Why is Palladium so ant-d20?

[Turjan]

Trinity, Aberrant, and Adventure. I haven't looked into them, but they are out.

Okay, I forgot about these ones . But this fits what I said, nevertheless. It's successful games that suffer from mixing up their image with that of a different company, whereas niche games might profit from the very same thing.

 

[Turanil]

OR allow me to put up my own extensive conversion up online without fear of reprisal.

Hey, even if you may not put that conversion stuff online, would it be possible to get a look at it? Would you be willing to send me the documents you created for it? Thanks.

 

[Mark]

Note that at the time, Star Wars was out of print - West End Games had lost the license, and WOTC had not yet produced the d20 version. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe "Palladium" refers to all Palladium games as a group.

As for GURPS' commercial success, I believe it is somewhat larger than the above table indicates, because many people buy GURPS books in order to loot them for their own campaigns in other systems. However, I doubt that factor is large enough to compensate for the difference between 3% of RPGers and 16%.

That also doesn't give you any sense of the number of books someone has purchased for the particular system they play.

 

[painandgreed]

Well, I don't blame KS for not converting to d20, but a new version wouldn't hurt if they could clean up all the contradictions and maybe make an index.

Also, forgive me for being jaded, but I don't see RIFTS as being all that special. Seems like a similar world could be done here with another "Creative Exercise" by dividing up the world and having people randomly dropping different settings into them. Then bring in an editor to help mesh everything together and another rules editor to help keep play balance. You could in effect have the same genre game witout ever stepping on any of Palladium's copyrights and IMHO probaby coem out with a better setting and ruleset. You just need a neat name to go with it, soemthing like "Patchworld", "Planescrape", "Cynosure", "Welt-treffen" or something.

 

[Crothian]

Also, forgive me for being jaded, but I don't see RIFTS as being all that special.

WEll, that's okay becasue not everyone things d20 is all that special or Exalted or even Blue Planet. There is only one game that everyone knows to be special.

And the idea of Rifts is not unique. Shadowrun has elements of it, and Torg does as well. They just went different dirrections but the underlying effect is still there.

 

[Krieg]

Steve Jackson just announced a gross of $2.8 million last year, I doubt that makes him 3% of the industry, gaming isn't a particularly huge industry I'm afraid.

Remember that more than half of that revenue is from non RPG products.

Thyere [sic] is only one game that everyone knows to be special.

And that is?

 

[Crothian]

And that is?

The only true game, the mandatory fun game better then all those other (not fun) games. Paranoia.

And only commies would disagree with that.

 

[The Traveler]

Trinity, Aberrant, and Adventure. I haven't looked into them, but they are out.

...and all three really stink compared to the original games. They should've left well enough alone.

 

[Crothian]

...and all three really stink compared to the original games. They should've left well enough alone.

I wouldn't say that. Abberant was so easy to min max and create super powered characters, it just got not fun. The real strength of the games were the settings and that has nothing to do with the rules they use.

 

[Staffan]

Steve Jackson just announced a gross of $2.8 million last year, I doubt that makes him 3% of the industry, gaming isn't a particularly huge industry I'm afraid.

Note that the figures from the survey were for "have you played game X in the last month", not "do you buy stuff for game X." Also, a significant portion of SJGames' revenue comes from non-RPG stuff, like Munchkin.

That said, it's possible that GURPS has become more popular in the last few years - I doubt it has beaten out Palladium, though, but it may have advanced from being something like #10 to something like #5.