Shadows of Light?

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Re: Shadows of Light?

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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Warwolf »

Please note that the linked post was made almost 7 years ago. There may have been some more discussion of this topic in the meantime. As of now I would say that the canonicity of Shadows of Light is "under review." This should have minimal effect on anyone gaming with this material, but anyone considering writing stuff for Nightbane might want to think twice about referencing SoL.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Zenvis »

If Kevin really didnt like it why dint he commission Vey to change it?
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

It's still canon to me damnit :) If Kev doesn't want a book to be canon, don't print it, or include a disclaimer like you do with the Rifters. No takebacks =/

If it changed the powerscape a bit much, it's always possible to throw in a 'most of the Athanatos have been wiped out in a genocide by enemy X' in future sourcebooks.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

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If the PCC(the Psychic hacker is sweet and psy ninja FTW) I won't be too happy. I will be sad..sad indeed, as most of those PCC are THE BEST P.C.C. of the whole Palladium system(but being for Nightbane is not suprise...all the SoL PCCs can run AWESOME circles around the ridiculous useless fluff that smeared that pathetic excuse of a paper made brick of nothing that is Psyscape...yes is my LEAST favored palladium book...I have nothing but hate for that book..the only one that made me think "yep, i wasted my money on this thing"). I will pray all day fro those pcc remaining canonical and official...at same time i will pray for Psyscape not being reprinted and being revised(i hate that sourcebook so much it hurt...)
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Warwolf »

Tor wrote:It's still canon to me damnit :) If Kev doesn't want a book to be canon, don't print it, or include a disclaimer like you do with the Rifters. No takebacks =/

If it changed the powerscape a bit much, it's always possible to throw in a 'most of the Athanatos have been wiped out in a genocide by enemy X' in future sourcebooks.


The problem lies in the fact that at the time SoL was printed there were several factors that led Kev to put it out. One, in my opinion, was a lack of a strong, cohesive vision of what Palladium wanted Nightbane to be. Another was pressure to support the line. These two things combined saw Kev put out a book that he saw as "good enough." He's mentioned that it's one of the few he ever did and one that he regrets. As to why there couldn't have been an Athantos genocide... you're kidding, right? Did you see how up in arms people were about Tolkeen's fate? Aside from that, using a plot-device to retcon a setting doesn't have a very good history (World of Darkness anyone?). Besides, concrete decisions about what, if anything, will stay or go out of SoL are still up in the air. Kev and I haven't gotten down to those brass tacks yet, which is why I said it's "under review."

Note: This IS NOT TO SAY that there isn't cool and useful material in the book, because there is. In fact, it's likely that at some point in the future at least some of what's in SoL will either be reprinted or something relatively similar will be worked up. Until that time, individuals should continue to use SoL in their games as if it were canon free and clear. For now, the review of the canon really only affects any new official material from the NSG on.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Warwolf »

The Baron of chaos wrote:If the PCC(the Psychic hacker is sweet and psy ninja FTW) I won't be too happy. I will be sad..sad indeed, as most of those PCC are THE BEST P.C.C. of the whole Palladium system(but being for Nightbane is not suprise...all the SoL PCCs can run AWESOME circles around the ridiculous useless fluff that smeared that pathetic excuse of a paper made brick of nothing that is Psyscape...yes is my LEAST favored palladium book...I have nothing but hate for that book..the only one that made me think "yep, i wasted my money on this thing"). I will pray all day fro those pcc remaining canonical and official...at same time i will pray for Psyscape not being reprinted and being revised(i hate that sourcebook so much it hurt...)


As I mentioned above, I've never said there isn't good material in SoL. In fact, the Spook Squad and Seekers material were some of my favorite parts of the book. So the worst-case scenario is that this material influences a new take on it. Best-case is that they are simply touched-up and reprinted. Perhaps in Faction-specific sourcebooks? Hmm?
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by The Baron of chaos »

Warwolf wrote:
The Baron of chaos wrote:If the PCC(the Psychic hacker is sweet and psy ninja FTW) I won't be too happy. I will be sad..sad indeed, as most of those PCC are THE BEST P.C.C. of the whole Palladium system(but being for Nightbane is not suprise...all the SoL PCCs can run AWESOME circles around the ridiculous useless fluff that smeared that pathetic excuse of a paper made brick of nothing that is Psyscape...yes is my LEAST favored palladium book...I have nothing but hate for that book..the only one that made me think "yep, i wasted my money on this thing"). I will pray all day fro those pcc remaining canonical and official...at same time i will pray for Psyscape not being reprinted and being revised(i hate that sourcebook so much it hurt...)


As I mentioned above, I've never said there isn't good material in SoL. In fact, the Spook Squad and Seekers material were some of my favorite parts of the book. So the worst-case scenario is that this material influences a new take on it. Best-case is that they are simply touched-up and reprinted. Perhaps in Faction-specific sourcebooks? Hmm?


I repeat...as long as those PCC remain canon i'll be happy.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

Warwolf wrote:The problem lies in the fact that at the time SoL was printed there were several factors that led Kev to put it out. One, in my opinion, was a lack of a strong, cohesive vision of what Palladium wanted Nightbane to be. Another was pressure to support the line. These two things combined saw Kev put out a book that he saw as "good enough." He's mentioned that it's one of the few he ever did and one that he regrets.


A "lack of vision" is too vague to be a "fact". A lot of us don't quite care if Kevin has regrets about publishing a book to support the line. Nightbane was primarily CJ's world so I'm probably more interested in what he says about stuff others author like TTGD, SoL or that new Survival Guide. There's pressure to support the Rifts line, but are we going to want to buy new Rifts books if the next one might be 'non-canon' in a few years?

I'll leave it up to Palladium to decide when to make things into canon, but IMO it isn't up to them to negate canon once it's introduced. If they print it, it's part of the eternal Megaverse IMO. It's unfair to those of us who bought the book to attempt to negate its canonicity after we spent our money on it on the basis of wanting something canonically Palladium.

Warwolf wrote:As to why there couldn't have been an Athantos genocide... you're kidding, right? Did you see how up in arms people were about Tolkeen's fate? Aside from that, using a plot-device to retcon a setting doesn't have a very good history (World of Darkness anyone?).
It was kind of a random thing to represent the idea, there's other ways of doing it. I can't even remember if the numbers of Athanatos compared to Nightbane/Guardians was even well clarified. If we're talking about 100 versus 100K banes/guardians then a drop of the bucket barely upsets any plans. A note about 'they're busy fighting the reapers' would mostly cancel out another SoL faction too if they're things that nobody wants to deal with.

It would be the first time prior sourcebooks get ignored. The acknowledgement of the massive implications of the entities in Pantheons of the Megaverse is barely nodded at in later Rifts books.

Warwolf wrote:concrete decisions about what, if anything, will stay or go out of SoL are still up in the air. Kev and I haven't gotten down to those brass tacks yet, which is why I said it's "under review."
Basically your decision is whether or not you want to acknowledge the past or not, bring SoL elements back and acknowledge them, or pretend they aren't part of the Megaverse. If there's an unavoidable conflict in the material GMs can just consider them separate dimensions. Transdimensional TMNT well clarifies this option when dealing with differences in rules or worlds.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

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Tor wrote:A "lack of vision" is too vague to be a "fact". A lot of us don't quite care if Kevin has regrets about publishing a book to support the line. Nightbane was primarily CJ's world so I'm probably more interested in what he says about stuff others author like TTGD, SoL or that new Survival Guide. There's pressure to support the Rifts line, but are we going to want to buy new Rifts books if the next one might be 'non-canon' in a few years?


Actually I'd say that "lack of vision" is right on the money (although it sort of implies bad planning when personally I think there was just no planning). Carella had an idea of what he wanted the setting to be, but everything after that was one big muddle. TtGD was a dramatic change in style from Carella's stuff and included a bunch of themes and concepts that drastically change the tone of hte setting if you include them. And SoL was radically different again, introducing a whole new side in the supernatural war and doing it in a way that (according to the fans at least) didn't connect well with the rest of the game. And the publication gap between sourcebooks after Carella left tended to be measured in years and years.

All in all, it really isn't unfair to say that Palladium Books didn't really have a vision or plan for the game line, and it's not unfair to say that Siembieda's approach was to just intermittently publish random submissions that caught his eye without really trying to give the game line any direction.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

TTGD and SoL were fine, the tone of a series can't be stagnant. Surely we recognize that the tone of Rifts changed over time.

SoL was radically different again, introducing a whole new side in the supernatural war and doing it in a way that (according to the fans at least) didn't connect well with the rest of the game.

This wasn't radical or different at all. Nightlands did exactly this when it introduced the demons of hades as an additional supernatural power. Between the Shadows also did it by introducing the powers of the Astral Plane and Dreamstream into the mix.

How do we evaluate how well something 'connects' with the rest of things?

Presence of lack of vision doesn't matter too much. Even if something is thrown in randomly, it's part of the universe. It's like comic books. Is every new edition going to be another Flashpoint where everything and everyone we love dies and we're left with a bunch of Prime Earth imposters?
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Warwolf »

Tor wrote:A "lack of vision" is too vague to be a "fact". A lot of us don't quite care if Kevin has regrets about publishing a book to support the line. Nightbane was primarily CJ's world so I'm probably more interested in what he says about stuff others author like TTGD, SoL or that new Survival Guide. There's pressure to support the Rifts line, but are we going to want to buy new Rifts books if the next one might be 'non-canon' in a few years?

I'll leave it up to Palladium to decide when to make things into canon, but IMO it isn't up to them to negate canon once it's introduced. If they print it, it's part of the eternal Megaverse IMO. It's unfair to those of us who bought the book to attempt to negate its canonicity after we spent our money on it on the basis of wanting something canonically Palladium.

Basically your decision is whether or not you want to acknowledge the past or not, bring SoL elements back and acknowledge them, or pretend they aren't part of the Megaverse. If there's an unavoidable conflict in the material GMs can just consider them separate dimensions. Transdimensional TMNT well clarifies this option when dealing with differences in rules or worlds.


No, our decision is what stays and goes from the canon. You are free to have your opinion on the matter and to like or not like what we do, but that does not dictate how Palladium IPs are approached. Even C.J. (whose work I largely have great respect for) has no direct say as to the direction of the line anymore, as he no longer does work for Palladium. Palladium owns the setting and thus has final say-so. Sometimes mistakes are made and sometimes mistakes need to be edited or erased to clean things up.

I HIGHLY doubt you'll see such a situation with any other Palladium supplement, though. SoL is likely a one-off situation that was learned from and won't be repeated. Of course, this is all still taking for granted that things are deleted from canon. It hasn't officially happened yet, and still may not. This is why I indicated that it is "under review."
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

I see the omission of ISP for super-beings with psionics as a misake. Or giving the same amount of ISP to both Master and Latent psionic as a mistake. Mistakes are things we can see as plausible typos or statistical illogicalities.

Entire sourcebooks, especially ones where Kevin writes forewards about how awesome they are and how he took a part in producing them, reviewing them, approving them, those aren't mistakes. Those are retcons.

How is this a one-off situation? It seems like a repeat of what happened with Manhunter. A lot of the material from sourcebooks is also de-emphasized or ignored.

I humbly respect that rather than some strange canon-deletion (Lord Simultaneous at work?) explanations simply be given for how (via a time fast-forward, perhaps, ala Siege on Tolkeen) some material is no longer relevant.

Later World Books for Rifts effectively take this treatment with the Four Horsemen, for example. The Athanatos could be dealt with in the same way. Rather than "there were never any angels, lol" you could simply advance the timeline and say "they all left at X date because of Y reason". There's so many easy ways to deal with them (cancel out the Reapers, wiped out by Nightlords, gone off to live with the Elemental Spirits of Light who are clearly their parents) which wouldn't require negating their existence in canon.

Even if it's a "Zurvan rewrote history and they don't exist now" (seems to be how Wally West is being treated in Prime Earth) at least gives us an explanation. Past books do not have to be de-canonized to remove their impact from newer books. Someone can defeat past enemies, realities can be wiped out. Precedents already exist for dimensions being wiped out and histories rewritten, they are tools available to writers.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Warwolf »

Tor wrote:I see the omission of ISP for super-beings with psionics as a misake. Or giving the same amount of ISP to both Master and Latent psionic as a mistake. Mistakes are things we can see as plausible typos or statistical illogicalities.

Entire sourcebooks, especially ones where Kevin writes forewards about how awesome they are and how he took a part in producing them, reviewing them, approving them, those aren't mistakes. Those are retcons.


Sure it'd be a retcon. Never denied that. Much like doing away with the whole "all Nightbane are orphans" line. "Mistake" and "retcon" are not mutually exclusive terms, however. In this instance, some material in SoL may be considered a mistake... and then retconned. Haven't you ever had things you thought were awesome until you revisited them years later and realized you were mistaken? I know I have.

How is this a one-off situation? It seems like a repeat of what happened with Manhunter. A lot of the material from sourcebooks is also de-emphasized or ignored.


No. Manhunter was a licensing issue. Palladium allowed Myrmidion to convert their game and publish a Palladium version. It didn't work out well and eventually I believe Myrmidion went under. Hence, no more Manhunter. As far as de-emphasizing or ignoring material, it doesn't have the same effect as removing it. While you might prefer that be the route that is taken with SoL, it likely won't be. If something needs to go from previously published canon, in this instance it will probably be stricken from the record entirely. Again, you may not care for this method, but simply claiming "it isn't our job" or that you don't agree won't change it. Sorry if this upsets you but we're simply doing what we feel is best for Nightbane.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

Nightbane are no longer orphans? What did this? Dark Conversions? Although technically you might have to have dead parents to be an orphan and if NB never had any to begin with... orphan might just be something they're assumed to be for lack of knowing any living parents.

Nothing 'needs' to go from previous canon. Once canon, always canon. If you contradict SoL (since AFAIK SoL doesn't contradict the previous NB books in any way that can't be explained) then there will simply be 2 dimensions of Nightbane, 1 which has SoL continuity and 1 which has the continuity of your new book.

Though unless you come right out and say 'ignore this part of SoL' I'm pretty confident I can weasel out a complex explanation of how the books compliment each other and don't contradict one another in any way :)
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

Tor wrote:Nightbane are no longer orphans? What did this? Dark Conversions?


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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

=/ Well, it's not the end of the world, I guess. It's one thing to complain about something from world book 4 but something that's been part of it from the start... guess it's worth a read some day for big changes like that.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

Tor wrote:=/ Well, it's not the end of the world, I guess. It's one thing to complain about something from world book 4 but something that's been part of it from the start... guess it's worth a read some day for big changes like that.


Not quite, most nightbane are, in fact, still orphans, but some of them have been proven to have defenate human parents.

It is also nice because it took most of the rifter tables and made them cannon, generally with updates or conversions to bring them in line with the others power-level wise.

Sadly, the Megalomaniac table did not make the cut.
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Re: Shadows of Light?

Unread post by Tor »

Hopefully at least the fantasy one that lets you be a dragon/knight/wizard did, that was cool...

Moreso than canonizing the rifter tables, I am wondering if there is a consolidated random table. Part of the problem I had with the separate tables introduced in the rifters was that they were all separate and you couldn't really mix and match, so you couldn't have traits both from fantasy AND sci-fi, which kinda sucked.
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