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.
Oh my gosh. I forgot that Palladium doesn't have overland travel rules. Not a significant element of GURPS, either. That's kind of bizarre when you think about it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it is. There's a lot of little things like that out there, which we've been long accustomed to ignoring, but we never should have and should stop ignoring now.
Delete"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."
ReplyDeleteGame design is a skill and no one really gets it 100% right the first time. There are more games then people think that actually do need a solid 2nd edition. - that doesn't mean a clean-sheet redesign, but errata and known issues do build up.
IMO this is why any game designer worth their salt wants people to play their game RAW.
It forces them to recognize and fix design shortcomings. This is all too often deal with via hanwavium by RPG developers unless something is completely game-breakingly broken.
The whole "rulings not rules" claptrap pushed by Wokeosos of the Coast is part of the problem. Because without clear and consistent rules as the foundation of game play, GM's cannot be expected to make clear and consistent rulings for outlier situations.
Were you referring to AD&D rules having problems or Palladium?
ReplyDeleteI'm a rules cyclopedia guy because we can take turns dming and it's complete as I need it to be. However, I always liked the Palladium art. I never tried the games themselves, no money back in the day.
Palladium, specifically.
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