Quote from: enelson;3812683. Hit points? Do hit points need to escalate since everyone has the buffer of SDC? And hit points aren't worth much against an MDC weapon.

I think it's a matter of how comic-bookie you want the game to feel.

I always liked the thought behind the dual Hit Point / SDC system, but also felt it was more trouble than it was worth.

My books are packed away because I'm getting ready to move, but wasn't SDC a measure of basically how much damage your character could soak up without being really bothered, and once you were down to HP you knew things were getting serious?

My problem with that as I got older was that a bullet or sword will kill the toughest man as easily as the weakest boy. It's like the damage they inflict is on a scale far enough beyond the range of human toughness that it doesn't matter. Sort of like the whole MDC -vs- SDC thing, though probably not as extreme.

If I were to house rule HP/SDC in my game I would probably say that everyone has a set number of wounds -3 seems to be the standard in most RPGs for some arbitrary reason. I might then use SDC to represent some sort of damage reduction mechanic, much the way SDC armor works.

So say you have to do 5 or 10 points to cause a wound, otherwise it's a superficial cut or bruise. But a tougher character's SDC would effectively raise the amount of damage you had to inflict to cause that wound.

I dunno. Just brain-storming.

Quote from: Silverlion;380835I write games the way I play them.

Weirdo!

Quote from: Silverlion;380835Interestingly enough, it always makes me wonder about other designers. "If you didn't write something you'd use, why the hell did you write it?"

Confuses me too.  

Dave Arneson said he expected people to just figure things out for themselves and to add/subtract as they saw fit.   This choked up several of us at the table.  He was "duh, its your game" and for the guys clutching the rulebooks, it was a tad heretical.  

Since he taught game design, I countered with how that approach didn't make sense since Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, etc didn't have that expectation so why put that into D&D?   When you buy a boardgame or a card game, the rules are there and maybe a variant, but for the most part players of games don't just rules hack the way RPGers do.

Dave's answer was that it was the 70s.  After we chuckled, he added that he thought Gary was too rules focussed and how he felt that less was more.  

But that's why Gary wrote the books I guess.   If Dave had his way, TSR would have had nothing but a pamphlet to sell and I doubt the hobby would have taken off from a pamphlet.

Quote from: Tavis;380873I'm gearing up to run a Rifts one-shot at a local convention, and want to figure out what my combat protocol will look like.

Cool!  On the Palladium forums, there is section for Megaversal Ambassadors which is for GMs who run PB stuff at cons.  In there, Novastar and myself and a few others have lots and lots of discussion on running PB at cons and how best to demo for noobs.

http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewforum.php?f=54

Quote from: Tavis;380873I'd be interested to hear descriptions of how people do the alternation of attacks within a round in play!

I give out tokens and use a fixed Initiative.  On your turn, you can spend as many actions as you like and keep the rest around for dodges or other response actions.  So, you could Aim + Called Shot + Shoot and then keep the 4th action for a later dodge.  Or you could Shoot four times and hope they go down.   The token thing is tangible and lets the players do some resource fiddling which they enjoy.

Quote from: Atomic Scotsman;381031But also, it was such a trippy read that it was more like descending into the diary of a madman -lots of vivid imagery and swirly colors, but when it was all over I didn't know what had happened to me and I couldn't find my pants.

So true.

Quote from: Atomic Scotsman;381031In a market that is shrinking you need to stand out to survive.

Maybe.  

Maybe KS knows his core customer can get him through as long as he stays loyal to the desire to never change.   Barnes & Noble stocks RUE.   That can't be said for most RPGs.

Quote from: enelson;381268A side tangent, Spinachcat mentioned going to the open house. It would be great to hear more about the open house.

Lotsa talk on the Open House forum.  
http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewforum.php?f=50

The PB Open Houses are really great fun.  I think more companies should do this, having their own convention.  I know RPGA and Warhammer do it and the North Texas RPG Con has become an Old School / Retro-RPG con.

Quote from: enelson;381268The player would divide his initiative roll by his number of attacks. Then he would act on his roll, roll - the calculation, etc... Sounded easy to implement and gave a person a chance to act multiple times before someone else attacked.

A really good GM did this at the OH in a Palladium Fantasy event that I got to play (Wolfen vs. Humans) and it was interesting.   You roll D20 + Initiative and divide that by attacks, round up and then calculate when you act.  

Thus if I have 4 attacks and I roll 15, then I act on 15, 11, 7 and 3.  The GM also added that we could not get a free parry before our first action, so if anyone attacked me before 15, I would have to spend an action to dodge...and that would be my first action at 15.

It worked fine.  The calculation added a step and he did the Init roll each round.  Personally, I would do it fixed Init and then have the numbers on the character sheets so the game would move faster.   Kinda like phases in Hero.

Quote from: enelson;381268I am still not sold on the roll with punch/fall but it seems to work very well for those that employ this mechanic.

Having it free like parries is a pain in the ass.  Making players spend an action to make it happen really works well for me.  It gives players a tactical choice.

Quote from: enelson;381268Can the system's experience levels be taken out? It would break alot but I am curious if it can/has been done?

Sure!  

I haven't done it, but I agree with the BRP style skill advancement.  As for SDC advancement, have players roll D100 at the end of an adventure if higher than their total, they get +1 SDC.  

HTH combat could be rated as % as well.  At chargen, I could have 10% in Martial Arts and like skills, get a possible +1D10% per adventure.  Then I get the HTH bonus equal to my %/10 so I need 150% in Martial Arts to get to the 15th level goodie.

Spells the same way.  At chargen, I have 40% in Spell Casting and each 10% lets me access a new level worth of spells.

Quote from: Spinachcat;381450Maybe KS knows his core customer can get him through as long as he stays loyal to the desire to never change.   Barnes & Noble stocks RUE.   That can't be said for most RPGs.

Maybe. B&N stocks Atomic Robo too -it doesn't mean we're doing anything fantastic. It just means our book is in the catalog and some stores choose to put a copy on their shelves. Most other RPG publishers probably aren't carried by the larger distribution organizations.

Catering to a shrinking audience, no matter how successful in the short-run, is ultimately suicidal from a business stand point.

But most publishers are afraid to take the risk and change things up -not until they have no choice anyway. Which is sad, because they could be bring in a whole new batch of readers if they did.

I don't know; I've played PB games for years, and bought more of their books than any other RPG publisher. But I think that if any system/IP (the Multi-verse in this case) out there is in dire need of a huge overhaul and house cleaning, it's Palladium.

The trick, of course, is deciding what to "clean up", so you don't lose more fans...

I'll freely admit, I prefer the old grey softcover RIFTS main book, to the hardcover R:UE. Not only is the softcover more evocative of the setting, it's minus "color commentary" from the publisher, and the ruleset is simpler and cleaner, IMHO.

It also doesn't read like a Palladium catalog (Buy RIFTS: Promise of Power! Want to know more about the Vampire threat? Buy RIFTS: Vampire Kingdoms, RIFTS: Lone Star and RIFTS: New West! :rolleyes: )...

Quote from: Novastar;381650The trick, of course, is deciding what to "clean up", so you don't lose more fans...

I'll freely admit, I prefer the old grey softcover RIFTS main book, to the hardcover R:UE. Not only is the softcover more evocative of the setting, it's minus "color commentary" from the publisher, and the ruleset is simpler and cleaner, IMHO.

It also doesn't read like a Palladium catalog (Buy RIFTS: Promise of Power! Want to know more about the Vampire threat? Buy RIFTS: Vampire Kingdoms, RIFTS: Lone Star and RIFTS: New West! :rolleyes: )...

Well that is a problem, but one of Palladium's own making. Within the RPG community I've always gotten the very strong impression that Palladium in general, and RIFTS in particular, is considered a huge fucking joke.

And even though I love Palladium I know that's 100% due to nostalgia.

Yeah, sure, there is a loyal core that keep the company afloat for now, but that won't last.

So if the majority of the community seems to think your product sucks, I would say that's a pretty good reason to do something new.

But then it wouldn't be Kevin Siembieda -he's the fucking Steve Jobs of Role Playing, with his cult followers and his special brand of cuckoo.

In that regard, I hope KS just keeps on truckin' right up until it all explodes, Hindenburg-style.  

Quote from: Atomic Scotsman;381662But then it wouldn't be Kevin Siembieda -he's the fucking Steve Jobs of Role Playing, with his cult followers and his special brand of cuckoo.

Not quite the analogy I'd make, as Kevin is the exact opposite to Jobs' aura of innovator and prophet. Kevin's main thing is in fact his adamant resistance to change.

But the observation on the cultish following is dead-on. I was in the Palladium Mailing List circa 1996-1997, and the moderation back then (headed by Kev's ex-wife, the one that ran away with the RECON guy) would make today's RPGnet modclique look tame by comparison.

Quote from: Spinachcat;381450I give out tokens and use a fixed Initiative.  On your turn, you can spend as many actions as you like and keep the rest around for dodges or other response actions.  So, you could Aim + Called Shot + Shoot and then keep the 4th action for a later dodge.  Or you could Shoot four times and hope they go down.   The token thing is tangible and lets the players do some resource fiddling which they enjoy.

Awesome, thanks for the link and the tokens idea! I will definitely use that prop.

For fixed initiative, do you mean that everybody takes a turn on a certain number - 11 is Joe, 10 is Mary, 9 is the DB with the railgun?

I'm fond of the Basic D&D procedure where each side rolls a d6 at the start of each round to see whether the players or the DM goes first, because this makes inter-party coordination easier and creates a nice back-and-forth between "us" and "them". For Rifts, though, would the possibility of one side going twice - by losing initiative one round, and winning it the next - mean that someone would get totally fragged without the chance to respond?

Re: hit points and SDC, if I were playing an ongoing campaign and had to worry about leveling, and if I were using MDC as written (which appeals to me; the idea of being vaporized by one point of mega-damage was definitely part of the core appeal of Rifts for me in the '90s), I wouldn't have either increase with level. First-level characters have few enough hit points that doing a little SDC/HP damage here when they drive their mech into a wall at 50 miles an hour, and there when they're knocked around by a missile impact, could add up and become significant. With the higher-level pregens I've seen, the HP totals get high enough to make this incidental damage not worth tracking (but still not enough to not be vaporized by a mega-damage weapon).

Quote from: Atomic Scotsman;381662Within the RPG community I've always gotten the very strong impression that Palladium in general, and RIFTS in particular, is considered a huge fucking joke.

I see this online.  But offline at conventions, I can fill a Rifts table every time with three groups - "I used to play", "I heard of it" and "I heard it sucks, but I am fascinated by the horror stories and want to see for myself"

Quote from: Atomic Scotsman;381662Yeah, sure, there is a loyal core that keep the company afloat for now, but that won't last.

Who knows?  If KS keeps feeding the loyal core, they may keep feeding him.

But its not a growth strategy.  
 

Quote from: Atomic Scotsman;381662So if the majority of the community seems to think your product sucks, I would say that's a pretty good reason to do something new.

Online yabbering = / = majority of the community.   Go to a RPG con and start asking people about RPG.net and ENWorld and you will get blank stares.  So few gamers are actually on forums.  

Quote from: Tavis;381695For fixed initiative, do you mean that everybody takes a turn on a certain number - 11 is Joe, 10 is Mary, 9 is the DB with the railgun?

Yeah.  10 + Init bonus.  I do it for D20 and 4e as well.  Speeds up the combat for me and rewards those who spent feats / points / whatever to boost their Init.   Considering PB combat has even more complexity, I like to minimize any extraneous.  

With fixed Init and dividing by actions, you can do this:

Crazy Joe = Init 11, 5 actions, Acts on 11 / 9 / 7 / 5 / 3
Cyborg Mary = Init 10, 4 actions, Acts on 10 / 7 / 4 / 1
Railgun DB = Init 9, 3 actions, Acts on 9 / 6 / 3

So Crazy Joe and Mary get to act first on 11 and 10.  Then Crazy Joe acts simultaneously with Railgun DB on 9.  The Crazy Joe and Mary act on 7, followed by Railgun DB etc.   At any time, they can spend their next action on a dodge.  

Now, some attacks require multiple actions like Called Shot.  Let's say Crazy Joe wants to do one.  He's start aiming on 11 and then shoot on 9.

Quote from: Tavis;381695I'm fond of the Basic D&D procedure where each side rolls a d6 at the start of each round to see whether the players or the DM goes first, because this makes inter-party coordination easier and creates a nice back-and-forth between "us" and "them".

Hell yeah!  My fav too.

Unfortunately in games like D20/4e/PB where part of your character is his Init bonus, you wind up penalizing the player whose concept is "I'm super fast"

You could just do the 1D6 vs. 1D6 for Rifts and then offer bonus actions for high Init characters.  

Maybe you roll Init and if you roll 5 or less, you get -1 Action for the round and 15 or higher you get +1 bonus Action.   That would add some chaos!

Quote from: Spinachcat;381704Unfortunately in games like D20/4e/PB where part of your character is his Init bonus, you wind up penalizing the player whose concept is "I'm super fast"

Good point. Of course, since it's a con game I could just avoid using characters who have that concept - but maybe some of the players will automatically expect a Juicer or whatever to be faster on the draw.

Sometimes in OD&D I avoid rolling for initiative until it matters. Like, going around the table:

Joe, what do you do?
"I run into the bank vault and set the dynamite."

OK, cool, it starts counting down. Mary, what do you do?
"I fire my plasma rifle at the Splugorth."

Awesome, let's resolve that in a second! Alex, what do you do?
"I fire at the Splugorth too!"

So now we roll initiative as normal - if Alex and Mary beat my roll, they get to go first. My initial inclination for simplicity sake would be to let them spend all four tokens, but maybe it'd be better to split it into two sub-rounds of two tokens each?

Sounds like I should talk my eight-year-old into playing out some sample combats...

When I posted this thread, I was wondering how many different Palladium games would be mentioned. So far it seems Rifts, TMNT and Nightbane are mentioned.  Anyone playing Ninjas & Super Spies or Heroes Unlimited? Any house rules?

Thanks for all the great house rules so far! Initiative, levelless play and forcing an action to roll with punch/fall are all helpful.

Any cool character sheets? Palladium books have wonderful art and Kevin Sembedia seems like a visual guy but their character sheets are boring. Why?

Quote from: Tavis;381749Good point. Of course, since it's a con game I could just avoid using characters who have that concept - but maybe some of the players will automatically expect a Juicer or whatever to be faster on the draw.

At the Open House in 2007, I got to play Phase World (Rifts in Space) with author Carl Gleba who is a good writer, great guy and talented GM.  We had 8 players at the table and Carl did exactly that.  He threw out Init and Actions and just went around the table saying "What do you do?" and it worked fine.

Since the GM controls which characters exist in a con game, you can easily tailor the character selection to how you want to run the game.  

The best thing about Rifts is the ideas.  If you convey those in an exciting manner, WTF you do to the RAW becomes meaningless especially in a con game where you want everyone to just sit down, learn the core rules in 5 minutes and spend the next 4 hours kicking ass.

Quote from: Tavis;381749My initial inclination for simplicity sake would be to let them spend all four tokens, but maybe it'd be better to split it into two sub-rounds of two tokens each?

According to the RAW, you get 2 Actions base and then additional actions based on HTH combat skills.  As you know, everyone has at least Basic HtH which gives +2 Actions.   But what if we just made 0 Actions base?  Then most everyone has 2 actions and "fast guys" may have 3 or even 4.  

Then you do the 1D6 vs 1D6 each round for Init.  Hmm...I may have to try this.

Quote from: The Butcher;381666Not quite the analogy I'd make, as Kevin is the exact opposite to Jobs' aura of innovator and prophet. Kevin's main thing is in fact his adamant resistance to change.

But the observation on the cultish following is dead-on.)

True. I mean it more in the, "You love this guy, or you hate him." kind of way.

Don't get me going on Steve Jobs . . .

Quote from: enelson;381789When I posted this thread, I was wondering how many different Palladium games would be mentioned. So far it seems Rifts, TMNT and Nightbane are mentioned.  Anyone playing Ninjas & Super Spies or Heroes Unlimited? Any house rules?

Heroes was okay, but the Marvel game from back in the day was much better.

Ninjas & Super Spies was less a game and more a giant list of equipment and OOC's.

Quote from: enelson;381789Any cool character sheets? Palladium books have wonderful art and Kevin Sembedia seems like a visual guy but their character sheets are boring. Why?

The Megaverse Ambassadors thread has some great pregens in terms of having all the character-making work done for you, but none of them I've seen so far have the iconic illustrations of that OCC which I consider essential - why play a glitter boy if you can't admire your shininess?

I'd been thinking about making a hand-drawn one that just presents the essentials like the 4E one I show about halfway through this post but with room for the scanned illustration. But I'm very inspired by the "play tray" idea linked at the bottom of this thread, especially if I'm already going with tokens for actions.

Sorry, there was so much stuff embedded in your post I didn't multi-quote it with the others.

Quote from: Spinachcat;381704I see this online.  But offline at conventions, I can fill a Rifts table every time with three groups - "I used to play", "I heard of it" and "I heard it sucks, but I am fascinated by the horror stories and want to see for myself"  

So nostalgia players (like me), and the voyeurs come to watch/play in the train wreck, make up a large chunk of those who play PB games.

Yeah . . .not really doing much to convince me that everything's hunky-dorry with company policy here. LOL
 

Quote from: Spinachcat;381704Online yabbering = / = majority of the community.   Go to a RPG con and start asking people about RPG.net and ENWorld and you will get blank stares.  So few gamers are actually on forums.  

The same can be said of a bar of soap, and dial-up Internet.

I get what you're saying -the Internet is a vast Echo Chamber that has done as much to isolate us into waring tribes as it has to spread ideas and knowledge . . .and pornography, of course.

But I've had this experience more often than not in real life as well.

A con is going to give you less of an accurate picture than even the Internet, because the people who are there are actively seeking out specific games to play. So of course everyone who signs up for a particular game either likes it or has some other motive for being there.

The Grognards are not going to sign up for a 4E game, so it will appear that everyone at the con loves 4E, you know what I'm saying?

That's probably a bad idea since the Fat Beards would probably sign up just to wreck a 4E game . . .or fire bomb it.