Customer Reviews

Mutants in Orbit (Rifts/After the Bomb)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good source book for the Palladium Rifts RPG series and their After the Bomb RPG series. It has much need information on the orbital community of Rifts Earth. Also the book provides a much needed system for building spaceships, altough no Faster than Light Speed travel for the ships, it does provide useful and realistic portrail of early 22nd Century Space Technology.

Given the nature, scope and concept of Rifts vs. After the Bomb, this book would have been better recieved and viewed as a source book just for After the Bomb. I honestly think that tacking that it's a Rifts Sourcebook was a way to try and garner sales given that Rifts is Palladium's more popular and better selling RPG.

As an After the Bomb Source Book, this is one of the better books it has. Format for create your "Orbit" character, profession, skills, ect is all there. It talks about the different stations in Orbit. And in After the Bomb fashion, it gives rules for creating characters who are Mutant Insects. That's pretty much the first half of the book and it does fine with how most of the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and After the Bomb RPG line has gone.

The second half of the book gives it the Rifts treatment for the different stations and what happened when the Ley Lines erupted over the planet. It gives stats for space vehicles and new Glitter Boys in an effort to draw in the Rifts fans. Some vehicles such as the Steel Dragon don't look very good despite the time and effort to draw it. Or take that the L-7 looks like a rejected concept drawing from Robotech.

I look at it now, particularly the Space Ship design rules, they're better then anything available then for Phaseworld. Course at the time of its original publication, there weren't any Ship design rules for Phase World. As it's now 2011 and I'm relooking at this book, I can see how it's become dated. Our current technology has gotten better and we've concieved of better ideas in the realm of Science Fiction as a whole how this stuff could look or work and what would be available.

Only a completest like myself would probably still look to get the book for After the Bomb and the now defunct Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG. At least it's thin and the price is close to about $12. Sections like Life on Mars are now a little tired, over done and boring. And with Rifts, it causes me to wonder why no ones tried to come down planet side as it were or weren't already dead.

My brother and I enjoyed hours of making spaceships and building characters around the whole space idea. Interesting storyline both for rifts and after the bomb.

A good book though it is kinda of old it works great with a phase world campaign

unbalanced, with little real game info. mostly just a jumble of numbers (stats on robots and such).. useless junk. and my copy is even signed by kevin siembieda. i don't care, this isn't really useful at all!