What is the deal with palladium?

[KillWatch]

I have to say he BEST PC generation system I have found has to be in CP2020. I can't say anything about cpv3 cuz the artwork blinded me richly detailed so of course I had to borrow and mod it

[Jefffar]

I just had to split a bunch of posts of this thread because they had nothing to do with the discussion at hand and were either flames or flame baits or too close to that line to call.

Please make an effort to discuss the topic at hand, not the person making the posts or this thread my find itself locked and I'll have to pass out a few more warnings and bannings to make people behave.

As usual, if you feel there was an error made or these actions were unjust, please contact Deific NMI.

Have a good day.

[Vrykolas2k]

Cons: You are less likely to be invested in your character which is more an assemblage of stats than a 3-dimensional figure.

No that is wrong.

Heroes Unlimited or Rifts example: 1-2 hours for character creation.
Pros: You definitely have a very clearly defined idea of who your character is and what makes him tick by the end of this. You've just gone through the equivalent of screen actors guild training for your upcoming roleplaying experience!

No, that is wrong, i know exactly how complicated and time consumning the process was, i know what he could do, but i do nothing on who he is and what drives him, not much about his lace in society which all i know for exampla when i built an GURPS Character for which i need one hour when i don´t use a template.

And the next crics are

the Support don´t follow

e.g. Wolven Wars and LoD3

Some books are wondeful missing necessary information

e.g.. Triax and Wolven Empire

how the society works, how power is organiced etc we don´t know

I'd agree with Sword-Dancer's opinion of the WoD characters and Warhammer Fantasy; then again, the character sheets I use tend to have spaces for background/history, personality, and so on.
Really, though, it's all a matter of preference; I like the Palladium system as-is; I've never had to house-rule anything, and there are enough rules that I can treat the game like a buffet: take what I like and leave the rest. I use the old rule where you add robotic or supernatural strength to melee weapon damage, for instance, where-as others don't. But as long as you're using the rules consistently, it matters little.
Just have fun.

[The Beast]

Wait a minute here..

Are we all trying to say that the rule book should tell you exactly who your character is, what they like and dislike, what their favorite color is and how they feel about themselves?!

I have no clue where this argument is going....

I'd like it to get back to the original topic though....

[Killer Cyborg]

Wait a minute here..

Are we all trying to say that the rule book should tell you exactly who your character is, what they like and dislike, what their favorite color is and how they feel about themselves?!

Probably more along the lines of "ideally the rule book should tell you how to exactly represent who your character is, what they like and dislike, what their favorite color is and how they feel about themselves."

Any game system that has a rule set which dictates my character to me is a rule set that will stand unused.

That's every rule system that has rules for character creation beyond "Just make **** up on your own."

[Spinachcat]

1) Not everyone favors point buy systems. What one person considers "freedom to build" is what another person calls "a huge hassle"

2) ALL point buy systems have significant flaws. I have decades with Hero and GURPS and I have played Waste World, WoD, BESM/SAS, L5R and Savage Worlds since they came out. If you need examples, go analyze the power vs. cost ratio regarding points spent on attributes vs. skills vs. powers and then analyze the power of money vs. cost. And don't get me started on the cost vs. actual play issues of disadvantages and flaws!

3) If you enjoy a Palladium setting, but you and your group prefer another system, then do what gamers have been doing since 1974: convert the setting to the system of your choice.

I have run Rifts / Chaos Earth / Nightbane / Splicers with BESM, D6, Savage Worlds and/or Fudge. You could run Palladium Fantasy in D&D 4e or C&C or S&W or SW with little effort.

Go convert! Have fun! If you bought the books, you have 100% freedom to do whatever you want with them. Morph, mutilate, rearrange, reinterpret and do whatever it takes to make your gaming as fun as possible.

[Shorty Lickens]

"Throwing rules all over the setting books."

Yes. This is the biggest problem for me. Sometimes, somethings are hard to find or confusing. Especially to a new player or GM. I remember my first GMing of Rifts. Someone wanted to buy a E-clip. took me 15 minutes to find where they were located simply because there was no organized chart of weapons and equipment... Wait, let me go see something.

*Runs down stairs to get his Rift book*.

Ok, lets see how long this takes me... Hmmm not under "coalition state weapons & equipment, coalition guns" pg 203...not under "miscellaneous equipment" pg 245... ahHA! its under "other weapons and equipment" pg 223! Took me 5 minutes that time! But wy are these not together? Or found under the "black market" section? Or a list of all the equipment so I can just open up to that and have it all in one place? Dont get me wrong, I love palladium and its books. But sometimes things can feel a bit too unorganized.

Even though I am not too happy with the direction D&D has been going, I still like some of the things they do. Especially with how they organize their books.

-For Rifts I'd like to see a proper GM's guide that just has rules to play the game. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not need to have 100 pages of rules and 300 pages of equipment repeated from other books.
-Rifts needs a proper players guide with all or almost all the OCC's and RCC's. It needs to have every rule and table needed to create any PC even if that includes oddball details most people dont bother with in an average game.
-Equipment guides. Given the nature of the setting this would be at least 3 books. Weapons, melee and ranged. Power Armor and Vehicles (including robot vehicles). Body armor and misc equipment.
-Setting books. With nothing else but setting info. No classes. No equipment. No monsters. Just the description of the land and its people. Politics and history would certainly be a good idea. Statting out villians and heroes is fine, as well as giving stats for any unique equipment they have, including vehicles and weapons. BUT ONLY IF THEY ARE UNIQUE!!! If its just another item thats been modified, it doesnt need a whole page entry.
-Monster books. Actually, we already have these with the 3 conversions books and the D-bees of North America. We just need another one for the Dimension books.
-Spell book and psionics book.

Frankly I think having a handful of big rule books and a buttload of small setting books would be much better than the current system. I like the improvements made in the RUE, but it wasnt quite perfect. So I guess my pet peeve and one of the main reasons other folks dont even get into Rifts is: The books are a mess, and very intimidating to newbs.

[demos606]

You'd be willing to guarantee financing for a new Players Guide printing with every new world/dimension book that introduces a new race, occ, pcc or rcc then Shorty? How about with every Rifter that does so?

While a centralized location is convenient for races/classes it's by no means essential or a deal breaker if a game system doesn't have such a thing. As for rules being scattered everywhere, that's why we custom build character sheets so you can make notes of such things if necessary.

[demos606]

As for rules being scattered everywhere, that's why we custom build character sheets so you can make notes of such things if necessary.

LOL how about the publishers make proper detailed indexes to find the rules instead of forcing players to do the work for them? Customer service should be a high priority. I can guarantee PB has lost customers due to the scattered and conflicting rules everywhere. I know many players that refuse to touch PB games even though they love the Rifts world.

You'll be willing to guarantee financing for those Indexes to see update and reprint afetr every new book is published? Or perhaps you'd be willing to lose space in every book for ever growing Index inclusions?

Do you people even consider the logistics behind these suggestions before you spout off just how "simple" a fix they are?

[Overlord Rikonius]

Why not as a download?

Or a wiki-style website

[demos606]

Why not as a download?

More realistic but you still have to address the costs involved with maintaining the index. Do you charge for the index every time it's updated? Do you charge a little more for every book?

As for self contained indexes outlining pages for equipment in each book, isn't that what the table of contents does in most cases for Palladium publications? I will admit to being a bit fuzzy on just exactly what bingo was suggesting but if it's a free standing product, we're right back at the previous problems.

[Overlord Rikonius]

I would pay for a download.

A wiki website would not work if it was accessible by anyone to change. I'd want to have official answers and rules not more player opinions that other players scoff at as unofficial house rules.

Oh no I didn't mean editable by just anyone, but a rules wiki that only the writers (or certain trusted posters maybe) can edit would be handy. Look up damage, has all the types listed at the bottom.

The website thing... not so sure about that one. "Why buy books when anyone can access the wiki?" Not very profitable.

Obviously not everything from the books would be in it. But stuff like rules. Like the Perception stat that some games use. Or the cyber-jacking rules from that one Rifter. Obviously, if you want the equipment or NPCs or campaign info, you'd need the book. But a centralized rule depository would be useful.
How much damage do you take from a fall? Know where to look? In skills, under climbing. Someone new to the system might not know that, look unsuccessfully for fall damage, then make something up as a house rule, because the rule itself is not intuitively located.
No OCCs, no super powers, no weapons, no flavor text. Basically, the wiki I suggested would be akin to a "core rules book", and would just have mechanics. If a new mechanic gets added (like save vs. wedgie in Rifts World Book 163: Coalition High School) it'd go into the wiki.

As for an online index, don't most of the books have an index? Why not just use that to build the master index? And again, it doesn't have to be paid staffers doing it. They could have someone maintain the index and pay them in books (ie, "we have a new Rifts World Book, merge the index with our master site. We're sending you a copy of the book and you can keep it when you're done")

[Crucible]

I lik Hin, he takes no guff! I had quit gaming back in '93 because I just hated DnD and some of the others. I had played Palladium in the forms of TMNT and Robotech, but it was Triax and the NGR that I picked up in '94 thinking that it was Robotech...LOL.

KS is strict andhas to have it his way. That means that when a guy leaves the system for a while and comes bck, he still has the right stuff. Not so with many of the others.

Folks don't like Palladium because its too vast for their imaginations. Some folks even make silly excuses. Over at a different board they are hating on Palladium's new Zombie book because Kevin so-called mad some comments about their Zombie book...all of the talk brought me back.

All press is good press.

[magustg1]

My gaming group and I just recently got into playing Palladium via Robotech. I've been a fan of the Rifts setting for some time but never had the opportunity to play it, thus never bothered to try to wrap my head around the rules, though once a long time ago we played a game with a friend that was made up of heavily houseruled Megaverse rules. We've played a couple of different gaming systems, including Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the Five Rings, Fuzion, and D&D 2nd, 3rd (in all its incarnations), and 4th edition. As well as many other d20-based games. Primarily we used to play by the d20 rules.

I find it a lot of fun, we love the game and will be doing our second session of Robotech this Saturday (unless something comes up). We feel that combat is more intuitive than d20, and always found percentile-based skills easier and faster to play.

The only complaints we have are the book's poor organization, tendency not to explain certain rules at all, some MDC/SDC discrepancies, and some weapon damages (why do laser pistols do the same, if not more, damage than my jet fighter's gattling laser cannon?). We're also having a hard time wrapping our heads around things like vehicle movement in combat (thanks to d20 we're too used to specific numbers...) but thats more an issue with us than the system.

As for people's complaints about Palladium, I think its the same as the stuff my group is having problems with, except they see these flaws as completely unacceptable for some reason. Yeah, its got quirks, but I think Palladium's quirks give it character. Perfection is boring, flaws are fun.

Personally I think if you honestly believe there is only "One True Game" and everything thats not your game of choice is garbage that must be shunned, then you have no right to call yourself a gamer. Real gamers dabble in any game or system they can get their hands on!

[Spinachcat]

Perfection is boring, flaws are fun.

Nope.

Not in games, cars or women. And especially not on bank statements.

[Dog_O_War]

Even though this is a way-old topic to answer, I have some observational reasons that I believe does the job.

#1 - The books are "Unclean". That does not mean they are spawns of a Warhammer greater daemon, but rather, they are "filthy" in design. As was previously mentioned in this thread, the books are not orderly; they are a poor collection of the ideas that went into the game. I didn't want to use the word disorganized because that is a lie; all the books follow the same organizational method. Also, reprints of info is simply added waste to bulk-up a book.

Basically they read poorly and cause frustration due to their poor design.

#2 - The rules are conflictual. This is immediately apparent when engaging in combat (where the rules begin to matter). This is the most important place that the rules of any book need to be abundantly clear, and cannot be arbitrary. Rifts is one of the few systems that anyone (not just a rules lawyer) sees their is a "problem". Most people will simply say that the rules "suck"; if they've actually read them, then they can give you an answer. The answer is that of all the stats and skills you've recorded for your character (taking a new player a minimum of 4 hours to complete), none of it matters.
It does not matter that you have a natural 30 strength as a human; it will never come into play in-combat. Melee is an illusion of power for those that didn't know how to properly stack ranged-combat bonuses; that is, it will not matter if you can inflict 1d6x10 MD in melee with a sword, guns do it better from further with less chance of failure (ie; opponent gets major penalties to avoid and costs him an action usually, where as melee sees that auto-parry has a mall-cop with a sliver of MD rebar capable of blocking your attack).

What this amounts to is that there is a design-flaw that most people cannot peg down to any one thing; the whole of the system is broken, except that in Rifts alone it is most grossly apparent. It does "work", but then again, so does using your hand as a hammer when building a house; except that it's painful to use and is a poor substitute to the proper tools. As you can tell, this is the biggest problem I can see within the books, as I have the most to say about it.

#3 - Power-scaling. While most people don't see this as a problem (mainly because one of the design-blurbs out-right states that it does not, and should not have one), it is a problem.
Say you and your group make a set of characters for a game the GM is running; all of them choose combat-effective characters in similar scale to one-another, and you make a city-rat with nothing more than basic combat. Does the GM cater to the majority of the group? Or does he allocate a fractional period of time each session to you? Keep in-mind that this offers that A; you are likely bored for the action-roller-coaster your GM can set-up for the majority of the group as a whole (because they are all similar in scale), and B; they are likely bored for your portion of the game "to shine". While some of you are going to say that "this character wasn't made for combat, and is thus an odd-duck", I offer that the city-rat is changed out for an HU physically-trained hero-archetype. Same problem; except now this new character cannot hope to offer anything within his specialty in the mega-damage range (without having to borrow equipment and such).

What this shows is that it would've been nice for a power-scale to have been included, lest you end up in a group Glitterboys as a Palladium Palladin.

#4 - Archetype system is poor in conception. The new stuff with MOA's are actually really great; the Merc is a beautiful design. What I mean is that there are "hundreds of OCCs", but in reality, they are merely the same bloody class with a different name. Same grouping of skills, with a few different ones to "set them apart". What this comes down to is that there is only really maybe a couple-dozen different OCCs, but they've all got their own MOAs. Why not include a regional MOA instead of all the billions of class-waste that exists? Often I find that this is little more than funny hats and differently coloured shirts. What I mean is that there doesn't need to be a "special-ops, grunt, and officer" OCC; what there needs to be is a Soldier OCC with a Spec-Ops, Grunt, and Officer MOA, with additional MOA bonuses based on region, race, and faction. Just seems like a better design-strategy.

#5 - The false claims.
This is a group-mind problem that the game is unfortunately picked-on for. That is, people can say it's a "munchkin" game because they once heard a decade ago that another guy their friend knew was in a game where another guy he was playing with rolled a 30 IQ, 30 PP Glitterboy pilot, shaming his choice of feral dogboy with a 3 PB, making the game "dumb". Basically, any claim that this game is "bad" because someone had a bad experience due to player/GM shinanigans is not the systems' fault. These things happen in other games just as often, though it seems that Rifts sees the brunt of the abuse.


#6 - Denial. The creator and superfans are in extreme denial about "their" game. It is not fine. It is not "playable as-is". There is evidence to prove it. I mean really; by word of the games' inceptor himself, he does not use the rules, as "stuff has creeped up that they required house-rules for". This is not a pro for the game.

It needs an actual update; not the minor "Rifts 1.5" we saw with R:UE.


I see 6 major things that the game needs to work on in-order to reduce the "hate" levels of the game.

[Nemo235]

...Palladium's system would be better if they just consolidated all the rules in one book, simplified them, organized them better, had better indexes to find them, weeded out contradictions, etc. The system is just messy and unattractive right now. I love the Rifts setting and if I can wrangle players and GM's into playing it, I do. Just hard to wrangle them though.

Agreed. This is my main constructive criticism I've tried to put forth since I joined these forums.
Rifts and the other Palladium games fun, FUN games full of great ideas and backgrounds. I can even deal with the percieved character class imbalance. But the books themselves could be organized alot better.
I collect alot of RPGs and I would say at least 90% are easier to understand and better laid out than Palladium. So there may be a steeper learning curve for new players trying out a Palladium title.
I stuck with it mainly because I liked the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Robotech and, having played several other RPGs, I was familiar with the various rules concepts. If not for those facts, I may have given up on Palladium for other easier games.

[Spinachcat]

So there may be a steeper learning curve for new players trying out a Palladium title.

As a Megaversal Ambassador, I introduce PB games to noobs at conventions and they pick up the core rules of the game in a few minutes. D20 + bonus in combat, D100 for skills, you have X actions per melee and away we go.

As I have said before, PB's strength is its settings. However, for the company, the strength is the deep back catalogue that provides the backbone of their sales. Creating a new system, regardless of how good it may be, would eliminate the worth of their entire warehouse all on a gamble. There is zero proof that the online haters would suddenly spend hundreds on PB products if the system changed. Kevin would have to roll the dice on the fate of his company, his livelihood and that of his team. WotC can change editions easily because they have Hasbro's deep pockets to rely upon.

Think about that.

[Spinachcat]

which means you´ve 2 rule engines, but the real problems are after that, and sorry i consider your argument not convincing.

Sounds like you are not a gamer.

In actual play, the vast majority of real players don't care about rules. They just want to roll dice and have fun. All the worries that people who only read the books, but don't play, are not worries that have ever shown up at my game tables.

Nobody shows up a Rifts demo wondering how the system works. Nobody cares. The players want to know if they are going to have fun, get to play interesting personas and get challenged by fascinating enemies.

If somebody is system focussed, they don't come to Palladium demos.

Seriously they need to go through each book, pull out every rule, clean them up, weed out contradictions and lay them all down in one book.

There is no way to alter everything, yet keep the catalog compatible. Also, there is no way to ensure that the tweaking that would work for one group would work for all groups.

Every GM has to decide how things should work in his game. Or convert the setting to his favorite system.

Most players/GM's hate hunting through books looking for some vague rule, we want to play not waste time looking through books.

Why would a GM ever allow hunting for rules during gameplay? The GM just makes a ruling and the game continues.

[Shorty Lickens]

I think one Core rule book for the Gamin engine is a great idea honestly. No need to erase the core rule book to each setting either, just go through look at the rules polish them up and put it out so you have a book that has the basic rules skills and what not, with a few pointers or something on how to apply it to each setting. A simple book like that won't erase or even screw up anything it would simply make an easier reference guide you know like the GM's guide for Rifts or the book of Magic.

AND Why does everyone that has a criticism of Palladium get called a Hater? I have criticism of Palladium but I play their games in fact that's all I play, does my criticism make me a hater? As one posters Sig says "Criticism act's in the same way pain does for the body, it let's you know something is wrong."

Because this forum is mostly filled with die hard fanboys. Rifts is not the most popular RPG and it seems that only folks who really love it would visit and join the Rifts forums. I try bringing Rifts discussions to other forums and they dont know what the heck I'm talking about.

I love Rifts too but not so much I cant be objective about it. And complaining is the only possible way I see anything getting fixed. If we all just sat around saying "yup, everthing is fine" I dont know how much motivation they would have to fix stuff. All writers, even RPG writers, need constructive criticism or they stagnate and turn into typewriter drones. Nobody wants that. It means the customer gets less interesting products, buys less over time, and eventually the company goes out of business.

[Spinachcat]

What would not be compatible in the catalog if the existing rules were cleaned up?

There is no such thing as "cleaning up" - it's not like there are some mispellings, weird commas or odd words that is keeping the system from being "perfect"

If PB wants to have a modern RPG system, it needs a total overhaul. Whatever minor "clean up" happened with RUE certainly did nothing for people who did not like the core system because the actual changes were less than what occurred between AD&D 1e and 2e.

I don't see that overhaul happening. And if you pay attention to the RPG industry, you will see that overhauls have serious repercussions by splitting the fan base with very little proof that new gamers are going to be drawn to the new product and very little proof that the overhaul will please the former customers who left.

Life is short so everyone should play what they enjoy. If you can make the PB system work for you, go have fun. If you love the setting and hate the system, then go convert. If you refuse to houserule or convert, then go play something else entirely.

[Killer Cyborg]

What would not be compatible in the catalog if the existing rules were cleaned up?

There is no such thing as "cleaning up" - it's not like there are some mispellings, weird commas or odd words that is keeping the system from being "perfect"

No, it's a hodge-podge of various rules that have been introduced and/or changed over the past decade or two, combined with a lack of specificity in many of the existing rules.
Palladium has already changed their rules a heck of a lot over the years without losing half their fan base or making their new books drastically incompatible with their old ones, and there's no reason why changing for the better and clearer would alienate people any more than any of their other changes have, or make things any less compatible.

[St. Evil]

The main complaints I have gotten are it is hard to find rules in the book, and it takes forever to make a character. In which I reply, "Have you read the DM's Guide to DND?", not that I want to trash 1st ed DND but that is what gets me, is some would rather have cookie cutter characters than a fleshed out one.

[Nemo235]

I know you're not trying to say that because you roll different dice for different actions that this consititutes two different rule 'engines'...

Excuse the late answer, but that is exactly what i say.

I see what you are saying. But usually the rules as a whole are called the engine, much like the program of a video game is called the engine.
I think what you are talking about are the rule mechanics, which are seperate rules or subsets of rules.

It would be safe to say that most of the "first generation" rpg's were heavily influenced by D&D and AD&D. These games usually have several rule mechanics to cover different situations.
Example: Reaction rolls, initiative, attacks, saving throws, damage, attribute rolls, skill rolls, morale/fear rolls, turning undead rolls, etc.
Palladium Fantasy, and later Rifts and the Palladium rules engine, was definately designed like this.

Later games, such as the D6 system, Marvel Superheroes, Chaosium's BRP (Call of Cthulhu), White Wolf, D20 and others trimmed down the number of rule mechanics to fewer types of rolls.

[Nemo235]

I see what you are saying. But usually the rules as a whole are called the engine, much like the program of a video game is called the engine.
I think what you are talking about are the rule mechanics, which are seperate rules or subsets of rules.

which to my knowledge are called rule engines.

Check out these definitions and I think you'll see what I mean.
Game engine:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
Game mechanic:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_mechanics#See_also

Example: Reaction rolls, initiative, attacks, saving throws, damage, attribute rolls, skill rolls, morale/fear rolls, turning undead rolls, etc.

No different dice or use of dice to resolve the e.g. the difference between the combat rolls vs skill rolls in Palladium system.

Yes, that was what I was trying to say.
Many types of die rolls and modifiers vs. fewer types of die rolls and basically one difficulty/modifier scale.

[Cyrano de Maniac]

I just wanted to say that this is perhaps the most refreshing and (mostly ) mature discussion I've ever seen on the Palladium Forums. It actually cheered me up to read the back-and-forth between so many people who have clear thoughts and opinions on the matters at hand.

I really don't have a whole lot to add that hasn't been written already, but I'd like to re-emphasize some of the points that I particularly agree with, and expand a bit on one or two of them.

But first a rundown on my RPG experiences, since I think that's useful background information, particularly to know that I'm not wed to any one system. I bought GURPS (1st ed I think) as a teenager before I even knew what a role-playing game was, but I never really played it. In college my first real roleplaying was with Champions, which I love to this day for the point-buy system, but for which combat was a grueling all-night affair. Next up was Gamma World, which I enjoyed the heck out of because of a good GM, reasonably straightforward mechanics, and a huge amount of fun with my characters. Then came Rifts, which to this day has most inspired my dreams of role playing and fan fiction and just a dang fun universe. Before being done with college I had also played Paranoia for one session (fun!), a very laborious Shadowrun that was drudgery embodied, and about a year of AD&D (2nd ed? 3rd? I don't really remember) that was fun, but winding down as the players were finishing school and moving out of town.

After school there was a bit of a break, and then I returned with Star Wars d20 for several years, a hugely fun heavily house-ruled d20 Modern set in the Matrix environment, Serenity for a few months, and a good stint with the new Shadowrun that was incredible at keeping my interest in the characters, but not so much in the plot (not the game's fault BTW).

And over the course of all that time I've also collected a number of systems that I've never had a chance to play but read thoroughly, including Buffy/Angel, Human Occupied Landfill, One Can Have Her, HERO, FUDGE, Cortex, and every single Palladium line (just received Valley of the Pharaohs today! Yay!).

That said, I'm very much in agreement that the primary weakness is the organization of the material in Palladium's books. When I first played Rifts, back around '93 or so, our small group of players and the GM often found ourselves wasting time hunting for information on rules, equipment, psionics, etc. One must keep in mind that this was at the point in time when there were maybe at most 10 total books in the Rifts line, only about 5 of which we were playing with. This problem has only been expanded and compounded by the tremendous amount of material released since then.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that there's such a wealth of material available, but the near-complete lack of real indexing really slows down finding any information you're looking for. The only solution I can think of to deal with this right away today would be to have each player photocopy the information for every single weapon/spell/psionic/skill description that is part of their character sheet, and keep it all in some sort of character bundle. Even then, that doesn't really address many lookups of the various rules, it just catches the most commonly encountered lookups. The lack of any comprehensive and useful indexes slows down the game, which makes it less fun.

And I think we can all agree than anything that gets in the way of having more fun is bad, right? To some the solution is to just make up a rule on the spot, and continue on. Perhaps that works for some, but I hope we can agree that for other players (I'd even say most, but I don't have empirical evidence) the overall experience is more enjoyable when there is a consistency to the rules/mechanics that can only come with being able to reference the rules. No, rules cannot account for every possible screwball situation that comes up in the game, however I would contend that making rulings on the fly to cover those sorts of situations should be the unusual exception, not a workaround for more common situations just because it's difficult to find the rule in the books.

I also don't really enjoy the "each RCC/OCC/spell/etc has it's own set of rules quirks" design of the game, which as someone so adeptly pointed out is a characteristic a lot of early-generation role-playing games shared with eachother. This isn't a deal-breaker and it's OK to live with it, but my exposure to so many other later-generation systems of all sorts of different designs has caused me to appreciate a more unified design. These later-generation systems seem quite capable of standing up to the rigors of the unusual things PCs do, without requiring much in the way of house-ruling/handholding/band-aiding by the GM. And despite what some may say, I don't think any group I've ever played with has found them to be constricting in the least But as clunky as the collection-of-one-off-situations design of the Palladium systems is, it's not horrific to live with -- it just requires more GM intervention to use than later-generation games. And personally I'd rather have my GM spend time inventing the story than inventing rules.

I do understand why Palladium, in it's current market position, size, and such can't go back and totally revise their systems -- in the end it just doesn't make financial sense for the company. However, given that we need to live with what we have, it sure would be nice to find a way to address some of these shortcomings so that there was less labor involved with playing Palladium games.

I would be very curious to hear what people think could be done to make the games more easily playable, without going back and updating the entire system.

My personal answer to that: This is where I think it would be wise to explore the unique opportunities that the advances in technology over the past 20 years have brought, and see how they could be brought to bear on the situation. The low-hanging fruit might be an annually updated PDF, available for some reasonable fee each year, that puts together true comprehensive indexes of the material for each game line. This wouldn't cannibalize sales of any existing product, would greatly help GMs and players, and could provide a small revenue stream. Yes, there may be some piracy of the PDF -- though as Palladium comes out with new titles the pirated PDFs would quickly go out of date.

I'll even go so far as to say that as the existence of things like Nexus Nine demonstrate, there may be enough motivation in the fan base to construct and maintain such a beastly project almost entirely on volunteer time. Palladium's big contribution could be simply granting official permission to create and distribute the fan-generated index. Wow, this has my programmer creative juices flowing, on how it could be accomplished in a manner similar to open-source software projects, and how the index data could be used to generate both dynamic online content and static offline content like PDFs.

So to summarize my thoughts:

• The single biggest weakness that needs to be addressed is the organization and real-time (i.e. gametime) usefulness of the various books.
• The abundance of RCCs, OCCs, spells, and the like make for an rich universe, but the one-off nature of each of them along with the special rules that apply to so many of them also makes the game less enjoyable. However this can be lived with, suboptimal as it may be.
• The prospects for overhauling the system are very bad for several reasons, not the least of which is the financial risk to the company, and as such we should focus on practical solutions for what we have today, not what we could have had if we could do it all over again.
• Taking advantage of today's technology to help address the identified shortcomings would definitely benefit players directly, and hopefully (likely?) Palladium as well.

At least that's how I see things from behind this 10 MDC wall of Palladium books shielding me from the flamethrowers.

Brent

[Spinachcat]

I would be very curious to hear what people think could be done to make the games more easily playable, without going back and updating the entire system.

I suggest that Kev & Co. publicly supporting the concept of players converting the settings to their favorite system. Tell people to buy the books and have fun doing whatever they like.

System fads come and go, but everyone still looks for great settings. PB's system is Old School, a hybrid of AD&D and RuneQuest. Some players may tolerate the system in order to play in the settings, but that pool of open minded players is shrinking, not expanding. Unfortunately for PB, the public relations well has been deeply poisoned. Anyone entering the hobby is much more likely to hear something negative than positive.

Which is a real shame.

The future of RPGs is not about more rules. As players have less time to devote to the hobby, the more they want a faster, simpler gameplay experience. Whoever delivers that will sell more books to the next generation.

Nobody who left Rifts is going to come back just because an Online Index shows up. But it would be a very nice feature for current players.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

Palladium uses a base formula for the set up and changes the environment, if you know how to play rifts, robotech, macross II , or heroes unlimited , then you can play any of the other settings. honestly look at how many revisions each of the other system has had. But i think it comes mostly because KevSim has even stated if you dont like a rule change it , throw it out , dont use it . something some dont like
House rules rules!!!

[Cinos]

Only bad thing I ever hear about Palladium is their rate of book releases and ability to hold to a release date, but that's more from me and my collection of everything already (Hint hint, nudge, nudge). In more serious tones, I've yet to see someone who hated Palladium (even if it's not their main game in table tops), and all love the writing, perhaps I just got lucky or just phase out the rest with "Imnotlistening" mantra chants with my ears plugged . . .

[Augur]

I've never met a gamer who "hated" the Palladium system in person.

That being said, half of my gaming group dislikes the system due to the archaic rules system, lack of consistency in the rules across core books, etc. It pretty much comes down to a lack of organization and rules coherency. I can't say as I disagree with them on these points, but due to these problems the dislike is only exacerbated by management failures due to KevSim being a poor businessman and manager of people & resources.

Mind you, I like the guy. I've met him more times than I can readily count and gamed with him on a couple occasions. He's a great GM and a generally nice guy all around. I'm also fairly well acquainted with a good deal of former staffers and freelance writers who have worked for him past and present so I'm pretty certain that my assessment of the MAN is accurate.

Cyrano de Maniac had a TON of great things to say, I generally agree with him on every point.

He has presented some great ideas which should be seriously considered by management.

Also, a low-cost PDF-only release of a truly concrete rules system revision/overhaul would be certain to be a smashing success and go a long way toward laying the framework for the kind of technology-based solutions that Cyrano de Maniac mentioned.

[Lord Z]

Hubris

[Rallan]

Palladium uses a base formula for the set up and changes the environment, if you know how to play rifts, robotech, macross II , or heroes unlimited , then you can play any of the other settings. honestly look at how many revisions each of the other system has had. But i think it comes mostly because KevSim has even stated if you dont like a rule change it , throw it out , dont use it . something some dont like
House rules rules!!!

That's because "if you don't like it change it, because I do!" is the crappest defence that anyone (a game's designer or one of it's fans) can use. It's basically an admission that the game isn't great at what it does and can't be picked up and used as-is.

Oh and those revisions don't count for much. There's never been a proper overhaul and revision of the Palladium system, just a bunch of incremental changes as new additions and houserules are tacked onto the existing structure. There was a shakeup to magic and psionics fairly early on in the piece, then SDC was applied to people as well as objects, then MDC was invented as a damage scaling system for Robotech, and after that they've pretty much just coasted along with minor tweaks. The only major change ever made was the point-buy system for making mutant animal characters, and that was just a plugin mechanic for TMNT (and its totally-unrelated-for-legal-purposes spinoff setting After The Bomb) which never saw the light of day elsewhere.

And what's worse is that the basic rules set isn't well suited for much except AD&D style dungeon crawls, but it keeps getting applied to every genre ever and called a universal (or "megaversal", which is one of the silliest words ever) system. So you've got martial arts games where cinematic action play takes a back seat to "hit him with your best attack until he falls over". A supers game where knocking someone out is almost impossible because it's "unrealistic" (who cares about genre conventions?) and gunplay is the most effective way of taking baddies about. Sci-fi games where a scaling mechanic intended to be used to show the difference between twenty-foot mecha and squishy humans is being applied to everything from dinosaurs (but not elephants) to man-sized monsters to hand-sized fairies, and a handful of guys with cheap laser pistols can sink a 20th century battleship. And an alignment system that works best for spandex supers being applied to absolutely every setting imaginable.

[Nomadic]

Cost to get all the neat stuff for your D&D 4.0 Character? 100$
Cost to get all the neat stuff for you Palladium Character? 129385701349587123459081273490128571908571239057812359078128912734 D6 x $24.95

[Nomadic]

I carry my dice bag in my pocket ( the same set I purchased with my first palladium book TMNT), I know the core Palladium rules. This allows me to play any where, any time, in any setting. It's the strongest set of simple rules I have ever encountered. I find that slot of the new rules come from refinement, or over refinement. I like the basics.

Most Palladium players I know require you to SHOW them the rule, otherwise your a GOD gm. Likewise most palladium players I know like to SHOW the GM the rule to prove he isn't GOD.

That being said.... Rules change to much. I've been playing Since the 90's and I just learned that you need a 8 on the dice to hit with ranged attacks.

[KillWatch]

1) I played HU for years before buy another palladium book
2) I think it more reasonable to assume that they stopped making stuff for 1st ed is that a) everyone who was going to buy it had, and b) it was reworked.
3) Rules: I love palladium for its rules. They may come out with a new one in a new book sure, but you don't need it. If you haven't fixed what you think is wrong with it, as the game suggests which then means it is a rule which means that whatever rule you have made to fix what you don't like is "canon", then its on you.
Course that makes it sound like you can play any system and if it sucks then its your fault. I haven't picked up 4th edition and never will. I am done with D&D. if books fall off a truck, if a zip makes its way to me or some other unlikely event then sure I will look at it, but I don't know what the rules say about changing the game to your liking. But palladium openly says "don't like it? change it" and it gives you a good solid core to work with. It is both well structured and open enough for interpretation and modification.

[Rallan]

Palladium uses a base formula for the set up and changes the environment, if you know how to play rifts, robotech, macross II , or heroes unlimited , then you can play any of the other settings. honestly look at how many revisions each of the other system has had. But i think it comes mostly because KevSim has even stated if you dont like a rule change it , throw it out , dont use it . something some dont like
House rules rules!!!

That's because "if you don't like it change it, because I do!" is the crappest defence that anyone (a game's designer or one of it's fans) can use. It's basically an admission that the game isn't great at what it does and can't be picked up and used as-is.

Oh and those revisions don't count for much. There's never been a proper overhaul and revision of the Palladium system, just a bunch of incremental changes as new additions and houserules are tacked onto the existing structure. There was a shakeup to magic and psionics fairly early on in the piece, then SDC was applied to people as well as objects, then MDC was invented as a damage scaling system for Robotech, and after that they've pretty much just coasted along with minor tweaks. The only major change ever made was the point-buy system for making mutant animal characters, and that was just a plugin mechanic for TMNT (and its totally-unrelated-for-legal-purposes spinoff setting After The Bomb) which never saw the light of day elsewhere.

And what's worse is that the basic rules set isn't well suited for much except AD&D style dungeon crawls, but it keeps getting applied to every genre ever and called a universal (or "megaversal", which is one of the silliest words ever) system. So you've got martial arts games where cinematic action play takes a back seat to "hit him with your best attack until he falls over". A supers game where knocking someone out is almost impossible because it's "unrealistic" (who cares about genre conventions?) and gunplay is the most effective way of taking baddies about. Sci-fi games where a scaling mechanic intended to be used to show the difference between twenty-foot mecha and squishy humans is being applied to everything from dinosaurs (but not elephants) to man-sized monsters to hand-sized fairies, and a handful of guys with cheap laser pistols can sink a 20th century battleship. And an alignment system that works best for spandex supers being applied to absolutely every setting imaginable.

What i love about pally is the fact even the people i know who totaly hate the games and systems KS and crew produce they will still read the books and enjoy the content.
Its a setting for folks who are free thinkers and like to treat the rules like a salad bar take what we want and leave the rest. Don't get me wrong i love other gaming systems my self i'm a big whitewolf fan and i love A D&D been playing since i was 12 but that being said pally will always have my heart so for those of You who are alll remember we all have our right to a opinion even if it drives everyone elses crazy.

Actually a lot of people won't enjoy the content, because the quality of the writing can be a bit hit and miss now and then, and the quality of ideas is often even worse. One of the main reasons I stopped buying more Rifts books is because I was getting heartily sick of every new corner of the planet consisting of yet another high-tech bastion of the human race duking it out in yet another war for survival against yet another demonic horde. Not to mention that the world information would always be vague big-picture stuff, and it would be kept to a minimum so the bulk of the book could be more OCCs that are virtually identical to the ones in the last book, more guns that do 1D6 more damage than the ones in the last book, yet another mage or psychic class with fifteen pages of spells/powers that no other class in the entire game can use, more robots that can take 50MDC more damage than the ones in the last book, and more write-ups of disposable monsters and demons to shoot at.

The core premise of most Palladium games is enough to make anyone's inner twelve year old boy absolutely ecstatic. But the execution can be a tad clunky, and Siembieda seems allergic to making anything more nuanced, complex, or moody than saturday morning action cartoon fare.

[Rallan]

Cost to get all the neat stuff for your D&D 4.0 Character? 100$
Cost to get all the neat stuff for you Palladium Character? 129385701349587123459081273490128571908571239057812359078128912734 D6 x $24.95

Cost to download FATAL before the folks who made it disappeared? Zero dollars

Dunno how to break it to you dude, but comparing prices tells people nothing about whether Palladium makes good RPGs or not.

[KillWatch]

100 dollars? you mean that includes PHB1 and 2, DMG 1 and 2, every monster manual? the draconomicon? a world setting? really wow good deal

[Nomadic]

100 dollars? you mean that includes PHB1 and 2, DMG 1 and 2, every monster manual? the draconomicon? a world setting? really wow good deal

Players need Every monster manual? A world setting? the Draconomicon?

Only knowing if from a player stand point as I've never GM'ed D&D I can tell you it cost me about $100 to get everything I needed for any PC class I wanted to play. I got PH1,PH2,And the source books. Sowrd and Fist, Martial Power, ETC.

Note I just picked up PHB3 (preorder) for $29 hardback and 224ish pages. HighGloss and Full Color.

[KillWatch]

well buying in bulk is suppose to save you money.

[Rallan]

I don't see where skills are "so slow" - "you got it?"

How do you measure quality and success?

Or how do you handle two characters opposing each others' actions by using their skills? Or how do you decide when a skill roll is necessary in the first place? Shang, I dunno what you're going on about with people calling Palladium's skill system slow, but sword-dancer's right when he brings up examples to show that it's various other things, like

- useless
- undefined
- a complete waste of time
- unintegrated with the rest of the rule system
- broken (in the sense that it doesn't work at all, not in the sense that it's overpowered)
- so utterly irrelevant, unworkable, and incompatible that the skills which affect combat had to use completely different game mechanics to the entire rest of the skill system
- and last but not least an exercise in twinkery, because virtually the only skills that have an easily defined in-game effect are the ones with combat or stat bonuses

[KillWatch]

Skill v Skill is obvious:Initiator's success=Defenders penalty
When to roll? When they are trying to use a skill
If you and sword dancer feel that way, why are you here?
Useless: I don't think so at all. It has given me a lot of stuff to work with. My favorite system. Way over D20, over WOD and a bit over CP2020. Other than that I haven't come across a system that i thought was worth much of anything. My hook was that bodybuilding actually affected your character's stats, directly. Not in a back door, "well if you are trying this" manner.
Undefined: strange how that is my complaint about a lot of there games. I agree they could come out with a conversion book with just skills. But I play mostly with the SDC settings and when I do use MDC, I haven't noticed any skill changes. Any irregularities I simply do what I think is right and not worry about it too much. The skills are awesome. I know of no other game system with so many skills. D20/Pathfinder annoys me in that they have things that SHOULD be skills but aren't. I like that if I need a skill, I can just make one up. I like the wide range of clear cut hand to hand abilities. Maybe if you gave me some examples of undefined I understand or at least tell you what I would do.
Complete waste of time:can't argue an opinion, otherwise see any of my other remarks
Non-Integrated rules system: Not sure where you are going there. Again, i haven't had any issues with this
Broken: ok it seems like you are saying the same thing again and again so your numerous points are really just one so far
utterly-blah blah blah:I work with it just fine: So either it is true what you are saying and everyone else who plays and enjoys it is simply a small collection of uniquely qualified number theory specialists, or it's you. See, you can claim that it sucks, you can claim a lot of undefined opinions, but when you say unworkable, that is certainly testable. So what if they use a different mechanic for combat? The only system that I know of that does that is D20, and I don't like it. It doesn't affect the stats, the range of skills sucks, and I like being able to parry and dodge.
Twinkery?:combat skills should be easily defined. But I am not so sure that other skills are that much harder to figure out. Botany? Chemistry? Advanced Math? I am not seeing the ambiguity. Skills like intelligence, streetwise, detect ambush, detect concealment, concealment, demolitions, prowling, tracking, etc are all skills that are used in my game regularly. I have made more skills to fill in perceived gaps. There are non-combat skills, non stat building skills that if you don't take, you run a good risk of dying. So I think it is more on how you run the game and what emphasis you put on the skills. If you don't have it, you can't do it.

What I don;t like is that these physical skills don't improve with the character. One flat bonus and that is that. I don't care for the monsters and animals.

I fixed that, but, for my money, Palladium isn't the perfect system, but it is the only one that makes me want to use it

[KillWatch]

Where is it written?
And where is this stated in the books? If it isn't listed, it's a house-rule
-Wow you guys ARE sharp because I totally thought that was going to get by you
no, really It IS a house Rule but it did seem OBVIOUS to me. Whoever makes it by a larger margin wins

So detect ambush is a totally-worthless skill unless you say you're using it?
-Normally, yes Skills are ACTIVE not Passive. They aren't healing factor

What about detect concealment and ID undercover agent?
-Yes if you don't use detect concealment, crap will get by you. I use the passive inset of Perception to let them know something might be hinky, but if they don't use the skill then it goes unnoticed

And Fasting doesn't work like that either.
-How does fasting NOT work like that? I chose not to eat. ok you are not eating. Or do you simply find yourself fasting all of a sudden

eally? Nice try, so the rider should roll for every ride?
-Yes, easy way to get XP, good chance for RPing if things go wrong or even right

don´t you like non Fanboys?
-Not sure what that is in reference to since I, myself, am a fanboy of several lines

I like palladium, but it definitely has problems. Can't understand why some people have a problem admitting that.
-I have admitted it and have taken steps to correct the perceived errors, but again, best system for my liking

That's actually one of the problems my players and I have. Shouldn't Math skills increase IQ, if boxing can help combat? Shouldn't Undercover Ops add to one's ME?
-I could see that and if you think so do it. But I feel IQ is pretty locked in apart from genetic engineering. Knowing math doesn't make you smarter it just uses up some more of your ram. And there is a difference between storage and actual use. There are still stupid people who do math better than I do. Just because you know soemthing doesn't necessarily mean you understand it

That can be done with any system.
-true, it can, but many systems frown upon it and don't give you the inkling to do so. For the most part they are "here is the skill list and you work with it", espescailly games like DND where the skills are all on the page and if you need something different, good luck

Never used a system which worked with quality degrees?success margins...
-Don't care for WODs skill resolution and the only problem I have with CP2020 is the non stat enhancing skills. Palladium has spoiled me on that. As for the palladium game I run I include penalties up the wazoo for environmental, physical, mental etc problems. Again, it would be nice if Palladium came up with a list of penalty guidelines, but I guess they figure we will do that on our own.

Gurps, Rolemaster, Hero, Midgard but is the number of skills a sign of quality, or what is there and what is not?
What is missing? Leadership, interrogation...
-I thought interrogation was a skill? N&SS? anyhow how do you playoff leadership? I can see it giving points to MA, but really, what the PC yells at the others what he wants done and makes his Leadership skill? Fine I guess for NPCs and non roleplaying, but how do you implement a skill based version of mind control?
And no not the number but the quality. Palladium I think has both. Unlike their powers, where one power either steps on another's toes or makes one completely useless. I blame both the players and palladium for that, it is a complete lack of imagination

you mean as well as 90% of the systems out there i guess?
-c o n t e x t

QED,
-BS. I made skills like meditation, divination, HTH Streetfighting and a slew of others, that have been inspired by the game itself or by other players. No game is going to be able to cover everything, but as long as the skills don't start fumbling over each other like the powers I think it's fine to create more skills. I've adopted from the Rifter the idea of Basic Expert and Master level skills. Basic medical=first aid, expert=Paramedic/nursing, Master=MD. I've instituted a Point Buy system for skills which has been working very well. I never liked the idea of never using a skill but getting better just cuz. But this makes the game more complicated, not less. If you are x level then your skills should be X%

The fact that there are skills that work on completely different mechanics than others explains the "undefined" part.
-how much more defined do you want it? Do I want to hit the computer or operate it? It is certainly defined and you saying that they are completely different mechanics defeats the former statement. If it is undefined then you shouldn't be able to point your fingers to it. Seems obvious so you must mean something else

If it was an integrated system there wouldn't be a need for Robot&PA Pilot AND Robot&PA Combat.
- I will concede a bit there, but this is where the tiered system kicks in. Sure you can drive a car, but do you know how to do a pit maneuver? I would think the combat is a higher level of pilot. You can move the robot this way and that, you know the basic readings and operational modes but reading a combat computer, understanding all the blinking lights and what those 14 fast moving objects on your radar are and what to do about it is another level I would think.

Several skills overlap. Examples:Salvage and Recycling and Recycle, Trap/Track Animals and Tracking(people), Vehicle Armorer and Field Armorer, Crime Scene Investigation and Forensics, etc. Another broken-aspect is the Cowboy Skill Category(where we find WP Rope, not under the WPs) and the Horsemanship Skill Category(of which we only need 3 skills:Exotic, General, and Skilled-Equestrian).
-I will take your word for it as I will not bother to look it up. yes I always thought that the overlap with tracking was silly and just labeled it Tracking. However I guess you could specialize in one or the other, meh
yes palladium needs better editing; a skills guy, a classes guy, a powers guy a spells guy etc. But again, no other system makes it so easy for me, and is so readily available to build upon.

No, it isn't an either/or sort of deal. It's called house-rules. You've as much as admitted to house-ruling it just to have it work.
-the vitriol you spewed was not of a sort that made me think you had anything but disdain for it, which prompted the question/comment
and your assumption is dead wrong. i didn't add house rules to make it "work". It worked just fine without me messing with it. I wanted it to do more and some stuff different that made more sense to me. I've added attributes, I've added/changed/deleted skills, the core is still there and what I liked about it is still there. Again there are things that I disagree with that makes me wonder huh???, but still no other system has inspired me so. I like the ambiance of VTM and WW and CP, but I don'care for the mechanics as much. I realy hate DCH and DCU and MSH and D20 and tristat and COC, but I pick them up for flavor and some things I do like. I've adopted the segmented combat round from the game I fancy I would rather pull my eyes out through my nose than play. I ahve explored so many systems, but I keep coming back to palladium, bringing things I did like from other games to my own. if one system had what I was looking for, or more of what I was looking for, then I would drop palladium like dirty underwear. But I liek palladium and it gives me a solid base to work with, enhance, and modify

I can think of several systems. D6 for example.
-Agreed, and I don't like it. The skills are both too broad and too specific. Take Nightwing from DCU:
Skills:
Reflexes: 5d
Martial Arts 9d dodge 14d Driving 7d (nightbird+1d) riding 5d sneak 10d
Coordination (different from reflexes, ugh)5d
lock picking 8d thievery 8d (wait lock picking isn't theivery? too broad and too specific) thrown weapons 10d
Physique 4d
leap 10d, lifting 5d (which is just silly all by itself)
Knowledge 3d
Arcane Lore 4d, criminology 12d medicine 1d
Perception 4d
artist 4d, conceal 7d, hide 10d, repair 5d (ok I could see the argument but why not knowledge?), security 9d, search 8d, shadowing 10d, streetwise 9d (again why not knowledge?), surveillance 8d, tracking 7d
presence 4d
Interrogation 8d, Persuasion 7d, willpower 9d

I like Palladium's stat block much better.


Again, you admit to having to house-rule the system just to make it work
-again no I didn't.
As for Marduk's "weakness" a) being drawn up i n the first place as the actual god (BS) b) Lore Babylonian gods, you could do Mythology-Babylonian Gods
Breed Dogs seems like a specialized version of animal husbandry, but animal husbandry allows you for the care and health of animals as well not simply breeding them. In effect you are a veterinary nurse

Combat vs skill system
-? again what? so you want to parry their club with your knowledge of faerie lore? I think you are inventing problems. The only real point you might have here is things like acrobatics and gymnastics where I want to dodge away. In that instance the skill has already adjusted your PP so no further bonus, but I would have you make two rolls d20 for the dodge and % for the back flip


Palladium has its problems which are easily fixed. I like that stat blocks. I like the way powers, psionics, chi all work. I like how the skills work Whatever problems you have with it can be easily managed. It's that malleable. Problem A) YOu have too many books which have apparently confused you to no end. B) Palladium doesn't have the added personell which I listed earlier. I am not sure if kevin doesn't trust enough or trusts too much. If you look at the OGL for d20, there is a LOT of utter crap out there. Palladium doesn't have that out that "it wasn't us" and if what I hear is true that kevin does all or most of the editing and writing, apparently crap gets by him, over load. If you just played with one book/setting you would probably be ok. I guess I have been playing so long and fixing things as I go along that your problems don't even register with me.The mechanics I like. Some of the finer points agreed need work, trimming, uprooting, clarification. But in general again, I think it is the best game out there

[Rallan]

If you and sword dancer feel that way, why are you here?

Because I've still got a nostalgic soft spot for Palladium's products, even though as I got older I started to spot the many, many problems they have. If you don't like us here, feel free to go to the forum for board improvements and ask the mods if they can put in a new rule saying that only people who like the game as much as you should be allowed to post

[Syndicate]

...hheeeyyyy....

There aren't any cookies in here...>_<

I heard yelling and naturally thought there was a fight over food. Silly me, it's people "discussing" the palladium system...again. Well, if there's any place that should happen...it's here

I'll go get some more newspaper and mops looks like it's going to be a messy night.

[KillWatch]

I think the messy stuff is over

[Nomadic]

It still doesn't explain why I own 4D&D Books and over 100 Rifts Books. $100 Bucks vs $2500 in retail cost. Which I didn't pay. All 2nd hand.

[Nomadic]

To Further make my Point.

I would like to play a Psi-Stalker. Core Book
Who can fly a DeadHead Transport. Core Book, but no Skill for it. Must have War Campain.
Who wants some Tatoo's. Atlantis and Book of Magic.
But the Rules for him getting tatoo's are in Splynn Dimensional Market.

So Psi-Stalker that can fly a ship with tatoo's requires 5 books max and 4 books min.

Can anyone think of another system like this?

[Rallan]

To Further make my Point.

I would like to play a Psi-Stalker. Core Book
Who can fly a DeadHead Transport. Core Book, but no Skill for it. Must have War Campain.
Who wants some Tatoo's. Atlantis and Book of Magic.
But the Rules for him getting tatoo's are in Splynn Dimensional Market.

So Psi-Stalker that can fly a ship with tatoo's requires 5 books max and 4 books min.

Can anyone think of another system like this?

Almost any system that lasted more than two or three books

Your complaint basically boils down to two things.

1) Palladium screwed up a few times and accidentally left things out (eg a piloting skill for vehicles like the Death's Head transport, or rules for how to get tattoos).

2) Palladium are terrible because there's a whole bunch of classes and powers that aren't in the main book.

And I hate to break it to you, but that's par for the course with every RPG ever made. Companies screw up. Writers forget that such and such is an exception to the rules and needs a rule of its own, or they forget to clarify something about powers A, B, and C, or the editors accidentally leave something out because they thought it was unimportant. Go to the website of pretty much any RPG with a company and fanbase that are still active, and you'll find a big Errata Q & A section.

And on the "oh my god there's no magic tattoos until Atlantis" front, suck it up already. New books introduce new powers. If RPG companies tried to fit everything into their core books, the hobby would be full of 1200-page books that cost a hundred and fifty bucks each or something. And Palladium's actually one of the less egregious offenders on this one, because at least when it writes a core book for a setting it doesn't deliberately omit things that will be a major part of the main setting to try and get people to buy the sourcebooks.

There's an awful lot of things that Palladium could really improve and which other games do better, but it's not doing too badly on this front.

[Nomadic]

To Further make my Point.

I would like to play a Psi-Stalker. Core Book
Who can fly a DeadHead Transport. Core Book, but no Skill for it. Must have War Campain.
Who wants some Tatoo's. Atlantis and Book of Magic.
But the Rules for him getting tatoo's are in Splynn Dimensional Market.

So Psi-Stalker that can fly a ship with tatoo's requires 5 books max and 4 books min.

Can anyone think of another system like this?

Almost any system that lasted more than two or three books

Your complaint basically boils down to two things.

1) Palladium screwed up a few times and accidentally left things out (eg a piloting skill for vehicles like the Death's Head transport, or rules for how to get tattoos).

2) Palladium are terrible because there's a whole bunch of classes and powers that aren't in the main book.

And I hate to break it to you, but that's par for the course with every RPG ever made. Companies screw up. Writers forget that such and such is an exception to the rules and needs a rule of its own, or they forget to clarify something about powers A, B, and C, or the editors accidentally leave something out because they thought it was unimportant. Go to the website of pretty much any RPG with a company and fanbase that are still active, and you'll find a big Errata Q & A section.

And on the "oh my god there's no magic tattoos until Atlantis" front, suck it up already. New books introduce new powers. If RPG companies tried to fit everything into their core books, the hobby would be full of 1200-page books that cost a hundred and fifty bucks each or something. And Palladium's actually one of the less egregious offenders on this one, because at least when it writes a core book for a setting it doesn't deliberately omit things that will be a major part of the main setting to try and get people to buy the sourcebooks.

There's an awful lot of things that Palladium could really improve and which other games do better, but it's not doing too badly on this front.

I'll spell it out since you seemed to miss the point. It's not one time.. it's all the time.
Ok So there is a new book. Awesome. Wait.. were are the rules for this tatoo stuff? Oh.. they aren't in the book with the tatoo's they are in this other book. Wait were are the rules for other people than humans getting these tatoo's.. they are in a book that doesn't even deal with Rifts? Ugh more books.

It's one thing to forget.. but the CoreRules has been out for like 30 years and they "were" still printing it with the same errors... you goto another companies website and you'll see all the post print AKA 2nd run, 3rd run books have the errata's in them.

The example I used above was just one that I happened across in the past few days. There are thousands of issues like this that keep poping up. huh??? happened to Heavy Weapons? it's still not in the errata.

I've ran Rifts for years. I love it. but I've refused to by new books because they've had years to stop doing a half-butted job and haven't done it. And don't even get me started on the power curve on the RUE.

Kevin. Listen to your fans. CLEAN HOUSE! Stop cutting and pasting and re-hashing old content. The RUE was great, now take what you've learned from the 33 pages of errors and re-print it.