Probably the main suspension-of-disbelief issue with the game is the way armor sometimes deteriorates very quickly. Therefore, it is important to emphasize to players how worn their armor is after battling goblins or rabid wolves or whatever.
Actually, ask your SCA pals about that. Combat is
hard on armour. The D&D trope on marching all day over hill and dale with nary a thought to maintenence is what should trip your suspension of disbelief. A friend of mine who does SCA heavy combat (I'm a wire weenie myself) once commented that after a 20 mile hike in armour he'd probably need a full day to do the repairs just from use wear. The reason a knight had a squire and assorted followers on with him was that maintaining all his gear was simply too much work for one man.
OTOH, it's not hard to fix, it's just work. One of the big weaknesses of Palladium has always been lots of rules for degrading armour, none for repairing it.
As for running the game, it a lot of fun.
Some things to look out for:
As mentioned the classes are not balanced, and deliberately so. A nobly-born (and therefore well fed and properly trained) knight should wipe the floor with a normal man-at-arms. It is not nearly as bad as in other palladium games however. There is no Cosmo-Knight/Vagabond gap.
Some of the magic using classes are
not spell casting classes. I personally love the diabolist and summoner classes, but they might throw players used to more blasty sorts of wizards.
Heavy Warhores are freaking dangerous. In a game I ran the Knights horse was far deadlier than the knight himself.
There is no common tounge in the game. Some of the most fun I ever had gaming was a PFRPG game I ran. Everybody made characters and I passed around a sheet so everbody could write name, race, class and what languages they spoke. It turned out there was no one language the party had in common. I think the worst case had to go through 2 other characters to talk to a party member. I made them play it out and it was hilarious. Took them 3 hours to order drinks and the waitress was in tears while the gnome was passed out in the middle of the table.
If you want to avoid that however you might suggest everybody learn a particular language.
