So what's wrong with Palladium?

[Summer-Knight925]

Fair enough. I'm capable of quite a bit. Especially if I take time off from the day job and do things I actually like doing. Writing is one of them.




Fair enough, here's the thing. He doesn't own license over percentile dice or character classes, or experience progressions, so long as you don't steal his trademarks good luck having any problem with him. I highly doubt that any system that ends up being written would be 75% similar considering the stuff that could be added or removed to fix it.



To be frank, I appreciate Kevin's efforts regardless of pride or whatever his reasons are, but make no bones about it.. if he's not releasing cleaned up and revised rules (because there are revised editions) it's because of the cost of print runs and the time needed to revise old stuff as opposed to developing new stuff and the additional time to revise everything to meet the new rules.

If it would make more money to revise everything, he'd do it, stubborn or not.

You do raise a few good points, and looking back I do seem fairly harsh, but perhaps we're seeing what money does in the industry? Palladium is no WotC, so through common sense they just do not have the money to put into R&D, it is not a bad thing, I do like Palladium, possibly more than WotC, granted TSR did IMO more with D&D than WotC. Paizo is another company I enjoy, I think what it comes down to is that Palladium is hard to work with, not just for actual jobs, but with material, Rifts (at least for me) is a very fun setting to write in, but actually play? Adventures are hard to do, maybe I just suck at it, but either way, I find any type of session hard to put together, I also feel scaling is hard, although that is just because of the sci-fi elements.

All in all, I enjoy rifts, alot, and I enjoy Palladium fantasy, I enjoy heroes unlimited, but I think the ultimate way to get a feel for Palladium is still with Rifts, granted a few rule changes help, but you can (and I think it was meant to be this way) take from all other book and create the "imagine it, do it" element.
When I was talking to some friends in my school's gaming club, he asked if he could make a ghost pirate badger man, I got back to him the next day with a ghost pirate badger man character. You can actually do whatever you want and while some say the system is broken, I actually see it more as it rewards imagination rather than reading into the rules.

 

[Dragonblade]

Very clunky proto-d20 style game mechanics that can play pretty smoothly with some house rules. But very front-loaded classes and abilities. You'll have something like 80-90% of all the power you'll ever have by 5th level. Which is fine because levelling in Palladium can take forever depending on your GM.

Also balance is not enforced by the game system at all. Its up to the GM to decide whether a heavily armored cyborg that can single-handedly wipe out a tank division should be adventuring with an unskilled vagabond with no powers or special abilities of any kind. Both are options in the core rulebook.

That said, I love the RIFTS setting. Played a ton of RIFTS when I was in high school 20 years ago right around the time it first came out.

Would love to see it re-done using a d20 variant, perhaps something using M&M 3e as the base engine to better handle the power disparity of mega-damage characters, monsters, mechs vs. non-MD humans and gear.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Pagesetting that was still being done with a light table, a straight edge, a razor blade, and some beeswax, last time I looked.

Nothing against the method, mind, I did some of it too, back in the (cobweb covered and moldy) day.

But there are programs now that do it better, faster, and can be used at several locations at the same time.

Mostly, the biggest problem is the owner....

The Auld Grump

 

[Spinachcat]

I am a Palladium fan, I have written for the Rifter0 PDFs and I consider Kevin Siembieda a personal acquaintance since I have hung with him a few times and we talk a couple times a year by email. I like him both as a person and as an author, and that probably colors my opinions. But I have no problem being critical of what I see as issues.

Being a 'newcomer' to things not D&D, I found Rifts, Heroes Unlimited and even Palladium Fantasy very interesting, so I have to ask why do so many people not like Palladium?

The "cult of balance" has become the dominant mindset in the RPG community - for better or worse. Palladium hails from the days when PC balance and game balance were issues for GMs at their game table and not on the shoulders of the designers.

I've heard that the Hero system works better for the Rifts world,

I prefer converting to Savage Worlds. I have run Palladium's Nightbane via Silver Age Sentinels/BESM and that was interesting. However, when converting you do gain some things, but you lose others. With Rifts, I feel that keeping the flavor is troublesome when converting.

That said, I highly suggest that anyone who enjoys the Palladium settings, but the system should definitely convert to their favorite system.

They also have a track record of being rude and threatening to fans who dare speak of converting RIFTS or other Palladium IP to other systems.

I post about converting all the time. Kevin and I have had multiple conversations about conversions. Palladium is defensive of their IP and they are very concerned about their copyrights and trademarks. According to Kevin, his attorneys have advised him to very wary of any converted material posted online.

I understand the upset and concern on both sides. I absolutely sympathize with fans annoyed by the "no posting conversions" policy. That said, if I had my entire livelihood and the livelihood of my team completely dependent on my Intellectual Property, I know that I would be pretty paranoid too if my trusted lawyer told me to be concerned about online stuff.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Rifts was the first paper and dice RPG I ever played. I love it. I wish to still run it but the system flaw makes getting players hard.


I always hoped that since it already used alot of the D20 stuff it would convert to D20 after D&D came out. I feel the world setting is his best work, and still hope he can go back and fix his mistakes...

eagerly awaiting a new revised rifts book...

 

[prosfilaes]

The "cult of balance" has become the dominant mindset in the RPG community - for better or worse. Palladium hails from the days when PC balance and game balance were issues for GMs at their game table and not on the shoulders of the designers.

That's ahistorical, I think. I have a hard time naming another game that has characters as clearly unbalanced as Rifts. Contemporaneous with Rifts (1990) are Hero (1989) and GURPS (1986--3rd edition 1989), both of which are systems that care deeply about balance. Earlier systems like D&D, Traveller, and Call of Cthulhu may not put the emphasis on balance, but old school D&D is known for its baroque balancing systems (like level caps) and all of them had limits on characters; a fairly rolled up character was going to be more or less balanced with another fairly rolled up character. None of them have vagabonds in the same party with cybernetically enhanced superwarriors.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That's ahistorical, I think. I have a hard time naming another game that has characters as clearly unbalanced as Rifts. Contemporaneous with Rifts (1990) are Hero (1989) and GURPS (1986--3rd edition 1989), both of which are systems that care deeply about balance. Earlier systems like D&D, Traveller, and Call of Cthulhu may not put the emphasis on balance, but old school D&D is known for its baroque balancing systems (like level caps) and all of them had limits on characters; a fairly rolled up character was going to be more or less balanced with another fairly rolled up character. None of them have vagabonds in the same party with cybernetically enhanced superwarriors.

Hi I am a glitterboy piolt, Hi I am a dragon, Hi I am an atlantian Undead slayer, Hi I am a rogue scholor, Hi I am a lay line walker.... that was my first party.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Being a 'newcomer' to things not D&D, I found Rifts, Heroes Unlimited and even Palladium Fantasy very interesting, so I have to ask why do so many people not like Palladium?

I like- no LOVE- the fluff in RIFTS, Heroes Unlimited and certain aspects of Palladium Fantasy and other products they produce. But for the most part, I find the mechanics to be really wonky.

And no, I'm no worshipper at the altar of balance. I have no problem running or participating in games with parties that don't even come close to being balanced.

Kevin S. is (allegedly) a complete jerk who (allegedly) rips off creators that make the mistake of working for him left and right. I don't know this first hand, but a friend of a friend wrote some stuff for him and has nothing but horror stories to show for it.

I have heard that allegation from a lot of people who did work from Palladium...and more.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I asked this because I am going to be running a rifts campaign for my school gaming club, and was accused of being, and this is a serious quote so it offends anyone don't get mad at me, just understand the person I was dealing with, a person no longer in the club for this exact reason.

And I quote:

"The Palladium line is a horrible excuse for an RPG and by playing it it proves I was right saying you are a horrible excuse for a DM (GM). I don't even need to know the rules to say how much it sucks and how stupid anyone who plays it is, I can already tell just by your description that the world setting is far inferior to D&D's (this is the 4e setting he is talking about) and all that extra crap they crammed in was to cover up the fact that it sucks and there are more plot holes in it than any other setting. The characters are a total waste of time, they don't do anything! Even the giant robot get's killed by a smaller robot, it's a pointless game for idiots who don't know how to role play at all so they just imagine star wars and play that, because if the TV didn't tell them what characters to have, they'd be lost."

Now my rebbudle will go unposted, for various reasons, but mostly because I said nothing, the group I had played with before almost tore this kid apart, you don't tell the player of a 7-foot tall wolf man (dog boy)he's a loser because we as a party made a lot of jokes about him being our wookie, something he agreed with and went along with, or the sniper in our group being "straight from COD".
Maybe he was mad because everyone from his 4e group wanted to come play rifts with me, or maybe it was because he wanted to be leader of the gaming club and no one else wanted him to be, or anyone for that matter, to be leader.

If you have questions about our club hierarchy let me know, I enjoy talking about our government of geeks.

 

[the Jester]

I post about converting all the time. Kevin and I have had multiple conversations about conversions. Palladium is defensive of their IP and they are very concerned about their copyrights and trademarks. According to Kevin, his attorneys have advised him to very wary of any converted material posted online.

I understand the upset and concern on both sides. I absolutely sympathize with fans annoyed by the "no posting conversions" policy. That said, if I had my entire livelihood and the livelihood of my team completely dependent on my Intellectual Property, I know that I would be pretty paranoid too if my trusted lawyer told me to be concerned about online stuff.

But there's got to be a way to do it without being a jerk to your customers, and I've heard umpteen complaints that Palladium doesn't bother to find that way. (Granted that this is second hand, but still.)