Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game vs Rifts

Compare Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game	Rifts
Genre	Horror, Historical	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	Fear & Stress Mechanics, Player-Only Rolls, Theater of the Mind, Character Building, Character-Driven, Narrative, Low-Prep, Licensed IP	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
Core Mechanic	The GM rates a task from difficulty 0 to 10 and multiplies it by 3 for the target number; difficulty 0 succeeds automatically. When a roll is required, players roll a d20 for tasks, attacks, and defenses and succeed by meeting or beating the target. Skills, assets, and Effort spent from Might, Speed, or Intellect Pools ease the difficulty; Edge reduces those Pool costs.	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.
Dice	d20	d20, d100
Complexity	Medium	Very High
Accessibility	Medium	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Monte Cook Games	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2023	2005
Best For	Groups seeking community-rooted horror in early 20th-century Appalachia, with player-controlled risk spending and theater-of-the-mind action. It suits GMs who prefer flexible adjudication and explicit horror-safety conversations.	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.
Highlights	Character arcs award XP for steps in GM-approved arcs and for climaxes even when their final goals fail, keeping personal stories mechanically active. Single-use cyphers turn folk charms and strange objects into frequently changing powers, encouraging players to spend unusual tools instead of hoarding them. What Wakes Mode widens the natural-roll range for GM intrusions until a ten-hour recovery roll resets it, turning supernatural attention into escalating mechanical pressure.	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.
Considerations	Stat Pools serve as both health and spending resources, so Effort and abilities can leave characters less able to absorb harm. The GM sets task difficulties and decides when to introduce complications, placing much of the game's consistency in GM adjudication. The game is built around alternate Appalachia in the 1920s and 1930s rather than a portable generic-horror setting.	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.