Palladium's RIFTS is an ideal game to approach in the Braunstein fashion.
As I said yesterday, this is the sort of wargame scenario where players can be across all of time and space. If you were so ambitious, you could just get a score or two of players to take all all the emperorers, merchant lords, cosmic powers, dimension-hopping sorcerers, etc. out there and let them go hard to the paint.
It would be glorious.
It would be if the rules--or the lack of them--didn't get in the way.
Palladium's biggest blind spot, being a D&D-derivative by a Boomer that--in typical Boomer fashion--refused to pass what he inherited is a lack of concern for the Domain game and a half-assing of anything larger than the individual character.
No Morale rules as such, no mass combat, no economics, no Henchmen or Hirelings, nothing at all like what you'd see in the Dungeon Master's Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition.
That's not bad rules. That's no rules. That's a void where such things should be.
So you have a problem: the rules don't do what they need to do, as the designer never thought that these were necessary.
That the bad news. The good news is that, because Palladium is a D&D-derivative, you can tease out where the mechanical inputs for those things ought to be (e.g. rebuilding Morale from Fear saves, Henchman loyalty from the totally-not-Charisma attribute, Movement from Speed after Encumbrance, etc.) and graft on the necessary AD&D subsystems to fit.
That's what needs to be done: to identify the bits that imply the necessary subsystems, look over to the complete game, and port them over to fill the void.
Want to hear more? Come back tomorrow.
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