Have you ever played Rifts? Maybe read a few of the books? Even owns a copy of the game?
For some reason (yeah, I know), this game often makes people blush or just have them talk about how they are above that kind of stuff. I'm not. I like that gonzo shit.
Now, I've been thinking about how to play Rifts, and using any kind of game system but the one in the book. Stay cool Kevin, I'm not going to be publishing any conversion notes! But, that game probably could work with what it got. Hey, I'm thinking of a cool way to approach the setting.
I was listening to the very cool podcast Canon Puncture Show and in it the idea was suggested to think of the setting from a new perspective. The idea was to merge Dogs in the Vineyard with Rifts. This got me thinking. I would do this, but take it one step further than suggested in that show.
So, in DitV you play 18 year old virgins, with guns, who have been educated to act like god sent emissaries of mail, doctrine, justice and death. You are supposed to enforce a social rule which many people find quite medieval at times. In the North America of Rifts we have another society, The Coalition, which is a hundred times as unpleasant. Basically it's all the racial elitism and militarism of Nazi Germany or some of the gun toting nut jobs around even today.
Now, mix and stir.
You play young soldiers in the Coalition, and not only are all the aliens out there really out to get to get you, that racial supremacist ideology is the last hope of mankind. How about that?
That could be a very interesting game about hard choices, ethical dilemmas when you explore the truth of that ideology. Maybe it could even be quite interesting as a very black comedy.
Lot of people probably would not get it at all...