Investigation on a stormy night

I guess because Rifts is a much different animal than a detective story, its hard to guess which way the game is going to go. Mostly, I think people are just going to be looking for carnage. Correct me if I'm wrong. The game lends itself to that pretty well. In the past, when dealing with people that just want to fight, I started introducing everything but combat. I'd definitely be willing to hear your take on it. I also think that RIfts would be good for ethical choices, especially since the possibility for collateral damage is so plausible in he game.

Something that has come up in the forums I read was that people store up Bennies like their gems and ust use them to soak damage. Dealing with this might be problematic because its in the rules. Smaller damage, but stuff that lingers like acid burns? The goal isn't too kill hte PCs, but to make the game interesting.

Do you have much experience with Savage Rifts?

So most people can and will likely build beast mode combat monkeys. If that's what they want to play that's what they want to play. What happens when you have an MMA fighter that turns into Hulk and he's at a day care with kids? There's the GM fiat/backstage move of people 'doing things in the PCs name' which could be a guy just running a con for stuff, or a cult starting up praising the destruction the PCs do which sounds cool like having a fan club until the PCs food supply or ammo depot or something they care about gets torched in the name of destruction. There's a lot of 'oh yeah' ethical moments I think. People pushing other races back through portals doesn't matter if it's dangerous or even the right one but due to not being human 'Go home' mentality to the point of genocide is one faction. Another that accepts all kinds of people as long as you tow the line and isn't above raising dead relatives in a graveyard by your town to attack it to 'whip the people into submission' isn't the lesser of two evils... Plus there's Rifts something totally random good or bad might show up for no apparent reason.

Collateral damage or PC killing purposely or accidentally is a real thing.

Bennies are just hit points: If Players want to just use them till the end that means they're good at rolling or keep trying to circumvent things, [b]"Can I use my fighting to display my combat prowess to intimidate them instead of rolling the skill? Sure roll a 1d4-2 and a 1d6-2 take the better." That's the mindset of a lot of people since depending on their background when you're out of wounds you're dead and by dead I mean incapacitated and you roll on the injury table after the fight since you're out of it the minute you drop except for certain edge abilities, situations. PCs aren't invincible there's always something to drag them around like lack of food or fresh water, low ammo, bad reputation for being a hobo murderer since they opted to just make a combat monkey, sometimes it's bigger or just as big people things that are the obstacle, sometimes it's just people who think the murderous PCs are kinda dicks and they don't want to listen to the outsiders who just strut around killing whatever doesn't get into line with what they're saying.

Don't have the books for Savage Rifts but as I stated the Happy Jack RPG Podcast's AP of a Savage Rifts game was pretty good I thought.

Thank you for all the help. I've got the Happy Jack Podcast up in my browser. Again, much appreciated for all the work you put into this.

*Teddy Bear waves* "Goodbye new friend."