Holy cow! Palladium releasing PDFs!

[Treebore]

*Cue the little girls voice from Poltergeist*

Their here!

RPGNow.com - Palladium Books - The leading source for indie RPGs

 

[DrunkonDuty]

jdrakeh wrote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by DrunkonDuty
(DnD ISN'T one of those.)

I think that's pretty subjective.

Absolutely.

ANd no arguments from me about Mega Damage. It tends to wreck the game. Or perhaps I should say: take the game in a direction I don't like. But since most of my Palladium gaming was the Fantasy RPG all those mis-matched bits and pieces one got in RIFTS were less of an issue.

 

[pawsplay]

I will say this, much as I don't like the system, the company has published some really neat setting material. Though the "alien blob of the week" does seem to be a pretty darn common occurrence now that I think about it.

I have to say, KS's Legion of Alien Blobs still has a lot more personality than a lot of creations from other game lines. Thought I hesitate to admit it, I can describe in some basic detail the differences between vampire intelligences, splugorth, and the Old Ones. And I was really tickled how he used them with regard to Rifts England and to the Olympic pantheon.

I have a lot easier time telling you the reason why slugorth and vampire intelligences each get their own entries than explaining the functional difference, in D&D, between hobgoblins and orcs.

 

[insanogeddon]

I already have ALL the books for palladium and rifts and I to cannot bring myself to loose that gigantic pile of back ache. They have done a magnificent job of plagerising original dnd, cthulu, hedge magic theory, myth, manga etc etc etc etc and making a game out of it. That they don't allow open use and elaboration is sad and stops it from being the social movement with long term ripples thru time that dnd was.

 

[Mort]

Oddly enough there is a 2nd edition of the Palladium Fantasy RPG ... which is (IMHO) not as good as the first one. He tried to unify it and balance it, however KS's grasp of the concept of 'balance' is fuzzy at best.

Slightly OT (though I guess if you're looking into which PDF's to buy it isn't)

but this seems to be common with Palladium.

The 2nd edition to Ninjas & Super spies is clearly worse than the first: the errors and problems in the first edition aren't fixed and new ones are introduced (plus the 2nd edition has more actual errors typos etc. despite being delayed for years).

Same thing (IMHO)for Rifts: Ultimate edition. The changes made were mostly cosmetic - except for changes to how magic worked - here palladium took something already inferior to technology (per the system) and made it even more obviously inferior - very frustrating.

 

[pawsplay]

OTOH, every iteration of Heroes Unlimited has been clearly better.

 

[jdrakeh]

That they don't allow open use and elaboration is sad and stops it from being the social movement with long term ripples thru time that dnd was.

D&D rules weren't available under any kind of open license until the year 2000. That is, it wasn't open content that made D&D a "social movement with long term ripples through time" by any means. If Palladium didn't acheive 'D&D status' on the same terms as D&D throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I doubt that it would have acheived that level of status by introducing open content in the year 2000, either (though I could be wrong).

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I'm pretty stoked about this. I just got me a copy of Palladium Fantasy RPG 1st edition, which has the badly named, but super-awesome diabolist class and its weird and wacky ward magic. I don't know what happened to my original hard-copy of that title, but I have been looking to replace it ever since I lost it. Yay!

I think my current plan is to buy one of their titles per week... Which it occurs to me is what I should have done with Goodman's DCCs before they got removed from circulation.

 

[insanogeddon]

D&D rules weren't available under any kind of open license until the year 2000

I am aware of this. My point is seperate to the whole ogl. Palladium have NEVER been open to other materials based on 'theirs' (and dogged in their 0 tollerance). The never had continuing magazine support till they released 'rifter' about the time the many other gaming mags were shutting or limiting shop.
If not for such dogged intolerance I recon like dnd you could trace its impact to a myriad of vid/comp game designers, script writers, sf artists, actors, directors, comic writers, authors etc.

Its sadly been like some inhouse tasmanian Alexander ‘the pie man’ Pearce hillbilly version of dnd with a closed breeding population. Its lead to some colourful offspring but never had the impact I wish it could.
Its a shelf game, a curiosity, a specimin you will never abandon as its always good to talk on and sometimes review in amusement.

That saddens me.

 

[Ariosto]

Siembieda's Mechanoids booklets knocked my socks off, and I was delighted with Palladium Fantasy (haven't played the 2nd ed. to form an opinion of the changes). It fit right in with the D&D and Arduin vibe, right down to familiar rules concepts. The skills system took some getting used to, but it did roughly the same thing as Rolemaster (only more simply).

I enjoyed a bit of TMNT, Robotech and Beyond the Supernatural.

A friend of mine really liked Heroes Unlimited, but somehow it did not "click" with me. I don't think I ever got all the way through making a single character.

I got a kick out of my first reading of Rifts, but after that the book gathered dust and I think I got rid of it. That's too bad, because the game apparently is still VERY popular -- so maybe I should give it another go.

Siembieda's approach is to me reminiscent of Dave Hargrave's and Jim Ward's. He may not be the slickest rules system designer, but I reckon he ranks among the great Game Masters.