Yet another of the fantastic settings from Palladium Books, hobbled by their insistence on using the archaic and clunky Palladium RPG system.

However, the great setting and ideas for creating mutant animals make up for it. The BIO-E system for mutation point costs is well thought out, and seems to play well. These mutant animals have also appeared in Heroes Unlimited and probably had a big influence on the Rifts Dog Boys.

It's too bad they couldn't reprint the original Teenage Mutant Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG, Transdimensional TMNT, or TMNT Guide to the Universe because those had some really great stuff too.

Very nice sourcebook, with all the information you could ever want on the Shemarrians. The only thing I would have liked to have seen would be a section on Shemarrian PCs.

This was the first Rifts Sourcebook, and it is still my favorite. This revised & expanded version is even better than the original.

There are a lot of new ideas brought forth in this book. Archie 3, the Shemarrian tribes, new equipment from Flying Titan industries and others. The best part is the section on Robot/AI player characters.

The book is also graced with a large selection of very fine art that fits the mood of the setting perfectly.

If the Palladium RPG system is a bad fit for Rifts, its an even worse fit for the Superhero genre. This book has practically no new ideas, it is largely a collection of tables of arbitrary and random powers.

If you want to play a Superhero, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of the HERO system or Mutants & Masterminds.

Rifts is a terrific setting, unfortunately shackled to the godawful Palladium RPG system.

There are lots of wonderful creatures and concepts, and I own dozens of the various sourcebooks. The Coalition States are developed in this book, along with a smattering of other nations. The character classes are very diverse and entertaining. But it can be a challenge to balance a party around characters like the Glitter Boy (can shoot through buildings), or a Dragon Hatchling (actual dragon and inherently an MDC creature) and a Rogue Scholar, whose special power is literacy.

The basic tenants of the combat system, and power creep since the first edition, also lead to either a slow combat consisting of whittling down the opponent's hit points/armor, or an over-reliance on called shots. When normal players have hundreds of hitpoints, and boss monsters have thousands or tens of thousands of hitpoints, something seems a bit off-kilter.

Another example of the problems with the system is the Strength stat. There are 4 different types of strength: normal, augmented, robot and supernatural. Each one of them has its own lifting, carrying, and damage progressions.

The layout of the books is poor, with sections scattered about in no particular order. It is good that it start with the background and setting, because that is frankly the best part. Then there are some character classes, then some psionic powers and magic spells, then some more character classes, then some equipment lists. And only then do they get to the section on how to actually create a character.

I do recommend buying these books, but only as a sourcebook for other systems such as FATE, GURPS, or Hero with more rational mechanics.

Product is damaged. Pages 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, and 81 are badly scaned and OCR. Hard to read them. Do they fix these issues? Are there refunds for broken files?

Hello, I only have one issue and that is, I am not able to manage the pdf file as I wish to convert it into word so I am able to share information with palyers vs items they are managing in game. Right now, there is no way to do it except finding informatikon on line and that defeats me buying the pdf.

Please, allow us/me to have full access to the files to make online game session more enjoyable and the player the ability for the GM to copy into work exactly what they have gotten.

Thanx mel.duffy@gmail.com Frustrated GM

The scan of this book is excellent. The missing star is because a good deal of the book is filled with character sheets. To be fair, most of this material is probably stuff that didn't make the page count of the first book, and Palladium probably had no idea how much of a hit the Robotech RPG would be, their most popular until Rifts.

The heavy hit here is the expanded timeline. My late 80s group used it as a kind of "plot point" campaign. The aircraft carrier stats and floorplans are nice, as are the writeups for main characters not included in the first book, like Claudia Grant, Roy Folker and Capt. Gloval. Descriptions of the "Reconstruction Blues" Earth are expanded, including the indroduction of Palladium's version of the Eastern Block, EBSIS. Although the core book and this one encourage playing in the post Zendradi armada destruction period through to the begining of the Southern Cross, with the material in this book and the Zentradi sourcebook, groups can easily play the three year SDF-1 in space period.

The book also contains missle logs and hit locations for mecha. I can't really speak to these because that's a little too close to war gaming for me.

The most disappointing aspect of the book is the discussion of military rank, which could have been clearer. It doesn't explain why some characters had naval rank and others had air force rank.

I am bias in favor of this game and this line because this book introduced me to roleplaying back in 1987. This system here is what has become known as the Palladium Megaversal System, dirived from first edition AD&D with precentage skill rolls reminecent of RuneQuest and other inovations, like a roll over d20 mechanic, that it would take TSR-Wizards over a decade to innovate on their own.

The best thing about this system is that though it has changed some since 1983, those changes are relatively minute. You can essentially port material from one game or setting into another with little work. My group used to play Robotech with martial arts from Ninjas and Superspises added in.

The scan is excellent, and presents an archival look at scifi-anime gaming and English language anime source material in 1986. One might ask how playable the game is today. My response would be that it depends entirely on the group and the game master. I have yet to play any rpg rules verbatium, and it's doubtful that the founders of the hobby ever intended rules as anything other than a bridge to entertainment. I have never used hit locations or M.D.C. other than Main Body to speed up the game, for instsance.

What makes the 80s-90s line of Robotech RPG books interesting is the degree of latitude Harmony Gold gave Palladium with the licence . In effect, in the 80s and 90s, there were four versions of Robotech that didn't always mesh: Carl Mecek's production for TV and notes for the Sentinels, the novelizations by Jack McKinney, the comics by the Waltrup brothers and Palladium's, which was very much a Cold War version of Robotech influenced by the geo-politcs of the 80s [see the RDF Manual]. This was great! it meant more Robotech. Harmony Gold's current lisencing allows for only the presentation of Tommy Yune's version of Robotech, which, while not at all bad, arguablly restricts the creativity of the RPG authors.

Buy it. Read it. Make it your own.

To my knowledge, this is the only issue of the Rifter to contain substantial Robotech RPG content, which makes it interesting to aging folks like me who were introduced to roleplaying through the game in the '80s.

This issue has a bit of everything, but of particular interest is the Atorian Empire article, because the book it previews The Guide to Imperial Space has yet to be published over a decade later. The Ninjas and Superspies adventure is also particularly good.

I have already a paper copy of it, but having used it beyond limit the PDF version is a good way to prevent it to crumble in pieces. And this version in particular, while surprisingly big, is actually quite good, ideal for cvarrying it over in the tablet. Woork smoothly and i don't see many flaw so far

if you are into Rifts or the Palladium universe, its a great book. Lots of great powers and great designs for heros. If you like the character creation system for Palladium characters, this is for you! This is a stand alone book to run your own super hero campaign, but also is easy to integrate into any other Palladium campaign. There are plenty of good illustations.

I look forward to using these in my games - I'm glad they exist!

I look forward to using these in my games - I'm glad they exist!