Good stuff, thank you for the answers fellas.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 22, 2021, 01:57:47 PM
I agree with his approach. Some GM guidance in the books would be nice, but we do have the GM Guide.
If you're running a combat heavy game, then the players are well advised to know that a Vagabond with a laser pistol is just not going to contribute like a Glitter Boy. But I really love the idea of an adventuring group that contains a wide level of types. Like Juicer, Vagabond, Mage and Psyker. Playing a game like that, combat should really be de-emphasized, and more emphasis on RP situations and problems that don't rely on having the biggest boom stick to resolve.

For the record, our last campaign had a Ley Line Walker (me), Mind Melter, Techno-wizard, Psi-Hound, Cyberknight and a Robot Pilot (Flying Titan)... and I insisted on playing my Ley Line Walker as a normal-ish guy; meaning I use my magic to earn a living ferrying goods and people around along the ley line networks of the Magic Zone and I really dislike killing people if I can disable them with spells like magic net or just escape from them instead (I took out nearly half our opponents in the campaign by myself, but killed absolutely no one; even going out of my way to save the lives of injured but not dead opponents; to the point that the combat monkey in the Flying Titan was getting a little ticked that he wasn't able to kill more people; though the resale value on undamaged body armor mostly made up for it... mini-missiles and armor repairs are expensive).

Quote from: lordmalachdrim on March 22, 2021, 02:33:49 PM
The thing to remember with Palladium is when you mention it almost everyone thinks of Rifts and only Rifts. The reason why this is an issue is the nature of what Rifts is and what the palladium system was designed to do.

Rifts is everything thrown together into one big pot (mecha, power armor, mages, psychics, ordinary people, magic items, monsters, demons, gods, etc)

The Palladium system was really created to run Fantasy (Palladium Fantasy 1st ed), and then had new bits tacked on for each new line (which came with small rule changes to existing material along the way).

Some examples of things added over time for different game lines.
SDC - added for Heroes Unlimited
PPE - added for Beyond the Supernatural
Mutant Animal creation - first appeared in Heroes unlimited but greatly expanded for TMNT
MDC - added for Robotech (to cover mecha and spacecraft)

Basically you are looking at nearly 10 years of minor changes and rule addons before Rifts was released in 1990.

Interestingly enough, I have played (and enjoyed) each of those games (most of them right after release.  BtS and TMNT were a blast!).  And, as stand-alone games, they usually work pretty well.  Then you mash them all together in Rifts, and you get total garbage.

Quote from: horsesoldier on March 22, 2021, 10:46:34 AM
Are the Palladium rules as bad as TBP would insist they are?

Rifts can be. Anything pre-Rifs tended to be very playable as the system has actually not that many moving parts. Just lots of decorations on the gears.

I GM'd alot of Palladium stuff and when was running a gaming club way back I GMed the most Beyond the Supernatural and Robotech. Later in the early 2000s GMed a Rifts campaign.

Personally I feel Rifts works. But its alot like 1e Shadowrun in that the GM needs to know the system well else it can go very badly one way or another due to how combat works.

Quote from: Omega on March 23, 2021, 08:37:18 AM
Rifts can be. Anything pre-Rifs tended to be very playable as the system has actually not that many moving parts. Just lots of decorations on the gears...

Personally I feel Rifts works. But its alot like 1e Shadowrun in that the GM needs to know the system well else it can go very badly one way or another due to how combat works.

As a lead-in to running Rifts, I recommend starting with Macross-era Robotech as it's got the MDC and bigger bonuses with mecha combat while still using SDC at the personal scale and then expanding into Robotech II: The Sentinels where MDC body armor/hand weapons become comon and some of the playable alien species have limited forms of psychic and magic powers and/or personal MDC bodies.

Going from Robotech II: The Sentinels to Rifts is not nearly the leap as from say Palladium Fantasy or even Heroes Unlimited (where AR still mattered).

By contrast, I consider the change from spells/day to PPE to be fairly trivial as it was is really just applying the ISP system that already existed in Palladium Fantasy for psionics to the magic system. Thus, it's not a big change in the learning curve the way SDC is only armor (Palladium Fantasy) to personal SDC (Heroes Unlimited) to giant robots/supertech have MDC (Robotech) was.

So in terms of lead-in, I'd say Palladium Fantasy 1e > Robotech (Macross) > Robotech II: The Sentinels > Rifts.

Quote from: Omega on March 21, 2021, 04:54:34 AMExample. I still use MS paint for some editing simply because it gets the job done without having to click 6 different sub tabs just to move something around. And the older MS paint was actually a bit more functional for my sprite projects way back as it supported certain older file types where the last version of MS paint does not, and also lacks some other functionality. Newer is not allways better.

Well hello there, fellow MSPaint afficionado! I knew we were still out there! 

Quote from: horsesoldier on March 22, 2021, 10:46:34 AM
Are the Palladium rules as bad as TBP would insist they are?

Long time Palladium GM here.

Yes, yes they are.

And...weirdly it doesn't matter in actual play...if you have the right group.

I'm unsure WHY exactly, but Kevin's [(AD&D + RuneQuest) x Gamma World]/2 mishmosh works so incredibly well in actual play with players who get into the setting, the archetypes and the action. But for decades, some of my most fun RPG memories have been Palladium sessions with a variety of their games from Palladium Fantasy 1e, Mechanoids, Rifts, Chaos Earth, Nightbane and Systems Failure.

Kevin has some odd magic. On paper, his system is wonky. If you're trying to make sense of stuff, it's double wonky. If you examine it and try to fix stuff, it's break your brain wonky. BUT if you and your players just go with the flow, hot damn Palladium games are mega-fun. 

Robotech/Macross does the MDC well. But for some reason they seem to have forgotten why or how when got to Rifts.

Quote from: RandyB on March 21, 2021, 03:33:33 PM

Quote from: Brad on March 20, 2021, 06:52:49 PM
It's amazing that someone who is such a massive Luddite also wrote some of the most technology-based RPGs ever. Maybe there's a lesson in there...

Once you reach a certain level of understanding of technology, Ludditism becomes more and more attractive. Ask anyone who works in IT infrastructure or cybersecurity. And ignore the software devs. They don't understand the tech; they cargo-cult.

Oh yeah.  I have multiple engineering and postgraduate degrees and decades of experience working in advanced technology, and I still use Microsoft Office XP.  I mostly refuse updates to software because they break thing and remove features more than they improve anything.  I'm still mad that I had to buy a smartphone when my old phone dies rather than another one with a slide out keyboard.  Newer is very often not better.  Frex, I have a 40 year old alarm clock that still works great while I'm lucky if my more recent equipment lasts a year.

Quote from: Omega on March 24, 2021, 01:25:41 AM
Robotech/Macross does the MDC well. But for some reason they seem to have forgotten why or how when got to Rifts.

I'll definitely agree with that assessment. The MDC levels were at a level that felt like the mecha were tough, but conventional explosives could still pose a threat.

For example, a Zentraedi Battlepod has 50 MDC (which is also about the MDC of a conventional tank) while a recoilless rifle does 1D10 MD so a coordinated attack by a squad with heavy weapons could drop a lone Battlepod (they could similarly cripple the sensor head of a Destroid or Veritech). Similarly, a short burst from the Veritech's 55mm GU-11 rifle does 3D6 MD or about twice what a recoilless rifle could inflict (and about what a tank's main gun could dish out).

My personal preference for time period was a few years post-Macross (before the SDF-3 launched) with the proto-Southern Cross/Sentinels gear from the Strike Force supplement in the mix and the details on the Zentraedi Control Zone from Breakout.

Personal body armor with 15 MDC also helped a lot in convincing PCs to occasionally get out of their cockpits to do some scouting.

2nd Edition Robotech (the one that spun out of their regaining the license for Shadow Chronicles) more accurately portrays the names and baseline capabilities of the mecha (the right armaments for example), but makes the same mistakes as Rifts regarding MDC as Rifts (probably because Kevin wanted them to be compatible/useable in Rifts since back when they had the original license he needed a good sized section of the conversion book on how to up-armor and upgrade the weapons to make Robotech mecha competitive with even early Rifts equipment).

My recommendation if you want to use 2e Robotech material with 1e is to cut all the MDC and MD damage values in half for everything except the capital ships. This generally results in a slight downgrade in MDC for human mecha, but their bonuses and damage will be slightly better (and the opposite, slightly better MDC, but lower damage for enemy units).

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 24, 2021, 11:38:58 AM

Quote from: Omega on March 24, 2021, 01:25:41 AM
Robotech/Macross does the MDC well. But for some reason they seem to have forgotten why or how when got to Rifts.

I'll definitely agree with that assessment. The MDC levels were at a level that felt like the mecha were tough, but conventional explosives could still pose a threat.

For example, a Zentraedi Battlepod has 50 MDC (which is also about the MDC of a conventional tank) while a recoilless rifle does 1D10 MD so a coordinated attack by a squad with heavy weapons could drop a lone Battlepod (they could similarly cripple the sensor head of a Destroid or Veritech). Similarly, a short burst from the Veritech's 55mm GU-11 rifle does 3D6 MD or about twice what a recoilless rifle could inflict (and about what a tank's main gun could dish out).

My personal preference for time period was a few years post-Macross (before the SDF-3 launched) with the proto-Southern Cross/Sentinels gear from the Strike Force supplement in the mix and the details on the Zentraedi Control Zone from Breakout.

Personal body armor with 15 MDC also helped a lot in convincing PCs to occasionally get out of their cockpits to do some scouting.

2nd Edition Robotech (the one that spun out of their regaining the license for Shadow Chronicles) more accurately portrays the names and baseline capabilities of the mecha (the right armaments for example), but makes the same mistakes as Rifts regarding MDC as Rifts (probably because Kevin wanted them to be compatible/useable in Rifts since back when they had the original license he needed a good sized section of the conversion book on how to up-armor and upgrade the weapons to make Robotech mecha competitive with even early Rifts equipment).

My recommendation if you want to use 2e Robotech material with 1e is to cut all the MDC and MD damage values in half for everything except the capital ships. This generally results in a slight downgrade in MDC for human mecha, but their bonuses and damage will be slightly better (and the opposite, slightly better MDC, but lower damage for enemy units).

It doesn't help that the source material had a certain lethality to it that just didn't apply to the hero characters, until it was time to for them to dramatically die.
Valkyrie/Veritech were way more fragile than their 250 MDC(?) capacity in the RPG might suggest.
The RPG seemed to take a simulationist approach to a narrative structure, and it made the Zentraedi mecha into glass cannons, where the earth mecha were capable of spike damage (missiles and gun full bursts) but could do a lot of damage soaking. Which kinda sorta worked for Robotech, but porting those paradigms into Rifts was wonky as hell.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 24, 2021, 12:40:53 PM
It doesn't help that the source material had a certain lethality to it that just didn't apply to the hero characters, until it was time to for them to dramatically die.

Valkyrie/Veritech were way more fragile than their 250 MDC(?) capacity in the RPG might suggest.

The RPG seemed to take a simulationist approach to a narrative structure, and it made the Zentraedi mecha into glass cannons, where the earth mecha were capable of spike damage (missiles and gun full bursts) but could do a lot of damage soaking. Which kinda sorta worked for Robotech, but porting those paradigms into Rifts was wonky as hell.

Its honestly why, if you halve the 2e Robotech numbers I think it actually works a bit better;

Halved, a VF-1 would have a Main Body of 175 MDC and its 55mm HEAP gun pod would do 1D6x10 MD w. a 10 round burst (250 round magazine) and the head lasers would deal 1D4 MD each (so the officer's variant would do 4D4 MD).

Halved, a Tomahawk (Excalibur in 1e) Destroid would have a main body of 237 MD and its particle beam arms would do 1D6x10+10 MD (with a 20 mile range) while the close range gun clusters would do 1D8x10 MD (but only a 2000 foot range and limited ammo).

Halved, a basic Zentraedi Battlepod would have a Main Body of 62 MDC and its particle guns would deal 1D4x10 MD.

The Officer's Pod would have a Main Body of 112 MDC and its main gun would do 1D6x10 MD (and potential knockdown if you fail a piloting check with a -15% penalty).

The Male Power Armor would have a Main Body of 125 MDC and its chest cannon would deal 1D6x10 MD to a blast radius, while its shoulder gun would do 5D6+5 MD with a potential knockdown (as above but only a -10% penalty).

In other words, relatively speaking, I think they tweaked the numbers relative to each other in the right direction, I just think they're a bit too high relative to SDC structures. Though to be fair, in 2e the person-scale anti-armor weapons would fire mini-missiles dealing about 4-6 times the damage of the 1e versions so even there I think the proportions are better. I'm just not a fan of big numbers for big numbers sake.

Honestly, given the number of "x10"s used for damage expressions coupled with hundreds of MDC on most locations, I almost think the whole thing might be better served if you just divided everything by 10... so the VF-1 has a Main Body of 35 MDC and its gun pod deals 2D6 MD and the Tomahawk has 47 MDC and deals 2D6+2 MD with its particle beams and 2D8 MD with its gun clusters.

That would actually be in line with the idea from 1e that a main battle tank should have a Main Body of about 50 MDC (relative to a HumVee's 4-5 MDC) and its main gun deal about 3D6 MD. A VF-1 SHOULD be less sturdy than a contemporary tank because of all the moving parts and weighing barely a third as much, but also have the unparalleled advantage in mobility that it demonstrates (i.e. good freakin' luck actually hitting a VF-1 with a tank gun while it strafes you with a 55mm HEAP autocannon that makes the A-10's Thunderbolt's 30mm model look like a pop gun).

You guys got me interested in Palladium Fantasy.

From p.3 of the main rulebook in the free preview on drivethru, I learn Humans have an 8% "Cannibalism" score (behind Goblins on 18%). I'm even more intrigued now.

Anyway, mashup of D&D and Runequest eh - anyone want to tell me more? I'm starting fresh on Palladium here. Never even looked at one of their games.

System or setting?

System-wise its a mix of d20s for combat and percentiles for skills. Very skill driven system really and there tends to be alot of leeway in what skills can acquire. Combat is fairly easy and armour works differently than in some other RPGs.
First off, any roll of 4 or better is a hit. But the defender can do things like dodge or parry.
Armour has a rating that if your hit roll is under, then the blow is taken by the armour which has its own HP. (STC)

The setting is fairly standard at its basics. But has several interesting features that sets it apart from many others. One in particular being the Wolfen empire which is fairly large in the northern region. Alot like BX's Known World, you are overall given a paragraph or two on each region. Though some like the Wolfen and Human lands get a little more info.

I always got the impression of a more sylvan land rather than a dark ages or middle-earth sort of setting.

Interesting, I didn;t even realise it had its own setting.

4 on a better on d20 to hit?