Systems like Palladium are strapped for cash since they have such a small group of followers, making it hard for them to produce something on par with D&D. It is probably even harder now they have such a bad rep.

Alpha Omega looks very much like RIFTS, done right – and it’s drop dead gorgeous to boot. Grab the freebie preview and you’ll see what I mean.

I’m seriously looking forward to getting my copy in the New Year

I agree with you 150% and have brought up many of the same gripes on my own site. The funny thing about Rifts/Palladium is that the good things (character customization, the settings) are some of the best you’ll find. However, the bad parts (disorganized, unbalanced rules, low production value) is truly the worst you will find. The only exception I can think of is Dead Reign. As a stand alone game I think this is one of the best, most well organized products they have put out.
As I’ve mentioned over at the Gazette, I have heard, from freelancers, that they are working on a “Palladium/Rifts Lite” book. Hopefully that will help alleviate some of the issues we all have with the unorganized rules. Having everything well organized in a fluff free book would be a great help. Of course this is just something I was told by a freelancer on the Palladium boards and have heard nothing more about it.

BTW Great Post.

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I agree that some of the content is great, but the layout of books really needs a lot of work. Being a Robotech fan I have quite a few Palladium books as source material (though not had a chance to play it). As well as a variety of other books.

I’ve run and played in a few TMNT games. And these were fun, though character creation took a while (but doesn’t it for most systems).

On the power gaming side, the character I’d most like to play in Rifts is: a Psionic from Heroes Unlimited; converted to Ninjas and Superspies so they get a martial art and a body hardening power; then converted to Rifts; the end result would be a major Psionic with martial arts and an MDC body.

I think the Palladium system could do with a going over like D&D. A core set of rules books, with each setting/supplement just the extra stuff for that setting. This would reduce the size the supplements and put all the rules in one place, making them easier to find.

The rules need to have a nice clear layout, and the indexes need to be correct

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I have been a big fan of Palladium games since the late eighties. Some of what has been stated I can marginally agree with. But when I here that people are complaining about the way the books are produced I am truly disappointed in my fellow gamer. What is wrong with a soft glossy cover for game books. I can’t count how many times I have rolled these books and used them to stress points from dialogue in a game.
As for imbalance what are you talking about, almost every game I have ever played there is some imbalance in charaters. For instance: (D&D) Lvl 1 Fighter vs. Lvl 1 Mage (hmmm?) not much thought needed.
So how can you possibly compare a Headhunter vs. a Glitter Boy? How about comparing OCCs that are not enhanced by mecha armor. Vagabond vs. Headhunter a little more balance perhaps. I just have to say I am disappointed to here that all these posts are so negative towards a gaming company that has lasted longer than almost any other game company and you complain because they are still using a system that has yet to let anyone (let alone the company) down.
Again this glitterboy idea slays me. Any good game master would put the habash on glitterboys if it would ruin the balance of a game. On the other hand you could do it like my GM and make some of the first adventures a search for glitterboy armor and weapons. This gives other players a chance to advance their characters equaling the disadvantage they may have by not having MDC armor.
Finally what other RPG has anyone played that they didn’t use their own set of house rules.

@ Mike
I am actually very fond of the Palladium Settings, it is the poor organization that bothers me the most. Like I said in my previous comment the good things about the Palladium books are some of the best you will find. However, the bad parts are some of the worst. For a company that has been around so long you would expect there to be fewer bad parts. Now I understand that every game has people who dislike it, but in this I think Palladium is unique. Everyone wants to love Palladium, which is why they keep chugging along. The settings are fantastic, character customizations is top notch, but good luck trying to find the rules you need quickly. I’ve read all my Palladium books multiple times and still have to jump to various parts of the books to find things I need during character creation. The rules are not in any discernible order, they are a bit clunky, spread out over too many different books, and simply not organized well, which is the biggest complaint I’ve heard from every Palladium fan, including those on the Palladium boards. Well that and subpar editing, which seems a bit amateurish for a professional company that has been around for a while.
I am a Palladium fan and will continue to buy the books. They are a joy to read and I will keep playing. I just think that it is time for an actual revision. Organize the basic rules in one core book and then release the setting specific sourcebooks, kind of like Hero system. If Palladium was a little more willing to bend to fans wishes they could easily be the top RPG publisher, they already have, IMO, the best settings.

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I agree with everything you say. I am a martial artist by trade and USE to be a big fan of the Ninjas and Superspys.

But now, having years of experience in Chuan-Fa, Kenpo, C.Q.C., ISR Matrix, Filipino MA like Kali, Arnis, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Boxing Judo, Brazillian Jiujitsu, Greco Roman wrestling, JKD as well as training with millitary and “private security” guys servinf over seas…I needed to re-write the entire combat rules to include grappling, groundfighting and realistic and BALANCED unarmed and armed combat.

It simply couldn’t be fixed! It needed to be re-built from the bottom up and I am in the middle of play-testing it. They really screwed the pooch in how they published materials without ANY regard to how it would affect future or past publications.

What they NEEDED to do is create a universal system of of how-to-create templates (like I have done for martial arts and hand to hand combat) based on some point system of some sort with defined maximums and minimums.

Then the different contirbutors could use THAT to keep it balanced. Too many cooks in the kitchen and the head chef is probably a bit overwhelmed.

However, all of that being said, Palladium has created a flexible system that allows a patient Game Master to rebuild the core rules however they want to create the game balance or recreate their life expereince or that of their players.

Two options for Palladium Books. Rebuild from the bottom up, using some sort of computurized database to track and create universal limiters and rules across their entire “Megaverse” or alienate future users and annoy current fans by creating NEW material, thus compounding the problem.

~ D ~

Touching on the recycled artwork point: This is something Green Ronin does now, much to my chagrin. I’m only really familiar with their True20 products, but those books are rife with examples of this.

samuel, you make a lot of valid points. The system is crap. the settings are phenomenal.

however, i tend to agree with Mike’s comments about the Glitter Boy vs Headhunter. since a headhunter starts with MDC armor, a giant-sized robot of his own, and unlike a Glitterboy, the Headhunter can MOVE when firing, so it’s a pretty even match up.

but even if it wasn’t “even” so what? why does everything have to be equal? where is the drama in that? some one pointed out a 1st level fighter vs a 1st level mage in D&D.

Graeme, Mary-ann left Kevin and the company years ago. the whole show is all Kevin. if you want to know how he runs the company, google search “bill coffin” old bill was the best writer palladium ever had and was fired by kevin. he has some interesting things to say. i think its on RPGNET.

also, Palladium Books has started releasing books as pdf’s for cheap on various sites for the last couple months. everything released so far has been old, out of print stuff though.

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Well…we are talking about a complex version of pretend here…so making up rules is just fine. I think anyone would be hard pressed to find a perfect set of rules for any system. I have been running Palladium and Rifts for years now. I think that story matters more than rules. If something doesn’t make sense, I change it.

I use rules from Palladium, Eberron, D&D, etc. Currently, I am running a campaign that started in Palladium and is now on Krynn from the Dragonlance novels. I love that story, and a few of my players never read it, so I went for it and it is great. It does seem to become easy for one to make a powerful character in Palladium. I let most things go as far as character creation. I think that the players will have more fun if they play something they like.

As far as dying on the first encounter, that’s BS. How does a GM expect a player to enjoy the game if you kill them off?…way more fun to do something to the character (Phobia, cut arm off, etc.) that they can role play. Dead is dead.

While, the party I have currently is pretty powerful, I still find that they are doing a lot of running away. Powerful party against a dragon army still has to use wits more often than not. Part of being a GM is letting the players have fun while keeping them in check. If they think they can beat everything, put them in their place.

I have a great group of players, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are just having fun, and they are building up their characters, not constantly making new ones. When you build a character from 1st level through 10th, it means more than just making a 10th level character from scratch.

When you have a good group, and a good story, rules don’t really matter. As a GM, you can do what you want. If someone is going to argue rules with me, then I don’t want them playing. Again, it’s a game of pretend. No sense getting into fights over rules. And if someone is unbalancing the game by looking for power over fun, and constantly arguing rules, I find that using a fusion bomb on an SDC character fixes that problem.

Regarding the “arms race”…it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Again, as the GM, you have to police this. I’ve been lucky to have mostly good players. Sometimes you’ll get a player that does research and finds weapons or abilities online that may not even be in any of the books. This can be good, if it is more in line with character development. I like when players take initiative and try to better their characters.

I have an archer who is looking to expand his character by using special arrows…Poison, entangle, smoke, signal, etc. This is fine and gets them into their character. 1st level, just shooting arrows. By 8th, he should be able to do something a bit better. This is different than, “Can I have a bow that always hits a head shot and unlimited arrows?” Or give them a powerful item with a curse. Sword of Tears is powerful as hell (Dragonlance item), but it drives you mad. I have a member in the group that can raise/control the dead. But others in the group are good guys, so he is kept in check.

It is bad when you get the power gamer/rule lawyer. Most times, I find that the players don’t know what is out there. If a player is asking for something specific that will unbalance the game, make it unavailable in game, “Nope, black market guy is fresh out of that one.” Or let him have it and see where it goes. If it gets out of hand, make ammo unavailable, or have someone take it/break it. Being the GM is wonderful thing!

Not allowing things like letting players play as dragons, I can see. There are some spells that are a bit broken. Fleet Feet is one that I only allow in an item (3x/day) or potion. Having a wizard cast that on players and doubling their attacks per round every combat is ridiculous! Carpet of adhesion is also a powerful simple spell. Even with a saving throw made, opponent is still stuck for a bit! This forces me to be creative as a GM (Using it on a dragon? Sure, now the dragon is walking with earth stuck to his feet…and I add damage if dragon uses this in a kick attack)…also, I can be cheap with spells too.

If you have a power gamer, knocking him down to size usually works. Bigger and better weapons? I just come up with something that will challenge that particular group. If you’re running a pre-written adventure, just modify it. 5 skelbots and/or CS grunts easy. 30…not so much. If all else fails, bring in the Tarrasque. That’ll learn ‘em!

To be honest, I never even made it to Rifts with Palladium… I played TMNT a lot, PFRP more, combined TMNT & PFRP in a ‘Spellsinger’ type fantasy world (worked really well), and then tried running a Heroes Unlimited 2ed campaign.

After struggling with those restrictive clunky broken rules for 3 months, struggling to make the game work rules wise via house rulings etc, I never wanted to touch Palladium ever again.

I have to agree that Palladium sucks. When I first started playing RPGs 18 years ago the first game I got was TMNT, and I have a soft spot for it still, as I got more and more of the Palladium books it had great settings and what not.

Then I started playing and getting the Rifts books and that is when the system got majorly imbalanced. At a certain point I would say when Phase World came out that the imbalanced was the point of the all the new gear. Who wants the crappy Wilk’s lazer pistol or a vibro knife in the main book when you can have a plasma pistol or rune knife that does ten times more damage.

I still believe that Palladium’s best books had little to do with gear and richly described environment. Wyrmwood was a great example of this and to a lesser extent the Juicer Uprising too.

My other problem with Palladium is their printing the stats of Major world leaders. It serves no point other than to take up space in book. Characters are not going to get in a fist fight with the Emperor of the Coalition States or Lord Splyncraith of Atlantis.

@Grungydan

Most people apparently don’t play up to your standards. We just pick up the game book and expect to play the game. Low and behold we didn’t know that Palladium games needed advanced planning and extreme situational encounters to ahve fun. Wow, what fun it is for the glitter boy to sit back while the headhunter goes about looking for the bad guy in the bar.

Call me an illiterate gamer for saying that Palladium is unbalanced, and I’ll call you super-exceptional for balancing it yourself, something the developers were too lazy to do.

I know, lot of gamers need their hands held by the system these days. I know some other games you shouldn’t try to play if you can’t tell by looking that those particular classes in that particular game probably shouldn’t be in the same party.

Seriously though, it’s a simple question if sitting down at the outset and figuring out why everyone wants out of the game. In a Vampire game, are you the GM that tells an excited player that he or she can’t play a human, or are you the kind that figures out how to make it work so they can play what they want and have fun? Do you let a player in a fantasy game tak a noble title, or just tell them no?

The system can’t do everything for you, regardless of what WotC would hve you believe. Sometimes as a GM, you might have to think. That doesn’t make the system bad.

But be a parrot for the author if you like. I’m not stopping you.

Mike, you gave a lot of ways to fix Palladium, ways even you use to fix it. That’s the problem. People will continue to feel the need to fix it forever, more than other games. Yes, everyone makes house rules from time to time, but Palladium needs a house rule overhaul.

I played Rifts extensively.
I played Heroes Unlimited extensively.
I played Palladium Fantasy extensively.

Then I started playing other games and OH MY GOD! I found it impossible to go back to Palladium games! It was such a pain in the ass. Why did we have to work so hard to make the game work when other games DID work?

When we realized how much effort we were putting into making our Palladium games tolerable, it made us sick. We threw our books away and vowed never to play Palladium games again until a new edition came out. Yeah, that never happened.

People can argue why Palladium games suck or not – forever. All that matters to me is that I will probably never play it again. It simply isn’t worth it.

What exactly is it that makes Palladium a pain in the ass? I am just curious as to more specifics than “it needs an overhaul”. D&D comes out with a new edition every day. WotC is just looking for ways to make money. I would rather have a system in place then one with new rules everywhere you turn.

I find that problems stem from players, not systems most times. The guy that is a power gamer in Palladium, is the same guy that is the power gamer in D&D. Again, either the GM lets power guy get away with it, or he doesn’t.

I find that the classes are pretty balanced. I have some powerful folks in my party now. One guy can meet just about every physical challenge that comes his way, fighting dragons by himself…put him up against a psychic…not good for him. The psychic in the party is quite powerful mentally (The campaign has been going on a while now)…he can’t get hit too much with pointy things.

I like starting off simple, fighting things like goblins and running away from bigger things…and building the characters to known heroes (Think Luke in Empire vs Luke in Jedi). The thing is, a good story arc works in any system. I use the rules as guidelines, in any system. The story, is the most important aspect.

I do not let rules get in the way of game play. I think that the GM should tweak things to meet their ideal, regardless of the system. If I find that a rule is awesome in Cyberpunk or Vampire, I am going to apply it to all other games that I run. Likewise with something that doesn’t make sense, I nix it.

When I play games that I am unfamilier with, I let the GM walk me through things, which is what I do. My players tell me what they do and I tell them what the result is. I am not a strict GM and they are not nitpicky about the game. We understand that we are playing to have fun.

I used to have people who read all the game books in addition to anything they could find online about a game. If you do this to better your character, that’s awesome. If you are doing it to find loopholes in the system to be a power gamer, that is the same as cheating. Those people no longer play with us and I would advise anyone else to let those players go as well. If someone is ruining the fun for other people, don’t invite them anymore.

Arguments and debates shouldn’t happen. Just have fun. I had a player argue the physics of a trap I made up once and how it wouldn’t work. I told him well it does work, so here is the damage. I get, “Well, the path of the projectile would be interrupted by…blah blah”. I asked him, “So, let me get this straight…you are in a dungeon looking for a dragon…one that you are going to use magic to defeat…also, you are a catman assassin…a projectile is the thing you have issue with? Really?”

There is a difference between having the game flow, and being a dick. If you are just putting monsters in there to win fights against the players…dick. If the players are supposed to lose a fight, make it so they at least have a shot at winning.

I push the point…have fun. I have fun with Palladium as well as many other games. There is nothing in Palladium that would make me stop playing (I would like to hear some specifics as to what is SO bad). Use the core rules of a system as guidelines and do whatever you have to so all players have fun.

Okay, I’ve been watching this arguement going back and forth for a while but I figured I’d weigh in again. As a gamer and GM I’m actually an opponent of meticulously balancing games and I don’t have an issue with Rifts or PFRPG being unbalanced per-se. What I do have a problem with is that Palladium’s system simply doesn’t have the ability for it’s wonderful creations to survive actual gameplay. I recall reading somewhere (I can’t remember the specific article) where KS described how to deal with “unbalanced” things like Glitter Boys. He cited choosing swampland as a terrain to make a stand against such heavy power armour, the logic being that the heavy armour will sink or not operate at full potential in such boggy terrain which would be great… if the system game actually represented this scenario in any way. Granted it’s been a while, but I don’t recall any sorts of difficult terrain rules, rules for power armour and robot vehicles interacting with that sort of terrain, and so it thus becomes up to the GM to abstract it. This is the problem with Palladium. It’s all 1d6 MDC < 3d6x10 MDC, no nuance, not mitigating factors, it’s all about damage vs armour, and while that’s nice and simple and appealing in some ways, but that’s all there is to it, and the system doesn’t offer ways to simulate logical countermeasures to this numbers-based gameplay, which is a real shame because the game it’s self has a lot of truly rich material that given the right system would be a ton of fun to play.

@Chris. What needs tweaking?
Okay.
Off the top of my head the attributes need to be overhauled. The only ones that have any dice relevance are PS, PP and INT. All the others could be dropped without impacting anything. What’s the point in having an attractiveness stat and charm/impress when there aren’t any social rules? There also needs to be an awareness/notice dice mechanic.

Next there needs to task difficulty and modifier guidelines, recoil rules, rules for bypassing MDC armour (such as falling/crashing). And rules for creating, and manipulating energy, substances and people with magic and psionics. These rules don’t have to be exhaustive or overcomplicated, just consistant enough that they can encompass the large scope variance of rifts. (The variance between soldier scope, to power armour scope for example.

Now I’ve got a few ideas how to implement these things, and I pursue them occasionally but I’m a unified mechanic sorta guy these days, and Palladium doesn’t convert easily to unified mechanics, and not a lot of my friends want to play Rifts these days, so I’ve never got around to finishing them.