HellHound
ENnies winner and NOT Scrappy Doo
The Palladium RPG is painfully obviously a derivative of classic D&D – with the urge to provide more detail and options. The collection of ability scores is increased, but generation remains pretty much on-par for D&D. The number of races is far greater, and leaves little reason to play a human. The number of Occupation Character Classes is also far greater than D&D’s offering, and thus typically fall into smaller niches. The game also introduces a skill system using a percentile system that starts at a base percentage in a skill and increases by a set percentage at each level, and a similar weapon skill system where you gain bonuses to attack, parry and damage as you level up.
I borrowed a copy of the game from the same gentleman who introduced me to Villains and Vigilantes, but didn’t actually own a copy until I was in High School. My new gaming group was hanging out and passing around the book and I was responsible for it when I left it in the cafeteria for ten minutes unattended. In this time, some jock came by and tore one of the pages out. Next thing you know, I’m buying a new copy for the original owner (one of the nicest guys in the school, no less).
In the meantime, I had run into rules taken from the game in the regular D&D game I was a player in – the death and dying rules showed up from time to time, and the runes, wards and summoning circles were used as flavour material on occasion.
That High School copy lasted me until University, when it became one of the casualties (along with a lot of my 1e AD&D books) of a flood in my parents’ basement. I bought another copy in the late 90’s through Titan Games (where I also bought a bunch of other very cool old RPGs over the years).
What made the game stand out for me, and for many I know, is the detail in the spell-casting classes. Summoners don’t just summon creatures, they have a specific list of summoning circles to do it with, and each circle is intricately drawn in the book. Those who learn to cast wards and runes also have their own section, detailing each ward and power word with a drawing and rules. There were priests, wizards, witches, elemental warlocks and more.
The game system was similar to D&D, with a little more detail. You roll attack rolls with a base DC of 5, and the opponent can try to dodge or parry it, trying to roll higher than your attack roll. If you hit, but don’t roll higher than the DC of the target’s armour, you end up striking armour instead of the target, dealing damage to the armour until it is destroyed and offers no further protection. Unfortunately, the game totally supported playing the larger races in the game, because their weapons did an additional die of damage compared to standard weapons, and they generally suffered no further penalties except role-playing ones (and even then, if you played an entire party of Wolfen and Ogres, then the role-playing issues were moot as you dealt primarily with other Wolfen and Ogres).
I remember a bunch of adventures I ran with Palladium – the loose mechanics seemed to encourage larger player groups for some reason (at least within our RPG groups) and thus it became the game of choice when we had a large group sitting down to game that wasn’t big enough for the annual “too many people around the Robotech table” games. And we would get great groups of strange characters like my brother’s goblin thief, the nearly mandatory Wolfen archer, an Ogre warrior, a Changeling summoner and so on – not nearly as odd as the socially improbable groups we had in Talislanta, but strange nonetheless.
The general ‘feel’ of a game was somewhere around mid-level OD&D (levels 3-5) for us, which meant more wilderness treks and less dungeoneering. I ran expeditions to strange environments, crossing through hazardous living swamps that reached up to kill unwary travelers, traversing hostile deserts, and climbing the cold mountains that were home to barbaric wolfen tribes and their strange Buddhist elders, all to find hidden and lost temples, fortresses and shrines to lost gods and forgotten kings.
In other words, it was D&D with a few other trappings and neat magic.
The book also included a sample adventure (something far more games should). Initially it looks like many other fantasy adventures – go to the newly uncovered ruins and see what you can learn and take. But this one had a twist in the form of a party of NPCs under the leadership of a higher-level character on site with the same goals. Not merely dungeoneering, this adventure seems to feel like a mix of archeology with competing dig teams and dig sites as well as a classic dungeon scenario. Thus, in addition to showing you a sample adventure, the scenario helped make the setting seem dynamic and lived in, as well as providing example higher level NPCs so you can see what to expect from the game. And of course, it included the “doubling sword of chaos” – a short sword that deals damage using a doubling die (from backgammon) instead of a standard d6.
I appreciated the Palladium RPG at many levels. While character generation had its quirks (if you rolled a 16+ on a stat, you got to roll another d6 and add it – rewarding high rolls not just with high bonuses, but with even higher rolls), it was one of the first fantasy games I played with a functional skill system. However, the games that followed were less to my liking, increasing hit points with SDC and effectively making characters stronger and tougher with each new game (and adding skills that also increase your ability scores as well as your SDC).
I never picked up the new edition of the Palladium RPG, but I would be curious to see how it has changed over the years.
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About three months ago a very close friend and one of the core team of the original Ambient d20 team committed suicide. This really struck deeply into me, and I haven't been able to concentrate on anything RPG-related since then - I haven't prepped a game, written a supplement, edited anything, or even put anything through layout. I even dropped off the RPG message boards I love, especially ENWorld.
So, I've started to think back over all the games I've played over the years and what makes gaming fun for me. And I'm collecting them into roughly 1,000 word posts about the various games, with the intent to write and post one every weekday that I'm not on the road, and then re-invest this energy into running games and writing again.
I borrowed a copy of the game from the same gentleman who introduced me to Villains and Vigilantes, but didn’t actually own a copy until I was in High School. My new gaming group was hanging out and passing around the book and I was responsible for it when I left it in the cafeteria for ten minutes unattended. In this time, some jock came by and tore one of the pages out. Next thing you know, I’m buying a new copy for the original owner (one of the nicest guys in the school, no less).
In the meantime, I had run into rules taken from the game in the regular D&D game I was a player in – the death and dying rules showed up from time to time, and the runes, wards and summoning circles were used as flavour material on occasion.
That High School copy lasted me until University, when it became one of the casualties (along with a lot of my 1e AD&D books) of a flood in my parents’ basement. I bought another copy in the late 90’s through Titan Games (where I also bought a bunch of other very cool old RPGs over the years).
What made the game stand out for me, and for many I know, is the detail in the spell-casting classes. Summoners don’t just summon creatures, they have a specific list of summoning circles to do it with, and each circle is intricately drawn in the book. Those who learn to cast wards and runes also have their own section, detailing each ward and power word with a drawing and rules. There were priests, wizards, witches, elemental warlocks and more.
The game system was similar to D&D, with a little more detail. You roll attack rolls with a base DC of 5, and the opponent can try to dodge or parry it, trying to roll higher than your attack roll. If you hit, but don’t roll higher than the DC of the target’s armour, you end up striking armour instead of the target, dealing damage to the armour until it is destroyed and offers no further protection. Unfortunately, the game totally supported playing the larger races in the game, because their weapons did an additional die of damage compared to standard weapons, and they generally suffered no further penalties except role-playing ones (and even then, if you played an entire party of Wolfen and Ogres, then the role-playing issues were moot as you dealt primarily with other Wolfen and Ogres).
I remember a bunch of adventures I ran with Palladium – the loose mechanics seemed to encourage larger player groups for some reason (at least within our RPG groups) and thus it became the game of choice when we had a large group sitting down to game that wasn’t big enough for the annual “too many people around the Robotech table” games. And we would get great groups of strange characters like my brother’s goblin thief, the nearly mandatory Wolfen archer, an Ogre warrior, a Changeling summoner and so on – not nearly as odd as the socially improbable groups we had in Talislanta, but strange nonetheless.
The general ‘feel’ of a game was somewhere around mid-level OD&D (levels 3-5) for us, which meant more wilderness treks and less dungeoneering. I ran expeditions to strange environments, crossing through hazardous living swamps that reached up to kill unwary travelers, traversing hostile deserts, and climbing the cold mountains that were home to barbaric wolfen tribes and their strange Buddhist elders, all to find hidden and lost temples, fortresses and shrines to lost gods and forgotten kings.
In other words, it was D&D with a few other trappings and neat magic.
The book also included a sample adventure (something far more games should). Initially it looks like many other fantasy adventures – go to the newly uncovered ruins and see what you can learn and take. But this one had a twist in the form of a party of NPCs under the leadership of a higher-level character on site with the same goals. Not merely dungeoneering, this adventure seems to feel like a mix of archeology with competing dig teams and dig sites as well as a classic dungeon scenario. Thus, in addition to showing you a sample adventure, the scenario helped make the setting seem dynamic and lived in, as well as providing example higher level NPCs so you can see what to expect from the game. And of course, it included the “doubling sword of chaos” – a short sword that deals damage using a doubling die (from backgammon) instead of a standard d6.
I appreciated the Palladium RPG at many levels. While character generation had its quirks (if you rolled a 16+ on a stat, you got to roll another d6 and add it – rewarding high rolls not just with high bonuses, but with even higher rolls), it was one of the first fantasy games I played with a functional skill system. However, the games that followed were less to my liking, increasing hit points with SDC and effectively making characters stronger and tougher with each new game (and adding skills that also increase your ability scores as well as your SDC).
I never picked up the new edition of the Palladium RPG, but I would be curious to see how it has changed over the years.
---
About three months ago a very close friend and one of the core team of the original Ambient d20 team committed suicide. This really struck deeply into me, and I haven't been able to concentrate on anything RPG-related since then - I haven't prepped a game, written a supplement, edited anything, or even put anything through layout. I even dropped off the RPG message boards I love, especially ENWorld.
So, I've started to think back over all the games I've played over the years and what makes gaming fun for me. And I'm collecting them into roughly 1,000 word posts about the various games, with the intent to write and post one every weekday that I'm not on the road, and then re-invest this energy into running games and writing again.
