If you haven't heard, the big news in the tabletop gaming world these days is that Palladium is in serious financial trouble and may go out of business barring some charity from fans. If that doesn't ring a bell for you, Palladium is a company that's been making RPGs for quite some time. I think they might even be the oldest alternative to D&D out there. Their biggest games are Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, the licensed RPGs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Robotech, and of course, Palladium Fantasy, but that one's kind of a given.
Getting back to the matter at hand, the other day I learned they were on the ropes, and to my surprise, I found that I didn't particularly care. It's not that I harbor any sort of ill-will towards them, quite the contrary, I grew up on their games. I think I even own more Rifts source books than all my other RPG books put together. I just can't get myself worked up over the thought of life without them around.
A small and petty part of this is me knowing where their money went. The biggie is someone flat out stealing a bunch of money from them, which I can totally sympathize with, but attempting to recover from that, they did some really stupid things. Investing a good chunk of change on a Rifts videogame is a perfectly fine idea, but they decided to make it for the Nokia Ngage. Remember? The $300 cell phone that tried to market itself as a viable alternative to the Game Boy? Anyone with even the faintest idea what they were talking about could tell you that sucker was doomed from day one, and one would think seeking the advice of such a person be a given before making such a deal. Making a movie isn't a good move when you're cash-shy either.
Not feeling sorry for someone making terrible financial decisions is one thing, but presumably, I should also be concerned about the future of a company whose stuff I've played for years, right? Normally, yes, but the sad truth here is, and I hate saying this, Palladium isn't particularly relevant these days.
The TMNT license isn't something to brag about these days. Forever ago, when TMNT was primarily known as some weird comic book that was pretty much just an endless string of fight scenes in funky extradimensional settings with strange non-human participants, it was a great thing to have though. Today though, when people hear TMNT, they think of a lame cartoon with an audience that wouldn't really have any overlap at all with that sort of content. So, anyone who'd buy the game wouldn't like what they found. Robotech is honestly a little better off, since people have been trying to rekindle that flame with some videogames for the last few years. It's still the license for a 20 year old mish-mash of 3 anime series though. Then of course there's Heroes Unlimited, which today is one of many options for a Superhero themed game, and they never really took advantage of their lead to build it up with an armada of source books.
That leaves Rifts (and Fantasy, and a few others but you get the picture). Now, as a setting, I ADORE Rifts. For those who aren't familiar, the premise is this- Worldwide nuclear holocaust happens to coincide with some supernatural phenomena, not only leaving us with a post-appocolyptic setting, but a post-appocolyptic setting with a few million or so portals to other dimensions. Pretty much all of them really. So there is literally no premise for a character or adventure that you can't rationalize including in any given campaign, and compatibility with all their other games is right there.
On the other hand, I'm not such a big fan of actually playing Rifts. It doesn't make any attempt at all really to balance the various class options available, and I'm just referring to the core rules here, not even getting into source books with rules for PC demi-gods. Then there's the MDC system, which I love on paper but hate in practical terms. The basic concept is you have two orders of magnitude when it comes to damage. There's the level of damage, and matching HP, that normal mundane things have, and then there's mega damage, and matching HP, for everything high tech and magical out there. The latter is common, and thus means the former doesn't come up. No adventures involving ordinary people, or catching the PCs off guard without their armor are workable. The setting doesn't lend itself too well towards any lofty goals you can include in your campaign. Overthrowing the Lovecraftian eldrich horror terrorizing the world loses its impact when there's at least a dozen others just as bad in the same time zone, with unlimited potential for more to show up in the future. Then on top of all that, we have the Palladium rules system, which is essentially just D&D's rules with some tweaks to the ones that are really arbitrary and confusing.
Which of course leads us to the unspoken primary cause of Palladium's problems, which I saw coming years ago. The 3rd Edition of D&D. When Palladium first came about, the only thing they really had going for them was that they took everything about D&D, redid it, fixed up some rules, and made it a bit more realistic. Mainly the rules fixes. No more minute long rounds, no more low armor class being good, rules that make it easier to play pretty much any monster race as a PC... does all this sound a little familiar? Basically, D&D's 3E conversion turned it into Palladium Fantasy basically, but with D&D's fanbase, and all those little things besides the bad rules that give it its staying power. Palladium couldn't exactly follow suit, because D&D was just getting with the times, and the only modern standard Palladium hasn't always had covered is the whole perks/flaws notion most games have. Not exactly something you can market a major revision around. Then we have the whole open d20 license concept which counters the angle of working in genres besides fantasy.
So, sadly, from where I sit, these sudden financial problems are just hastening an inevitable downfall. From where I sit, not only does Palladium need some money to get out of the hole, they really need something new out there to make themselves relevant again.
All that said, again, I have a lot of respect for Palladium. They gave me something to play besides D&D back in the 80s, and give more information on campaign settings than just about anyone out there. So, if you are the sort of person to lend a helping hand to floundering game companies, here's Kevin Siembieda's open letter on the matter.
Oh, and on the off chance anyone from Palladium is reading this, good luck, and sorry for being so harsh.