User:Bill/Rifts Week by Week/Series One Notes

Slated to run ten weeks, every Monday from August 8th to October 10th, Series One will focus on the Triax 2 book and showcase several racial character classes from the Thundercloud Galaxy book.

Pregenerated Characters

All of the pregenerated characters for Series One will be made using one or more of the following books; World Book 31: Triax 2, Dimension Book 14: Thundercloud Galaxy, Rifter 51, Rifter 52. These sources have been selected in an effort to highlight the most recent releases in the Rifts product line. While players who wish to make their own characters are encouraged to use these sources, they are not required to do so as long as the characters are of a similar power level and are able to fit into the background story.

• Ashara
• Jimena
• Milosh
• Peta
• Theophorus
• Zebulon

Background Stories

Since this is a drop in game, you may not want to put a lot of time or thought into your background story. The character still has to fit into the series, if only a little. I really only need the following defined for every character.

• How you got to Germany
• Why you joined the special tactical regiments

The easiest answers to these questions are that the character was born in the NGR or one of the D-Bee border settlements and that he or she (or it) is attempting to gain citizenship, but feel free to be creative. Anything else you take the time to write will be read, provided that it's legible, and I may end up incorporating portions of it into the metaplot.

Participant Log

Player	Sessions	Points
Chewie	1	500
Dylan	2	1000
Rachel	1	500
Theresa	2	1000

Session One - August 8, 2011

I was excited to hear that as many as six players were interested in playing Rifts on Mondays. I was not very confident that I would get many takers for a non-D&D game Monday nights. That only three showed up wasn't a real discouragement either. For this first Session, I had Dylan, Rachel, and Theresa. Dylan brought his own character, a Grackletooth Gunfighter called JW (John Wayne). Rachel played Ashara, the Shing Lioness. And Theresa opted to play Peta Grüber, a glitterborg from Rifter 52. This presented a small problem as I am not completely versed in the powers that Dylan's character has available. I ended up short changing him a little during the second fight.

The session revolved around two combat encounters. I opened with the aircraft that the group was traveling in being attacked in midair by a couple gargoyles. I could have short handed this scene by saying that the plane was forced down by monsters and jumping directly into the second encounter, but since the objective of this game is to offer players the opportunity to learn the rules, I played it out. Ashara easily removed one of the two gargoyles by casting net at it. JW opened a door and drew a bead on the second while Peta braced her laser cannon on his shoulder. The gargoyle got one good swing in on the engine before they shot the hell out of it.

The crash permitted us to use the plane crash rules from the core book and highlight how dangerous megadamage situations are to SDC creatures. The Shing was forced to leap out of the plane and invoke its Giant spell rather than be killed in the crash. This came up again later. The crash also permitted me to eliminate the pilot and copilot from the cast.

After the crash, I left it up to the players to decide whether they would attempt to return to the coast or trek north to Germany. Neither route would be short. The plane crashed in the former territory of middle Pyrenees in what used to be France. Moving out, I told Rachel that her character was sensing supernatural energy all around them. And after a short trek, I had the characters with Detect Ambush and Detect Concealment make a skill check. They easily detected a group of humanoids in unknown battle armor staked out for an ambush. Playing true to her character, Theresa attacked without hesitation with one of her fragmentation mini missiles. This could have led to a pretty brutal assault, but the players managed to figure out that the men in white armor weren't trying to ambush them. I gave Theresa a chance to reign Peta's behavior in, the character is suffering from the Homicidal insanity, and she was successful.

Before the men could adequately explain themselves, only identifying that they were elves from Sceaduwe and that they are defending their forest from an undead menace, I had a dozen zombies assault the combined group. Using tokens to help keep track of combat actions, this went pretty smooth over all. Rather than track the NPC on NPC violence, I described the elves taking coordinated actions to take down one zombie every other turn and had one of them go down to enhance the potential threat of the monsters.

On the players' side, the dice rolls were not in Theresa's favor, but Dylan managed to make some called shots when they counted. Rachel struggled a bit to understand that the monsters could destroy her character if they landed a single blow. Dylan and I provided some guidance to suggest an effective strategy for her and she managed to be more effective. Combat was over in approximately four melee rounds, or an hour of real time. My overall assessment of the combat sequence is that it easily becomes repetitious and that I will have to be more dramatic in my descriptions if I am going to keep it engaging. This was in part due to the monsters being mindless. I think things will be more interesting when the opponents are acting defensively.

The session ended with the player characters being guided to Sceaduwe and introduced to the leader of the elves, Wisfæst Dökkálfar. I described Sceaduwe as a miracle of organic looking architecture. The buildings being constructed from a strange white material similar to stone. The Shing Lioness, with her ability to see the invisible, was able to see the remarkable network of mystical energy that flowed from the trees surrounding the city, through circuitry-like patterns on the buildings to the central tower where Wisfæst Dökkálfar's audience chamber is located. As they traveled through the city she was able to draw more and more Ley Line energy, at the center it was equivalent to a nexus point. The leader of the elves introduced himself and offered the players his hospitality.

As with my Encounters sessions, I am awarding experience points to players rather than characters. The pregenerated characters will never level up, but any player may elect to create a new character at any time using their accumulated experience points to determine the character's level. So, if one of the players wanted to bring a new character in next week, the 500 experience I am awarding this week will apply to it.

Session Two - August 15, 2011

I was quite nervous about my second session. Rachel and Dylan had both told me that they would not be present, and not knowing Theresa well it seemed likely that I would be killing the evening by myself. Fortunately for me, Dylan's plans fell through and Theresa brought Chewie along. I attempted to cajole another guy into joining, but he was reluctant to take part and doubly reluctant to use a pregenerated character. About a half hour in, I had a kid somewhere around 12 years old ask to join in. I turned him down on grounds that we were already into the meat of the session, but to be honest I am reluctant to bring a minor into the group. If he asks again, I'll tell him that I need to get his parents' permission before he can join. The last thing I want is to have an angry parent yelling at me because I am corrupting his or her child with my language or violent role-playing game. Anyway...

This session really was about the player characters gathering information on Scaeduwe. Dylan and Theresa continued with the characters that they played last session, Chewie elected to play Jimena. I am thankful that he went that direction because it permitted me to give the group a lot more information than they would have gotten with one of the technologically focused characters. Some important details that were gathered; Scaeduwe has been standing at least sixty years, the alien trees that the elves are protecting extend almost exactly twenty miles in all directions from the city, the trees act as powerful PPE collectors, so powerful in fact that they effectively consume a ley line that formerly crossed the border of the forest, and that Wisfæst Dökkálfar is a powerful supernatural being.

The session also involved a brief fight with a werewolf and its fenryr allies, and Peta blindly lashing out at one of the trees to see what would happen; she got blasted with a huge energy discharge. Shortly after her attack on the tree, the elves attempted to take the group into custody. The cyborg dramatically leapt from the top of the central tower and scaled the city wall to escape while Jimena used her jetpack to evade pursuit by taking to the air. JW was interrupted during his breakfast and locked in the stockade. If not for his disarming manner, he would likely have been left to rot there. Fortunately the grackle managed to convince Wisfæst Dökkálfar that he could insure his friends wouldn't join forces with the necromantic menace.

Mounted on the back of an enormous draft horse, JW caught up with his companions; the cyborg's trail was far from challenging to follow. After bringing his partners up to speed on the elves' concerns, Jimena's sixth sense alerted her to a nearby threat. As a group all three realized that they had been surrounded by terrible necromantic monsters. Stitched together horrors made of man, elf, monster and animal parts confronted them on all sides. And that's where I left it. I love a cliff hanger.

Overall, I was pleased with how the session went and the feedback from the players was positive. Chewie indicated that he would be returning and that he wants to make his own character. The fight with the werewolf ended faster than I expected. Jimena happened to be in the right place at the right time to decapitate the monster before it could present a credible threat. Ironically, she was also the only character that could actually harm him. Partly this is due to my ruling that headshots are automatic critical strikes. I don't intend to change that rule, though I may revise some MDC values to compensate for it a little. I'm shooting for a delicate balance between a short, exciting, battles and threats that are genuinely dangerous. Under the normal rules, combat seems to drag so something needs to be adjusted.