The Megaverse® is our playground but it can still feel lonely at times... us, as loyal fans of Palladium Books, aren't seeing as many players as some of the other systems. It kills us because we know what awesome experiences these people are missing out on!
With Palladium Books' recent crisis, we banded together as fans and renewed our 'evangelistic' ways and spread the Palladium Books system, either as simple players and GMs or as Megaversal Ambassadors. One thing was certain: we weren't going to let Palladium Books go without a fight...
I, myself spent considerable time getting a few new player groups together that had never played any Palladium system before. My RPG of choice was Rifts® so I could show them, in one setting, the fun to be had in the Megaverse®. With great success, we even got a few new GMs out of the groups and they all run campaigns to this day.
Recently, I joined a Meetup.com group that Larry Gray started. There were a handful of us looking for a new group in the Salt Lake City area and SLC Rifters was born. After seeing 3 people quickly turn into 7 (with more joining every few days; up to 9 as of this article), I realized there are quite a few people out there longing to play a game they played several years earlier but just didn't know who might be looking to play.
Out of sheer curiosity, I checked the global Rifts meetup site (rifts.meetup.com) and saw over 200 people looking for a Rifts group, too. I'm sure there are more out there -- without a meetup category -- who are looking to play other Palladium Books games, too. That's when I thought of Rifters.org.
My vision of the Rifters group is to create local gaming groups of whatever Palladium system and publish our numbers and leverage different RPG forums to invite our lost gamers back to a group. By doing this, I hope to revitalize book sales (moreso than what we as a community of fans have already done) and really start to make Rifts Earth, the Palladium world, the Three Galaxies and elsewhere across the Megaverse® a far more common place for people to adventure in.
So please join our community in creating local player groups. Be sure to involve your local game shop(s). Support them in their business. I'm confident we'll see our local groups split into several as more people play in this awesome place we call the Megaverse®.