The standard gripe

[Natasha]

My thoughts? Let the gripe go and enjoy what we have.

[GreenGhost]

I've been gaming Palladium for 20 years and GMing 18 of those years. I've seen my share of late and cancelled books, but overall Palladium keeps on dishing out great books and I get them as they come out. I've got well over 130 Palladium books in my collection and a good number of them can be used as source material for BTS. I too am disappointed that the two sourcebooks promised aren't out yet, but I still have the hopes that they will and when they do I'll grab my copies right away. In the meantime I use what material I do have. If I remember right Kevin S. said that the game is limited only by your imagination. It's true. Try researching the internet for BTS type of creatures and places of magic. You'd probably be amazed by what you find. I ran a 3 year BTS campaign soley on info from the internet. During that time I mainly used the book for character creation.

[Augur]

No doubt that once Palladium Books' economic concerns are a distatseful footnote in its company history, there'll be more BtS source material published.

Simply put, Palladium Books has to properly identify its market and meet the demand of that market simply to stay solvent at this point. Once that is no longer the driving force behind their production I'm sure you'll see more risks taken by Palladium Books. Books cost money to research, write, print and ship. Rifts is a cashcow. It is a long-standing and well-received product with a large and dedicated following. BtS is a very niche product. It is wildly popular with those who enjoy its setting and the very low "power-level" of the setting. Its supporters are near fanatical but are barely a blip on the proverbial radar next to the teeming masses of Rifts fans out there who blast Kev & Co. at every turn for a missed product deadline or cancelled manuscript for Rifts. In summary, BtS material is an economic risk Palladium Books can ill afford at this time.

Check back when they've got a decent market share of the RPG industry once again.

Until then...be a good GM and come up with your own ideas and material.

[Misfit KotLD]

I've been gaming Palladium for 20 years and GMing 18 of those years.

Yes, but you're extra old.

Oh yeah, the Nightbane line and Ninjas and Superspies line (ok, all two books of it) offer excellent source material for BtS.

[Jasper]

I understand that Rifts is Palladium's flagship product line and they should keep putting out Rifts product. What annoys me though is that we've been waiting years for any 2nd edition BTS books and instead of them we get yet another new game from Palladium - Dead Reign. Now this may be a fine product but it annoys me to see BTS overlooked yet again in favour of a new untried product line...though zombies do have an appeal and I think it will sell well.

I suspect that BTS 2nd edition is stalled as I think Kevin S. is writing it himself. Maybe he's lost interest in the product, maybe he's sick of people bugging him for it, maybe he's disappointed with the sales of the main book, maybe he is unhappy with the result of his book, or people's reactions to it. I obviously don't know but what I think is that not to have an expansion to the line after 3 years of expecting one soon tells me that the line has been abandoned. I hope I am wrong though.

[runebeo]

I really wanted these two Bts books too, but if you really need a good monster book Rifts Dark Conversion book will work to fill your campaign for years really and since it covers most of the Nightbane creatures include the sorcerer class from Nightbane to work as magic user with it's magic system for now. Having a nice crossover with Nightbane may lead your group into have a full-time Nightbane campaign which is a great setting with a Hellraiser, Hellboy & Night Breed type theme to it. I hope the beyond books get printed soon. I bet Kevin will put extra special touch to them for the loyal fans that have been waiting for theses many years.

[Jasper]

The silence I think is what upsets more people than anything else.

Well said.
Of course Palladium is known for putting rule books and then not supporting them with expansions (Scraypers, System Failure, Ninjas and Superspies (1 expansion only) besides Beyond the Supernatural, so should anyone really be surprised?
Personally though I have been playing BTS since 1991. My friend (and only original player left from that campaign) marked on his character sheet the date his character was created. BTS was a campaign I started to honour my first moving out of my parent's house on my own. A new campaign and game for a new era! Of course we didn't get to play a lot as I worked out of town a lot then finally moved away from my home city three years ago (right after BTS 2nd Edition came out...). But BTS has always been a campaign that my buddy and I talk about and we've even played a couple times recently over a webcam of all things. I don't have time or energy to totally adapt or create my own magic rules for 2nd edition so the Arcanists in the current group has basically been on sabbatical in the campaign. I want BTS to start putting out more books again as it only feels like half a game. I am annoyed that when 2nd edition came out I spend a large amount of time converting all my NPCs to 2nd edition along with the PCs only have to sit on the Arcanists.
I even picked up some GURPS books recently, before we started playing again, and was thinking about converting the campaign but got voted down.
I've been playing Palladium stuff since Robotech in the mid-80s. I own virtually every game book they've put out (even the original Mechaniods), since during their Time of Crisis I went and ordered a bunch of stuff that I was missing just to support the company even though all my Palladium stuff just sits on shelves. The game I want to play is BTS and I am very dissapointed not to see it supported.

[Jefffar]

Well in regards to refunds for pre-orders. In my experince the money doesn't come off the credit card until the book ships anyway, so there is no worry about refunding the money.

In regards to making money. It's not jsut about making a profit, it's about making enough of a profit that the initial shockof printing a book that will be a slow seller can be absorbed and recouped over time.

Kevin has to budget his moneis carefully still and right now Palaldium still isn't in good enough shape to print a book that will take years to recoup printing costs. They need to focus on fast, hot selling properties that can recoup printing costs in months.

When the budget grows, the greater an ammount of a short term hit Kevin can take in return for a long term payoff.

I don't like it, you don't like it, Kevin doesn't like it, but that's the way it is.

Things have improved since the near failure of the company, but it's still going to take a while before the company is back to where it can print the books they want to print instead of the books they need to print.

In regards to the Rifter, I'd love to see a section each month devoted to the quieter game lines. Doesn't have to be official, but just soemthign in each Rifter for the lines that go ignored. We can pretty much garuntee that each Rifter will have one or more Rifts related articles and one or more articles for Heroes, PFRPG or Nightbane. So a slot where BTS or N&SS/MC or Splicers or Systems Failure or AtB or Recon will show up every month would be awesome. I dont't think we need to ditch Hammer of the Forge for this, it just requires a bit of dedication by the editor to set aside a slot for th best that's come in about those game lines.

I wouldn't mind ditching or triming back the Swimsuit section for that - perhaps change it to a single pin-up tyle full page and character sheet every issue.

[GreenGhost]

I've been gaming Palladium for 20 years and GMing 18 of those years.

Yes, but you're extra old.

Oh yeah, the Nightbane line and Ninjas and Superspies line (ok, all two books of it) offer excellent source material for BtS.

I wouldn't say, "extra old," but more like finely aged. Kind of like pond scum.

[Jefffar]

You think Palladium doesn't track how well things go at the pre-order stage and how well they go at the published book stage?

They know that the books will sell. The problem is they wont' sell enough,f ast enough to justify printing them when the company is still in a "making sure the bills are paid" mode. A book that tunrs a profit in 6 months isn't goign to pay next month's rent afterall.

I've corresponded with Kevin directly (back when this whole thing was jsut about to bust open) and he wants to make these books out, but for now he has to deal with the reality that a slow selling book like these will be just isn't going to do it for the company.

[Misfit KotLD]

I've been gaming Palladium for 20 years and GMing 18 of those years.

Yes, but you're extra old.

Oh yeah, the Nightbane line and Ninjas and Superspies line (ok, all two books of it) offer excellent source material for BtS.

I wouldn't say, "extra old," but more like finely aged. Kind of like pond scum.

I didn't know they stacked pond scum that high!

Old man.

[GreenGhost]

Now you know
...and knowing is half the battle!