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The Table Still Feels Like Home

I opened the Fantasy book last week, and the page still smelled like that room. Not the original copy. That one is long gone, lost in a box somewhere. This is the replacement I bought after the first move, or the one after that. Same rules. Initiative is still a d20. Four or less still misses. Armor still takes the hit before you do. I sat with it longer than I meant to. The Western Empire tavern came back first. The one that was supposed to be a single night. Somebody’s knight kept fretting about his mail like it was a real problem. The thief kept the map even when we were not using it. We never finished what we started. We just kept showing up. That table is still the one I measure against. College was the best of it. Late nights, too much pizza, the books stacked on the floor because the table was full. I would drive to the New Hampshire store that carried the whole Palladium line and stand in front of the wall until I knew which one I could actually buy. Money was tight. I still ma...
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Christmas Always Feels Like Palladium

The books always shine in December. I am not sure when that started. College, maybe. The ones that arrived right before break, or the ones I bought for myself once I had a little money of my own and could stop asking. They sat under the tree, next to it, or on the table by the door because nobody had wrapped them yet. Palladium Fantasy. Heroes Unlimited. A Rifts book I wouldn't open until January. The spines looked right there. They still do. They feel like family by now. Not in some big way. Just the ones that stayed. The ones that came with me from one place to the next. Rifts was always the coolest game on the shelf. Still is, when I pull it out. The covers, the size of the books, the sense that the whole thing was bigger than the room we were playing in. I would stand in the New Hampshire hobby store that carried the full Palladium line and just look at the wall of them. Pick the next one I wanted. Money was tight back then. I still made room in the budget. The next book was th...
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The Number Is Already There

You roll percentile. If you roll equal to or under the number on the sheet, it works. Over, it doesn’t. You already wrote that number down when you made the character, or the last time a level ticked and a skill got a little better. You are not sitting there inventing a challenge rating because the room feels tense. You are not negotiating a DC with the table. The book printed the chance. Roll under it. That is most of the skill system. The list is the same whether you opened Palladium Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Nightbane, Dead Reign, or Beyond the Supernatural. A lock is still a lock. Climbing is still climbing. You learn the sheet once. When the book changes, the fiction changes. The d100 stays put. I keep running into people who come off 5E and expect a little menu here too. The skill is a proficiency. The scene gets a number. Somebody can argue the modifier. The whole thing turns into a short negotiation about how hard the moment should feel. Palladium does...
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Quest For It

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3d6, down the line, eight attributes. I still like that roll. It is mean in a way that feels honest, and I have grown tired of generation systems so generous that everyone walks away with an 18 and a little story about how fair the math was. Dungeon Crawl Classics uses the same kind of roll: six scores instead of eight, still 3d6 in order, still the body you get instead of the body you shopped for. That part of the two games is already cousins. Palladium does not hand you more of those numbers just because the experience chart ticked. There is no ceremony at 4th and 8th where you pick two points and pour them into I.Q. or P.S., which I used to miss until I sat with what the books actually print. Physical skills can bump the body - Body Building, Boxing, Wrestling, Running, the usual gym list - and if you take one of those later, when the O.C.C. finally gives you another skill pick, the bonus comes with it. Race and class can add a point at the start. After that, the sheet is mostly do...
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Initiative Is Rolled, Then We Fight

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Initiative is rolled. You roll a d20. Four or less misses; full stop. Five up through the target’s AR (Armor Rating, the thing people keep calling AC because they just came from D&D) hits the armor and damages it. The other guy can parry, dodge, or try to entangle. If they actually know how to fight, the parry is just part of standing there. If they don’t, it costs them an attack. Dodge always costs one. Entangle is there if somebody wants to turn this into a wrestling match instead of a cutting contest. Higher than AR and you hit the person. Damage goes into SDC first, then hit points. Somebody swings a club or a fist, and you can try to roll with the impact, spend an attack, and stay on your feet instead of folding. If you have more attacks than the other side, those leftover swings happen at the end of the melee. Fifteen seconds of mess, then the faster one is still swinging after everyone else is done. That is most of the combat system, and it is the same system if you picked u...
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Alignment is Important

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Newer 5E-shaped games keep dropping alignment. They call it leftover cosmology, flavor text, a stat that made people uncomfortable. The 2024-era books treat it as optional at best, and many of the games sitting next to those books don't bother printing it at all. I think they are throwing out the best part. Alignment is not a team jersey. It is why the character does the next thing. In Palladium, it is a core piece of identity, and it has been since the chart was printed. Diabolic does not need a tragic origin to justify the next move. The sheet already told you what kind of person walked into the room. That is a decision you made about the fiction before anyone rolled. Palladium never sanded that off. The alignments in last year’s printing are the alignments in the book you bought in college. Nothing much has changed here, because the chart already did the job. Palladium’s system beat AD&D for me back then, and D&D eventually almost dropped the whole thing. It is also a sa...
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XP Is Not GP

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Many newer designs treat experience like a receipt. You went into the hole, you took the coins, you bought the next piece of the kit, and the number on the sheet went up because the wagon got heavier. Palladium does not owe you XP for treasure, and I keep forgetting how much that still bothers people who grew up being paid that way. The character is already the character. The oath, the job, the code, the skill list that only matters because the world outside the fight is still running. None of that needs a shopping trip to stay true. You do not become more of a priest because you hauled copper out of a basement. You become more of a priest because the village is still a village in the morning. Magic items in these books are rare, and they change the story when they show up. They are not the story. You are not filling item slots, so the math works next Tuesday. If a rune weapon hits the table, the campaign just grew a new problem, and everybody at the table can feel it. When people say ...
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