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<blockquote data-quote="Spinachcat" data-source="post: 5698450" data-attributes="member: 37588">The Palladium system was born with the Mechanoids RPG in 1982. The games of that time included Arduin, T&amp;T, Stormbringer, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu and other &quot;random roll&quot; RPGs where characters could be rather out of power balance with each other. A few years later we see Hero System via Champions and GURPS and the raising of temples to the cult of balance. However, it is very true that Kevin took Rifts even further afield than previous RPGs with PC classes and PC races with entirely divergent power levels. The mistake Kevin made was not providing enough GM guidance in the core book. The Game Master Guide covers some things, but certainly more GM help is needed in the core book. It takes a strong GM to run Rifts. It's much more challenging than balanced RPGs because the GM must tailor the game to a variety of power levels and be able to shine a spotlight on each player. That's rather easy to do with Traveller. Even in the original Book 1, you could easily roll up a character with 1 term who got Gambling-1 and a revolver and another character who has Pilot-4, combat armor, a laser rifle and starship.Even easier for imbalance was Gamma World where you could easily roll up weak powers and crippling deficiencies plus poor stats.&nbsp; That ended about a decade ago. They have been fully computerized with their process for some time now. However, the by-hand layout probably should have ended two decades ago. And they should enhance their PDFs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Spinachcat, post: 5698450, member: 37588"] The Palladium system was born with the Mechanoids RPG in 1982. The games of that time included Arduin, T&T, Stormbringer, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu and other "random roll" RPGs where characters could be rather out of power balance with each other. A few years later we see Hero System via Champions and GURPS and the raising of temples to the cult of balance. However, it is very true that Kevin took Rifts even further afield than previous RPGs with PC classes and PC races with entirely divergent power levels. The mistake Kevin made was not providing enough GM guidance in the core book. The Game Master Guide covers some things, but certainly more GM help is needed in the core book. It takes a strong GM to run Rifts. It's much more challenging than balanced RPGs because the GM must tailor the game to a variety of power levels and be able to shine a spotlight on each player. That's rather easy to do with Traveller. Even in the original Book 1, you could easily roll up a character with 1 term who got Gambling-1 and a revolver and another character who has Pilot-4, combat armor, a laser rifle and starship. Even easier for imbalance was Gamma World where you could easily roll up weak powers and crippling deficiencies plus poor stats. That ended about a decade ago. They have been fully computerized with their process for some time now. However, the by-hand layout probably should have ended two decades ago. And they should enhance their PDFs. [/QUOTE]

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