Oy. I'm dizzy just from _reading_ all that weapons garbage and technobabble on the posts about RIFTS. Head...spinning...must...stop it....(clunk)
Instant death doesn't at all appeal to me. When I make up a character, I make them up _carefully_ and I give them real personalities and backgrounds, etc. Sometimes I even _care_ about them--as much as anybody cares about their favourite fictional character in a book or movie, I guess. So I make them to LAST. I mean, I _intend_ them to last. If I go to all that work, I certainly don't want them to die on the first gaming session! I make up my characters with a lot of care, with the intention that they will last a long time and will eventually grow into something far more powerful.
Of course, I COULD give them zero personality at all, crank several of them out at once, and go, "Oh, well." if one of them dies and reach for the paper of the next one...but I'm not that kind of player. I'd much sooner BE a cardboard cutout with no feelings or background than PLAY one!
So. I've heard of RIFTS' world before and it sounded interesting but, if it involves instant death all the time...no thanks. Not unless you get clones, like in Paranoia.
The gaming systems I "know", for splicer and anybody else who got here after the original thread, are D&D 2nd edition, Hollow World (that's my fave _basic_ D&D universe), GURPS, Paranoia and a bit of Runequest. I tried making up a character using that program thingie for D&D 3rd edition, but there were so many new rules to remember it made me dizzy, again, and I never really fully memorised the rules to the OLD edition!
Anyway, for me, it's about ROLE-PLAYING, not combat! Oh, combat is a necessary evil, I suppose, without it you couldn't get experience points and advance...but give me _exploration_! Give me humour! Give me "human" interaction with other characters! Give me societies, towns, _cultures_! Give me a colourful, interesting, weird world! Give me history and three-dimensional NPC's! And _then_ I shall be happy.
I know, I sound exactly like the stereotypical "female gamer", don't I? Well...maybe I AM! So what? Nothing wrong with being intellectual and creative rather than mindlessly, repetitively violent!
Anyway, the thing we made up last was a 1500's? or 1600's?-era society on an Earth-ish planet, using D&D 3rd edition, and I was going to use my old Runequest character, although all the discussion we did about how to fit his homeland into this world without changing its culture drastically made me rather sick of him, and I'm probably going to make up a new dude or dudette. I wish I could get my brain out of Phantasy Star mode; I WANT TO PLAY A NUMAN! Meow! But in the 1500's Earth that would take some explaining. The closest I could get would be an elf who wears a swimsuit to battle (and full armour on the beach ) and uses strap-on metal claws for her weapons...
Mello
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Mello ]