Megaversal Flavor

Flavor?  What flavor?  I thought you said Palladium was bland as a paper plate on cardboard sandwich, Dave Bone??

Well, it is, taken by itself.  It takes some good ol' luvvin to get that old engine warmed up, but we've got some GM's who are capable and ready to take us back in time to when the rules didn't always connect, because they weren't really well thought out.  That's a huge penalty to it's credibility as a system, and thus raises questions as to it's longevity here at the Wargate, because rules are bread and butter to us - we love them, and they love us.  However, we're done talking about rules today because...

Today's topic is flavor, more specifically, the kind you sprinkle (pour by the bucketload) into Palladium's Megaverse to get it to taste like anything resembling something you actually want to have.  We're going to talk about a few different incarnations of the Megaverse, and their respective flavors - you're going to have some of it, so we might as well warn you about it!

We've recently done Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition.  Mechanically speaking, it's basically the same as some other Palladium games, and at the Wargate we combine Beyond the Supernatural, Ninjas & Superspies and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness into this category because they are so similar to each other. These games depict an ordinary world fraught with extraordinary things.  They are also S.D.C. worlds, putting them all on the same base power level.

The different flavors can be appealing!  For basic Heroes Unlimited, the style can be any kind of superhero adventure.  Beyond the Supernatural can have a Cthulhu-style bent to it or be more "orthodox" in it's approach to horror.  Ninjas & Superspies is fraught with James Bond style intrigue and action, but also brimming with 80's style ninja assassins!  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may be the epitome of gonzo comic action.  You can take the basic system and alter it a lot by changing the flavor, mixing and matching any of these games or using the system to do a different kind of genre, like pulp action from the 30's or even stranger settings that you find or dream up.  It's quite adaptable on the base level.

Palladium Fantasy has a lot going for it, as there's a ton of books out there.  It's your basic D&D adventure setting, with a lot of character types to choose from.  The setting material seems as good as any other Palladium books product, maybe better thought out than a lot of the Rifts line.  The characters and information in this book could fuel a number of campaigns in any number of different lands, just like other games of it's type.  In fact, the first time we play this, Mr. Smith will be running us through a game in the Dalelands...

Rifts has a strange setting and flavor that can't be easily explained.  It's post apocalyptic, but it can be all sorts of genres.  It's a melting pot of settings and conventions, and has a massive amount of support and material.  In fact, of the material available, most of it makes the setting more diverse by exploring new areas and worlds, introducing new classes and powers and generally doing as much as possible in as small a space as possible.  Depending on which of the many settings you choose, you can have a very different game every time.

What it all means is that as we explore the Palladium Megaverse, you're going to get to see a lot of these different games and genres pop up, but by no means can we get to all of them.  Don't be confused by the disparate rules spread throughout the Megaverse, and just try to accept it for what it is - wildly chaotic and all scrambled up.  If the combat rules are bothering you, cheer up - we're going to be stabilizing our part of the Megaverse with a compendium of rules for use in our games.  

We hope this will clear up some frequently asked questions and put a finer point on the combat mechanics, as well as spice them up a little bit to bring them into the 21st century.  Until then, you can place requests for items to enter the rules compendium here on this post.

Adios!