Life in the Megaverse

Here is an excellent tool for your GM's Toolbox, the Palladium Fantasy book Land of the Damned One Chaos Lands has one of the best random monster generators for any Palladium Game, sitting right there on pages 108-121. This can be used for both SDC and MDC games; just say it is, and it will quickly create a random monster for your game. These are primarily for Palladium Fantasy , but nothing is stopping you from using them for all your other games! These are mainly intended for the random things crawling around the Chaos Lands, but they work just as well for any random creature you may need crawling around a dungeon. Just roll it up, flavor it as an undead, slime creature, minor demon, impling, animal, creature of magic, chaos beast, or any other random monster you may need to fill out an encounter. This is especially useful for Beyond the Supernatural and for making random creatures, either as boss monsters or those random things that skitter through alleyways. You could use the...

I hope you got everything you wanted under your Rifts-mas tree this year: all the excellent books and games in this system, the worlds we create, and, most importantly, the games we play together! This year, I got a bunch of Rifts books to complete my collection that I started back in 1990, and the people in the Palladium warehouse were probably overjoyed to ship these massive orders to me. I was just as happy to get them and finally have a complete collection of Rifts books (minus the Rifter, which I have in PDF). It feels good, and this is the best Riftsmas that I have ever had! And supporting such a great company, and one of the oldest non-D&D roleplaying games out there, is a plus too. Palladium is a treasure of the hobby and a pioneer in many areas. Please keep making great books, and I can do my part here on my blog to spread the joy of these great games. I started my journey with Palladium back in college, in the 1990s, when I worked in the university computer lab as a tutor...

The first Rifts book was always a special part of my game collection. This is a book I could open that unlocks infinite possibilities and adventures. I have only felt that with a handful of games over the last few decades. The original BX red and cyan D&D books were one. Star Frontiers was another. The original Vampire: The Masquerade was another. These are special games where once you crack open the book, you enter another world. Rifts feels awesome. It is a cultural milestone and an equal of any comic-book universe. This carried science fiction gaming through the 1990s, with Star Wars d6 on the other side. Traveller was floundering with Megatraveller. Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Star Trek roleplaying, and Space Opera were mainly dead. Battletech held its own, but more as a tabletop game. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk were technically science fiction, but still very close to today. There was also Space Master, and GURPS did science fiction. But Rifts captured imaginations. I could open...

It is not a Palladium Megaverse game, but Recon won our hearts in the 1980s when Rambo was playing at the movie theater, Chuck Norris was saving the PoWs, Tour of Duty was on the television, and the Vietnam War was the stain on a country's consciousness, and the loss of innocence for a nation in the free love 1960s. The Vietnam War ended the science fiction future we were promised in the 1950s. It ended with a hedonistic, jaded, and drug-addled discotheque nation in the 1970s, lost in a malaise and gripped by inflation and an oil crisis. And a role-playing game trapped in the jungles of Southeast Asia about one of the darkest periods of modern history seems almost obscene and too controversial. Yet, here it is, honoring those who served. We got this game early, and while we never played a whole campaign, we played the system for a few one-shots and enjoyed the authenticity and design of this fantastic book. Recon is a true beer-and-pretzels RPG, one you crack open, design some char...

It is like Terminator, but with a nano-metal plague that attaches itself to humans and infects all metal we touch, and turns it into killer robots. To fight it, humanity engineers bioengineered MDC weapons and armor from bone, flesh, coral, and organic materials. Humans cannot get rid of the nano-bots in their systems and the world; they need to exist around them. All metal is death to the touch. So it is humans in bio-war-suits versus nano-bots and giant robots. Do you want to play an armored suit jockey who rides around in a naga-shaped snake-like armored suit with two plasma cannons for arms? I can't think of another roleplaying game that lets you do this, and Splicers is the only one. This is one of the most imaginative non-Rifts settings Palladium Books has ever put out, and it is cool in ways I did not expect. You can be a flesh-meled supersoldier. You can be a samurai-like Dreadmaster in some of the most powerful bio-armor ever constructed. You can be a zombie-like Scarecrow...

It's like Rifts, but you play the good guys. Rifts Chaos Earth is a fascinating game. This is an alternate timeline game set way before the current year Rifts, yet still compatible with most of the game. You are the "Earth Defence Force" or NEMA, and you go around doing heroic things in a newly ruined world. You get to meet the Dee-Bees, users of magic, and aliens for the first time and decide how first contact goes. There is no Coalition to step all over you. You need to protect and serve the innocent SDC populations of the world. And there is no set timeline you need to follow; you can pull in things from Rifts, but nothing that depends on that timeline. For example, there is no Coalition, so you will never use those soldiers, mechs, suits, or tech. There could be places like Atlantis or Phase World. There are MDC demons. It is primarily up to you what you want to pull in, and this being Rifts, you could rift in something that is not supposed to be there, and cause a lo...

The idea of Palladium Books putting out a zombie RPG is a fascinating one. This one I have never played, but I love this game and its punk, street, grunge-infused, almost street-art style. The art in here is beautiful and hovers on the edge of counter-culture, mixed with the classic Palladium line art. Where other zombie RPGs tend go with boring zombies, Dead Reign treats zombies as a world of possibilities, offering a variety of walking, crawling, running, and talking dead that amazes me. These are the best zombie designs in gaming: imaginative, fresh, cool, and you never know what to expect next. This is also not a "zombie virus," so there is no infection mechanic for getting wounded. This is also not a "chemical zombie," so exposure to a toxin does not create them. The zombies seek life force, draining PPE and giving them a metaphysical element. This is another fresh take on the genre I like, and it makes zombies less dangerous as infectious agents and more harmf...

If Beyond the Supernatural is Palladium's answer to Call of Cthulhu, Nightbane is the answer to Vampire: The Masquerade and the White Wolf universe of the 1990s. Instead of being a vampire or werewolf, which were fun in their own right, you can be anything in this game. Anything wild, vampires and werewolves included, but you could have a typewriter for a head, guns for arms, a minotaur, a snake-erson, or be a fictional character, some pernament space man with a rodent head, anything. You have a human side to you, and then a nightmare form. It is never clear which side is the "real you" - your human (facade) side or your your morphus. Your origin is "just out of highschool or college" so your training is limited. Your morphus side has supernatural strength, and can likely punch through doors and do all sorts of cool feats. Psychics also walk in the worlds of Nightbane, so things are a bit mixed up. You could totally make vampires, werewolves, fae, demons, ghosts...

I never got into Beyond the Supernatural as deeply as I wanted, but I always loved this game. This is an X-Files meets Call of Cthulhu meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Ghostbusters sort of game, where the big bad guys are: Spirits, Ghosts, and Wicked Folklore Supernatural Monsters Demonic Servants Ancient Evils Alien Intelligences And the wickedness of humankind. This is a solid setup for supernatural investigators against the world. This was first published in 1988 and had a second edition in 2005, so, being rooted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it feels right for the genre. Call of Cthulhu had "modern play options," but the monsters were, for the most part, Lovecraftian. They had classic horror monsters in CoC and supported those, but BtS leaned hard into the "everything else" category and brought that SDC and Palladium charm to the table. Unlike Call of Cthulhu, you have powerful psychics and psychic mechanics on your side, wielding a full array of psychi...

I still have my original TNMT books! When I saw they were bringing this game back, I jumped at it, and I am happy I did. The new books are full-color, beautiful, and exactly what I wanted. The rules are NOT updated to current Palladium 2017 standards, which I am fine with, since nostalgia and memories for games like this are more important than having everything perfectly up to date. This is precisely "how we played it," and if I wanted to update it using the new rules in Rifts Ultimate, it would be easy enough. The most significant difference is in the number of attacks per melee round, using the "two attacks for living" standard, as discussed in an earlier article. This results in fewer attacks overall, which is fine since the game feels closer to the original Palladium games of the time, and it is easier for younger players to grasp with fewer choices per turn. The book is full color, with all the art colored in, which is just fantastic. The paper quality is high...

We played Marvel Superheroes and DC Heroes in the 1980s, but we had this game and played it alongside TNMT. While all the Marvel heroes with character stats kept us in that game, Heroes Unlimited was the better superhero RPG. The powers could do more than just generic attacks; the descriptions were far better, and the system had this grit and street-level feeling that hit the "superhero sweet spot" we loved. The Palladium alignment system also makes this game soar. The comic-book codes of conduct and morality are definitely what is missing from many superhero role-playing games. The only difference between heroes and villains is alignment, and Palladium has the best alignment system in gaming, hands down. Other superhero games? They are basically "murder hobos with superpowers." Sadly, with newer fantasy games removing alignment, there are no limits to how terrible characters can act, and murder-hobo-ing is now a feature. Monsters are now victims. Everything is misu...

I love this game. This game replaces the original Top Secret from TSR for me, and it does everything I wanted that game to do. We have super spies, cybernetics, vehicle combat, vehicle modification, gadgets, spy agencies, and more martial arts than you can throw a kendo stick at. The skill list is deep and enhances role-playing far more than many other spy games could ever dream of doing. The melee combat is some of the best in old-school gaming. The game set out to be the be-all and end-all of spy and martial art role-playing games of the mid-1980s, and it did just that. Yes, the game is stuck in the 1980s, but who wouldn't want to be? Take me back. The game is so good, I have a Spotify playlist for it, and the music is just as good as the game. I still play Ninjas & Superspies; it is like a tightly put-together Super Nintendo game, but for pen-and-paper, instantly replayable, and I could pick this up at any time and have fun. It does outdo Top Secret, one of its peers. The ch...

After TNMT (and Ninjas & Superspies), our third Palladium game was the Palladium Fantasy RPG. By this point, I was hooked on the system, and nothing would save me from the Rifts book, which was next on my to-get list. Palladium Fantasy gets fantasy right. I love how it builds a world, fills it with classes, introduces widely varying balance levels in the classes, and sets you free. I love the skill-based characters and the different fighting styles. I love mixing martial arts into this world. The magic systems are superior to D&D and much more mysterious and arcane. No two casters are alike, or pull from the same spell lists. A warlock-style character in Palladium is a true warlock, not a D&D caster who "uses a different chart, needs frequent rests, and uses the same spell list." D&D is the perfect game for fitting round pegs into square holes, and it optimizes and simplifies far too much for its own good. All the flavor and mystery of magic is gone, and it si...

"Fantasy Heroes  This is an option similar to the Medieval Heroes setting mentioned previously, but instead of being set within a historical Earth time frame, it is set in a world of fantasy, magic, and legend, such as the one presented in The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, 2nd Edition . In this setting, dragons and magic are very real and the characters mesh easily into it with their super powers, psionics, and other strange abilities. The G.M. can make super abilities available to all inhabitants of this world, or have the player characters belong to one particular race or class of people that demonstrates these powers."  - Heroes Unlimited GM Guide, page 70. So, I want to be a dragon-man paladin in a fantasy world, have natural body armor, fire breath, a light blast power, extraordinary strength, fire and heat resistance, and karmic power to lead a "blessed by the gods" life where my natural resistances (and those around me) are heightened. He goes around,...

I hear some muttering about Rifts Ultimate Edition not meeting some players' expectations. Most notably: The original book still has a few resources that were dropped in Ultimate, including the Quick Roll Monsters charts and the enemies presented there. Ultimate's organization is confusing for new players. There were a few changes to skills and OCCs. The meta-plot has been updated to the most current point in the timeline. Magic casting times have been changed to make mages more efficient in combat. The Ultimate Edition is enormous and is a lot more to take in. That miniature missile chart in the back, what were they thinking? So, the original book is still the preferred way to start a new campaign for some players, especially those who want to run through the books and play in the official timeline events before the current year. You could play using Ultimate as your core rulebook, and pull in the missing content from the original book. I know I am going to miss that random mo...

Back in the late 1980s, everyone we knew stopped playing AD&D and played GURPS 3rd Edition. Everyone loved how GURPS did everything, and you did not have to learn a new set of rules to play another genre. GURPS killed AD&D for so many of us, and it was then that you began to see AD&D's popularity decline. And then Rifts happened. A lot of those I knew gave up GURPS 3rd Edition for Rifts. And there was a massive crowd from D&D who found Rifts easier than GURPS, which increased the Palladium game's popularity on that side of the hobby, too. It was a little of both, the massive crowd from D&D that played Rifts drew in a lot of GURPS players, and Rifts became an early '90s juggernaut with a ton of MDC and giant hyper-cannons. The influence of anime, the Robo-Tech and TNMT games (welcome back Turtles RPG, mine is in the mail), and the cross-genre nature of Rifts meant that many of us with a half-dozen campaign worlds could cross them all over and play Rifts w...