Rifts (role-playing game)

Rifts

Front cover of Rifts Role-Playing Game, Ultimate Edition, illustrated by Scott Johnson
Designers	Kevin Siembieda, C. J. Carella, Kevin Long, Patrick Nowak, Julius Rosenstein, et al.
Publishers	Palladium Books
Publication	August 1990 (1990-08) (1st edition) August 2005 (Ultimate edition)
Years active	1990–present
Genres	Post-apocalyptic science fiction
Languages	English
Systems	Megaversal
Website	palladiumbooks.com

Rifts is a multi-genre role-playing game created by Kevin Siembieda in August 1990 and published continuously by Palladium Books since then. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, deriving elements from cyberpunk, science fiction, fantasy, horror, western, mythology and many other genres.

Rifts serves as a cross-over environment for a variety of other Palladium games with different universes connected through "rifts" on Earth that lead to different spaces, times, and realities that Palladium calls the "Rifts Megaverse". Rifts describes itself as an "advanced" role-playing game and not an introduction for those new to the concept.

Palladium continues to publish books for the Rifts series, with about 80 books published between 1990 and 2011. Rifts Ultimate Edition was released in August 2005 and designed to update the game with Palladium's incremental changes to its system, changes in the game world, and additional information and character types. The web site is quick to point out that this is not a second edition but an improvement and expansion of the original role playing game.^[1]