#182 – Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising

Breakfast puppies? This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Hey man, you're listening to the Glitter Boys. Yeah. And now for what I believe is the second most requested of the Rifts worldbooks, Juicer Uprising, yet another CJ Carella knocking it out of the park.

Absolutely. This is one of my favorite books of all the Palladium books, and the reason why is one, juicers I think are overused and under-understood. A lot of people want to play a juicer. They want to— one of the first characters I'm thinking back to like 1990 and this guy, this kid, what's his name? I, I probably shouldn't say his name, but this kid was telling me about this book that he got and it had this awesome cover and it had a druggie that was a hero.

That's— don't do drugs, kids.

Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad.

Now do some drugs and kick ass.

Yeah. Do a lot of drugs. Do all the drugs. Do Keith Richards level of drugs.

Yep.

And I think that's why juicers haven't been developed now. Keith Richards has done all those drugs and we just don't have them anymore.

Yeah.

All the drugs are gone.

They're gone.

He did them all.

And he was describing that, but you only live 5 years. You're the best combat, you're the super soldier, but you only live 5 years. So you already have this built-in tragic backstory. And I'm like, wow, that sounds crazy. No, that's another class.

Oh, wait.

Okay. So juicers. And it's a turning point in RIF's history. It was kind of, in some ways, the beginning of the end of what was almost the peaceful time, if you can call it that, in RIF's history. If you're looking at the timeline, because there's a lot of buildup, there's not a lot of actual big wars going on. There's little conflicts, but then they decide, let's go get rid of the juicers. The coalition says, hey, Juicers are a problem. We don't know how to fight them. They're so over the top that we just get our butts kicked every time we run into them. And they don't like us. Like half of the juicers out there joined because we killed their parents.

I'm just picturing the Ancient Aliens guy holding his hands up and like, juicers.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so this book starts off with a bunch of great information about where did juicers come from, how did they start, why are they so popular, and how there was a pre-Roofs book called The Death Dance Saga, which was basically a fictional retelling of James Bond, but James Bond is a juicer, right? Like, okay, that would— that's probably got a movie that's going to come out next year. Let's be honest. And it brings up the timeline to 105 PA. And up to this point, there was bits and pieces about what was going on chronologically, but this really kicks off. It really is a 200-page preface, foreword to the Coalition War Campaign. And it basically says, this is really the inciting incident that starts the Coalition Wars. It starts the Tolkien Wars.

Yeah.

It pisses off Free Quebec. It really brings us all in and it does it in a really interesting way and a different, a different story and giving you all this background on, on juicers and different types of juicers. It blows up what juicers can do and what they can be. No longer are you just the same OCC that's been out there for, at this point, 6 or 7 years, but it's, hey, I want to be a juicer that is super, super fast. That's, that's where they focus on. Okay, we got you, we got, we got you covered. We got a Hyperion juicer. All right, I want to be a Titan but a juicer. Okay, we got that Titan juicer. I want to be an MDC juicer because that was always the big complaint, that juicers weren't MDC. They're still— they have almost MDC. They can have several hundred SDC, but if they happen to get hit with a weapon, they still can die. No, no, we're going to fix that. We're going to make you basically so tough that you are now a mega damage structure just walking out of the shower. Oh, okay. That's cool. But when you die, you explode into a ball of fire.

Hey man. I mean, I was told I would leave a beautiful corpse.

Well, not anymore. You literally catch on fire and burn to death. You know, you're like, okay.

You've got all of that stuff. We move further on through every possible juicer you can think of. And then we get to the magic juicers. We got the dragon juicers. Then we, of course, we got the, the one juicer that I'm pretty sure every GM has had to tell at least 5 different people, no, you cannot play a murder vase. Yep.

You have the undead juicer. It's an awesome— okay, if you're a GM, And you want a, a one-off bad guy who is just evil and kick-ass, you get a necromancer who's made some murder wraiths. And all of a sudden your players— and you put them in regular armor so they don't know that they're murder wraiths. And it just— watching the eyes of players just like, what is going on? And you can't kill them and they have all the invulnerabilities of undead. It's, it's, it's brilliant. It's one of my favorite, like, bad guys that I'll pull out of the hat. And then you have the Sploogworth want to get in on this game.

Mm-hmm. And more and more and more. And then finally, my favorite, the Juicer Wannabe.

Which I've seen people play. I mean, you have the Gambler too, but I think that's, I think that gets reprinted basically in New West, but I'm not sure. Or maybe it's their own slide on it. Maybe it's the Card Sharp I'm thinking of, but the Wannabe is an awesome Like, I can't afford to go to the juicer conversion and get modified, but I'm just gonna do drugs that'll help me almost get there with all the side effects. Um, but don't do drugs, kids.

Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad.

Because now we're gonna go into a section that is 4 or 5— no, 2 or 3 pages of different drugs and their side effects.

Yeah.

Yeah. Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad. But here's all the drugs you can do if you want to.

The, the new skills are very interesting. They're all mostly juicer-oriented. You've got the juicer bike combat, the juicer jump jets, and of course everybody's favorite, murderthon.

Murderthon. And deathball.

Murderthon, deathball, and the boringly named juicer football.

Right.

Uh, it reminds me of Shadowrun, which had a nationally recognized sport called Urban Brawl.

Juicer football to me is if— is, uh, what was that? What was the football league? The one that—

Mutant League Football?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

On the Sega Genesis.

Yeah.

I still have my copy of that game and Mutant League Hockey, which I think are 2 of the best video games ever made.

But it could also be like if they just said anyone could do anabolic steroids in actual football, you might like, oh yeah, we're going to, we're going to just do all the drugs now in real life and let's see what happens. What could go wrong? You know, just fun little skills. And then some of the most overabused weaponry in all the books to this point. You have, I played several games where everyone had forearm bracers. Everyone had forearm vibrobracers that they thought it was the most cool thing. Everyone wanted them, everyone had them, and half the people would have also grenade launchers because it's like—

Forearm blades though, I think they're in the first book, but there's pictures of dog boys with them. Yeah, yeah, they're, they're, they're core, but I don't think they're not new.

Maybe it's the double blades and the triple blades.

Yep, they're I think the, yeah, just 2d6 MD. Yeah, that's it. They're not, these are not new. Now the rocket boots. Oh, and the forearm grenade launchers. Those are new. Yeah. Yeah, but the vibroblades, well, I don't know why they have urinary tract infections associated with them. That wasn't in the core book.

No.

But the rocket boots are definitely new. One of the most unreasonably Why not?

Why not?

Sure.

Yeah, it's, um, I do like the fact that a lot of the equipment in this book, they're very clear. This was designed for someone who's been super enhanced. And if you're a normal person, you can use it if you want to, but it could be a really bad day. You know, like a bad roll means that you pull the maneuver off and suffer 2d6 SDC, Lua's initiative. And you might break a leg or sprain an ankle or pull a ligament, like in the middle of combat. That could be a bad thing.

I love, love the long, pointlessly long name, the WIC-8 Close Combat Weapon System, AKA a fucking chainsaw. You just call it a chainsaw, right?

Well, they have 2 of them. They have the C8 and the CL8 because they want to tack on more weapons onto them, you know, and one has a laser and a chainsaw. It's just, oh, they're ridiculous.

All right. So we move into the gear. Oh, sorry. We move into the armor part of the gear. Okay. Vince Martin. Has done some really fucking good stuff. He's done some really fucking good stuff in this book. The picture of the chainsaw—that's epic. That's amazing. Yeah, that may be the most badass chainsaw I've ever seen in my life. Good job, Vince. I hate the fucking bulbey insect-looking styles that he does sometimes with his armor. I just don't like it. We'll talk about him in our next book. Oh oh oh yes, we will talk about him. Uh, Vince, you're probably a great person. Sorry. If you'd like to come and join our podcast sometime, let me know. But I don't like this. It just, it is to me the antithesis of that lived-in, dirty, grungy look that the first Rifts book brought forth. Like the first Rifts book is peppered with this Larry McDougall art and various other bits, but, but it shows a dirty world. This is, it's an— this is so just, it's anime. Like, well, it's essentially, this looks like the Envid. It's that same organic style that was used to draw the Envid, which is why I never really liked the Envid either. But it's, I don't, I don't like it. No, sir.

And how big is this person's waist? Like, like on page 77, the Juicer Killer armor. I like the concept of the armor. And then you get to the image and you're like, oh, that—

Yeah, no, someone just can't even fit in there.

How do you fit in that?

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And also, this is a Northern Gun suit. This looks nothing like Northern Gun anything.

Well, and that's what I was talking about when we were talking about South America too. Yeah. Is while I may not agree with some of the lines of equipment for the different species and countries, they all fit. This, I would never think this came out of Northern Gun because by looking at it, it was like it came out of Phase World.

Phase World.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I could see that. Um, some one-off, uh, maybe the Japanese, uh, one of the, the, the modern, the new Japanese kingdom. You know, it's like, yeah. Um, but, uh, and then you, and then you get to very similar. I could see the same. You're going to have the same problems with the Defender on page 79.

Okay, but then he redeems himself with this same style with the with the the chopper or the jump bike. Oh, that's a great picture. That looks good because that's what it's a sport bike. Yep. It's supposed to have that that organic style that that Japanese sport bike look. Yeah. It just looks like somebody made a sport bike in the future. The armor even looks appropriate to it.

Absolutely. Yep. And then and then you have the the chopper.

Chopper. No no no see and then he ruins it again.

Damn it. I I want I want. I like this picture. I, I, I like this picture. I really do. I'm sorry. I do like this picture.

A chopper is a chopped motorcycle. It is a chopper. That's what chop means. A chopper isn't just another word for a fucking cruiser. This is just a fucking cruiser. This isn't a chopper. This is the sleekest looking store-bought chopper I've ever seen in my life.

This is one of the, uh, This is like the bikes that come out of the, uh, was it the, the California Chopper Shop Show where they have like these beautiful custom-made bikes and it, but it's like 40 different pieces, but it's so smooth. It doesn't look like, it looks like an artist made it. And then you can't ride them because, you know, you have like a 30-foot front wheel slope. I wouldn't want to take any sort of high-speed maneuver with this bike with where that front wheel is.

Oh, definitely not where your center of mass is going to be. No, no, no. And what is its speed? What does it say? Um, Top speed, 185. No, on a flat track. Yeah. Turning. Not this. But okay.

That aesthetic aside. And I agree with you there. If you take that aside, he has this assault cannon on his shoulder. That is cool. Like the cannon that's sitting, he's like, I don't know how he's steering, like under any sort of combat situations and trying to use that gun. But, um, but it's, it's just, I do like that picture. Yeah. I know why you don't, but I do like that picture.

I mean, I love the concepts of this vehicle. Yeah. I like the concept of the shoulder cannon, but if it's going to be called a chopper, needs to be a fucking chopper. Right. Right. You know, absolutely. Don't, don't misrepresent yourself. You didn't earn that title.

I want to go back and this is, I want to go back just, and the JA-12 laser rifle. On page— JA-12 laser rifle on page 76.

76.

Okay.

Okay.

I love this rifle as a player because it has good damage, it has a decent range, it's a very simple rifle. But depending on the edition of the book you have, they performed a stealth update between editions on the damage and the capacity of that rifle.

Okay. Tell me about this update.

So I have, I have in front of me almost a brand new 5th edition printing. Okay. Because when I was playing a game, I had an older edition and the damage is different. I believe in the previous editions, it's a d6 times 10 plus 10 or no, no, a d6 times 10, not the plus 10. They tweak it just enough.

And of course, what does it say the damage is in your edition?

A d6 times 10 plus 10 for the triple pulse.

Um, I'm looking at a 3rd printing and the single shot 4d6 MD. Yep. Triple pulse 1d6 times 10 counts as 1 melee attack and grenade inflicts 3d6.

In the 5th edition, it's a d6 times 10 plus 10. That's what I got.

Well, that's what I have here in the 3rd print.

Okay, somewhere there's a change to this and I need to track it down because I've had— I've seen it myself and I can't remember which edition it is. But anyway, this is like—

Oh, there is a change because I've got the— I've got 2 different editions here. Okay, the change is the JA-12, at least at the 3rd printing, has a rate of fire of standard, whereas the— it specifically says the rate of fire in Whatever I'm looking at is each single shot or burst uses one melee attack.

There we go.

But there is a change. Yeah. Yeah. That's the only one I'm seeing. I'm going back and forth between them with my perfectly legally acquired copy from the bundle of holding. Thank you very much. But I also had a previous version that was copied from 3rd printing and it is slightly different, but I don't know. Its damage isn't different.

The damage isn't different. Um, but it, you know, the, the mechanics of how it's supposed to shoot is different. Which is interesting. And, and that's something I started noticing. And it's just, as a guy who likes to deal with errata or has to deal with errata in his real life, I love errata sheets. And it's just, it's just one of those nitpicks that the Palladium's really never been great about errata.

They really, they really haven't. It's sad.

And it's okay. Yeah. But it was the first time that I noticed that they would change things between printings.

I must say though, this is a cool weapon. I like the JA-11 better. Something about that single-shot SDC, it gives the gun character.

Anytime I have played a TW, he has ended up, or she has ended up, with the JA-11 because then I have 3 modified TW weapons and I modify each one. And it's just the versatility of it. Completely impractical in the real world, But in a game, it's amazing. I don't want to blow the head off of a deer when I'm hunting, right? You know, if I have to go find food in the game as the only one that has a weapon that won't just vaporize the deer with one shot or something like that, you know, I want to do a warning shot. Well, I'm the only one with a weapon that'll do that, you know, in some of those games. And I have the reach and yeah, no.

Well, also it's a cheap kill. Yeah. Like if you're going up against something that you know that you can kill with a headshot with an STC bullet, why waste the, the E-clip, you know?

Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, moving—

Plus that also— oh, just the visual clink, the, the rail, or what is it, the slide bolt action. Oh yeah, just— yeah, especially when you imagine it from a juicer whose perception is heightened and amplified. You've just got that real slow Clank. It's, it's a nice mental picture. Totally agree. Totally agree. Okay. So let's just move past all the gear, all the gear. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Move, move past.

Cause I know you're going to complain about a couple of things and I'd agree.

Yep. Moving past, moving past. Let's get to, we got some organizations, we got some cool things. We got some cool stuff. We got some juicer groups, whatever. Fuck them. Let's talk about the story of this setting. Like, oh yeah. And by fuck them, I mean, They're really interesting. Absolutely. You should go and read them if you want to have juicer groups. They're great. However, there's so much more than just that. Like, there's a meta plot here.

Okay. So I'm going to talk about Kingsdale. I could probably talk about Kingsdale for hours on end. This was the place that I ran a couple of different games. Um, some that lasted a long time. Here is a city that is smashed in the middle of the Coalition States. That's an independent free city that has a king and a Senate. Okay. A dictator king and a Senate. It's a mixed society. So it's one of the first times I think where they really say, here's a society that loves tech and magic and they can all behave right. Like this is, this is a hope. But the big bad Coalition States is literally 100 miles away. And, and, and they were surrounded. Like, it's the old Marine adage. We did not retreat, sir. We were surrounded by the enemy. So whichever direction we go, we were advancing. Right. So, and they have an almost completely volunteer military of which they have just shy of 2,000 juicers. Just, we got 2,000 juicers in a standing army.

Just at least for the next 5 years.

For at least the next 5 years. And so you have this politics situation and they're, and, and they're, and they're basically, they also have a magic group that's a magic militia. And it's the start of like, this is the mecca where you can go get a juicer conversion. I want to go get a Borg conversion. I want to go become a crazy. Sure. Come on in. You got your money. We'll do it for you. Coalition is not super happy about this. They're starting to get worried by this because anyone with, you know, 150,000 credits can go get turned into a super soldier. Okay. You know, you got a vendetta against someone because they killed your dad. I'm going to, you know, you save up.

Actually, that's a ridiculous amount of money, especially if you go and look up how much Borgs cost. Turns out they're actually pretty cheap.

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, okay, here we go. And you start building this story of the buildup and the Coalition seeing this opponent that they think they could walk over and they start building up and Then the armies start building up, and then the Coalition comes out and says, hey guys, we have this treatment and it'll let you live maybe your normal lifespan as a juicer or longer or something like that. Come do this treatment for us. And really, it's a trap.

It's a lie.

Mm-hmm.

that they're really going to chip you so they can control— so they can blow you up when they want to and control you. But a lot of them are like, oh, okay, cool. Well, not only is it a lie from the Coalition States, but there's this group called Ultratech, the UTI. They're aliens. The UTIs are aliens. That explains everything. And they're actually the treatment Turns you into an, basically a zombie juicer under their control. Well, this just goes bad every which way from Sunday and you get 30,000, I think it was 30,000-some juicers basically rioting and protesting. And it basically sums up with the, like, I think the picture is on, yeah, on 140.

Yeah.

With juicers fighting skelebots with, with blades to the head, hand-to-hand combat, just going nuts.

Okay. Hear me out. Okay. I got an idea from the way that you described it. Little, little pings were happening in my brain. All of that as a possible future. Now, I'm trying to think of the best way to think of this. Okay. Did you ever watch a TV series from the '80s called V?

Oh yeah.

Did you watch the reboot years later?

I did, but not for the same reason.

It was all right. It was okay. Anyway. Yeah. So it was too clean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was too, it started that way, but yeah. Anyway. So Going back to the V series.

Mm-hmm.

You can take that concept, right? Or the concept of occupied France espionage campaign. So you start before the Juicer Uprising. In order for this to work, game masters, your players need to know jack and shit about the Juicer Uprising. So Get a new group. Introduce Rifts to your friends. This is the perfect way to do it.

Absolutely.

Start in or around Kingsdale. Adventurers in the area dealing with the fact that you have this essentially a haven for adventurers that has a lot of intrigue because you're surrounded by the Coalition. So there's constantly something happening here. So ultimately though, the idea is The player characters stumble upon bits of information that they have to piece together in the background, learning about the Coalition's plans versus the Juicers, the nature of these, these, these, the aliens, the UTI, Ultratech. But at the same time as they're learning it, information is becoming public.

Oh.

And everybody starts to love the Coalition or something, or this company. Very much like the visitors they call them in V. And then to the point that you have to find a way to set it up so that the player characters are almost pariahs. Like they have acquired this information, but they know that if they were to release it, first off, nobody would believe them because everybody is on board with this new thing. And seriously, these guys are so nice. How could you hate them? Kind of stuff. So turn it into like this, this tension-filled Westworld-style espionage campaign.

Well, that's, that's the, you know, the original V series. They have the, uh, the Welcomers, the New Founders or whatever they are, and they basically bring some people on the ship and then they basically brainwash them to convince that the V are awesome. Right. You know, um, in this you can go one step forward, forward. Is they have the newcomers, which are androids. They literally make android humans that are all their representatives.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. First off, you have to have the group that's cool with this kind of thing, because in this day and age, I don't like to waste people's time with this kind of shenanigans unless everybody is okay with me doing shenanigans on them. One of these shenanigans would be one player at the group is a plant.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, they've already been converted and they are the one like leading the whole thing. And then, you know, they, they set it all up and, and finally they get the players and the uprising happens or whatever. Anyway, right in the middle of it, turns on them and is like, all right, congratulations. You did everything we wanted you to. But then, but then you take that group, that same group after, of course, that they kill the betrayer. You take that same group, we're in a Titan Robotics campaign, get another player to be the plant.

Are we recycling the same storyline multiple times with just another robotic bad guy? That sounds like what you're suggesting. I'm not against this.

What I'm suggesting is long-term psychological torture of a player character group where over time each player gets their own opportunity to be the plant.

To be the bad guy.

To the point that finally, after in the 4th, 5th campaign, they're all looking at each other like, who is it this time?

Have you ever played Resistance? The, the kind of quick card game Resistance where someone's the bad guy, or, or, um, Murder, or Werewolf, or whatever? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You would— no one would trust anyone in that game ever again. Like, you do that a couple of times, every— like, who's the bad guy, you know?

Yeah.

I think it would be a great con game. That could be an Excellent. Like if you could condense it down to a 4-hour convention game.

Yeah. How do you condense 17 years of campaign into 4 hours? If anybody has an answer to that, let us know.

Yeah. I mean, like the storyline here, you have 10,000 juicers in the middle of the night sneak out and prepare to fight the Coalition. Right. Like, like, and a lot of times when I think logistically, how do you get 10,000 people to go do anything? But they're juicers, so they're all going to be super quiet and super sneaky and super fast. So they're all stealth experts.

They're all sneaky attack monsters, and they just show up and they like, "Oh, this is not going to go well." But then someone's like, when suddenly there's that stomping stomping, and like, "God damn it! Who invited Dave the Titan juicer?" Hey guys! Yeah, Dave.

Wait for me. Uh, yeah. And then of course it all goes bad, uh, and the storyline, you know, like what happens. And this is, this kind of kicks off the tone for what's going to be coming in the next several books, in my opinion. And again, it's C.J. Carella. And so anyone that says that C.J.'s, all of his stuff is way over the top, none of this stuff, in my opinion, is really that over the top.

I'm giving you the eyebrow.

It's, it still fits in the stuff that was going on at the time. in North America.

Fair, fair. And honestly, there's— I would say that the juicers are broken each in their own special way, but ultimately most of them are pretty fun.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, you cannot play a Murder Wraith, Dave. Sorry.

But I think, you know, there is a power creep at this point in Rifts in general, but I think it's within the in the tone of the creep. Yeah. And it doesn't get too wonky.

What I really like about this is the same thing I like about so many other Palladium, quote unquote, adventures or campaigns, is it's not a beat-by-beat crawl through a place with the map. It's not a whole lot of boxed text. This is very, very, very similar to what Savage Worlds has always done with their one-sheets and their plot point campaigns in that the— honestly, but probably it's one of the reasons why Savage Worlds got Rifts.

Yeah.

Because of that, that, that philosophical agreement that An adventure doesn't have to be completely statted out from beginning to end. Essentially, an adventure can simply be a place at a time where something is happening, insert players. There's a series of events that are going to happen, and essentially it's, here's what will happen if no one does anything.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it, and it doesn't flesh out everything. for you. Like, it just leaves it kind of open. What do you want to do? Which is, you know, every GM, like new GMs, I've always had that they complain, well, how do you handle when players do X? And I go, well, they're gonna do X, Y, and Z. You're never gonna know. Just be, just go with it.

Yeah.

Breathe through it and go, okay, what would I do if that happened? Well, this is what happens. And this gives you enough to do a small little revolution. Yeah. And juicers. And you're like, at the end of it, you're like, everything could be in flames or they could all be undead-controlled zombie juicers. Like that's a possibility. Maybe the aliens win. What if, what if the CS let them win? And now the Coalition States has an army of 50,000 undead zombie juicers.

Exactly. What if nobody stops the aliens?

What if they're their own faction now and the CS have to fight them? Hmm. And the CS don't have any magic, really.

Exactly. This is simply— the Juicer Uprising is simply one more thing that Palladium does, which is it gives you a series of things that are going to happen, but you don't have to follow that canon. You can change the world. Unleash your imagination. Stop the uprising. What, what if your group somehow through their actions accidentally arranges it so that all of the juicers who were going to rebel are suddenly like, oh, actually, no, no, you're right. These guys are pretty cool. And yeah, boom. Everything goes according to the bad guy's plans. It's—

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, and then the, basically the last word of one player at the end of a session is, oh, fuck.

Cutscene. Okay. Next time we're going to be doing Princess Ponies. Wait, what happens? Nope. Nope. Black screen goes black.

We'll find out in the footnotes at the beginning of our next campaign. Right.

Yeah. And then they, you know, they start summing up basically, here's what happens. You know, you got 6,000 to 12,000 juicers who are a little pissed off. You know, it does give you what they think should happen at the end. One of the towns, Newton, is— or Newtown— is completely destroyed. The Coalition are a little pissed off. And Things just get ramped up. But as we just said, that doesn't have to have happened. You know, any number of things could have happened. Maybe the, the, the aliens, which look kind of like, uh, kind of bug dudes, kind of like big. They almost look like thri-kreen from D&D kind of thing.

They look like something out of Face World.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they actually make a comment here that, that they are the highest have among the highest technology in the Megaverse. Their weapons and equipment are incredibly sophisticated, centuries ahead of anything else, and even such technologies as enclaves of Phase World. Unfortunately, they're trapped on Earth, as all of the high-tech aliens are. They all get trapped on Earth. Don't go to Earth if you're high-tech aliens. Don't go to Rift's Earth. You can't get off. Yeah, and so that's, that's kind of where this happens.

Oh wow, actually they kind of remind me Slightly of, uh, if anybody has read the, uh, Alternity, uh, Star Drive books, there is a group of enemies called the Cliques. This kind of reminds me of the Cliques and they're, they're, they're pretty fucked up.

Yeah. Yeah. And these guys aren't super powerful, like physically, but they have good technology. Their technology makes up for it. Right. But you know, they don't give you a lot about them. It's obvious that I think they intend for you to kill them all or something. And, but, uh, it's, it's interesting. And, and I just, for such a small book, 160 pages like that, 135 pages.

I got another idea.

Oh no.

Again, in the same level, you're, but, but, but do it the other way around. Instead of going from a Juicer Uprising campaign to the Titan Robotics campaign, swaparoo. Start with the Titan Robotics group, get them fully committed to Titan Robotics, and then they're And then the guild rep's like, hey man, there's this thing going down in this town called King's Dale. I want you to go check it out. And then you inadvertently end up putting all of the newcomers under the control of Archie. And now Archie has an army of undead juicers. Heard it here first, folks.

Archie has an army of undead juicers. That's, that's how that worked out.

Um, I don't, I don't, I don't think of I don't think anything more Rifts has ever been spoken.

Oh yeah. He's taking notes. I'm taking notes. Army of undead users. I may use that. I know where I'll use it too. All the players that I play with, do not listen to this version of the podcast because I don't want you to get that idea.

Oh my God. And then Archie mixing the concepts of the newcomers robot technology with the stuff that he managed to steal from the mechanoids.

Oh, mechanoid juicers, mechanoid undead juicers. Oh my God. See, see, stuff like that. These are bad days. Bad days.

That's Rifts, baby.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you get 3 or 4 good cities that you can play in, a couple of city maps in the back of a new town and, um, and Kingsdale. Not to scale of any sort. Otherwise this town is really small. Yeah. But, but, you know, um, like one of the things I love about the, like the description, going back to Kingsdale just a second, juicer bars. They have the description of juicer bars in Kingsdale, just basically bars that are, I envision they are reinforced MDC concrete pillboxes that have like concrete tables that are fixed to the— you ever been to one of those places where the tables and chairs are literally fixed to the ground?

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like concrete pillars. Mm-hmm. Like they try to make it so they don't have to redo it every night when the bar brawl breaks out. 'Cause you know, it's a juicer bar. When the bar brawl breaks out, it, everything gets destroyed. Everything gets destroyed. But just has these great flavor of like what's going on in these cities.

Again, the table is a concrete block. Yeah.

It's just like you can't, you can't get under it. You just stand at it. Right. Yeah. You know, it's like, Yeah, it's just so much fun in this book. Again, 160 pages, just shy, with just cram amounts of bits and pieces. And that's even really before you get to the major plot point of the CS tried to pull a fast one on all the juicers. And well, it didn't go well.

I really like the idea of the CS trying to pull a fast one and then also having a fast one pulled on them at the same time.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because they're double blind. So hungry for it.

Right.

They're so hungry for someone to help them. And it appears that they're all humans. And that's why humans would never betray humans. They're robots controlled by bug aliens, but humans would never betray humans.

Yep. And these guys want a war? Anyway. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. Well, it's a good book. It really is.

It's a great book.

I myself, As a GM, I'm not normally super into juicers, but I might now make an exception if I run that campaign. Hopefully you didn't listen to this, dear player of mine.

Absolutely. And I have always enjoyed juicers in my games. Uh, usually I try to find the player that's always the chaos magnet anyway, because being a juicer and having downtime It's built into the juicer. They're not going to handle downtime real well. And so if you want that game to just keep moving and you have a juicer in the game, oh, you want to spend 4 months doing something? No, no.

Weren't you just recently complaining about playing a builder and not getting to because of the other players and the GM wanting to move that way?

So when you're a, when I'm a GM, I want that. When I'm a player, I absolutely don't want a juicer in my game.

Well, I agree. As a game master, on the one hand, I do love the idea of building a base and taking the time and doing it, but I also really like the keep them moving approach because it will whittle down their resources and get them more and more desperate. And that is when the really cool shit happens. When they are out of their normal resources and when they, they're basically looking at their character sheet for something to do that is not what they normally do. That's when the moments that I love the most happen. And you have to get them tired and desperate to make that work.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Okay. Juicer uprising. So, uh, we forgot to do this on the last one. No, I guess we kind of did. Uh, we just didn't even ask the question. So I will ask the question now. Juicer uprising. Do you need it?

I would say yes. I, it is one of the books that I always recommend.

I would say maybe. I think it's a great book. I think that if you are a collector, you need it. If you're a fan of CJ's writing, you need it. If you're a fan of juicers, you need it. If you like the canon development of Rifts North America through the Rifts Ultimate Edition, I think you need it. However, if you don't do anything with the Coalition, if you don't do anything with Juicers, and if you don't do anything with the King's Dale region, it's not all really gonna have anything for you. It's just not. You don't need this for a Rift South America campaign.

No, you don't. Absolutely don't.

You don't need this for a Phase World campaign. I mean, the aliens could be cool, but they're really a small section of the book.

Yeah. There's a, the aliens are the punchline to the story. The end of the, like the big reveal is that.

And honestly, you don't need this for a New West campaign. In fact, having the content in here could destroy a New West campaign because the juicers are so powerful.

Yeah. Yeah. I could see that.

So it's a good read. You should get it, but you don't need it. But you should get it.

And I think you need it.

Thanks for listening, folks. We'll catch you next time as we continue this dive through the worldbooks because we just got to knock a few of them out so we can get to the good ones.

This is one of the good ones.

I know, I know, I know. I'm just waiting for a certain trilogy to approach.

Oh, okay.

Thanks for listening, folks. 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. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

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