The Business: How Can Palladium Do Better?

(Following through on yesterday's post.)

How can Palladium make better products?

Let's get the first objection out of the way: Yes, Palladium MUST make better products. This is not 1990; Conventional Play, Cargo Cult Play, is done BETTER by videogames ACROSS THE BOARD.

That's just Rogue Trader. Baldur's Gate 3 is another videogame that can wholly replace tabletop gaming for most prospective players doing Conventional Play; no DM fuckery, no scheduling, nothing right out of Neckbeardia videos about social retardation at the table or other anti-social faggotry, and no pressure to perform because you're not playing in a team- you are in command or on your own. Divinity, Grim Dawn, Wasteland- all are preferable to Conventional Play for most prospects.

Palladium Books is the oldest surviving Conventional Play publisher.

Palladium Books survives because of its sizzle, not its substance- and certainly not the substance of its gameplay design (which does not exist).

Once Kevin is gone, assuming Palladium outlives him, the Boomerism that Kevin embodies will go with him. Whomever aims to succeed Kevin had better be preparing now to enact a plan to change Palladium's products into something that does not compare against videogame alternatives (e.g. Wasteland vs. RIFTS) and lose- as they currently do.

Which means that there is one path open to Palladium.

Accepting The Inevitable

Palladium Books is in the business of publishing fantastic adventure wargames. The problem? There is no wargame. There is, instead, a Silver Age Comic Book sensibility that lubricates a set of rules more barebones than a Vampire LARP.

Therefore, the first step is to strip out all of the fluff, the sizzle, the stuff that sells the products and look at what poor excuse for a technical manual--a user manual--there is for this company's products.

There's more meat on the bones of those rescued from German camps than there is in this ruleset.

Therefore, we start here: making a wargame.

We determine how fast a common man can move, how much punishment he can take, how much he can deal out (and how), and how resilient he is under pressure. Movement, Damage, Morale- respectively.

Then we add gear. Not fantastic gear. Not complex gear. We're talking basic gear, and working our way up. We want our play to go fast, to produce decisive results fast, and to properly simulate (as best a tabletop medium will allow) how real interactions of that sort work.

We slowly increase our technological prowess up through from Stone to Bronze to Iron to Steel. We add thrown, then assisted (i.e. atalatils), then launched (slings, bows, crossbows), then fired (firearms) before speculating on pew-pew options.

This is a slow process. You might as well start now, and by that I mean "Review, in detail, all 50ish years of product development across the board; find the winners, toss the losers, and assemble the winners on a virtual tool table."

Then you will design your wargame. Man-to-man first, then ensure that it (a) scales up by number without getting unwieldy (AD&D1e succeeds at this, among others), or without going unusable with greater technological (or otherworldly) options (i.e. tanks, mecha, spells, monsters, space battleships, etc.- something Dream Pod 9 figured out, among others).

You have NO SETTINGS at this time. Leave what exists be; you'll come back to them later.

As Palladium's core product identity is Man To Man, start there; it will be easier to scale up than down, and you'll have more testers.

And you need testers. People need to get your playtest documents, use them where you can see them (i.e. at conventions), and provide user feedback; they can't give useful solutions, but they will identify problems.

It's Not Just Roll To Strike

The system has to (a) move fast, (b) scale up, and (c) handle modular complexity and (d) possess sufficient procedural generation tools so that Solo Play is viable.

This is why you start with a totally mundame adventure situation: a man, no powers, in an adversarial situation in the wild- a Tarzan or El Borak situation.

Your reforms must do the following:

• Skills: What, specifically, do they represent? When, specifically, do you roll a check? (Neither are answered as things are, leading to pointless arguments.)
• Stats: Clean this mess up; normalize determination (with racial stat requirements just like Occupations), put ALL the info IN THE CHART, and ensure that both high and low scores are there (and smooth out the curve.)
• Damage/Healing: Dump SDC. You're not HERO; you don't need STUN. Clean up the Saving Throw categories and put them in a chart, not bury them in a bunch of combat miscellany.
• Occupations: TAKE A CLEAVER TO THEM! You have THREE: Warrior, Magician, Adventurer. All of those massive Occupations are just variations or remixes of those three by definition and admission. You can use the Skill list, Power access, etc. to replicate ANY of them- and putting Stat requirements on some options replicates the goal of those Occupation options without needing to add more at the Class level.
• Powers: Added once the mundane foundation is tested and found to be up to specifications.
• Gear: Same, though more frequently and in smaller increments.
• Scaling: The same framework that is made for a man scales up to groups and institutions, allowing not only for skirmishes and pitched battles between armies or navies, but full on Total War between trans-galactic empires- including their supernatural patrons.

We'll continue this over the week.