Epiphany
Proverbs 17:9
Rifts - The Thirteenth Mystery
There's Always An Ending
The walls of Tolkeen have fallen, first in the north, then the east. Skelebots pour through the breaches, followed by Coalition troops. With Tolkeen air defenses and air support destroyed, SAMAS and other Coalition air wing invaders strafe everything that moves on the streets. The fighting has moved entirely to the streets. Defenders make use of the million hiding places within the city itself, exploiting basements, parking garages, secret lairs and passageways to use guerilla tactics. Invading tanks get bottlenecked and broken. Snipers turn squares and plazas into killing zones. Traps and ambush exact a bloody toll on the Coalition invaders.
It's still not enough. You've seen this campaign from the beginning.
That's when an airstrike brought down a nearby hospital, killing hundreds...and the surging energies of the Rifts swept over you.
The Premise
Your character finds themselves in Tolkeen at a speech being given by the King of Tolkeen.
The year is 100 PA.
The last 9 years have vanished but you still remember.
Once more, Tolkeen prepares for a war that may be inevitable.
Can you fulfill the Thirteenth Mystery and change the Future That Might Be?
This is a Palladium Rifts game and will require at a minimum the Rifts Core Rules book and ideally all six of the Coalition Wars books.
Character Creation
Questions?
Drop them here. Some remarks:
| There will come a time when a prophecy will not come true because interlopers from afar will enter events foretold and break their connection with the Future That Might Be. The changes they shall make from the Future That Might Be will be great, and those who had been destined to triumph shall be the losers, and those destined for defeat shall find themselves Victorious. Poor Yorick - Coalition Wars 1: Sedition, pg. 45 |
There's Always An Ending
It's still not enough. You've seen this campaign from the beginning.
- Maybe you grew up in Tolkeen or joined up to fight the Coalition or perhaps you were just a mercenary looking for a long-lasting paycheck.
- You were there, way back in the Spring of 100 PA when the King began giving speeches and rallying Tolkeen to prepare for inevitable conflict with the Coalition.
- You faced uncertainty of unknown combatants when the Skeleton Raiders forged deep into Tolkeen territory in 103 PA.
- 104 saw General Phineas Chalk unleashing Operation Fullbore and perishing in the attempt. If only it'd stayed that easy.
- Then Emperor Prosek announced the Crusade for Humanity in the summer of 105 PA
- Followed by four years of sustained, unrelenting war.
That's when an airstrike brought down a nearby hospital, killing hundreds...and the surging energies of the Rifts swept over you.
The Premise
Your character finds themselves in Tolkeen at a speech being given by the King of Tolkeen.
The year is 100 PA.
The last 9 years have vanished but you still remember.
Once more, Tolkeen prepares for a war that may be inevitable.
Can you fulfill the Thirteenth Mystery and change the Future That Might Be?
This is a Palladium Rifts game and will require at a minimum the Rifts Core Rules book and ideally all six of the Coalition Wars books.
Character Creation
- Characters can be created between 5th and 10th level, depending entirely on player preference based on how old and/or how experienced your character is. This provides the opportunity to play higher-level characters than players routinely experience in Palladium campaigns. The 'lower powered' your OCC/RCC is, the higher the level to aim for.
- You can play any OCC/RCC from any book, as long as there's a reasonably plausible excuse for them being in Tolkeen in 100 PA and having been in the final fight in 109 PA. I'm even open to non-Rifts characters as long as the Conversion book covers them (or it's not an enormous headache to crosswalk them) and they could have arrived on Rifts Earth via a Rift.
- No evil alignments please. The premise is based on changing the future of the Coalition War Campaign. Conflict/drama in character around how to change the future is encouraged but characters shouldn't be so intractably different that the party splits permanently over it.
- Players are encouraged to read all six of the Coalition War Campaign books and decide your character's biography, how they experienced the war, how it affected them and those they knew. This is a free excuse to reread a huge campaign without fear of spoiling things, since spoiling is the point of this game.
- Plan to work out how you'll know the other PCs, even if you only met at the very end. The only firm requirements there are (A) you were next to each other when the hospital collapsed in 109 PA, caught in the same Rift and (B) 9 years prior, your character attended the speech being given by King Creed. This is mostly to minimize the difficulty of pulling the party together.
- You do not need to plan what the group is going to do OOCly. The Coalition isn't attacking tomorrow. Sharing what you know with your (new/old) colleagues and deciding on a plan ICly is very much the point of the opening game, which will also be a great opportunity to get into character so you're encouraged not to rush it.
- I don't have a hard cap on how many players, feel free to ping your buddies (but if it gets to be more than, like, 8-10 people I might have to cry uncle).
- Actual levels awarded in game will be done via a milestone system.
- Attributes will be rolled as below.
Questions?
Drop them here. Some remarks:
- I'll make an OOC and Characters Thread if I get enough interest. Obviously, this is a niche concept in a niche game on a site that's largely diceless so no idea if we'll hit a critical mass for getting started.
- If there's enough interest, I may set up a Discord but I also know there's a chunk of prospective Palladium players on RPN who don't use it and I don't want to cut them off so...that'll depend on who signs up.
- New characters and/or new players should be easy enough to drop in as the game goes; clearly the newly arrived character was also in the final fight but they weren't at the speech so the group will meet them wherever they're at in the 'present', which will conveniently be the first time the characters will have crossed paths.
- While I'm largely retired from play-by-post (as seen by the post on my profile), I recently discovered RPN has Discord integration. Testing it out the last few days has given me some optimism that the new approach may work for my particular brain.
- I haven't run a game in years. But I'll do my best to bring the level of effort to the game as you see in this pitch. Just saying I'm rusty (so don't be shy with suggestions or feel you're rules lawyering if I get something wrong, I'm pretty easy going about thanking you for the correction and changing things up accordingly).
- I wouldn't characterize this as a sandbox game, because the world 'as is' will run according to the Coalition Wars Campaign books if no intervention occurs. However, what the plot will be, where the game takes place, areas visited and encounters encountered will depend on player choice. The only railroad is the war and time and it's up to you to decide if/how you'll force time onto a different track.
- Open to house rule discussions. I have half a dozen penciled down but prefer to get input rather than just impose. Suggestions are welcome!
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