Holy cow! Palladium releasing PDFs!

[darjr]

Cudo's to em. This is a really smart move.

If only TMNT were among em.

 

[jdrakeh]

If only TMNT were among em.

Sadly, those are the breaks when you license a property from somebody else.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Wow, color me impressed that Siembieda finally got dragged into the 21st century. Especially given his computer-phobia of the past.

Now if we can just get him to give the core Palladium system an overhaul...

[ sarcasm ]Eh, maybe next decade. Wouldn't want to scare him with too much progress. [/ sarcasm ]

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.

 

[Andor]

Interesting news. Though regarding all I have heard so far, a new edition might sound more attractive to me.

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.

 

[DragoonLance]

Any sign of Palladium moving toward using these new-fangled computer thingies is a good sign. While I don't think much of the system (even after DMing it for several years,) for Kevin and Co. to make use of ANYTHING digital is a Good Thing. Now maybe once they start real digital publishing (I'm so betting the PDFs are just scans) they can work on fixing the clunky system...

 

[Reynard]

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.

1E Revised is the best version to get, and still widely available in print from the likes of troll and toad and noble knight. It's a solid AD&D clone and even useful for cannibalizing to add some cool elements (the skill system and the magic subsystems) to your AD&D game.

As to the general notion that the system needs to be "updated": newer systems are not necessarily better, nor are systems with "core mechanics" or "balance". A game design can be judged good or bad only on one criteria: does it get the players where the designer intends the game to take them.

 

[Urizen]

Well, look at it from my perspective: pick up a first printing of "Rifts", and try to make a character with no previous knowledge of the Palladium system.

"Try" being the operative word, here.

Been There.

Done that.

I picked up the RIFTS book way back in 1991 (or was it 1990? man I'm getting old) when it was the only book for the RIFTS Megaverse and created a head hunter for a game my friend was starting up. Took about an hour. I'd never even heard of Palladium before then.

It's not hard to do.

The system works. yes it's clunky, but it's not a horrible system, at least I don't think so.

 

[Halivar]

It's not hard to do.

Well, then you have an intellect that dwarfs mine and gaming group, because I don't think any of us, to this day, have ever completely figured out char-gen (as in, we say, "uhh... I think I did it right...").

EDIT: Now that I think on it, I seem to remember that the big issue was that no one could quite understand how the conflict resolution mechanic worked. Upon referencing a Robotech sourcebook, all became clear, but the consensus in the group was that the Rifts book did not stand well on its own.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Hey glad to hear it. I think I'll go see what's on offer.

As to the system itself: It works. There are other systems that are easier to use. (DnD ISN'T one of those.) I played a fair bit back in the day, mostly the Fantasy RPG but some Robotech, TMNT and RIFTS. I never really got into RIFTS, but that's just me. As pointed out above: yes there is a fair amount of character power disparity possible (esp. in RIFTS) but a group CAN work to moderate those. And for Fantasy I have no trouble with a high level wizard being much more dangerous than a high level fighter. It's what the genre is about. ANd the system works. I put my own tweaks into the system; like extending the bonuses from stats down (much like 3e did later) and borrowing the idea of easy to hard tasks giving modifiers to skill checks. All up, the game worked. I definitely preferred it to the 2e DnD that was around back at the time I got into it.

ANd then there was the world. I liked it. A lot. I bought the 2 setting books (there were only 2 at the time IIRC) and enjoyed them immensely. It was a very different world from the Forgotten Realms, for which I was very grateful. It was the Old Ones that first introduced the Blobs form Outer Space, er, Old Ones I mean, to the game. I looked at them and thought: too tough to ever use, but nice background. And I really liked the devil and demon princes/princesses. They had much more personality than their opposite numbers in the Monster Manual.

Must dig out my old books from storage.

 

[jdrakeh]

(DnD ISN'T one of those.)

I think that's pretty subjective.

My own experience with Palladium is that there are a few rules and sub-systems (frex, Mega-Damage and some of the magic systems in the Palladium RPG) explained poorly enough that they could (and often did) escalate things to the level of 'unplayable' very, very, quickly.

Having stated the above, I still enjoyed the Palladium system despite its potential flaws. As a rule set, the Palladium system introduced me to neat ideas that were totally unheard of in D&D — such as consistently scaled combat damage and multiple magic systems, for example.

Granted, as I mention, those ideas usually weren't very well implemented in Palladium (or, if they were, they weren't explained very well) — but at least they were there.