Favorite Rifts campaign you've ran/played

[Lao Tzume]

What happened? Plot you intended and the plot created by your players.
What was the group make up?
I always love hearing others' experiences with Rifts.

I'll start.

The group consisted of a Cyber Samurai, a Psi Slayer, A Techno Wizard, and a super spy(elf with psionics).

They woke up in a Coalition lockup. The night before they met a jovial dwarf who had recently concocted a powerful beer he was very proud of. It turned out a bit too strong and caused the players to cause a ruckus and be arrested.

As they came to they actually found a way to break out since this particular town wasn't really equipped to restraint beings such as them. They had help breaking out by ways of a mysterious mage. He helped them break out and as repayment he asked them to take a metal crate to a town not far away.

The samurai scanned the box with IR. He found a heat signature the size of a large egg. After some time he found it had started hatching. So, that rushed them to get to the town quicker. They were stopped by a CS patrol that decided starting trouble wasn't worth their lives and let them pass while playing dumb that these were the recent escapees.

After that, they got to the town. They found that the town had been under the control of a dictator like mage. He ran the town with an iron fist. They dropped the crate off and learned that the local resistance had ordered it, so to speak. As they met the resistance the egg hatched a dragon hatchling. The TW bravely sauntered up the the hatchling and made friends.

They then agreed to help the resistance take out the mage. The mage had a impenetrable force field that could be taken out if 4 gems were brought into proximity to the force field.

One gem was in the Coalition lockup, the other was in possession of a gargoyle, one was actually in possession of the dwarf that served them that previous brew and the last was in possession of a wealthy heiress who had to be charmed by the elf to let them borrow her gem.

They got all the gems and confronted the mage. A quick fight ensued. The Super spy psychic used bio manipulation and paralyzed the evil mage. They then drug him outside of town limits, strapped him full of c4 and let him blow. This was not how I intended. I expected an epic fight. But, I rolled with it.

Once it blew they discovered he was the only thing keeping the local rift closed. As he died a rift opened and a giant balrog came out. They defeated that but not before the balrog let out a plague that still needs to be cured.

They found out the mage started as a nice guy but years of expending his power to keep that rift closed drove him mad.

[Razzinold]

@Lao Tzume - that sounds like it was a fun campaign.

I used to love when my GM would share stories from his other group where he was a player (in university his buddy ran the group but when he came home for the summer he ran our group).

Anyway I obviously can't remember the whole thing since it was like 17 years ago, but here are some highlights I do remember.

One player was a full conversion borg and the guy playing him gave him a pretty cool personality quirk. He never hesitated when killing need to be done, but he kept a container of wet wipes on his belt and would clean his hands with one after every kill he made. I thought it was a cool mental image to see this huge borg sanitizing his hands because he felt the guilt of having killed.

One time the group was in a bar, and the borg wasn't allowed in town so he guarded the vehicle. A fight breaks out and my buddy Paul (or GM) figures that the best place to find a weapon would be behind the bar. So he tells the GM that he runs towards the bar, plants his hand and vaults over while simultaneously kicking the bartender. So the GM makes some rolls and tells him that he is successful in his action, but failed to notice that the bartender was a 100lbs girl and his combat boot connected with her jaw and shattered it.

One of the guys in the group had the GM's permission to actually be an enemy of the group (obviously it was kept secret). So he sabotaged equipment, "accidentally" gave away their position by talking loudly, firing before everyone was in position, etc.
His final epic act was to sick a magnetic fusion block on the back of my friend Paul while they were sneaking up on the villains base. Paul was playing a Samurai and he had a set of vibro swords on his back in addition to the Daisho on his hip. He couldn't draw the swords to try and dislodge the fusion block and his arms were not long enough to reach it. So he sacrifices himself by jumping off the cliff instead of letting someone attempt to remove it before it blows up.

The GM was so impressed with that act so he brought Paul back as a Cosmo Knight, but he said he is going to follow the code to the letter and one slip up and he will fall. Paul managed to successfully play a Cosmo Knight for 5 years of school without falling. His GM later told him that he thought out of all the players that he was the only one he could trust with that kind of power. He knew the other guys would try but not really care about falling since they would still be powerful.

[Lao Tzume]

Ha! That is pretty awesome. Also, thanks for the compliments. It was a fun campaign to run. I wanted the guys to understand that not everyone is evil for the sake of being evil. In their eyes they may just be the good guy.

[Razzinold]

Well their guy was evil, and loved to toy with his victims. He was actually the villain that owned the compound that they were sneaking up on. After the fusion block went off he teleported away.

So they had a battle and the villain escaped. After that the GM turned it into an NPC and the guy rolled up another character that joined the group.

Another thing that made me laugh is their group vehicle. It was one of those Triax hover ambulances and every time they went out that poor thing came limping back, but never was completely destroyed. So a part of their profits always went to having repair it so they never were as rich as they thought they would be after a big score, kind of like the crew from Serenity always being broke because of repairs or the Trailer Park Boys because they end up in jail lol

[Alrik Vas]

Huh...let's see.

Instead of telling the story like I did in this thread I thought I'd just get into it normal-like.

See, after rescuing villagers from a CS attack, getting shot down over a demon-infested forest and trying to survive for days with a wounded crew that was quickly running out of supplies, Alrik (my character), Meg and Tom (the other players who were still left, the others were remaking characters) were put upon by a CS special ops group that was in the woods as well.

Turns out they weren't after us. Turns out they were hunting down a Shifter...that used to be a black bag man for the Coaltion. He made a deal with the devil for power, awoke his magical potential and was looking to summon him into Rifts Earth. The CS were there to clean up a mess they made.

Well, Meg got away because Tom is too slow, and I'm a sucker, so I distracted the platoon so they wouldn't noticed her get away. Anyhow, i learn all this about the operation later, at first the dead-head LT wants us to lead them to somewhere in the forest with the offer of letting us go afterward. Without much choice we go ahead with it.

Meg follows us, carefully. Knowing that if she presents a threat the CS's psi-stalker's 6th Sense will trigger. Along the way, she meets a giant, horse-sized animal spirit in the form of a wolf, who is hunting this demon shifter as well, as the shifter's master is one of his old enemies. The two of them decide to team up.

So we go deep into the forest, find some more brodkill, but these guys have heavy weapons and the platoon gets jacked up, Tom gets killed (a brodkill crushes his skull with it's foot) and I'm unable to break away and escape. Fortunately we win the fight.

Closer to the center of the woods, we find a rock outcropping, high craggy tops and all kinds of bad-juju in the sky. Then the goblins come out of everywhere with little demon sticks that can inflict MD. Fortunately the CS's use of ranged weapons help a great deal. The big problem is a Baalrog appears, kills half the troopers and laughs at their use of energy weapons. So it's up to me and the pump-rifle, vibro knives and the Psi-stalker. Looks like we're hosed but Meg and her giant woofz show up and we kill the thing.

Travelling up the rocks we come across Mr Shifter, he's doing his ritual to open a rift (sacrificing fae and even a unicorn to get the PPE he needs) and we interrupt him. Most ofthe troopers die, the LT and one of his rangers lives, but the psi-stalker and Meg both eat the big one when the shifter sicks his Gallu on us.

So I'm kinda pissed, grab the psi-stalker's vibro sword and manage to leap around the gallu when it comes for me, roll up and hack this guy to bits while what's left of the last Striker SAMAS occupies the demon bull. The Rift stays shut, but the PPE release causes a molten hail storm or some crap. The fricken rocks start melting and coming apart. We need to move. I try to get Meg's body, hoping she's still alive but can't make it. The giant wolf creature leaps into the fire for her, but i lose sight of him too, even through multi-optics. No choice but to run.

So eventually we get clear and the CS officer tells me he isn't going to take me into custody, that he never met me, there was never any shifter and his unit was actually just on it's way to assault the village.

Everything was just a cover up so people wouldn't learn the CS had employed a magic user to do their dirty work once upon a time. He let me go, knowing i could be a security risk, but he seemed to not hate me and it was just him and two other guys left and i was in the best shape of everyone. I probably could have killed them and he might have known that.

turns out the CS still put a price on my head.

[Lao Tzume]

Ha! That is a great story. Also, thanks for pointing me to that thread. Should have known there was one in the last month posted. Oh well.

[Alrik Vas]

No problem.

I did forget to mention something in that story that's important in things that happened in a later game though. The Shifter wasn't really in the center of the forest, he was really in another dimension, the rift was in the center and guarded by a Nymph. She gave us passage, even the CS guys, because she knew we were going to stop him. I thought the GM handled the CS special ops group pretty well. They didn't want to be there, dealing with magical creatures, but they were devoted to their duty and had to get the job done.

The reason I bring up the Nymph is that she had a lot of favors apparently, and the Wolf Spirit (who i forget the name of) brought Megan to her and asked for a boon in return for her help. She was brought back from the dead, but she was a wierd nature-zombie-thing. Not evil, and she looked normal, but she wasn't human anymore (she had some druid-ish type powers and her HP were MDC, she could sense supernatural evil etc). It was...uh...interesting...the next time we met.

[Razzinold]

Huh...let's see.

Instead of telling the story like I did in this thread I thought I'd just get into it normal-like.

See, after rescuing villagers from a CS attack, getting shot down over a demon-infested forest and trying to survive for days with a wounded crew that was quickly running out of supplies, Alrik (my character), Meg and Tom (the other players who were still left, the others were remaking characters) were put upon by a CS special ops group that was in the woods as well.

Turns out they weren't after us. Turns out they were hunting down a Shifter...that used to be a black bag man for the Coaltion. He made a deal with the devil for power, awoke his magical potential and was looking to summon him into Rifts Earth. The CS were there to clean up a mess they made.

Well, Meg got away because Tom is too slow, and I'm a sucker, so I distracted the platoon so they wouldn't noticed her get away. Anyhow, i learn all this about the operation later, at first the dead-head LT wants us to lead them to somewhere in the forest with the offer of letting us go afterward. Without much choice we go ahead with it.

Meg follows us, carefully. Knowing that if she presents a threat the CS's psi-stalker's 6th Sense will trigger. Along the way, she meets a giant, horse-sized animal spirit in the form of a wolf, who is hunting this demon shifter as well, as the shifter's master is one of his old enemies. The two of them decide to team up.

So we go deep into the forest, find some more brodkill, but these guys have heavy weapons and the platoon gets jacked up, Tom gets killed (a brodkill crushes his skull with it's foot) and I'm unable to break away and escape. Fortunately we win the fight.

Closer to the center of the woods, we find a rock outcropping, high craggy tops and all kinds of bad-juju in the sky. Then the goblins come out of everywhere with little demon sticks that can inflict MD. Fortunately the CS's use of ranged weapons help a great deal. The big problem is a Baalrog appears, kills half the troopers and laughs at their use of energy weapons. So it's up to me and the pump-rifle, vibro knives and the Psi-stalker. Looks like we're hosed but Meg and her giant woofz show up and we kill the thing.

Travelling up the rocks we come across Mr Shifter, he's doing his ritual to open a rift (sacrificing fae and even a unicorn to get the PPE he needs) and we interrupt him. Most ofthe troopers die, the LT and one of his rangers lives, but the psi-stalker and Meg both eat the big one when the shifter sicks his Gallu on us.

So I'm kinda pissed, grab the psi-stalker's vibro sword and manage to leap around the gallu when it comes for me, roll up and hack this guy to bits while what's left of the last Striker SAMAS occupies the demon bull. The Rift stays shut, but the PPE release causes a molten hail storm or some crap. The fricken rocks start melting and coming apart. We need to move. I try to get Meg's body, hoping she's still alive but can't make it. The giant wolf creature leaps into the fire for her, but i lose sight of him too, even through multi-optics. No choice but to run.

So eventually we get clear and the CS officer tells me he isn't going to take me into custody, that he never met me, there was never any shifter and his unit was actually just on it's way to assault the village.

Everything was just a cover up so people wouldn't learn the CS had employed a magic user to do their dirty work once upon a time. He let me go, knowing i could be a security risk, but he seemed to not hate me and it was just him and two other guys left and i was in the best shape of everyone. I probably could have killed them and he might have known that.

turns out the CS still put a price on my head.

oh no mister! You don't get off that easy!
You have shown an aptitude for high quality, dramatic story telling and we refuse to except anything less from you from now on.
I believe the saying goes "You're a victim of your own success?"

[Alrik Vas]

Maybe...I'll think about it...*ninjas behind something convenient, which may or may not have a keyboard. there may be typing sounds coming from it...depends on who you ask*

[Shorty Lickens]

Clearing the mechanoids out of Maryland.

[The Ruiner]

Huh...let's see.

Instead of telling the story like I did in this thread I thought I'd just get into it normal-like.

See, after rescuing villagers from a CS attack, getting shot down over a demon-infested forest and trying to survive for days with a wounded crew that was quickly running out of supplies, Alrik (my character), Meg and Tom (the other players who were still left, the others were remaking characters) were put upon by a CS special ops group that was in the woods as well.

Turns out they weren't after us. Turns out they were hunting down a Shifter...that used to be a black bag man for the Coaltion. He made a deal with the devil for power, awoke his magical potential and was looking to summon him into Rifts Earth. The CS were there to clean up a mess they made.

Well, Meg got away because Tom is too slow, and I'm a sucker, so I distracted the platoon so they wouldn't noticed her get away. Anyhow, i learn all this about the operation later, at first the dead-head LT wants us to lead them to somewhere in the forest with the offer of letting us go afterward. Without much choice we go ahead with it.

Meg follows us, carefully. Knowing that if she presents a threat the CS's psi-stalker's 6th Sense will trigger. Along the way, she meets a giant, horse-sized animal spirit in the form of a wolf, who is hunting this demon shifter as well, as the shifter's master is one of his old enemies. The two of them decide to team up.

So we go deep into the forest, find some more brodkill, but these guys have heavy weapons and the platoon gets jacked up, Tom gets killed (a brodkill crushes his skull with it's foot) and I'm unable to break away and escape. Fortunately we win the fight.

Closer to the center of the woods, we find a rock outcropping, high craggy tops and all kinds of bad-juju in the sky. Then the goblins come out of everywhere with little demon sticks that can inflict MD. Fortunately the CS's use of ranged weapons help a great deal. The big problem is a Baalrog appears, kills half the troopers and laughs at their use of energy weapons. So it's up to me and the pump-rifle, vibro knives and the Psi-stalker. Looks like we're hosed but Meg and her giant woofz show up and we kill the thing.

Travelling up the rocks we come across Mr Shifter, he's doing his ritual to open a rift (sacrificing fae and even a unicorn to get the PPE he needs) and we interrupt him. Most ofthe troopers die, the LT and one of his rangers lives, but the psi-stalker and Meg both eat the big one when the shifter sicks his Gallu on us.

So I'm kinda pissed, grab the psi-stalker's vibro sword and manage to leap around the gallu when it comes for me, roll up and hack this guy to bits while what's left of the last Striker SAMAS occupies the demon bull. The Rift stays shut, but the PPE release causes a molten hail storm or some crap. The fricken rocks start melting and coming apart. We need to move. I try to get Meg's body, hoping she's still alive but can't make it. The giant wolf creature leaps into the fire for her, but i lose sight of him too, even through multi-optics. No choice but to run.

So eventually we get clear and the CS officer tells me he isn't going to take me into custody, that he never met me, there was never any shifter and his unit was actually just on it's way to assault the village.

Everything was just a cover up so people wouldn't learn the CS had employed a magic user to do their dirty work once upon a time. He let me go, knowing i could be a security risk, but he seemed to not hate me and it was just him and two other guys left and i was in the best shape of everyone. I probably could have killed them and he might have known that.

turns out the CS still put a price on my head.

oh no mister! You don't get off that easy!
You have shown an aptitude for high quality, dramatic story telling and we refuse to except anything less from you from now on.
I believe the saying goes "You're a victim of your own success?"

I fully agree. I read that story in the other thread (Couldn't help but read it in Rorschach's voice), and have come to the conclusion that you should not be allowed to write up a story without it being in the First person POV.

[say652]

All I played a super in. Or any I used my supernatural intelligence Nephelonious Moonshade in. Gotta love avatars.

[Lao Tzume]

He actually did! It's a good read.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=143018

[Alrik Vas]

You guys are too much. Thanks for the kind words.

[Jerell]

My current Phase World setting is my favorite I've ever ran. It evolved from my regular Rifts New West campaign with a Psy Slinger, Techno Wizard, Werewolf, and Power Armor Pilot. It was based out of the Colorado Baronies. The Psy-Slinger and Werewolf characters actually continued over from my friends earlier Rifts campaign that had been over for a few years. They also had tank left over from the merc campaign, which they kept, and used as a sort of small mobile command center/party transportation/fire support.

Had a great western feel to it, helping farmer, cactus people and the like. Had an Orc gunslinger bad guy named Gorbad who was fun to play and have shoot outs with him and his orc and goblin gang against the party. Also quelling a lot of dimensional disturbances that popped up here and there. I had one Invid Hive crop up in the mountains that was abducting people in the night to work their protoculture farm. The campaign really changed when I introduced a Technowizard Train that went to other worlds/dimensions around the 3 galaxies. One person on the train was actually looking for help in a conflict on her home planet They traveled to a few different planets on the train, eventually got to the destination and had a wonderful few adventures, and some great urban combat. Troops in buildings, tanks rolling down the street, I had a blast. There was one part were they thought they were hunting a submarine out of a port town, boy were they surprised when it was a giant Turtle monster. They went on to one more planet via the train and ended up in the Thundercloud Galaxy...

Which is about the time the Lemuria book came out. That's where the current campaign really started. Most of my group really liked the Lemuria book, and since we were playing in 3G now, they wanted to make new characters.

The party - Lemurian Serpent Hunter, Lemurian Shifter (specializing in dimensional travel and rifting, not summoning), Sand Dragon Hatchling, Faeriekin (Rifter 66) Spirit Host (China 2). That's the core group, the two others that are there sometimes, Lemurian Biomancer and a Phantom(Phase World).

The setting - The planet Hylia in the Thundercould Galaxy, Creche Coulds region. The planet's native population is Faeriekin (which I call Hylians). Around 80 years ago a Lemurian floating city was rifted in from Earth (do to some trickery from the Lord of Deep trying to destroy the city, instead it ended up being sent to the Thundercloud). Shortly after, Atlantian explorers came across them, who as is their way started teaching the native populous and helping them build a better society. Since then, circa 40 years ago the UWW, Star Elves have set up one big colony city in cooperation with the natives. The planet is now a Thundercloud colony of the UWW. There's one main modern city which is a hybrid Atlantean, Lemurian, Faeriekin and Star Elf design. The planet is ruled by the Queen of the Hylians, in conjunction with a council which consist of Star Elves, Lemurians and True Atlanteans. The PCs are members of the Royal Park Guards which protect the park around the royal palace and Pyramid in the main city.

I never run out fresh ideas for adventures with this setting. I've had terrorist acts from comic forge fringe cults. Exploring new worlds in the Thundercloud. Discovering long lost ships from ages ago, space pirates involved in human (read Hylian) trafficking, Splugorth raids, and even one run in with the Sunaj. They have used a ship, but now they pretty much travel from planet to planet via the abilities of the Shifter from a nexus Pyramid on Hylia. Sometimes they get assignments from their Park Guard supervisor Benson, other times they get tip offs from their world/dimension skipping Atlantean buddy "Skips."

I've had a great time putting together new planets with fairly primitive new cultures and creatures for the group to explore (Thank you Thundercloud!), and there are so many forces at work in Thundercloud, Naruni, Sunaj, TGE, CCW, Slugorth, Dominators, Pirates and forge cults I don't think I'll ever run out of things to keep the players interested. The players never really know what to expect until they step through the portal. I can throw anything at them, and with the Minion War looking to possibly erupt sometime in the future in my campaign, it should continue to be a blast.

In the most recent adventure they've become involved in what started as a search and recovery mission, to find to missing Atlantean technomage-explorers (friends of Skips). Tracked down what planet they went to, started searching that planet, met some new aliens, found out that Deslyth's minions had a small fortress which no one knew about on the planet. The Kitani raided the locals as needed to supply slaves so they could mine jewels for use in Splugorth TW items. The demand for which has increased since war with the TGE has started. Apparently the Kitani had taken the Atlanteans to their fortress, after they ran into them exploring the 'wrong area.' The party decided sneaking in was the way to go after taking over a Kitani transport, which had come out to investigate a probe droid destroyed by the PCs. After in, they had a big moral dilemma as to if they should try and free all the Slugorth's slave miners or just recover the 2 Atlanteans. They decided to just go for the Atlanteans after figuring out they couldn't take the whole fortress of Kitani, and rescue the slaves safely. Plus seeing some Altara about really freaked out the party (they've had one knock down drag out fight with some Altara and a slaver earlier in the campaign). Here's where it gets interesting, A Nexus Deevil had infiltrated the Kitani and had her own plans for the jewels being mined and the fate of the slaves in the fortress and mines below. She approached the players (in Kitani guise) diplomatically as they were sneaking around the fortress some invisible and some dressed in Kitani armor. The party doesn't know what the Deevil is, just that it's not a Kitani and is something supernatural evil, though the Nexus Deevil has tried to represent itself as a Star Elf on a secret mission to the players, though they're not buying it. Thing is the Deevil doesn't want trouble in the fortress to disrupt her plans or put the Kitani on alert (after all this is just a low tech back water planet in the Thundercloud, Kitani don't think anyone has noticed they even have a presence on the planet), and offers to help the players get the Atlanteans, as long a they don't come back after they get out. The players were really uncomfortable, but in the end decided guardedly to take the help.

After that, long story short, they ended up having a big covert adventure getting to the Atlanteans and getting them out. With the Phantom, shifter and dragon the group was more sneaky than I thought they would be. Lowest body count in an adventure I've ever ran, just 2 dead, and 2 subdued Kitani. But man, roleplaying was off the charts high, with all the NPC interaction and sneaky about. As a GM this campaign has let me do whatever I've felt like running and it's been a fun experience all around. Getting to GM Slugorth minions and Deevils I really get to cut lose. I can't wait for the next adventure.

[Dog_O_War]

So you grow up on Rifts Earth.

That can make you callous, cruel, mercenary.

You fall into the life of a hired gun; a sell-sword; a man paid to kill.

And you become good.

But being good on Rifts Earth isn't enough; you need to become the best. So you take steps.

An implant here, a bit of Bionics there, and you make connections. Lots of connections. You come to know the business of the shadow markets better than the legitimate ones.

And you thrive.


So I made a stock Headhunter, armed to the teeth with gear and gizmos. Nothing too wild, but certainly formidable. Player 2 also made a Headhunter, but he went with a Robot-Killer. Player 3, seeing the trend, went Momano Headhunter. Player 4, new to the game, got talked into doing up a Juicer. Players 3 and 4 were only semi-regulars, but were there often enough to round out the band of professional killers that Headhunters are reputed to be. We're all human; this is on purpose so that we can take jobs from any and every party. We're in North America - pretty typical for Headhunters. We get around, though most of our jobs are on the Canadian border or in the Chi-Town 'burbs.

Chi-Town 'burbs was where we set up shop; on the outskirts of a marginally abandoned district. We'd done all sorts of jobs; escorts, assassinations, thefts, etc. But we were finding that we were barely breaking even. Along the way, our building got occupied by another professional, but not the kind regular professionals like to deal with; a Crazy. He'd been living in an old freezer for days, maybe even weeks in this warehouse we'd laid our bedrolls. We weren't sure just how long he'd been there, but we knew he had plenty of chances to just rob us blind or kill us in our sleep, but didn't. We extended him a wary courtesy and let him stay, since there was a chance this was his squat and we were the interlopers.

We continued to plan missions and break even. We weren't getting the better jobs; our front was too... amateur (for lack of a better word). We wanted to retro-fit one of the old buildings with a proper business front, but that would require creds. Together we'd barely mustered 12K after ammo and repairs. Not much. That's when Icebox (our freezer-dwelling Crazy) pipes up that he'd toss in 10K; a small amount, but too tempting to pass up for a couple of hard-living mercenaries. So we ask to see the creds, and this crazy Crazy goes out to the middle of the street and starts digging. He's got maybe a foot-deep hole in the dirt when he comes up with a cred-stick. Kinda wished he'd done that at night because every hobo and vagabond within sight-range was digging up the area for a week after that.

Well, in addition to being crazy, Icebox couldn't count. That cred-stick didn't have 10K on it; it had 100,000 credits. Score. Now all we needed was cheap labour. All those bums quickly turned into a workforce for us (they were paid sure enough, but I can't say that "forced work" wasn't an entirely inaccurate summation of how that went down). We got our professional front. Our next job sure enough was also professional; Northern Gun itself sent a representative to hunt down an experiment of theirs; a robot. That was a rough job. Travel time was through hostile wilderness, tracking took longer than either of us would have liked, and the fight itself was tough, even for a couple of well-armed soldiers like ourselves. The robot in-question was an experiment in artificial intelligence; and on top of that, it was also a combat model. Damn thing had SAMAS. Between my Flying Titan and our RK's SAMSON, we took a lot of rough hits, but a lucky shot by the RK with an ATL (yeah, the anti-tank laser from South America) saw the end of this mission.

Or so we thought. On our way back home, we came across a Coalition patrol (standard Mark V with squad and about a 1/2 dozen SAMAS) getting chewed up by an extensive group of Brodkil. So we lend a hand; we start slamming demons,smashing them good, when the idiot Mark V driver panics and releases a full volley of plasma mini-missiles. I got out of the way, but my partner wasn't so lucky. It was his MD pilot suit that ended up saving him from his now molten SAMSON; I had to peel off the front of his suit to get him out in time. And the CS? They offered an amount so small I'm not even going to mention it for "aiding a CS patrol". His suit was ruined. There went our entire profit margin from that one job

We get back home, demoralized. Our other companions didn't have much luck with jobs either, again - barely breaking even. That's when we heard the rumour; our hobo-labour force also became our ear to the underground (a gang-free area protected by H.A.F. mercs has a certain draw to it). That rumour was a major[ly illegal] business transaction was going down in our section of the 'burbs. So we devised a heist.

We scoped out the building based on our intel and went in silent. I was geared for heavy engagement, so I lagged behind, while our RK set up a sniper position. The Momano and Juicer quickly and easily dispatched the outer guards, and..... wait; there's a precursor to this. Icebox wanted in on this one. The crazy bastard didn't even have any weapons, but instead just walks out into the pot-holed street, still dug up from the bums searching for loot months ago, and digs up a Q-102 (odd - that was my personal side-arm of choice) and a broken bat wrapped in barbed wire; he kept calling it a Neural Mace, and I was hard-pressed to argue with him since he once spent three days upside down on the roof of our complex, telekinetically suspended up there because he claimed "that's where the gravity was".

So back to the mission; the Juicer and Momano were doing the wetwork silent as an owl gliding in for a kill while I was busy laying charges for a breach-entry. Me and Icebox were gonna take the breach - while our RK watched the exits. The Juicer and Momano went in the entry ways not visible to the RK as to eliminate escapees; our plan was ready and the trap was set.
Showtime.
Explosion, we go rushing in; there's two-dozen armed but lightly armoured mercs working for either side of this exchange, as well as a 'borg and a Juicer; this 'borg had some experimental tech and the Juicer had a damn fusion block chained to his chest rigged with a deadman's switch; this was gonna be tough as most of the fighting was close-quarters. Everyone's gunning and knifing and swinging axes, swords, even an engine block and a 'Neural Mace'. I'm running down the 'borg and one of the top guys; he looks like an exec. of some sort - I shoot him in the back of the head and he drops with the briefcase he was holding. That 'borg turns on me; that experimental tech turns out to be a forearm claw made of plasma. I'm already roughed up from shooting the Juicer and mostly but not quite escaping the resulting fusion-explosion, and that claw is ripping things up; he cut up my own vibro-claws, so I'm forced to draw my [vibro]knife.

I'm on the top of my game making all the right moves, when he gets in a swipe to my leg; a single swipe - and my left leg is gone from the knee down. I wished that was my bionic one; maybe I'd have still had a leg to stand on. No matter; before shock set in, I popped the 'borg for a critical and punched an ionic hole through his MDC skull. I get lucky - I don't pass out. But I'm kinda hurt. My bionic ears pick up footsteps; I throw on any and every spectrum vision I have; nothing on my level - it's coming from upstairs. I take a pot-shot through the floor and ice a guy (SDC structure), and work myself up to standing. I cut a hole in the ceiling and a body comes down; another exec-looking guy with a briefcase. This means a successful heist; both sides are completely dead and we've got all the loot. We've even got the extra goodies.

Back at the hideout, we take the time to examine our loot; we've got this plasma claw from the arm of the 'borg - should fetch a good price. The one case had other experimental cybernetics; all likely worth a fortune. But the other case only had a single black cred-stick in it. We run it through our readers; nothing registers. Damn. Oh well; we still have good stuff to fence. After some semi-emergency surgery (an IRMSS kit), we make the long journey to our fence. Our fence was in Old Bones, because we were kind of paranoid about locals zeroing in on our operations' expenditures. He gives us a great price for the tech and everything, but we still had that cred-stick; we ask him to run it through his reader incase ours are broken. His doesn't work either, but it just did though; he just juiced up cred-sticks for us. So he pulls out a different kind of reader - a high-transaction one, and swipes the card. What happened next when we saw the result can only be described as whenever someone looked in the case in the movie, "Pulp Fiction".

1,000,000,000,000 credits.
One Billion. Credits.

And can you imagine? This tale is only a third the way through


So that campaign ran for a couple years longer, with sessions infrequent but long (like 12 hours long). It's been the best campaign I've ever played through and I know that there are a ton of details I left out as well.

[Alrik Vas]

I like the crook/dirty merc side of Rifts too. My story was "you gotta be kidding..." (that's a theme in technical terms ), but I always liked games like the one you shared.

All that cyber-aug and the ******* manages to hit your fleshy leg. That's just the way...

Also

Here Jerell wrote a story about his last session

Really love covert ops like that too. Had a pretty good infiltration of a CS base once, but it turned into a huge mess. Wish i coulda kept things quiet like your players did, heh. I might have to share that story next.

[Lao Tzume]

Dog o War. That was a great story! That sounds like a blast. Thanks for sharing man!

[Jerell]

Really love covert ops like that too. Had a pretty good infiltration of a CS base once, but it turned into a huge mess. Wish i coulda kept things quiet like your players did, heh. I might have to share that story next.

Look forward to hearing about it.

[Lao Tzume]

^What he said!

[Alrik Vas]

I'm working on it already, just trying to remember some details about the game. Not in contact with the GM who ran it anymore.

[Colt47]

I wouldn't say it was the most memorable campaign, but the one that I had the most fun in was a game we played at my 2 year college where we basically ended up stuck with a worst case scenario. I forgot who was GMing, but it was like everything wrong from every angle happened and we had swarms of Xiticix flooding into Ipsheming (pre-Northern Gun Books). Yup, never mix a night of Farscape with Rifts. Wormhole weapons don't work too well when said magic research goes astray and instead of sucking foes OUT of rifts earth you end up pulling things TO Rifts earth... which happened to be a Xiticix queen. Funny enough, we weren't even running a Xiticix based campaign and the GM didn't know much about Xiticix at the time so he assumed they would act like giant alien killer bees. We weren't even playing any MDC based characters, either. I think the strongest one of us was a Momano Headhunter and maybe the leyline walker that failed all his freaking rolls that night.

Honestly, I think I have the most fun in Rifts when we have accelerated XP gain and everyone is playing SDC beings.

[Alrik Vas]

Sounds like a real mess. Did you guys even live?

[Colt47]

Sounds like a real mess. Did you guys even live?

The funny part is that the Leyline walker who caused the mess lived, while the rest of us all died. To make things short, we got into a fight trying to get out of the over run Ipsheming, the leyline walker got knocked out due to falling debris, and the guy carrying him got shot through the chest after the last of his armor got spent by a TK rifle. So yeah, the leyline walker survived by "playing dead".

We all hated him. The CS got some new recruits that day.

[Alrik Vas]

Damn...terrible. Having been the lone survivor a few times, I at least wasn't blamed for living..

[Colt47]

Damn...terrible. Having been the lone survivor a few times, I at least wasn't blamed for living..

Honestly, the kinds of things required to make that situation happen made it memorable. It was like the cursed D20 fell into our possession that night. Well, and a pair of cursed D10s. Then again, the skill system in Rifts is very much a gambling game with the odds stacked against the player until at least the mid levels. Heck, even then having a 70% chance is still risky. In pathfinder the skill system is set up to at least break even in most challenges, which is the game I've been playing recently. I'm actually not that involved with Rifts anymore due to the skill system and the MDC vs SDC/HP debacle.

[Alrik Vas]

No need to explain. Your complaint about HP/SDC/MDC is the same complaint I have about d20 games and HP, especially at high levels.

When a dude crits you with a long sword, shaking you utterly, for 30 damage, but you have 200+ HP...yeah. Same thing as MDC to me.

[Razzinold]

So you grow up on Rifts Earth.

That can make you callous, cruel, mercenary.

You fall into the life of a hired gun; a sell-sword; a man paid to kill.

And you become good.

But being good on Rifts Earth isn't enough; you need to become the best. So you take steps.

An implant here, a bit of Bionics there, and you make connections. Lots of connections. You come to know the business of the shadow markets better than the legitimate ones.

And you thrive.

Loved the intro, it makes me think of the opening voice over narration for an action movie, or the first paragraph in some bleak Mad Maxesque novel.

(snip)

there's a precursor to this. Icebox wanted in on this one. The crazy bastard didn't even have any weapons, but instead just walks out into the pot-holed street, still dug up from the bums searching for loot months ago, and digs up a Q-102 (odd - that was my personal side-arm of choice) and a broken bat wrapped in barbed wire; he kept calling it a Neural Mace, and I was hard-pressed to argue with him since he once spent three days upside down on the roof of our complex, telekinetically suspended up there because he claimed "that's where the gravity was".

Dude, I love Icebox, out of curiosity, was it your sidearm that he had buried there ?

So back to the mission; the Juicer and Momano were doing the wetwork silent as an owl gliding in for a kill while I was busy laying charges for a breach-entry. Me and Icebox were gonna take the breach - while our RK watched the exits. The Juicer and Momano went in the entry ways not visible to the RK as to eliminate escapees; our plan was ready and the trap was set.
Showtime.
Explosion, we go rushing in; there's two-dozen armed but lightly armoured mercs working for either side of this exchange, as well as a 'borg and a Juicer; this 'borg had some experimental tech and the Juicer had a damn fusion block chained to his chest rigged with a deadman's switch; this was gonna be tough as most of the fighting was close-quarters. Everyone's gunning and knifing and swinging axes, swords, even an engine block and a 'Neural Mace'. I'm running down the 'borg and one of the top guys; he looks like an exec. of some sort - I shoot him in the back of the head and he drops with the briefcase he was holding. That 'borg turns on me; that experimental tech turns out to be a forearm claw made of plasma. I'm already roughed up from shooting the Juicer and mostly but not quite escaping the resulting fusion-explosion, and that claw is ripping things up; he cut up my own vibro-claws, so I'm forced to draw my [vibro]knife.

I'm on the top of my game making all the right moves, when he gets in a swipe to my leg; a single swipe - and my left leg is gone from the knee down. I wished that was my bionic one; maybe I'd have still had a leg to stand on. No matter; before shock set in, I popped the 'borg for a critical and punched an ionic hole through his MDC skull. I get lucky - I don't pass out. But I'm kinda hurt. My bionic ears pick up footsteps; I throw on any and every spectrum vision I have; nothing on my level - it's coming from upstairs. I take a pot-shot through the floor and ice a guy (SDC structure), and work myself up to standing. I cut a hole in the ceiling and a body comes down; another exec-looking guy with a briefcase. This means a successful heist; both sides are completely dead and we've got all the loot. We've even got the extra goodies.

That was a sweet battle, some good rolls on your part, other than your poor leg though.

Back at the hideout, we take the time to examine our loot; we've got this plasma claw from the arm of the 'borg - should fetch a good price. The one case had other experimental cybernetics; all likely worth a fortune. But the other case only had a single black cred-stick in it. We run it through our readers; nothing registers. Damn. Oh well; we still have good stuff to fence. After some semi-emergency surgery (an IRMSS kit), we make the long journey to our fence. Our fence was in Old Bones, because we were kind of paranoid about locals zeroing in on our operations' expenditures. He gives us a great price for the tech and everything, but we still had that cred-stick; we ask him to run it through his reader incase ours are broken. His doesn't work either, but it just did though; he just juiced up cred-sticks for us. So he pulls out a different kind of reader - a high-transaction one, and swipes the card. What happened next when we saw the result can only be described as whenever someone looked in the case in the movie, "Pulp Fiction".

1,000,000,000,000 credits.
One Billion. Credits.

And can you imagine? This tale is only a third the way through


So that campaign ran for a couple years longer, with sessions infrequent but long (like 12 hours long). It's been the best campaign I've ever played through and I know that there are a ton of details I left out as well.

All in all well told, can't wait to hear more!

I fully agree. I read that story in the other thread (Couldn't help but read it in Rorschach's voice), and have come to the conclusion that you should not be allowed to write up a story without it being in the First person POV.

He actually did! It's a good read.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=143018

See, I wasn't lying lol

[Dog_O_War]

there's a precursor to this. Icebox wanted in on this one. The crazy bastard didn't even have any weapons, but instead just walks out into the pot-holed street, still dug up from the bums searching for loot months ago, and digs up a Q-102 (odd - that was my personal side-arm of choice) and a broken bat wrapped in barbed wire; he kept calling it a Neural Mace, and I was hard-pressed to argue with him since he once spent three days upside down on the roof of our complex, telekinetically suspended up there because he claimed "that's where the gravity was".

Dude, I love Icebox, out of curiosity, was it your sidearm that he had buried there ?

That is a sad tale; I had my Q-102 right on my hip (believe me, I checked immediately), no, that was Icebox's "Lucky Charm" (he had a four-leaf clover etched into the grip). I inherited it from him, unfortunately. Guy was my best friend.

He became the reason I started a private war against the Coalition.

That was a sweet battle, some good rolls on your part, other than your poor leg though.

Actually, it was quite a few unlucky rolls on my part But I tend to turn bad luck into good fortune, so it all worked out.

[Alrik Vas]

See, I wasn't lying lol

Yeah, yeah. Still working on the next operation. Takin' me a while as I got a lot going on writing-wise. Hopefully soon.

[Crucible]

The campaign where it started of as Robotech. Long story, I really enjoyed that one.