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.
Contents
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.
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 |
| Dylan | 1 | 500 |
| Rachel | 1 | 500 |
| Theresa | 1 | 500 |
Session 1 - 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.
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.
