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As a kid I owned many Palladium games – TMNT, BtS, Robotech, and Rifts, which I got when it came out. Created many characters. Tried to get a group together to play. Never happened.

Now many decades later I’ve been gaming again (really for the first time!) and after finally mastering the arcane systems of old games that confused me as a kid (hint: the first edition of a famous game) I think I’m ready to take on Rifts.

The Ultimate Version seems more weirdly organized but ultimately more complete. I’m gonna go with that one. And yes, I am going to attempt to play it by the book. I’ve overcome all of the other bugbear systems of my youth, now I want to try Palladium.

I’ve been going through old forums (like this one) and looking at arguments about rules (some of these arguments are a real bummer!) I understand the complaints but there seems to be a solution possible every time. The combat makes sense. One of my players hates RPG combat – the whole “I swing my sword.” “You miss. The monster attacks you. It misses.” On paper, the whole attack/react system Palladium has seems much more fun.

D20 initiative. D20 combat. D20 roll over saves. D20 roll over perception rolls. Percentile roll over skill checks. Seems simple enough!

Basically, I think I’m close to understanding the system enough to teach it/run it for a bunch of open-minded players. My question is, what rules am I probably failing to internalize that are going to come up as questions in our first few sessions of play?

Thanks! Very excited to finally get to play a game that I dreamed of playing when I was a kid.

I you want to get a feel for game play you might watch on the on-line games in the PN chats.
Most of the time on-line games tend to be Role-Playing games, rather then Combat/hack-slash games.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:I you want to get a feel for game play you might watch on the on-line games in the PN chats.
Most of the time on-line games tend to be Role-Playing games, rather then Combat/hack-slash games.

Got any links to share?

Palladium isn't keen on details so you'll make a lot of decisions and will have to be consistent.

Cabor wrote:As a kid I owned many Palladium games – TMNT, BtS, Robotech, and Rifts, which I got when it came out. Created many characters. Tried to get a group together to play. Never happened.

Now many decades later I’ve been gaming again (really for the first time!) and after finally mastering the arcane systems of old games that confused me as a kid (hint: the first edition of a famous game) I think I’m ready to take on Rifts.

The Ultimate Version seems more weirdly organized but ultimately more complete. I’m gonna go with that one. And yes, I am going to attempt to play it by the book. I’ve overcome all of the other bugbear systems of my youth, now I want to try Palladium.

I’ve been going through old forums (like this one) and looking at arguments about rules (some of these arguments are a real bummer!) I understand the complaints but there seems to be a solution possible every time. The combat makes sense. One of my players hates RPG combat – the whole “I swing my sword.” “You miss. The monster attacks you. It misses.” On paper, the whole attack/react system Palladium has seems much more fun.

D20 initiative. D20 combat. D20 roll over saves. D20 roll over perception rolls. Percentile roll over skill checks. Seems simple enough!

Basically, I think I’m close to understanding the system enough to teach it/run it for a bunch of open-minded players. My question is, what rules am I probably failing to internalize that are going to come up as questions in our first few sessions of play?

Thanks! Very excited to finally get to play a game that I dreamed of playing when I was a kid.

technically the skill percentage is roll under in palladium, but if you wanted to it would be easy enough to change just make all the skill percentages subtract from 102% instead of the current I take cooking I get 40% chance to prepare it "correctly" you would instead do it as I have cooking I have a 62% chance to botch it. I level up I get a 5% increase in the skill, I now only have a 57% chance to botch the preparations.

I believe "attribute checks" if used are also a roll under but everything else is roll over mechanics which means the higher the roll the better.

guardiandashi wrote:

Cabor wrote:As a kid I owned many Palladium games – TMNT, BtS, Robotech, and Rifts, which I got when it came out. Created many characters. Tried to get a group together to play. Never happened.

Now many decades later I’ve been gaming again (really for the first time!) and after finally mastering the arcane systems of old games that confused me as a kid (hint: the first edition of a famous game) I think I’m ready to take on Rifts.

The Ultimate Version seems more weirdly organized but ultimately more complete. I’m gonna go with that one. And yes, I am going to attempt to play it by the book. I’ve overcome all of the other bugbear systems of my youth, now I want to try Palladium.

I’ve been going through old forums (like this one) and looking at arguments about rules (some of these arguments are a real bummer!) I understand the complaints but there seems to be a solution possible every time. The combat makes sense. One of my players hates RPG combat – the whole “I swing my sword.” “You miss. The monster attacks you. It misses.” On paper, the whole attack/react system Palladium has seems much more fun.

D20 initiative. D20 combat. D20 roll over saves. D20 roll over perception rolls. Percentile roll over skill checks. Seems simple enough!

Basically, I think I’m close to understanding the system enough to teach it/run it for a bunch of open-minded players. My question is, what rules am I probably failing to internalize that are going to come up as questions in our first few sessions of play?

Thanks! Very excited to finally get to play a game that I dreamed of playing when I was a kid.

technically the skill percentage is roll under in palladium, but if you wanted to it would be easy enough to change just make all the skill percentages subtract from 102% instead of the current I take cooking I get 40% chance to prepare it "correctly" you would instead do it as I have cooking I have a 62% chance to botch it. I level up I get a 5% increase in the skill, I now only have a 57% chance to botch the preparations.

I believe "attribute checks" if used are also a roll under but everything else is roll over mechanics which means the higher the roll the better.

My bad I meant to write roll under!

Cabor wrote:

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:I you want to get a feel for game play you might watch on the on-line games in the PN chats.
Most of the time on-line games tend to be Role-Playing games, rather then Combat/hack-slash games.

Got any links to share?

There is a link to the PB chats at the top of the message boards main page in the 1st section.


viewforum.php?f=82

Natasha wrote:Palladium isn't keen on details so you'll make a lot of decisions and will have to be consistent.

So far I've found an answer to every rules question I have predicted coming up...like repairs, healing, ISP recovery...the rest can be solved via roleplay.

Three more questions for getting my first adventure set up:

1. What's the best North American world book so far? (Would like to start in North America for now...)

2. Where can I get a simple list of various low-level NPCs/monsters WITH STATS? Do the world books usually include enough for their region? I need to give the players something to fight!

3. Is the GM reference screen ever going to come back in print? Would love one of those but so far it's not cheap on ebay...

Cabor wrote:2. Where can I get a simple list of various low-level NPCs/monsters WITH STATS? Do the world books usually include enough for their region? I need to give the players something to fight!

What counts as low level varies too much from party to party for this system to have a challenge rating for monsters. You as the gm will just have to eyeball it.

IGNG wrote:

Cabor wrote:2. Where can I get a simple list of various low-level NPCs/monsters WITH STATS? Do the world books usually include enough for their region? I need to give the players something to fight!

What counts as low level varies too much from party to party for this system to have a challenge rating for monsters. You as the gm will just have to eyeball it.

How about just "average" NPCs/monsters statted?

There is no average. You could start by throwing some of the NPCs from would book 11 page 133 at them. If that's too much of a joke find something a bit tougher, rinse and repeat until you find what is appropriate. Without having the parties character sheets in front of me and knowledge of your players capabilities (I had a guy in a game I ran who insisted on attacking 1/5 the number of times he could) I can't really help other than to tell you to start at the bottom and work up.

Cabor wrote:

Natasha wrote:Palladium isn't keen on details so you'll make a lot of decisions and will have to be consistent.

So far I've found an answer to every rules question I have predicted coming up...like repairs, healing, ISP recovery...the rest can be solved via roleplay.

Three more questions for getting my first adventure set up:

1. What's the best North American world book so far? (Would like to start in North America for now...)

2. Where can I get a simple list of various low-level NPCs/monsters WITH STATS? Do the world books usually include enough for their region? I need to give the players something to fight!

3. Is the GM reference screen ever going to come back in print? Would love one of those but so far it's not cheap on ebay...

So far, so good.

The only Rifts game I'm in now is set in Charity, Colorado and we're just now arriving in El Paso after some adventuring in dino swamps. So we make use of New West and Vampire Kingdoms which have a decent amount of monsters and gangsters in them, but our GM has to wing the stats anyway since we have hard to kill characters in the PC group--particularly the Crazy and especially the Immortal while the Larmac and Demigod are both quite durable, but only the Crazy likes to get into fights, which has tailed off as that player has taken over the GM duties and so the Crazy has become more or less background auto-follow character.

As IGNG points out, winging the stats of the opposing forces is something you'll probably have to do anyway as you learn the PC group's power level. And by winging I mean "making them up on the spot".