#183 – Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign

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Today we're talking about Rifts World Book 11, the Coalition War Campaign. Probably the most divisive book that had been published up to this point. And there is the right opinion that all the armor in it is awesome and it looks awesome. And then there's everyone else's opinion, apparently. How do you feel about that statement, Nathaniel? And he just stares at me as he doesn't want— he is on the wrong side of this conversation. I Okay, we'll step back for a second.

Okay.

The book opens up, before we get to that debate, the book opens up with this speech and a prelude to war and basically Emperor Prosek saying, hey everyone, we're going to take over the world. We're going to do this big speech. We're taking over everything. It's going to be awesome. And we're gonna unify the campaign of unity, and we're all gonna be one group of humans, and we're gonna dominate the world. Except for the fact Free Quebec has broken away because they don't like us. And we have these— those juicer things just happened. That's a problem. And Tolkien is a problem. We don't like Tolkien. But we did a stealth attack on all the non-human influence, and we wiped all their bases out. So we've murdered a bunch of people in the night, but we're the good guys. And that's how the book starts. And it's just off to a bang. Like, like, I never liked the N'rani anyway. And they go and kill every N'rani dealer in North America, which I thought was like crazy.

That was something that it happened between books though. Like, like just Yeah. Oh, oh, by the way, they're gone now. Wait, what?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like since when?

And they weren't really, I mean, they were only in a couple of books up to this point anyway. Mercenaries, a little bit in South America.

That's it. Pretty much. Yeah.

And, and it was, it was very interesting that, you know, from a writing perspective, they chose to wipe them out. Like we went in and killed them all because they are bad and they're not humans. Like, okay. Okay. I, hmm. Interesting. But yet they didn't take out like Northern Gun. They didn't take out Triax, who are Archie, you know, they didn't take out— not Triax. Um, they didn't take out, uh, Titan. Titan, excuse me. Um, which is Archie, right? But yeah, it's interesting. And then they go in and talk about, you know, the Federation of Magic, which is, you know, probably one of the worst combined forces there is on the planet because they don't all get along either. And they talk about a nice update about what's going on. in the region, the different cities and different city-states, and how they brought in the Ishbeming and the Manstique Imperium. You know, a lot of good world updates, some, some fun maps that say, hey, this is what's going on here. This is what's going on here. Here's the CS Missouri, Lone Star, Chi-Town, the domain of man.

And we get a lot of really cool stuff about life in the Coalition, their laws, what's happening in the cities, how to get in and out. Then we get to the army section, which has some great information about their rank and file. If you've ever wondered what the structure is, who's in command, what are the size of their organizational units within the military, it's all here. It's good information if you have a desire to put the Coalition as a large military force in your game.

Yeah.

And a lot of us do when you're doing North America, they become the big bad, you know, um, the big human bad, so to speak. And it talks about, it almost gives you some justification for what they're doing. Um, there's a good game master tip here, the Coalition, good or evil, uh, really talking about how in some ways their hope for humanity, not great and not, not good guys. I like to use the argument of, if you're surrounded by a bunch of things that are going to kill you, what are you going to sacrifice to keep you and your family alive?

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Yeah.

And, and, and it gives you some empathy for the average Coalition citizen, you know, why they might make the choices to live there and live under that regime. And it gets interesting and it gives you some tips, talks about the different types of people. You know, how, you know, what respect, everything you might possibly want to know if you're a Coalition soldier, you want to play a game, you know, your salaries, everything, uh, like a lot of depth here.

It's something useful to everyone, at least if you are working your way through the books and not using the Ultimate Edition, you're still working with the BOTS Edition and you're just, you know, sticking with the early stuff. Starting on page 58, they finally take all of the skills that they've introduced in the past several books and reprint the master list. Very useful.

Yeah, super useful. I will say, uh, there's a couple of skills in here that a lot of players that I know would like go try to find because it just kind of rounds out their characters.

Yeah. The one thing they didn't do is put references. Yeah. They should have mentioned where those skills were, but there's a lot of new ones introduced here, which are Actually, how many pages? Okay, military and wilderness trap construction takes up about a third, no, 2/5 of page 62, all of page 63, half of page 64, and then a 4th of page 65. That might be the longest skill description in Palladium history.

And it's every type of mundane trap and booby trap that you could Probably shake a stick at. It's a little excessive, to be honest. And it's so big, it's credited to 2 people. You notice that? Which, which I don't think— I don't know if I've ever seen another skill that actually gets a credit. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. That's a big skill.

Okay. OCCs.

Oh yeah. Okay. Here we go. So OCCs, I think, are pretty neat. Coalition Borg, really cool. The CS Commando. I think they're okay. The specialist, sorry, the explosive ordnance specialist is pretty cool. Now, remember our last book? Congratulations. We now have Coalition Juicers.

And one thing we didn't mention in the Juicer Uprising, there's a whole section that talks about the secret Coalition Juicer program. We didn't even touch on that, but they're right here.

Yeah. Reprinted information, but now it's like, it's official. They're here.

They're here.

Now, my favorite of the OCCs, probably because of its artwork, is the Ranger. Oh, that is a badass piece of artwork for a badass character.

Yeah.

Like it is essentially the opposite skill-wise or sorry, power level-wise of the Dead Boy in every way. Well, and if you want a villain that will ruthlessly hunt the party, If you really want to bring in someone that would probably be played by Rutger Hauer, the CS Ranger is where it's at.

Absolutely. Yep, absolutely. And it's, it's one of those classes that it's not crazy powerful. It has all the skills you need to hunt people down. They're going to be sneaky. They're going to ambush you every time. You're going to hate this bad guy so much every time you can't kill them because they're going to run away. They're going to evade, you know, they're, they're not going to hit you in a standup fight. They're going to, you know, they're going to slash your tires at night when you come out of the bar. Uh, they're not pleasant.

Also, what I really like is this is the only representation of the new style Coalition armor that doesn't suck.

Ah, I would say it's probably the best of all the new Coalition armor because it's so awesome.

It is. It's really awesome. Like it does a good job of, I feel, mixing the Best of both worlds.

Yeah.

Then we get this dick tease of a page on page 86 of the special forces using that sweet-ass black spiked armor. Yeah. Look at that shit.

Yeah.

And then 2 pages. What the fuck is this? What, what is this white? It's not, it's not scary. It doesn't even look like a skeleton to me. It looks fucking '90s. It looks like a rad '90s cartoon.

Okay.

I mean, it's, it's really, it's just, no, no.

Let's just rip off the bandaid, go to page 101, just rip it off.

I'm getting there.

Okay.

Stupid fucking ponytail. Stupid. Everything about this. I just want, no, damn it, Vince.

See, I look at this—

You're dead to me.

I look at this and, um, and I, and I go, they wanted to present— and I'm telling myself a story that is not substantiated by anyone anywhere— they wanted to present something that looked new, very distinct. The whole backstory in this book is that they ran these suits of armor Covertly, and no one knew that it was the coalition. So they did all this black bag work with this unique suits of armor. And so no one knew it was the CS because all the weapons and all the armor were different, right? And then they come out and go, hey, surprise, we're actually the boogeyman. This is our new armor. We've been doing all of this. And it's supposed to be shiny and maybe uplifting or positive, not as grimy. trying to show their people that they're better and that it's all gleaming and polished. I understand why people don't like it because it's so stark. I mean, it is so stark from the original stuff.

This is the glamour shots version of the Coalition armor. Yeah, absolutely.

This is Hugo Boss.

Yeah. No, no, this is Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, only she worked for the Coalition. Like, this is, it's bad. This is bad, but it is objectively bad in every way.

And I like it. I know I'm going to get a lot of hell for that, but I do like it. Although I think we can agree on 103, the special forces armor.

That is fearsome looking armor. Like the Dead Boy, the original Dead Boy is fearsome. Again, it is iconic. The, to change that, like, This is, this is, you know what? I was, I was, I'm going to quote myself earlier. I think maybe today or yesterday, I said that probably the, it's hard having a hard time figuring out what the dumbest thing in the Palladium universe was. It was either the floopers or the glitter girl. I think this is actually up there. This is one of the dumbest things in the entire Palladium universe was this redesign. I'm really sorry if I hurt the feelings of somebody who was behind this.

I hate it.

I just, you, you made the baby Jesus cry. This is, this is sad.

So here's one of my complaints though.

What is this on page 106?

Look at this garbage.

This is like, this is like a plastic action figure. This, this isn't terrifying.

Okay.

What is Mauler? No, no, no. This is like Jack Skellington shit.

So this is where I think actually the book from an artwork perspective starts breaking down because you start flipping. So you have the Mauler on 106 and then you flip to 108 and you have the Terror power armor, Terror Dreamer power armor.

Hold—

holding onto it, Wayne. Carry on the good fight.

You know, that's, that's terrifying, right? Like, that's like, uh, I don't know what the spikes are going to do. You're probably going to get hung up on the spikes. Like, I mean, in real world, but you know, but then you flip and I'm sure you're going to appreciate the Glitter Boy Killer power armor.

That thing can't—

okay.

That thing needs wide open spaces to move because it's going to get caught on everything.

And it has every weapon. Okay. So it has, let's see.

Did Rob Liefeld draw this? No, I think that's just a joke. This is— It has feet, right? Kind of. Kind of.

So, but this armor, it has forearm plasma guns, forearm ion guns, forearm grenade launchers. So all you have to do is cut off its arms and it loses a lot of its weaponry. Um, vibroblades, a triple barrel laser turret, energy rifle. Like, it has all sorts of freaking weaponry. But from a psychological standpoint, this is how terrified they were of the Free Quebec's Glitterboy army. They wanted a quick, nimble suit of armor that could fight Glitterboys. And even then with the main body here of 440, a couple of Glitter Boys will take these guys at range and they're never going to get there.

This is like the edgy American reboot of a cool German cartoon or something.

Okay.

No, case in point, 113, the Samus. Again, it's beautiful. It is terrifying. It is going to murder you. What is this ballet dancer bullshit on page 115?

Okay. Before we go there.

Smiling Jack.

Before we go there, I want to, I want to read something. I'm going to read it and then I'm not going to talk about it ever again.

Okay.

And I'm going to read this. Uh-huh. Okay. The old style PA-06 Death Head Samus has been semi-retired from military service and become part of the ISS. We'll talk about the ISS. The ISS is actually a cool concept. Over 3.2 million I will repeat that. 3.2 million PA-06 Samus are stockpiled. Half are currently in use by the ISS and its subdivisions.

Okay.

I'm not gonna say anything else about that, but no. Okay, so moving on.

So what you're saying is that after Archie infiltrates the juicer uprising, he should go then take those Samus suits and have Undead cannibal juicer horde in Samus.

And you'll have a million and a half of them that'll pick up at somewhere else.

Yeah.

This is why you don't talk about— boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, creatures of all ages— don't talk about economics in Palladium's Rifts because it doesn't make sense. If you had a million and a half Samus flying around, there's no force in any of the books that could stand up to that. Just, yeah. Anyway.

Yeah.

'Cause that's just one unit they have. Right. Anyway. So the Smiling Jack, um, that looks, uh, what are they called? Um, paragliders. There should be a big like parachute. This one I think is the stupidest one. I'll be honest. I don't like the Smiling Jack. Uh, 'cause it's, it's like a—

It's, it's as dumb as the Glitter Girl actually. It looks terrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The new Super Samus, I kind of like.

It's, it's to me, okay. Take away the stupid-ass spikes. Those are just, they're going to get caught on everything.

Yeah. The fin thing.

Take away the fins. And this is passable because it evokes an H.R. Giger feel to it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I can see that.

I can see, see, it's got it again. It, this is the aesthetic I think is better.

However, Why?

You can't turn your head.

No, no. What is the inlets? Yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah.

What the fuck? This is World of Warcraft pauldron dumbness here. Okay.

Well, they are like, like for scale, if you look at this thing, so this thing is like 10 feet tall. So those things are 2 feet maybe tall. Like they're massive, massive. You, you have like what? 40 to 45 degrees of visibility in your head, you know, because of how big those inlets are. And the guns, they can't shoot forward really. Like the shoulder-mounted weapons wouldn't be actually able to shoot forward.

Yeah, because they can't turn past the stupid intake vents. This is okay.

Hold on.

Bring the pressure up. Can we have— I know it's beautiful.

The Stryker.

Yeah.

The Stryker is, that's pretty sexy.

It's pretty sexy.

And look, the vents are back.

back. You can turn your head.

Yeah.

But this is the difference between Wayne and Vince, right?

Oh my God. These Skelebots are beautiful. They're nice, sleek, black. They look like skeletons. They kind of make me— what is— and then you— I mean, it hurts. It hurts so much. This— it's—

At least it's consistent. I'm getting really bad looks. Okay. The Skelebot Hunter?

Again.

Yeah.

It's like, it's like there's 2 different design teams in the Coalition that are battling each other.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

There's, there's the, uh, the Wayne division and the Vips division.

Totally.

Totally.

And this is, um, this is my complaint. While I like the new stuff, my complaint is it's just not integrally consistent.

It's not. And Vince is totally going for some kind of a visual style that, you know, we, we bitch a lot about. We make fun of the Coalition. You know, we make fun of the Rift setting logistical impossibility.

Right, right.

But let's talk about structural impossibility. For example, page 131, the Hellion. How does it— no, those joints are so Awful. I don't— I just don't like the spine.

Like the whole thing would fall over.

Like, how do you even fit a wire through there?

Well, I mean, a wire, but there's no structural integrity. Uh, the Centaur.

What the fuck is this? I forgot about the Centaur.

It's going to shoot itself in the back, right?

Embarrassing is what it is.

And then, and then we drop into some long, some like updates of some long stuff.

Okay.

Yeah.

The Abolisher, big old suit. The Skull Smasher. Give me some sugar, baby. Um, I love the, the, like the intensity of it, but the guns in the mouth.

Yeah.

They're just like Sure, those will go there. Yeah. Okay.

Those guns are the, they are the visual personification of bam. Just, you could, you could hear that noise every time it shoots.

Well, and they're particle beams. So it's like, oh, oh, even better.

Even better.

Um, and it's 28 feet tall. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's not small. Right.

Okay. The Hellraiser. I don't know who this is, but it's, this is, it's on the COVID I mean, that's the COVID picture, right? Oh, really? Well, I gotta say that this one at least has, you know, some pistons.

It's Zelnicknik.

Oh, Zelnicknik.

Zelnicknik. Thank you.

Oh, okay. This is a pretty good one.

Yeah. Now, had more of— had my question to you, had the new armor been more feeling like that, which is definitely an update?

Well, that's a fucking skull.

Yeah.

So, you know, okay.

Yeah.

If they had had skulls on the Coalition skull armor, then I think I would have been a bit less heinous. However, unfortunately, Vince's joints and his angles and his spikes, it's— yeah, it is out of control.

Let's see here.

Yeah. Yeah. The, the, yeah, just, okay. The spider skull. What the? I forgot about you too. That—

The scout?

The— yeah. How do you support yourself? And a scorpion? Okay, some of these are just dumb.

Well, and really, really dumb.

Yeah, like none of this even fits anything about the Coalition aesthetic in any way whatsoever. Like the spider skull walker was a terrifying thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, but to have these like skittering monstrosities It actually, you know what it is? Vince Martin did the Naruni artwork.

Yes.

This is just Naruni shit that, that I feel that got repurposed into Coalition art.

Oh, that could be. Absolutely.

All of this looks like it could have been Naruni designs.

Some of the Phase World stuff. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. This all has that Phase World aesthetic to it that this just doesn't— Really, the Scorpion is Scorpion.

That's pretty bad. I could see this being Kitani stuff too.

Okay. But now we get to the tanks and it's all old style. Like, like, like we got, we got bro just like holding the fort over here.

Yep.

It's beautiful stuff. This, see, that is, it has that, that we will conquer you aesthetic. And the Coalition has always been It has always put forth that visual unstoppable juggernaut feel.

Yep.

Skinny spindly dancers aren't— you don't put Baryshnikov on the front to just— this is some— it's just— okay, I gotta stop. The joke is over. I don't like it. I miss the old black stuff. Black is a cooler color.

So, so what do you think of the Firestorm Mobile Fortress?

What page are we looking at?

158.

I've already moved way ahead here. Do do do do do do do do. 158. Looks pretty cool. I like the style. I like the curves. I like the the sleekness. I'm kind of getting a I'm having a hard time picturing it. I think the angles are yeah, and and what it can hold.

This is where again I try to like oh shit!

I didn't even notice the people. That is enormous. Yeah, it's massive.

It's oh it's it's It's 76 feet tall, 104 feet wide, 240 feet in length. Holds everything you would possibly need to take over a small city.

Oh yeah, those are spider skull walkers.

Yeah, those are spider skull walkers. Those are the original spider skull walkers, right?

Yeah, this thing is enormous.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's just gigantic, right? It makes a DHT look small.

That cannon is bigger than my house.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, no, it's, uh, and you have a Mauler in the back. Yeah, this picture is like one of those pictures, they're like, there's every little detail. It's like, I don't think I've ever noticed the Mauler in the back until today. Like, there's—

oh look, there's a full-size—

there's a 26-foot suit of power or robot armor behind it.

Just hanging out.

Yeah, just hanging out.

You know, the scale is—

it's—

I mean, it's not 100% perfect, but I think it gets the point. It gets the point across.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's a good one. Hey, this is— it's the unstoppable juggernaut feel. That's what I love about this stuff. It has that, like, that, that unified look.

And they have 12 of them so far. And at this time in day, in the story, in canon, there are 12 of these flying around. Another 12 are being built and 6 more under construction. Like, like, that would be terrifying. By itself, and then a squad of six skull smashers, six spider skull walkers, ten glitter boys, forty scouts, forty hellraisers. Like a company of Samus, a company of infantry troops. Just like oh hi, we're the new neighbors. Okay, like this is just a bad day, right? Yeah, just just massive at this point. A lot of the books start showing up with these really, really big things, but it started in Triax with one of their, like their super like land tank thing, I think.

I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah. So like bigger, bigger, bigger. This book in my mind, more than Juicer Uprising, really starts the power creep that a lot of people give Rifts a hard time for.

Yeah.

Because this really jumps forward. Like now the Coalition who used to be kind of stormtrooper-y, Right. They didn't have the greatest equipment. They weren't the greatest guys. A lot of people played them that way, whether or not it was legitimate. But now all of their equipment, whether or not you like the pictures, all their equipment is definitely beefed up a little bit.

Well, I think, yeah, up to this point, we've only had the stuff in the core book and Sourcebook 1, I think, that had some Coalition stuff.

A little bit.

But still, I never— okay. The Dead Boys, I would always think of as stormtroopers. However, the fact that they could just field millions of Skalabots at a time.

Yeah.

Like that is that they have just the horde. The Skelebots to me represent the swarm. Everything else is the juggernaut with the, they have the Spider Skull Walkers, you know, they have the Death's Head Transports. They have the UAR-1 Enforcers. Those, that's not Stormtroopers, you know?

Absolutely. Yeah. They don't like the Stormtroopers just had a couple AT-ATs. Well, these guys have like 5 different versions of AT-ATs.

Yeah.

That, yeah, there's more gear, there's more stuff. There's some low-key stuff, helicopters and things like that, and it's got new sky cycles and, and different things. Cool, like bits and bobs that fill in. Like you have your patrol cars, which I always thought was kind of a cool idea. It gives you a feel that they have dudes just run around the cities in their little CS patrol cars. You know, they have a little more armor than body armor and blah, blah, blah. And you could steal a patrol car, right? And infiltrate. You could do the Endor run. in a CS patrol car instead of the Tiberian shuttle. You're stealing a patrol car and sneaking into the base.

And if you want, you could take that patrol car into the burbs.

Yeah.

Which get their own write-up finally, starting on page 197 after a few additional OCCs and whatnot. This— I forgot about the new races. Oh, the Gorilla Man's okay. But the Sword Fist was always to me one of the dumbest ones. Yes, I have my, my hands off swords. But what about hands? No. Quick Flex.

It's Edward Scissorhands, but the Quick Flex, I've always liked the Quick Flex.

They've been okay. Their faces are kind of dumb, but yeah, they kind of look like the bad guys from, uh, They Live.

Oh, okay. I thought that in some ways they look like a more organic version of the, the bad guys in, um, Titan AE.

Okay.

Yeah. But instead of energy-based, they kind of have this weird kind of gangly look to them. Um, the Vanguard Brawler is, it's the thing. It's a slimmed-down thing. You know, it kind of, I've always looked like, ah, okay.

Yeah. And then the big neck guys, the Tremadors.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have an NPC in one of my games that's a Tremador. I just kind of liked them. And then you have the cyborgs.

And then you get stats for the Coalition Imperials family.

Yeah.

Bunch of dicks.

Evil incarnate.

Yep.

And they're going to live a long time. Well, you know, we haven't gotten to there, but in Lone Star, you find out that these guys are going to live a long time and it's, it's not cool.

Yep.

Because he's like Emperor Karl Prosek is, what, he's like 80? No, he's not 80 yet.

Um, but he's, he's in his years. Yeah.

He's up there. Uh, and he's, and he's going to live longer. And then his son ready to go, head of propaganda, you know, like Cabot, you know, like Ross Underhill. And all through this book, like they have a couple of the, like, The storylines, the hook, line, and sinkers in here. But really, if you've been reading the book and you've been going through, you know what's going on.

Yeah.

Like this book sets you up if you want to play the Coalition, but it also sets you up on, okay, what city are you in? Do you want to set your game in? What's the Coalition doing to you?

Yeah, pretty much.

You got it all. You got it all. They're coming after you. Right. And this is their plan. They're very upfront. It's like, you know, hey, by the way, we're going to take over the world. Here's our 20-year plan. Go.

So do you need this book?

Yes.

I agree. It's just my feelings on the artwork aside. It's, it is the evolutionary step of the setting. Like this is like Juicer Uprising was like a preview of things to come.

It's the foreword.

Yeah.

You know, the preface.

Yeah.

This is, here we go. This is chapter 1. And you're like, bam, the CS, they're tired of, of being the butt of everyone's jokes. And they're coming out swinging.

I would go so far as to say that you need this if you're running a campaign in nearby parts of the world as well. Because again, this is the point where the CS, I think, actually starts to set its sights on becoming a world power instead of a local power. And this is, this is where They might become relevant in your overseas campaign as, you know, ripples of their activities make their way to you. Now, if you're running in FaZe World, maybe not so much. But, you know, if you're on Rifts Earth, I think you need it. Just knowing about the Coalition Army tells you a lot about the shit that's happening right there in the middle of the old US of A.

And even so, even if you're playing a game that's completely in Europe or, you know, in South America or something like that, you're like, I'm never going to use the coalition, but I want to know, how would I structure a million-man-plus army? Well, guess what? I can take the breakdown of all the different ranks from this and, and use it for that real feeling of what that, what, what does the Santiago military look like? Oh, okay. Well, I'll just do this. Here we go. Here's some ranks. Here's some structure.

Yeah.

Go, right? You know, I want to use mercenaries and I don't have the mercenaries book. Well, bad on you for not having the mercenaries book because you should have it. But this gives you pay because players sometimes want to know what they're getting paid if they're mercs, right? And there's pay salaries in here. Uh, it, it really does give you a lot of information that's not just coalition stuff. Gives you a breakdown of what's going on with the storyline. Yeah, it's, it's a book. You really do need it.

Yeah.

And I love the artwork. It's in my— actually, my complaint of the artwork is it's inconsistent between the 2 themes. You have 2 development houses, as we said.

Yeah.

And I know you hate— I know you dislike half of it. That's okay.

It just— yeah, it— don't like it. No, sir.

I don't like it.

But yes, I think you need it. It's a good book. Content-wise, ignore some of the shitty art. Otherwise it's pretty good.

Well, maybe those aliens from the Juicer Uprising won. And so that's why that armor's that way.

You know, I'm going to take that. I'm— that's, that's my headcanon now. The Coalition is now taken over by alien bugs and Prosek and his family are all newcomers.

That's right.

Yep. Yeah.

Sounds great.

Controlled by Archie and his undead juicer horde. Well, on that note, I have a side note. We need to do mercenaries. I think I forgot its order and we've moved past it. So we should catch up. Yeah, we should do mercenaries. That should come very soon. Anyway, thanks for listening, folks. Again, join us on Discord. If you want to help us pay some of the bills, please drop us a tip on Ko-fi or on our Pinecast tip jar.

Yeah.

Or you can buy any of the DriveThru books directly through the links on our podcast show notes. Just kicks us a few bucks. It helps us then take that money and buy more Palladium books. So it goes to a good cause. Anyway, please stop by our Discord. Let us know what you thought and tell me how right I am and how— terrible the new designs are. I say new, this is 1996 or 1997 or something. It's, it's been—

'96, July '96, first printing.

So it's not—

it's new, you know, if you've just bought it.

It's almost 30 years old at this point. I should just let it die. But no, I'm dead on that hill. Anyway, we hope to hear from you and we'll catch you next time.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance— all of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. description. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one.

You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse, and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally at DriveThruRPG as well. Our opening music is 8-Bit Bass and Lead by Furby Guy from freesound.org. This closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org. All sound effects used are self-made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as The Glitter Boys— that's B-O-Y-S— and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys, and also join us on on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/discord. And if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.