This Coalition Worship Has Gone Full Retard

So, today I received the weekly email from Palladium Books updating subscribers on what's out and what's coming. I cannot make this shit up.



QUOTE!

Rifts® Sourcebook – The Coalition States: Heroes of Humanity The events unfolding in World Book 35: Megaverse® in Flames threaten to change the entire landscape of Rifts® Earth, as the demonic minions of Hades and Dyval seek to bring Hell on Earth and turn the planet into a dimensional gateway to Armageddon!

The Coalition States, along with Northern Gun and Lazlo, take the lead in the defense of North America. Heroes of Humanity explores the good and bad in the Coalition’s efforts to save humanity and send this new threat back to the pits of Hell.

• New Coalition weapons, armor and war machines.
• The Coalition States: Are they heroes or villains? Or does it depend on whether you are human or not?
• Can the CS fight alongside mages and D-Bees if it means saving the world?
• How is the CS dealing with the Minion War on Earth?
• One plan to battle the Xiticix and who really pays the price.
• Adventure ideas and more.
• Written by Kevin Siembieda, Matthew Clements and other contributors.
• Final page count and cost yet to be determined but probably 96 pages – $16.95 retail – Cat. No. 889.

What is this I don't even.

But wait, there's more!

Rifts® Secrets of the Coalition States: The Disavowed

“Desperate times require desperate measures. War has nothing to do with morality or justice. It’s all about winning or dying. We cannot bind our hands with high ideals, even our own, or worry about the laws of renegade nations or the rights of alien people. We must fight fire with fire. And you are the match.” – Colonel Lyboc, addressing a Disavowed team.

The Disavowed are so Top Secret that their existence is known only to a handful of the Coalition States’ most elite, top echelon, with Joseph Prosek II the mastermind behind the Disavowed operation, and Colonel Lyboc its shadowy face. Find out who these men and women are. How the Disavowed get away with using magic, traveling to other parts of Rifts Earth and even to other dimensions in pursuit of enemies and strategic information that cannot be had through conventional means. Learn about the secret parameters in which these hard-boiled warriors, secretly hand-picked by Joseph Prosek II, operate, why almost every mission is considered a suicide mission, and why they must forever be the Disavowed.

• CS operatives so secret that even the top military and political leaders right up to Emperor Prosek know nothing about them. And if they did know, would they condone their activity or condemn it?
• Are the Disavowed heroes or renegades? Assassins or soldiers? Madmen or super-patriots? Or a little of them all?
• Unsung heroes who keep the CS safe, or thugs and pawns of a shadow agency within the Coalition government?
• What role does the Vanguard play in this group?
• How do they reward their D-Bee “teammates” when the mission is over?
• What happens to the Disavowed when they have seen or learned too much? Adventure ideas galore and so much more.
• Written by Kevin Siembieda and Matthew Clements.
• Final page count and cost yet to be determined, but probably 96 pages – $16.95 retail – Cat. No. 892.

Full. Retard.

We can stop fapping over these techno-Nazis any time now. They're Nazis. Stop trying to make Good Guys out of them, Uncle Kevin. Yes, I do blame you and not the "co-author" whose manuscript you--if you hold to your pattern, and you usually do--suckered out of the guy and then hacked up to suite your sophomoric sensibilities (which haven't matured since the 1970s). Christ, folks! This is just the sort of crap-tastic content that I spent so many posts trying to clean up and make sensible. Bother.

RIFTS and Your Game: Shaping the Setting as Customization

An easy way for a Game Master to take what is written and make it yours is to curate and shape the setting material to your liking. This is a liminal conceptual space where rules and setting blend, so you might as well think of this as an aspect to making House Rules.

To illustrate the point, I'll go with the Coalition States and its primary socio-economic institution: the Army. The Army is where the Coalition puts the able-bodied men within its reach. By putting all adult men into the Army, it subjects them to a single comprehensive authority with total control over their lives, so we'll do that and remove all civilian life from the Coalition States: the Coalition doesn't have an Army, it IS the Army. The rules effect? All Coalition characters are Male and Military. (With two exceptions, as noted below.) This culls the playable options down to a handful of Occupations (which, really, are military specializations) and exactly one race/sex combination; it also narrows the range of playable spaces down to those specific to military operations- something that an expansionist, manaphobic, xenophobic, racist, sexist, authoritarian, and totalitarian military dictatorship operating in a milieu that justifies its propaganda on an hourly basis would be.

(Exceptions: Dog Boys and Honeypots. The former are still male-only, but male Canine; the latter is where the very few women allowed outside the home operate, both in counter-intelligence and in foreign intelligence. You expected post-apocalyptic Nazis to do otherwise? Learn your history; they would, because in many respects they did.)

Let's get more specific now.

A Coalition man, regardless of his specialization, must complete Basic Training. This includes, since the technology exists, the mandatory implantation of certain cybertechnologies. Ear modifications that act exactly as real-world electronic ear protection headphones, eye modifications that guarantee 20/20 vision as well as instant polarization (making eye glasses/sunglasses pointless), lung modifications to ensure endurance in the field, and a datajack in the base of the neck- all imposed to get any given recruit up to baseline functionality at best possible speed. (Yes, the datajack is that important; it's easier to have a unit jack into a cybernetic network to get trained/briefed/etc. than to talk it out (since all Coalition personnel are totally illiterate, so written stuff is out).

So, rules: instead of a Coalition character having a choice, they get a set package of cybernetics as a standard feature of that Occupation, to be considered part of Basic Training and not Specialization training.

Now, let's do some variation thinking.

Abolish man-sized energy weapons and instead replace them with latter-day (but otherwise conventional) firearms. As our Coalition is based in North America, they will use foreseeable iterations of U.S. Army small arms or rivals thereof. Instead of the M9 (i.e. a Beretta 92 model), we'll grant the Coalition officers a latter-generation Glock 17 or 19. (Pilots or similar personnel will be issues a Glock 26, while Technicians will instead be issued a hypothetical Glock carbine--as a real one does not exist as of this post; other manufacturers do this--chambered for the same handgun cartridge, and thus uses the same magazines; we can base this on the Keltec Sub-2000, the Kriss Vector, or some other real-world model but I think just imagining an up-sized Glock filling out the same profile as the venerable M1 Carbine would do.) This will have some cascading effects, but I think those to be desirable ones that are beneficial to the game experience anyway.

Likewise, the standard rifle will be iterations and variations on the AR-15 platform (currently the M4 variation in the U.S. Army). Maybe the standard cartridge will shift to the now-new .300 Blackout cartridge, instead of the current standard 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge. Upgunned versions chambered for the .308 Winchester cartridge ("AR-10" sorts) may be the standard issue instead, depending upon the commonly-encountered opposition of the Coalition. Specialized operators will still use bolt-action rifles, often chambered for that Winchester cartridge by default; far bigger and more powerful cartridges (such as the .50 BMG) will be employed as required (and yes, for those not paying attention, such rifle platforms exist and have for some time).

The game's "Mega-Damage" conceit, when confined to its original scope of use (i.e. tanks and similar objects), works fine; the vast majority of entities in a RIFTS campaign do not qualify for such a status and therefore should be handled accordingly. (You can achieve much of what is implied by using Mega-Damage by other means, especially for super-natural entities, such as Immunities and Resistances or some other concept that other tabletop RPG engines handle very well.)

The rules effect? To eliminiate needless redundancy in conceptual spaces, as well as conceptual confusion, by keeping the baseline of Coalition campaigns as close to that of "The Army vs. The Monsters" as possible- and thus making buy-in very easy for new and returning players, since the unrealities they need to deal with are confined to a few Gee-Whiz widgets and the inhuman presences that they confront on a regular basis.

There, a set of examples of how you can make the body of RIFTS into the game you want- all at varying degrees of emphasis (rules vs. setting), degrees of player-vs.-GM engagement, degrees of in-play vs. away-from-table engagement, etc. so you can see what I intended to do to achieve the desired effect- and thereby do this sort of thing for yourself. This is one of the many reasons for why being as skilled and as knowledgeable of things beyond gaming matters; you can't do this well, if at all, if you refuse to improve yourselves as individuals.

Common Campaigns in RIFTS: The Superhero Campaign

RIFTS, being a multi-genre campaign, can support entire genres if (and only if) your group buys into that voluntarily. Superheroes do work well enough, and you need not have Heroes Unlimited to make this work, but some commentary with regards to melding the usual superhero tropes with RIFTS is in order.

I am not talking about someone with superpowers in a colorful costume. That can, and does, cover plenty of Occupations in this game and therefore does not make one a superhero. (Or a supervillain for that matter.) I am talking about taking a campaign that would be normative for something like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds (or, of course, Heroes Unlimited) and using it in the environment of RIFTS. This is all about the tropes and not the numbers or the gameplay options.

A superhero game in RIFTS can handle the same range of power level--from the streets and backwoods of mostly-mundane characters to the cosmic levels of Lensmen and their inspirations (Green Lantern and Nova Corps)--so that is not the issue. The issue is that such a campaign will not be the Comics Code Authority sort of castrated content; this doesn't automatically make it an Iron Age (to use comic culture terminology) setting, but it does mean that you are not making the most of what's available in RIFTS if you sanitize things.

By necessity, you should be using some form of team as your campaign template. The trick is to pick the right team for your table's needs; if you have a group that can reliably fulfill a regular commitment to show up and play for four to six hours a week playing the same characters, then you want to use a group like The Fantastic Four or one of the many Japanese tokukatsu shows (or their animated counterparts, Magical Girls and Martial Boys). For a group with a rotating attendance, you want to use a larger organization where members come and go routinely for this or that reason, such as the Legion of Superheroes or the various Avengers lineups. This also means choosing team templates means choosing gameplay templates; committed single-character groups can better exploit serial drama tropes and premises than looser groups who either lack commitment or play multiple characters, who (in turn) can better exploit episode structures and tropes.

So, that said, here's a list of things you need to do to make it work in RIFTS:

• Choose a Scope & Scale: On Earth, you're best being a City Defender sort of team, even if it's not strictly a city-centric team. Tolkeen is very good for a Magical Girl/Martial Boy team, using magical armors and powers with a common theme. The Coalition would do a super-elite team in the fashion of Suicide Squad or Doom Patrol, using some varieties of Juicer and Crazy that are otherwise ridiculously powerful but burns them out really fast- faster than what is the norm for Juicers. Smaller cities would work better for smaller groups, or even motivated solo players, but should also range somewhat afield to make up for the small city space.
  Out in the Three Galaxies, go cosmic. Characters should have technology or magic equal to that of starships, if not star fleets. They should be concerned about large-scale threats; planet-specific parties should be irrelevant nuisances if they are not on planets of strategic importance, and those that are not irrelevant should make the power but lack the scope of operation for some reason or another in order to prevent "Why are they not major players themselves?"
  
  
• Cull Your Corpus: You, the GM, needs to sit down beforehand and sift through everything that is available and cut away everything that does not fit the specific superhero experience that you want. This means both what players can access as well as what the NPCs--friendly, neutral, and hostile alike--can access. By definition, a superhero is an individual whose capacities exceed the norm for his environment; if the standard soldiers or gendarmes are augmented in some fashion then being similarly augmented generally doesn't cut it- the superhero possesses an advantage of quality over the far superior quantity of the NPCs. This means that power differential is both relative and necessary to quality as "super"; Batman is super over most of what he deals with, but ordinary versus what Superman can and does contend with (which is why Batman has to rely on Writer Bias to prevail), so don't think that you can blindly employ what's in the books.
  
  
• : Get the players on the same page. You're playing a campaign that doesn't necessarily jive with RIFTS as-presented. Ensure that your players see things your way and agree with that before you start chucking dice. If this means house rules, do it. Square that away now, before any issues arise.

Playing a Psychic in RIFTS, Part 10: Putting It Together

By now, you know what kind of psychic your psychic man is. You've gotten into your man's head, so you know where he's coming from and how his thinks. Now, how does your man deal with others?

Good question.

First, a simple and pragmatic matter: you are playing a team-based game, wherein you cooperate to accomplish objectives and deal with scenarios put before you- either self-generated or encountered via emergent gameplay, so it behooves you (and the others at the table) to play well with others, part of which being making a man who does so.

Now, on with it.

Regardless of your man's abilities and level of power, your man is still a psychic and therefore has a unique perspective on things that non-psychics do not share. Exactly what that perspective is will vary--see the previous Archetype posts--but magic-users and mundanes cannot see things as your man does; what your man does, and especially how your man does it, is beyond their capacity to comprehend and as such your man bring a vital asset to any team that your man joins.

Telepaths and Sensitives are good at facilitating communication and unit cohesion amongst a team, either directly through psychic mind-to-mind contact or by facilitating mundane leadership and management skills to get desired results faster. Psycho-Kinetics are able to augment a team's firepower and work as a force-multiplier. Gishes have their own well-defined niches, and Hybrids suggest their own engagement within a team by what they blend together. When making your man, it's a good idea to talk with the others at the table to establish these team relations before you start throwing the dice around; the sooner that everyone is on the same page, the better everyone's gameplay experience will be and the faster that all of you can get to the good stuff and maximize your fun and entertainment.

That last part is a matter that is specific to your table, so I really can't get too specific in advice; what I can do is recommend that you look into non-fiction books about making the most of teamwork environments, and take notes as to how well your man either conforms to or contradicts the proven methods and techniques for successful integration into such environments so that you can play your man accordingly- and, if possible, do this with your fellow players. Even for the most powerful of psychics, the ability to do well with others makes succeeding at your goals far easier and more common than those who lack such social faculties.

And next week, I'll move on to something else altogether: a shift to the sorts of common campaigns in RIFTS.

Playing a Coalition Campaign: What You're Getting Into (Part 2)

Last week I wrote about playing from the perspective of common Coalition subjects. This week, I write about playing from the perspective of the oligarchy that rules the Coalition States.

The Coalition States' leadership consists of an oligarchy derived from the American end of the Anglo-American Establishment that dominated pre-Rifts world political and economic influence world-wide. This group consisted of a handful of core families (extensively intermarried, within the North American end of the axis as well as across the Atlantic with their British and Continental European counterparts) and a ring of affiliated families engaged in patron-client relationships. After the Coming of the Rifts, protocols introduced when nuclear warfare emerged in the wake of the Second World War ensured that a critical mass of this oligarchy not only survived this cataclysmic event, but possessed the means to immediate reestablish themselves upon emergence from their bunkers. This they accomplished, and the result is the Coalition States is the result.

If you choose to play one of this social class, then your man has a very different perspective on Mankind and its role in the world- something that won't be on your character sheet. First, from as soon as your man could comprehend his elders (and that could be in utero if he's of the Inner Elite, all of whom are telepaths), your elders showed you that you are part of a superior subspecies of Mankind--an emerging breakaway homo superior--and because of your innate superiority of breeding and genetic fitness you deserve to rule over the rest. They are as children or dogs to you, so act like the father/master that they crave and enjoy the benefits of your paternalistic leadership. The more benevolent are the Father To His Men sort, while the cynical or degenerate sorts tends being like Animal House's villain Neidermeyer or the worthless shitheels of the Imperial High Nobility as seen in the first season of Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

You are an aristocrat in all but name. It is unlikely that either of your parents were not oligarchs, paired up not for love but for the betterment of the oligarchy as a whole (as well as that of your parents' families); if either of your parents were not, it is likely your mother and you are not in any line of inheritance (for the oligarchy most certainly emulates the policies of the SS with regard to procreation). Your career path is planned out even more meticulously than your common man counterpart: you are an officer in the military, and you stay in the military for the whole of your life (and, through the combination of superior medicine, cybernetics, and genetic therapy that can be well over a century). If you're lucky, your elder relatives ensure that your career keeps you away from dead-end jobs or forward positions where your chances of coming home are slim or none, aiming to position you into command posts that end up with your ascension to the High Command. If you somehow earn their ire, you're going to get assigned to all sorts of dead-end posts or suicide positions.

If you want your high-class intrigue, your Game of Thrones with laser and robots, this is your option. You have external enemies, internal rivals, and a population that needs to be kept busy doing the work. If it weren't for the unique power of the Inner Elite, the Coalition's oligarchy would have long ago splintered into warring factions and descended into civil war. Speaking of which...

As I noted above, the Coalition States oligarchy has an Inner and an Outer Elite. If the Outer Elite (comprising the majority of the oligarchy) does the majority of the actual work of reigning and ruling, as aristocrats often do, then the Inner Elite are the royality and other high nobles who actually benefit from all of this and administer it to ensure continued wealth and power. The marker is telepathy; the Inner Elite have it, and the Outer Elite does not. Furthermore, the Inner Elite are continuously linked into a telepathic network--they are, so to speak, online 24/7 and have since conception--and it is this telepathic network that allows this small cadre to utterly dominate so vast a population.

Playing one of these as your man means that you are one of the emerging homo superior, and the odds of you NOT being part of one of these bloodlines is slim to none; you could be an adopted foundling, detected while in utero, and brought into the fold at birth (and otherwise are just like your peers). If the Outer Elite are the majority of the officers and officials, then the Inner Elite moves amongst them as the shadow government (with the exception of the Imperial Family) that keeps them--and, by extension, the rest of Coalition society--in line. (They're based out of the Intelligence sector of the military, which uses the same Inner/Outer structure to shield itself from prying eyes; the Intelligence liason may or may not be one of them and none but other psychics and some magic-users can even tell at all.) Because your man has demonstrable power over his fellow man, your man is very likely to think of the common folk as one would favored pets or livestock and the Outer Elite as children; paternalism, again, is the social norm. However, there are very few of you and you can't be everywhere at once; because you know what you can do, your anxiety over what any enemy could do is far more palpable than it is for any of your subordinates.

The Vanguard: The members of this disavowed Intelligence operation, by and large, are Inner Elite scions who lost the internal argument over the sanctioned use of magic against the inhuman enemy. The families' tell is that they are redheads with green eyes, compared to the Imperial Family and its allies who prefer blond hair and blue eyes; as both otherwise agree on the genocide of all aliens and supernaturals, and so on, and the Vanguard is quite comfortable with being the very deniable asset for Coalition Intelligence and military operations that it currently is, one should not assume any serious animosity between the magic-friendly Inner Elites and those that are not. They co-exist, and cooperate just fine. Yes, they too are all telepaths, and they also recruit other magic-users who are also xenophobic and otherwise support the objective of Earth again being just for Man as a way to keep up numbers and initiate new members to their end of the emerging homo superior breakaway subspecies.

To run any of these subsets means committing to a campaign where you create and sustain an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, for you are running a political campaign first and foremost. While your players may experience warfare on the frontlines, or counter-terrorism in the rear, or jockeying in the halls of Coalition High Command, you are still overlaying those other environments and their specific demands and circumstances over that of a man born into privilege and accustomed to the benefits and responsibilities--the power and vulnerability--that come with it; he has expectations placed on him, like it or not, and therefore duties both social and formal to handle in addition to any ambitions of his own and those expectations are to take precedence over his own aims and desires lest the punishment fall far beyond his own individual existence. The common men need only worry about themselves; the officers are expected to think bigger, and act accordingly, or at least make a good show of it (until an Inner Elite scion decided to do something about it; good luck lying to a telepath) before others. Some of these oligarchs are cynical gloryhounds, and some of you truly care about Mankind and its future as a free species; most fit somewhere between.

Take some time before you commit to doing this sort of campaign; read around, do a little research, and you will ensure that the players who sign on for this do so ready and able to experience this sort of thing. It's not the sort of play experience that everyone is up for; if it's not for you, that's okay- RIFTS has something for everyone, so look elsewhere to find what you're looking to experience instead.

Playing a Coalition Campaign: What You're Getting Into (Part 1)

The big thing to remember is this: The Coalition States does not have a war machine; the Coalition States is a war machine. Everything about what the Coalition States is, and how it works, revolves around the ability to wage war. Given its stated objective to liberate Earth for Mankind by way of exterminating all things supernatural and alien, complete with an obsessive (and hypocritical) emphasis on genetic purity (because you can't take up the Nazis as a model without becoming eugenicists), this nigh-omnicidal regime has to be a state engaged in permanent total war in order to accomplish those objectives. This has grave consequences for both the population as well as for the oligarchy ruling that population. I'll save the oligarchy's issues for a future post, and focus instead on the population here.

For players, choosing to play a Coalition soldier means that you choose to play a young man (by default, age 15) who grew up in this environment and believes that this life is normal. Your man cannot read at all, is functionally innumerate (counting fingers and toes is not out of line), learned what he knows solely through the hands-on/on-the-job training he received at the hands of his father/trainer (complimented with cybernetic downloading to the brain), completely believes in the authority of the Emperor and therefore of the States' power over him and his, and he does not question the dogma relentlessly hammered into him by the (state-owned and controlled) media. Your man is a True Believer, and he will think and act as the propaganda programmed him to do, even after suffering the trauma that comes with exposure to combat against those same supernatural and alien entities. (The Army Medical Corps ensures this with psychological maintenance, augmented by cybernetic technologies.) Therefore, to play a Coalition soldier is to play a militant adherent to a cult of personality that masquerades as the government of a free--but beleaguered--Mankind (a.k.a. a personality cult operating as a secular religion, like what happened in France from the Revolution through the fall of Napoleon); the lives experienced that one finds in such conditions will be no different from those of common soldiers in other historical totalitarian, authoritarian states.

Your play experience, whether your man is deployed to the front line or enjoys some time in the rear areas, will also be complicated by an atmosphere of anxiety and paranoia. Your man has heard stories for the whole of his life about the deceptive nature of the enemy and the ruinous powers they employ to destroy Mankind, and they are trained to see any intellectual behaviors outside of approved authorities to be signs of witchcraft or other malign presence and must be exterminated immediately. It's a horror experience in the field, a blend of Call of Cthulhu and All Quiet on the Western Front/Platoon, when done right. (When you fuck it up, you get the movie version of Starship Troopers or one of those low-budget movies like Dog Soldiers.)

At home, this shifts to a blend of Orwell's 1984 with Heller's Catch 22; you can't be honest with those who are close to you, or claim to be there to help you, due to their overriding loyalty to the Emperor and official dogma. (Facts and truth are for the oligarchy; everyone else just does what they're told, how they're told, when they're told like the obedient children that the oligarchy wants them to be- or else.) People who slip up disappear, never to be seen again; this is the hint to stay in line at all costs. The only relief that such severe stress as this imposes comes from an environment that does a hell of a lot to give validity to the official propaganda; there really are a lot of hostile entities out there that want to conquer or destroy/devour Mankind and take Earth for themselves, so killing those that get found out is not necessarily the result of self-serving skull-duggery by the oligarchy, and that produces cathartic release that keeps things in check well enough for the oligarchs.

For Game Masters, choosing to run a Coalition-focused campaign means creating and giving substance to that environment. One would be wise to take time to study the historical examples--not just Nazi Germany, and not just popular or easily-gotten materials; read the academic works--starting with Napoleonic France (what some call the ur-Fascist or proto-Fascist state) and going through the history of the European nation-state's emergence. The environment and paradigm that the Coalition States embodies and exploits far more resembles the examples of 19th and 20th Century European authoritarianism, including the totalitarian states, than anything prior to that historical epoch. It also would be wise to read up on the psychology of authoritarianism, of how cults work, and the practical application of mass psychology--the psychology of real-world socio-political power--because a show of that reality gives a great deal of substance to the fictional environment and greatly aides in the players' ability to fully immerse into their man's world (and, therefore, to think and act as they would).

Emphasize the oppressive mental and social environment that is Coalition culture. Conformity, hierarchy, deference to authority and respect for authority, and just enough examples of hostile entities to make Coalition propaganda seem utterly believable to the uncritical and uneducated Coalition population are the key elements to making a Coalition campaign work as intended. For veterans in particular, actual combat can often be seen as a very comforting release from the otherwise everyday stress of their lives; this dysfunction should be commonplace, compelling intervention by the enforcers (Coalition Army officers, usually Medical Corps or Intelligence operatives, who are not only trained in body language and such but also telepaths.) who are a secret counter-intelligence force. Your campaign alternates between terror and horror as dominant moods and themes, coloring everything else that occurs, so prepare yourself accordingly. (Make good, and at times frequent, use of the Horror Factor rules.)

This is not the sort of gameplay experience that everyone wants out of RIFTS, as it emphasizes the fact that the common Coalition soldier is not in control of his life and does not determine his fate. What powerful technologies he possesses and employs does not translate into actual autonomy or freedom; he is a thrall, as he is enthralled, to a dominant malevolent power that has such a powerful and invisible form of mind control on him that he is unable to even conceive that such power exists- let alone that he is under its control. (And no, I don't mean telepathic domination.) This is the experience of a victim in a horror story, or a fool in a tragedy, but certainly not that of a heroic adventurer seeking fame and fortune or that of the hero taking down the Dark Lord. He is one of millions, completely disposable and therefore expendable, and if he endures long enough he'll be forced to confront the reality of his circumstances- and, most likely, accept both it and agree that this is as good as it gets (and therefore continue to go along with it). A merciful Game Master may conclude such a character's life by transforming him into one of the Emperor's Immortals.

There are other sub-settings that those players should be made aware of, and encouraged towards, instead if this does not appeal to them- Game Masters included. As I said above, I will go into how the oligarchy plays next week.

Tolkeen: The Sky-Blue Kingdom, A Place of Freedom and Hope For Tomorrow

Tolkeen arose on the ruins of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Unknown to everyone, it is one of the key points on the planet's global network of ley lines; 100 ley lines meet here, making it ones of the lynchpins of the network, and thus it is not at all surprising that some form of supernatural power base would arise here. What is remarkable is that, instead of it being dominated by supernatural creatures or alien species, it is rules by a majority of native humans in concert with a minority of off-world humans and aided by a significant number of friendly non-humans of a diverse sort.

The off-world humans are a branch of Atlanteans who decided to establish themselves here as part of a larger, longer-term effort to unseat the usurping god-like alien Splugorth who occupy the Atlantean homeland now risen from beneath the Atlantic Ocean. They are the faction that brought magical training to Tolkeen in the wake of the Coming of the Rifts, and for some time thereafter dominated the emerging community. Today they have a strong presence in the government and drive its foreign policy, but no longer hold such an overwhelming advantage.

The native humans are far and away the majority, and as many of the surivors were also trained as scientists in various disciplines they took to the magical arts--once they saw it to be beneficial to learn them--quickly. What shocked the Atlanteans was they applied ideas commonplace before the Coming of the Rifts, creating a whole school of sorcerer-engineers that swiftly seized a memetic hegemony and impressed the Atlanteans greatly, revolutionizing magical practices heretofore fossilized and stagnant in their existence.

They industrialized magical practice. Entire machines now exist that ritually resolve entire buildings into existence directly out of magical energy, following plans that the architects and engineers created and loaded into the machine before starting the machine's resolution/manufacturing process. Most people learn how to use common items that resolve vehicles, armor, whatever into existence as an outgrowth of magic tattoo technology. Tolkeen is a place of wonder, optimism and vibrancy where the only thing that's scarce is knowledge- which compels the ambitious to scatter far and wide in search of it abroad as eagerly as it does searching for it in the labs at home. In Tolkeen, one can be whatever they want to be, for magic brings freedom and autonomy no one can have without it, and thus any commitment that they make is one freely made by choosing to do so.

This is also the crack in their armor. Ambition can lead to arrogance and hubris, and the unusual openness leads to easy infiltration by malevolent agents. Tolkeen's close proximity to the capital of the Coalition States poses a severe existential threat to the States, so war between the two is inevitable despite the denial that some around Tolkeen indulge in, thinking that its cosmopolitanism and links to many other magical societies and states through the multiverse will moot any aggression by the Coalition.

In short, Tolkeen has some distressing naiveity to its culture that the Atlanteans and other more sober-minded individuals have yet failed to rectify, and that will prove to be troublesome in the years ahead. Hopefully, the Marvel Project will prove itself as effective when the time comes.

The Juicer: Augmentation For Expendable Assets

RIFTS posits a handful of well-known archetypes for human augmentation, and one of them is the chemical route. Juicers are chemically-augmented soldiers, usually used as Special Forces assets and commonly deployed as snipers and assassins, whose chemical enhancements bring them super-human capabilities in physical might and endurance at the cost of burning out the body within 5-7 years of completing the conversion process. As these are the facts behind this fictional system, I can only conclude that this process came about because the state or other entity that needed it had a massive surplus of men willing and able to serve as soldiers, but for whatever reason deemed utterly expendable and unwanted by the oligarchy ruling that state or entity.

In other words, Juicers came about because someone need a lot of jacked-up cannon fodder and didn't want to deal with the consequences of having that surge of veterans re-enter civilian life after the war ended. Long-time gamers may recall another game with a very similar vibe to it--Underground, published by Mayfair--that also had this question come up; the difference, as is commonplace with Palladium products, is the lack of effort spent in answering that question. Oligarchies that are prone to scooping up large segments of their population, using a large subset as a resource for achieving an objective and then discarding it like soiled toilet paper are exactly the sorts that would embrace Juicer augmentation technology.

In the canon, this is said to come out of Europe and I can indeed believe that one or more European states (or factions thereof) would indeed invent and deploy this sort of technology. They would use it to target the young men of their underclasses, recruit them into the military, convert them into Juicers and then manipulate the wars to last long enough for the process to kill them all off within months of the war's end (for all but a handful; all are dead within a year or so). Once the Detox process became viable, this could easily be extended to civilian convicts: accept service as a Juicer in return for your record being wiped clean upon Detox. (Once Cyborg technology gets to a point where swapping brains into shells becomes reliable, "promoting" Juicers to Cyborg shells becomes another viable alternative.)

As chilling as seeing European governments "solve" their "undesirable" problem through exploiting the men--and some of the women--as Juicers may be, I think that it would be far more commonly done in the Americas and Asia once the technology got out there and the means to convert people became easier to establish and maintain within a country; waves of wars would come as one age cohort reached prime draft age, got sucked into it as Juicers and either died in combat or died due to the process burning them out, with only a small core remaining to train the next cohort. The poor of the world, already a prime target for exploitation of this sort, become little more than crops reaped in regular intervals- and the very expendable assets used abroad would become used at home to quell dissension against such exploitation.

The real game-changing point, however, becomes when (by comparison) rather ordinary criminal syndicates become able to field Juicers. Right now we have well-known cartel organizations such as the Medellin of Colombia and Los Zetas of Northern Mexico, groups that were or are sufficiently flush with capital to acquire and maintain military gear and the skills necessary to make the most of it. In this hypothetical situation, once Juicer technology becomes that reliable and replicable these same organizations will be able to take scores of gang-banging street thugs and transform them into superhuman hitmen- utterly expendable superhuman hitman at that, and they will not have a hard time recruiting. The same goes for partisan or terrorist organizations, as they walk in the same circles, and (for the same reason) it's likely to come when this or that intelligence agency flubs an operation and loses a Juicer conversion set-up to a group of that sort.

All this, by the way, is pre-Rifts. After the Coming of the Rifts, there's no reset button- it's all the way back to the worst scenario as soon as someone starts up a conversion operation again because the scope and scale of institutional organization is so small. There's the Coalition & Free Quebec, then Lazlo/Tolkeen/Dwemeor and then Everyone Else- so far as North American goes. Elsewhere is no better, and often a lot worse.

So, what are we left with? The Juicer is a loser. If he volunteered, then he's either a well-meaning sucker or a brain-addled fool. Most likely is that he's forced into it somehow, which means that he's not at all privileged- and likely comes from an underclass or outcast status of some sort. The bravado, the bullshitting, the glamor- it's all ego-armor covering the fact that they're going to die, die horribly and die soon. To be a Juicer is to have No Future; you've chosen to burn out than fade away- so act accordingly.

Whyfor the Misogyny and Sexual Repression in Coalition Society?

There are two reasons for why these are so prominent.

First, this was tried in Nazi Germany and the Coalition States are meant in many ways to be "Nazi Germany Done Better"; second, because this is a society that--like Orwell--is obsessed with control and one of the oldest ways (old, in large part, because it works) is division of the population against itself and the easiest way to do that is all lines of sex and gender. Removing individuality from the population, getting them to think in terms of being part of a greater--but fragile--whole without which they have no security, works when you institute a Greco-Roman style of patriarchy and make the patriarchs into agents of the state. It's a peculiar sort of neo-feudal social mechanism where you're nothing unless you're part of something bigger than yourself.

Why the repression? In part because of the fear, uncertainty and doubt that it generates- and tyrannies thrive on that anxiety because it opens an avenue of social control. In part out of cold logistical necessity, something the population understands intuitively; the Coalition's playing a numbers game, so it uses force and fraud to maximize the breeding rate knowing full well that it's their specific circumstances that make it viable to do so- if this were a more stable world, the ridiculous disparities amongst the sexes would itself become a threat to social stability and order. They need men to fight and women to breed; it's that simple at its basis, and they cook the books (as it were) to ensure that things work that way.

Why the misogyny? In part because the Inner Elite, being successors to the pre-Rifts global elites, see people first and foremost as tools--as assets--and not as fellow human beings. They look at women and see self-propelled baby manufacturing complexes; they view women that aren't breeding as being wrong, somehow, and a lot of their reactions to that perception of wrongness is meant to "fix" them (if possible) or recoup a loss (if not) by using them in some related capacity. The Inner Elite thinks in terms of math, of statistics, of profits/conquests and losses, and not in terms that would see the people under their power as equals, as fellows. They're not that much different than their predecessors in real history; the callbacks to Rome, Greece, China and other strongly patriarchal cultures is not accidental- it's, in many ways, an attempt to synthesize the successful (from their point of view) elements into a stronger whole- and they do this because they believe that this is natural law, and the women amongst their own class largely buy into it.

I'm trying my damnedest to create an evil society and culture that fits into the high concept of the States, and in my experience you have to get at elements like this to make it stick in play; the players (and their characters) may only see the tip of the iceberg, but there is a lot of depth supporting it that can make its presence felt if pushed.

The horror here is that, because the majority of Coalition subjects are totally ignorant of anything other than what Coalition propagandists tell them, all of this is normal to them. The women of the Coalition, by and large, don't think to question this social norm; in part because they lack the education needed to generate the critical thinking skills required to make that leap, and in part because--like all successful cults (and remember, the Coalition States runs off an Imperial Personality Cult)--they're kept far too busy working to think about much other than the here-and-now. The men of the Coalition don't do this because they are too busy fighting, training, recovering from same or in preparation for same to do much critical thought- even amongst the Outer Elite ranks. They aren't aware that they're repressed.; the Inner Elite successfully convinced the people that, as it were, the Devil doesn't exist.

Finally, the Inner Elite cheat like the rat bastards that they are. They know how past societies like theirs fell, they have a clear advantage in their telepathic powers, and they sure as Hell don't play fair. While they don't need to intervene often, they do need to keep their hands on the wheel (as it were) to keep this oppression machine going. It's why they are so focused on maintaining and sustaining perpetual warfare: it keeps the people focused on external threats, keeps the people away from looking at their leaders, and permits the government all of the power and privilege required to enforce their will. Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Mussolini, Tito, Pinochet and many other butchers would look on this regime and wonder at it- and, likely, feel at home.

The Outer Elite

The Outer Elite is what most people, common Coalition subjects and outsiders alike, usually think of when they think of the upper class of Coalition society. It is the doctors, engineers, military officers, high government officials and other visible authority or expert figures that do most of the skilled labor or professional service provision that comprise the Outer Elite. Of these groups, the Army Medical Corps is the most visible as it is the most widespread.

The Inner Elite created the Outer Elite caste as "useful idiots": a class of people that are, like the common folk, kept in the dark about what's really going on (and who is really in control) but are permitted a certain degree of training and education in order to channel natural talent away from becoming a threat and into becoming a useful asset.

A certain degree of social mobility is part of this caste's creation; the very best and brightest amongst the common people are identified as early as possible and co-opted into their ranks (in a manner that resembles the Psi Corps of Babylon 5, in that it isn't an option to just refuse; most parents, being worshipful of many Outer Elite groups, think of it as a great honor- and, wisely, they get treated well for complying).

Most Outer Elite households work hard to ensure that their sons maintain that status, and that their daughters marry as high up as they can manage; that this resembles the society of the English Regency period is not at all an accident- the Inner Elite deliberately manufactured dogma to create this zeitgeist and tweak it now and again to maintain its effectiveness. The fortunes of such a family rely greatly on the performance and reputation of its men in service, and somewhat on the "success" of its women when taken into marriage. (More on that in another post.)

Commonfolk households are similar in their ambitions; it's just that their sights tend to be lower. Rather than climb into medical school, most are hoping to qualify as medics. (Note: "Nurse" is not a term in use; Coalition nurses are Army medics that are currently not in the field, having rotated out to train new medics or just to take a light tour in a base hospital.) Medics are hoping that their sons, thanks in large part to their active teaching at home, can work their way into becoming Army Doctors. Similar divisions are in place in the technical field; the grandfather is a grunt, the father a tech and the son an engineer.

The Coalition States doesn't have a separate law-enforcement agency; this is handled by Army and Intelligence assets as required, with the local militia taking the role of the beat cop or county sheriff. Its judiciary is a unified one, such as it is, with all people under military law; these courts exist not to find justice, but to maintain order and readiness, and would offend civil libertarians (that survived long enough to see one)- it's often just a prelude to punishment, and that is in large part to the omnipresent surveillance used.

Most of the manpower in the Outer Elite goes into the medical system, with a lot of medics and doctors spread throughout the States either working out of base hospitals or deployed into field hospitals. Base hospitals are common as every farming community has one (integrated with its citadel), and retired doctors are often put into administrative positions at the base hospital where they live. (Yes, this means that Rambo's being looked after by Hawkeye.) It is commonplace to use cybernetics for medical purposes, but augmentation is strictly controlled; lots of retired soldiers have a few parts, but any serious rebuild means being officially marked as dead and a transfer to the Immortals.

Second most common is the Technical group, as they handle infrastructure of all sorts (other than medical). Roads, communications, power production and distribution, building construction, etc. are all handled by them somehow and that keeps these guys busy. While the retired technicians can handle most everyday work in their communities, active-duty techs get called in on occasion when the locals need Army assets to get a job done. Engineers are often put into authority positions upon retirement. (So Rambo goes to the hospital where Hawkeye works, and he gets there on roads built by one of John Wayne's many characters in a car made by Q.)

As for the Army and Intelligence, most of their officers and agents also fall into this group. Inner Elite members use these two groups most often to cover their own movements within Coalition society. They often find that their careers stall out around the Major or Colonel rank, however, and that they get shunted out of tracks that lead other to the General's Club in favor of useful--but dead-end--positions such as managing basic training for this or that area, being put into command of a garrison in the middle of nowhere, or something else that's a political snub but an institutional necessity.

Spies get similar problems. Most are not James Bond types. They operate boring networks of informants, look after the tavern operations, scout out an area prior to the Army invading it, or other necessary--but dead-end--jobs. If they piss off their superiors, they get all of the exciting and adventurous tasks (because they're meant to die in action); the worst are filled with crap intelligence and sent into traps fully expected to either die or break under interrogation (and then die, either at enemy hands or as traitors upon return).

Everyday Counter-Intelligence

Some retiring Coalition soldiers are unable to sire children. This is a severe blow to their pride, so it's officially classified as a "life-depriving injury" to facilitate the ability of the soldier to save face. (This seeming-mercy is self-serving; the Inner Elite, as noted above, places great value on being able to breed so as to keep population up and use the pressures generated to maintain an overall level of fear, uncertainty and doubt that can be exploited for propaganda purposes- it also acts as another tool in the social control toolbox.) Rather than risk the exposure of this inability by putting them in farmland homesteads, they're made into the managers of taverns located near Army barracks.

These men are, as usual, granted wives as well as land. The women, however, are actually homosexual women. They're drafted into a "finishing school" and then work as tavern wenches for their husbands. Since the active duty men are single men, and still as randy as soldiers usually are, it's not uncommon for the soldiers to attempt to pick up the wenches. Thus we have one of the most perverse, hypocritical and cynical examples of how the Inner Elite control the Coalition population.

The women are trained as spies, in the Honey Trap tradition; they use sex to seduce targets, get them to lower their guard and spill their secrets while in bed. These lesbians are used in a counter-intelligence capacity against the Army to ensure that all sorts of unwanted influence doesn't find a home in a Coalition facility; their husbands, by and large, are blackmailed into complying through the stigma of impotence. (Their supposed secret isn't one, really; it's more of a "don't step out of line and we won't ruin you" situation.) What makes this perverse is that these spies compound their husband's problems by cuckolding him and producing children by the men that they seduce; that stigma turns into scandal if it comes out that "your children" aren't yours- off to a Spartan unit with you. (Most evil is this petty and banal.)

So, the end result is a game most foul. On the surface, it's a game of randy soldiers screwing tavern wenches behind the old man's back for fun and lulz. (But don't get caught; off to the Spartans with you if you do!) Children that these wenches have are legally and official of the husband's household. Now, under that facade you have Coalition Intelligence exploiting homosexual women by forcing them to be whores for the state (or else), forcing retired soldiers to play along (or else), all to catch undesired political (etc.) influence from getting any traction. Now you know why that tavern owner is such a miserable old man, and often why the wenches are so surly, as well as why Little Bobby doesn't seem to resemble his father that much.

How the Coalition Holds Land

The Inner Elite of the Coalition States, as noted previously, are a highly-educated caste of psi-active men. They have access to the lore of pre-Rifts Earth, and in addition to making very inside jokes to amuse themselves they also mine it for useful and proven ideas to recycle for their own use. One of these ideas is the granting of land to soldiers upon completing their 25-year term of service.

The common Coalition soldier enters the Army at age 15 as a draftee, serves on active duty for 25 years straight and retires at age 40. This means that those soldiers survived 25 years of campaigning, combat and constant contact with a hierarchy demanding obedience to superiors and (as these men are commonly senior NCOs upon retirement) and compliance from subordinates. The Inner Elite, reading Roman and Chinese accounts of the use of retirees as settlers in contested territory, decided early on to recycle this idea for their own use.

Now it is commonplace for Coalition territory to be held by scores of small farmsteads centered around a small, fortified town. Each of these are the plots awarded to retiring soldiers, who continue their service to the state by acting as the local militia and staffing the local government. The order that they became accustomed to in the Army is the order that they maintain in their small communities, treating their wives and children as subordinates and each other more or less as peers. Since the state automates the farming, the men have plenty of time to patrol their area and play county sheriff; that they retain the Army-issued equipment that they retired with (and still get new stuff, just not as fast) means that would-be raiders often end up facing a militia comprised of some of the toughest that baseline Humanity can make--an entire town of Rambos, Master Chiefs, Sam Fischers, Snakes, etc.--and get wiped out. In a demon-haunted world, this is a necessity for conquest.

Through these means that Coalition government achieves several objectives. They keep old soldiers from causing trouble by giving them all significant rewards for service that are tangible (wives as well as land), puts them into a position of responsibility that they are suited to handle (maintain order over this area and ensure its productivity in all things), and ensures that if the need arises these veterans can be called back while in good shape and familiar with current technology. The land that the government claims is occupied and put to use, secured against raiders and skirmishers and likely to hold long enough for the Army to relieve them if necessary- and this also denies that same land to hostile entities.

(There is a different track for soldiers rendered unable to sire children; they get assigned to the sanctioned watering holes that the government uses to let the Army blow off steam, but that's another post.)

Coalition Jucier Units: The Three Most Common Types

Spartan: This is the common penal Juicer. He is an otherwise normal human male, either heterosexual or bisexual, who committed an offense and got caught. (Or got framed, but we're talking Official Dogma here.) He is a trained soldier, and the specific form of Juicer he becomes depends upon that training; most are baseline, a few are Phaeton (pilot) types, with others being rare or non-existent. These guys get used like marines; they get sent first where the resistance is hardest, and they are expected to succeed or die trying- those that retreat do get shot by their (not-Juicer) officers. Very few ascend into the Immortals. Their CO is always "Leonidas", and they come in 300-man units; amongst the Inner Elite, this is considered hilariously funny.

Theban: The Inner Elite has little love for homosexuals. Thanks to DNA testing, male homosexuals are identified early and then tracked into training as a Juicer upon draft age; neither they nor their families are ever told that this is anything other than a high honor. They are not mistreated, but--as with their namesakes--are encouraged to find love within the ranks. If those Spartans are the dogmeat sent into the grinder, Thebans are glorious soldiers sent to do Very Important Things that nevertheless are usually certain death such as hold the line during retreats, make diversionary assaults against hard points or take on enemy elites and tie them down so artillery can tear them up. (The artillery commanders aren't told to be precise, by the way.) Most of the Immortals come from these units. These also come 300 at a time; this too is often thought of as a hilarious joke.

Gorgon: The Inner Elite has no need of women that can't breed (not won't; they send those women elsewhere), and are too ugly to use as spies (not too plain; again, those women get sent elsewhere- we mean fugly). These women are the rarest of the Coalition Juicers, are always of the baseline model, and operate as three-man teams. They aren't used in military operations on the battlefield. They're used strictly as deniable killers by Intelligence. The team leader, usually the most personable of the trio, is "Medusa"; their handler is always "The Eye". The Inner Elite snicker like brats over this also. Gorgons that ascend into the Immortals are rare.

My Personal Take on the Coalition States

For me, the think I enjoy most about Rifts is the Coalition States. They are one of the best iconic villains in tabletop gaming, and they make the base setting of North America far more compelling than it would be otherwise. Yet I find that my specific interpretation of the States is often at odds with others I see, either in print or online, so I'm interested in sharing perspectives and the reasons for these opinions.

I see the States as being a dystopia. This human-supremacist state is, very much, a totalitarian state that generates a cult of personality rooted in the worship of the Emperor (ala 40K). It is openly, loudly and avowedly xenophobic as well as manaphobic; fear and hatred of the alien and of the supernatural is as commonplace as breathing, and common language has a lot of tropes and jargon built upon slurs against the designated targets. It is also quietly, yet openly, sexist; the States portrays itself as being in a perpetual total war, by necessity a war of annihilation, and thus (like its Nazi roots) places a great deal of value on female fertility and domesticity. It is also quietly, covertly racist; "White Anglo-Saxon" is the definition of "pure Humanity", so you will observe a bleaching of color as you look higher up the hierarchy until you reach a perfect blond-hair, blue-eyed perfect specimen as the commonplace example. (This also doubles as useful social control.)

I see no reason for not avoiding the hypocrisy of the inspirations. I prefer to use the Straussian concept of an Inner and Outer Elite, with the Inner Elite as hidden from both the Outer Elite and the common people alike, save for the designated points of interface (e.g. the Emperor and a few other officials) so that the true rulers can operate efficiently in the shadows away from prying eyes- literal and metaphorical alike. Certain "elite units" are put into one or the other, with the vast majority being "Outer Elite" and used as covers for Inner Elites, but most of the core Intelligence community is firmly in the Inner Elite's hands. (e.g. the Vanguard is Inner Elite)

I also see no reason for not displaying the most fantastic ideas when it comes to social control mechanisms; this is one of the few settings where it isn't fucking retarded most of the time. For example, I think that the States uses the Army to manage its population. So, I think that "citizenship" comes only after either spending 25 years on active duty (for men) or getting married and producing a large number of children (by said husband) and then raising them to draft/marriage age. Service grants citizenship, for those that endure that long and don't get cheated along the way, in the form of being able to hold land and establish a household. I think that there's an imperial DNA database that tracks genetics, that much of the free healthcare provided (by the Army Medical Corps) is really just a cover for DNA engineering that alters the vast peasantry into forms that the elite prefers, and industry is automated to a degree we would find fantastic.

The Army gets used in other ways. The Emperor's elite guard? A unit of Full Conversion Cyborgs, all of then identical, 10K strong called "The Immortals" (in knowing homage to the Persian unit of old). The Army's penal units are all Juicers, as are certain "elite units" composed of undesirables, the specific type of which are code-named along Greek lines. (The three most common are "Spartan", "Theban" and "Gorgon".) Those that survive long enough for Final Call to hit are instead transferred to the Immortals and converted into cyborgs, with mental stability ensured through active telepathic intervention.

Coalition Society, therefore, is thoroughly militarized. There are no private firms providing arms; there are design bureaus. There are no individuals, just members of households (with paterfamilias re-instituted), and most men die young fighting in one of the Coalition's many wars while most women end up married to officers and retiring NCOs as part of their husband's retirement bonuses. (And no, monogamy is not the norm.) Farming is highly automated but most farms are small, as they are grants of land given to the toughest of Coalition men: retiring NCOs around 40-45 years of age (and 25-30 years of combat experience). (This too is deliberate policy, based on Rome.) Mining is done by automated assets, as is logging, protected by military assets (this is "light duty"). The States, therefore, are on a permanent wartime footing.

Education is entirely by voice and example, using iconography and advanced animation techniques. Fathers teach and train their sons; mothers do so for their daughters. Most people never see a book or other printed media; it's all electronic and iconic, like a Star Wars movie made for illiterates. Most are also illnumerate, with mathematics limited to basic four-function teaching- only the Elites (Inner and Outer alike) get any education in any of the sciences (including math), as Coalition operations possess a lot of tools and tricks meant to get to "good enough" without properly educating people.

This brings me to the Inner Elite. These are all telepathic, which is how they maintain their dominance; they can, and do, communicate constantly in utter silence and without display. The Vanguard is entirely made up of this faction and certain other Intelligence operations work entirely through this faction. I am of the opinion that they control the States' vital institutions as well as its institutions, often invisibly in the form of being trusted advisers, teachers or others commonly in the penumbra of a leadership position: "gray eminence" is their usual mode of operation.

Finally, I prefer the Coalition to be More Dakka and Less Pew-Pew. It allows control through logistics, which in a control-obsessed society like this is very important to maintain.

The Supernatural of Rifts and Its Fueling of Coalition Paranoia

As stated in the Rifts rulebook, supernatural power works around Potential Psychic Energy (PPE) and Inner Strength Points (ISP)- respectively, they power magic and psionic abilities. These powers are augmented when on or near a Ley Line, and moreso at a Nexus Point. Likewise, recovering of spent energy is greater at these points than normal. This means that magic and psychic entities shall appear with greater frequency at these sites or along those lines than elsewhere. Furthermore, magicians have the option of using auspicious times and ritual sacrifices to enhance the gathering and use of supernatural power- an option that applies before the effects of Ley Lines or Nexus Points apply.

To use magic, a magician has to have the required PPE on hand at the time of working the spell. Psychics must have the required ISP. Once spent, it can be recovered by rest, again accelerated if on a line or at a point. Spells can be learned, imbued by another entity or spontaneously brought about depending on the tradition in question; psychic powers are usually handled along similar lines, with the caveat that psychic powers are genetic somehow (usually) and such abilities can't be taught like magic can.

Yes, that's right, some forms of magic can be taught just like one can teach science and make damn near anyone into a scientist. The two most iconic forms of magic use in the game--the ways of Shifters and Ley Line Walkers--are wholly teachable traditions of magic and require no inherent ability aside from the intelligence to comprehend the ideas and the mental fortitude necessary to handle the strain of working magic (as you are wielding the raw power of Creation bare-handed, as it were). This, predictably, makes magic use in some traditions not much more than another form of science- and that is a fact that has would-be tyrants and those terrified of the supernatural everywhere scared shitless.

Now, why does this matter to Rifts North America? That's because of the Coalition States (and its fellow travelers), the notoriously xenophobia and manaphobic empire of human supremacists, because in order for the Coalition to succeed in its desire to kill all extra-dimensional entities and supernatural forces they need to divorce their bases of production (including human ones) as far from these places of power as they possibly can. Magic can do mind control, possession, traffic with demons (or worse), transform victims into monsters or beasts, and so on; psychic powers are comparable in their potential for abuse. In an environment saturated in fear, uncertainty and doubt like Rifts North America--where one can count on one hand, with digits left over, the number of places where one may live without such an atmosphere weighing down on you--it is not surprising to see many people use whatever power they have to promote their own security at the cost of the freedom and autonomy of others (if not their lives) due to the significantly greater predation present in the world.

In short, the Coalition is an evil totalitarian empire that uses its milieu to justify its oppression. In the coming posts, I will go deep into the Coalition States and how to best execute the premises upon which this fictional empire is based.