Starting up idea

[OnOne]

Morning or afternoon to whom ever you may be,

Looking to start running a Rifts campaign once this Covid-19 craziness settles down a lot. I've some idea's on the direction I'd like to move the group into/ general story line, and I though its see what you all thought of it.

Starting plot:
Our characters find themselves in city just west of the Quebec boarder. Some are from there, others took a wrong turn though the wrong door (rift, dimensional gate, ect..), & others might have just walked into town. To sum up they find themselves looking for work after getting partially chewed up by the city. An up starting organization feels its time to explore the lands to the north and west, to discovers towns, start trade routes {time line wise, no one has explored Canada, or up into the arctic circle}.

This seems like a good way to have a starting/ low level game. Also helps me GM'ing this to build up the world, get use to how things work again.

Goals for my players stating out-
-What they need/ day (rations, fuel, ect)?
-How much they can carry?
-Whom if anyone they need to hire?
-Can they get what they need from the wild, or new settlements they find?
-How to map?
-How to navigate on/off road? Distance they can cover in a day?
-What town had what?
-How to act?
-What calls certain area's home?

In short lots of stuff for starting out PC's to figure out. I've rolled up random cities, organizations, Mercenary companies, traveling shows, hidden vaults, along with everything else in the wilds.

Figure that longterm they can quit the job, leave and come back to it, or run it all the way to completion. Completion would be- exploration of Canada, Alaska, Arctic circle, and northern Europe/ Asia.

Source material: I've got the Canada world book, and pick up the England world book hoping it would have into on the Scandinavian parts (it doesn't). Pending on how far they get I'll pick up the Russia books. Any other advice?

So that my idea, I'd like to see what you think, how I can make it better, stuff like that.

Thanks for your time,
Jeffrey

[Razzinold]

I know when we played a game similar to what you mentioned above, our GM read Chaos Earth. He said it gave him so good information about the dangers/benefits of moving as part of a large convey vs smaller raiding party.

Rifts Canada should cover the answers to most of your above questions, they even have rules about how their equipment functions in the elements, and I believe that there should be some random item table threads still on here that you could use for what they find in towns, can't remember if Chaos Earth has them or not. I think Dead Reign has random item lists, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[desrocfc]

I know when we played a game similar to what you mentioned above, our GM read Chaos Earth. He said it gave him so good information about the dangers/benefits of moving as part of a large convey vs smaller raiding party.

Rifts Canada should cover the answers to most of your above questions, they even have rules about how their equipment functions in the elements, and I believe that there should be some random item table threads still on here that you could use for what they find in towns, can't remember if Chaos Earth has them or not. I think Dead Reign has random item lists, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

As Razzinold pointed out, WB20: Canada has a lot of what you are looking for. I've not touched Chaos Earth yet; but colour me intrigued.

Some other NA-based suggestions (haven't read the Russia Books yet):

* Rifts Mercenaries, Merc Ops (for adventure ideas)

* Depending on the year you are playing, possibly WB11: Coalition War Campaign, WB22: Free Quebec and SB4: Coalition Navy for the dynamic between the CS and FQ

* If you are playing in and around the Hudson Bay, you could always throw in some WB:23 Xiticix Invasion as well

I certainly would not suggest getting a whole collection for regional input, unless specific OCC's catch your fancy (WB10: Juicer Uprising for Juicers, WB12: Psyscape for Psionics, etc).

Hope this helps and happy adventures!

[Orin J.]

as far as book suggestions, i think the black market book would be good for you, having a few low-end trucks and such as well as random traveling circus rules for idea fodder (and a lot of guns for you to overcharge- er, sell the PCs.) but i think you've got a pretty good grasp on what you want, a lot of travelling, a little confusion, and hopefully some fun adventures. i'd make cheat sheets for a few general bandits and roving military forces looking for "deserters" as well as grabbing some random monsters.

[Hotrod]

Morning or afternoon to whom ever you may be,

Looking to start running a Rifts campaign once this Covid-19 craziness settles down a lot. I've some idea's on the direction I'd like to move the group into/ general story line, and I though its see what you all thought of it.

Starting plot:
Our characters find themselves in city just west of the Quebec boarder. Some are from there, others took a wrong turn though the wrong door (rift, dimensional gate, ect..), & others might have just walked into town. To sum up they find themselves looking for work after getting partially chewed up by the city. An up starting organization feels its time to explore the lands to the north and west, to discovers towns, start trade routes {time line wise, no one has explored Canada, or up into the arctic circle}.

This seems like a good way to have a starting/ low level game. Also helps me GM'ing this to build up the world, get use to how things work again.

Goals for my players stating out-
-What they need/ day (rations, fuel, ect)?
-How much they can carry?
-Whom if anyone they need to hire?
-Can they get what they need from the wild, or new settlements they find?
-How to map?
-How to navigate on/off road? Distance they can cover in a day?
-What town had what?
-How to act?
-What calls certain area's home?

In short lots of stuff for starting out PC's to figure out. I've rolled up random cities, organizations, Mercenary companies, traveling shows, hidden vaults, along with everything else in the wilds.

Figure that longterm they can quit the job, leave and come back to it, or run it all the way to completion. Completion would be- exploration of Canada, Alaska, Arctic circle, and northern Europe/ Asia.

Source material: I've got the Canada world book, and pick up the England world book hoping it would have into on the Scandinavian parts (it doesn't). Pending on how far they get I'll pick up the Russia books. Any other advice?

So that my idea, I'd like to see what you think, how I can make it better, stuff like that.

Thanks for your time,
Jeffrey

Welcome to the boards!

My suggestion would be to start with a pretty simple shake-down adventure, where you give the players the option of revising some of their character creation choices at the end. The idea here is to give them a simple series of challenges designed to show them that they can survive, navigate, fight, recover, communicate, and trade. A simple delivery could be a good way to kick things off, especially if the thing you have them deliver can become the plot device for the next adventure.

You can certainly have a great adventure with the books you currently have. That said, if you want some more books, these cover areas near or where you want to go: Canada, the Tolkeen series+Aftermath, Northern Gun 1&2, Free Quebec, Triax 1&2, Underseas, Xiticix, the two Russia books, Sovietski, Mindwerks, and England.

Other general books you may find useful: the Rifts Game Master's Guide, Book of Magic, Black Market, Mercenaries, Merc Ops, Bionics, the Conversion Books, and Megaverse in Flames.

You may also want to pick up the Savage Rifts map of North America.

There are a ton of useful online resources out there that can help you prepare. I have a few suggestions:
A fantastic resource: a fan-made PDF map of North America.
I've also made some resources linked in my signature that could save you some time and help you run your game better:
+The Disposable NPC Generators are handy for coming up with NPCs on the spot and cutting down your guesswork and prep time.
+The Rifts England and Michigan Upper Peninsula maps gather and present a lot of canon information in a way that's accessible and easy for a group to use together.
+I've also made a Spell Selector Tool (available on my Patreon page) that's very handy for handling magic-using NPCs (and PCs, for that matter); rather than organizing them by level and alphabetical order, I've compiled all the RUE spells onto a single double-sided sheet, with spells organized by functional category (attack, defend, communicate, heal, et cetera) first and level/casting time second. It helps flatten the learning curve for playing spell casters.

[OnOne]

Wow, thank you all for the input. I'll factor all this in. One thing I'm also looking at is starting zero level characters. Playing in a 1st Ed d&d thing on roll20 where we start at zero level and then become a class. Looking into how this would work in the palladium system. As races go: should I pick up the d-bee's book, or the fantasy book? Seems like most everything is humans

[Orin J.]

Wow, thank you all for the input. I'll factor all this in. One thing I'm also looking at is starting zero level characters. Playing in a 1st Ed d&d thing on roll20 where we start at zero level and then become a class. Looking into how this would work in the palladium system. As races go: should I pick up the d-bee's book, or the fantasy book? Seems like most everything is humans

your class determines a lot of your base stat information, partly since literally all your skills and starting SDC come from that so i don't think a zeroed character is functional for palladium games.....but you want the world book D-bees of north america for everything other than humans. that one covers a LOT of ground for a worldbook, and is really more a sourcebook that walked in the wrong door and kept the free hat.