Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game.
For those of you who don't know, and I'm guessing that is all but two of you that I know reads this blog, there is a brand of Fantasy Roleplaying Game out there called Palladium.
Palladium is the brain child of Keven Siembieda, and was developed back in the early eighties during the boom period for Roleplaying games.
His idea was to found an rpg company that would use the same game mechanics system for every product.
This had not been the trend up to that point, and until GURPS and the recent d20 system.
He promised this in fact.
Palladium is the company that produces such classics as the insanely diverse and over whelming Rifts.
The modern horror game Beyond Supernatural.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... yeah, don't laugh, it was based off the original comics which were not for kids. The game was cool... cheesy but cool, and was not kiddy, like the come, and have become.
And a game that Erica want to play when she was up her Logan; Ninjas and Superspies.
There are a schlew of others, all of them using the same system.
Rift's, Palladium's mother ship, is so flexible in it's setting that you can use any character from any other setting with in it.
I have a problem with Palladium, admittedly two problems.
First; the game mechanics aren't as straight forward as they could be, I could go into the gritty details of it, but I don't want you to bore you.
It's, well, cumbersome in a way, not all of it, just combat.
It's not impossible to learn, it just isn't a straight forward elegant system like WestEndGames d6 system or the raved about d20 system.
Second; well, to be honest the lay out of the books leaves alot to be desired.
It's as if the layout designers and the editor and writers tried, but just didn't succeed in execution.
They are either close to being reasonably put together, as in the case of Palladium's FRPG, or a ramble of confusion, like the version of the Rift's rule book I have.
Palladium's Fantasy game and setting is intriguing and rich.
And the magic system, and magic classes (jobs) is one of the most interesting and rich to be found.
The setting itself is set on a single continent dominated by men in the south, and a strange race of wolf humanoid creatures called wolfen.
Elfs and dwarfs exsist, but they are fading races, both of them are part of human society, their empires decimated by a war between them thousands of years ago.
Kobolds aren't your classic dnd kobolds, which I find fresh, neither are the goblins and hobgoblins.
The magic system, if there is one reason to play the game it is for the magic system.
I'm not a fan of magic in rpgs.
Generally magic tends to dominate and over power the games settings, but make no sense in the context of the worlds because the worlds themselves are low tech and weith all the magic, you'd figure that they'd have a bit more innovation than they have.
Pallidium solves this by setting up the fact that the most powerful magics have either been lost, or completely destroyed.
Magic items are difficult to make and expensive, there are only a handful of characters that can make them called Alchemist, who are versed in the three major types of sorcery.
The three types: Wizards, who mostly cast spells through verbal incantations.
Diabolist, who create magical wards and symbols that unleash the powerful magic with in them.
And lastly, Summoners, socerors that are versed in summoning beings from other realms, and creating circles of command and protection.
Each of the three are unique in their scope.
There are other magic using classes, but are classes that are given their powers, not research,
they are Warlock, Witch, Druid, and Priest.
Overall I've finally found myself keen on a Palladium setting I'm going to seek out some more of the books (I got the FRPG book at the book store) for this setting.
I will pull some ideas from it, and perhaps in the future, run a campaign or two in it.
Until then...later.
(sorry, if this doesn't make as much sense as I'd like. I had a sudden bout of fatigue hit me right in the middle of this, there may be some edits later.)
posted by F.G. Shaw @ 1:25 PM
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