Life in the Megaverse

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

Heroes Unlimited still has the best alignment system in superhero gaming, and most tables treat it like a box they check to get to the power catalog. I keep doing that myself until the first scene that will not resolve on a blast radius. The powers are the fun part. The code is why the night goes anywhere. You find that out in a place the power list cannot finish. Late news. A high school gym after a game that should have been nothing. The scoreboard is still on. Somebody in the bleachers filmed a kid stop a collapsing bank of lights with his hands. The clip is already circulating. The principal wants the gym cleared and the story to die. A parent wants a name. A coach wants the kid off his roster before morning. The kid is still in the locker room because he does not know which door is safer. Same power. Different night, depending on what they wrote down. Principled walks out and owns it before the clip hardens into a rumor. Scrupulous walks out and then spends the week trying to ...