you gained your level increased by 1, along with Health and Magicka. In ShadowRifts, you gain X number of skill/stat increases or spells, and you level: you'd gain a box on your damage tracks, while casters might gain an extra die to resist spell drain. In a lethal setting like Rifts Earth, though, this might not be such a bad idea. But then again, it probably is. What do you guys think?

Mega-Damage: One of the most controversial and hated elements of Rifts. Can't say I blame people, I don't like it either. Of course, I have far bigger issues with the application of Mega-Damage than the actual concept. While I don't think including it is absolutely necessary, I might if I can find a workable system for it. MD weapons and attacks might do damage autohits -- damage added to the damage test result. MDC might subtract directly from damage, before damage resistance tests. (I'd keep the numbers small, say +3 to +5 damage add/subtraction.) Or, one can say that MD attacks can't be resisted except by MDC armor or creatures (no damage resistance if you're a "squishie"); by the same token, "normal" attacks are less effective against MDC. Then again, I may save myself a headache and just not bother with it at all.

I'm wondering, have any of you enterprising people out there done your own Rifts to SR conversions, or have ideas for such? I'd love to hear from you if so.

(Note: I have no expectation to see an "official" conversion of Rifts (or anything Palladium), as Kevin Siembieda would rather continue killing his own game line than let anyone redeem it. He has some good setting ideas, but he marries them to a third-trimester coathanger abortion of a game system, crazyquilt mechanics largely derivative of 1st Ed AD&D that he hasn't updated significantly in 20+ years. And won't. The best I can hope for is that Palladium will finally die its well-deserved death, and that WotC or someone else will swoop in and gobble up those properties. But I won't hold my breath on that. So fan conversions only, for the time being anyway.

Anyway, I'll quit ranting. For now.)

I'm curious why you want to completely redesign SR to create a new game [since that's what you'll have to do to do the several of the things you mention]...
...When you could use the World of Darkness rules [very similar to SR, but with things already in the system] or an infinitely more flexible system like HERO, GURPS, FUZION, D6 or even Savage World.

Well, it's not a complete redesign. That's the appeal. Most of the things I want to do in Rifts are already expressed in SR, it's just a matter of tweaking the system to get it to do what I want. Both magic and tech are rampant in Rifts, and whaddaya know, they are in SR4 too! So SR4 certainly fits the bill better than any WoD/WW system, and I have both oWoD and nWoD (though far more the former than the latter).

I also have a limited amount of money and time to invest in games, and I'm not interested in investing in a lot of games. (Since I don't get to play most of the ones I own as it is.) I wouldn't use GURPS or Savage World because, frankly, they're not good systems. IMO. (Jackson makes awesome mine-able sourcebooks, but the GURPS system itself leaves a lot to be desired.) I have SR4, and it's pretty well perfect for my needs from what I can tell -- at least, as close as I'm gonna get.

The only significant changes I mentioned above would be adding a level system to the game and Mega-Damage -- and I can dispense with them, no prob. Simulating races like dragons and other weird D-Bees as PCs may not be necessary if you declare only humans and human-like races are available for PC consumption -- problem fixed. But psionics as a magical tradition, the addition of ley line spells, reinterpreting things like 'borgs and Crazies through 'ware... seriously, how does SR4 fail to accommodate this? And how would any iteration of WoD work better, pray tell?

If you're going to go to all the work of porting a game, you should at least choose a decent core to port to.

~J

Great, okay. Thanks for that invaluable advice.

Now can either of you guys explain why SR4 isn't a "decent core"? How it doesn't fit? Anything contructive?

There's nothing wrong with sticking with Shadowrun's system if you and the people you play with enjoy it. Every system has it's faults. No need to be snide about Shadowrun's, especially since it does fit wth RIFTS just fine. In fact, the only real difference between the two settings is that one relied on an Awakening while the other relied on the multiverse shattering and creating rifts to parallel worlds (ie, metaplanes). As Hate said, little really has to be done to make either system compatible with either setting. All the elements are already there.

I really love the RIFTS setting, too. But then, I love all the mashed genre settings; Shadowrun, RIFTS, Torg, etc. So I'm pretty biased. The only thing that's ever stopped me from going all-out with RIFTS are the rules and some of the choices they made with the setting. It's definitely a game where the concept trumps the execution.

That said, the only thing you really need to do is create more races, monsters and equipment, and/or perhaps expand upon the SURGE rules to allow players to make more interesting and diverse d-bees. If you really want to include mega-damage, just use the rules for hardened armor and create weapons specifically designed to defeat them. Sort of like weapon foci vs. Immunity to Normal Weapons. This makes it so that the weapons aren't overpowered compared to conventional weapons, but it does allow for the idea of ultra-tech gear to exist that more "primitive" weapons don't have much of a hope of scratching.

The only problem with the hardening rules is that it's all-or-nothing. If you exceed the rating, it just acts like normal armor. Otherwise it pings off you like nothing. An easy fix is to simply say that hardened armor reduces the DV of ineffectual attacks by its rating and still acts like normal armor. So even if you do exceed its rating with, say, a regular bow and arrow, the attack will be easier to defend against than an appropriate attack of the same power (like an ion rifle) would.

Other than that, your basic ideas all sound fine to me. I'd be even less inclined to change a lot of things myself, but that's because I prefer an elegant simplicity to house rules/game systems.

Immunity to Normal Modifiers, the non-monotonic odds of disaster by skill, pervasive impossibility, those are the fundamental ones I remember offhand (and they're unfixable to boot). The forum is filled with more analysis on the matter, just check the archives from around 2006 (searching for member Ellery's posts is probably productive. I do admit that things will be made more difficult by the fact that I don't think anyone made any effort to separate issues fundamental to the system from issues with the setting-specific stuff like gear/metaraces/etc.).

Each to their own, I guess. I admit there was a time when I didn't care about 6=7.

~J

Wholescale system conversion isn't an easy thing to do, and rarely gives you an exact fit, so you'll not have SR v?? as a setting or a rules base.

SR v4 isn't geared up for the things you'll need [aliens, mega damage, proper psionic rules, levels, balance], so you'll have to create them from scratch.
Once you go along that route, it'll no longer be the system you started with.

As a core of "roll 'x' number of dice vs a fixed t#", it's not bad - in theory.
But that's the same as the current WhiteWolf rules [except they use d10s] - and that's had most of the balance between completely different genres issues already looked at.
So have HERO, GURPS, etc.

Bearing in mind what I've just said, going with systems that already have such things in place is much, much easier.
10 years ago I converted my SR v2 game to the Aeon Trinity rules [basically the same as the current White Wolf rules] and that was fine.

Of course, if you enjoy spending days and months just writing material and not actually doing anything with it, that's fine and dandy - I've been there and done that.

Me, I actually like to play.

The thing is about making ports, you don't have to include what you don't like. (I suppose this is true of any game -- in my WoD, the Week of Nightmares metaplot silliness never happened, and in the 3E Rifts game I'm playing in the GM ruled that Dunkelzahn never died.) There are legitimate issues with the Rifts setting, but you effectively recreate it when you convert it to another system, which is an opportunity to address some of those problems.

And it's nice to see someone that remembers TORG. It never was a favorite of mine (I remember I had some rules issues with it), but it seemed to be an interesting setting. And I'm wondering just how well its Axiom concept, remixed with some ideas of Mage: the Ascension, would apply to Rifts. In this case, the conflict between the Coalition, Tolkeen, the Federation of Magic, Splugorth and other entities becomes an epic struggle to define the nature of reality itself -- if the Coalition wins, for instance, magic will become much harder to use. Rifts Earth is in a state of flux now, where multiple Axioms intersect, so technology, magic and the like all work just dandy -- at least until one group or another achieves dominance. I'm happy leaving this as thematic element of the setting rather than an actual mechanic most of the time, but there may be areas where one "paradigm" holds sway to the extent where Axioms apply: ultratech may act buggy in areas dominated utterly by magic and demons, where spells tend to fizzle in the heart of Chi-Town.


A very elegant and functional idea. Thanks. So basically, "MDC" (hardened) armor would be extra proof vs. normal weapons, but against high-powered "MD" weapons it would function as normal armor. MD weapons might do extra damage to non-hardened targets, but nothing excessive.


I'm not all that rules-obsessed either; I prefer intuitive mechanics, as they help games run a lot quicker. That being said, if I'm going to port Rifts I'm going to try to model it as accurately as I can without debasing the SR4 rules set. SR4 is a simple system at its core, though, and I don't want to bog it down.

I'll do a search for that thread, thanks. I don't intend to preserve Palladium's systems bugs (such as a binary treatment of skills) or things that are "unfixable." That's what I'm trying to get away from. As far as preserving Rift's versions of stuff, such as their elf model vs. Shadowrun's, I'd probably decide on a case-by-case basis. Or let the player decide: if he wanted to stick with the version in SR that's fine, if he wanted to tweak a character so it's more like the elves from Palladium Fantasy that's fine too. Hell, if he wanted to do a darned drow-like elf, more power to him. There's nothing saying there can't be different types of elves on Rifts Earth. The game's very premise supports stuff like that.
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The Mega-Damage issue is resolved as far as I'm concerned, thanks to Dr. Funkenstein's idea; a tweak on the hardened armor rules. Aliens and D-Bees will use a metahuman base, tweaked to taste with SURGE rules and the like. And I see no reason psionics can't be treated as a magical tradition. A level system isn't a given; I'm looking into possibilities, but if I don't find a workable mechanic I won't include levels in the conversion. And "balance" is such a subjective and situational consideration, anyway; everyone will get the same number of character points to build with (probably around 500). What people decide to make with those points -- a Cyber-Knight, a Lynn-Srial, a dragon hatchling, a Glitterboy, some made-up alien species that's a vampiric gibbon-mantis centaur -- is really up to them.

But can you see how many of the things you say can't be accomplished in SR4 actually can be? And fairly easily?


If Rifts is what I'm starting with (with the end point being the SR4 rules set), then yeah, that's kinda the point. Every conversion from one system to another is a compromise, as you try to model the things in Game A with Game B. In this case, though, little of SR4's rules set will be changed, and the compromise is heavily in favor of SR4. As I pointed out in the beginning, I'm not going for something 100% true to Rifts and all its worst concepts and bugs, nor am I trying for a functional SR4/Palladium hybrid. What I'm trying to do is simulate Rifts' concepts and setting using SR4 rules. For instance, a minor tweak to the cyberware and bioware rules allows for something like Juicers; I don't give a fig about retaining the narrow skills, X#/attacks per round with bonuses to dodge and pull punch and all that BS. Nor do intend to recreate MDC monstrosities able to catnap through sustained SDC attacks. And a lot of the sillier and extreme stuff, especially things from sourcebooks like flying flaming psionic cat-men (I kid you not, from the South America sourcebook), Mega-Juicers or Star Elves, may well not even exist in my version of Rifts Earth, period. I'm under no obligation to retain anything I don't want to from the Rifts line, be it a broken concept or the broken system.


White Wolf still has balance issues, trust me, even in the nWoD -- though things are better than they used to be. (Of course, the oWoD games weren't supposed to balance with each other or be crossed over... then people did it anyway, despite the books themselves warning against it, and stupidly wondered why their games melted down.) The GURPS system isn't a good one, IMO, so I won't be using it. I actually considered using Mutants & Masterminds or Aberrant for my Rifts conversion, but in my estimation SR4 fits the bill even better. If this estimation is wrong, then please cite supporting data for your view.


But what about magic?! There is no magic in Trinity! Or elves! Such a conversion Can't Be Done!

Actually, I'm being facetious. I'm sure you used the psionics system, or a variant thereof, to cover the magic angle, right? And the various types of metahumans couldn't have been hard to recreate either. And for the record, while the Trinity system is at its core similar to nWoD's (multi-d10 vs. target), a lot of the specifics are different between the two systems. Enough that every attempted conversion from Aberrant (which uses the exact same system as Trinity) to the nWoD base mechanic that I've seen has broken down; the nWoD system simply breaks at such higher power levels. One would be better to attempt an Aberrant to Exalted conversion, I'd think -- the power levels seem compatible.

But to get back on topic, nWoD has magic and psionics rules, but I'd have to go through the trouble of creating rules for cybernetics and bioware from scratch. So that doesn't fit the bill. I don't like the oWoD system or Aberrant enough to use them for the conversion (I do love the oWoD setting, but that's insubstantial here). Trinity might work, but I don't like the setting or the rules enough to use it, much less shell out money for it. I can't think of anything I want to do with ShadowRifts that I can't accomplish with SR4.

So using a system that has rules in place for what I want is exactly what I'm doing. SR4 has a great system (always a good thing) which supports solid rules for magic and high technology. Palladium has magic and tech, but terrible rules. Sounds like a match made in heaven to me! Psionics, D-Bees, all these things are not only possible in the SR4 system, they're easily done. And conversion won't be much work from what I can tell. I've done much more daunting conversions before, trust me.


A statement that suggests I don't (without outright stating it, giving you deniability). Such statements come pretty close to insulting my intelligence, which isn't warranted here. So let's not go down that path, okay? No need to be negative.

Look, I don't mind critical feedback, as long as it's constructive. But you're just naysaying, declaring "it won't work, it doesn't fit, it's too much trouble to convert" without offering reasons. You say psionics won't work... well, why? The SR4 systems won't support aliens... again, why are SURGE rules not sufficient for this? And if some things won't fit and I can't find a good way to include them in the system (like levels), is there any good reason to include them at all? I mean, maybe I'm not getting something basic here. If you can offer solid reasons the simple conversion ideas I've presented aren't viable, some oncoming train that I don't see that will wreck my game, please share. I'll take what you have to say under consideration, and if it helps me you'll have my appreciation. But if you just don't like the idea (or me) on a gut level, and you're just trying to shoot holes in it out of contrariness, or all you have to offer are broad-brush assumptions and no concrete data... well, you're free to feel how you want to about it, but that's not really helping here. M'kay?

I think SR4 is an odd choice but not a terrible one, just requires a lot more work. I would look at other conversions people have done (GURPS and Savage Worlds come to mind) So you can get ideas on what to convert and what to throw away, plus it may give you some insight as to how you want to convert particular things.

I think a problem a lot of people have is that they think using another system is the same as a direct conversion. The RIFTS setting can be supported by any number of systems with minimal modification. Shadowrun is one of those systems. All of the elements are there. Aliens (metatypes), magic and psionics, megadamage (hardening rules), hacking, bionics (implants), full-conversion borgs (jarheads or heavy cyberlimb usage), Juicers and Crazies (other implants), mecha (vehicle rules, though you may want to look at older editions and the various Rigger books for rules on how to build and design them), and multi-genre support. It's all there. Hell, I've personally created characters based on Juicers and Techno-Wizards several times in the past with only minimal rules changes (namely taking away the insta-death sentence of heavy drug use in previous editions), and they worked out just fine.

You don't need levels (no game does; levels are so insanely stupid that I can't even fathom how anyone can say they represent any degree of believability), you don't need classes, and you don't have to have separate rules for magic and psionics. All you need is a system that covers all the basic concepts -- which Shadowrun certainly does -- and then look to the RIFTS sourcebooks for the setting and world information.

At most, you have to come up with stat blocks for new gear, spells, and races. But you have to do that with nearly any setting, too. That's hardly unique when porting.

Those are flaws in SR4, not RIFTS (I must admit I've never actually played it).

~J

Ah, how cool. I actually pitched a Juicer-like character concept to my 3E SR GM (I ended up going with a Muslim minotaur PhysAd). But the potential to create such a character is there.

The way I planned on working the Juicer augmentation was that my character was implanted with an experimental implant (the BioComp), which injected chemicals into his body continually. High physatts and some out-of-the-book bioware for a speedster represented the device's baseline benefits. However, you could tap into the BioComp to enhance yourself even more, granting another initiative die, +1 Reaction, +2 Quickness and extra running speed. However, this caused a drain-like effect, resisted by base Body (not including any BioComp enhancements); if this roll failed, the Juicer would take stun damage and lose a point of Body -- permanently. (This reflects the damaging effects of the chemicals on his body.) When base Body reaches 0, death results. And if something took out the BioComp, the Juicer would lose all of his enhancements until it was repaired, until which time he suffered from shakes and severe withdrawal. He'd have to cut the BioComp off to sleep, and reactivate it upon waking up... booting up took a minute, during which time he had no special abilities and suffered withdrawal. Yeah, don't mean to throw lotsa rules at ya. But I did put thought into the concept and tried hard to balance it.


Eh, I have disagree with you here. Different types of games model different genres. Levels don't work for all games, but they do work for some -- especially those that support epic-style play. Level-based games aren't supposed to be realistic, they represent great heroes that can square off with barbarian hordes and dragons, and villains that are thrown off cliffs but survive to thwart the heroes another day. While it's not my favorite game, I do like D&D, and it does what it does well. So does d20 Star Wars. Either system would not, however, do the Shadowrun setting justice; d20 Call of Cthuhlu was an epic fail, as leveling your characters so they could take on Star Spawn is an affront to the very CoC concept. On the other hand, SR wouldn't do epic fantasy very well. I prefer gritty/realistic systems and settings, but a nice fantastic romp is fun now and then. A lot of level systems are done poorly, but not all; I prefer levels that measure incremental increases in capability instead of huge jumps, and that have skill advancement unhinged from levels. A setup like the Elder Scrolls PCs games would work well in tabletop, if you want levels at all.

Rifts is an epic game, in my estimation, which level-based games support. But that might be a side effect of the game being level-based. I'm concerned not having some sort of level advancement there will make the game too lethal.


And that's half the fun. The other half is seeing it in play.
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Ah okay. My bad. Do you have any links to relevant threads fpr these issues?

IHAL, search the boards for the mad rantings of one "emo samurai ": http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showuser=8019

He's long been banned, I believe, but if you can find his posts (preferably the ones in 2005, early on in his stint here) and play Shadowrun 4 with the tweaks and wild abandon he hid did, plus use Vehicle Armor/Damage for Mega Damage, you'll be within spitting distance of RIFTS. Maybe a little past it on the Crazy Scale in places.

Thanks for the tip, I'll search his posts here later when I have time. And just FYI, I don't want to even come close to Rift's crazy level. Hardened armor and attacks that ignore damage resistance are quite sufficient for my MDC needs.

Weird, I was looking over some of my Rifts books a couple of months back and had the sme realization: that SR4 could make a better rules engine for the chaotic setting of Rifts. I just don't want to do that much work.

I would love to see what you come up with. (Hey, I may not want to do all that work, but I am fine with stealing it.... (Okay, okay. If anything comes to me on how to do something I will post it....dang DA's and their strong-arm tactics!)

This is true. But this isn't saying much, hell; adapting the rules of the board game Chutes & Ladders for Rifts would work better than the Palladium system.


Thanks, I'd like to see what you do with it. When I get to actually doing the conversations and making stat blocks, I'll post what I have here or link to it. I'll probably put it on my web page, as I don't think Palladium is doing well enough right now to send their litigators after my dirt poor ass.

So true, so true....