Online Encyclopedia
Palladium Games
Founded by Kevin Siembieda and Erick Wujcik , Palladium Games (also known as Palladium Books) is a role-playing game publisher known most popularly for their best-selling, genre-crossing Rifts gaming series (1990-present). They were one of the first table top role-playing games systems that sought to create a single Palladium System of role playing, with different genres of games in this system easily converted to another.
Their first game was The Mechanoid Invasion in 1981, followed by the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game in 1983 and Heroes Unlimited in 1984. Other popular titles included the role playing game adaptations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1985) and the Japanese animated series Robotech.
Palladium was also one of the major distributors of Robotech merchandise for years, and also produced a short-lived collectible card game based on Rifts.
Perhaps due to their status as one of the first producers of a universal game system, Palladium has been aggressive in preventing wide distribution of fan-made conversions of their games to other systems, such as the D20 System. Other than that, however, they have a fairly lenient policy about derivative works so long as the proper notices are applied.
Palladium is based in Taylor, Michigan.
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Dice
Palladium roleplaying system involves primarily D6, D20, and percentile dice. Combat is resolved using a D20, while skill checks are performed in percentile. Skill bonuses increase uniformly with levelling up and different strength characters are given different experience point tables for leveling up to help even out powerful versus weak characters.
Alignment
Defintions of good versus evil and lawful versus chaotic common to Dungeons & Dragons and other games are discussed in more detailed terms in descending order from Principled, Scrupulous, Unscrupulous, Anarchist, Aberrant, Miscreant, to Diabolic. This may stem partly from core author Kevin Siembieda's own personal distaste for the presence of "True Neutral" characters.
Other Palladium Games
- Beyond the Supernatural
- Macross II (adaptation)
- Nightbane (formerly called Nightspawn )
- Ninjas and Superspies
- RECON