The Culture: Going Solo Through The Rifts (Rolling A Man Pt.1)

Time to pull another rulebook off the shelf. This time, it's Palladium's flagship: RIFTS.

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We're going solo, but first we need to generate a man. That means Character Generation, and thus I flip through my book to pg. 279.

This is a step-by-step process, but in typical Palladium style that process is scuffed and half-assed due to caveats unspecified. Time to get out the dice and some scratch paper, because Here We Go Again.

Step 1: The Eight Attributes

Ordinarily, you roll 3d6 to determine the starting score; if you roll 16+, you roll a bonus 1d6 to add to the total, guaranteeing a peak or superhuman score. For Men and Manlike aliens, that's fine; RIFTS, like Palladium Fantasy, assumes a wider array of playable characters than that.

Furthermore, some races have race-specific class options or are a class unto themselves. Combined with the above, and the lack of Attribute Score requirements for racial options, and the result is that the actual first step is "Determine Race".

We're going for a basic RIFTS Earth character, so in the absence of either racial attribute score requirements or a formal Racial origin table I'm going to go with "More or less a normal Man" vs. "Not" and divide this on a Pareto ratio (i.e. the 80/20 Rule).

I pick up the percentile dice and give them a roll. One toss later gives me a result of 89; we have a Not Normal Man result. Okay then, that means two results: Superhuman or Alien. Again eyeballing what is playable and not in this general category, I again go with an 80/20 split- with the smaller odds for a Non-Human. A roll of 20 means we're playing a Superhuman or something like it.

After reviewing the shelf of books, I'll go with another 80/20 split. 80% for a Superhuman, 20% for Supernatural; a roll 86 means we're in the latter territory, meaning that I'm getting out Pantheons of the Megaverse. I'm playing either a Demigod or a Godling, and because the former is far more common than the latter I'm weighing that roll to a 1 in 20 chance of getting a Godling; a roll of 6 means that someone owes Mom child support.

Finally, after all that, I get to rolling attribute scores. A roll of 3d6+2 gives me an IQ of 12. I roll 3d6+4 for a M.E. score of 20. For M.A., I roll 3d6+6 and get 20 again. It's 4d6+4 for P.S. (24), 3d6 for P.P. (10), 4d6 for P.E. (24), 3d6+6 for P.B. (20), and for Spd it's 4d6+6 (24).

All attributes are Supernatural, meaning that he is a Mega-Damage being on RIFTS Earth (base MDC is 120; base SDC in weaker worlds is 192, w/ 48 Hit Points).

He gets some other stuff, as that becomes relevant.

Step 5: Pick An O.C.C.

What happened to Steps 2-4? All fallout from Step 1, so skipped over; we'll get back to them later.

Given our Demigod's attribute scores, he can be whatever he wants provided that he abides by the following bans (Pantheons of the Megaverse, pg. 17): Full Conversion Cyborg (i.e. 'Borg OCC), Robot (i.e. Playing an android), Juicer, Crazy.

The only other influencing factor will be his inherited divine gift. This is from a list of 11 options, so I'm rolling 1d12 and rerolling on 12s; a roll of 10 gives him the all the abilities of a Ley-Line Walker, Shifter, Mystic, or Warlock (player's choice) and automatically gains all spells for that OCC equal to his character level. Picking this, for all intents and purposes, makes this character a psuedo-multiclassed character (something otherwise impossible under Palladium). I choose Ley-Line Walker.

With that divine gift bestowed, I decide to lean into what that implies and reach for Secrets of the Atlanteans to choose one of the Occupations therein. Going on a hunch, I choose Undead Slayer (Secrets pg 67); it's a bit of a redundancy (already a MDC being in high-magic environments inherently), but the combination of Tattoo Magic and Ley-Line Magic is potent AND being a Demigod means that someone is invested in having a half-mortal son.

As there's plenty of subchoices to make, I'll defer that to tomorrow.