Life in the Megaverse

The Palladium FRPG is one of gaming's most underrated gems. The advice on role-playing, gaming, and the fantasy genre in general - on what it means to be a player - is second only to Gygax's words in the original AD&D. The book itself reads like a continuation of the ideas presented in the original AD&D, the midwestern wisdom we all crave, what it means to have an alignment, how to play, how to be a hero, this is all amazing, inspirational stuff here. And the combat system is far easier than D&D. Roll a d20, and 4 or less is a miss. Roll between 5 and the armor value, and you hit the armor. Roll over the armor value, and you penetrate the armor and damage the target directly. If the AC system of D&D is a sound combat system, this is a great combat system. You can parry, dodge, or entangle an attack. After damage, if it is a blunt attack, you can try to roll with the impact. The combat is simple, heroic, gritty, has armor damage, and it just works very well. Diff...

I added a group of YouTube search results to the sidebar for various Palladium games and topics. I like listening to these podcasts on my walks, and they help me zone out and focus on the games I love. What has happened to all the Palladium videos? I swear there were a bunch 4-6 years ago, and then most of them disappeared. YouTubers figured out it was more profitable to complain about Wizards and 5E rather than cover the games we love, so all the great Palladium coverage dried up. This is YouTube's massive problem, and the negativity feeds on itself. Even the dedicated D&D YouTubers openly admit "clickbait titles and thumbnails work," and they do it on purpose to game the system, but there is nothing they can do. Wizards, D&D, and their games get all the attention and coverage, and the game everyone wants to hear about gets none. It is a cycle that feeds on itself and poisons the ecosystem. Yes, I want clicks too! But at what cost? If all I am going to do on YouT...

So I asked Google AI the following rules question, which is one I always got wrong: In the Palladium game systems, when did the target number for ranged attacks rise to an 8, and why? Also, how many weapon proficiencies are added to an attack? The highest one, or all of them? Google AI came back with this answer: --- The target number for a standard ranged attack in the Palladium game system was officially updated to 8 or higher in the Rifts Ultimate Edition (published in 2005). This change was part of an effort to standardize the rules across different game lines and make the combat system more consistent and challenging, with melee attacks retaining a target number of 5 or higher.  Weapon Proficiencies and Attack Bonuses When making a ranged attack, you typically add only the relevant Weapon Proficiency (W.P.) bonus to your d20 roll.  Only the single, highest applicable W.P. bonus is added. You do not add bonuses from multiple weapon proficiencies, nor do you add bonuses...

Nightbane has always been an incredible game. This is Palladium's answer to the World of Darkness series, but instead of classic movie monsters providing the character types, it draws on characters and forms from our dreams and nightmares. What comes out is a twisted mishmash of strange characters pulled from fiction, horror, science fiction, body horror, pop culture, classic stories, aliens, demons, nightmares, dreams, fantasies, fantasy fiction, and any other source of hopes, dreams, or fears. Vampires are still a huge theme in this world, though they play a different role, with the classic supernatural creatures serving as targets os the alien threat that secretly took over the world. The game's story is very X-Files in a way, with the world conquered by an alien force from another dimension, a massive Earth-wide blackout happening, and the world now existing in the supposed aftermath and resolution of this gigantic, disruptive, still-unexplained event. Again, this is like ...

I collected about 4 years' worth of my best Palladium articles from the SBRPG blog, ran them through my grammar checker, and reposted them here in a massive collection. This is an excellent start to a game-focused blog, focusing on different Palladium games and serving as a home hub for my thoughts on the games and their worlds. I started Rifts back in the 1990s when it first came out, and I was drawn in right away. There was nothing like this game, and the visuals, books, and covers were mesmerizing. Everything about the game screamed "this was cool" to me, well worth my time, money, and attention, and I loved every book. I have no idea where most of my Rifts books are now, likely in a box somewhere, so I am rebuilding my MDC collection book by book. I have a complete collection of the SDC books I gathered over the Pandemic, and those have never left my gaming shelves. I love the SDC systems on their own, and I keep a separate SDC-only mirror universe on one side of my M...

If your eyes are not what they used to be and you find the downloadable Palladium Fantasy character sheets unusable, this is a great product. You will spend a little time learning how this works, but it is much less time than you would spend working up your own sheet (or struggling with the official ones). The printouts are way more readable than what I can write on those sheets that force you to write in 6-point type in pencil. The only downside is now I want one for the other Palladium games (Ninjas and Superspies, Dead Reign, Heroes Unlimited, etc) besides Palladium Fantasy and Rifts. There is a little room for custom skills and classes in here, so you can customize this sheet for specific characters. It gives you three printable sheets for the character sheet (double-sided), magic (double-sided), and combat (single-sided). The sheet auto-calculates everything, so you don't need to do much math, and you need to follow along with the OCC selections and skill picks with the books ...

So I sat down this weekend to run through a few sample combats using the NPCs from the  Palladium Fantasy Game Masters' Kit , and of course, I was sitting there with my "expert bias" and saying, "I know how this is going to go. I have been playing these games long enough to know how this plays, and I won't be surprised." Well, I was surprised. So on one side was the pre-gen character Haloric, a 3rd-level thief with two daggers and soft leather armor. On the other side, we have Tramon Dess, a 3rd-level assassin with many weapons (military fork, sword, daggers) and studded leader armor. The assassin has the advantage here in a few ways; first off, HTH combat assassin versus the thief's basic. The assassin has far better weapons and armor, along with a +4 bonus to strike with most weapons. This is going to be so one-sided. The thief is likely going to get one hit in. Now, I house-ruled in a fumble on a roll of a 1, and the assassin kept dropping his weapons...

This is a great book. And why play Palladium? The fans are some of the most die-hard and best around. People who don't like it, don't play it (but they complain about it a lot). Those who are left are there for the game. I ran with the  Aftermath  system as our house rules for nearly 10 years for sci-fi, fantasy, and modern games. Palladium and Rifts feel like throwback B/X games in comparison, and plus I played TNMT and Rifts back in the day and loved them. The attack roll and the defender's chance to react are very cool, cinematic, and tense rules for combat. Do they drag out combat? Yes. Are they worth it? Even more so! Very few games can you outclass an opponent in so many ways that make a difference, and a good defense is a viable combat option. Back to the book. Let's take a step back from our journey through Palladium FRPG. Let's open the monster book and check things out. Over 160 pages of illustrated monsters, followed by a further 80 pages of illustrated a...

  They have never reprinted  Palladium RPG Book IV: Adventures in the Northern Wilderness , so if you are looking for a "book 4" for your Palladium FRPG collection, you will find some of the same material in the  Wolfen Empire  book. You can also throw the old "book 5," Further Adventures in the Northern Wilderness, into the Wolfen Empire compilation, so the second edition books have a numbering gap, jumping from 03 to 07. They are leaving those open for a reason, but as far as I know, all 2nd-edition books are still in print. If you want the 1st-edition books to fill the gap, get them in PDF format. It looks like the older 1st edition books were more pure adventure books, while the 2nd Edition books switched to a mixed "rules expansion plus adventure" format. This is a good format change since you are expanding your game with each new 2nd edition book that you add. There is some content found only in first-edition books, as I read, so it is worth having t...

Wait, is this a Rifts book? That cover looks a lot like a Rifts cover to me... In a way, yes, it is for every Palladium game. This one feels like a crossover book with a lot of Rifts information and dual-statted dragons, gods, monsters, and demons of the Palladium universe. If you are strictly playing a Palladium FRPG game, this book is as close to Rifts as you can get. Every god, demon, and dragon in this book knows about the Rifts universe, but they are just a little quiet about it. In my PFRPG universe, everybody knows what happens when they open the door to Rifts. The guy who writes these articles is spending a lot of money on books. And he has forbidden that. For now. Yeah, they listen to me because I buy the shelves around here. If I say I am just playing and collecting JUST the fantasy game, all these aliens, gods, and super-powerful dragons stay quiet. Everything We Didn't Have Room For... ...in the core book. Except for the bards. Later, bards. Why did you leave the dragon...

This one is a must-have. The obvious? Ships, waterborne travel, and ship combat. Mariner, pirate, and sailor character classes. Sea trade rules for running cargo. You get to be a pirate. And if you have the Ninjas & Superspies book, you can have ninjas and pirates fight each other. Great stuff. The not-so-obvious? Bards and entertainers of every type. Jesters and acrobats. Necromancers. Shamans. Gladiators. Rules for changing classes. The elves' night-vision ability was left out of the main rulebook, and a few rules clarifications were provided. You can have a dwarven bagpiper. A juggler who throws knives. A stage magician. An actor and the picture of this class is of a dwarf, so we have a Game of Thrones reference decades ahead of its time. Bards alone make this a must-have, and you have clowns in here as well. Ninjas, pirates, and clowns? That sounds like my first adventuring party. You could build a dungeon adventuring circus out of the classes in this book. Or a circus of e...

There is this paragraph at the beginning of this book, right after describing this world "Old Ones": In the fantasy setting of the Palladium world, magic replaces automatic weapons, nuclear bombs, and biological warfare. It is the great equalizer that can make the poor or the weak as powerful as a king or a dragon. Like any resource, and like the duality of human nature, magic can be used for good or evil. I get the feeling we will see this again. In fact, this is one of the most essential paragraphs in the worldbuilding and the Palladium FRPG game. The fact that we have evil classes in the main book alongside the others is a massive part of this philosophy. Magic is a resource used for good and evil. Any revision to this game needs to keep this central theme, as one of the parts I love about these rules is that it does not judge you. You pick an alignment, and the world is your sandbox. You are not a part of an "adventurer class" of citizens. You select an occupati...