Longspeak
Adventurer
Go back in time and hold this poll in the early 90s. Past me will give this system top marks.
TMNT was my first (caveat, I am old, and my memories for four decades ago are unreliable) Palladuim. I loved the comic, and my High School friend said he didn't want it anymore. I bought it, made about a hundred characters, never played it. I was too young and my views not nuanced enough to catch some of the issues, and even the ones I did catch, I interpreted in more positive assumption. (sexual preference is insanity? That's not right. He must mean a sudden shift in preference. Yes, that must be... look I was 16, okay?).
Later... I think a year or two... I found Heroes Unlimited at my FLGS. I bought it, made a lot of characters for it, shelved it...
Later still, I was in another group and they wanted to run Ninjas & Superspies. Had some fun and some weird arguments. "Uh... my character would recognize the Dim Mak when he sees it because his Jiu-Jutsu teaches it in just ten more levels and he would have seen demonstrations." Sure. At the weekly Dim Mak expo. Of course.
That game ended because the GM was a selfish [redacted] who TPKed us during a mission briefing because she was in a bad mood.
Years later, I would pull Heroes Unlimited down to run a game for my friends. We loved it, and we even passed the GM hat around, playing the same world, expanding on it, our PCs becoming NPCs for a couple of sessions. This was the genesis of the longer running series I'd run on an off from the mid-90s to the mid-teens, though the system changed pretty early on. I even incorprated some Rifts into the last story I ever ran with this system.
But over the years... I noticed... Palladium recycles everything. Why was I paying full price for half a book? I already owned several copies of the other half! That, and game design advanced, changed, grew... Palladium never did. Eventually I left them behind. Today... So many better ideas, better executed, better written, better productions...
Palladium... I don't even know how it competes these days.
TMNT was my first (caveat, I am old, and my memories for four decades ago are unreliable) Palladuim. I loved the comic, and my High School friend said he didn't want it anymore. I bought it, made about a hundred characters, never played it. I was too young and my views not nuanced enough to catch some of the issues, and even the ones I did catch, I interpreted in more positive assumption. (sexual preference is insanity? That's not right. He must mean a sudden shift in preference. Yes, that must be... look I was 16, okay?).
Later... I think a year or two... I found Heroes Unlimited at my FLGS. I bought it, made a lot of characters for it, shelved it...
Later still, I was in another group and they wanted to run Ninjas & Superspies. Had some fun and some weird arguments. "Uh... my character would recognize the Dim Mak when he sees it because his Jiu-Jutsu teaches it in just ten more levels and he would have seen demonstrations." Sure. At the weekly Dim Mak expo. Of course.
That game ended because the GM was a selfish [redacted] who TPKed us during a mission briefing because she was in a bad mood.
Years later, I would pull Heroes Unlimited down to run a game for my friends. We loved it, and we even passed the GM hat around, playing the same world, expanding on it, our PCs becoming NPCs for a couple of sessions. This was the genesis of the longer running series I'd run on an off from the mid-90s to the mid-teens, though the system changed pretty early on. I even incorprated some Rifts into the last story I ever ran with this system.
But over the years... I noticed... Palladium recycles everything. Why was I paying full price for half a book? I already owned several copies of the other half! That, and game design advanced, changed, grew... Palladium never did. Eventually I left them behind. Today... So many better ideas, better executed, better written, better productions...
Palladium... I don't even know how it competes these days.