Spinachcat's Open House Review

[Spinachcat]

I wrote my review of the Open House for RPG.net and I am cross-posting it here for anyone who was not able to attend. It was awesome fun! I know there are a lot of Palladium fans who lurk on RPG.net and I thought it would be fun to let them know about the OH. I tried to be as impartial and analytical as I could be for a review and keep the drooling fanboy-ness to a minimum. I probably failed on that point, but what the heck!

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=325398

Palladium Books threw their second annual Open House gaming convention this weekend inside their warehouse. It was 72 hours of pure badwrongfun gaming gooey goodness with about 250+ gamers, writers and artists!

I took the red-eye out of LAX in a cattle freight plane courtesy of Northwest Airlines whose seats are designed for anorexic midgets. It's always surprising to see how barren America is when you fly over thes vast tracts of nothingness with small spots of civilization. You forget that when you live in the urban crunch for too long. On a similiar note, White Castle blows chunks and torched a childhood memory. Wow, that franchise has lost it in the worst of ways.

Palladium Books is located in mellow industrial park in Taylor, Michigan which is a quiet suburb of Detroit close to the aiport. Thursday was VIP Night which gave a limited group of 50 people the chance to hobnob with the Palladium staff, freelance writers and the terrific artists. It was a fabulous and relaxed atmosphere and I greatly enjoyed talking to the gaming pros about their work, current projects, future projects and thoughts on various aspects of Palladium.
Alex, Julius, Wayne and the honorary staff were very fun to meet and talk about the past and present. Many of these dudes are gaming historians who threw dice back in the stone age of the hobby. On RPG.net, we are lucky to have Old Geezer but for many people the 70s game world is lost in the mists of time so hearing their tales was a blast.

Since most of the VIP Night attendees were people active on the Palladium message boards, it was particularly fun to put names and faces together and chat about gaming stuff. Kevin's girlfriend Kathy catered a great dinner which included swedish meatballs and polish sausage with sauerkraut done to perfection. There was also salad there as a tricky diversion to fool people from basking in the glory of the meatballs and sausage.

Also, VIP Night gave us first shot at the books and bric-a-brak being sold. This was great fun since everyone was there for autographs and many of the artists were selling prints in addition to original works. I picked up prints of Scott Johnson's amazing cover for Rifts Ultimate Edition and his Sister of Battle. Check out his gallery here. BTW, Kevin was selling a massive Star Wars toy collection and his Robotech artwork collection is very impressive. The T-shirt selection was good (especially if you like black t-shirts), but I hope in the future they put more cover artwork on clothing. I wants me some Sluggorth underwear!

I learned a neato fact about the book trade. Printers do more copies of the cover than the actual books. So Palladium has these stacks of covers with their utterly gorgeous artwork and they were selling the covers for 25 cents each. The cover is heavy cardstock so it's perfect for the outer panels of a GM Screen. I plan on making a GM book of pictures so I can flip through during demo games, show the artwork to the players and say "THIS is your character!" and "THAT is the thing eating your head!"

After chow, Kevin Siembieda gave us a tour of the warehouse and did a Q&A session in their conference room (with a giant stormtrooper) and introduced many of the staff and writers including the amazing and prolific Erick Wujcik. Kevin talked about the challenges of the past year, the overwhelming fan response and it was very obvious that here was someone deeply hurt both financially and emotionally by someone who had been a close friend for many years. The fan response blew him and all the staff away and his gratitude was heartfelt. What this means for Palladium's future interaction with its fans, I do not know, but for the gaming world and business world at large, the fan response is a remarkable statement of how a company can tap into the goodwill of the customer base in times of need.

BTW, Kevin talked about Palladium's move into the mass market with Barnes & Nobles, Borders and other stores. So far, the growth has been slow and steady and they have had a great response from the stores with only a managable 3% return rate. That's great news for the hobby. I am looking forward to more small press RPGs making the push into B&N too.

Kevin talked about the trials and trevails of licensing issues with Harmony Gold and the hopes to have Robotech happen sooner than later and of course, the challenges with Disney to get the Rifts movie happening. Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney are indeed interested at least in continuing their option on the license and we will see post-PotC what they plan to do next. Kevin discussed some other interesting projects they are peeking at but firmly warned that everything is in the earliest of the early stages. He gave some interesting anecdotes about the "ones that got away" and how some projects go from exciting idea to near-reality and then sadly to vapors. Kevin was also duly chided by us about Mechanoid Space and the Chi-Town book.

I can not speak for who Kevin may have been as a younger man when he started Palladium or launched Rifts, or even the man before the "Crisis of Treachery", but the Kevin Siembieda I met was a damn good guy. He's my kind of scum! Kevin is a genuine RPG cheerleader. He really believes in roleplaying as an enduring and wonderful experience. He brims with enthusiasm about the future of not just Palladium, but of the great future of the hobby as a whole. He views MMOs as a boon, not a threat and believes that RPGs are going to boom again even bigger than before. Is he right? Hell if I know, but hearing that enthusiasm was so opposite the normal discussions about our hobby that it makes me hope that he's right. If all that hooting and hollering throughout the games running until midnight was any indication, Kevin may be onto something.

After Kevin's Q&A, we all launched into dice tossing insanity as the writers ran special events, often showcasing and playtesting stuff from their upcoming sourcebooks. I played Carl Gleba's Dimension Outbreak which is the Phase World book part of the Minion Wars where demons and dyvals wreak havoc across the Three Galaxies. Carl is a very good GM and we had a blast. I got to try out the new Space Warlock with space spells...which include stuff like Summon Comet Storm and Create Black Hole. FYI, Alex M looks like Sean Connery. He is a real good guy and kept the warehouse open way late on Friday for us throw dice and fight like rabid squirrels over the game sign up sheets.

Saturday and Sunday had 16 scheduled tables of games running from 10am to midnight plus 6 tables for Open Gaming or just hanging out. Randi & Roger Cartier hosted a massive miniatures game for Palladium Fantasy on Saturday and Sunday. Two long tables full of Dwarven Forge dungeons, caves, weird pools and great eye candy! Most games had 8-12 players and although sign-ups were chaotic, nobody seemed to be left out. I do not know why these crazy Palladium kids like these 10+ player events, but "the more the merrier" seemed like the order of the day. I am used to only running 6 players at convention games and I still think that's the top number to maximize interaction. Carl Gleba's game had 12 players broken into the Ship Crew and the Merc Squad and I never felt bored because both sides always had something to do and discuss. Kudos to Carl for wrestling that bunch!

I ran Rifts Rapa Nui twice on Saturday and got two batches of great players, both newbies and veterans. Thanks to all of you (a couple of stealth RPGnetters as well) who played. Ah, the joys of psychic underwater Polynesian vampires, exploding ghouls and Mister Shushers, the crazy who sang all his roleplaying!

That evening I played in Kevin's Palladium Fantasy tourney adventure which was timed. We got the characters (I played a Goblin Cobbler Thief) and he gave us the setup. An evil dude named Lord DeSilca pledged himself to Hell and tonight he performs the final sacrifice of wee babes to become a true demon lord and only the 12 of us could save the day. After the setup, we had 2 hours of actual time to stop the naughty bad guy. We won with 14 minutes left, but damn that last 30 minutes was daunting!

BTW, Kevin runs "Kev's Palladium Fantasy" much like Dave Arneson's "Dave's D&D" which I played at ConQuest SF last year. Both of them run gonzo, off the cuff, "you can do it if its cool" style games where the rulebook's main purpose is to be the dice rolling platform. Both Kevin and Dave have the GM hand waive down pat where its all about fast flow of story, action and decisions and role-playing is all cool dialogue interactions, characterizations and play acting. It makes me wonder why guys who do not care about "system issues" put so much fire and fury into the weird minutiae of the RPG games they publish.

That goes pretty much for all the GMs I played with over the weekend. The whole "game system" boiled down to (a) cool character concept plus (b) opposed rolls for combat plus (c) roll percentiles for skills and BLAMMO much fun results left right and center. "Say Yes or Roll" was assumed and each GM used the OCC and skill list as "Aspects" which we tapped via dice tossing for anything and everything. Everybody (in the games I played) went for the big, bold and cinematic and the books were consulted much more secondarily than I had assumed. I thought that the fans and GMs would be much more book / stat / crunch focussed than so freeform in their style. That surprised me.

Saturday night was also the costume contest. There was an amazing Wolfen Soldier (a wolf in roman armor), a Coalition Officer with glowing eyes, wrist computer and weaponry, a Shemarrian Blind Warrior Woman with the body that silenced game tables, two wonderful Crazies and several more. Check out the Open House forum on the Palladium boards if you want to see pictures.

The Ramada Downriver (weird stain paradise) was funky, but they gave the fans a great rate and Palladium rented two Presidential Suites for 24 hour gaming which was greatly appreciated. After midnight on Saturday, I got to play with Carmen Bellaire who wrote Splicers and Powers Unlimited Two. Carmen is a way cool dude and we gamed past 4am in a slam bang scenario that involved wall to wall insanity as we bumbling heroes became the second worst thing ever to happen to a small town. On Sunday, Evan Cooney ran Valley of the Pharoahs which was the second game published by Palladium after The Mechanoids. Valley of the Pharoahs was a boxed game about Fantasy Egypt and it's a free download now. Talk about a gaming relic. The game is low powered fantasy and has some cool magic. Worth a look if you like Egyptian RPG stuff. Evan claims to be a "by the book" GM who does not house rule which is hysterical since we leaped into awesome Mummy inspired cinematics about 30 seconds after he started the game.

All good things come to an end and Sunday afternoon, I got to talk to Kevin again before he was swamped with autograph requests and I played Levi Johnstone's Palladium Fantasy where we were Wolfen passing through the evil human lands and we had to deal with slavers and the combats were awesomely raw and brutal. Levi had some great house rules which he shared and I'm excited about trying out for myself.

Funny enough, my Palladium Open House had a bookend experience. On Thursday, my printer exploded right before I left to get on the plane so my hands were covered in ink which caught the TSA's eye and earned me extra questions. On Sunday night, I stopped by the bathroom before going through the security checkpoin at DTW and a pipe burst in the bathroom sink so I got to be Osama bin Pee Pee Pants for the flight home!

[MADMANMIKE]

..Hey, you want some candy?

-Mike >8]

[Lord_Dalgard]

Chello!

Yeah, Carl's game was fun...I'm really jazzed about Minion War now! Great playing alongside ya'!

Tony

[Warwolf]

I'm bummed, SC. It seems that every time I saw you, you were either running or playing in a game. I really wish I could have sat down and chatted for at least five minutes. Well, maybe next year then.

[Carmen]

Glad you enjoyed the after hours game, since I was running on diet coke and insperation.

[MADMANMIKE]

Glad you enjoyed the after hours game, since I was running on diet coke and insperation.

..Dude, you're an animal! I know I wouldn't have had as much fun this weekend if you hadn't kept me up until 4:30AM on Friday night, 5:30AM on Saturday night, and 5:00AM on Sunday night.

..I slept 8 hours on Monday night, and that was half of all the sleep I got since Wednesday morning.

-Mike <8]

[Carl Gleba]

Chello!

Yeah, Carl's game was fun...I'm really jazzed about Minion War now! Great playing alongside ya'!

Tony

Who did you play Lord Dalgard? I can now put a face to a name with Spinachcat, but what about you?

The players were all great in that game. For me it would have been better with a smaller group. I'm not as good as Kevin S. when it comes to running the large groups. I want to personalize the game more and I don't feel I can do that with such a large group.

Carl

[Spinachcat]

Glad you enjoyed the after hours game, since I was running on diet coke and inspiration.

Your game rocked! Thanks again for running into the wee hours! The speed and brutality you used to take down mega-PCs was frightening.

"Dragons need to breathe" is a terrifying statement!

It was great to meet lots of people from the boards and game with you crazy guys. Let's hope there is an OH in 08.

The players were all great in that game. For me it would have been better with a smaller group. I'm not as good as Kevin S. when it comes to running the large groups. I want to personalize the game more and I don't feel I can do that with such a large group.

You did a great job splitting us into two logical groups - Crew and Mercs and that really made things work well. I really liked the new Space Spells and the Space Warlock is going to be a very fun OCC in the future.

Here's hoping we see Dimension Outbreak this year!!!

[Carl Gleba]

Thanks Spinachcat

I forgot to mention in my previous post what a great write up this is

Great job.

Carl

[Carmen]

MadManMike - I too slept for 10 hours Monday when I got home.

Spinachcat - Any character can be killed if you just use the right method. I have to admit that killing super-munchinks is a blast, as long as everyone has fun and the death is a good one. But hopefully the muchink enjoys himself too. It was a fun game to run.

Carl - I got to get a copy of those pics from you, especially the one with me and the Blind Warrior Woman.

See Ya.

[Lord_Dalgard]

Chello!

Who did you play Lord Dalgard? I can now put a face to a name with Spinachcat, but what about you?

I was two down from SC...playing the CAF Fleet Officer Tiberious!!! I think i was wearing an orange shirt that day....

The "dead" spaces for having to switch from mercs to crew weren't bad at all...the game flowed smoothy and watching the mercs run around was too much fun!!!

Tony

P.S. You can also click on "www" below to catch pics of me on my Yahoo 360 account. Ane

[Nightshade37]

I'd also like to post my Kudos to Carl for running a great Minion Wars game. Who knew playing a kind-hearted Kreeghor Runner was possible, let alone so much fun.