Rifts Sourcebook One
Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 12:19 am
RIFTS SOURCEBOOK ONE (1991):
-So after all this jumping around, I've found I kinda like cycling back to the beginning of Rifts to see what the early books were like. Both England and Vampire Kingdoms were a little more fun than I thought they'd be, even though they suffer from some awful, boring O.C.C.s. So here I jumped to the VERY beginning to write up the original Rifts Sourcebook! This is more or less a collection of what they couldn't fit into the Main Rulebook, plus some extra stuff planned for a mass "World Book" before they gave up and decided to make every part of the setting a separate book. This ended up being a signature of Rifts, so it's kind of funny that it seems they'd initially intended to pump out a rulebook and some side books and that was that. Talk about an unexpected cash cow.
All in all, though, it's pretty clear what this is- a MONSTER MANUAL! It's very much just "here's some gear from Triax & the NGR" and "here's some Coalition gear"- some of which later got added into the updated Rulebook, but then piles on many of the monsters that become very important to the setting. So it comes off as kind of pointless if you've owned later editions or other World Books, I guess. 90% of this I won't even be reading, for instance. Included are stats for the Proseks and main Coalition people (updated in Coalition War Campaign), the Skelebots (same), notes on whether or not the Coalition is evil and what the average citizen & soldier is like, etc., plus some additional info about the world of Rifts Earth. There's bios here for the Rhino-Buffalo, Simvan Monster Riders & Brodkil Demons, all of which got updated bios in the mid-90s, but to be fair, these ARE the big "monsters" in the setting and it's smart to get those out early.
Oh, and there's a big "Player Campaign" featuring a mission against A.R.C.H.I.E.-3, a major antagnoist in the setting! So this, for players, would be mainly "The A.R.C.H.I.E.-3 book".
In short, I can see really wanting/needing to buy this book circa 1991, but within 3-4 years, you'd probably never pick up the thing again except for the robots.