Rifts Adventure Summaries!


"I go to a bartender and say, 'Word on the street is some Coaltion Flunkies are gonna make an attempt on Julian's life. Pass it on.' And I walk away."

--One of Bobuelo's first actions after arriving in town as part of a Coalition sponsored covert ops squad whose job was to quell the juicer uprising.

This is a new page I'm experimenting with. My plan here is to eventually post small summaries for every Rifts adventure I've every played in. I'll likely make similar pages for seperate games or maybe just post them here too. I haven't decided yet. Anyway, here's the first of what will hopefully be several. Enjoy! Or...don't!

Btw, I realize I jump from third person to first person a lot in these. But that's just my style... Oh and I can seperate the RPG from reality in case you thought that this shifting perspective was indicative of my impending descent into a Tom Hanks-Mazes and Monsters lunacy. Cmon folks...cmon!


The Early Days

Protecting Small Town in Jungles of South America.

Erik was the GM. And myself, Mark, and Max were PC's.

I was playing an Anti-monster, an earlier incarnation of the character that would become to be known as Bobuelo. (I later created the background story that this was Bobuelo Sr., the father of Bobuelo. His son decided to follow in his dad's footsteps and serve his country by undergoing the Anti-monster operation. My fellow gamers were critical of this interpretation, as I recall.)

Our characters were soldiers of the Republic of Columbia.

I specifically remember being flown over the area we were expected to clean out of vamps. We were gonna parachute in.

Anyway a humorous moment came when, after we were given the mission objectives, the commander asked, "Now any questions?"

I remember shouting out, "Nope! I jump!" Only to be told by our GM, "Bobuelo leaps out of the plane without his parachute." I found it extremely funny and took awhile to stop laughing at the result of my over zealousness. Luckily Bobuelo survived thanks to his enormous amount of MDC.

The actual adventure remains spotty. But there were several memorable minor skirmishes in the town our unit was sent to protect. Some highlights of these small battles were...

Mark's proclamations of, "Let's get our backs against some wood!" Which drew confusing looks until he explained that since wood is harmful to vamps we'd be safe from being surrounded. This was until Erik explained that they'd risk the damage and just punch through anyway.

And the short lived plan of going into battle with somebody sitting on top of Bobuelo's shoulders. Just another one of the points that exasperated our GM during the course of this adventure. "Do you realize how complicated this will make the combat go?" Luckily for Erik, Max's character fell off when Bobuelo sprinted ahead to brawl with a vamp.

After these encounters The Coup de Grace of the session arrived. Erik gives control of one of the military NPC's to Mark for an encounter with Bobuelo. During the dialogue I am told that this whole mission has been a set up by the Colombian government and our elite cadre is fully expendable in the face of some unknown hidden agenda. I believe he also said there was a small army of vamps heading straight towards the town we were defending and the higher-ups would observe the details of our destruction from safety.

Understandably, Bobuelo Sr. flips out and starts running around looking for his fellow soldiers to let them know, "We're being played for saps!! We've got get out of here!!" I come into conflict with the townsfolk, the fellow PC's, and the military NPC's because of my character's paranoid and insane ramblings.

Keep in mind that I saw nothing out of the ordinary with an NPC being played by Mark delivering me this vital info. My impression was that Erik was so fed up with this adventure's stupidity he didn't care anymore. Thus he was more than willing to pass along some of the boring GM duties to one of the players. How wrong I was.

So what was Mark playing this adventure? That's right, a changeling. I took the bait hook-line-and sinker and single-handedly ruined my reputation with everybody in the town. My final misstep was when I got into a verbal argument with the local rough neck troll over the validity of my information. He didn't see the need for the complete evacuation that I was advocating. Bobuelo was punched so hard that he flew out of the town and into the surrounding jungle.

He slowly made his way back and decided to try and explain the situation once more only to be sabotaged by that damn interfering changeling. He hid in the shadows and used ventriloquism and impersonation to insult the troll with Bobuelo's voice. A fight broke out and Bobuelo was being soundly thrashed by the 12 foot troll while trying to expose the changeling's trickery and talk his adversary out of instigating such an action.

(It turns out that my opponent was not your garden variety troll. He was from Erik's stable of pre-made character sheets and had several super powers. Which helps explain why he was easily beating the crap out of my Anti-Monster.)

Then things ended when the sea of rats swept into town followed by vampires in wolf form. Bobuelo was immersed in rodents at the edge of town while the rest of the folk ran for their lives along with the PC's. I think that's where we closed up shop. And Bobuelo Sr. was no more. Alas...


Expedition To Nowhere

This "adventure" also took place in South America and held no relation to the one previously detailed. At least in terms of campaign ties.

Matt was playing a character of Erik's own design, an experimental juicer dogboy named Pookie. Who Matt renamed as Packer.

Mark was a power armor pilot. SAMAS I think.

Max was playing a superpowered vagabond who could create forcefields and had super speed.

I was a ley line walker.

Aaron, formerly a mere observer, gave himself the title of spirit advisor.

Kevin, chuckling bystander.

Notable NPC in our party: A magic using mutant squirrel.

Erik sez: It was a kercpa! (I think that's how it's spelled) Sheesh! I took it from some magazine... like Dragon Magazine or something... I think they were doin an expose on that particular DnD race or something. So I got inspired to create a race of lil squirrel people for Rifts.

The group was situated in a river front settlement and picked up a mission as guards on a boat that was heading down river. Mark and Max were creating general havoc in the town the day before we were supposed to leave. The most notable incident was the harassment of a feeble old man in a barn. (One they might have been robbing?)

Anywho, one of the primary rules of RPG's is that the weak looking elderly guy is often never weak nor ordinary. The theory held true for this dude. He wiped the floor with his two opponents and scared the hell out of them by displaying abilities far surpassing your average man. Carpet of Adhesion didn't even slow him down. He just lifted his feet and ripped out the floorboards that they were stuck too. (He's a godling, Erik pronounced)

Then, in a final act of humiliation, he launched twin snot rockets at his inferiors. Mark's character stood and took his punishment but Max had other ideas. He blasted out of that building at sonic speed and dashed down the street. He was shocked to discover that the gooey projectile was right behind him. And worse yet, it was slowly gaining. Horrified at this aberration of logic, the superbeing ran on. But it was to no avail. Eventually he gave up and met his fate. It was not pleasurable.

Next day, we all pile onto our fancy boat and set off down the amazon river. Our purpose? Damned if I remember. Things passed uneventfully until we saw another craft approaching ours. It was a canoe being paddled by lizard men. A couple of them looked to be armed with laser rifles.

This sets off Max as being a hostile threat and he decides to start shooting. I think this is something of an overreaction so I levitate him high into the air, thus preventing him from accurately firing at the natives. He was left there until the boat completely moved out from underneath him. After which, I let him drop into the water.

In a moment of arrogance, I just waved as he went dropping by the edge where I was standing. My reward was a laser shot to the chest. Luckily, I was protected by my body armor.

So the lizard men are fleeing, the vagabond is floating behind us, and everything should be fine. Until Aaron suggests I levitate Mark as well.

"He *is* your spirit advisor," Erik rationalized.

So after a failed roll of mental resistance, I expend all my PPE trying to levitate a guy in a five hundred pound suit of power armor.

Then, Mark got it into his head that Max was to blame for something or other and flies off the boat anyway, out over the river. A spontaneous battle occurs with the vagabond creating a forcefield bubble for protection and the SAMAS just sitting on top of it, holding it underwater. The stress on Max's powers was eventually going to prove too much and time was running out for. Things looked dire for the vagabond. Until...

I, the simple ley line walker, decided that enough time had been spent with these two psychopaths. So the choice was made to hightail it out of there and leave my compatriots to finish things off on their own. "I drive the boat away."

Little did I know that, upon hearing the sounds of the craft speeding away, this would be the factor that eliminated previous animosity between the two combatants. They immediately called a truce in order to eliminate the bastard who dared to leave in the boat.

With a couple of lunatics in pursuit, no PPE left to use on magic, and little knowledge of where he was going, the ley line walker made the decision to off himself with a quick laser blast to the head.

To which Erik responded with, "You can't." The supposed reason was because I missed or was out of ammo or whatever. The real reason was because Erik was petty and he wasn't afraid to show it.

This lead into a five to ten minute long argument over the reasoning behind that GM decision until the food arrived and we all feasted.

That was pretty much the end of the "adventure."

Erik also reminded me that Kevin was originally supposed to GM that night but he ended up being coerced into the job. He ended up taking it out on the PC's with silliness.

And when Kevin wasn't chuckling over the party's misadventures he was openly disparaging Erik's GMing. Which Erik retorted to with, "Oh yeah? You wanna take over?" Which was, of course, what he was hoping.

Also note, that the squirrel was originally going to be Erik's PC until he had to change his game role to GM. Thus, it became a starring NPC. FYI.

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