# Rifts *Created:* 2026-10-09, *Modified:* 2026-10-09 **Rifts** is Kevin Siembieda's 1990 kitchen-sink epic for Palladium Books — a post-apocalyptic future where dimensional tears have shredded the Earth and mixed every genre into the same howling wasteland: magic and laser guns, dragons and power armor, cyberpunk and swords-and-sorcery, all sharing one rules system. It made its debut at Gen Con 1990 and sold out in three weeks, because it delivered exactly what it promised on the tin: *anything is possible*, and then a hundred sourcebooks went on to prove it. ## The System The premise is that reality itself is coming apart. Massive dimensional **Rifts** — tears in the fabric of space — have opened across a post-apocalyptic Earth, pulling creatures and civilizations from other worlds, other times, and other dimensions into a single chaotic present. The result is a **megaverse** where a cyber-knight can ride into a city of demons past a dragon guarding a cache of Golden Age war machines. The game's tone is gloriously maximalist: giant robots, psychic powers, alien invaders, ley lines, and a sprawling metaplot of world-shaking stakes. If it's cool and vaguely apocalyptic, it's in here, and it's probably on the cover of at least three books. ## Mechanics Rifts runs on the **Palladium Megaversal system**, the same engine Palladium has used across its whole line. Combat uses **d20 percentile** rolls — strike, parry, dodge — and damage is split between **SDC** (Structural Damage Capacity, the ordinary harm humans survive) and **MDC** (Mega-Damage Capacity), where one point stands for a hundred and only high-tech armor, weapons, and monsters can even touch it. Characters are built as **O.C.C.s** (Occupational Character Classes) or **R.C.C.s** (Racial Character Classes), and the book's enormous class-and-gear catalogue is half the draw — the Glitter Boy alone justifies the cover price. It's a big, unapologetic, sprawling system that has never met a subsystem it didn't want to expand. ## Editions - **Rifts Role-Playing Game** (1990) — Palladium Books, the original. - **Rifts Ultimate Edition** (2005) — the updated core, billed not as a second edition but as a refinement of the founding text, keeping the back catalogue valid. ## References - [Rifts — Palladium Books](https://palladiumbooks.com/what-is-riftsr/) - [Rifts — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_(role-playing_game))