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Rifts Dimension Book 10: Hades
Overall score: 
Hades, at least to me, marks a return of the Palladium Books to where they were before the finanical crisis hit the publisher about 16 months ago. Sure there have been new books released during that time, but they were far and few between, with many being smaller supplements and books that really didn’t carry the weight of a good Palladium release--which is namely a very rich, imaginative idea scaled down into an easy-to-read book that’s entertaining and full of enthusiasm that you don’t get with other RPG companies. Hades is the start of yet another Palladium series that shows a lot of promise; however, as someone who’s accustom to Palladium never finishing what they started--I’m looking at you Land of the Dammed, Wolfen Wars and Beyond the Supernatural—it’s hard for me to see the book as anything more than a two-part series (the second book, Dyval, is in printing at the time of this writing) and not the first of a promised five book series.
While Hades is labeled as a Dimension book for Rifts it’s really the first book in what’s being called the Minion War, an eternal war that been taking place between Demons and Devils (called Deevils for some reason), Hades covers the Demon part of said war. Palladium Fantasy fans will recognize that label since it’s a part of that world’s history, and until now hasn’t really been mentioned anywhere else (though I don’t read either the Rifter or any Rifts books so I’m not sure if it’s been in those book lines) until now.
The concept is basically that the Demons of Hades are tired of the stalemate of the eternal war, one that has been more or less the status quo with neither side really winning, and have decided to invade the Deevil home dimension of Dyval, which is causing the Minion War to flow into other worlds such as Rifts Earth, Phase World, and other Earth variants like Hero’s Unlimited.
Hades gives a good introduction to what Demons are in the Palladium universe, what their motives are, how they live and their involvement in the Minion War—this includes brief descriptions of squad organization and hierarchy. The author, long-time Palladium vet Carl Gleba, doesn’t go into a lot of detail about the war itself or what the Demons are doing on other worlds since that’s supposed to be information that comes in specific setting related books after Dyval, so you only get a summery of what the Demons might be up to on various worlds. Most of the book is setting information for the Dimension of Hades; it’s part of Hell with Dyval, which is why it’s a Dimension instead of a world, and monster stats which is much better than it sounds.
For convince's sake Palladium has amassed all the “true” demons from their other books as well as added several new ones. At first I was a little annoyed by all the reprinted material, but having them all in one location is nice, plus all the creatures now have stats for both Mega Damage worlds like Rifts as well as SDC worlds like Beyond the Supernatural and Palladium Fantasy, which means the book can be used for any setting without having to use the conversion books.
The best addition to the monster entries is their views on the Minion War and relation to other Demons (some loath each other, while the others can barely stand each other); however, the lack of quick stats means you still have to roll up every encounter and the lack of recommended difficulty level for players means you have to know the Palladium system well to decided what’s appropriate for your players to make this section less useful than it could be. There are also update descriptions of all the Demon Lords, but none of the stats given, which means Dragons and Gods can finally be of use-- though you don’t need them because the Demon Lords are basically gods and there’s no chance any player group can take one down without GM wanting them to and even in that situation you’re not going to use the actual stats.
The most disappointing part of the book is that even though it's very rich, Gleba didn’t do anything new with the material. I still don’t see Demons being any different than in any other setting. The world of Hades is fairly unique, but that’s only half of the setting, and I was hoping for a little more than demons like to kill and so they do. So what really sets them apart from Deevils or other creatures that like to kill? Sure they want to win the war, but it's still one-dimensional. and outside of the word “Demon” there’s little that would help a GM decide which side of the war the players should get involved with. But maybe I’m being a little too critical since the other books aren’t out yet.
While they give you SDC stats for both the monsters and hazards of the dimension they are so lop-sided compared to MDC stats that you’ll find it very hard to play any SDC-based adventures, with the possible exception of Heroes Unlimited. And while it should be harder for a group of people running around in chainmail to adventure in hell compared to someone in a 20-foot robot, I think it’s a little too hard with most environmental hazards, and there are a lot, that can severely wound or kill a SDC character only inflicting a few points of damage to a MDC character.
Gleba does a good job of making the locations in Hades unique, despite the whole place being one giant lava and sulfur pit and there are plenty of possible adventure locals and ideas to have reasons to go there. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of reasons to base a whole campaign in Hades or even multiple adventures because the place is just too hostile to any non-Demons. The book pulls no punches describing how twisted and decrepit Demons are, so a sane person would ever want to play one as a character as described. However, the book does give you the option to play an excepted slave or other creature raised in the dimension by giving several stat changes, both positive and negative, to apply to your character; but annoyingly these stats are actually divided and listed in two separate places and don’t even reference each other.
Outside of that the layout and organization is typical for your Palladium book. The art is good, as always, but there are a few places where the book contradicts itself (sometimes just paragraphs apart), and there are a few places where you can tell that the order of content was switched without re-writing. Most of these are noticeable to anyone reading, but are all very minor and not too numerous. Though a big complaint from me is the lack of maps of the various cities and other places of interest, which is something that normally Palladium is very good about, and the few maps they have aren't that good because they're very loose (meaning more of a sketch then anything else) and/or not labeled very well.
Hades is a good read and could be useful in any setting, Palladium or not, when you want to add a supernatural force to challenge your players because of the sheer amount of information in this book (but some content is more generic then I expected). The different stats are a nice nod to us SDC world fans, but the setting will be very hard for any but the higher-level characters, and even then it could be too challenging. So it’s a very circumstantial book, and depending on what Palladium actually does with the Minion Wars, they could make this a very good book to have, but as a standalone, while good, it's not as good as it could have been.
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Buy Rifts Dimension Book 10: Hades at AmazonWritten by Spriggan on November 11th, 2007
