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The recent Palladium Books Update said that Yin-Sloth Jungle and Island at the Edge of the World are finally being upgraded to 2nd Edition. It's about time.

Very interested in seeing what they do with crystal magic swords and the circle of elemental destruction or whatever it's called.

Smiling_Bandit - Totally not Lord Axel in disguise

Well, that would be really great. But, I was there at the OH when KS said it almost a year ago and the company's track record of publishing books isn't great. Plus, they have Lopan and The Land of the South Winds to put out first.

-Vek
"But any book they release that isn't Garden of the Gods is a benefit."

He says he has started putting finishing touches on it and plans to release one of the books next month. So yeah, could take a couple years at his usual level of getting things done.

April 2023 release date for Yin Sloth.

I love Kevin and PB, and I never complain about book delays. However, I would NEVER put money on PB hitting a release date.

Original manuscripts for both updated books were turned in last year. This revised already published material (20+ years old) so both books are 95%
already written with the original material. All Kevin has to do is approve the new stuff added to it and if he decides to make a few changes. So this is a
book that can be released in April maybe May if there is a printer issue. The point is to release the two books for the 40th anniversary this year. Island at
the Edge of the World should be even easier to get done because there are no O.C.C.s, skills, and numerous bits of new material added.

Notice, I didn't say they wouldn't get them out this year, I just said I wouldn't be putting any money on it and I don't think, given PBs history, you can blame people for being skeptical.

For me, even though I don't play fantasy I can't wait for Island at the Edge of the World as that is my favorite Fantasy book and probably in my top 5 Palladium books of all time. One thing that I think might hold it up is that crystal magic might be kind of tricky to revise.

People not buying the books is why we don't get more for the setting. We need to support the company if we want more books, not whine if they don't get them out in what we consider a reasonable time.

Then it needs to update its rules to draw in the younger players.

I think you will be pleased with the Psionic Crystal Magic results.

Updating the rules would require someone with an idea of how to do so. I don't think constantly updating the books the way D&D is constantly updated is an option.

Why would it not be possible or an option to update like DnD?

To an extent, Palladium doesn't have the manpower to do so; smaller shops, with less turnover, don't revise their rules nearly as often; you're more likely to get slight changes than a full revision.

Palladium also has pursued as "all our stuff is compatible with all our other stuff" angle, which isn't QUITE true (1e v. 2e), but it's mostly true. A big revision of the rules would break this, and it might draw in more people, but it also might alienate their core customers, who are pretty much all they have right now.

If you have one basic book, and a supers book, like Savage Worlds; any settings on top of that are simply then updated to any rules changes.



But it isn't balanced in the slightest. And rules revisions would help sort out things like MDC rules, which are a bit knick-knacked right now. Plus having to crack open multiple books to search for a particular rule. It should be in one place.



Because of this, the system, and company - as has been said in other threads is slowly bleeding out.
We know this is true just looking at their release schedule, and some of the hideous delays.
It either needs to change its MO, or die.

Oh, no, not in the least. I'm pretty sure Palladium, or at least Palladium Fans, have pointed to the lack of balance as a virtue, which I don't entirely agree with.

I'm not defending Palladium on this... just looking at what seems to be the facts associated with it.

It is just laziness on behalf of Palladium to sort this out, and this also goes with needing new rules to create balance, or some form of toolbox to make the most out of it.

If other books have additional rules then the rules aren't all in one book, so you'd still be flipping multiple books. And if all the rules were in one book, you'd have a massive book.




On the other hand I constantly read about fans abandoning games that continually change their rules. Palladium hasn't really changed too much and I think that's an advantage. The older books do work with the new ones. Sure, there's differences but they do work. We can play any 1E Character right along side any 2E Character. If Palladium had changed their rules completely, then we couldn't do that. These books would only be good with Palladium 1E, so players with Palladium 2E couldn't use them. Instead, they are compatible so 2E players can still use them.

As for the release schedule, I think that has more to do with Kevin having to personally go over every little thing a writer submits, in addition to his own writing and overseeing the day to day operations of the company. That is going to drastically slow production.





I don't think it's laziness. I think it's Keven's need to control. Because of that need, he wears too many hat and that slows production. I wish he didn't feel he had to personally oversee everything but I can understand why he feels that way.

Define balance and tell me why one game must be "balanced" against another? Then tell me how they aren't balanced. Should we make War Galleys MDC because vehicles in Rifts are MDC? Should we make all weapons from Rifts that come into Palladium SDC or should we keep them MDC as long as the ammo hold out? Isn't all that what a conversion book is for?

That's the point, they should be in one book.



DnD 5e. It has changed rules five times, and at this point is the biggest player on the market!
So this is just not right.



And it requires work, and it shouldn't.
So yeah, it is laziness.




There is a word for this, micromanaging.
As that is what he is doing, and that is a problem, especially as a lot of re-writes, or stuff he has overseen is massively unbalanced.



Yes it is. Otherwise please explain why we still have rules with copy pasta stuff in different fonts.
It is laziness.




Then he needs to change his tactic, as Palladium used to produce multiple books a year back in the day. Now barely one, so that is extremely arguable.



Weapons across different books that are similar, it has been awhile since I flicked through equipment at the time, have wildly different MDC ratings.



If they are MDC they should stay MDC, unless magically powered.
The laws of physics haven't changed.

Oh, way more than that.

You have White Box, the first stuff to come out.
You have Holmes, you have Mentzer, you have the BECMI/RC era by Allston. You have 1e AD&D, 2e AD&D, 3e D&D, 3.5 D&D (which had several significant shifts, really more than you see between 1e and 2e). You then have 4e, which also had Essentials, which made some large changes. Then you have 5e.

There's easily 11 rulesets for D&D.

D&D is sort of like Xerox or Kleenex... it's the name for the genre. "What are you doing this weekend?" "I'm playing my Palladium game." "What's that?" "Well, it's like D&D." (or "It's an RPG set in a fantasy world." "Oh, you mean like D&D?")

Now, I have seen some different games which have gone on where Palladium has chosen not to... my usual suggestion here is Hackmaster, with it's % skills and opposed combat rolls... but Palladium has chosen not to come out with a new edition, preferring instead to do iterative improvements that get spread over a wide area. With Rifts, they licensed out the setting to Savage Worlds. But they don't want to do a new edition or rules clean-up.

Rogerd1, this is a tired argument that many people have made for upwards of 40 years; would you like to place a gentleman's bet (no actual money wagered) on when you anticipate this happening? My bet is, Palladium Books is not dying as a company any time in the next 40 years.

If anything, based on the ages of the people I saw the latest PoH (and as a man in his mid-40s, I was slightly older than the majority of the people I saw attending), Palladium is in no true danger of bleeding out. My son and I play Palladium games (as do his friends, for whom I GM), as do many of the players/fans from my generation and their children.

As for the appeal of its IP to those not currently connected to it, that can change any time, particularly if Hasbro and WOTC keep stepping on their cranks (please forgive my crudity) when it comes to going past their fans' limits for overt greed, cash grabs, and then offering clumsily worded responses as they try to do damage control. (But to be clear, I'm not predicting D&D's demise as a game any time soon; I just argue that it could easily give up its crown as the leading table top RPG if they keep getting bad PR and alienating enough of their more vocal fans).

All that said, I don't hate you and I do welcome your thoughts; please don't read what I wrote above as angry or hateful.

If all the rules are in one book, why would there additional sourcebooks?







And I constantly read how a lot of older players stick with older editions because they don't like newer ones.
DnD is so big, in part, because it has a much big company behind it and can get their books in all kinds of stores. I've seen them in Walmart. D&D has also had movies and cartoons. That's a lot of advertising that Palladium doesn't have.
Of course, since Wizards and Hasbro's gaff last December, I wonder how big D&D will continue to be. They've lost a lot of fans.






What work? I make a character and I play it. Sure there's some adjusting but it's not taking incompatible systems and trying to force them together.




I agree he's a micromanager.
How's it massively unbalanced?




Why spend time and money completely retype the same information over and over? Copy and pasting gets product out the door faster with lower cost. Why the different fonts, I don't know. Maybe Kevin decided to change them? Maybe a file got screwed up or the printer changed them? I would hope that they'd be fixed in future printings.



I agree. He's gotten burned by people he trusted so I can understand his need to control things. Hopefully, he'll start trusting his writers again.




So? Not all weapons are the same, nor is all ammo. Just look at all the different rounds for 38 caliber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38_caliber and then we have 9mm on top of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_mm_caliber

Do you expect a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver to have the same performance as a Saturday Night Special?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_1851_Navy_Revolver
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special




The laws of physics may work differently in different universes. We've seen that in a couple of Rifts books. I think it should be up to the GM if they want MDC or not. If they do, then use it. If not, convert it.

Agreed. Palladium does not have a large staff. That is one reason it takes so long or the books to come out. The other reason is that Kevin insists on editing and adding to all the books himself, which takes forever.

Yes, there were a lot of them. DnD 6e, a.k.a One DnD is coming soon.
But the point is that in the time between Palladium 1e, and 2e (HU 3e) coming out, DnD and Shadowrun have gone through multiple new editions - admittedly, a lot of people are not keen on Shadowrun due to its crunchiness.

The point remains valid and unchanged though. Palladium has not improved with a single centralised book of rules, that have attempts at balance, and primarily work with most other products.



And that is why people don't really buy it, because the rules are spread out over multiple books which should not be necessary to access basic rules.

SWADE has basic rules
DnD has basic rules
Pathfinder has basic rules
Eclipse Phase
13th Age
Modern Age / Fantasy Age 2e

I could go on. The point is they all have basic rules attached to them, then have setting specific rules.

Palladium will never pull in the younger crowd until it gets its act together! Otherwise it will keep losing, and bleeding out until it closes.



This is called Micromanagement, and is quite frankly poor business.

Exactly.

Don't have to tell me; most of my for-fun work these days is SWADE, just because I can use it for a lot of things from only a few references.



Though, consider it's loss in status over the last 20 years or so, from its zenith in the 90s. For a while, Rifts could realistically boast being the 3rd most popular RPG, behind D&D and Vampire. Even the other World of Darkness lines weren't seen as contenders. Now? It is pretty niche, and, IME, regarded as ossified. How many of the innovations that are bragged about on the Company Profile are from 40 years ago? How many are new?

If you look at the comments around Savage Rifts, there's a lot of "Thank goodness it's getting a decent system". Discussing the Megaversal system, you hear the same refrain, again and again... "The world-building is cool, but the mechanics suck." With regards to Rifts, it often has "Man, they really like their fascists" and "How many stereotypes can we fit in a single book?" added on.

True, plus you could get a character from Savage Pathfinder, or Savage Fantasy Companion with Heavy (+2) armour or powers and fit right into Savage Rifts, no problem.



Palladium as a product is a virtual dinosaur, and slowly dying, and Savage Rifts is likely keeping it alive.
Plus, as you, and others have said, the rules for Savage Rifts rock, and work really well.



I think this is also a case of Palladium being a product of its time, when Indiana Jones was slaying Nazi's by the bucketload, so killing them was cool. Now.....having such a polarising set of characters, all the while is not so good. I know KS has said in his Rifts books about liking clear bad guys, but they don't have to be the Baby Eating Bishop of Barton Wells (Blackadder joke for anyone who didn't know).

Latest weekly update states, the 2E Yin-Sloth Jungles book will be from 192-224 pages, with Kevin putting a lot more material into it, beyond even that which the freelance manuscript included.

Island at the Edge of the World should also get the same treatment, as he also explicitly states "We anticipate updating and expanding this sourcebook much as we did with Yin-Sloth Jungles, for release later this year."

Oh, he also states he's anxious to write the Old Kingdom books, so things are looking up in terms of the publication schedule.

https://palladiumbooks.com/about-pallad ... ly-updates

The more he plays with and adds to the material, the longer it will take to get the book out.

How is a basic rule book an improvement? I don't see it as that. I see it as extra work. Why should I need two books to play when I only need one now?




I'm confused. You want Palladium to have a separate book for rules and then books with specific setting rules. Then you list games that include basic rules attached with the specific setting rules? That's what Palladium has now.

Palladium - basic and setting rules
Rifts - basic and setting rules
Splicers - basic and setting rules
After the Bomb - basic and setting rules

and so on. Each game has their own basic and setting rules. It just happens that the basic rules from one game are compatible with the others. How is having another book that's just rules help Palladium? It just adds to the complexity of a game by requiring another book, especially if that book includes rules that aren't relevant to the game I want to play? If I want to play a Wizard in a fantasy setting, why do I need rules for modern combat, or rules for martial arts?

I feel like I'm in The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. First we have a stubborn monk, who is not an Elf. Then we get a box of holding with shotguns, explosives, and a psionic spirit blade that from another system.

We can do that with Rifts.




I consider Palladium a decent system and that other game's mechanics suck. I don't know about Savage Worlds. I haven't tried it but I hated Star Wars D20 and never understood DnD, Pathfinder, or A Time of War.





Being a product of it's time can be said of current games were there are no clear bad guys and evil characters are just misunderstood and in need a hug. Ultimately, how bad guys are portrayed is up to the GM. If they want baby eating bad guys, the bad guys eat babies. If they bad guys aren't really bad, they're not really bad.

You don't have MDC armour in Fantasy, so this is a lie!
Whereas with Savage Pathfinder I can do exactly that.



Hahahahahahahahaha!



Try 13th Age, Modern Age / Fantasy Age 2e, Tri-Stat, Age of Sigmar, Wrath & Glory, Trinity Continuum, Torg 2e, Wordplay, Omni.



This is a rather silly statement.



My statement was used an extreme example, and should not be happening in an rpg, unless agreed by all by all players.



Bad guys are bad guys. They don't need to be 2-dimensional all of the time.

It is no lie. Rifts has all the races Palladium does. We also have MDC equipment and weapons. We can quite easily have a fantasy game with MDC using Rifts if we want.
You can't do that with just Savage Rifts. As you said, you have to bring in characters from other books.




I've never played D&D or Pathfinder because don't understand them. I can't even generate a character with them. There's quite a few other games that I never bothered with either after looking at the rules. Others I had to struggle with. Palladium is easy compared to them.






I think I'll pass. I'm happy with Palladium.




We live in a silly age. Look at how much D&D has changed.





That's true. Characters will be as dimensional as we want them to be. Not that the Coalition States aren't "purely" bad guys in the canon but they can be if we want them to be. We could also make them the good guy if we want or any place in between. If we want Deevils and Devils to be good we can do that. If I want my CS military to have, Elven archers, Dwarven artillery and Dragons for air support along with Turtle Commandos, Mermaid Sailors, Vampire medics and a Succubus as a Chaplain, I can do that. (I really want to do all that right now.) And this doesn't just go for Palladium's games but all games. We could have Stormtroopers as the good guys and Rebels the bad ones. If we want Nazi SS to be the heroes defending Europe from the invading French hoards we can do that. The books and canon universes are just a framework for our games. Our games only include what we put in them.

While it is true that Palladium Fantasy titles do not have MDC armor or weapons in them per say (though some books might have MD conversions available like D&G), I do agree though it is entirely possible to construct a fantasy themed game using various Rifts books if you know where to look:
-Rifts does have numerous examples of Rune Weapons, which are found in PF
-Rifts does have various magic gear that can be used (even ignoring its default TW)
-Rifts does have magical "Fantasy" esque weapons that can do MD, and non-EBA magical armor is a thing
-Rifts does have some non-magical Fantasy-esque weapons (Steel Tree, Larhold, Kissinite((sp?))) and armor (hide armor exists in numerous books) that can be classified as MDC-level that would not qualify as "magical" IMHO.
-Rifts (early titles) borrowed heavily from PF in terms of races and monsters IINM
-Rifts does have non-tech powers that could be seen as fantasy-esque (Spirit West Traditionalist Tribes IINM, there are a few in South America 1&2, Dinosaur Swamp tribes ((not that they don't have tech)), several D-Bees in WB30 also fall into this category, Africa might also fall in to this category outside of the Pheonix Empire)
-Rifts Wormwood DB, Mystic Russia and England WBs might also qualify in this respect (or run as such, I'm not to familiar with the titles in question)

There's also bows that fire MD Arrows along with vibro-weapons, so it's totally doable.

MD bow and arrows fall under the heading of Steel Tree (WB26) and Larhold (WB9) examples, IIRC Spirit West might also have something in that vein (aside from the controversial laser bow). MercOps also has the only MD crossbow that comes to mind.

Depending on the intended "spirit" of doing a "Fantasy" setting like PF and how "high-tech" someone wants to go some weapons like Vibro-Blades, neural maces, and exploding MD arrow heads might be in or out. I certainly agree you can do a Steam/cyber-Punk looking version of Fantasy using Rifts without any real question, but I thought the questioner was going for "traditional" fantasy which would rule out things like vibro-blades and neural maces, though exploding arrow heads could be considered an outgrowth of know materials in the PF setting. Same thing with working materials to get MD performance in a given role if you can see it being an outgrowth of techniques they already use.

You guys have gotten totally off the topic posted about. This topic was about the new books coming out, not about combining PFRPG with Rifts.

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