That Jerboa doesn't allow blocking of instances is a massive red flag. Users need to insist on that functionality and switch to a new app if they don't get it.
It makes violence less fun to play than the alternatives; combat is bullet-time; skill use is a montage. That said, it's not overtly anti-violence, allowing players to figure out that fighting isn't the best approach (or not, if they actually like bullet-time battles).
It rewards experience for solving problems, rather than racking up kills. Modern gaming is too corrupted by the reductive influence of video games and the market-driven need to minimize GM workload to ever really break it of this.
It encourages groups to develop house rules by making changes to the "RAW" only very gradually, instead of constantly reinventing the rules.
I can recommend these, but I'm frustrated that there aren't more options for big polyhedral dice suitable for outdoor play. Does anybody know of other options?
Itch page
A free turn-based space shooter, created as a thought-experiment in clashing genres.
I'm here to try to catch the podcast-driven wave of renewed interest in RIFTS to get more people into Palladium-style gaming (the system is broken so you can fix it to your liking).
Itch.io Homepage
Has anyone tried this out?
I just use a spreadsheet for everything. Google Sheets is great, but in keeping with the spirit of the Fediverse, EtherCalc is a less-corporate alternative. If being in the cloud isn't needed, Gnumeric is my go-to spreadsheet; it has a portable version for Windows and doesn't need to load a whole office suite to open up.
If you want to recapture the feel of early D&D, ShadowDark (quickstart book) looks like it's going to be pretty good. The simple tweaks to the current game make a big difference, and the artwork is spot-on. This is the image grabbed my attention when I fist saw it (and realized it was new).
Dave Trampier is the most obvious influence, but the art also reminds me of Garry Chalk's illustrations for Joe Dever's Lone Wolf books and the early editions of Talisman. Now that I mention them, Lone Wolf game books and the original Talisman board games are worth familiarizing yourself with if you really want to get into the old-school experience...
Ashmedai are shapeshifting worms that hail from (but may not be native to) the Darklands, the dark dimension of bad guys that's just adjacent to Nightbane's Earth (behind every mirror). They're the closest thing to Aku's "race" in the Megaverse that I've come across, and they'd be easier to play than a RIFTS shifter, for sure.
Nice! This is exactly the sort of copyright-infringing game that wouldn't fly on a company-moderated message board. Character builds for Spear, Samurai Jack, and Dexter, would, of course, be obligatory...
RIFTS (core)
Mira : Wilderness Scout
Ikra : Shifter (with combat training)
Honeydew : CS Military Specialist (minor psionic)
Turtle Prime (no-MD, old school)
Mira : mutant hominidon (Transdimensional TMNT)
Fang : mutant t-rex (Transdimensional TMNT)
Ikra : Ashmedai (Night~~spawn~~bane)
Honeydew : agent (Ninjas & Superspies)
Monkey : mutant monkey (TMNT Adventures and Heroes Unlimited)
::: spoiler There are probably as many takes on this as there are Palladium gamers, but here's mine (spoiler):
Palladium's rules discourage the types of ~~problem-solving~~ conflict resolution that games like D&D require, but they do so (and this is important) without explicitly saying so.
There are plenty of alternative systems that go out of their way to de-emphasize the things that make D&D what it is. Some of them are even fun, worthy games in the niche they represent. But many of them (especially the more fashionable ones) are extremely preachy about it. By contrast, Palladium presents itself in very much the same way as D&D (you play heroes who fight bad guys, etc.) while using different game mechanics.
Most of the hate Palladium gets from RPG reviewers online arises from this. The reviewers who are into min-max-crunch can't understand why Palladium hasn't streamlined its combat rules, balanced its classes, and otherwise tried to do everything that D&D has tried to do with its endless revisions. The reviewers who like fluff want to be preached at about "immersive storytelling" (and, though they'd be loathe to admit it, how playing that game instead of D&D will get them laid). Because Palladium fails to give either side what they want, it gets smeared as slow and clunky by min-max-crunch nerds, and as neck-beardy and cringe-inducing by vampire-fetish drama geeks.
To really get what sets Palladium apart, in my opinion, requires looking at the table for rewarding experience. Most of what's on there is about making plans, solving problems, and putting others before yourself. There's even an explicit reward for "Avoiding unnecessary violence."
By itself, that's not that unusual; lots of games (other than D&D) emphasize non-violence. The real difference is in Palladium's treatment of the very thing that those experience rules discourage, dedicating a massive portion of its rules to an extremely fine-grained bullet-time treatment of combat. Min-max-crunch nerds hate this, and the Palladium system by extension, because it makes combat less fun. Vampire-fetish drama geeks hate it because it doesn't provide detailed systems for the non-combat things they want to focus on.
But that is exactly the point. Combat is meant to be less fun than sneaking around, using wits and skills, and solving problems in less-obvious ways than kicking in the door. That being said, combat remains the focus of the mechanical rules, because to shift focus off violence would not only be counter-productively preachy, it would also encourage a min-max mindset with regard to whatever the rules shifted to emphasize instead.
Keeping with this theme, there will also be "Rockers' threads"** meant to celebrate Palladium and defend it from its many (many, many) detractors. In part because of how protective they were of their copyrights, Palladium Books was extremely slow to establish a Web presence, so just about everything about Palladium games on the Web until very recently was either unauthorized or negative, especially with respect to the rules.
** The same adventure that contains the Krugatch, Lancer's Rockers, also introduced experimental mega-damage musical instruments, and the whole adventure built to a climax involving the player characters rocking out against a kaiju-sized Krugatch robot. It was peak late-80's Silverhawks-style cartoon camp!
Bullets intruding into a gun-free setting made this feel like a very "Amber" moment:
What's up with that cool glow effect? Did you take a picture of a monitor with your phone?
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I have similarly basic needs, and I stopped distro-hopping when I found Q4OS a few years ago. It seems to run well on most hardware and, while I can't speak as to how well-supported it is in German, its community is based in Germany.