Newbie Advice Needed!

Ley Line walkers, Juicers, Coalition Troops, Samas, Tolkeen, & The Federation Of Magic. Come together here to discuss all things Rifts®.

Moderators: Immortals, Supreme Beings, Old Ones

User avatar
MrDisturbed
D-Bee
Posts: 29
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2012 12:04 am

Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by MrDisturbed »

First off I am sorry if this has been asked before. Or if I'm in the wrong forum. I have played fantasy and heroes but never Rifts. I met a couple guys who have only played d&d and I want to run them through rifts. Something new for all of us. There's alot of source material for rifts and I have PDFs of most. My main weakness as a gm is finding the right setting to start. I tend the think big to early. Where should I start? Does anyone have suggestions for first level modules I'm looking for something easy enough but exciting enough to capture my new players attention. Any help would be greatly appreciated.. BTW I love the Crazies O.C.C haha off topic.
User avatar
Razzinold
Hero
Posts: 1568
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:51 pm
Comment: HTTP 404 [witty comment not found]
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Razzinold »

MrDisturbed wrote:First off I am sorry if this has been asked before. Or if I'm in the wrong forum. I have played fantasy and heroes but never Rifts. I met a couple guys who have only played d&d and I want to run them through rifts. Something new for all of us. There's alot of source material for rifts and I have PDFs of most. My main weakness as a gm is finding the right setting to start. I tend the think big to early. Where should I start? Does anyone have suggestions for first level modules I'm looking for something easy enough but exciting enough to capture my new players attention. Any help would be greatly appreciated.. BTW I love the Crazies O.C.C haha off topic.



Well first piece of advice is that I wouldn't mention this on these boards unless they are all legal copies purchased through Palladium, people around here get awfully touchy about that.
I mean everyone knows they exist, they just are never spoken about publicly.

Well North America is a good place to start, but it's also a very big place. My suggestion would be to pick a region and stick with that. I find a good place to start is out of New West, or out of Merc Town and the surrounding area. There is a lot of material fleshed out so you can go into a lot of details when describing the area.

I will let someone else handle the part about low level modules. I know that there are some Hook, Line and Sinkers in some of the books and sort of a practice campaign in one of them. I find that Palladium kind of steered away from scripted adventures like D&D did.
User avatar
MaxxSterling
Adventurer
Posts: 650
Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:05 am
Comment: I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum...
Location: Lvl. 3-B, Wonderworld

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by MaxxSterling »

North America, use the Coaltion as the main bad guys. Or if you like Space, go with Phase world. Good stuff there.

*And, I would personally stay clear of these boards. They are infested with trolls and fanboys. I don't exclude myself from that statement. Just read the books, play and have fun. These boards ruined Rifts/Palladium forever for me and my group and I'd hate to have anyone else drawn into that.
User avatar
Killer Cyborg
Priest
Posts: 27954
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2001 2:01 am
Comment: "Your Eloquence with a sledge hammer is a beautiful thing..." -Zer0 Kay
Location: In the ocean, punching oncoming waves
Contact:

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

If they've only played D&D, never any Palladium Games, then I'd suggest starting off with a simple adventure designed to get them acclimatized to the new system.
I'd aim for something pretty short, that focuses on skills and abilities, with only one or maybe too combat encounters.

Something as simple as, "Some unknown creatures have been picking off sheep and cattle from farms on the outskirts of town, and now a person (could be a child, could be an adult, depending on which makes for better motivation) has gone missing as well. The town council has scraped together enough money (or, more likely, trade goods or local store credit, or whatever) to hire the party to track down and kill the creatures.
Tracking the creatures from their last attack site will require multiple skill and/or attribute checks to follow the trail as well as overcoming a few natural obstacles or hazards.
Depending on how much role-playing you want to get into, the creatures could be either evil predators that the party has no real choice but to attack, or they could be intelligent enough for the party to deal with them through negotiation of some kind.
I'd keep the power level relatively low, avoiding allowing characters with powers and/or equipment that negates most or all of the adventure. In this case, I'd say no jetpacks, power armor, and so forth, or the magical equivalent. Keep them on foot and such, so that things like cliffs, river crossings, etc. could be legitimate obstacles.

I'd have the creatures be appropriate for the power level of the party as well as the adventure. Since the pay isn't great, the danger shouldn't be great. Characters should expect to get their armor lightly damaged, but not so damaged as to make repair bills eat up all of their profits. Same thing with ammunition expenditure.
The random creature generation tables in the RMB are good for coming up with that level of threat.

(This could also be an appropriate adventure for a team of CS characters, although the motivation would be protecting the town instead of getting paid, and ammunition and armor concerns wouldn't be as important.)

One thing that I'd suggest that you keep in mind, and demonstrate in gameplay, is that the percentages for skills only apply in situations where rolling the dice makes things more interesting instead of less. In D&D 3.x terms, skills shouldn't even be rolled in situations where a D&D character could Take a 10 or Take a 20 to solve the situation.
Basically, if the task is easy and/or there's no real rush, there's no need to roll a skill check.
A person with Land Navigation, for example, doesn't need to make a skill check while moving through familiar terrain, or walking a block or two in a small town. A person with the Swimming skill doesn't need to make a check when they're in a public swimming pool, unless they try to get too fancy in some way. And so forth.
Annual Best Poster of the Year Awards (2012)

"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." -George Orwell

Check out my Author Page on Amazon!
User avatar
MrDisturbed
D-Bee
Posts: 29
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2012 12:04 am

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by MrDisturbed »

Thanks for the advice all of you. And I do believe I'm going to keep them restricted to human characters with the options of the base O.C.C's I also want to keep them from getting to much power to quick.. Mainly gear wise.. Lol noticing a major power creep as I look through these books. And as far as the adventure I got plenty of plots and subplots I just need a place to put them lol. I'm not good at laying out the land so to speak. And about staying off the boards.. I love the forums. I usually watch the fantasy boards tho.
User avatar
Athos
Hero
Posts: 829
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2004 3:16 pm
Comment: Free Missouri, stand up to Apartheid everywhere.
Location: Placerville, CA
Contact:

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Athos »

MaxxSterling wrote:North America, use the Coaltion as the main bad guys. Or if you like Space, go with Phase world. Good stuff there.


I think North America is a great start... I would try the New West areas though. CS is a good villain, but there are enough "monsters" out in the west to satisfy old school D&D'ers. Personally, I would avoid phase world at the beginning since it seems like the most advanced setting in Rifts and I would try to keep things a bit on the medium to low power level to start.

MaxxSterling wrote:*And, I would personally stay clear of these boards. They are infested with trolls and fanboys. I don't exclude myself from that statement. Just read the books, play and have fun. These boards ruined Rifts/Palladium forever for me and my group and I'd hate to have anyone else drawn into that.


You have to take the boards with a grain of salt, this is true. If someone has tens of thousands of posts, then you know what their hobby is. I mean, who really has that kind of free time? :) But ya, if rules lawyers arguing over the dozens of contradictions in the Rifts rules is a turn off for you, I would stick to threads with 20 or fewer posts, they tend to have gotten to the meat of the matter and anything beyond that tends to just be arguing for the sake of ego. Personally, as long as I stick to questions that can be answered with a book and page number, I have had pretty decent luck on the boards getting help. And, remember, it is an online resource. Which means that people have no fear of personal harm if they are rude, obnoxious or offensive, so if someone upsets you, just figure they are a maladjusted, ninety pound kid afraid of his own shadow and move on, maybe even pity them some, but definitely don't take it personally.
User avatar
Razzinold
Hero
Posts: 1568
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:51 pm
Comment: HTTP 404 [witty comment not found]
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Razzinold »

MaxxSterling wrote:North America, use the Coaltion as the main bad guys. Or if you like Space, go with Phase world. Good stuff there.

*And, I would personally stay clear of these boards. They are infested with trolls and fanboys. I don't exclude myself from that statement. Just read the books, play and have fun. These boards ruined Rifts/Palladium forever for me and my group and I'd hate to have anyone else drawn into that.



I have to disagree with you on this, not the part about trolls and fanboys but the "stay away part".

Don't stay away from the boards, just be picky about which threads you read. There is a lot of valuable information that you can get from here, also it doesn't take long to figure out which posters to avoid.
Whenever I start reading a thread and it devolves into a back and forth kind of garbage that doesn't further the topic and creates a standstill I either stop reading or skip ahead and pick it up again after that has stopped.

@MaxxSterling - on a personal note your statement (IMO) is quite the contradiction. You dislike the boards and don't wish anyone else to join yet you stay, am I missing something here ? I'm not trying to bait you or start a war but I am genuinely interested by this remark. I have seen it numerous times from a variety of people, except their's was hate filled whereas you just made a matter of fact kind of statement (i.e. no hate involved), and everyone always asks the same thing "If you hate it so much then why are you here?"

They never seem to answer that questions, unless you count responses like "I can be here if I want to be", of course I'm paraphrasing, as a response. Perhaps it's because everyone was getting steamed up and thoughts were not clear. So seeing as how you are not worked up and angry I was hoping you could shed some light on this.
User avatar
Zer0 Kay
Megaversal® Ambassador
Posts: 13730
Joined: Tue Jul 06, 2004 1:59 pm
Location: Snoqualmie, WA

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Zer0 Kay »

MrDisturbed wrote:First off I am sorry if this has been asked before. Or if I'm in the wrong forum. I have played fantasy and heroes but never Rifts. I met a couple guys who have only played d&d and I want to run them through rifts. Something new for all of us. There's alot of source material for rifts and I have PDFs of most. My main weakness as a gm is finding the right setting to start. I tend the think big to early. Where should I start? Does anyone have suggestions for first level modules I'm looking for something easy enough but exciting enough to capture my new players attention. Any help would be greatly appreciated.. BTW I love the Crazies O.C.C haha off topic.


Start them with something familiar. Start in Fantasy as simple mercenaries or other class that would accept employment from a hamlet they are unfamiliar with.
The group comes into town or even individuals come in and see that the town seems dead. There is a mist rising from the ground and the wooden walls seem to be covered in sheets if parchment.
The parchment is a wanted poster offering a large bounty for the head of a dragon.
While everyone seems to have approached the same wall and are concentrating on the $$ The person in charge of the town breaks the silence, startling everybody but the deaf, oblivious and those who knew he was approaching.
He looks emaciated and sick with discolored teeth. I see you are all interested. If money is what you value that was last weeks poster and several families have been... ended. The town has agreed to give all holdings of the families the dragon has taken to the people who bring back his head.
The guy has some pretty detailed information on where the dragon is. Any questions about the towns people or the history of the town is met with some form of comment meaning we value our privacy. The characters find a hatchling dragon in a cave, the are littered with burnt bones and decaying corpses. The dragons lair is a cave with a bendy entrance that makes use of ranged attacks impossible. The characters easily get the drop on the dragon. The dragon pulls its head from under its wing just as the first weapon is raised into the air. Poof. It says and the group is surrounded by Forrest. The dragon springs back toward the cavewall that is no longer there. WAIT, you don't work for the necromancer do you? He has been sending seemingly endless waves of the dead after me. He had the townsfolk chase me out when he revealed what I was. My friend didn't understand and became frightened of me. So I left, a couple days later what used to be my friends were shambling through the woods hunting for me. Anyway, if your only interested in the money, you won't be able to find him here. (D-Port Rifts)
:thwak: you some might think you're a :clown: but you're cool in book :ok: :thwak:--Mecha-Viper
BEST IDEA EVER!!! -- The Galactus Kid
Holy crapy, you're Zer0 Kay?! --TriaxTech
Zer0 Kay is my hero. --Atramentus
The Zer0 of Kay, who started this fray,
Kept us laughing until the end. -The Fifth Business (In loving Memory of the teleport thread)
User avatar
drewkitty ~..~
Monk
Posts: 17737
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2000 1:01 am
Location: Eastvale, calif
Contact:

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

MrDisturbed wrote:First off I am sorry if this has been asked before. Or if I'm in the wrong forum. I have played fantasy and heroes but never Rifts. I met a couple guys who have only played d&d and I want to run them through rifts. Something new for all of us. There's alot of source material for rifts and I have PDFs of most. My main weakness as a gm is finding the right setting to start. I tend the think big to early. Where should I start? Does anyone have suggestions for first level modules I'm looking for something easy enough but exciting enough to capture my new players attention. Any help would be greatly appreciated.. BTW I love the Crazies O.C.C haha off topic.

start them off with a bar fight (as an introduction to the combat mechanics.)

The closest thing to "D&D game modules" are the adventures pulished in the Rifters, and some of the Gamebooks (HUGMG is the 1st one that comes to mind.)
There are also the "Hook-Line-Sinkers" that give a basic game mini-arc that GMs can customize to the power level of the char.

Note I used the term "power level", cause the level of a char is not really and absolute measure of what a char can do in the PB game system, like it maybe else where.
Last edited by drewkitty ~..~ on Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
May you be blessed with the ability to change course when you are off the mark.
Each question should be give the canon answer 1st, then you can proclaim your house rules.
Reading and writing (literacy) is how people on BBS interact.
Crow Splat
Explorer
Posts: 194
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2014 2:19 pm

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Crow Splat »

When I have new players that have never played in the system, I sometimes run them through a "Basic Training" or a tryout for a mercenary group. I'll have them perform a task that involves using some basic skills and have them fight something in a situation that doesn't necessarily put them in mortal danger but gives them a good idea of how combat works.

One of my standby beginner adventures is basically the players being a Coalition squad and going through a training coarse and a few basic missions. It culminates in the squad being given vague details and told to destroy a d - bee village. I then let them choose to follow orders or to investigate further and possibly disregard their orders.
Nox Equites
Explorer
Posts: 175
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 3:34 pm

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Nox Equites »

You might want to figure out what character types the players want to try and pregen an example for them with maybe a fudge factor to give them a good stat for the character. I agree with previous idea that starting players shouldn't have handed to them a Juicer or Crazy. A good starting character for the enthusiastic hard charger is a borg or dragon to give them a chance to regret their mistakes.
guardiandashi
Hero
Posts: 1437
Joined: Wed Nov 27, 2013 12:21 am

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by guardiandashi »

almost everything in the main book such as Rifts Ultimate Edition should be fairly ok to use.

the thing to remember is some classes may be more challenging than others.

for instance a coalition grunt, is in some ways a pretty simple char class to play, at a basic level, but if used creatively they can be very powerful.

most classes have a basic use and more advanced ones.
heck even the glitterboy which is in some ways a one trick pony, and has some serious potential flaws can if used properly be one of the if not the most powerful "core unit in the game." on the other hand if its weaknesses are exaggerated and or exploited it can be taken out fairly easily.
User avatar
Subjugator
Palladium Books® Super Fan
Posts: 3783
Joined: Tue May 04, 2004 4:56 pm
Location: Wishing Rorschach would catch up with me.
Contact:

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Subjugator »

I'd say all of the advice is good to a point, but don't take it too far. Don't stay away from the boards, but don't drink in the meanness. Stick to North America early on, but let 'em expand as you wish. Take the players on a short adventure that gives them a taste of the rules to let them acclimate to the differences between these rules and others (a bar fight is a very good idea). I'd also keep them to the main book for the early portion (either original or Ultimate), and let them graduate to other books as the campaign progresses.

I'm moving an observation about them using different classes to another thread (called 'Why I Like Rifts').

I'd add a couple I've not seen*: Make sure they know and understand what house rules you're already expecting to use (if any).

I'd also keep them to the main book (either original or Ultimate).

*Someone might've given it, but I didn't notice it so far.
There's a reason...and a very good one...that I have certain people in this forum blocked both here and on Facebook.

I can see an illustration of that nearly every time I come here.
User avatar
drewkitty ~..~
Monk
Posts: 17737
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2000 1:01 am
Location: Eastvale, calif
Contact:

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

Another thing: Don't run games in places that the players have local knowledge in real life of. That way you can make landmarks up w/o getting "corrected" by the players.
I play on-line all the time and just hate it when the game takes place in the LA area. So I know more about the place then the GM and annoyed cause I keep thinking "no, that isn't right" or I take an action about what I know is there and the GM say doesn't work cause the things I know are there are not there in his game.

However, if it was a BTS game (or other 'modern setting" game) you might want to build a game on your local so your players are familiar with the area (If All of them, players and chars, are from that area) and you just throw in the nasty creepies they need to investigate/clean up.
Last edited by drewkitty ~..~ on Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:01 pm, edited 3 times in total.
May you be blessed with the ability to change course when you are off the mark.
Each question should be give the canon answer 1st, then you can proclaim your house rules.
Reading and writing (literacy) is how people on BBS interact.
User avatar
Razzinold
Hero
Posts: 1568
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:51 pm
Comment: HTTP 404 [witty comment not found]
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Newbie Advice Needed!

Unread post by Razzinold »

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:Another thing: Don't run games that the players have local knowledge in real life of. That way you can make landmarks up w/o getting "corrected" by the players.
I play on-line all the time and just hate it when the game takes place in the LA area. So I know more about the place then the GM and annoyed cause I keep thinking "no, that isn't right" or I take an action about what I know is there and the GM say doesn't work cause the things I know are there are not there in his game.

However, if it was a BTS game (or other 'modern setting" game) you might want to build a game on your local so your players are familiar with the area and you just throw in the nasty creepies they need to investigate/clean up.



This is good advice. I went through this with a player and I wish it was limited to land marks.

They were pinned down without the majority of their equipment and he was like "I cut through the alley and go down half a block to where so and so's gun shop is located".
I had to argue that he can't do that because even if that shop did exist he wouldn't know that because it was his first time to that city from a gaming perspective.
Post Reply

Return to “Rifts®”