New Entries in the Works
Topic: The RRVGG RIFTS Gallery

Its been a few days since I've updated the site but that's because of my propensity for adding materials when I should just be updating coding and that kind of stuff!

Soon in the RRVGG House Rules section will be a few new entries. One is going to expand on how we interpret Wilderness Survival in the RIFTS® setting and what exactly it encompasses.

Another I am considering and preparing for is expanding on the skill of Swimming to account for progressive swimming speed, modifications for BMI and the maximum amount of time a swimmer can hold their breath underwater. I also hope to add information about swimming with added weight, such as body armor, weaponry or other baggage as well as common solutions a character may have prepared to deal with such issues.

The other which has been holding me up with in depth research will cover a woefully lacking component to the RIFTS® RPG; RIFTS® Lifestyle & Age. The game has been around since 1990 and here it is 28 years later. While the RRVGG's oldest characters have been relegated to the role of NPCs in our campaign most assuredly others out there have either opted to play characters of middle ages to advanced ages while others have aged naturally in their respective game continuum timelines.

This optional set of rules discusses dietary habits, dietary requirements and the effect of malnutrition on the mind and body of characters in the RIFTS® setting for players whom do not treat their bodies with the attention, care and respect their character requires.

While I have not progressed to this stage I also hope to delve into the risks of heart disease and contributing factors to the risks of cancer.

Finally is a section that comprehensively discusses the cumulative effect of aging upon any given character from the mid-20s through to the "Golden Years."

Also included is mention of advanced medical technologies and methods of which the lifespan of individuals can be drastically prolonged beyond that of the assumed species lifespan, where it is available, to what extent and to whom it is available.

These will be the first new additions to The RRVGG RIFTS® Gallery in several years, if there is anyone out there reading, I hope you are looking forward to it as much as I am enjoying composing it!

 

Pandering, Deleting Old Files & More Revision
Topic: The RRVGG RIFTS Gallery

Ugh, yesterday and the day before positively sucked @$$. Our landlord is planning on selling this property to a new owner that will at the very least honor our new 21 month lease. (Why 21? Your' guess is as good as mine, I didn't pen the document, I just put my John Hancock on it and keep paying the bill!)

Anyway so we spent the better part of the day before yesterday polishing up the place so it'd look all nice and neat as the landlord wanted to show the property to a prospective buyer. For those of you unaware this Webmaster happens to have two offspring whom both positively detest cleaning so that was a nightmare in and of itself and even then I didn't feel they got their rooms in a truly presentable condition. He's doing another showing on Sunday. The real rub? We aren't allowed to be AT our home for the 10-20 minute showing we even have to pack up the pets and take them with. C'est la vie, as they said in "Old France."

As to the updates for late yesterday and today; As can be seen below there is now only one link to Past Updates as opposed to six. There is no longer a text limit on notepad apparently and so I was able to fit all the updates from 1999-2013 when I made the last entry significant enough to put on the updates page. I also removed the individual "Campaign Badges" for players that had joined us in the past from Tripod altogether. For some reason or another several had already been removed by Tripod. They also deleted most of our player's photographs, which were taken expressly for the RRVGG website. I can only guess this is because it displayed many of us holding swords, a rifle and Gimli's axe in one case! I don't remember seeing anything like that in the Tripod Terms of Use Policy and never received any warnings but what can you do once they're gone and the hard drive that originally had them was fried?

I updated and revised our Campaigns page, which is linked towards the bottom of the RRVGG site, which talks about some of our more noteworthy campaigns. While I do not have any Current Campaigns to display yet I have several that I'm juggling ideas for, for our prospective two Player/one Game Master group.

I also discovered a pile of no longer used images and files all over the RRVGG RIFTS® Gallery folder within Tripod and tossed them.

You may find that under S-Mart (Which will gradually be changed to "The Royal Armory of K'Assai Antoh,") K'Assai Antoh being the phonetic spelling for the Dalmiree language that translates to "Star of the Desert," will contain broken links pertaining to the Allied Naval Fleet/Joint Naval Fleet.

This munchkin creation was dissolved in our campaign but for The RRVGG RIFTS® Gallery will not remain mentioned at all. There may even be references regarding it and/or Kyatashiro remaining in far flung corners of the Gallery. There are many references to the topic within the Past Updates page as I did spend a considerable amount of time working on these topics. I'll gradually be weeding these mentions out as I continue digging further and further into the website updating, editing, coding and adding material. I have many years worth of materials to edit and add.

 

 

Fiddly Coding & Copyrighting
Topic: The RRVGG RIFTS Gallery

This morning I did a lot of work by going back and adding Copyright & Trademark marks next to those presently held by Palladium Books®, in compliance with the Limited License supplied to RIFTS® Webmasters who provide independent source material.

The completed the coding for the updated appearance on the Limited Palladium Books® Internet License page, the RIFTS® Links page & the House Rules page. The most difficult of these was without a doubt the Links page. Of nearly 2 dozen awesome RIFTS® source pages that we started with back in 1996, it dropped to a half dozen the last time I reformated the site in 2005 and of those only two remained in any form! (One I had to track down to it's new address and the other seemed to have quite a bit of material removed from it and was no longer worthwhile to keep on the list.)

Thus I added one I discovered around a decade ago and spent a bit of time looking around the internet for new sites of particular interest. In the end I settled on nine of the best I could find between time spent last night and then again this morning.

I can certainly tell that many players have gravitated away from Palladium Books® game systems because there are no where near as many actively updated RIFTS® source material sites on the web as there used to be.

BUT! I've never been one to run with the crowd and latch onto the latest and greatest things around - sometimes olden is just golden - its as simple as that.

I still have a ton of work to do with the additional pages that link to The RRVGG RIFTS® Gallery and their subsequent sublinks, and their sublinks, and their sublinks, etc., etc.

While I stuck with a single motif last time, namely the fire/smoke pattern, this time these "Background" pages in the listing will have this cloud motif while I intend for the others to be customized to suit their subject matter. I think it adds a little something to it to establish the setting & feel. ^_~ The question is if I can find images online that would establish the right "feel" for each one? I don't know yet but we shall see!

Past Entries
Topic: The RRVGG RIFTS Gallery

This blog will now serve as a replacement for the antiquated "Updates" page previously used to update readers of The RRVGG RIFTS Gallery on what has been added, changed or otherwise altered. To see past entries you may see them at;

Past Updates

Over the last couple of weeks I started working on The Republic of the Misty Isles Navy as something to while away the time, between work, family obligations, keeping up with REAL news, household chores & my modest social life. I got quite a ways into it before I started cursing my luck with computers.

Get this, I've had THREE computers crash on me since I phased out my ancient Win98 Compaq Presario. The first computer, a Hewlett-Packard, destroyed my netbooks. The second took with it all sorts of new illustrations, technology and campaign details that were critical to our game. The third and most recent was a refurbished HP Laptop from Walmart which destroyed a whole new layout for the Gallery AND yet more illustrations!!

As a result I started working on a new layout once again, because if I'm going to seriously address the dated (and in many cases childish) material found throughout many of these pages it needs a proper semi-modern appearance and more complete details. When I got down to the Updates page I thought to myself; Hey! Why not use Tripod's blog function for updates?! It'd be far easier than coding every single detail.

 Thus far I have updated "The RRVGG RIFTS Gallery" (Formerly known as SirTenzan's RIFTS Gallery) and the home site of The RRVGG. No new material is yet to be found amidst the creations YET but this is the ground work so that I can begin to add information in a concise and well sorted way. Later I will offer it up as a comprehensive pdf file.