Palladium Books Presents: Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game

by Kevin Siembieda

The Second Edition Palladium Fantasy RPG is a dramatically revised and updated second edition of the original fantasy game rules — the first significant revision since its release in 1983.Kevin Siembieda has personally wrote the comprehensive second edition, and had this to “The fantasy RPG is the game that launched my company and has been its cornerstone for over a decade. The fans love this game as much as I do, so the second edition will be true to the original, but more fun and detailed than ever before. Not only will it be completely compatible with Rifts and all of our other RPG’s, but it will be the Rifts of fantasy gaming — epic fantasy adventure in a unique world, and offering possibilities that are limited only by the player’s imagination!”The emphasis on the Second Edition will be on making the game better than ever, with clean, entertaining descriptions, exciting concepts, quick playability, and a better presentation of information and ideas. The end result will be the first step into the bold and dangerous world of high fantasy. A world of magic and conflict. A world dominated by a human civilization built on the bones of the non-humans who reigned before them. A world of unparalleled heroic adventure filled with magic, inhuman creatures and intrigue! The Palladium World is one of epic fantasy. A world torn in conflict with the non-human barbaric races, creatures of magic and supernatural forces. Non-Human playing characters provide a host of unusual creatures as regular characters. They include the feared changeling who can assume the shape and appearance of any humanoid. The giant races of troll, ogre and wolfen. The small and agile goblin, kobold, gnome and the mighty dwarf, as well as elf, human, and dozens of “optional” creatures found in both the Palladium RPG and Monsters & Animals. The skill system embellishes characters with knowledge and abilities that make Read more

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Games, Gaming, Dungeons and Dragons

336 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1983

About the author

Kevin Siembieda (born April 2, 1956) is an American artist, writer, designer, and publisher of role-playing games, as well as being the founder and president of Palladium Books.

Palladium Books, founded in southeast Michigan, claims to be the first to implement a role-playing system intended to work for all genres and to introduce the perfect-bound trade paperback format to the RPG industry.

Some of the role-playing games Siembieda helped produce include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (1985), Robotech RPG (1986), After The Bomb (1986), and Rifts (1990).

Siembieda is also an artist, best known for occasionally illustrating Palladium Books' products. In 1978, he started the now-defunct Megaton Publications in Detroit, publishing a digest style title called A+ Plus and several other titles. He also contributed art and cartography to several early Judges Guild products (for both their Traveller and Dungeons & Dragons lines).

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I don't use the Palladium system for my Role Playing games they have great books. Tons of good ideas and write-ups in every book. Recommended

[Jackvanc3gmail.Com · Rating 5 out of 5]

best pen papaer RPG ever

like D&D but simpler

3rd edition D&D copied palladium

d20 for most stuff

palladium way ahead in different magic stuff

the monsters and animals pisser too

if you can get the red letters on black book first edition it was even better, thats the one I have

They tried to merge RIFTS into this and jacked the whole system trying to unify it

mind mage and witch awesome

summoner and diabolist and circle dude whatever hell call that one....awesome too

Only house rule I did was triple agility/pp dodge bonus, and add damage block to armour, and armour gave minus to dex

I also would triple constitution bonus.....to stop everyone from just taking strength

crits I had a table of dehabilitating injuries to further mix it up

great book
great product

worlds ahead of pathfinder and D&D 8h ed or whatever goblin shit they are peddling now

dont use miniatures or a battle matt

play with pen n paper only

best way


tunnels and trolls kinda cool system too, and dirt cheap

the leveling monster idea really cool

[Beth Lequeuvre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favorite fantasy setting rpg. The world building/history is complex and wonderful. This system focuses and rewards characters for roleplaying rather than having the focus on killing and looting. I found this system brought a much larger variety of characters into our games. I switched to this system after playing AD&D because the rules in this system were simplified and more streamlined in comparison.

In rereading this book to get a campaign going again after a decade hiatus, I realize as much as I like this system the book is not organized very well. When you create a character you select a race and that determines the attribute dice you roll. Then you select a character class and that gives you skills and hand to hand abilities. The races are found near the end of the book. Same with the map of the world. I feel like this book would be better organized if you see the world first, get an overview of each territory, then see the races, then the character classes. You know, in order of how you would create a character...

All in all though, this is my favorite fantasy setting.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The latest version of my favorite fantasy game. No Tombs of Gersidi but still nice. =) The original version of this book inspired me to write my own stories now for many years. =)

[David Chmelik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palladium RPG systems are the best compatible with TSR (part of WoTC since the mid-90s,) but read their weapons, armour, castles (etc.) non-fiction first.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book to read, though I don't think I'd actually use this edition, but instead would choose the second edition which brings things more in line with other Palladium games. Of course, this was one of the first games they published, right after Mechanoids and around the same time as Robotech. The Palladium house system in general can be described not inaccurately as rather messy AD&D house rules, and it's especially apparent here. This really feels like Kevin's modifications to first edition AD&D compiled into a book and published. In fairness, a lot of them are improvements. The thief class is made less of a weird outlier by giving all character classes percentile skills, which also has the advantage of making the thief a bit stronger. Spells are still on a per-day basis, but all spellcasters are much like sorcerers in 3rd edition D&D, as they get a pool of spell slots to use for any spell they know without having to assign them ahead of time. Perhaps most significantly, armor is ablative and all combat maneuvers are resolved by rolling high on a D20.

The class and race selection is also in many ways AD&D+. You won't find halflings here, though gnomes serve a similar purpose, but there are a number of monster races as PC options, including goblins, orcs, and the quite inventive Wolfen (humanoid wolves with a Roman Empire culture). Fighters, clerics, thieves, and wizards are all here, albeit in somewhat modified form. There are also assassins, knights, and palladins (without any divine magic and no alignment restriction, rendering them a bit redundant to knights in my view). Magic is where things get really interesting. There's a standard wizard, but there are also witches and warlocks who gain arcane or elemental powers from a patron, diabolists who focus on magical wards and arcane writings, and summoners, who have circles of magic power in addition to the obvious summoning of demons and devils and such. The divine classes include clerics of both light and darkness, shamen for more "primitive" cultures, and druids, who have the shapeshifting and animal pals of their D&D version but none of the spell casting. A psychic class and optional NPC classes round things out.

There's none of the now traditional GM advice, as that wasn't as common when this was written. Instead, there's a small selection of magic items and a boatload of things to kill. Weirdly, the section starts with statting up gods before moving on to other matters. (The gods are a nice selection, with pantheons based on Hinduism and Norse mythology along with a primary religion that uses Egyptian deities.) There's a good selection of demons and dragons and other such staples of fantasy RPGs, though I did find the devils from Hell disappointingly quite boring. I liked the selection of faeries and giants and could actually see myself using both. There's some brief discussion of the nations of the Palladium campaign setting, though much of the useful stuff is spread throughout the book. I think that's another case where the second edition does things much better. Finally, there's a starting adventure that seems unsuited for low level characters as it is short on combat encounters, with those that are present seeming rather too deadly to me.

There are definitely some flaws here. I imagine that some of the systems would be clunky and difficult to use, and the skills especially lack the refinement of contemporary systems like RuneQuest. More critically, this book is the worst organized of any RPG book I have ever read. There's no table of contents at all, and while the flow of information does roughly go from player to GM material as you move through the book, there are some glaring exceptions, like magic items in the middle of the magic character classes and key information on what the various playable races are actually like being hidden away in the monster section. There is an index at the end, but I doubt it'd be enough to make this book reasonable for easy reference, another reason I can't imagine actually playing this edition.

All in all, this is a neat look at Palldium's early history and there are definitely some pretty cool ideas here. I'm especially intrigued by the few snippets of the setting, which means I may read more of the first edition books for that purpose. However, in general, I plan to read the second edition of this game at some point because that is definitely the version I would actually use rather than this disorganized yet somewhat charming mess.

[Garrett Henke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea what inspired me to read this RPG from 1996. It wasn’t even particularly cutting edge for the 90’s let alone 2019. And yet I would be lying if I said it wasn’t enjoyable. There are so many better fantasy RPGs out there, but like almost all Palladium stuff, the game is just simply fun. The mechanics are all over the place and the organization is horrendous. Still, there are a lot of inspired ideas in the Palladium Fantasy RPG (especially the Diabolist and Summoner OCCs). To be honest, despite its age and overall ridiculousness, I would actually play or run a Palladium game. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but this is an enjoyable and playable game.

[Horrorsage · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good evening and welcome fellow Children of Chaos.

An unbalanced mess, but a fun unbalanced mess.

Honestly I would like to try this one out and when I am done with my M&M game I might try running this one.

Love the idea that all Palladium/RIFTs games are compatible.

Also, I do mean this, I love how Simbieda explains Why he makes the choices he makes. I wish more games did this sidebar of "This is why me made this choice." Even if I don't think it's a good one, at least we can kind of understand the creators train of thought.

[Capitalismissexy · Rating 5 out of 5]

3rd edition D&D stole the simple d20 plus adds system from palladium rpg.

D&D owes palladium lots of $$

*****1st edition**** is awesome with tomb of gersidi and the whole pencil artwork collection.
or 1st edition revised!!!
2nd edition INFERIOR

Magic has a lot of vrey conan robert e howard stuff in it with summonsers circle magics witch pacts with evil beings.....

Some of it is goofy liek wolfen but hey if you ever plqayed AD&D from the 80s and used combat CHARTS you will see how this is far far more awesome.

The magic system is awesome.
I personally look at it as an expansion of AD&D 1st ediction module.
The psionics are much more powerful and fleshed out.
Add this to the awesome worldbuilding and planar travel and anything goes of D&D and you have a mega nice combination.
Ignore D&D after advance D&D form 80s. D&D is like politics n nba since 1989 they went to hek.
The imagination and awesomness and non forced focus on minorities n multicultural crap hadnt kiked in.
Multiple races were done without a huge zomg.
Hek you could play a monster race if your DM was cool and no one blink.
Again get the 1st ediction black cover with red dragon.
Once seimbeida went rifs he back ported the generic mechnics to everything kinda jacking up a lot of stuff.

To aovid strength only powergaming I reccomend tripling dex avoid attacks abilities.
I also like idea from warhammer or someplce of armour blocking damage, but again armour is bulky n massive so reduced ability to avoid a blow.

Elric strombringer rpg ideas of binding evil demons n spirits into weapons n armour and objects n doors is kinda cool too I use that a lot.
Golems are also such fun

[Malum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't quite remember all of the rules for this game, but I do remember that it gives you a ton of options when making a character. Psychics, witches, assassins, various kinds of priests, and summoners were just a few of the classes you could pick from. Race-wise, you could be things like wolf-men, goblins, kobolds, and changelings. And all of this was just in the core book. The supplements added around a ton of other race and class options.

What I really like about this game, however, is the world. The Palladium Fantasy universe is really fleshed out and interesting, and (like other Palladium games such as Rifts) there are a huge amount of sourcebooks to expand on the world.