How is Palladium doing?

[the Jester]

Hey, Alex, thanks for posting!

I don't play any Palladium games at present, but have played Robotech, TMNT and Rifts in the past, and played in a dnd game with heavy Palladium Fantasy influence. I am glad you guys are still going, even if I technically have no use for you these days either.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

If D20 hadn't come out, my group and I would still be playing Palladium Fantasy and Rifts...

 

[Treebore]

I've always liked house ruling, so I played PAladium Fantasy and RIFTS just fine with various house rules.

The setting info for Paladium Fantasy is probably my favorite stuff of all the settings I own. I love the Wolfen, the Coyles (sp?), the changlings, the various spellcasting classes, and lots of other things.

I think I'll have to add Paladium Fantasy to the list of RPG games I want my kids to try out this summer. Maybe RIFTS too, but only after Synnibar.

 

[Xyanthon]

I had fun playing the Palladium FRPG, back in the day (before RIFTS). That was a game I only played -- never GM'd, which is very unusual for me. That's probably part of the reason I have such fond memories of it: I got to play a long-term PC.

Can't say I liked TMNT or Rifts. Tried Ninjas & Superspies, but it never caught on, either. Pretty cool art in all the Palladium books, though.

Philotomy,

I agree completely. I first encountered them through Robotech and then discovered the Fantasy game. I like both even though the mere mention of Palladium can start all kinds of craziness. I really enjoy the art as well. I still look in on them from time to time but I'm not crazy about RIFTS and wish they would do more Palladium Fantasy stuff.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

I still feel like the best thing that could happen to Palladium's IP would be if Palladium folded and sold their stuff to another company. I just don't think Kevin S. is ever going to do the updating his system so badly needs. It's not attracting new people into the fold at the same rate the fanbase loses people.

Agreed, at least based on what I'm hearing and seeing in my area.

Don't get me wrong, RIFTS was a good idea, and I had fun playing Robotech back in the day (even though the games only lasted a few sessions before we got formally introduced to Champions/HERO). But the system is clunky, and combat is even more convoluted and clunky than D&D 3.x

Maybe back in the 80's and 90's that was fine, and it certainly may please the old-school fans. But new playes, ones that don't have many years of gaming experience, are scared off by how non-intuitive the system is. They'd much rather have a game system that they don't have to learn several different resolution mechanics to play. That's the big strength of the d20 system, in that the core mechanic for everything is d20 roll + modifiers.

WotC may very well be testing a super-streamlined d20 ruleset with Saga Edition of Star Wars. And while there may be a percentage of the market that prefers a game that requires a lot of number-crunching in characer creation and complicated task resolution rules, they are a shrinking as such gamers get older and invariably get jobs and start families.

This isn't meant to be an attack at Palladium in any way, shape or form. Just one old-time gamer's perspective based on what he's seen and heard. To an extent, I commend Palladium for not jumping on the d20 bandwagon like a lot of already existing RPG publishers did.

Problem is, their in-house system is, as Ottergame put it, in dire need of a tune-up to stay competitive. The days of gamers with money to burn on books they use strictly for fluff and background are past, and more and more gamers would rather buy a book with crunch material they can use with minimal (if any) modification. Palladium may have put out some great source material under the RIFTS label, but to a lot of people that utilize d20, it might as well not exist.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Alex!

We are alive and on the comeback trail. Rifts: D-Bees of North America ships in a few days (awesome cover by Dave Dorman). That will be followed by Rifts: Machinations of Doom, a combination graphic novel and sourcebook. The graphic novel collects Ramon Perez's Lone Star comic strip from the pages of The Rifter and the rest of the book stats out those characters and presents a diabolical plot that could change the face of Rifts North America forever.

You know a combination Graphic Novel and Gamebook is such a novel approach (no pun intended) that I think I'll check it out (In fact its so obvious I wonder why no ones tried it before). However, the book I am really waiting for is Minion War. I'll also be interested in the Art of John Zeleznik.

I invite everyone down to www.palladiumbooks.com for a look at what's new, and what's coming.

Alex Marciniszyn,
Palladium Books

While I'm here, I have to ask. Why the heck don't Palladium bring out d20 versions of their material!? They would make a fortune. Are you guys worried that if you have Rifts d20 you might lose some players from Rifts? Even if that was the case, surely the sales increase of one would far outweigh the decrease of the other.

To me Rifts is the best setting in RPGs, because its got everything (almost literally you could say). The flipside is that the mechanics are a 'tad' unwieldy*.

*Although you could say that d20 is getting there (in terms of high level stuff at any rate) so you may want to wait for D&D 4th Edition (assuming its OGL) before converting Rifts, if you were to do so that is

EDIT: Alex, I just found the d20 thread on the Palladium forums, so no need to respond here. Its still something I'd love to see, but if you guys have your reasons then I am certainly not going to be one of those people who 'tells you your business'.

 

[Contrarian]

Me too; did you combine them like we did? Teenage Mutant Ninja Mecha Pilot Turtles...

In my hometown (barely a stone's throw from Detroit, actually), we just stole the parts of Palladium that didn't suck and inserted them in AD&D campaigns.

One day, somebody attacked Odin with a Veritech, and it all got weird.

Down to like 4 hardcopy mags far as I can tell and Palladium has one of them. Why pick on them if you dont like the system.

Because Palladium practically asks for abuse by picking pointless fights with everybody else?

Seriously, at Ubercon Great Lakes (worst con ever, by the way), the loudest person in the room was the guy at the Palladium table telling everybody that D&D's problem is "'the character classes are all clichés."

Ooh, publically slagging the mechanics of a game everyone else knows that you based your game on. Now that's what I call class.

 

[papastebu]

I have been inspired by the Heroes TV show, and went and spent about 100 dollars on all but one, maybe two of the Heroes Unlimited group of books by them. Then I bought Mutants and Masterminds at Barnes and Noble in Nashville.
Comparing the two, Palladium's books are meatier, but I don't like the system much. That's why I'm going to tinker these rules into submission, just like I did with D&D!
Seriously, though, Palladium doesn't suck. But I do wish that they would make the numbers less cumbersome. Too much stuff going on to get your head into the game easily.
Kind of reminds me of Shadowrun 2e. Even Shadowrun 4e. The system ain't great.

 

[Kafkonia]

I always thought Palladium had some great ideas that were hobbled by an awkward system, which seems to be the general consensus in this thread. Am I remembering wrong, or was it impossible to have a stat of 16 in Heroes Unlimited? (I seem to recall that you rolled 3d6, and if you got a 16, 17, or 18 you rolled another 1d6 and added it -- thus making the minimum 16+1, or 17.)

So while I actually have three different Palladium games (Heroes Unlimited 1st ed, Macross, and TMNT & Other Strangeness) I've never been able to bring myself to play them because of my misgivings about the system. A lot of their material might be great under different systems; the idea behind Rifts was certainly neat, and might make a fun GURPS game, for instance.

I am glad to see they're still alive and kicking, though -- it's no good to lose a company in this industry, especially to underhanded dirty deeds.

 

[MojoGM]

As proof that no everyone finds the system clunky, I actually know a person who runs a DRAGONLANCE game using the RIFTS system instead of D20.

Not my cup of tea, but hey, to each their own