I have similarly basic needs, and I stopped distro-hopping when I found Q4OS a few years ago. It seems to run well on most hardware and, while I can't speak as to how well-supported it is in German, its community is based in Germany.
That Jerboa doesn't allow blocking of instances is a massive red flag. Users need to insist on that functionality and switch to a new app if they don't get it.
It makes violence less fun to play than the alternatives; combat is bullet-time; skill use is a montage. That said, it's not overtly anti-violence, allowing players to figure out that fighting isn't the best approach (or not, if they actually like bullet-time battles).
It rewards experience for solving problems, rather than racking up kills. Modern gaming is too corrupted by the reductive influence of video games and the market-driven need to minimize GM workload to ever really break it of this.
It encourages groups to develop house rules by making changes to the "RAW" only very gradually, instead of constantly reinventing the rules.
From the back of the book: Intelligent life is ancient in this universe. Before the Earth and the Sun congealed out of space dust, there were races travelling between the stars in shining ships. Living beings heard the echoes of the Big Bang reverberate off the cosmic spheres. Alien voices sang as ...
>chaos through warfare evolution through bloodshed perfection through victory
Big Foam Dice
I can recommend these, but I'm frustrated that there aren't more options for big polyhedral dice suitable for outdoor play. Does anybody know of other options?
Astral Fantasy
Itch page A free turn-based space shooter, created as a thought-experiment in clashing genres.
I'm here to try to catch the podcast-driven wave of renewed interest in RIFTS to get more people into Palladium-style gaming (the system is broken so you can fix it to your liking).
If you want to recapture the feel of early D&D, ShadowDark (quickstart book) looks like it's going to be pretty good. The simple tweaks to the current game make a big difference, and the artwork is spot-on. This is the image grabbed my attention when I fist saw it (and realized it was new).
Dave Trampier is the most obvious influence, but the art also reminds me of Garry Chalk's illustrations for Joe Dever's Lone Wolf books and the early editions of Talisman. Now that I mention them, Lone Wolf game books and the original Talisman board games are worth familiarizing yourself with if you really want to get into the old-school experience...
Are there any other In Nomine conversions?
Angels Are Real So are demons. They're among us right now. Heaven and Hell are locked in a battle, and humanity is caught in the crossfire. This is the GURPS adaptation of In Nomine, the award-winning game of the war between Heaven and Hell. Players can take the part of angels, serving an Archangel ...
There's the linked GURPS conversion, and I found a FATE conversion, but does anyone know of any others?
(Rockers' thread) - Why play using Palladium's rules?
There are probably as many takes on this as there are Palladium gamers, but here's mine (spoiler):
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Palladium's rules discourage the types of problem-solving conflict resolution that games like D&D require, but they do so (and this is important) without explicitly saying so.
There are plenty of alternative systems that go out of their way to de-emphasize the things that make D&D what it is. Some of them are even fun, worthy games in the niche they represent. But many of them (especially the more fashionable ones) are extremely preachy about it. By contrast, Palladium presents itself in very much the same way as D&D (you play heroes who fight bad guys, etc.) while using different game mechanics.
Most of the hate Palladium gets from RPG reviewers online arises from this. The reviewers who are into min-max-crunch can't understand why Palladium hasn't streamlined its combat rules, balanced its classes, and otherwise tried to do everything that D&D has tried to do with its endless revisions. The reviewers who like fluff want to be preached at about "immersive storytelling" (and, though they'd be loathe to admit it, how playing that game instead of D&D will get them laid). Because Palladium fails to give either side what they want, it gets smeared as slow and clunky by min-max-crunch nerds, and as neck-beardy and cringe-inducing by vampire-fetish drama geeks.
To really get what sets Palladium apart, in my opinion, requires looking at the table for rewarding experience. Most of what's on there is about making plans, solving problems, and putting others before yourself. There's even an explicit reward for "Avoiding unnecessary violence."
By itself, that's not that unusual; lots of games (other than D&D) emphasize non-violence. The real difference is in Palladium's treatment of the very thing that those experience rules discourage, dedicating a massive portion of its rules to an extremely fine-grained bullet-time treatment of combat. Min-max-crunch nerds hate this, and the Palladium system by extension, because it makes combat less fun. Vampire-fetish drama geeks hate it because it doesn't provide detailed systems for the non-combat things they want to focus on.
But that is exactly the point. Combat is meant to be less fun than sneaking around, using wits and skills, and solving problems in less-obvious ways than kicking in the door. That being said, combat remains the focus of the mechanical rules, because to shift focus off violence would not only be counter-productively preachy, it would also encourage a min-max mindset with regard to whatever the rules shifted to emphasize instead. ___ ___ ___
Mutants in Orbit / Turtle Prime / Ghost Ship
"Mutants in Orbit is a Palladium Books Adventure and sourcebook for After the Bomb & Rifts developed by James Wallis and Kevin Siembieda. The original copyright came into existence in 1988 and is owned by Kevin Siembieda. The book deals with life of the space colonies After the Bomb. The se...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the pre-2000 Megaverse, which can no longer be supported by Palladium Books because it included the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Mutants in Orbit is the only RIFTS book that still references TMNT and hasn't been updated, so it makes a certain amount of sense to say that orbit is the only canon place where the Megaverse retains a connection to Turtle Prime's future. This is convenient because the other big license Palladium can no longer support (Robotech) also has a lot going on there; the debris field from the Ghost Ship adventure works well as The Graveyard from Mutants in Orbit, and the destruction of Dolza's fleet by the SDF-1 could have created all sorts of dimensional havoc in Earth orbit.
Anyway, if you’ve played any of these old games or are interested in learning about them, drop a simple post here.
(Krugatch thread) - Turtle Prime and the Megaverse
Palladium Books formally announced the loss of the licensing rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in issue 9 of The Rifter and had to sell off or destroy their entire stock of Ninja Turtles book by the end of that year. Nine years later, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle "canon" was solidified by the TV Movie Turtles Forever, which establishes that the universe of the gritty black-and-white original comics (which is part of, or at least very close to, the Palladium Megaverse as it existed through 1999) is "Turtle Prime," a sort of hub from which extends an entire Turtle-verse,** containing ALL iterations of TMNT.
Back in 2000, Palladium published the first major update (as opposed to expansion) of RIFTS earth, the Seige on Tolkeen series, changing the aesthetics and landscape detailed in the original core book considerably. In 2005, they published RIFTS Ulitmate Edition, and eventually republished the early RIFTS books to expunge any mention of TMNT.
So is Turtle Prime still connected to the Megaverse? Most of the RIFTS books that mentioned TMNT have been republished, but the one exception I know of is Mutants in Orbit, which details near outer space for both the After the Bomb universe (the canon future of Palladium TMNT aka Turtle Prime), and the RIFTS universe before Tolkeen's destruction.
** If this sounds familiar, it's because Marvel totally ripped off the idea for Into the Spiderverse. But that is perhaps fitting, as Spiderman-adjacent comics (Daredevil specifically) spawned the entire Marvel "Iron Age" that TMNT was developed for in the first place, and was rejected from as "too weird." Because they went out on their own, they developed and licensed their own original RPG to get added distribution in hobby stores. That, in turn, gave them the nerdy "street cred" that made TMNT seem edgy and cool to little kids, and that popularity turned TMNT into the entertainment juggernaut it remains to this day.
Various post-apocalyptic RPGs
" "After The Bomb is a role-playing game published by Palladium Books in 2001. It uses the Palladium's Megaversal system, and features mutant animals, anthropomorphic or otherwise, in a post-apocalyptic setting. The storyline of After The Bomb introduces a post-apocalyptic setting, center...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the current no-ninja-turtles-allowed version of After the Bomb, Splicers, Rifts: Chaos Earth and/or Systems Failure. Each of these games involves some sort of end-of-the-world scenario that can't be part of RIFTS for some reason.
If you’ve played any of those games or are interested in learning about them, drop a simple post here.
Palladium Fantasy (current version)
A massive core rule book and campaign world setting for an original High Fantasy RPG. The 336pg softback book is packed with densely written, highly detailed information for a complex world of combat, magic, gods, demons, wolves and everything you could possibly need. Experienced D&D players wil...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the current version of Palladium Fantasy, which is both a game and a setting in the same vein as "normal" D&D.
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.
Heroes Unlimited (current version)
From publisher blurb: There has never been a single superhero RPG book, like Heroes Unlimited, that enables players to create virtually every type of hero imaginable ... Mutants, superhumans, alien visitors, super-sleuths, weapon masters, cyborgs, robots, psychics, masters of the mystic arts, super...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the current version of Heroes Unlimited, Palladium's four-color-comic-book-superhero game.
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.
Rifts
Rifts is a multi-genre role-playing game that captures the imagination unlike any other. Elements of magic, horror, and the supernatural co-exist with science, high technology and the ordinary. The game spans countless dimensions, making anything and everything possible.
RIFTS? Never heard of it... ____________________________________________________________________________________ (Just kidding. Sound off here with a post if RIFTS is your jam, you filthy casuals...)
For those who don't know, RIFTS was the game that was such a hit in the 90's that it kept Palladium on life support for the next twenty-five D&D-dominated years, and was even optioned for a movie (and then discarded into development hell as a cashed-in bargaining chip in their strategy to get a better price for the rights to the Transformers franchise. But still, a Hollywood movie! That's never worked out horribly for the RPG in the past except for every single other time it's happened...)
¯\\\(ツ)\/¯
From the back of the book: The dead have risen and it would seem to be the end of the world. Civilization crubmles in a matter of days as hundreds of millions of people die and rise as the walking dead. The hundreds of millions of people who fall to the zombies also rise to join the growing legio...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in Dead Reign, Palladium's unique take on the zombie apocalypse.
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.
Publisher blurb: China as you never envisioned it! Ancient magic, martial arts masters, supernatural predators, and the dark underworld of mystic China as you have never dreamed. Highlights Include: 14 new classes of Chinese Martial arts. Mudra - The power to deflect any attack. More ...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in Mystic China, Ninjas & Superspies, and Beyond the Supernatural. I'm not creating threads for the latter two games because Mystic China is an RPG masterpiece that no fan of the Megaverse should remain unfamiliar with.
If you’ve played any of those games or are interested in learning about them, drop a simple post here.
Amber Diceless
AMBER Diceless Role-Playing is a system set in, and designed around Roger Zelazny's Amber universe. It features a unique (for its time) diceless resolution system; and a attribute auction character creation system. Many aspects of the system are designed to replicate aspects of the Amber books.
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in Amber Diceless, which was the creation of a long-time Palladium Books contributor, the late, great Erick Wujcik. Although it does not use the Palladium rules, its nature and theme are highly germaine to the Megaverse concept, and can be run seamlessly over the top of just about any TTRPG.
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.
From the back cover: The Primal Order(TM) reigns supreme. Also known as TPO, The Primal Order is the premeire resource for using religions and deities effectively and creatively in roleplaying games. Explore how deities gain power, learn why they need worshipers and temples, discover why they provi...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the The Primal Order, the first printing of which included rules that Palladium Books claimed it owned in a lawsuit back in the 90's.**
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.
It looked like this:
** inadvertently leading to the creation of a hobby gaming company so rich that, when the publisher of the world's largest TTRPG went out of business about a decade later, they simply bought it, hired top talent to revise it, and published it under an intentionally perpetual and non-deauthorizable Open Gaming License so that anybody who had a mind to could publish material for it, FOREVER. Today, just about everybody plays or has played that game or one of its offshoots, and only a few grognards even remember Palladium.
(Krugatch thread) - a quick parable about TTRPGs in the 90's
Back in the day (and even now), Palladium Books was known in the industry as a difficult company. In particular, they had a reputation for being extremely litigious and protective of their copyrights. On one occasion, they sued a then-obscure game publisher for The Primal Order, a neat little roleplaying game about gods and religions that included conversion rules for Palladium's own game system. Despite the fact that game rules are not, in fact, subject to copyright at all, the expensive settlement of this lawsuit nearly forced that publisher into bankruptcy, forcing its owner to switch his efforts into putting out a new game that could make lots and lots of money. Palladium won the battle and received its pound of flesh, but the publisher, owner, and new game were Wizards of the Coast, Peter Adkison, and Magic: The Gathering. The rest, as they say, is (obscure) history (for nerds).
So why Krugatch? The Krugatch are a made-up faction of alien-lovers, splintered from the Invid-beaten remnants of the made-up EBSIS communist super-state, in a game based on an anime that had nothing to do with Macross but got squashed together with it to create Robotech, an intellectual property that Palladium is no longer allowed to publish. Does Palladium Books "own" Krugatch? Capitalist boot-lickers would say "yes, of course, intellectual property, blah blah blah."
But this is the Federated frontier; out here, Krugatch has no owner.
So this (and future Krugatch threads) are for ribs and rants against Palladium Books from we who still love and play their games anyway, regardless of who has what licensing deal, who's allowed to publish what about which intellectual property, and all that other bourgeois hogwash that gets in the way of creativity and fun.
Nightspawn
From the publisher: The world has never quite been the same since Dark Day. The day there was no sun rise - no moon or stars for that matter - only absolute darkness and hysteria. It is your seventeenth birthday when "The Becoming" changes your life and your world view forever. That was ...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the Nightspawn, which is still supported by Palladium Books, but is now called Nightbane...
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.
Robotech (revised)
Robotech pen-and-paper role-playing games, based on the Robotech and Sentinels series, were published by Palladium Books from 1986 to 2001. A new revised line began in 2008 with a role-playing game based on Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. Source: Wikipedia, "Robotech (role-playing game)"...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in later versions of games based on Macross and Robotech, including the Robotech RPG Tactics tactical miniatures game, none of which are any longer supported by Palladium Books.
If you’ve played one of these game or are interested in learning about them, drop a simple post here.
Robotech (OG)
" "Robotech pen-and-paper role-playing games, based on the Robotech and Sentinels series, were published by Palladium Books from 1986 to 2001. A new revised line began in 2008 with a role-playing game based on Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles."" Source: Wikipedia, "Robotech_...
This is the sound-off thread for anyone interested in the Robotech original game, which is no longer supported by Palladium Books.
If you’ve played the game or are interested in learning about it, drop a simple post here.