#192 – Machinations of Doom

Breakfast puppies. This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Previously on The Glitter Boys.

We're diving right into a. Let's talk about the Rifts graphic novel, Machinations or Machinations of Doom. So that's pretty cool, right?

Yeah, that was great.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening. No, when this came out in the Rifter, number 6, it was a comic. It was the first time I'd seen a comic in Rifts, and I'm probably wrong, or in Palladium. The one that I had read before was the TMNT. The comics, the, the unique special comics just for TMNT and other strangeness. And of course with Riffs, I read this and I was like, oh my God, they're gonna do a whole comic book. Well, that didn't quite happen, but we got 6 strips in the Rifters with the comics. And then, you know, 20 years later almost, uh, we got it all compressed into one book.

Yeah.

And it's, it's great. Like it's Riffs. It's everything you want to tell a story of rifts. And, uh, yeah.

And, uh, dear listener, we've mentioned this comic several times before when we've done episodes talking about The Rifter. We kind of have held off talking about it until we could give a full discussion about the graphic novel itself, because I think that it, it is something that it's, it's really cool in The Rifter, but as a complete piece, it's pretty Fucking awesome.

Yeah, absolutely.

So one thing I love about it is, like when we were talking with Kevin and he had mentioned that he would put it out, but he would need to put some RPG stuff in it. It has very concise stat blocks for disposable minions in the back of the book. You've never seen a Coalition grunt with a smaller yet more functional stat block. It's very handy.

Very, very handy.

Yeah. It's got pretty cool characters and it's got all of their stats too. But I have referenced this book in game multiple times for Coalition grunts and Samus.

Yeah, no, that, that is like one of the high points of the book is the reference material section functionally.

Yeah. And it's what you need as a GM.

Yeah.

Bam. There you go. Run. I have nothing else added, which is great. And then of course you want to, you want to, you want every dog boy or kill cat or yeah, like, yeah, pick, take your pick. You got a whole, you got a whole team here.

Well, that's actually really good because oftentimes I've played in games. I'm sorry. Oftentimes I've run games where I've been needing like a group of similarly statted up dog boys or a dog pack to hunt down the PCs, but I wanted them to each be a little different, more so than I could come up with on the fly. So I've referenced that section before as well. I have not used the battle cat, but now that I'm playing one in a game, I might have to go back and reread it.

Yeah, yeah, you might.

See how I, how I match up. Absolutely.

Prez's depiction of the new Coalition body armor.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

What are your thoughts on that?

I mean, I think he did a good job working with what he had to.

That's as close as we're going to get, ladies and gentlemen.

Shots fired.

I mean, you can draw good pictures of terrible things. He did a good job doing that.

He did do a good job. I found another picture somewhere else, but yeah.

I'm— my favorite character, I think, at least art-wise, not necessarily writing-wise, but art-wise, my favorite character in the whole book. Unexpectedly, the monkey. The monkey.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

The expressions that he puts on that monkey's face, the look of clear annoyance with everything. He does such a good job with the expressions on a primate.

Yeah.

Yeah. It is.

It is.

And he ends up, he ends up actually joining the group pretty much, doesn't he?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah. He's like, oh, they're going to kill me. Okay, fine.

Yeah.

There's a fun picture of him in the stats section. With a right, uh, the pintle behind a machine gun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The only way it could have been better is if he was menacingly holding a stick of dynamite that was lit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's the crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. The, the, uh, shakes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, okay. So there's a moment I love dearly. Like, okay.

Crazy's They get a bad rap.

Well, they get a bad rap and I think sometimes they deserve it because I've seen people play crazies poorly.

Yes.

And crazies can become some of the most annoying members of a party if played poorly. But there's something that the crazy does in this story where they're finally going off to fight the thing and they're trying to come up with a strategy and they're like, no, we're going to pin it down. Then suddenly the crazy's like, See ya. Just steals the motorcycle or the hovercycle, flies off and does that shit on his own. That to me is that, right? It's the pinnacle, the pinnacle of the character class right there.

And he does it in, apropos, a very crazy fashion.

Yeah.

Right.

Like I'm going to, like in the kind of monster hunter, I'm going to crawl over you and do horrible things and may or may not have a grenade.

You know, I'm going to go fly up and stab this behemoth in the butt.

Right.

Yeah. He just, what?

Okay. And then I'm gonna fall to the ground because I didn't have a plan beyond that.

There was no plan. No plan at all. Uh, that conversation for another day. Uh, crazies and, uh, how they're played.

Yeah.

Because I, I totally agree. Crazies are one of those classes. You have to be combat effective if you're a combat type thing. Yeah.

Right.

And if your insanity and your psychosis impair that to the point where you wouldn't ever be effective, you have to be careful with that line.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, and, and of course the, the character, the depiction of the crazy as with many of the other archetypal OCCs, is great. It's a great, you know, like this is a burster. This is a leyline walker that, you know, like how these characters fit together as a team around the Mountaineer.

Yeah.

Just, yeah.

You finally get to see the inside of that fucking thing. So I remember when I first made a Rifts character back in 1990, whatever. And one of the things that I don't even remember what type of character it was. It might've been a line. No, I think it was an operator.

Yeah.

Anyway, I got a vehicle and there's an array of vehicles in the back of the book. And I remember looking at one like, how do you even fit in this thing? I guess I didn't quite understand the scale of it. And then Perez drawing it, I suddenly realized, Jesus Christ, this fucker is huge.

It's massive in size. Just horribly huge.

Yeah.

To dig into like the opening scene with the Burster and the, basically the bar scene, the, the, the exchange that's supposed to happen. You don't know what's going on. And oh, look, the CS show up and just kill everybody. Just, just open fire. Like, like, oh, oh, that's, that's not— oh crap, I'm leaving. You know, like, he calls the bike from remote, you know, the motorcycle from remote, flies in. You're like, Oh, like this is this is a Star Wars scene. This is like this is like this. It's like oh that is so cool. Like and he leaves like I'm out of here. Bye. I'm I'm gone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, as you were saying when we were talking to Ramon, the thing that the burster does next is where where he turns around and just does like the snap and it explodesifies the whole city block. You're like.

They don't can't whatever mechanically yeah maybe there was a nexus underneath that bar and they never knew there's a ley line nexus which I think not even that I don't think wait wait wait wait wait hold on hold on hold on I'm looking at it now did it maybe get like doused in alcohol okay rules boy no listen I mean it is an awesome scene like just the snap and boom everything goes up I mean it is a bar.

Right?

It is a bar. Like, but it's a bar that they just shot up.

Yeah.

With post-apocalyptic rotgut.

Yeah. So maybe, sure, we'll go with it.

What's the proof on this? We'll allow it.

We'll allow it.

Yeah.

It's, it's fucking cool. That's all there is to it.

It's 100 years past post-apocalypse. There's gotta be good quality wood lying around. So it would go up like kindling.

Yeah.

It makes sense.

Now in classic, uh, Perez style, on, on 14, the CS, the after-action.

Yeah.

There is a CS soldier helping someone, right? They, they like the detail that, yeah, here's the people like checking out, okay, we just got attacked. But there's a, there's a CS soldier in new armor assisting one of the townsfolk, right? And you're like, you don't wait, what?

Hearts and minds, baby.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Like, but that's a detail in the artwork that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see that I like, it jumped out at me and like just looking at this and then it moves on and that's it. Just one little panel, like something's going on, you know, like, um, and then it, it just starts and it goes and it goes and it goes and it goes and there's no pause. There's no, there's no downtime in the entire story. Like it doesn't feel like there's any downtime in the entire story.

Also again, background characters. So, yeah. Okay. We go over here to, um, I guess, where's the first appearance of this lady? Okay. Page 8, um, second row. We see the, the burster being served by this lady. And then top of page 9, she's like, oh fuck, something's happening.

Yep.

Oh God, no. Then, then we see her again on the bottom of page 13. This nice little— she gets her own little rectangle, which is very cool. And then we see her finally again on page 14 in that same picture of the Coalition helping and the guy crying. I'm guessing it's probably his—

What's left of a beer stein?

What's left of a beer stein.

He seems so unhappy about this.

Well, we know what OCC that is, don't we, gentlemen?

Yeah, exactly.

Gluten bomb. Yep. That actually might just be the barmaid OCC character lady from Rift's New West. I've got this right here. Let's to the books, to the books, to the books. Do do do. No, not the size slinger. There we go. It could be her. The one in the New West doesn't have glasses, but otherwise they're very very very very very similar.

Yep.

It, I just, yeah, it's nice little world touches like that to create again, a lived-in world.

Oh, so good.

The characters' expressions, the, the Grackletooth. I, oh, I love this guy.

I really liked the Grackletooth. Like, yeah. From the moment you see him in New West and in this, and you're like, oh, that's cool. That, that's cool. What is that? You know?

The lineup of the whole group on page 17. Nice. Just nice classic Western piece. Yeah.

Except for— Except for the guy who's still coming in. I didn't go and kill them all, did you?

Yep.

He misses the dramatic lineup. That's great. This is okay. Everything about this. This is, it reads like somebody's 2 or 3 session Rifts adventure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Like you can, you can almost picture them rolling the dice at each moment.

Yeah. 2 or 3 sessions. You couldn't do this all in one session.

No, no, no, no.

But, but, uh, yeah, no, it's, it's great. It's just, oh, and it builds and it builds. And of course this fits in perfectly with, uh, you know, Lone Star, New West. You're like that feel, what's going on there? What's going happening? And, and then being handed the MacGuffin of MacGuffins, like, what is this? Well, we were supposed to talk to this dude. He's dead now. What do we do now? Ah, read his scroll. I mean, okay.

Yeah. It's like, burn it.

Burn it.

How many adventures begin with somebody died, but you found a secret note, right?

I mean, it's not quite as much as you all are in the same tavern, but you know, it's, it's, it's a trope.

Well, it's a trope, but only one of them is in the tavern and it still goes wrong. It doesn't matter. PCs plus tavern equals bad, right?

The adventure did start in a bar that somebody set on fire.

Right. And that somebody might've been a player character, but you know, no one survives. So it doesn't really matter.

Taverns in Dungeons and Dragons, bars in Palladium games, will readings in Call of Cthulhu. Yeah, nothing good ever comes from them.

Oh, there's not much more that I can say about this that isn't just me repeating the same praise over and over again.

Yeah, or I will say the, the full spread 24 and 25, the introduction of the, the rats. Like, this is one of those scenes where the players are thrust into a situation where if you do the wrong thing, you're fighting a couple hundred mutant rats.

Yes.

Right. And, and I've been in that session where the party that day was murder is the answer to everything. And, you know, and we're all going to die, but murder is the answer to the other thing. And then I've also been in that session where, why don't we ask a question? You know, well, let's maybe murder isn't the answer today, you know? Um, and, and they find out real quickly enemies become allies because, you know, we all hate, we all hate the CS.

So also what happens in that big old fight scene, the way it is resolved is in my mind, an example of a game master looking at the situation and like watching the potential of everything spiraling out of control. And then coming up with a fuck, right? How do I do this? Okay, I got it. Knife to the throat always works.

Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. Um, it's a great story. Wow. Uh, and, and I look at it and you reread it and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you add a monkey. Then we're gonna add a monkey.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, that, that every good story needs a chimp that you You've thrown into pseudo BDSM gear. Wait, no. Um, you've tied up and thrown into the back of your mountain bike.

That went in a weird direction that I was not prepared for, but I'm along for the ride.

So is the monkey.

That, that is one abused fucking monkey too. They like slap him around, beat him up, throw him around under their arms. He knocked down, beat down. He basically has everything that happens to the protagonist of Alice's Restaurant happen to him.

Yes.

Lordy.

Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much. He doesn't get recruited, but you know.

Neglected inspecting, all of that stuff.

Oh God. So where do we come down on this one, gents? Is this a must-have for your Rifts collection?

Well, if you've, if you collect the Rifters, you got it. Yeah, it came with it.

Yeah.

Um, which you better read it. Like, go, go dig them up, read them. Uh, it's 6 through 11, I think. Um, do you need it absolutely as like a book on your shelf? Uh, I would say if you're a GM, from what we talked about, the quick references of some quick made-up grunts and CS, uh, units, and even like a sergeant or you want some really fleshed out store, fleshed out PCs, just from that, I'd probably buy it personally. Um, otherwise, uh, you like comics? Yes. You know, it's not necessarily absolutely required in my opinion.

I'm just going to echo all of that because it's exactly how I feel. I don't think you need it, but I have found it extremely useful as a game master. I will add, however, I think if you're going to run something in the New West era, I think you need it. I think this will give you so many ideas of how to portray your game.

Yeah, then that was exactly where I was coming down on it. Do you need it? Not really. Are there some handy things in there no matter what you're doing as long as the Coalition's involved or it's set in North America? Yeah, it's super handy. But if you are doing New West, Lone Star, Spirit West, It's a must-have at that point. You know, it's— if for no other reason than you just got off of work and you're about to go GM a session, flipping through that comic just to get the juices flowing will definitely serve you well.

Yeah. And you can also get it in digital format if you're just interested in the stats. Very useful.

If you're trying to introduce— if you're trying to introduce someone into Rifts, Handing them this and say, "Hey, go read this comic." That'll that'll give them riffs.

Okay.

Yeah. Like that's a great like here read this. Give it back to me in a couple of weeks. Tell me what you think. And they're immediately gonna go. They'll either like it or they're wrong.

That that's the final word. You'll either like it or you're wrong. Thanks for listening, folks.

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. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast I'm 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 Furbyguy 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-I-S— and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys, and also join us 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.

We'll catch you next time.