The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 8)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

The 21st Century Palladium Game Business starts with a core technical manual like this:

1. Introduction: "Welcome to (X), The Fantastic Adventure Wargame", where we define this hobby in terms of a wargame with heroic figures- as a medium of agency.
2. How To Play: The Gameplay Paradigm Explained
   1. The Latter-Day Braunstein
   2. Total Player Autonomy
   3. The Referee Is Crom
   4. Players Must Be Active
   5. The Tiers of Action and How They Interact
   6. Timekeeping And Accountability
3. Generating Your Hero: Character Generation
   1. Roll Attributes
   2. Pick Race (if applicable)
   3. Pick Occupation (Skills done here)
   4. Pick Alignment
   5. Pick Powers (Gear, Spells, etc.)
   6. Record Name And Description
4. Pathfinding And Starblazing: Movement, Exploration, Encounters
5. Waging War Great And Small: Combat (from Man To Man to Grand Fleet Action)
6. Death, Dying, And Disease: Injury And Healing
7. Fantastic Powers Revealed: The Core Of How Magic, Psi, Etc. Work
8. Making Your Man Famous: Leveling Up
9. Sieg Mein Kaisar: Faction Play And Integrating It Into Common Action
10. The Grand Campaign: Putting All Of It Together
11. Glossary
12. Appendices
13. Index
14. Afterword
15. Credits

It would be "The Palladium Fantastic Adventure Game" (PFAG), it would be a big book, and it would become the hub product around which all others are spokes connecting to it.

Those second products would be sold as supplements, built to a standard (128 pages, softcover), with the sales end being a two-for-one package. "Buy PFAG and get one (Product Line Manual) of your choice FREE!" The price point for the package would be $40-45; individually bought, you're looking at $60.

As all Palladium products fall under a single unified standard, with complance being checked for as part of the house Style Guide, the defacto implicit assumption that all Palladium product is usable in RIFTS would be preserved. RIFTS would remain the core product line over all, with Fantasy a close second, because those sell and big; a new product line, using these rules, would be launched to showcase the new faculty for Faction Play and cross-scale interaction- and it would be "Totally Not Robotech" the same way that After The Bomb is "Totally Not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness".

(Yes, that can be done. Do you have ANY idea how popular "Aliens with Mecha Invade Earth, So Earth Uses Mecha To Fight Back!" were and are out there? It would not be hard at all to do this. If Super Robot Wars can get a 30+ year franchise out of this, Palladium can do ONE original take- what the hell do you think Splicers is?)

And if you want me to do it, cut me a fat check and get me a solid contract. That's a lot of work and time, and I demand to be well-paid for both.

With that, we're done here- for now. I'm willing to follow-up on that "Totally Not Robotech" idea, if there's sufficient interest. Otherwise, I'm shifting attention to another subject that's been in my head: Playing The AD&D1e Assassin To Win.