Narrative Warfare: Any Game Derivative Of D&D Will Work Better If Played Like Real D&D

To no one's surprise, Palladium entire product line readily conforms to the True Campaign model. This is because (with the exception of RECON), all other Palladium RPGs are derivative on Kevin tinkering with Gary's ruleset because he didn't like or grok what Gary was doing. This is how The Mechanoids and The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game came about.

This means that you can crack open your AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and use its systems for things like overland movement without issue because Kevin never took the time to make his own. He presumes familiarity with D&D and its norms, and he has done so for all of Palladium's existence. You can use this with any Palladium game without issue once you convert Real World movement ratings (MPH, etc.) into something useful mechanicaly.

This means that you can implement Patrons without any issue whatsoever, even for RIFTS or Splicers, and your campaign will immediately benefit from doing so as it takes so much off your shoulders as well as allows the full scope of a setting to come into view immediately.

The tricky part is going Rules As Written because, again, the technical writing is not good. There are plenty of outright contradictions, and other inconsistencies, that appear in the manuals that need to be resolved and settled or you are going to lose precious time over arguments and other disputes. Like it or not, you're going to have to address them, so do it before you launch so that everyone knows where they stand and aren't guessing or making errant presumptions.

What benefits does this have?

The entire setting immediately opens up. Because you are not tied to One True Party, your table sessions can swap drastically from one to the next. This week it's Skull Company being deployed into the Magic Zone to raid a sorceror's tower in the run-up to the Siege on Tolkeen, and in their downtime afterwords you move over to Center where a Patron's actions therein open up an opportunity for some intrigue to go down and some enterprising freelancers to benefit from it, and the week after that another Patron's plan to begin building up a Denied Area against some space empire concludes so word goes out to mercenaries looking for work to go there for contract tenders.

And you, Mr. GM, need only worry about what's at your table that week. The Patrons, in their email/text correspondance, handle the rest. They're doing Braunstein-style play that generates playable scenarios for the table sessions, which those same players as well as others can participate in at their leisure with whichever characters can be made available- and given RIFTS that can be far more than it seems.

This same dynamic applies to After The Bomb, Heroes Unlimited, and even RECON--especially RECON--so don't confine your thinking to Swords & Sorcery. Even Palladium's now-defunct licensed adaptations of Robotech and Macross II work fantastic in this manner.

"Wait. Even Robotech?"

Yes. Come back tomorrow for more.