Back to the Megaverse!

My oh my, what is there to say about the fabled Palladium Megaverse?  Where should I even begin?  At the beginning perhaps, when I was 12 years old in 1991?  Should I even tell the story about how my very first rpg game was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness?  I could, perhaps...but since that mirrors the experience of several folk my age, I'll leave it at the pondering stage.  Suffice it to say we're about to move into territory that is both near and dear to me when we begin talking about the games published by Palladium Books.

Several folk in my gaming groups (since that fateful day I happened to pick up Mutants of the Yucatan at a friend's house and began to ask questions) have had their encounters with this system / place.  We've run Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game, Ninjas & Superspies, a plethora of various worlds in Rifts, and a lot more besides.  There's a lot of nostalgia here for us, and the whole reason I'm bringing it up is because one of our GM's has decided to revive this system for us to use now at the Wargate with a new set of adventures for Heroes Unlimited!

It's been a long, long time since we've even thought about Palladium.  First of all, let me say the biggest complaint we have had are the problems with the system itself.  You know what I'm talking about - Glitter Boys and Rogue Scholars, anyone?  We at the Wargate are competitive wargamer types who play in a large group so this sort of thing cannot be handwaved away.  Strict rules must apply all the time to every player, and we've found that for us that is the best approach that elicits the best satisfaction from most of us.  Palladium isn't the best for that, and the combat system can be tiresome when it drags on through thousands of MDC.

Aside from all that, Palladium isn't known for it's awesome book layouts or really anything technical about the process of making books.  For the most part, they really suck in quality - shoddy paperbacks whose lamination peels off pretty quickly.  I hate them.  They never last.  More hardbacks for this line would be much appreciated and might even move a few units in my neck of the woods, but that sort of quality is kind of lost on the works themselves in which the text itself tends to be - let's say - much more personal than professional.  For myself, I prefer a more professional text in my RPG's that distances itself from the audience like an encyclopedia or textbook.

I also am more prone to buy a book if it is hardcover and looks slick, and these books from a time gone by look like pieces from a comic shop than professional gaming books, though I understand that might be part of the point.  I don't like it at all that the books are still being produced this way.

Hence the decline of Palladium Books since the early 1990's.  You might can present a few figures that show that Palladium once or twice had a "good" year, if those exist for developers in this niche publishing zone.  More likely you will turn up barkings on Google about the "Crisis of Treachery", which made me sick when I first read the publisher's letter to his fans.  This has it's own place in the Wikipedia entry, and is best examined on your own time.  Take a look at it. No really, if you don't know what it is, go read that paragraph or two about it.

After that I wanted nothing more to do with this publisher, other than perhaps to help Palladium commit ritual seppuku by cutting off it's head.  I ceased all support for the company in reaction to what I perceived (as a loyal fan) as gross mismanagement of the company akin to what happened to TSR, only basically a lot worse.  Already having been disgruntled by all sorts of problems with the systems in every single Rifts book I bought (and I bought all of them), I basically sold the entire collection for a pittance.  Good riddance to heavy comics, said I.

There are a ton more criticisms that one could level at Palladium, but oddly enough this post isn't meant to rag on the Megaverse as much as I have been.  I actually want to talk about what we are going to do with the whole thing here at the Wargate, and I'm glad to say - I have great news.

We do lots of systems and worlds here, and the Megaverse (by which moniker I will now refer to the entirety of Palladium's lines from now on) has a lot of potential for us.  Rifts practically oozes the entire premise of the Wargate itself, and I'm kind of sentimental for it anyways.  Now, being free to examine the Megaverse from the Wargate, we'll get to see a lot more of the coolness that was inherent in those books come out as we focus on tiny pieces of the Megaverse during our campaigns to come!

Heroes Unlimited will be kicking off our return to the Megaverse and the beginning of our support for this venerable line of rpg books.  That said, we'll be making our houserules and general conversion notes available online, as well as a smattering of original material in the weeks and months to come.  Expect to see the State of Play emerge for Genesis Syndrome, the starting point for our players to enter the Megaverse - many for the first time!

We've already passed several Heroes Unlimited, 2nd Edition books around, and the game is starting to get a move on.  We are going to be very careful about what we add to our particular game, and all those other groups out there are cautioned to do the same - don't allow random Megaverse books into your game!  We'll talk about other books later as we widen our options with the massive amount of books out there.  For now, expect to see The Compendium of Contemporary Weapons and Aliens Unlimited on the table in the near future.  We're going to milk this thing for all the awesomeness it's worth!

I'm going to leave off today with a list of demands for Palladium's publisher that he should seriously consider complying with.

1. Clean up your system and give us a corebook that's hardcover.  You don't need to reprint all the rules in spells in each book - that's a cheap copout and wastes my bookshelf space.  If it's that integral, make a corebook.
2. New editions are a good thing.  Good for you, the publisher / good for me, the gamer.  Reorganize the line so the old ones are collectors items and the new ones can be gobbled up by today's gamers.
3. Format your books and do them all the same.
4. Hardcovers.  Right now. Of every single book you've ever published.
5. Clean up your house and set things straight for the future, before you die and leave all this mess.

I have thought many times about converting to D20, I know others have done this but I'll be honest - I won't use a fake system for a published game.  Palladium, you need to try using a different model for your lines. This tired devotion to an ancient and only partly successful business model is really hampering your growth, and ours.