Book Reviews – Page 13

Rifts dimension book two Phase world is my favorite book. I think many people have either a love or hate relationship with it. I really loved the Cosmo Knight for its looks and diverse options. What else is in Phase World you may ask, lets's get into it. Rifts Dimension Book Two: Phase WorldCJ CarellaPalladium Books208 Explore The Three Galaxies and the most advanced city Center on Phase World. GM material Phase World offers Gms a slew of new locations and NPCs to use. The city itself is gigantic in scope and has dozens of levels to explore. The maps for the city mark all the important areas and give many options for players to roam about while the GM plots their demise. Rifts dimension book 2 Phase World describes the city and gives an overview of the 3 Galaxies that it is set in. 3 main factions within the areas and their relations, important planets, who is important, and what's important in each system. There are eleven adventure ideas with an additional adventure more detailed with NPCs, backstories, and more. Player material Over 30 new Occupational character classes, and racial character classes to choose from, including the cosmo-knight, draconid, phase mystic, and others. This book takes to power up quite a bit. The options for truly legendary character creation are great. This also includes the technological advantages of the 3 Galaxies. Weapons, armor, spaceships, and many other basic equipments are just better than anywhere else. Cosmo Knights Rifts Phase World Story Material Phase world is a dimensional nexus like Rifts Earth is in its dimension. The difference is that Phase World has been this way for millennia upon millennia. The history of the 3 Galaxies goes back hundreds of thousands of years, though the city of Center on Phase World is over 5 million years old. This is one of the first books that made me really consider the scope that numbers pose. Our recommendations of the best Rifts books for a Minion War game. The 3 Galaxies have a combined total of 25 trillion sentients among them. That figure doesn't take into account alternate life forms like demons and carbon-based life. While that's a staggering living population it isn't near what the estimated population should be. Wars, plagues, and other things have wiped out many would be rising populations. With over a thousand spacefaring races and 2 or 3 times that of races with lower technology. Two main civilizations exist with a few other smaller ones. The Consortium of Civilized Worlds(CCW), and the Transgalactic Empire(TGE) are the two most powerful. The United Worlds of Warlock(UWW) is primarily mage based while the primary two are technologically based. Rifts Phase World: Transgalactic Empire story The TGE is led by a barbaric race that cares little for the freedom of other races. They are in fact led by an alien intelligence that is playing a long game of wiping out all life and only the leader of the TGE knows it, or rather of the intelligence. The TGE has an open policy of expansion through conquest and slavery with many in rebellion against them. The Kreeghor that rule the civilization are a bio-engineering slave race that freed themselves from the Splugorth. The irony is that their once slave masters were cruel and oppressive to them, which they then became to other races. Rifts Phase World: Consortium of Civilized Worlds The largest civilization of the Three Galaxies is only matched in military power by the Transgalactic Empire. The CCW was created centuries ago when a federation of planets led by humans came in contact with another group led by the Noro. Neither race was interested in a war they signed a peace treaty. Sometime later the TGE began raiding their territories so they joined forces and beat them back. The new alliance welcomed any advanced civilization to join. Their main goals are peacekeeping and self-defense. Anyone that joins has to meet certain "enlightened" principles. Those principles require interesting planets to meet certain rights and freedoms to their citizens. Such things as slavery are forbidden and impose heavy fines to anyone caught. Atlanteans are dimensional travelers, check our review of their introduction in Rifts World Book 2 Atlantis Rifts Phase World: United Worlds of Warlock Of all the large power blocks the UWW has one thing in common and that is magic. Instead of using technological advancements to fly between stars, they use magic to do so. Star elves were the first ones to start traveling between stars without technology but they never left the atmosphere. They ran into a collection of races that jumped into one of their solar systems using techno-wizardry. Seeing the advantages of controlling the space around a planet they set to make their own space fleet. Soon this led them to become a fully spacefaring society. This chance encounter led to a peace treaty, which then led to information and technology exchanges. The alliance grew over time and eventually became what it is today after a neighboring civilization, unfortunately, the Splugorth enslaved or killed all that lived on an elven planet. Rifts dimension book Phase World originality I find the material in Phase World to be very unique. No other book brought space to such an easily explorable frontier. In addition, it expanded the options tremendously. Mutants in Orbit, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and some other books exist that give the option of playing in the atmosphere or a solar system but it's very clunky and limited. If you like playing crazy different characters and want to play fun space opera, pirates, smugglers, or other strange classes/races then this would be the book to get. Is Phase World game-breaking…? The standard way of thinking most people find the Three Galaxies and Phase World to be extremely powerful. I believe power is relative. Instead, look at roleplaying more as a question of "what do you want to manage/track". In DnD we are really used to tracking daily rations, arrows/ammunition, some even track how and exactly where your equipment is located. I find that to be very tedious and dull. Though some find it interesting and enjoyable, so it all comes down to personal preference. Phase World offers new races that don't eat or breathe air for example. So the style of game you play can be wildly different. Ever play characters that drift through space and wait for other things to come by? My absolute favorite class is the Cosmo Knight and it comes from Phase world. In my opinion, its code of conduct is like the Rifts version of the Paladin from old advanced dungeons and dragons. Races like the Draconid, Phantom, Noro, and Promethean offer a really fun set of different options. Just after the Cosmo Knight is a racial generator which I've used a lot to create characters from. That generator is amazing for creating truly unique and different character options. Phase world equipment and armaments The technology level of Phase World is considered to be the most advanced technology that players generally have access to. It is by far more advanced than what's available on Rifts Earth. I look at a lot of what is listed as an example of what's possible allowing players and GMs to be creative and make up other gear if they so wish. How good are the OCCs(classes) The full scope of OCCs listed spans from a colonist up to the Cosmo Knight. So there is a huge range of options for gameplay. It is the first book that is fully meant to be long-distance space travel. With that in mind, other OCCs include space pirates, runner(smugglers), freedom fighters, and security agents. Obviously, these are setting-specific so OCCs from many other settings could still be used where appropriate. How well does it mix with the core Rifts game? As a dimension-spanning, all genre-spanning game in general, anything in Phase World COULD be brought to Rifts Earth. The challenge typically comes from the fact that gear from outside Rifts Earth doesn't have replacements unless you also play with the limited supply from Naruni Wave 2. That being said the settings for most people's games are kept separate. I would give it like a 1 star as far as combining goes simply because they are such different settings. Most races and such from Phase World come from super high-tech societies with billions if not trillions of people within a solar system. Coming to Rifts Earth would be like taking a historical trip back in time. Could some want to come, sure, would they, that's up to you to decide. Amazon link for Phase World Book