Rifts Casual Gaming - What to do?!
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 1:47 am
I'm "new" to Rifts after ~20 years away from it, and am running a campaign with casual gamers. We're all in our 30s and 40s, some have families, and though we try to make it a regular 5-6 hours a week, not everyone can play every week. So it ranges from one to five PCs, depending on the week. I started a campaign in late 101 P.A. because I wanted to take advantage of all the source material and engage in the timeline, rather than skipping past it to 109 P.A. I also made everyone roll a human and a non-MDC OCC from RUE (i.e. no Full-Conversion Borg or Dragon), because they're all new to Rifts (we played a little TMNT beforehand) and I want them to experience MDC from a squishey's perspective, and to not overwhelm them with the plethora of options before they're even familiar with the core system.
I started them off nearish to Chi-Town, and am having them work their way east to encounter ARCHIE. I'm trying to expose them to a lot of the world in a relatively quick manner, because our gaming time is limited. I have 27 pages of campaign notes, that extend to the Mechanoids, smuggling Naruni gear into Splynn for resale, New West, Mexico, and eventually Africa for the 4 horsemen. And that doesn't even touch on Europe and a ton of other great content. I really just don't know what path to take. I'd like them to gain power holistically, but things don't move that fast. I'm reading through Atlantis now, and Rune Weapons specifically. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to drop a bunch of rune weapons in their laps, but there are so many things in the source material that take so many pages of content, and adamantly stress how limited their availability should be. So what does a GM do? Are rune weapons so rare that only one PC in a thousand would ever get one? What about Tattoos? What about x and y and z? I want to empower my group so that they can enjoy the world of Rifts, but I don't want to overpower them. I also don't want to always have to save their asses with NPCs because the encounters were too much for them. And I want them to experience as much as possible - what's the point in having so much content if the players only experience a tiny fraction of it?
I guess I'm just looking for some guidance on how to fast-track a campaign (from both a story and a player capability perspective) while still playing true to the fantastic world that Rifts is. FWIW, the OCCs (listed from most to least frequent player) are:
Shifter
Cyber-Knight
Psi-Operator
Gunslinger (I allowed this exception to RUE because I think they're cool)
Mind Melter
I started them off nearish to Chi-Town, and am having them work their way east to encounter ARCHIE. I'm trying to expose them to a lot of the world in a relatively quick manner, because our gaming time is limited. I have 27 pages of campaign notes, that extend to the Mechanoids, smuggling Naruni gear into Splynn for resale, New West, Mexico, and eventually Africa for the 4 horsemen. And that doesn't even touch on Europe and a ton of other great content. I really just don't know what path to take. I'd like them to gain power holistically, but things don't move that fast. I'm reading through Atlantis now, and Rune Weapons specifically. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to drop a bunch of rune weapons in their laps, but there are so many things in the source material that take so many pages of content, and adamantly stress how limited their availability should be. So what does a GM do? Are rune weapons so rare that only one PC in a thousand would ever get one? What about Tattoos? What about x and y and z? I want to empower my group so that they can enjoy the world of Rifts, but I don't want to overpower them. I also don't want to always have to save their asses with NPCs because the encounters were too much for them. And I want them to experience as much as possible - what's the point in having so much content if the players only experience a tiny fraction of it?
I guess I'm just looking for some guidance on how to fast-track a campaign (from both a story and a player capability perspective) while still playing true to the fantastic world that Rifts is. FWIW, the OCCs (listed from most to least frequent player) are:
Shifter
Cyber-Knight
Psi-Operator
Gunslinger (I allowed this exception to RUE because I think they're cool)
Mind Melter