#186 – Rifts World Book 12 Psyscape

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Hi, do you play riffs? Do Do you like psychics? Do you want to change the psychics and how they work in your game? Well, we got the book for you today. It's World Book 12, Psyescape, the book that originally was announced, I think, in '95 and came out in '97 and kind of threw a bunch of stuff at you that is fun and entertaining. But at the same time, as a GM, I think I got more problems out of this book than any of the other Rifts books for players.

So I'd like to take a moment to look at some things here. What does the first printing say on your book? Does it say December of '97?

December of '97.

Great. So that's World Book 12.

Yes.

World Book 13 is Lone Star.

Yes.

Its first printing was in April of 1997. In fact, Lone Star, New West, and Spirit West were all published in 1997, I believe, before Syescape.

Yes, they were, actually. I personally was looking forward to this book in this huge way. I don't know why. I think there had been a glut between, or a gap between books, and I was super excited for it. And then it just kind of disappeared for a bit. We got a bunch of great books, uh, New West, Spirit West, Lone Star, and then it shows up in late December. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. And then I started going through it. And it started off with some good premise. Hey, here's this world of psychics and there's their own little city-state and they're kind of hidden away from everybody and everyone thinks it's a myth and it might be a whole thing like the Yucatan, like a parallel dimension that, you know, like I'm super excited. And then I'm like, oh, Dark Harvest, what is this? Oh, it's another big, bad, evil guy monster.

Well, you see, let's switch this around because I felt the whole background behind Syescape in that just not interesting whatsoever. First off, the name. Who would name their town Seascape?

Yes.

You know, we're right in between Overton and Sheboygan and we're Seascape.

Wait.

Okay.

Well, you, I guess you're, you know, coming right out of the gate swinging, but, but, but, but the Dark Harvest I thought was really fucking cool. I guess because we've just done like going through all of the Nightbane stuff and dealing with all of the You know, the alien intelligence is taking over the universe and the fact that it may or may not be one of the lost Old Ones. See, that just takes me back to my roots.

And I get that. It's just for me, from a book perspective, the first thing you get to read about is the bad guy. You don't even know what the good guy is yet. You know, you don't know, like, what are we defending? No, we're going to tell you about the bad guy. And I totally agree. It's a, it's a pretty solid bad guy, you know. There are at least two more bad guys that are of equal power in this book. It's it's just kind of thrown in in the back, which is interesting to me. So you have Nexel, Nixla, Nixla.

Yeah, I'm just going with Nixla.

Nixla has no real form except a two hundred two excuse me a tower two hundred stories tall that has like heads and monsters. I mean, it's a great picture. on page 23. If I saw this coming out of somewhere, it'd be terrifying.

I think my favorite component or my favorite aspect of the Nixla setup and the harvesters are the very specific methods required to bring in aspects of Nixla and to exorcise the presence of Nixla in your fallen friends. Like there is a process that you have to go through. And it's fascinating. Like you have to get a group of harvesters together to combine, to pool their PPE and ritually open a portal. And that portal's only open for one or for what, 1d6 plus 2 minutes or something like that. But during that time, Nixla like oozes a little bit of itself into the universe, takes over some people, and then the portal's closed. It's a, it's It's so different from what we've seen so far with the alien intelligences who are, you know, slowly widening and widening and widening existing solid portals, such as the vampire intelligences that have taken over the nexus points in South America or in Mexico, in Central America. This one is, it's mobile. So it adds an extra level of threat. and danger to trying to hunt these guys down and stop them. I just think that was pretty cool.

Yeah, I, the whole setup, I mean, it doesn't, and I think this is going to be a recurring theme with this. It doesn't necessarily need to be in this book. It could be put into any of the books until you get to, oh, enter Syescape.

Okay.

And we have another entity, Synex. Kleenex?

Synex? Synex.

Yeah.

We have this entity that's just kind of given a, Okay, I thought my feeling on Sinex— have any of you seen the Eddie Izzard Dressed to Kill?

Yes.

So in that stand-up, he does this routine where he kind of, um, what if Darth Vader was actually British, like the actor inside the suit? And he does this, this skit on it where, you know, Vader's like, Luke, I'm your father. Who told you? I don't know, some bloke. That's the kind of like lazy, I don't give a shit. I'm just sort of kind of here. Maybe I might be here. Maybe it, maybe I'll help you, uh, you know, try and talk to me and you might get a sentence out of me once every 3 weeks. It just, it felt, it felt weak. So this whole Sinex thing is just—

But yet it gives, what is it? It gives amazing powers to all these psychics in this area called Sinex. But like, why? Like, like, what, what's your motivation?

It's just a, that's the psychic analog of a millennium tree. Yeah. And I didn't find the millennium trees all that cool.

No.

So I'm just griping. It was all right. It just didn't have enough definition or presence. I don't have enough here to use Psionics in a game. If this were written by a previous author who we've had on to talk about his books, and who we have spent many words praising the way that he sets up factions and introduces the power players and that, I feel that we would have several more pages on this entity, its purposes, you know, how to use it in a game. But instead we just get like a page and a half of, not even a page and a half. We get like a page.

Yeah.

A page on this guy.

Yeah, like one column, a solid column with a little bit extra.

Yeah.

Like I keep flipping the page expecting, oh no, there's a picture there.

Right.

I keep expecting more on the next page.

Right.

It's just, you know, it, and then it goes on to the city and it tells you about the city. And again, it's missing that, uh, really it's, it's, there's not much stuff here.

Counterpoint.

Okay. Please.

The city of Syescape is supposedly relatively close to the present-day location of Dayton, Ohio. Suddenly everything in this book makes sense.

Sure. I have no— I've never been to Ohio.

Oh God.

Neither have I.

You hit the border and the smell of burning glass and fried food just comes rolling over you.

See, if now they had introduced Synnax as smelling of burning glass and fried food.

That is a huge miss. That is the one major miss.

That right there is one sentence more of great description than this.

Yeah.

That's more description in that sentence than in this whole—

All I'm going to say is having spent some time in Ohio and going like, So tell me about Bowling Green. There's a college there. That's like everything. Apathy.

That's what I'm looking for.

It's apathy. Ohio in so many ways is a state of say as little as you can and go get the fuck away. Apathy and huge defense of Skyline Chili.

The whole Synnex thing, it feels like Hey guys, come on into my town.

Yeah.

And then you have like, what does it mean to be a psychic from Syescape? And this is where, as a GM, I ran into a lot of players that the only reason why they wanted to be from Syescape is extra stuff.

Yeah.

All the extra free stuff.

All the extra free stuff. And I'm like, wow. So you won the psychic lottery by being born in Syescape. Okay, cool. It's like, uh, all right. And then it, I mean, and that's it. Like, like there's what, 5 pages here about the whole namesake of the book.

Yep. And then we just get into the rest of the book being a stuff book. This is a stuff book.

This is a stuff book. This is very much a stuff book.

We're going to revamp psychic abilities.

Well, this feels less of a revamp and more of a clarification.

Like, okay.

I feel like this particular section starting on page 32 was actually information that was very much missing. Okay, or, or that had been spread across other books and maybe talked a little bit about on Usenet or something, and then finally had been collected into, this is how they work, just so you know, this is the final word on things. Yes.

So the one takeaway I had from it is a lot of this book is, when it comes to what you're talking about, the psionics clarifications, overhaul, whatever you want to call it, was moving towards a more unified psi system between Beyond the Supernatural and the Rift psionics and an early peek to how psionics would work in Beyond the Supernatural 2nd Edition. Although that was coming way down. So it's not like, it's like these are, you're seeing the germs of what became the Beyond the Supernatural 2nd Edition psionics system.

When I had to go, when I went to the Psyscape book, it was usually for this, these, these sections, this section here. It's like, how does this psychic work? What's the latest wordage for it? Or I will say there's a bunch of cool new OCCs and RCCs that have been put into this book.

The Index of Psychic Powers is pretty cool too.

Oh yeah, very much so. Yeah.

I don't really have any thoughts on the powers. There's some cool new ones. More powers, I think it's always good. Just, it adds more variety. Yes. Big thumbs up to this section. Yep.

That is it. Like, if you wanted one reason to buy that book, buy this book, that would be one of the big ones.

Now the Burster, I don't know, is this a reprint or is this the first appearance of the Burster?

No, this is, this is a reprint.

Yeah.

But it's a, again, I think what I'm going to hit on what you were saying, it's kind of a clarification of some stuff. They, they, they, they punch it up a little bit. They clarify some of what it can do and you know, what powers they have and a lot of Braxo artwork.

Yeah.

Yeah. And gives a, gives a lot of stuff here for the Burster. The Burster, I think, is— we haven't really talked much about the Burster. Uh, again, one of the iconic classes of Rifts.

It's—

we should take an episode and focus on the Burster because again, just look at that picture. Ramon Perez knocking it out of the park with this Cool, total badass.

The, the one thing I will say that I do appreciate about the burster section in this book is it's a— I would call it more of a clarification and enhancement compared to Butz Edition Riffs.

It—

the, the burster as presented there was very much a does what it says on the tin and no more. presentation. And this gives you some interesting ways to play with a Burster and how they've expanded and clarified the powers without being a strict overhaul.

Yeah, I'm now remembering the picture of the Burster in the first book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was pretty straightforward class. This is a bit more versatile.

You're a psychic pyromaniac. Have a nice day. All right.

You know, right after the Burster, we have what is, in my opinion, the best part of this book. And that is the Mind Bleeder. The Mind Bleeder is what I wanted the Mind Melter to be. It has the Scanners shit. This fucker melts minds. The whole veins popping in the forehead as it's doing cool stuff. Like, this is the character class. When someone says, man, I just watched Scanners and I want to play that. I'm like, I got you, fam.

Yeah.

I got you.

It's right here. the special cool Mind Bleeder only powers that it can take. The, the, this, this is what the Mind Melter I think should have been.

And, and while it is a reprint from Africa, again, I think they cleaned some of the things up. They clarify some stuff. It's yeah, the Mind Bleeder was always one of the RCCs that I like, no, you can't play that. Yeah. It scared me even though in reality, okay. But it, It's very powerful.

Yeah. Of course, you know, reprint of the Mind Melter. Yeah.

Without punched up a little bit. Um, if there was one that I would have liked to have seen more punch up on, it would have been the Mind Melter just because it, it needs some love.

Well, it's, I've always seen it as the, the psychic version of the Leyline Walker and the Leyline Walker had some cool abilities and some unique things to it. But it was a generalist arcane magic using type of class. Whereas the Mind Melter.

Yeah. My issue with it is when the Mind Melter was originally introduced, it was supposed to be the master master psionic and it didn't even, and in the book it was put into, it didn't even really live up to that.

All they had to do was just call it Mind Mage.

Yeah, sure.

Give it, give it. That would have been a, to me, a more functional identity than calling it something it doesn't do.

Right.

Yeah, I know, I know. It's a really weird distinction for me. A bunch of people disagree with it who think the Mind Melter is a perfectly useful class. And you know what, actually, as it is, it is a totally useful class.

Yeah.

But in my opinion, I think it's a very badly named class, whereas the Mind Bleeder is essentially the Mind Melter in my headcanon.

Badly named, and what its skills and abilities do are out of sync with the flavor text on it.

Yeah.

And that is what is the dissonance. As someone who's played Mind Melters, like I played a Mind Melter in the first campaign I ever played with you, I was playing a Savage. My, my character, where it was, you know, I grew up in a backwater community and I was leaning in hard to the flavor text, but it was kind of hard given like the skills you were supposed to take and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's, that's a good, uh, that's a good way of summing it up. It's, it's the disconnect between the description and the actual implementation. For example, the Mind Mage is guilty of this, especially if we looked at the original Mind Mage in Palladium Fantasy, because I remember when we were talking about it in our previous episodes dedicated to the class, the big focus here was like, this reads as if it's like some kind of super powerful, awesome mental savant, but the skills and the setup of abilities show a back alley shyster.

Yeah.

A criminal. Like, this is, this isn't just, this is very shoehorned into a certain role and Mind Melter always kind of felt like that.

Now we move to the RCC that I have huge opinions about.

Oh, the Nega Psychic. Tell us your opinions.

So I, as, as someone who is playing Beyond the Supernatural before Rifts was a thing, I, I'm really up on my Beyond the Supernatural. And one of the core conceits of Beyond the Supernatural, and they even mention it slightly here, is that what a nega-psychic actually was, was someone who was so anti-conspiracy theory, UFOs are just swamp gas, etc., etc., psychics are just hucksters, etc., etc., but they were psionic themselves. So their psionics got filtered through that lens to disrupt other psionics. When— and they even— I'm gonna actually read straight from the book for this one. Of course, on Riff's Earth, it is virtually impossible to honestly believe that supernatural beings, demons, dragons, magic, and psychic abilities are not real. They are everywhere and are known to be extremely real. So they don't give a good reason for how a negapsychic has that deep conceit to just be able to say no to reality.

You're spot on. This seems like a pointless class. It should have been combined with a class that comes later in this book, the nullifier, because the nullifier essentially does what you're saying, right? But the negapsychic is like, kind of does it, but doesn't it? Yeah. If you take the nega psychic's power and take that and just pass it over to combine with the nullifier, you have an excellent class. It does exactly what you're saying.

The one thing I will say about this class before I hand it off is that they put in a tendency I have seen over and over again with a lot of nega psychic players who came out of Beyond the Supernatural. of very significant libertarian stripe in their characters, whatever their personal belief. It's— they literally put it in the description.

I read that and I was like, that's, that's weird, but I kind of see it. This class, even in Beyond the Supernatural, always struck me as a running joke that I've had in many groups, which is, well, I disbelieve your insert horrible thing that's about to happen to me. And it comes back from old school Ravenloft where you could disbelieve a bad thing.

Yep.

And it just didn't happen. Well, they just believe so hard that nothing happens to them. And if you had it smacked in your face, it just wouldn't make any sense. You know, it's very hard for me to like, yeah, yeah. I agree completely with you, Nathaniel, that it shouldn't get rolled into the Psi Nullifier. Like it shouldn't have been part of this anyway.

Yep.

Psi Druid. Hey, I love nature and I have psychics.

And it's, you know what though? Okay, people shit on the Druids and I've seen people talk about how crap the Druids are. In fact, I've joined that conversation. The Druids in England, they were kind of a crappy class. I feel that this is taking that and turning it into something a bit more playable.

Exactly.

Yeah.

They're kind of like the uber Ranger.

Well, like, yeah.

Or outdoorsman.

Yeah. I had the privilege of playing, of running for a group that had a Wilderness Scout, a Psy Druid, and 2 other characters that were all wilderness-focused. One of them was from, I believe, New West. It worked really, really well because while they had the core conceit of all being wilderness characters, the fact that we— you could have enough different RCCs/OCCs at the table that all had that focus but different emphasis on that focus made for a great, great group. And I think the Psy Druid is a great addition.

I think it's a good class. And I would add a note here under its point number 6, other psionic abilities. What I find is fascinating at the very last sentence, plus 1 supersonic power can be selected at levels 3, 5, 7, 9, and 13. And it does not state limitations.

Nope. Which is weird, but interesting. But I think Mind Melter does. Yes.

Yes, it does. Yes, it does.

Yeah.

So moving on to the Psyghost. Which is one of the RCCs as a GM, again, I've had the most problem with players.

I just don't like—

yeah, hate them.

Because you're a mutant who has some psychic abilities and you have the most— you're basically Kitty Pryde. You're intangible and, and you can just do it and maintain it.

And that's it.

That's it.

Like, yeah.

Okay.

It has fewer restrictions on its function than phase powers do. And phase powers are broken.

Yep.

I'm, as a game master, I'm not a fan of this class. Essentially any class that takes away one of the core ways of creating conflict, the wall, and just removes it from your game, it makes it difficult to provide challenges. Suddenly you have the same problem that I had as a game master in Shadowrun with astral projection. Astral projection The only way as a game master to deal with it as the, I'm going to find all information immediately power is to have every single opponent in the game have put in astral blocking things in their walls. So it's one of these classes that the GM has to counterbalance. Otherwise, the game is kind of, congratulations, there are no more walls.

Mm-hmm.

As a GM, I totally agree with you. The counterpoint I would offer is it's one of the psionic classes out there that provides a more realistic in-universe justification for the Coalition stance.

Oh, because if they knew about these or ran into them, they would defend like crazy against them.

And they do. Like, like they, this It— the most of the psionic classes, other than impingements and low-level mind-reading, empathy, shyster-level conman-type stuff— I don't want to go too down the road to defend— sound like I'm defending the Coalition's stance on this, but there are surprisingly few psionic classes in the game.

Hmm.

that really explain the extent to which the Coalition spends so much effort in anti-psionics as they do. And this is one of them.

Yes. Making matters more complicated though is that its core game-breaking power isn't psionic.

Yep.

Right. Right. 100%.

Well, and it's okay because if you took that ability away, I think they start with more psionic abilities than the Mind Melter. Because it's a huge list of stuff.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Um, I mean, it's more specified and then they, they, they as well get supersonics at 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th. Like what? It just, anyway. And then they have a better skill selection, I think, than the Mind Melter.

Oh, they do.

Much better.

So, um, I'm going to play a Psyghost instead of a Mind Melter and call myself a Mind Melter.

Yeah.

Does that make you feel better?

Yeah.

But anyway, then you have the Psi Nullifier. I think the class that should have been the negative, they should have rolled. This is how I see this class kind of working, the psychic ability to kind of override the supernatural and psychics and like go, nope, nope, I'm shutting that down. Nope.

Nope.

You can't do that. Turning that off.

I like the balancing aspect of it too, in that the, the, the victim of this shutdown ability can still pump more power into it to make it happen.

The theatrics of that at a table is awesome. It's like you have a psi nullifier be a bad guy and he's shutting you down. He's like, oh, you have to spend more. What? What do you mean I have to spend more? And you just go back and forth on that and like the thematics.

Although I will say, I do have this weird mental image whenever that has happened at a game table I've been at of The Pokémon character Psyduck going and just staring at another psionic Pokémon and just like clutching its temples and staring at the other one. And it just makes me giggle every time it happens.

And then have you ever wondered, have you ever wondered what you would get if you crossed a Mind Melter with a Psy Stalker? You would have the Psy Slayer, which I think is also More powerful than the Mind Melter.

I think you meant to say, have you ever wondered what would happen if you crossed a Psi Stalker with a Mind Melter and had it grow up in the Australian Outback? Because I get huge, huge, uh, Down Under vibes of Outback Crocodile Hunters.

It's funny you say that because Ramon Perez did the main art for the character and did most of the art for the Australia book. I'm with you.

Yeah. This is one of those interesting classes to me. At the surface level, you look through it and you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. Wait, what is that? Oh, it's a little side dagger. So it's a little dagger that just does 1d4 MD plus another d4.

What?

And it's just like this thing you can create. And as an assassin, you walk by, you stab someone in the back, you walk away. Because if you sleepwalk, you know exactly where they're going to be. They walk their dog at 2:00 AM every night. And I'm going to go like, it's, It's kind of an evil little class.

It is. Did you have to call it evil? Because it's one of my favorites.

You're evil.

I mean, like, I mean, well, you're, you're an assassin for good. I mean, okay, we can have some— that's another conversation.

Yeah.

Okay.

Psi-Tech.

Psi-Tech.

I'm okay. This is a weird one for me. I'm not a fan of it. I don't have any kind of complaint. with the class. And specifically, my complaint is essentially it, it erases operators.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I—

one thing I have not done is, uh, since Titan Robotics came out and did a whole bunch of stuff with robots, uh, what Power 4, Mental Link to Robots, Power Armor, and Vehicles, does with that and exactly I, I, it was one of the ones that if I had had time before we sat down to record, I wanted to look at Titan just because it— I wonder how much it was considered.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I mean, honestly, +1 attack action per melee round is huge.

So it's also one of those classes to me that it becomes— not only does it get rid of Operator, but any of your robot pilot classes or combat pilot classes or power armor. You play this and with level 4, you get all these better bonuses. Oh, and you can pilot anything. You start with 3 piloting choices.

Yeah.

So I'm going to pilot power armor and robot armor and have all these abilities. Oh, and I'll pick up, you know, power armor combat and robot, you know, like, and all of a sudden I'm just way better than anything you can field. Which, you know, it's rifts. There's no balance, boys and girls. Get over it. It's just not a thing. But at the same time, I'm like, it's, it's stealing thunder from some other core classes.

Honestly, my take on this one, I think with a little tuning, it could have been a great class, but it, it wasn't tuned enough.

Yep. And then we have the Psi Warrior, which is okay. We're starting to get a theme here. Let's take a character class from the original Rifts book, make it psychic and better.

Yeah.

So this is essentially the Cyber Knight, but better. Like the Operator, but better. The Mind Melter, but better. Like all of this is— okay, I'm starting to get less and less joy out of these character classes. The Warrior is pretty cool. A lot of cool fighting powers that are psychic. I don't really have much to say about it. It's, it is very much the Cyber Knight, but psychic.

Without cybernetics.

Yeah.

I see this as the nucleus for what happened in the Siege of Tolkien with the revamp of the Cyber Knight.

Yep. Oh, that came before this.

No, it came after this. I'm pretty sure it came after this.

Oh, oh, that. Okay.

Okay.

I see it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or in parallel with.

Yeah.

I'd have to check the dates.

Yeah.

Um, but, uh, it, it's kind of like, hey, but you know, the story from a flavor standpoint, not anyone can be a Psi Warrior, right? These are Psyscape's kind of elite warriors. They're, they're fighters.

Their main line would be great if we knew more about Psyscape. It would, it would really would.

Uh, and then we close out with the Zapper. I think that's the last one, which Zapper's pretty fucking cool.

Zapper is one of my favorite character classes. Um, it's the M.

Bison of Well, he's got a little bit of Vin Bison and a little bit of Blanka.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Although the artwork, the page on 80, I think that's a Zapper. It reminds me of Dazzler from X-Men, kind of her, like she's in the middle of doing a dance around the CS and she's going to—

I suspect—

It looks more like a Psi Warrior.

I was going to say, I think that's supposed to be the Psi Warrior. If you look at the picture that they post of the Psi Warrior on 77 and the look at 80, Thematically, it's consistent.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah. No, the zapper is one of the coolest pictures in the book.

Perez just wonderful. Okay, Cyclops dumb. So okay, okay. Not just dumb, not just dumb. It's it's one. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6 and a half or so pages of dumb. They could have condensed this down into like 4 paragraphs of this thing. But no, it's like everything is so long worded. It's, it's, it's a drink. It's addictive. It gives you some weird powers. We don't need 6 and a half pages about a fucking soft drink.

And you get what you didn't get. I now know how every region Classifies it, legal status, and if it's available in every region so far in the world of Rifts. But I don't know how they feel about Syscape.

Oh, and you know what? I don't know where those stores in Syscape are.

Yeah. Um, one thing that I want to quick call out is on page 83, second column, Sysstalker note. It's it is their justification for the nega psychic and psi nullifier that, in my opinion, doesn't do the job they were trying to do in the paragraph, but is important if you're trying to wrap your head around the differences between them.

Sure.

Yeah.

We'll get more psi stalker goodness in an upcoming book though.

Oh oh you mean the the one they mentioned right in the paragraph?

Yep yep yep.

Lone Star.

Yeah.

Okay. I like the monsters. I like all of them. I think they're really cool. I really, really, really, really like the Dark Hound. What I really like about the Dark Hound is apparently it and several of the other books are half designed by the lead singer of Bauhaus. It just seems, you know, Peter Murphy. This looks like a Peter Murphy kind of character. This, this is pretty dark. I love the idea of like the twisted awful dog boys gone bad. The dragon ape's kind of dumb. Sorry. But the other stuff is pretty cool. The Necrophim.

Okay. So this is the second big, bad, evil guy in this book. It could totally be. I mean, look at that picture on 103, 101. Like, okay. That's, that's, that's disturbing.

It is.

I will, I will note though, it doesn't have several hundred thousand MDC like our good friend Nixla.

True.

Or any of the Splurgar.

True.

Yeah.

This is just a big monster. Yeah. What's fascinating to me is that it is called the Necrophim, but I'm pretty sure there's also the Necrophim in the, um, second book of Nightbane.

Mm.

Oh yeah. There's, it's an astral creature, the Necrophim. I'm pretty sure. I have to go back and check that out, but the symbiotes are kind of neat. I like the You know, the tragic story of just the whole concept of a species that has been like wholesale captured and lobotomized by the Spluugorth is pretty compelling stuff in my opinion. All the rest of the creatures are pretty cool. The fucking sun demon. Oh, oh, it's beautiful. The, just the artwork. This, it's wonderful.

Love it.

The one that I think doesn't get enough love, uh, from the Rifts community Is the Bloodhawk.

Bloodhawk's pretty cool.

The Bloodhawk is very cool.

I had it on a short list of creatures to use in our former Rifts campaign, should the heroes have gone to a certain location, which they didn't do wisely.

When you suddenly realize these things, because they tend to operate in small flocks, are an existential threat to Samus pilots, you know, it's like Why we don't have air travel in Rifts Earth, you know, flocks of bloodhawks.

I'm also a big fan if we go like keep moving way, way, way back. I really like the Zenith Moon Warpers. I'm not like a werewolf fan or anything, but I love the concept behind them. Palladium's take on classic monsters has always been really cool.

Yeah, definitely agree with that.

There are lots of really good just monsters that have a lot of depth that you can just go have fun with.

I do need to bitch about a picture. Turn to page 144. Bodies don't work that way. Wayne, what are you doing? This is the classic, let me somehow twist my body so I can show you both the ass and the titties at the same time. Like, uh, her spine. Poor lady.

So there's a couple RCCs in here. that I actually really enjoy.

Okay.

The Amorph is actually pretty cool.

It's pretty cool.

I, I, I, yeah. I mean, honestly, I, I kind of suspect that, uh, you would, Nathaniel, kind of have a soft spot for them, if for no other reason than the picture on 118.

It's a great picture. Yep.

Love it.

On the other side, The demon dragon mage, I just like, why?

Yeah. Um, not all of these even make sense.

Yeah.

So again, we're going back to our complaint at the very beginning of this discussion, which is this book is called Syscape. There's almost nothing about Syscape in this book. The rest of it is a whole bunch of psychic classes and then this hodgepodge of creatures that don't really fit the theme. Like this, it was, it's, and again, England, it's just like Rift Singlen. Rift Singlen didn't know what it wanted to be.

Right.

And it just didn't put things forward in a way that felt like this is a book about England.

Right.

This is just Rift's, the psionic sourcebook.

Right.

Yeah.

Although one of the ones they introduced and actually do a pretty good job linking to the overall concept of Syscape is the Psygoblins.

Now the Psygoblins are pretty cool.

Yeah, I am down with them. I have never played one. I've ran for a couple Psygoblin players and honestly, one of the better RCCs they ever put together as far as, you know, internal balance, not balance across the entire system, but within itself.

The look into the Coalition States and their psionic research, it's pretty cool. I like it because it also is a direct tie-in to the book that follows.

Like, uh, especially everything they have to say about the Psi Battalion.

Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Psi implants, techno devices. Again, stuff book.

Mm-hmm. Psi implants for when you're crazy needs more.

Right.

Needs more crazy. Yep.

What about the OCC double crazy? Oh God. Yeah. Well.

If I was to look at this book and say, you know, do I need this book? Would I recommend this book? I don't think I've ever recommended this book to anyone. Unfortunately, I hate to say that. It's hard for me to say that.

Yeah.

But you don't really need it because we kind of asked this question. The completist needs it.

Yep.

But otherwise there are books that came out afterwards. Hell, even Butt's Edition has most of the updates in it that you would want. Or, uh, or not Ultimate Edition, excuse me, not Butt's Edition. Has most of the updates you would want. You don't really need the book. There's not enough there to justify the book, but you know, you can't, can't hit them all out of the park.

Right.

If you wanted to play with quote unquote Rifts history a little bit and look at the Coalition Federation of Magic war and do a slight revamp, why was Syescape sitting on the sidelines during that whole thing? And if you changed that because you suddenly have New Laszlo, the Federation of Magic, and Syescape as Op 4 for the Coalition, suddenly it changes dramatically and actually makes Syescape far more relevant to the setting.

I think as a stuff book, if you're into psionics, like really into psionics, it can be handy. As a game master, I warn You, when a player approaches you wanting to play a character from this group, you need to activate your own psionics and sense their motive because this is, there's some broken stuff in here. And I say this having just had a conversation in our previous episode about South America 2.

Right.

The thing is, so that South America 2 is isolated to South America and all of it fits together when you think of the whole South America continent as a grand as a grand stage for its components. This, however, is meant to be in North America.

Right, with everything else.

And everything else.

My biggest gripe with the book is that it doesn't do enough to explain Syscape, and then it seems to be totally forgotten going forward.

Yeah, I know it's referenced somewhere in various other books and some of the books that come out after it. But as you said, not much.

And when it's that big of a deal, it should be mentioned more.

And when it is mentioned, it's see this book for X power or X RCC more than anything.

Right.

And honestly, after the Ultimate Edition and, you know, some of the compendium books that have come since, you don't even need it.

Yeah.

Unless you want those classes. Yep. And I think many of the creatures are in the Bestiary. Many of the RCCs are in the big old Rifts book of RCs, of DBs. You don't need it. Yeah. That's my opinion. Yeah.

When it came out, that was the only place you could get those things.

Yeah.

But now you have other sources.

If, however, you are into invasive, indomitable, unstoppable evils, the first 30 pages of it are pretty cool. I did like Nixla.

Yeah.

Well, that's Syescape.

That's Syescape. Get it if you're a completionist. Otherwise, we gave you some tips on where to get the information, the information you really need elsewhere. Um, otherwise it's one of the cheaper books available at drivethru.com and other sources.

So yeah, it's, it's, it's an all right Rifts book. I don't hate it. I just don't find it very inspiring. You know, I, I don't own the physical copy, and that's— that says something as, as a collector of Palladium books.

It is. So in the 3 categories that I keep in my mind of Rift's books— must-haves, don't-needs, and then the 3rd category of wish they do have done more with— this falls firmly in that one. That third category of I wish they had done more with, if you're willing to put in effort, there's interesting concepts and ideas to explore if you want to like totally go off the rails as a GM and have something that you can build your own story without the constraints of a pre-established narrative. Not that Kevin's gonna come knocking on your door if you mess with the pre-established narrative anyway, but you know.

Yeah. Cool.

Cool.

Well, I think that's Syescape.

All right, folks. Well, um, we finally did it. We finally talked about Syescape. Thanks for recommending it over and over again. We're trying to power through a series on going through these worldbooks of Rifts because again, we're still in 1997 here and we need to catch up to the present day.

I mean, how many, I mean, really, how much of, how much of a task is this? How many worldbooks are there? Like 20?

32? Yeah.

33?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At this point, we're not even halfway there, my friend.

Not even close. So yeah, drop by Discord and complain about how we did your favorite book wrong. I guess I know it's coming, but also just come hang out, join the conversation with a bunch of really awesome, wonderful, largely pleasant Palladium fans.

Yes.

Yeah.

See you there.

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.

Oh, wow.

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. Have a good one.

Thank you.

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. Thanks for listening. 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/podcast. 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.