What's 'wrong' with the Palladium system?

[Sureshot]

The infamous G.I. Joe rule I don;t remember a huge demand for it. It was something that Kevin added in. To ensure player survivability at the expense of a continent sized sense of disbelief. To clarify what I mean by a lack of change. Is unrealistic release schedules and promises to ensure support for all their rpgs. Which given their resources and track record is simply not possible. I don't consider the Rifter a actual product. For the most part a fan magazine. Nor is a reprint a product either. Rpgs reprint older material all the time. We have asked that Kevin the release schedules to a more realistic one. To stop promising more that they can publish and produce. That gets ignored. Until that stops then to me nothing has changed in any significant amount at PB imo. So asking for feedback on topics that have already been answered. Then still not acting on it. Is simply a feel good public relations exercise.

It's the same reason I don't participate in open playtests for Paizo. In the end no matter how much feedback they will do their own thing. To the detriment of their product imo. A good example is Gunslingers and targeting Touch AC. They were told by many too many that it was a poor mechanic to introduce. Yet despite all the feedback they went ahead anyway. While one can still play a Gunslinger. The DM has to make the encounters two to three times as hard. As it's ridicoulously easy to target touch AC. Or to throw creatures that have a high touch AC which makes the player feel like a target. I'm not saying a rpg developer has to take any and every suggestion or criticism and act on it. At the same time well they have no one but themselves to blame if it gets them grief from the fanbase. Most older fans like myself simply know they won't be able to release more than four maybe six new books in 2015. With one person reading and editing everything and a staff of six. Unless the work 60+ hour weeks it's simply not possible imo.

[Forar]

How was the -10 rule changed?

Because I definitely recall dealing with it two decades ago, which isn't exactly a recent revision if its implementation at all is the point being made.

While I concur that it's good to hear that folks are open to constructive criticism, actions speak louder than words, so it's even more important to "show, don't tell" when it comes to those alterations, adjustments and improvements to processes.

[Glistam]

But as is the case over the last 30 years...many such "changes" were not even mentioned when put into the system via reprint shadow changes not to mention many of these "changes" were obviously not play tested per se and feel completely bolted on and piecemeal.

Definately a flaw that I agree with.

[jaymz]

Forar - the latest version that I am familiar with in regards to the -10/-5 rule is it is now -10/-5 at under 10ft/out to 50ft.

[Jefffar]

The infamous G.I. Joe rule I don;t remember a huge demand for it. It was something that Kevin added in. To ensure player survivability at the expense of a continent sized sense of disbelief. To clarify what I mean by a lack of change. Is unrealistic release schedules and promises to ensure support for all their rpgs. Which given their resources and track record is simply not possible. I don't consider the Rifter a actual product. For the most part a fan magazine. Nor is a reprint a product either. Rpgs reprint older material all the time. We have asked that Kevin the release schedules to a more realistic one. To stop promising more that they can publish and produce. That gets ignored. Until that stops then to me nothing has changed in any significant amount at PB imo. So asking for feedback on topics that have already been answered. Then still not acting on it. Is simply a feel good public relations exercise.

There was some clamour about the fact that as soon as someone's body armour took 1 more MDC point than it had, the player character within was immediately vaporized. So it didn't completely come out of left field, though it's not the solution that I would have chosen.

[Sureshot]

There was some clamour about the fact that as soon as someone's body armour took 1 more MDC point than it had, the player character within was immediately vaporized. So it didn't completely come out of left field, though it's not the solution that I would have chosen.

I hope people were not voicing their objections about how lethal and dangerous Rifts can be. It make sense to me at least that as soon as the MDC of a person, creature or object is depleted it means certain death. MDC is dangerous. I had a player who it took forever to realize that running across a open area was asking to have a character killed off. I make it a point to stress how deadly it can be.

[Glistam]

There was some clamour about the fact that as soon as someone's body armour took 1 more MDC point than it had, the player character within was immediately vaporized. So it didn't completely come out of left field, though it's not the solution that I would have chosen.

I hope people were not voicing their objections about how lethal and dangerous Rifts can be. It make sense to me at least that as soon as the MDC of a person, creature or object is depleted it means certain death. MDC is dangerous. I had a player who it took forever to realize that running across a open area was asking to have a character killed off. I make it a point to stress how deadly it can be.

People have been voicing exactly that objection forever it seems. There are numerous discussion topics in the Rifts forum which discuss ways to adjust the M.D.C. ratio (or abandon it entirely) in order to make Rifts less "lethal," or for various other reasons.

[Jerell]

Rifts, I think, is potentially one of the most lethal settings out there. Which is good, Cthulu and Hackmaster GMs shouldn't be allowed to claim all the PC kills. But that's what you're bound to get with most characters carrying anti-tank weapons.

[Marcus]

Rifts, I think, is potentially one of the most lethal settings out there. Which is good, Cthulu and Hackmaster GMs shouldn't be allowed to claim all the PC kills. But that's what you're bound to get with most characters carrying anti-tank weapons.

Paranoia.

[Sureshot]

While I can respect the objection. I truly don't understand it either. Their are plenty of less lethal rpgs on the market. Playing ine that from the start says that gameplay is going to be lethal. Then cry foul when it happens. It's too be blunt and honest kind of dumb. It's like joining a game of D&D which your told is going to be focused more on combat. Then making a skilled based character that can't hit the broadside of a barn. Sure one is allowed to make such s character. If he is useless at the table it's no one fault but the player. Almost as bad as insisting on making a Paladin in a all evil group.

Now if the GM is in the habit of killing of PCs. Then Rufts or any other rpg it's too deadly and not fun.

[Killer Cyborg]

The infamous G.I. Joe rule I don;t remember a huge demand for it.

There wasn't a HUGE demand for it.
There was a VOCAL demand for it, in the sense that the people who wanted that kind of extra protection approached Kevin at conventions to complain about how easy it was to die in Rifts, or they wrote letters to the company about the issue.

This is precisely why I think that people who say "Palladium never listens to fans" are wrong, because this is one clear case where a vocal minority made a significant change to the rules, one that Kevin apparently didn't really think was strictly necessary.

[Killer Cyborg]

There was some clamour about the fact that as soon as someone's body armour took 1 more MDC point than it had, the player character within was immediately vaporized. So it didn't completely come out of left field, though it's not the solution that I would have chosen.

I hope people were not voicing their objections about how lethal and dangerous Rifts can be. It make sense to me at least that as soon as the MDC of a person, creature or object is depleted it means certain death. MDC is dangerous. I had a player who it took forever to realize that running across a open area was asking to have a character killed off. I make it a point to stress how deadly it can be.

Agreed.
But that WAS what people were complaining about.

[Sureshot]

Agreed.
But that WAS what people were complaining about.

To be honest it's one of the few times I wish he had ignored the fans. Again when the author gives a good example of how deadly the rpg can be. Playing in one where instant death is a really issue. Then being vocal about it is well complaining for the sake of it. Granted I do it too sometimes. It's like going into a vegan only restaurant then being unhappy that their is no meat on the menu. sure you can be unhappy about and even voice it. One still looks foolish doing it imo.

[TechnoGolem]

I would say that one of its greatest weakness is also one of its greatest strengths. More on that in a moment but first a little background on myself...

The Palladium system was the first RPG system I ever played. I tried a few different lines (Fantasy, Robotech, Heroes Unlimited, and Rifts) but never owned more than a few books for any of the lines. When I went to college I played numerous RPGs by different companies and would try to collect them. By this point I pretty much forgot all about Palladium because no one played it and my few books were collecting dust somewhere at my parents house. For many years afterwards I would try to collect various RPG lines by buying a few books at a time. This always caused me problems because they would launch a new edition, the old books became hard to find, weren't supported, so I felt I had to move on to the new edition. This process repeated itself several times before I got sick of it.

This is when I noticed that Palladium has pretty much stayed the same it was all those years ago. This became a major factor in me coming back to the system recently. I knew that I would be able to buy various products and know that they won't be nearly useless a year later when everyone else moves on to the next edition.

This is also the problem because, due to the lack of new editions, the Palladium system does feel archaic. I've played a lot of different RPG systems with various mechanics that I would love to see in the system.

The other problem for me is the MD system. I'm basically repeating what others have said here but I didn't mind it in Robotech. It made a lot of sense that you are dead if you are running around the battlefield and a mech shot you. In Rifts, I learned to hate it. If your character didn't have MD weapons and armor you might as well not play because there is a good chance you will die before you even get an action in combat. The MD system was way overused in Rifts and I house ruled that it was only 5 - 10 times more than HP. The 5 multiplier was for human sized armor and weapons and the 10 multiplier was for vehicles and heavy weapons.

That said, I've always greatly enjoyed their settings and I think Rifts is one of the most interesting RPG settings ever created.

[Forar]

It might be an extreme case, but in a setting with armour that has something like 50-250 MDC (light/medium'ish body armour to power armour, things I wouldn't think it unreasonable for characters to start with), having weapons that can hit/crit for 10 to 120 damage can take an action from 'somewhat risky' to 'suicidal', but only after the dice have been rolled. Incurring an attack of any sort (depending on the character, gear in question, situation, etc) can be a fatal mistake, and due to the 'theatre of the mind' approach that many games seem to take (from my reading of the forums), one isn't often making a fully informed choice.

The game can be as lethal or not as the players and GM prefer, but only one of those two knows what the outcome is going to be. "Running across open ground" might seem like the only thing or best thing available to do, and could lead to a near miss or instant splattery death. It's almost 'rogue-like' in that regard, and while I'm sure some pros can whip 'em up in twenty minutes flat, personally I generally found that for myself and my group, crafting a new character across whatever books seemed appropriate, rolling stats, picking gear, possibly spells/psychic powers, other abilities, choosing skills, and finalizing the numbers could be a good hour or two, possibly more depending on what time, effort and thought was put into crafting a backstory.

The setting is great, but the mechanics (both in game and in terms of setting up characters) can sometimes be at odds with one another.

I've heard great things about Paranoia, and how utterly horrible it can be to characters, but it's my understanding that the game is *very* quick to roll up characters, and it is flat out expected that death can come swiftly and all but without warning. Contrasted against a game where it can take quite some time for people without a backlog of pre-built character sheets to generate a new one on the fly, and where 2-4 bad rolls in succession (and/or a little GM fiat) can end a career orders of magnitude more quickly than it was created.

As long as everyone is on the same page, there's no 'wrong' way to play, but that doesn't mean there can't be notable discrepancies or concerns about how the game is set up 'baselined' versus what the average player's expectations are going to be.

If I spend 2 hours crafting a character from toes to helmet, I sure don't want to hear "oops, natural 20, better get a new one made".

And 'a good GM fudges rolls' is not something I consider an argument in its favor. That's just fiat in the opposite direction, and at that point the mechanics are all but irrelevant in the face of shared story time.

But 'shared story telling time' doesn't have to cost a group a couple hundred bucks in books.

Not to say this is purely black and white. My group played 1:100, but we also had allowances for depleting sections of armor merely leading to crippling injuries (that might be attended to with cybernetics) and a player/opposition balance that was sussed out over years of playtime. We lost dozens of characters, but most of them were either due to extremely stupid choices (with fair warning granted) or in heated combat where the cards were on the table and the dice fell where they might.

But it did also lead to a lot of non-sdc characters, or redundant layers of defenses. And a propensity to sleeping in armour no matter how uncomfortable it might be.

Uncomfortable is better than dead, should an MDC possom decide to nibble on ones foot.

[Killer Cyborg]

Agreed.
But that WAS what people were complaining about.

To be honest it's one of the few times I wish he had ignored the fans.

Agreed.
Another time is when he added the -10 rule, because people complained that the burst/spray rules were too unrealistic.

[Jerell]

But it did also lead to a lot of non-sdc characters, or redundant layers of defenses. And a propensity to sleeping in armour no matter how uncomfortable it might be.

I've slept in contemporary armor on rare occasion, woke up stiff every time, I don't like it, don't recommend it for most of the time. Unless you're expecting to wake up straight into combat or running for something through hostile fire.

Just get some MDC Triax pajamas, or sleep in an APC, MDC Truck or something... Or better yet, Lemurian Bio-armor.

[Forar]

I'm pretty sure almost every character I could get it for had some Plainclothes armor around for that very reason.

Sadly Lemuria was released roughly a decade after my group stopped playing.

The point is that so many things in the world do MD that not 'being' MDC ones self is a tough balancing act between ones 'immersion' and playing roulette.

It's like including beloved family in a backstory; just asking for the GM to mess with you.

Sure, a good GM won't do so in an obnoxious way.

But not everyone has the benefit of a good GM.

[Sureshot]

Again if one does not want to have a character die within the first 15-30 mins either use tactics or play another rpg. In a rpg where weapons are very deadly it's always a risk. I have had to turn away a few players who expected me to give them a free pass on dying. Simply because character creation can sometimes take long. Which I never game. I make it clear from the start that when I run any rpg with MDC I don't pull punches. If a player dies within the first few minutes he either makes another character or joins a less lethal game. Battletech and Star Wars D6 are also both very unforgiving to the average person. When a rpg it's deadly. that does nto suddenly go away because a player spent a long time making a character. It's like in D&D where a player who makes a Fighter with low Strength wants to hit and damage a target as well as one with high strength. As well as being able to carry the same amount. I caution players again as well. Take low values in key stats I don't pull any punches. It's not to say that it makes it fun to lose a character. In Rifts more than any other rpg I expect to die more often.

[flatline]

Again if one does not want to have a character die within the first 15-30 mins either use tactics or play another rpg. In a rpg where weapons are very deadly it's always a risk. I have had to turn away a few players who expected me to give them a free pass on dying. Simply because character creation can sometimes take long. Which I never game. I make it clear from the start that when I run any rpg with MDC I don't pull punches. If a player dies within the first few minutes he either makes another character or joins a less lethal game. Battletech and Star Wars D6 are also both very unforgiving to the average person. When a rpg it's deadly. that does nto suddenly go away because a player spent a long time making a character. It's like in D&D where a player who makes a Fighter with low Strength wants to hit and damage a target as well as one with high strength. As well as being able to carry the same amount. I caution players again as well. Take low values in key stats I don't pull any punches. It's not to say that it makes it fun to lose a character. In Rifts more than any other rpg I expect to die more often.

This is why a large portion of our house rules were intended to make character generation faster. It sucks to spend 2 hours polishing off a character only to have the character killed 30 minutes into the game. If it only takes 15 minutes to make the character, then it doesn't hurt as bad if the character is killed.

The White Wolf games get this right. Once you know your options, it takes maybe 5 or 10 minutes to whip up a character unless you're making some subtly tweaked build, but since the system doesn't really reward you for that kind of fine tuning, it's not usually worth the bother.

--flatline

[Killer Cyborg]

Again if one does not want to have a character die within the first 15-30 mins either use tactics or play another rpg.

Agreed!

By that same token, GMs need to give the players a chance to use tactics, instead of just saying, "Okay, there's a T-Rex 20' away, and he has a bag of Throwing Sharks at the ready. Roll initiative."

[jaymz]

Unfortunately many GMs and players like aren't very tactically in thinking.....at least in my experience. It is why the CS is by and large played as not very good tactically (like stormtroopers in Star Wars as well rpg-wise).

Player I deal with....well they learn to think tactically because I will not dumb down my antagonists.

[Jerell]

Again if one does not want to have a character die within the first 15-30 mins either use tactics or play another rpg.

Agreed!

By that same token, GMs need to give the players a chance to use tactics, instead of just saying, "Okay, there's a T-Rex 20' away, and he has a bag of Throwing Sharks at the ready. Roll initiative."

Agreed.

I GM my groups rifts, because, honestly I'm not sure anyone else would do as good of a job. They all like Rifts, I don't think anyone wants to step up and tackle running a game though. Witch is okay most of the time, but I wouldn't mind playing in a Rifts game again some day. Maybe I'll contact my old Rifts GM and see what he up to these days, I haven't talked to him in years.

I stopped playing bow using characters in my PFRPG group because of the 'there's enemy X 20' away encounters kept popping up. He had said on occasion he was, 'tired of longbowmen,' I took that as a que to stay away from the class for a while.

[Forar]

Again if one does not want to have a character die within the first 15-30 mins either use tactics or play another rpg. In a rpg where weapons are very deadly it's always a risk. I have had to turn away a few players who expected me to give them a free pass on dying. Simply because character creation can sometimes take long. Which I never game. I make it clear from the start that when I run any rpg with MDC I don't pull punches. If a player dies within the first few minutes he either makes another character or joins a less lethal game. Battletech and Star Wars D6 are also both very unforgiving to the average person. When a rpg it's deadly. that does nto suddenly go away because a player spent a long time making a character. It's like in D&D where a player who makes a Fighter with low Strength wants to hit and damage a target as well as one with high strength. As well as being able to carry the same amount. I caution players again as well. Take low values in key stats I don't pull any punches. It's not to say that it makes it fun to lose a character. In Rifts more than any other rpg I expect to die more often.

Shenanigans.

Flat out, shenanigans.

While there are plenty of "Rogue scholars" and "vagabonds" in the books, I daresay the the raw hundreds (thousands?) of pages of weapons, armor, power armour, giant robots, combat spells, TW items, runeweapons, psionics and other abilities and powers are indicative of a game that is no stranger to including combat. High lethality may be common at your table, but if I spent 2 hours rolling up a character and you killed them in 15 minutes because I zigged when I should've zagged, I would cheerfully be off finding another game to play at.

Combat having risk is one thing, but the way you're expressing yourself, one might as well have a dozen characters pre-made and ready to go in some sort of twisted "oh, so my dead character's sister shows up and carries on the mission" sort of arrangement. Dead characters mean the 'party' is now at reduced capacity, and the player is spending time (possibly hours) not playing the game with their friends, and instead figuring out what "two weapons of choice" they might include and if they'll bother rolling for minor psionics again.

For the right table/group/event (a convention one-shot, for example) there's nothing wrong with that, and if that's how you enjoy playing, great! But that's not the only way to play, and what you find enjoyable at your table isn't necessarily what others are going to find works for them.

And maybe you agree with that and it's merely "Sureshot's Lethal Table Of Bring Three Characters" where this is the case, but if so you have an awfully aggressive way of expressing it.

Not wanting to feel like every last choice carries an X% chance of death isn't a bad thing, and frankly I think I'd be bored in a game where choosing to take a leak at the wrong time had me dead. The risk of death being overbearing fits in some settings, some games, but Rifts (in my opinion) is practically "Pulp Everything: be a Crazy Were-Jaguar Warlock Bounty Hunter Mind Melter piloting a Super-SAMAS YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

"Be scared of your shadow" seems like an awful waste of a lot of options.

Or I guess everyone could just be borgs and MDC creatures, but that's just a cop-out in its own right.

[Sureshot]

So because it takes a long time to make a character that means he is untouchable and unkillable. Would you like for him to be immortal while your at it. How about playing a Paladin in a fantasy game who targets a cult. Yet get mad at the DM if he or she targets your pc family in retaliation. I don't go out of my way to target pc and kill them off. I use my npcs to the best of my abilites. Just like pcs use theirs as well. Chances are that a pc or npc or both will die. It's MDC combat where body parts can be vaporized in one shot depending on the weapon. Not to mention I give a warning upfront that my games are going to be lethal. If a player thinks it's a joke or I'm not serious. Then what happens to your character is on you. I'm pretty sure others here will say or have said the the same thing. Some rpgs one can make a bad tactical choice and survive. Rifts is not one of them. Forar if your that attached to your characters I suggest you never play Battletech or Star Wars D6. It's been awhile and I might be getting the rule wrong. But anything large like a battlecruiser or AT-AT does double damage to ground targets. I think the AT-At does 10D6 with it's lasers. That 20D6 against a pc. Don't ever play in a Rifts game that uses C.J. Carella equipment because his stuff was lethal if not even more so.

Get on my case or call me a killer GM if I said I like killing pcs. Or that I did not give my players a fair warning on how lethal the rpg can be. I don't like killing pcs. I warn my players. So you don't have any call to label me a killer GM. Come up with better examples as well. As if I would kill a pc for taking a leak. It's the same way I don't give any free passes for people in D&D with dump stats. Want to take a low Con and take a combat class. Go right ahead. Don't complain after that your fighter falls easily after a Ogre sneezes on them. Want to stand your crowd after a volley of four or missiles comes your way go for it. Whatever happens good or bad is up to you.

[ScottBernard]

Actually, thats the very definition of a killer GM.

Ive played in non lethal Rifts games. What the heck man?

[zyanitevp]

Let's get back on topic folks.

[Forar]

So because it takes a long time to make a character that means he is untouchable and unkillable. Would you like for him to be immortal while your at it.

I'm not sure who you're talking to, because it isn't me, as I didn't say anything of the sort.

For challenge to be engaging, it needs to be possible to overcome it (even if not through brute force). For loss to have meaning, there has to be a connection to the character.

"Life is unfair, you died, make a new one" in the first five minutes of a game (the extreme example we're working with here) is only going to appeal to a narrow subset of players in an already niche of a niche market.

As I said, if it works at the tables you play at, that's cool. But I wouldn't want to play at it. And the preponderance of mechs and power armour and OCCs and gear and weapons and armour and abilities that are heavily combat focused leads me to believe that it is not intended to be a high lethality game, where every choice could lead to instant death.

I mean, you could play it that way, and it's great if you do, but seeming to take offense at suggestions that others might not see it that way is kind of baffling.

RPG's are a shared experience, and ideally everyone should be on the same page about what's being played and to what ends, and that includes choosing a system/mechanics that play to those goals and have strengths/flaws that fit the group/game goals as well.

[Kryptt]

RPG's are not about the gm vs gamers it's about having fun together and having a memorable time doing it. No the characters should not be immortal, but as the gm you shouldn't go with the mindset that your going to create an atmosphere of angst towards your players. To each his own. Forar is right. If that's your thing then cool. It just seems to go against what roleplaying is about. To me anyway.

[cyber-yukongil v2.5]

Rifts is much more offense oriented than defensive. This is evident in a couple of ways. The most glaring to me, is the creation of the "GI Joe" rule, made specifically to offset the lethality of the system. The fact that you are auto-killed if an SDC character who nicks himself shaving with a vibro-knife is another.

What makes it so lethal? Volleys, full-auto, simultaneous strikes, killing blow, increased crit ranges, boom-guns, etc...These things, especially the first, can auto-kill most any threat or character in one go around, which would be bad enough if it was a limited resource ability, but since most things can do a half dozen or more of these attacks before stopping for a reload, any opposition should have long been turned to cosmic dust.

This is the world of Rifts, and one should really be mindful of that, that is part of the game world, mechanically and meta. Death is always close-by.

Now, "killer GM" means something completely different then what some of you seem to be arguing. Killing a character in a combat in a lethal system, is not being a killer GM. Using that same system and throwing them up against unbeatable odds would be. A lucky crit by a JA-12 icing the parties LLW isn't being a Cheney, having them turn a corner in the woods and running into a Hunter/Killer squad with aerial support would be as would jumping them with a Lanotaur Hunter when they are taking a squat outside their armor, or generally setting up any encounter to maximize the oppositions strengths while negating any of their own without warning or setup, would count as being a killer GM.

[Jefffar]

I think this has wandered far enough from the topic at this point to have lost its value.