I am a bit curious about this, as I have never played anything from Palladium. But for years I have rarely seen a company with more controversy surrounding the fandom, rules discussions etc. so I also thought that it looked a bit like a hornet's nest. Rifts is he big one that I always noticed, but it seems like......a bit of a mess? Is it a fun mess at least? What about the other games?

Here's a full list of everything I've enjoyed from Palladium over the years:
1) TMNT back in the early 90s
2) Robotech back in the early 90s
3) ...
OK, done now.

I've played Rifts and the core Palladium RPG.

Rifts is a great setting, but I hated the rules, which were a mess.
I've since had a go at Savage Rifts, but it feels all tacked together, so it's equally crap.
I'd love to see a DnD 5e supplement for Rifts.

Palladium, well, the setting is fun, the rules are a horrible mash up of ADnD, but  the guy who ran it wayback ion the 80s was a great GM, so that didn't matter so much.
But even so, the rules sucked.

So yeah, great setting, horrible rules, but if you have a really good GM , the horrible rules can be mitigated somewhat.

Quote from: Trond;1043647I am a bit curious about this, as I have never played anything from Palladium. But for years I have rarely seen a company with more controversy surrounding the fandom, rules discussions etc. so I also thought that it looked a bit like a hornet's nest. Rifts is he big one that I always noticed, but it seems like......a bit of a mess? Is it a fun mess at least?

Yep. That's what makes it fun!

QuoteWhat about the other games?

Robotech is eh, ok. The system doesn't do mecha combat at all well. But it's got all the mechs statted up.

Nightbane is really cool. If you've seen the movie Nightbreed, it's like that, with more action and government coverups of sinister forces trying to take over the world. I'd say it out-supernaturals, Beyond The Supernatural.

I only really liked their illustrated weapons & armor and castles books, and a few details in their RPG (which otherwise rolled & melted my eyes).

It is a very simple system and pretty easy to GM. Especially the older stuff.

Personal Favourites.

Beyond the Supernatural: Ghost Busters meets The Night Stalker and X-Files. Supernatural mayhem in the pre-Rifts earth. Overall a good setup and nothing seems too overpowered as long as the DM knows that they are doing. Some of the classes are pretty potent though in certain situations. I GMed this alot way back and the group was composed of two normal people with lots of tech and one latent psychic. Great fun.

Robotech: And all the setting books covering Macross, Southern Cross and Mouspeda and then Sentinels and Macross II. Does mecha combat pretty well and allows for adventuring in and out of the cockpit. GMed this a fair bit too.

TMNT and After the Bomb: Based on the original comics. Not the cartoons or Archie comics. After the Bomb plays like a sort of prototype Rifts in some ways. The setting was later re-released as its own book. GMed this once.

Rifts: This is a sort of ANYTHING! setting. It covers supers, mechs, mutants, aliens, horrors, robots, cyborgs, animal people, and eventually other worlds and more. Seriously needs a DM who knows when to say "No" and much like Gurps, a DM who is willing to prune the giant tree down to something manageable. Tons of setting books for it. Some really good and some so-so.

The Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game first edition - who thinks elegant when they think of Palladium?

The Mechanoid Invasion Book III - Wait! Two Pages?  The rules minus charts, races, and classes are two pages?

Dead Reign and Robotech are great representations of the otherwise somewhat disorganised Megaversal System. Or After the Bomb, which might be my favourite Post-Apo RPG. These are 3 good games.

Now Rifts of course is the crown jewel and IMO rightfully so. That's a game where you can literally take an adventure--any adventure--and just drop it into Rifts Earth.

I happen to have a soft spot for Beyond the Supernatural, even though the 2nd edition is infamously incomplete for over a decade. It's a cool game to run supernatural horror with; even Cthulhu.

Palladium Fantasy 2nd Ed uses the Megaversal System, while 1st Ed uses the system which eventually grew into the Megaversal System. 1st Ed is one of the better D&D-likes from the early days of the hobby. It also helps in understanding certain conventions established by the Megaversal system later on.

The Megaversal system is very simple and combat (while feeling dated in the sense that it isn't streamlined for the sake of being steamlined) is engaging and rich in options. Character Creation is a mess, but if you want to dip your toes into the system and get a feel for it, you can run a game of pre-gens with the Rifts Primer and a Core Rulebook (really both the old rulebook and ultimate edition are fine, though ultimate edition has made some minor changes to the system).

The rules are a mess...but they work if you take a hammer to them. They houserule easily and you're expected to run the game your way. I'm on the Palladium boards and I've been a Palladium GM for a long time and everybody has their houserules (including Kevin).

Palladium has excellent settings. RIFTS is awesome and absolutely worth a look. Pick up a used core book via eBay cheap. I am also a big fan of Palladium Fantasy 1e and the original Mechanoids RPG which is bare bones, but brilliant.

Nightbane is a favorite because chargen is crazy fun and its World of Darkness minus the angst. Trenchcoats and katanas, releasing your inner monster, being hated by real monsters and feared by the innocent, all sorts of fun stuff.

Splicers and Systems Failure are both solid games. Splicers is custom biotech armor vs. robots controlled by multiple insane competing AIs.  Systems Failure is the Y2K virus post-apocalypse where giant bugs came from another dimension through our electrical lines. Now we live without electricity, trying to reclaim the world from the bugs who round humans up for food and breeding.

Quote from: Omega;1043662Rifts: This is a sort of ANYTHING! setting. It covers supers, mechs, mutants, aliens, horrors, robots, cyborgs, animal people, and eventually other worlds and more. Seriously needs a DM who knows when to say "No" and much like Gurps, a DM who is willing to prune the giant tree down to something manageable. Tons of setting books for it. Some really good and some so-so.

Say No in Rifts?  Trim the tree?  Rifts is the one game I've never had to say No or Trim.  Rifts is where you can run a Magnificent Seven campaign where the seven are:
A Robotech Master
A Dragon
Boba Fett
A Cosmo-Knight
A Space Marine Librarian
Thor
Joe the Vagabond

Quote from: Spinachcat;1043684The rules are a mess...but they work if you take a hammer to them. They houserule easily and you're expected to run the game your way. I'm on the Palladium boards and I've been a Palladium GM for a long time and everybody has their houserules (including Kevin).

I trust your authority on this, but the only thing that I find messy is the integration of hit locations.

Palladium has a lot of good stuff in there.  Some of it's just good ideas, some of it's fun game stuff.

The old Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle books have all been fun, as well as the After the Bomb game that the line pivoted to after they lost the TMNT license.  (This means that there's actually two After the Bomb books, one as a TMNT supplement, and one that's a stand-alone game.)  This is especially recommended if you like the old TMNT comics.  (Although I've got to say, I've been reading the recent TMNT books by IDW, and enjoying them.)

Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game has some good stuff in there.  Bill Coffin's an author to watch for - for instance his Library of Bletherad is packed with interesting ideas.  Check his wikipedia page for a list of what he's worked on.

Rifts, of course, is a mad collection of fantastic stuff.  Speaking of madness, Rifts Madhaven is a fantastic book - New York City got hit *hard* by the emergence of the rifts, and the city is poisoned with evil energy and ghosts.  But if you can get inside, there's some fantastic stuff going on in Central Park.  Additionally, check out the dimension books - Wormwood was created with the ideas and art of Tim Truman, a fantastic writer and artist from indie comics.  Phase World takes Rifts into a SciFi/Fantasy dimension that let's you travel across a bright, if dangerous, future instead of grubbing around in the muck of Earth.  Once again, I'll suggest following the work of C.J. Carella, who was prolific and inventive author.  He also created the inventive Nightbane game for Palladium.

Palladium games I own that I had fun playing:

Palladium Fantasy 1st edition
Rifts
After the Bomb
TMNT
Robotech
Ninjas and Superspies


Palladium games I own that I did NOT have fun playing:

Beyond the Supernatural
Palladium Fantasy Revised & 2nd (yuck x1000)


Ambivalent Feelings:

Mechanoids
Macross

Quote from: CRKrueger;1043688Say No in Rifts?  Trim the tree?  Rifts is the one game I've never had to say No or Trim.  Rifts is where you can run a Magnificent Seven campaign where the seven are:
A Robotech Master
A Dragon
Boba Fett
A Cosmo-Knight
A Space Marine Librarian
Thor
Joe the Vagabond

Rifts is the game where a GM and the players can let their hair down and channel their inner 12 year old.

1E Palladium FRP (NOT 2E!!!), plus a couple of its early supplements and the Arms and Armor book (though it is seriously weird that they didn't make that book directly compatible with PFRP...)