I Was This Close to Buying Starfinder 2E

I like Starfinder 1e, and I played some of that and its throwback 3.5E science fiction. The combats were fun, and the adventures were memorable and enjoyable. I also liked the concept of "space fantasy," with classic fantasy races in a futuristic world. I liked the space drow, the star elves, the space orcs, the goblins, and all the other classic Pathfinder races "in space," and it felt cool.

Seeing Traveller 5E announced got me thinking about getting the new version of Starfinder, but I hesitated. For one, I bounced off of Pathfinder 2E pretty hard, and that game is in storage. Going back to one would mean I pull out the other. Also, the classic ancestries are no longer central to Starfinder, and I know the games are cross-compatible, but the universe feels different.

The core Starfinder races are what the settings and adventures will be about. I am free to put everything from Pathfinder 2E in there, and even the OGL version, but again, that is a lot of work for a game I am not really into. Pathfinder 2E is a good game, just not for me. Things are not the same.

It looked cool, but I didn't think I would play it much. I had the store pages open, but did not add the books to my cart. I read a few mixed reviews about it, saying the writing wasn't up to the standard of the original. So I backed off, and I will likely read up more on this. If the writing isn't there, I will skip this edition. Excellent writing is something I look for in a game, especially its adventures.

Some have expressed disappointment that the game wasn't taken further from Pathfinder 2E, like it was in the playtest versions. Compatibility with Pathfinder 2E ultimately won out, which is a smart business move, but the game lost some of its identity and feels more like an expansion. Others say the "ranged meta" won, and DEX is your most important stat, and melee feels secondary. I liked melee being important in Starfinder 1E, which made the game hit differently for me. The best way to do considerable damage was up close and personal.

What I want is gonzo, anything goes, science fiction plus fantasy. I want melee strikers to be on par with ranged attackers. I want the rules to have depth and substance. I want an anything-goes science fiction world.

That game is Rifts.

Rifts backs me up, too, letting magic inflict MDC damage, so my elven arcane caster can throw up an MDC shield and blast away at power armor with MDC fire bolts. This is good stuff, and puts them on par with the armored powerhouses of the setting, and elevates magic as an equivalent force in this world. Get a rune weapon, some magic armor, and you are close to becoming a minor god at this point.

You can stand toe-to-toe with MDC armored foes in Rifts with magic.

You can also adopt a melee style and absolutely slay up close with MDC melee weapons, and beat the heck out of power armor with a rune weapon or your fists. That's cool.

The next best option is to keep everything on the hit point scale and use White Star, with fantasy races pulled from BX. This is also a viable option that works well, and I have White Star on my most-played shelves. However, this is not as flat-out cool as Rifts. My proposed game will be a mod, magic is relatively low-powered, and it feels derivative.

Another option is a science fiction campaign using Stars Without Number, incorporating the magical classes from Worlds Without Number and importing fantasy races from BX. The magic in this system is better than BX, and allows for magical casting that recharges after a scene, so magic-using classes are not "one spell and the day is done." Still, this is another mod, and it does not feel right.

But if I am going to DIY fantasy science fiction in those games, I can DIY it just as easily in Rifts, and have tons of cool monsters and enemies to battle. Plus, since Palladium games are by their nature "make your own game with this," I can drop in a group of elves, an elven faction, a kingdom of elves, or a whole planet of them anywhere I want, for any reason I want.

Dark elves? They can be in the setting. I will just mod the Palladium Fantasy Elf and port them in from somewhere in the multiverse. Anything I want is here, and it fits in. If I want a planet of them and a few gods for them, fine, go ahead.

In Rifts, anything goes.

In Starfinder, I will usually need to wait for the book. Why am I buying into this again?

DIY games are superior to those that ship with default assumptions. Rifts are so open that anything I can imagine can be here. It may sound silly, but all Palladium games are supposed to be wide open, and it supports many power levels and campaign types. There is no "this game is made for dungeons, and everything is balanced against each other" feeling. Every class is overpowered in what it does.

I don't mind MDC armor either. Nobody in D&D complains about having to wear armor. Mostly, they just ignore it and take the AC value. The MDC system simplifies Palladium combat greatly, eliminating AR, and you are either hit or not. Don't subject the players to cheap shots, and you will be fine.

Not wearing armor is not advised, and primitive weapons are useless. But this is science fiction, like Heavy Metal, where the energies and forces you are dealing with are so powerful you need special forms of protection, either tech or magic. Some miss the lower-powered science fantasy. I don't mind it since you are slugging it out with mech suits as a caster, and that is awesome.

With most other games, I feel guilty for breaking the game or playing it not as it is supposed to be played. I get this with Starfinder 2E and Pathfinder 2E, now that the OGL content has been removed. I don't see the classic Pathfinder Dark Elves anymore, and I know they will never appear in adventures, so a piece of the world feels missing.

But a part of me misses the old Starfinder, as flawed and broken as it was, with the massive weapon lists that turned into run-on sentences and felt like something out of a video game. There was a ton of 3.5E cheese in this game, too, and some classes felt utterly powerless. But the mixed science fantasy world was fun, which was the best part of the game. This is a game where most of what you put up with is for the sake of the setting. Even 3.5E was okay, I didn't mind it, but I knew how to break the system.

Removing alignment in 2E, I did mind, and the entire aspect of playing chaotic or evil characters is now an afterthought and gone from the game. Rifts and Palladium? It has the best alignment system in the industry, and playing anything is on the table.

A lot of people love Starfinder 2E, so there is something here.

But I almost bought Starfinder 2E today. It is a game I miss. But I need to learn more before I make a purchase, especially these days. It is on my radar, but I have other games taking up my time currently.

I don't find much enjoyment in sifting through rules. Let a computer game do that for me. I want story and easier character builds and powers. I don't play a tabletop game to slowly work my way through a few hundred pages of rules to simulate a combat. If I do want that, GURPS gives me a better end result, and there are far fewer rules to follow if you follow them all.

Most of GURPS' rules are optional. Few of Starfinder 2E's are.

People like the "-Finder" systems, and I bounced off hard after trying them. Pathfinder 2E was not for me, despite how hard I tried. I may give it another chance. I may grab the PDFs and skip the books.

We shall see.

Why the Netflix and Warner Brothers Merger is Bad for D&D

The above headline should tell you everything that is wrong with OSR and D&D YouTube right now.

Whatever is trending plus D&D equals views.

Stop it. Get some help.

Mail Room: Rifts Ultimate Edition

Rifts is one of the best games and settings of all time.

You will either think I am crazy or agree. There is really no middle ground here. I know about Savage Rifts, and while that is a fun, game-balanced version of the game, it does not do it for me. You know that scene in Avengers: Endgame where Captain Marvel is flying through the ships of the enemy battlefleet and destroying them by treating them like she is flying through paper?

That is Rifts.

That is what it lets you do.

I have a softcover in the mail, and the hardcover is still out of print. It is nice to see Palladium selling out of books, and they deserve all the praise and success they can get. This is one of the OG pen-and-paper role-playing game companies, and they make excellent games that are still very affordable.

You can be that powerful, and there are enemies out there that can out-power-level you and crush you like an ant under a shoe. Forget D&D 5E and its "managed power levels" that only let you go so far. Rifts is roleplaying with the rails removed. Does your 50 SDC/30 hp super-character get caught without their MDC armor, and someone vaporizes you with a low-power 1d4 MD laser pistol? Tough luck.

It is like one of those Heavy Metal scenes where the main character gets vaporized, and the audience sits in shock. That's life. Deal with it. You should have done that to the other guy before they pulled on you. Live and learn. Oh, and even if your character has 600 MD of hit points like Captain Marvel, a battlesuit could roll up on her doing 1d6x1000 MD, and it is basically the same thing. That's life. Deal with it.

Take your fake assumptions of fantasy superheroes and throw them in the trash, this game ain't that. Even a level 20 D&D character rigged for maximum damage still is not doing that 1d4 MD per attack, so those power levels are laughable and small. Sorry to burst your ego bubble, but that "D&D balance bubble" is a tiny, small, almost insignificant thing to beings that can harness the power of suns and atomic fusion blasts.

Just like your level 20 D&D fighter could not stand in front of an M1 battle tank and block the 120mm APFSDS shell flying at them, Rifts teaches you "you ain't all that." One cloud of red mist later, you realize that was probably a dumb idea as 20 levels of XP get torn up with the character sheet, and tiny bits of magic armor go flying.

In Rifts? Well, magic gets naturally amped, so your fighter could bounce that 120mm round off their shield and redirect it into another tank or battle robot. You are just that awesome.

D&D is a fantasy superhero game that operates in a limited power envelope.

Rifts is a superhero anything game that operates in an infinite power envelope.

In D&D, you are being given a tiny power envelope to play in by the gods and the game designers, and you are expected to play nice. Some people cannot exist outside of that cave, and they need that illusion of balance to construct a mathematical framework of how the world works with its numbers. They need to know, well, an Orc can only do this much damage, and anything outside that is a reason to start a fight with the dungeon master. Suppose that Orc just did 1d6x20 hit points of damage with a longsword. In that case, the DM is a terrible person, not worth playing with, breaking the game for everyone, hurting the community, attacking online play, and needs to be called out online as a blight on the hobby.

In Rifts, none of that matters. That Orc could have been bathed in massive amounts of arcane power. He could be a very strange OCC, an arcane summoning swordsmith. In Rifts, not much is a "stock something out of a monster book," and roleplay comes first. You need to gauge your opponent's strength before the MDC goes flying. If your tails are getting kicked, you need an escape plan.

Rifts is extremely "roleplaying meta." Your characters from the Forgotten Realms? They could all be in here, converted to Palladium classes and MDC power levels. Here they are. Comic-book characters? Right over there, anyone you want, created in Heroes Unlimited or TNMT and converted up to MDC. Characters from movies and fiction? Right over there, anyone you want, created in Ninjas & Superspies or any other Palladium system that fits, and pulled into the Rifts world. Anime? Rifts has Robotcech in its design DNA, so it is one of the first anime-inspired roleplaying games.

Harry Potter meets Happy Gilmore? It works in Rifts!

Rifts is the ultimate roleplaying sponge. It will soak up every idea, character, movie, role-playing game, comic, anime, monster, music band, or idea it can and find a place for it.

Drow? You don't get these game designers telling you, "they aren't in our world anymore." They are in the SRD now, even the name, so get outta here. You want them? They are in Rifts, one of them or billions. Rifts doesn't care about game designers with control issues. The game was designed to give you control and put your ideas first. Even down to rules customization and how the game is played, your ideas come first.

Tiny little sandboxes, designers who have too much control over your world, games that feel more like tabletop MMOs, games that tell you that there is no room for your ideas, and surrendering your ideas of the world to a set of rules is what Rifts is designed to destroy.

The Rifts game is freedom.

And once tasted, it is hard to go back to anything less.

AD&D is Coming Back?

Really?

It never left. I have been playing OSRIC for a while now, and the news would surprise me. I would rather support a game that anyone could publish for than a nostalgia re-release. Unless the first edition license is opened up, any news right now is clickbait. Otherwise, if I can't write adventures and expansion content for it and sell it on DriveThru or any other store, I am not interested.

With OSRIC? I can. Now we are talking. Community-supported games are superior to the reprints.

I don't want a new first edition with modern art and any of the adventures designed by the current teams. They don't understand the product, the times, and they would end up making more people angry than happy. Will a new first edition come with a warning message? If it doesn't, it isn't the first edition.

Besides, we have plenty of first editions, and some of them are free.

Oh, do you mean For Gold & Glory? This is the second edition, but just as good. A free PDF, and compatible with first and second-edition adventures.

Oh, do you mean Hyperborea? No?

Oh, one of my favorites...?

Oh, it is Swords & Wizardry! Right?

Umm...

Castles & Crusades? Wait. I have something else that is like the first edition around here somewhere.

Dungeon Crawl Classics? Wait...I think I have another...

What is going on with OSR and D&D YouTube? I see them passing the same topic around, and it feels desperate over there. Last week, it was "What would I do if I were in charge of D&D?"

First and Second Edition never left us.

Second Edition Bliss

BX, BECMI, 0e, and White Box tend to be too simple for me. I see most of YouTube going crazy for this easier-to-play system, and yes, they play fast and don't require much rule support, but a lot feels missing. What will always be true is that the BX system as a "base compatibility layer" is the bedrock of gaming, a standard set of math and numbers that all games can communicate with and use.

The one thing Wizards did to "own the game" was break backwards compatibility, which was a sin, and it destroyed D&D. We have the scaling damage of 3.5E, the insane triple-down hit points of 4E, and the doubled hit points of 5E.

There is nothing wrong with the original math. THAC0 is laughably easy; don't listen to the clowns out there. Roll a d20, add the target's AC to the roll, did you roll THAC0 or higher? You hit.

Of course, you are using descending AC too here, but there is nothing wrong with that either. The better the armor, the less of a to-hit bonus you give your opponents. It is simple. Do you have AC 0? The entire world gets no bonus to hit you.

In fact, you can pre-adjust THAC0 for your melee and missile attack adjustments, and it gets even easier. My 6th-level fighter with a THAC0 of 15 has a +1 melee-hit bonus from STR, and a +2 sword. My base THAC0 is now 15 - 1 - 2 = 12. Have fun adding that proficiency bonus, ability score bonus, and weapon modifier to every attack, 5E players. Even if you make it one number, you are still adding it to every roll in 5E and comparing it to a floating target number.

5E is more math versus a floating target number (AC or DC).

With THAC0, my target number never changes: I only add a number from 10 down to 0 (or lower in rare cases) to my attack, then check my THAC0. I attack an AC 3 creature with my THAC0 of 12. Roll a d20 + 3, beat THAC0.

Also, with the second edition, you lose the demons and devils in the game. OSE does not have them either, and that has not stopped that game. They are the same as in the first edition, so port them in from that, and adjust the XP awards to the second edition standards. Or, use the renamed ones out of the AD&D 2E Monster Compendium and Outer Planes Appendix. They are all there; you just have to do a little finding.

Personally, our Forgotten Realms game ran fine without them for a decade, and I liked having to be creative with other monsters and not fall back on the same old tired enemies. Let the mastermind be a red dragon this time, or an intelligent purple worm. Use an NPC. With Tieflings everywhere in 5E, I am tired of modern D&D proving the Satanic Panic right, and they have become as exhausted as the Drizzt trope. Sorry to burst your ideal character bubble, but everyone is playing them, and they are tired now.

Plus, if you remove them from the "normal world" when demons do show up, it feels special again, and not everyone is playing one. Let evil be evil, and stop co-opting it.

I like For Gold & Glory, the beautiful, free second-edition retro-clone. The book is far better organized than the Wizards reprints, and the core-book art is superior. I will give the 2E Monster Compendium scores on better art for plates of each monster, even if they are slightly cartoony. FG&G does the job, feels like classic AD&D, and the PDF is free for everyone.

Why am I buying BX OSR games when I have this? Designer hubris? To say I "have something" and try to use that as an influencer? Why is it that on YouTube, most OSR influencers are trying to sell you something while ignoring the free games? Why is it Labyrinth Lord versus Dragonslayer all of a sudden? Are we all dumping OSE, which is also an expensive version of the game, for some reason?

The ads were bad enough on there; now all the videos are ads.

OSRIC is free. FG&G is free. Even Basic Fantasy is free.

Are we in this for the game and community, or are we here to sell people things?

Another great thing is FG&G's compatibility with the 2E complete guides, which give us "subclass options," or what we call character kits, to flavor our character classes without creating new ones or piling on complexity. A gladiator or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit; it is simple and easy, reducing rules bloat. These books you need to buy from Wizards, but they are worthy and an improvement over the first edition.

I love character kits over 5E's mess of subclasses. This is a much cleaner design, and it works perfectly. I never want to see hundreds of character classes and subclass options for each one in a game ever again; it is a terrible mess of a game design that reminds me of tangled, knotted, dusty, and filthy cords behind an entertainment center. 5E's design sucks, and it is far too complicated for its own good.

A gladiator, cavalier, or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit. No new classes are needed. The design achieves flavor with minimal rules interaction, and is a modern, object-oriented design that is clean and simple. There is a beauty to 2E's design that has never been replicated, and certainly not by the BX-obsessed OSR. Many OSR games will create a gladiator and barbarian class, just to fill books and sell you more stuff.

Yes, I am calling this out, but the OSR suffers from many of the problems that ail the 5E design community. Where simplicity, inheritance, and elegance can solve a problem, many OSR games do the same exact thing that 5E does: create classes to please the collectors, sell books, and bloat the game until it becomes unplayable.

Character kits rock.

THAC0 is the better system.

The second edition wins on solid design principles.

The AD&D 2E monster book is also a purchase if you want the product identity monsters; for FG&G comes with plenty of monsters of its own and is compatible with all of OSRIC's monsters, too. For that matter, all of BX is compatible too, just make sure descending AC is supported, as it should be. If you look around, you will find literally tons of OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry monsters that are directly compatible with second edition, and there is no shortage of foes to fight.

We have bards here, too, so that is not a reason to skip out. In fact, bards are a more challenging class to play, and I like that design since it forces you to have a high degree of player skill and leverage your roleplaying chops, which you should be doing as a bard instead of falling back on designer gimmes and free magic powers. I would not let an inexperienced player choose a bard in 2E; this is for skilled players only. As it should be.

Add the second edition's story XP and increased monster XP on top of what is already the best version of the game, and you have pure gaming bliss.

Game Glut: The Random RPG Flood

What is it with all these random fantasy role-playing games being pushed on Facebook and YouTube? I have seen three new ones in the last week. It is like everyone is rushing to get their games out as quickly as possible. YouTubers are rushing to cover "the next big thing in fantasy gaming!"

Excuse me.

What?

How To Create Palladium Character Sheets with LibreOffice

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/

All right, let's create some Palladium character sheets by hand, for free. While this tutorial is for Palladium Games, specifically Ninjas and Superspies, nothing is stopping you from doing this for D&D 5E, Pathfinder 2, GURPS, or any other game you can imagine. All we need are some free tools, like LibreOffice; grab it from the link above, or if you are on Linux, you probably already have it installed.

Why LibreOffice? Why Linux?

Because we are not supporting the AI ecosystem and are staying away from paid character hosting sites, software packages, and learning to be self-sufficient without spending money or having Microsoft feed our documents into AI models. My characters are my IP and thus mine. Also, I am not feeding into this RAM crisis. I choose not to use AI.

Also, my hand-crafted character sheets come out far better than these pretentious ones you get in the OSR and other games with dungeon maps and far too much clip art tossed all over them. They are simple, to the point, save paper and toner, and I can create custom sections to my liking if a game needs special information.

Download LibreOffice and install it. Then, go to Format->Page Style...

Set your margins to a half-inch, and give yourself a half-inch gutter. This way, we can three-hole punch our character sheets to store them in a binder with dividers. You may not want to know it now, but if you plan to run many characters or track one as they level, you will thank me later.

If you run an adventure, three-hole punch that too, and put the old character sheet in with it when you print a new one. This way, you will have a record of the adventure and the characters who went on it, and how they were at the time. Since you have hard drive space and these are small files, save a new file every time you level, just to watch the progression.

Next, go to Format->Columns and set this to two, and leave all the default values, including autowidth. This will use our paper better. Three columns are sometimes too hard to manage, and I end up with a lot of overflow onto the following line.

Part of me wonders if people need a tutorial like this, but another part of me knows that many just don't know. This is how we used to hack together character sheets in the 1990s, using word processors and dot-matrix printers, doing our own layouts and working magic with the features of the programs we had.

If you want an actual throwback, 1990s experience, doing your character sheets this way (or by hand) is the way to go. This is how we did them, and they always came out so clean, with plenty of room for notes and other scribbles. Did a value change? Cross it out, pencil in the new number, fix it later, and print a new sheet when you level up.

Remember to shred and recycle! But, seriously, doing my character sheets this way wastes a lot less paper than printing out a 16-page monstrosity with Hero Lab. One double-sided sheet can hold a lot of information when done this way. Of course, one sheet done by hand is the most waste-reducing way to make a character sheet, since you can use it until the holes wear through the paper. These sheets can do the same, as long as you pencil in new SDC and other changing values. I could do empty tables for "fill in by hand" parts, like for gear and open skill slots, and that is probably a smart improvement I can make to enhance reusability.

But it is my choice to make them! In many sheets and programs, you get no choice. This way, I get exactly what I want, and I can engineer re-use into the sheets if I feel I am wasting paper. I could go the whole way and make the entire sheet rigged for re-use, with a fill-in-the-blank box for everything.

For Ninjas and Superspies, I laid my first page out like above. The stats have tab stops, so I can create "columns" for the value and then the modifier. If a character has more than one martial art, copy and paste the Primary Form section for a new one. I made one since that is enough for now.

Skills and secondary skills will expand! Leave a lot of room at the bottom of a column for these expanding lists. In general, open lists will appear at the bottom of your page. Also, use the Insert -> More Breaks -> Insert Column Break command to stick a section at the top of a column, as I did for the weapon proficiencies. This way, they won't keep backing up into the skill lists.

Palladium has a lot of weapon modifiers that can add up for different weapons, so I split out the "to strike" modifiers for different weapon categories and include any bonuses from PP.

My second sheet has gear and, on the right, a list of the characteristics of different attacks. I have equipment back here, cyber implants, and a section for the training programs I selected during character generation, including the colleges the character attended and the time spent there. Cover is not on the official character sheet, but it improves as you level, so it needs its own section. Background is another fun section that covers family and other personal details. Remember to total your equipment weight!

If you need to set tab stops, you can do that by putting the cursor at the first spot in the document, choosing Format->Paragraph, and choosing the Tabs tab. Type in 0.5, press New, and then add them like that. I did mine every half inch.

If you want to get fancy, you can insert tables, too, and be very organized! I do everything with tab stops, but to each their own. If you like tables, go for it, and your sheets will begin to look very fancy. For games like Pathfinder 2, this may be a lifesaver feature. I will need to adjust column widths, and that is just a matter of dragging them over. Doing it this way gives me higher reusability, as previously discussed.

I like these hand-made character sheets a lot. They are more work, but this is a small trade-off for a sheet that grows as you fill it in, and you can create custom sections for whatever you want on the character. I can also copy & paste out of my PDFs into these, saving me a little work typing. If I need an entire spell description, I can create a sheet for it and paste that right onto the character's grimoire. If a character has an animal companion, I can make a place for their stats on the sheet.

If I want an adventure log, I can create a spot on the next sheet and list the adventure, the location, people involved, a summary of what happened, the XP gained, and other information.

Also, given the way you create characters in Palladium Games, you are copying and pasting a list of skills and modifiers into the sheet, making a few choices, and moving on to the next training package. For my character, I just added all the skills first with their modifiers, sorted the list, and removed the lowest-modified duplicates. Select a bunch of rows of text, and use Tools->Sort to sort that list so you can keep your skill and ability lists alphabetized for easier reference during play.

Would I love a Palladium software package and character designer? Yes, I would, and I know about the spreadsheet designers and have those for fantasy. But even those can't be as fine-tuned as this style of sheet, which is very personalized, and I can optimize the numbers I need and put them all in easy-to-read sections. The availability and quality of the character sheets I can find for the game do not limit the amount of fun I can have with it.

And my DIY sheets, while taking a little longer to set up, are fully customizable and quick to use during play. Are they fancy? No. Are they retro, and look like something we would do back in the 1990s with a 486 and a dot-matrix tractor-feed printer? Oh, yes! We did this for Spacemaster (with WordPerfect), and those sheets worked very well. All the same skills were used, including columns, bolded titles, and tab stops.

Now I don't need character creation software; I can do this myself on Linux. I am not feeding into the AI nightmare, and as a gamer, I can make the conscious choice not to feed into the AI bubble madness. I have the freedom to make that choice as a consumer.

Also, this throwback, 1990s-style word-processor sheet makes me happy.

Palladium System: Two Attacks for Living?

Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, page 50

So I was looking through the pregenerated characters in the Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, and I saw a 4th-level ranger with ...five melee attacks? And a rate of fire of five with his longbow?

Then a sense of panic hit me. Five? Five! Where are they getting five?!

Am I getting all the attacks I should be getting?

This is critical in any Palladium game, and this is one thing D&D 3.0 stole from the system: the notion of your attacks per turn going up, and your damage naturally increasing as you level. Granted, in Palladium, attacks can be traded for defense, so there is a balance to the mechanic, where in D&D 3.x, they are just attacks. Wizards did a lousy job at implementing the concept they borrowed, again.

So, where do these attacks come from? Let's look at Palladium Fantasy.

The first two are easy: Hand-to-Hand Combat Expert starts with two attacks per round.

The next one is also easy. Since this character is 4th level, we look up the chart, record the bonuses, and see that at 4th level we get "one additional attack per melee round."

That is three of the five accounted for. Where do these two other attacks come from? We have an explanation on the forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=170392

Later revisions of the rules and game introduced the rule "2 attacks for living," which means that without any melee combat skills, you get two attacks, and these will stack on top of the HTH combat styles in the game. This was present even in some of the older books in the Palladium fantasy line, especially in NPCs and pregenerated characters.

The Palladium Fantasy RPG book needs updating, as do many of the other books in the line.

So this is our five melee attacks, and where they come from:

• 2 attacks for living
• +2 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

For ranged, this is where they come from:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

That HTH Expert extra attack at level 4 DOES apply to missile weapon fire! This may seem surprising, but multiple sources confirm it, and it aligns with the pregens.

And I have sources on the Palladium forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79257#:~:text=Do%20the%20attacks%20from%20HTH,a%20bonus%20to%20ranged%20combat.&text=Question:Within%20the%20new%20rules,tiny%20+2%20bonus%20from%20aiming?

This is a question that Google's AI gave me both answers for; it insisted the wrong answer was correct, said I was dead wrong, and after I found the official clarifications, it went back on its original answer and admitted I was right. AI can be dead wrong and insist it is 100% right, trying to provide facts and proof, when it is clearly NOT.

AI is a very persuasive liar when it is dead wrong.

This is why we need a human soul in any decision-making process.

And why we need skeptics and those who challenge us.

Be very, very, very careful and never trust AI! It is a known liar in some cases, will lie to prove itself correct, and bases its claims on incorrect sources, trying to use this as justification for the truth. Good luck playing with an AI DM, everybody over there in D&D land. Your character will die because the AI DM goes stupid on you and tries to use someone's incorrect rule interpretation on some forum somewhere as the official rule.

Also, they put a lot of work into making these AI systems sound super confident, which also helps sell the lie and justifies the billions of dollars they are pouring into it all.

In Rifts Ultimate Edition, which is the master rules update for all Palladium games from 2017 onward, the HTH tables were updated to the correct "4 attacks per melee round" value, and the unwritten "2 attacks for living" rule was done away with.

Also, the language for the level 4 bonus in HTH Combat Expert was changed in Rifts Ultimate. In Palladium Fantasy, it is:

• Level 4: One additional attack per melee.

In Rifts Ultimate, it is:

• Level 4: +1 additional attack/action per melee round.

This makes it clear that it is an "attack/action" per melee round, which DOES include missile weapon fire. Missile weapons fire as many times as the character has melee attacks, but some skills do have their own rate of fire rules that these HTH attack bonuses do modify.

So, by Rifts Ultimate, our melee attacks are:

• 4 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

And for our ranged attacks, by Rifts Ultimate, this is unchanged:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

As far as I am concerned, Rifts Ultimate is the master Palladium rules update, and it should be used with all Palladium games, including Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Palladium Fantasy, and every other game.

Palladium Characters: Amazingly Good

I created a character for my throwback 1980s Palladium Ninjas and Superspies game last night, and there it is. That incredible feeling came right back to me. This is a character I want to play. Wow, what a fantastic experience, and this is a character with depth, real meat, and substance. When I am done, the character feels substantive, authentic, and seriously cool.

You must be able to follow instructions! Most modern players do not have the patience for this process and will never be able to figure it out, but that 'speed bump' is not gatekeeping; it is a skill test to see if you are worthy of putting in the time and attention the game demands. If you can't get past character creation, other games are going to be better for you.

This was true of games like Advanced Squad Leader in the 1980s; the rules were a certain way, creating a natural barrier, so more casual players would play other games, while players who appreciated the level of detail the game delivers would stay. This creates a filtering system so people who want to put in the time will stay, and those better suited for casual games will go elsewhere.

And this is not bad design; it is a feature. Those people on gaming YouTube saying "it is common wisdom this is a bad design" have no idea what they are talking about. They just want to sound smart and push everyone into casual games so they can get on the monetization gravy train. This is also why the First and Second Editions of AD&D (OSRIC or For Gold & Glory) are better for me than BX or BECMI.

I will take devoted, attentive, and patient players over the casual crowd any day. It is the difference between home cooking and fast food. While fast food is great every once in a while, it never satisfies me, nor is it worth going out of my way to eat. Meals made with care and time are always better, and the people who share that love are the ones I can relate to and speak to about food. The same goes for gaming; simple, casual, easy games feel pointless to me.

That is not to say the system could be more organized. Keep listing the skills and their modifiers that your training packages provide. In the end, sort both the primary and secondary lists, go skill by skill in the book, and write down your base percentage (plus the education bonus for primaries) and the per-level bonus. Some skills also have a negative modifier when chosen as a secondary, so secondary skills are better for no-percentage physical skills.

I create my characters in a LibreOffice document in double-column format, with fixed tabs, and type all the values by hand. Who needs a silly character sheet? Real players use LibreOffice and Linux for their character sheets. If you know how to create columns and tab stops every half inch, you have everything you need. You will never be taken advantage of by a paid online character storage site or Windows and its AI reading your documents ever again.

I even prefer this method to many "crafted" character sheets that are too fancy or take up too much space. At least here I can set a half-inch gutter margin and three-hole punch the character sheet for binder storage. LibreOffice character sheets are the way to go these days, and you will get a greater sense of DIY attachment and accomplishment once you create a sheet that is better for you than what others can provide.

Once you create one character, strip it down and use it as a blank template for others. There is your blank character sheet, and you can do a better job of organizing things yourself. Make sure to use LibreOffice's "sort" feature (Tools->Sort) when you select a list of skills so you can alphabetize them quickly.

This works very well for me, and I can fit an entire character on a single double-sided page. Also, note that I listed the skills as a base percentage plus X%/level, so if the character levels up past level one, I will not need to go back to the book and find all these "per level" modifiers again.

This also works for any Palladium game, and you can even export to PDF or text to import into a VTT. It sounds primitive and like a lot of work, and while it is more work, I feel an in-line two-column character sheet that I design is superior to most anything I could find online. For one, I have infinite space, plenty of room, and I can create custom sections for things that I want the campaign to focus on.

You will get double skills in character creation, and only the highest level applies. Also note that the character's education bonus (if they have one) is added to all primary skills, and not the secondaries! Some skills will modify other skills, so take note of that.

And do those physical skills early, so they modify your stats and SDC.

Also note, this is an old-school game. If your character is missing a skill, you can either wait until the OCC says you get a new one or you can figure out a way to get it in-game. Let's say I want my agent to get a "combat motorcycle driving skill" and they don't have it, or I forgot to give it to them.

Your first option is to swap an unused skill for that one, but be careful with physical skills, since they modify stats! Another option is to wait for the OCC to grant you a skill pick.

The third option is to figure out how long it would take to get that skill through a training course, if they can take it, who they would take it from, and how much in-game time it would take to attend classes. Three months for a secondary and six months for a primary sounds right, and you are trading time for advancement. If the skill is more in-depth, this time may be 2 to 4 years in fields like medicine, and it will take place over a more extended period.

You are trading time away from adventuring and adding time to the character's age in exchange for that advancement, so it works out. If you wanted to start with this skill, add the time to the character's age and give it to them. You are trading lifespan for a skill that is more than fair.

Also, I added a few sections to this character sheet that the "official" one lacks. I created a background section for the character's background and family, including the university they attended and when they graduated. I made a training programs section to list the packages I took during character creation. I added a date of birth. I made a section for their cover that can also expand if contacts or other special notes are needed. I listed all their martial arts moves and abilities. I made a section that lists the strike modifiers for different weapons and attacks.

The combination of the time it took to create the character, craft the sheet, and go through the selections and picks made me excited to play. I don't get this feeling with other games, and games that are much simpler than this. This character means something, and I get that "excited to play" feeling that I do not with other games.

Fantasy characters done this way are likely just as good, and clearly a step above anything 5E gives me.

Palladium: MDC is Conflict, not a Mechanic

We have MDC in this world today. Once you are talking 120mm APFSDSDU rounds fired from M-1 tanks, you are in the realm of 2025 MDC weapons, and the effects blow turrets straight off enemy tanks, sending them hundreds of feet into the air. We see these things every day in videos from the war.

Getting rid of MDC is running back into the safety of the game designer's arms, begging for them to balance the game for you, and protect your character from one-shot kills for "fairness."

We are talking highly speculative science fiction here in a world gone mad. Parts of this world are already here, especially when you are talking about modern weaponry that can vaporize an entire ship or building in one hit. We see this almost every day on the news, and yet, we still pray for peace.

You can't remove the MDC in Rifts without also causing another problem. You will break the fundamental conflict in the game. MDC is not just a game mechanic; it is a part of the core conflict in the setting. Remove MDC, and you are removing the best part of the game.

Take the Coalition, the mostly bad guy, but also possibly good guy, favorite punching bags of the setting. In my campaign, the coalition's cities are strictly SDC settings, and even the police are rolling around in SDC armor, carrying SDC guns, with an "inside the megolpolis" vibe that's more like the pre-ruin world and how it used to be.

MDC quick reaction forces are always on the ready and can be called in at any time; all the Coalition Police need to do is make a call, and the flying suits and skelebots start rushing in. The Coalition is one of the largest users of MDC arms and armor, but there is a deeper philosophical issue at play here.

If the goal of the Coalition is to retake Earth and make things "like they were," then the citizenry should be able to live in a world "like it all was." The police use regular SDC guns and armor because, well, they could be stolen, but the reality they wish to create is one of normalcy, not of the MDC overlords coming in, acting like gods, and demanding fealty and servitude.

This is especially true when superheroes, fantasy monsters, and aliens can walk into this world and be instantly converted to MDC overlords, get drunk with power, and fall to madness. The MDC of the rifts is like booze, and you could imagine a group of "good guy" superheroes coming into the world of Rifts, getting drunk with power, and all of them turning into MDC demons.

Just because they were good guys in their world does not mean they will remain so in Rifts.

The alignment system and the ability to make alignment changes are core to the experience of playing any Palladium game. This is how the "good knight" falls to evil and dons the black plate mail.

Imagine the X-Men beginning to go mad with power, growing demonic horns, wings, and hooves, their skin slowly turning red, and the wickedness they begin to embrace as the raw power of MDC, magic, and super psionics corrupts their souls, and actual demons show up to smile and offer them more. Some of them realize what is happening and try to turn the tide and warn others, but it is already too late. They are sacrificed so the demons can further corrupt the rest.

Remove MDC, and you are taking the forbidden fruit away.

This is a story that can only be told in Rifts. It is an old-school game; if I want to instantly drop a character modification on a character, like a pair of demon wings, I can. In 5E? Forget it, you are centrally planned all the way to level 20, and that would break the game. People would want it to take a feat slot and limit the wings' flight. Don't laugh, I have seen this in so many race supplements for 5E, it is not funny. Flight breaks 5E in most cases. In Rifts, I can go there and do that without worrying about what game designers will think of me.

The story of the corrupted superheroes is a great tale to tell.

This is the core conflict in Rifts.

Power corrupts.

The MDC conversion puts a massive strain on the human soul, and it is still alien and abnormal to the world. MDC technology lacks a soul; it is merely a tool. But a Coalition that recognizes that "MDC everywhere" is a danger to what it needs to keep existing, families, a semblance of everyday life, children being born and growing up in safe environments, and soldiers fighting for their precious SDC enclave where they can feel normal, that is what "saving humanity" is all about.

How can an ex-soldier raise a family if they have to worry about punks with MDC laser pistols shooting up neighborhoods, or MDC police forces fighting back, and those stray shots flying through the walls of dozens of houses? If the world they fight for is supposed to be normal, then the interiors of these cities will be kept as normal as possible. It highlights the "fake nature" of reality, since everyone knows better. Still, this group depends on millions of people going about a typical day in schools, factories, service jobs, healthcare, and other professions.

Again, if an MDC user of magic teleports in, the MDC quick reaction forces are on a hair trigger, but the life this group needs to create is one of normalcy. And yes, being in the Coalition Police and only having SDC armor and weapons is a terrible job when an MDC something shows up, but that is life. It isn't always a perfect job in this world, and you need to duck and call for reinforcements since your partner was just vaporized.

Remove MDC, and there is little reason to play Rifts other than as "just another science fiction IP," which it is not.

The MDC versus SDC mechanic is a core conflict in the game, highlighting the struggle between outsiders finding a home here and those who want to preserve the way things were. And that, my friends, is a very topical and current conflict to explore.

Traveller 5E

Y&T was a great 80s metal band. Then, their label forced them to make cheesy pop-rock music. Then, the band died. Longtime fans felt they sold out. The new fans never showed up after the original MTV video went into high rotation, and then everyone dumped them. They could never return to their deeper cuts, and they were stuck in limbo until grunge killed the genre.

So what do they have to do with Traveller 5E?

https://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/threads/traveller-5e.126195/

I see people saying, "If Traveller wants to survive, it needs to attract a younger audience." Yes, the Traveller players are getting older, but this new audience is not interested in the current Traveller. The universe is not engaging with them, and a new set of rules won't make it any more appealing. If it were, they would be playing it.

So next year we are getting Traveller 5E, which is a terrible name since we already have Traveller 5.

But repackaging the current Traveller universe is not as compelling to the players they are trying to attract. They will want dragonborn, tieflings, animorph races, fae creatures, talking plants, robot people, dark elves, puppets, space elves, and all sorts of cute and cool things running around in space. 

Frankly, Starfinder 2E is the better game for them, and it is not even close. What the younger players want from science fiction is not what Traveller will give them. Starfinder is the better game, with better player options, and it plays perfectly to its audience and knows what it is.

Starfinder also feels more relevant to today's mood and feeling, and it feels more like a game for young players than Traveller in a 5E wrapper will ever be. Starfinder is an exciting, engaging universe that feels fresh and is begging to be explored and used for adventures. Traveller has the best-established universe in science fiction, but if it hasn't already attracted these players, a change in rules won't do much good.

The above is an excellent video on the Y&T band and a recounting of the events around this label-forced mistake that ended a great run and wonderful music. Please like and subscribe, and watch it all the way through. Great music commentary is very cool to see, and I support thoughtful, engaging commentary.

But it is an example of trying to be what you are not.

And trying to appeal to new fans who won't be there for you in the long run.

5E is not a universal solution to every problem with marketing and aging audiences. Companies that feel 5E is the answer to every issue will alienate their core fans, and the new fans they thought would be there will go right back to their Baldur's Gate 3 adventures and cartoony player options they are comfortable with. But if younger players like these things and it lets them express themselves fully, that is cool, too. Having fun is what gaming is about.

We are clearly in late-stage 5E, where every company is rushing to get its game on the platform. I fear the announcements of Runequest 5E, Rolemaster 5E, Tunnels & Trolls 5E, Call of Cthulhu 5E, Twilight: 2000 5E, Savage Worlds 5E, Paranoia 5E, Lamentations of the Flame Princess 5E, OSE 5E, and who knows what else. The modern audience will save us all, right?

Tell that to the band.

I get it, Traveller's audience is getting older. Tell that to every '80s band when grunge came out, and the kids walked away. There are times when there is not much you can do but try to please your core audience. The answer is not in rebranding; the answer is always in creating something new that speaks to the next generation.

You don't need to wrap Traveller with 5E.

You need to do what Starfinder did, and build a new universe that appeals to younger players. The best they can do is fork the Traveller universe and fill it full of neon-colored fantasy races. I know, it sounds like heresy, but you need to play to what your audience wants.

Starfinder 2E wins this fight before it even begins.

The Birth of Subclasses

During the life of AD&D 2E, they released these books in the "Complete" line, which introduced "kits" for the various classes, allowing you to flavor your class along a particular theme, such as a pirate, swashbuckler, barbarian, or gladiator. This was the birth of the subclass, and also a lot of the "spin-off" classes, such as the barbarian in later editions.

The kits were a small collection of proficiencies, suggested gear, and minor bonuses for a particular character type, and they were cool and fun. They were not that complex or in-depth, and they did not have leveled bonuses or ability progression. All they were was a set of modifiers, kit abilities, limitations, and other modifications.

Subclasses that become treed progression paths and that load new abilities on you every few levels are far too much overkill for a fantasy game. In the end, a barbarian should be a "fighter kit" and not its own class, and the barbarian with subclasses feels like going into far too much depth for a game that is supposed to be simple and straightforward.

Subclasses these days feel too overdone, and classes that should be subclasses (barbarian) end up being their own class. There is something to be said for "keeping all fighters under fighter," using simple kits to flavor the fighter, and keeping the core class identity strong. We end up with a bloated game that is not easy anymore, and classes that go too in-depth with subclass progression, and the complexity shoots out of the roof.

I could say even Old School Essentials suffers from the "too many specific classes" problem, too, along with many OSR games that just keep adding and adding without putting a foot down to keep the game's design clean, streamlined, simple, and uncluttered.

Kits are "class flavors," and they work well that way, and help us differentiate one fight from another. Yes, there can be more generic fighters, but gladiators are a special flavor of fighter; they are still fighters at heart and should not stray too far from the core fighter concepts and core abilities.

And they are optional. Can you be a "gladiator" without them, just using the core book? Yes, pick a fighter and say you are. Do these add flavor? Yes.

These books work perfectly with For Gold & Glory, the 2E retro-clone that stands out as a perfect, community-supported, throwback 2E set of rules with one of the most generous redistribution policies I have seen in the OSR. One of the things I love about AD&D 2E is that TSR positioned the game as a competitor to GURPS 3E in the late 1990s, and they made an honest attempt to be "everything generic fantasy" by splitting out the D&D, setting-specific, and generic fantasy parts in distinct lines of books. This wasn't TSR "dividing the market" more than it was "making sure the core line of books could be used with any specific setting." The "Complete" line of books could be used with the Forgotten Realms just as well as they could with Dark Sun.

Contrast that with today, we get new 5.5E Forgotten Realms books with subclass options that everyone will backport into every setting anyway, and all of a sudden, everything is a mixed-up mess in a stewpot. Today's organization of books and setting guides is one long run-on mess of content.

I love the organization of the product lines in AD&D 2E. It makes sense to me: I can focus on a specific setting, have the rules-sourcebooks that support it, and a core of the 2E rules forming the foundation. The idea that TSR published too many campaign settings is a simplification; they should have just focused on the Realms and Dark Sun, possibly combining Birthright and Greyhawk, and the Realms and Spelljammer.

Then again, Dark Sun never really had a great direction in 2E, and the setting feels like the lore ran dry, and nothing interesting was happening after the dragon kings were deposed.

Ravenloft should have been expanded to a whole world to take on Vampire: The Masquerade, along with a LARP option. This is where they lost a lot of ground in fantasy role-playing in the 1990s. Vampire and Magic: The Gathering were the death of D&D.

The Complete books work perfectly with FG&G, and if you want a source of "subclass-lite" kits for your game, check these out. I like this design theory; they aren't writing hundreds of pages of new classes, and the kits aren't all that complicated. They serve as "flavoring" for a class that can seem a bit dry and dull, turning it into something unique, special, and fitting its purpose in the world.

And you are not supposed to use everything in every Complete book. If you have a gladiator-themed game, just use that with the core rules, and don't try to use everything in every book. Again, the design theory feels like GURPS: you don't use it all at once; just stick with the core rules and drop in the bits you need. Again, this is unlike 5E these days, where our character creation tools bloat and die with too many options. I have had new players get scared off by those bloated tools in my 5E game, and I dislike them.

If you play a lot of 2E and are looking for optional expansions for FG&G, check this line out. These are worthy.

Nightbane

I am starting to post articles exclusive to my Life in the Megaverse blog, and today's Nightbane article is an absolute banger that twists our current reality and contrasts it with the world of Nightbane.

Nightbane

Or does the global zeitgeist and consciousness, and "streaming shows" that support the fantasy systems of today, signal a larger, more sinister plot to drain the Earth of its dreams and imagination? Is the corporate version of "accepted fantasy" some attempt to limit it? By thinking we are expressing our identities through this framework of rules and limitations, are we killing those ideas of self-expression and marching them into corporate idea prisons in the AI cloud?

...it is some excellent, mind-altering stuff over there today. Check it out. My game-focused blogs let me go deep into ideas and thoughts that are less suited for a general gaming blog, like the ones here on SBRPG. I appreciate having a space where I can drill into Palladium topics and get these deeper thoughts out.

And check out Nightbane. This game is seriously cool and frees my mind from today's strictly interpreted ideas of fantasy and self-expression.

The Golden Age: The 1990s

The 1990s were the Golden Age of role-playing games. This is the era when Magic: The Gathering killed D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade took over the goth subculture and LARP play, and D&D's last best edition reflected the world through the insanely popular novels of AD&D Second Edition. This was the time when Rifts was born and blew up gaming, and all the great Palladium SDC games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blended 90s comics and roleplaying.

Rifts got me into the Palladium games. Since then, I have stuck with the SDC versions of Palladium RPGs and have come to love them all. They are still out of storage and have never really been put away for the last 5 years, sitting in a secondary room, and I am happy to have them out. Rifts, these days, I am avoiding, since I know that it is a considerable investment to rebuild my library, and I don't play it enough to warrant that.

Oh, and I know that some used the Palladium SDC games to "trick" players into playing Rifts, where a GM would promise a superhero or fantasy game, then pull a switcheroo and teleport them all into Rifts. Most of the time, this never worked, and I tend to keep my SDC universes far away from the Rifts multiverse. There does exist a parallel universe where only the SDC universes exist, and this is where my primary fantasy and superhero universes are set.

But let Rifts be Rifts; that is the best way to go. And if you play Rifts, let everyone know before you begin, and don't pull the wool over their eyes. And yes, Rifts was part of the reason why AD&D 2nd Edition died for us. By the end of the decade, the writing was on the wall, and everyone was moving on, much like today.

Rifts was much cooler than D&D, and it still is. Rifts is the final boss of role-playing games.

The 90s were the last best decade of RPGs. The 16-bit consoles were battling for living room supremacy, and we still had VHS tapes and VCRs, CD-ROM music, with the DVD appearing at the decade's end. The Internet was AOL and CompuServe, while computers were Intel 486s hooked to dot-matrix printers.

This was the decade gaming became a powerhouse and cultural influence.

Tabletop roleplaying was dying, but this was one of the best eras to be a gamer in. We had the best versions of every classic game, and others like Champions 4th Edition and GURPS 3rd Edition kept the dream alive. Rolemaster was hot. By the time we get to the year 2000, TSR is bankrupt, Wizards releases D&D 3.0, which is not compatible with AD&D and turns characters into powergaming builds, and we have been on that road ever since. GURPS would go to the 4th Edition, Champions would see two more editions, but the Palladium games are wonderful time capsules looking back into that era.

People complain about the rules, but the rules are not why we play these games. I could roleplay using a ham sandwich for the game's rules. Today, the rules are far too important to the game, and people feel that their enjoyment of a game directly depends on the novelty and powergaming present in the rules. Every level has to "give me something," and I need a lot of choices on my character sheet. I need my build. I need my combos. I need my power synergization.

Here's the problem: the more choices you have, the fewer choices you have.

There will always be an optimal sequence of attacks and best powers in these games, where they could give you 20 choices, but really, you only use one or two every turn.

In contrast, my AD&D 2nd Edition (For Gold & Glory these days) bard did not have spells at level one, and it took three turns to get their combat song going. They had a d6 hit die and could fire a bow as a support class, or swing a shortword in chainmail, but leather armor was the better way to go for encumbrance and a lower STR. They were not front-line fighters. They did not have a complete set of rogue powers. I had to be creative and use my mind to make that class work.

I had more fun with that bard than I had with any bard in D&D 3.5E, Pathfinder, 4E, or 5E. The bard got worse over the years, and it just keeps going downhill. The more powers they pile on the class, the more I have no clue what the heck the 5E version is supposed to be. It isn't even about performances or music anymore; it is just a do-it-all caster class with light melee and a variety of rules tricks.

In contrast, Palladium Fantasy splits the bard into a collection of entertainer OCCs, such as acrobat, actor, bard (spoken word), minstrel (music), stage magician, and juggler/knife thrower. None of them has magic, but these feel better and more focused to me. 

"They are also alter-egos requiring a greater degree of role-playing to be most effective. This will challenge some, and tum off others . It' s up to both Game Master and the players to make their own choices. Just give it your best shot and enjoy." - Adventures on the High Seas, p14.

Are they as powerful as casters and other pure adventuring classes? No, nothing in this game is built on the same power level, but we can make conscious choices to play OCCs that are a challenge, and find ways for them to excel at what they do. Palladium Fantasy's classes are not balanced against each other in all areas! Some are far better at magic and combat than others. Some are highly skill-based, such as entertainers, and will require role-playing and creative use of skills to be effective.

In all Palladium games, the best class at something will be the best class to do it. The game will not go out of its way to artificially balance other classes against it, or sprinkle in options and buffs to keep all choices on the same power level.

The best option to play a 5E-like bard in Palladium Fantasy? Create a music-based superhero in Heroes Unlimited and drop them into the fantasy world. This will work, give you a complete choice of powers, and be 100% compatible. This will also be a lot of fun to play, and will work for many of the "fantasy superhero" character types if you want to go this way.

"Fantasy Heroes 

This is an option similar to the Medieval Heroes setting mentioned previously, but instead of being set within a historical Earth time frame, it is set in a world of fantasy, magic, and legend, such as the one presented in The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, 2nd Edition . In this setting, dragons and magic are very real and the characters mesh easily into it with their super powers, psionics, and other strange abilities. The G.M. can make super abilities available to all inhabitants of this world, or have the player characters belong to one particular race or class of people that demonstrates these powers." 

- Heroes Unlimited GM Guide, page 70.

And Heroes Unlimited allows for superhero fantasy games? Well, there you go. This book even mentions giving paladins light blast and karmic powers, and these powers aren't artificially limited by stamina or energy systems, so you can light-blast away and smile as you are divine enough to resist anything thrown your way. This sounds a lot like what they tried and failed to do in D&D 4E, and it sounds a lot more fun here.

Create a fantasy superheroes world, give it a He-Man sounding name like Grimrune, have everyone create a random fantasy superhero, steal monsters from Palladium Fantasy, and play! Make sure to place this world on the SDC or MDC ley lines so you can fold it into the megaverse later.

Similarly, some of my Ninjas & Superspies characters feel more compelling to play than any modern spy game characters I can create today. Sure, everyone is stuck in 1985, but to be honest, who would not want to be stuck in 1985? This was the peak of the 1980s. Any character designed with these rules was a nightmare to get started, but in play, they were easy and straightforward. Once you have been through the system a few times, you know how it went.

For us, the 1980s were Aftermath, Car Wars, Star Frontiers, Space Opera, and a few other games.

In the 1990s, AD&D 2nd Edition got us back into fantasy. Rifts captured my science fiction imagination. Vampire did the dark and brooding. Battletech was in here, too, along with Warhammer. While everyone wants to wax nostalgically about the 1980s, the 1990s were the golden years of roleplaying for us, and all the best games came out during this time, along with the highly evolved editions of our favorites.

In the mid-1990s, we watched our hobby shops shrink their role-playing sections in favor of table space for Magic: The Gathering. The owners of stores we talked to said nobody was buying these games anymore, and they had to shrink shelf space to fit in a few more tables, and the profit margins were far better for the cards. This was the beginning of the end of TSR and most of the hobby, and even today, the card side of the hobby is still far larger than the D&D side.

You could make the argument that buying D&D was a waste of time and money for Wizards, and they could have been far more dominant and larger had they kept their focus on the card games and other transformative gaming experiences. This is what they did well, and version after version of Wizards D&D shows they have not cracked the code, nor made it a profit-maker.

Even today, Magic thrives while D&D struggles and takes too much support to run a game, with VTTs, character creation tools, versioned books, and a DM, and hours of prep time needed to run each game. The Sigil VTT was a colossal waste and highlighted the massive amount of support D&D needs to "run one game" correctly. A card game? No prep, no DM, no setup, just a table and a deck. The games play fast, and you are onto the next. Everyone needs cards, so the profits are far higher.

Where card games are like airplanes and can land anywhere there is an airport, tabletop role-playing games are trains that need rails and infrastructure all the way to their destination.

Wizards supporting D&D is like Apple supporting old computer hardware, like dot-matrix printers. If the goal is "playing a game around a table," then eliminate the barriers to play and maximize profits. Let the OSR handle D&D, and move on to games that support fast play with minimal support needed. I am not against tabletop roleplaying, Wizards, or D&D; I recognize the model is all wrong for what the company wants the thing to do.

D&D will never be a billion-dollar brand since it requires too much support to get playing. What Wizards bought was expectations, and those consumer expectations are holding them back. They feel like the American car company in the 1970s, shipping gas-guzzling cars with fins and wood paneling. The trouble is, this is what their fans expect, and they are stuck trying to please them when the OSR does a far better job for far less money and support.

With Wizard's "brand" in quick-playing, no-DM-needed, fast, fun, player-on-player experiences. All you need is a table to play. In comparison, the D&D brand needs a few tons of scaffolding and days of preparation to get started.

Yes, they have been at it for 25 years, but D&D never fit the successful mold of what they do best.

And here we are in the age of smartphones and tablets, and transformative experiences abound in the mobile market. Even AR games and other technologies can innovate without needing to support the D&D model, which clearly drags these new ideas down, since people expect the traditional support model for the game.

In an alternate universe where Wizards never made the vanity D&D acquisition, where would Wizards be with this 25 years? They would have replaced D&D with a stronger, card-based, zero-prep game that defined fantasy gaming. You are beginning to see those types of designs in Daggerheart, but that still isn't a design that scales as well as an actual card game.

The 1990s were a strange time, marked by a seismic shift in gaming.

And a moment when gaming got trapped by nostalgia and never really moved on.

I am moving my Palladium SDC books to a most-played shelf tonight and getting them out to enjoy. This is one of the last, great, original role-playing games of the 1990s (and early 2000s), and it is still going strong today. They have new books coming out, a reprinting of the classic TNMT game, and new books in the pipeline for Rifts and a few of their other series.

Some games go so well together, not played, but played alongside each other. If I am back playing Second Edition with For Gold & Glory, then the Palladium SDC games are another potent dose of 1990s nostalgia and an excellent gam in their own right. They are an acquired taste, but thoroughly amazing and well put together.

The Palladium games are my guilty pleasure, and while people may call them disorganized and broken, they are every bit as good as any music or pop culture that came from the 1990s. They bring me back to those days, and that is all I need them to do.