Running Rifts With One's Sanity Intact

I still haven't really figured out how to throw reasonably appropriate monsters at my RIFTS group. I just kind of pick monsters that sound cool. They usually get utterly trounced. Combat is really kind of an afterthought in a game where dudes lug around particle canons and nano-swords made from bio-wizardry and what the fuck am I even talking about juuuuuuuuuuuice!

Ahem.

Right now I'm all about the environment in the game. I try to give my players cool shit to interact with. I think I had some Lamentations-esque rooms in my necromancer tower last night. (Lamentations-esque meaning creepy and unsettling, not pushbuttonruincharacter.) The players also managed to ruin both a "safe recovery" room and a potential source of information though general carelessness. Ooooops.

I play fast and loose with the rules. The Ley Line Walker in the party has managed to semi-accidentally learn two Necro-Magic spells, and I offered a non-spellcasting player the chance to acquire the ability to use Necro-Magic. Both of these things are technically against the rules, but meh. I am constantly hand-waving things in RIFTS, because to do otherwise is to court madness.Wit h Rifts, you pretty much have to go style over substance. I think of RIFTS as more of an attitude rather than a set of rules.

The game is a little horror-ish right now, but hey, necromancy should probably be a little horrifying, right?


Tonight I am filling in for our Deadlands GM. When I fill in, we actually play a different campaign that is also somewhat divergent from "default" Deadlands. My Skype group is also set to resume on Sunday after a month long hiatus, the game being my house-ruled Ravenloft/Masque of the Red Death/Gothic Earth game.