Hey all, I’m finally starting an AW game with some friends. We’ve been playing a lot of DW, and love it.
I was looking to set our game in Palladium’s RIFTS world. I’ve seen a couple people talk about potentially doing this, but can’t find any hacks. I only find mention of it.
I love the AW system and think it’ll fit for the RIFTS wold. Any help would be appreciated.
Maybe not what you want to hear, but just as Dungeon World benefits from having the group create the setting through play, so does Apocalypse World. Rather than playing in the Rifts setting, I would recommend playing in a setting of the group’s creation that is inspired by Rifts.
Asking questions of the players is essential — discussions of theme and tone beforehand make sense, but knowing everything? That may not be so rewarding.
Thanks guys, that’s not the problem I am concerned with. I’m thinking more in terms of the mechanical. I’m not as concerned with help for the story elements. You’re right, we’ll have that covered. I’m thinking of help with RIFTS Character Playbooks and the like.
I’m with William Nichols and Christopher Stone-Bush with not forcing a specific setting. That said, if your dead set on it I don’t think you’d need to do much. You can use the space marine mammal play book minus being a dolphin to have a play book for a power armor pilot. Other options would be the unofficial juggernaut book or just using a broader way of thinking of the driver (which is totally in spirit that Vincent Baker had). Magic and psionics can be covered by the brainer and the skinner and maybe even the hoarder. There shouldn’t be any need for custom moves but you can always add them as you see fit.
I will warn you that AW is a system which assumes the PC’s as individuals are just better than anything else in the world. The difficulty comes from the fact that even as total bad asses, they cannot handle everything at the same time. Rifts however has a lot of big bad nasties that PC’s are not supposed to be able to handle. Gods, dragons, riders of the apocalypse, whatever those eyeball things that had taken over atlantis were called, I remember they all had stats that only absurdly powerful parties could handle. Elements like that do not play nice with the MC’s principles.
Thanks for your response +David Rothfeder. Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but I was really just looking to be pointed in a direction like that. My players and I think RIFTS is a very rich world (no offense to any other settings) that we’d like to revisit, but that system is so godawful….and we wanted to give AW shot as well.
And you’re right, the NPCs of RIFTS get out of hand quickly because (it seemed like) no real thought went to balancing the world.
Thanks again.
ok, if the players are on board, then this is going to be awesome.
I wasn’t trying to discourage you if that’s the game your group wants, more that I wanted to point out where the system and setting disagree. Otherwise I think that Rifts fits very nicely in what AW can do since Rifts is an apocalypse setting, it has stuff that can be interpreted as the maelstrom, and weapons are extremely availible. My suggestion of the play books was to point out that the cool stuff from Rifts can easily be represented with existing elements. I myself don’t see much need for making a full hack to run a Rifts game since custom moves can cover any tweaks to make stuff work.
The Coalition would make a heck of a campaign front.
I’m still pretty new to all things PbtA but I think one of the first steps would be to check out the Simple World (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/simple-world/) and World of Dungeons docs to break things down to their most basic.
The next would be to compartmentalize the Rifts Character Classes down to their building blocks.
> Men at Arms, Adventurer/Scholar, Psychic, Magic, and Race are the core Character Class categories
> Power sources include but are not limited to Normal, Psychic, Magic, Supernatural, Powered Armor, Bionics/Cybernetics, D-Bee, Enhancements, Technology
> Attributes: IQ, Mental Endurance, Mental Affinity, Physical Strength, Physical Prowess, Physical Endurance, Physical Beauty, and Speed
> Condense Skills down to the Categories
I think Microlite Palladium would come in handy right about now…
“When you walk on a ley line, roll +Con….”