has anybody here legitimately ran a Palladium (or Rifts) game?

>>48581079
No nobody has. Their entire business is built on curious people buying their books

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The poor layout of the rules as well as the constantly reprinted typos and lack of clarification is probably what turns more people off of Palladium than anything else

I would check out this channel https://www.youtube.com/user/Maloquinn it features one of the writers for Palladium discussing the system interviewing artists and Uncle Kev himself and explaining the rules and going step by step through character creation

This was actually the first fantasy genre RPG I ever ran/played. There's a lot of fun fluff/lore it, and some OK mechanics, but it can be horribly unbalanced, even if you're not trying. I do recommend giving it a try, because it has a different mechanic for just about everything, and it's quite different from many other RPGs.

I played it for about five years, and by the time my group and I were done with it, we had houseruled the shit out of it to make it more balanced and more symmetrical.

The book itself has issues with layout and organization, too.

Some changes that I would suggest to you:

Make all Weapon Proficiencies follow the same pattern.

Make all classes follow the same XP progression.

Introduce a Perception Skill and/or Stat.

One neat thing, though, is that there's a ton of homebrew material for Spells, Classes, and Skills, as well as mechanical fixes, all available online.

It's a very uneven system, but you can absolutely have fun with it.

Ran Robotech for years. Yes, the rules were very confusing compared to other systems. If anyone here bitches about any version of D&D, I instantly know they've never had to do Palladium anything. >_<

>>48581280
Yeah, I really like the setting/fluff. I think I have every Rifts worldbook downloaded and most of the Palladium books downloaded just for the pleasure of reading.

>>48581079
I was a huge Palladium fan as an tween to early teen, a long, long time ago. The ideas it had going on just sent my young mind racing. Mutant animals from TMNT, Romanesque wolf-men from the Fantasy, crazy powers from the heroes game and all of Rifts.

Somewhere a long the line I realized how mediocre the rules are and how awful the balance of the game was. A lot of fun was had at the time, but can't say I could go back.

If I had people into it, I would probably enjoy using the settings with GURPS or something. I'd never use the book rules though.

>>48581427
>I would probably enjoy using the settings with GURPS or something
Well, there is always the Savage Worlds Rifts conversion.

>>48581318
The Savage Lands version of RIFTS dropped a little while back, have you tried that?

>>48581079
Yep but it's been a few years.

>>48581124
Speak for yourself.

I ran a Beyond the Supernatural game back in high school. That was a little over two decades ago. I remember being frustrated by the system.

When I was in high school a few of my friends and I were really into it. Rifts is sort of a mess with all the splatbooks and major power level differences between classes that aren't immediately obvious. First time players are likely going to need a whole session just to roll a character, let alone learn the game. On the other hand, thanks to the setting you can run with any stupid idea you have for an adventure and justify it somehow. If you want to run it, pitch the idea with one of the sourcebooks that can stand alone like Mindwerks, Juicer Uprising, or Federation of Magic.

I preferred their heroes unlimited system though. The book is laid out a bit better in some ways, but can be counter intuitive to anyone that's played most tabletop rp.

>>48581079
I acquired the PalFant core book for all of its many odd subsystems to maybe port into AD&D, but it was already too late. Palladium had already evolved from being an incomprehensible set of house rules for a Gygaxian D&D to being incomprehensible and Gygaxian in their own right. I think only Arduin was less comprehensible.

>>48581826

Honestly making characters in Heroes Unlimited is more fun than I've had playing most games.

>>48581951
We used to trade off GM duties because we got kicks out of rolling up villains in our spare time.

I still buy a gift box from them every christmas even though I haven't played anything other than dark heresy and dnd in the past 7 years.