Play the Games You Already Own

I went quiet after January. The last three posts sat there like an unfinished melee: Palladium Fantasy as pure fun, Palladium as DIY world simulation, and Rifts as space opera, part one. Then life did what life does. The books did not leave the shelf. The Megaverse did not shrink. I just stopped typing.

That is a bad habit for a blog. It is a fine habit for a game.

Because that is the whole argument I was making before I vanished. Palladium does not need a live-service drip of new subclasses, nine more fire spells, and another pile of magic junk to stay playable. The power is already in the character. The world is already in the core book plus the two or three sourcebooks that match the campaign you actually want. You do not have to wait for a new release, a new app, or a new excuse.

So this is the restart post. Short. Useful. No apology tour.

Pick a shelf, not a catalog.

If you came here for the SDC games, start there. That is still the heart of this blog.

Palladium Fantasy does not care if you have not bought a book since 1998. A knight, a longbowman, a witch, and a thief can carry a campaign if you decide what the campaign is about first. Court intrigue in a border kingdom. A merchant house trying to keep a road open. A low-magic gladiatorial circuit where rune weapons are rumors, not loot tables. Take away the magic items and the characters are still the characters. That was the point in January, and it is still true in September.

Heroes Unlimited still has the best alignment system in superhero gaming. The difference between a hero and a murder hobo with laser eyes is not a power set. It is a code. If your table has drifted into "the monster is the victim, and the city is just a dungeon with better lighting," put HU back on the table and make alignment matter again.

Ninjas & Superspies still does the thing almost nobody else does well: occupations that live in the real world. Martial artist, spy, gimmick agent, private eye. Not dungeon classes wearing trench coats. If your next game is a city, a conspiracy, and a fight in an alley instead of a 40-foot corridor, this is the book.

Beyond the Supernatural, Nightbane, Dead Reign, TMNT, After the Bomb. You already know the pitch. Investigators. Nightmares with a human face. Zombies that drain life instead of spreading a video-game plague. Mutant animals who are funny until they are not. These are complete games. They do not need Rifts to justify existing.

If you came here for Rifts, the unfinished thought is still sitting there.

Phase World is still the best way to run Rifts as space opera. Ignore Earth. Use Center as the hub. Keep MDC as the default. Build a marooned-on-a-nexus-world start if the Three Galaxies feel too big on night one. Dinosaurs optional, but recommended. Stars Without Number tables to sketch nearby systems, then put the Rifts flavor back on top. Part two was always supposed to be campaign frames: tramp freighter, mercenary fleet, dimensional skip-tracers, and the "we stole a Splugorth slave barge, and now everyone wants us dead" game. That post will come. The books did not expire while I was gone.

The only rule that matters when you come back.

Decide what the game is about before you roll attributes.

Unlike 5E, the rules and character builds are not why we play the game. The story is, and that is the most important thing at the table. 5E trains you to treat the session as a build showcase: the subclass, the feat stack, the spell list, the item slots. Palladium does the opposite. Occupations, skills, and alignments exist so the character can walk into a story and matter. If the night is remembered for a ruling, a sacrifice, a stupid plan that worked, or a banquet that went sideways, the game did its job. Nobody is going to quote your skill percentages at the funeral.

Palladium will not tell you what the story is. That is not a flaw. Dungeon-first games tell you because they have already decided you are crawling a hole. World-first games make you choose: war, trade, investigation, survival, politics, monster hunting, space piracy, street-level heroics. Once you choose, the "trap classes" stop being traps. The bard is not bad. The bard is wasted in a five-room dungeon and lethal at a banquet. The noble is not a joke OCC. The noble is the campaign if the campaign is land, fealty, and who gets to hang whom.

That is DIY gaming. Core book. A handful of expansions. Rulings over a thousand-page minigame for apple-pie eating contests. Quality, not quantity. The build is a tool. The story is the point.

I am back. The next posts will be short, specific, and aimed at the table: a Fantasy campaign frame, a Heroes Unlimited city start, that space-opera part two, and more GM toolbox pieces like the Land of the Damned monster generator.

If you have been sitting on a Palladium book since the last time I posted, blow the dust off it this weekend. You do not need the rest of the catalog. You need a focus, four characters, and a reason they are in the same room. The rules will hold. The story is what you came for.

That has always been enough.