Rifter 1

Authors note: Before I start this review I want to say that it’s a bit intimidating writing about something that was so inspirational on all my work that I have ever done in the Rifter or online. To all the writers of the Rifter past and present, thank you.

Rifter 1 came out in the spring of 1998. In that year I had just met the woman who would agree to be my wife of over sixteen years and to see it was so awe inspiring that I was set to be in this magazine. It had so much talent pouring out of it but you all know that so let’s get to the beef.

In the first article was Rifts City rules by Eric J. Lind a.k.a. Tungsten Avenger. At the time I recall we didn't even have rules for what Chi-Town looked like nor any of the burbs. The possibility of creating towns controlled by the Coalition was fascinating as I really didn't know now they defined their boarders. At the time I thought the Coalition was an all consuming parasite that was just pushing the limit. The War on Tolkien was yet to come in novel form (published in 1999, written by Adam Chilson) as well as RPG format (Coalition Wars; published in October of 2001).  But I digress, This first article had everything that was embedded in the spirit of Rifts and what we knew of it. The article covered everything from the past of the town, racism, to the available resources and technology of the town/city. I admit that I built at least six towns before my wife told me to stop geeking out.

Those that have a copy of Lemuria (written by Greg Diaczyk) The new Roman Republic written by Rodney Stott was a big add to the world of Rifts covering a place that had never been really discussed which was deep south Europe. Some years later Bill Coffin would write Wolfen Empires (a rewrite of a classic of Adventures of the Northern Wilderness and More Adventures of the Northern Wilderness written by Kevin himself). The adventure showed a new format of empire that I am sure followed a Roman-esk format and was quite enticing because it involved creatures that we all had thanks to the Rifts Converson book or various Palladium Fantasy books. The incorporation of technology and magic was a nice blend. I am sure that if where it ever revisited that it would have to show their relation to the empires mentioned in the book Rifts Underseas. I really could see a new Europe book about France, Italy and such. What was nice is that they had new O.C.C.’s, armor, weapons and robots. Magic was briefly mentioned in passing but we had so much to pull from that we could fill in the blanks.

Next was the Knights of Kamnos witch I thought initially was just a story for Phase World but it turned out that it had a bit of new bits for our adventurous mind with a new O.C.C. and armaments and equipment.

The real surprise was James M.G. Cannon Hammer of the Forge a novel that was put into the Rifter like a periodical that you had to get the next Rifter just to see what happened next (still hope that they make it a novel). This story would carry on for 50+ Rifters.

Like I said, we had a real taste for the war on Tolkien because the next story after was the Siege Against Tolkien by David Haendler; a fine short story that carried in the second Rifter.

Heroes Unlimited had to be mentioned of course and at the time we had only Heroes Unlimited first edition and by the looks of this Rifter we were hungry for more. With over twenty powers by several authors we unknowingly saw a preview of the next version of Heroes Unlimited. Great powers were in the magazine with some powers that would not be in the new edition but man they were really thinking. One particular power Alter Physical Structure: Putty was actually put in a Powers Unlimited later because.. well.. it was left out of the great book of Heroes Unlimited. Aaron Oliver a.k.a. DreamFox and Steve Trustrum were big contributors of this article though I don’t think that there was another article that was compiled like this one as far as I can remember.

In 1995, C.J. Carella wrote my absolute favorite dark roleplaying game and it was not forgotten in the Rifter. Again Aaron Oliver a.k.a. DreamFox added more viewing pleasure with new Morphus Tables that were wild and zany. I mean for heaven sakes he had armadillo tables for the Nightbane. I admit that the tables that C.J. had made were diverse but the Rifter showed us that we could make a ton of tables of our own and sure enough we would in the following Rifters of the first one.

The one thing that still catches my eye was the following article y William R. Muench about the new faction called the Inlustris. Here the author showed us all that there were more factions and fighters in the war on the Nightlords. He had history, R/O/P.C.C.s, characters, and with Aaron Oliver a.k.a. DreamFox and Shawn Merrow, new adventures called Hook Line Sinkers. Now we had new ways to stimulate our ideas in a short quick way that other G.M.’s could share without stifling the creativity that each group created. Holy Cow, GENIUS.

The last article was for Beyond the Supernatural creating in my opinion O/P/R.C.C.’s that we could use in a number of avenues. The new classes were darker and created a new way of looking at your psychics and introduced a way of thinking of how we fought the unknown. Again this was a culmination article which has not been seen much since but I liked this magazine.

So this is the first Rifter Review of the first Rifter. We had comics, creativity and a I had to say that it took a while to put out the fire of excitement but the fire kept going with Rifter Two. Awesome!!!

(To be continued with Rifter Two…)

Cover art by Kevin Long