Websnark

Comment from: TheNintenGenius posted at April 20, 2006 2:15 PM

Holy shit, somebody actually tried to make a game for the N-Gage?

Wait a minute, the N-Gage still exists?

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at April 20, 2006 2:17 PM

The problem with the Nokia N-Gage game seems to actually be a minor one, to my eyes.

Now, I obviously don't have Palladium's or Nokia's books in front of me, so I don't know the exact amounts of those contracts (but since the latter is publically traded, it might be possible to find those exact amounts). However, even if the Rifts N-Gage game had been a success, it would have had to sell like gangbusters (I'm talking at least on the level of a new Metroid release, if not more) for Palladium to get a kickback serious enough to overcome the bare minimum $850k shortfall they say they're dealing with. Moreover, even if it had a more moderate success (say, on the level of Katamari Damacy), I don't know if the ink of the contract for a sequel could have dried fast enough to make a difference (although it may have convinced a bank to give a generous loan).

In other words, of the reasons listed by Siembieda, I suspect that the malfeasance is the lion's share of the problem, if not the whole of the problem.

It seems kind of weird, but I've never had any experience with Rifts at all, on any level. And I'm someone who once played the first edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth. I've played dozens of systems, and flipped through a score more.

However, I've never had a reason to think anything but good of Rifts, and I am of the belief that a healthy Palladium is only good for the industry. Maybe I ought to pick up a new Rifts core rules book, to finally see the system myself and give them a bit of a boost.

Comment from: toshi.m posted at April 20, 2006 2:37 PM

This is a sad day for me and mine. While technically the first RPG I ever played was D&D, it was a single session almost two years before I began playing with any regularity. The first RPG I ever *enjoyed* playing was Rifts, and it's still a standby among my friends. The Rifts base book was my first RPG book purchase- my first dice were bought for Rifts!

I hope they stay afloat. I never would have even known they were in trouble, were it not for this post. Thanks for getting the word out!

Comment from: Stan posted at April 20, 2006 2:56 PM

Hmmm, somewhere on my home pc, I have a D20 version of Rifts that looks relatively playable. Fan made, of course.

Palladium did some ok things but I never cared for the Rifts mechanics. Too unwieldy and too much power creep.

I wonder what the malfeasance was. Were they connected to Osseum or another company that went under under shady circumstances? (Osseum was a distributor who disappeared in the night, owing much money to publishers for stuff that had already been sold to stores.)

Comment from: Robotech_Master posted at April 20, 2006 2:57 PM

In my opinion, the Rifts setting and storyline are keen, the art is usually at least interesting and more commonly top-notch (more giant robots than at which a stick can be shaken). One of my earliest forays into fanfic—hell, one of the earliest pieces of fanfic to appear on the Internet in general—was my Robotech/RIFTS crossover (entitled, imaginatively, Robotech/RIFTS Crossover—hey, I was in high school when I wrote it!). No, I'm not gonna link to it. Like I said, I wrote it in high school. If you really wanna find it, I'm sure a search-engine will tell you exactly where it is.

RIFTS is probably one of the most fleshed-out commercially-available game worlds, due to Palladium's habit of putting out Rifts This, Rifts That, Rift The Other books every time they turn around. (One friend of mine believes that Palladium was in part responsible for a RPG book glut that helped to slow down the industry back in the '90s, though I would argue that CCGs and computer games were more responsible.) It's probably not the first "smash magic, technology, and everything else you can think of up into a little ball" RPG out there—TORG predates it—but it's certainly the only one that's still going strong. There's a lot of potentially great stories to be told in there.

I still have warm memories of my brothers and myself playing Rifts or Robotech and arguing over rules interpretations, fiddling with printing font generator programs for our old computer (which was so old it didn't feature a wysiwyg word processor) to create character sheets printed in tiny type, or even import the "Zentraedi alphabet" for printing stuff in it. If I had the cash to spare, I'd be very tempted to buy a print, just for old times' sake.

On the downside, Palladium's mechanics are atrocious. I sometimes wonder if the reason they don't want people posting conversions for their stuff is that if they do, folks will realize how horrible their rule mechanics are. You start out with a clone of D&D, right down to rolling 3D6 for base physical and mental stats. Then...you don't really do anything with those stats. They just sort of sit there, as skills are based on percentages and have very little to do with the base physical stats (apart from some really high or really low scores providing a few percentage points of bonus or penalty).

Whenever you level up, your percentage ability in every skill you have goes up too. Even if you never used it. You just magically become 5% more proficient at navigation, or mechanics, or basket-weaving, or whatever.

Oh, and then there's the "Mega-Damage" system, whereby robots' and monsters' hit points are measured in "megadamage" points, which are "super" hit points equal to 100 "human" hit points. This doesn't handle scaling really well, because under this system you're either super-huge or ultra-squishy, nothing in-between.

And rather than go back and redo their mechanics from the ground up, they just keep bolting stuff onto them. (Mega-damage was such a bolt-on.) Maybe they have since I last read their books, a few years back, but I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't.

Some gamers have also complained about "hit point inflation" in the Rifts series, whereby every new sourcebook had mecha that were much more powerful than the ones in prior books. I haven't seen as many of their recent books as some, but from what I did see it did seem to be the case.

Their books are so riddled with typos it makes you wonder whether they were proofread at all. This includes the novels based on the Rifts setting, of which I have only (had the misfortune to) read one. It included a particularly humorous search-and-replace error where someone had done a S&R but not specified whole-words only. (I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was on the order of if someone had changed "mile" to "kilometer" without checking for cases like "smiles".)

I'm still rather annoyed at Palladium for what they did to Robotech. Not only did their clunky mechanics not simulate the action seen in the show (for just one example, in the Robotech show, a Valkyrie could waste several Battlepods with one long burst from his rifle; in the game, a Valkyrie could fire his rifle for a 15-second-long burst at a single Battlepod and only have a 1 in 3 chance of destroying it), but they got huge amounts of stuff flat wrong. Admittedly, the stuff they got wrong wasn't entirely their fault, since they didn't have access to the original translated source material that's available now, but it's still aggravating.

In the end, I hope Palladium doesn't go under—I think their Rifts stuff is interesting and shows a lot of promise. I can't say that I hope they get the Robotech license again, though.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at April 20, 2006 3:03 PM

It seems kind of weird, but I've never had any experience with Rifts at all, on any level. And I'm someone who once played the first edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth. I've played dozens of systems, and flipped through a score more.

That's one of the odd things about Palladium. Palladium exists in its own island in the RPG community. I know relatively few people who've just played White Wolf games, or just looked at Steve Jackson Games stuff. If someone isn't a dedicated D&D person, they usually have five or six discrete game systems in their background -- at the very least, the top stuff from the top companies in the areas they're interested in.

Except... well, Palladium fans. There's a nontrivial number of Palladium fans who've never played anything else, and there's a huge number of alternate RPG fans who've never even heard of Palladium. They've had a monumental fanbase over the years, but in a lot of cases it's been wholly discrete from the rest of the community and industry.

(I have to assume the zealous lockdown on conversions added to that.)

That said, one of my best friends is as much an RPG polyglot as I am, and he's got a ton of Palladium stuff. So this isn't a universal law or anything.

Comment from: Orikes posted at April 20, 2006 3:10 PM

Dude, you broke their forums!

Seriously, though, when I clicked on the link in the essay, it bombed out. They're probably getting linked all over the place and the traffic influx keeled them.

I'd heard of Rifts, but never played until just a few weeks ago. One of the die-hard guys in my gaming group had decided we were going to play Rifts. He loves D&D but wanted something different, and I was rather burnt out on running my M&M Superhero game (I'm a new GM - I break easy). So, Rifts it was.

It's.. okay so far. I'm not in love, I'm not in hate. We'll see where it goes.

As you say, though, even a second cousin is part of the family. It's disconcerting to see them suffer.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at April 20, 2006 3:16 PM

The thing about family is the explanation why I continued to enjoy Star Trek beyond 1995 when so many others were abandoning it or, worse, sticking around just to kick it while it was down. But this is no second cousin, this is a brother. I've always wanted to quote The Search for Spock, "I'm talking about loyalty", when the arguments roll around; but you've said it much better.

Comment from: Stan posted at April 20, 2006 3:32 PM

Paul, you, oh god, you watched Voyager didn't you.

Comment from: Robotech_Master posted at April 20, 2006 3:52 PM

I found some interesting stuff in the Wikipedia entry for Palladium Books (hey, look! When Websnarks collide!). There are links to forum posts where former Palladium employees suggest that Kevin's management style was "too centralised and not adapted to the size the company had reached," which may have contributed to the situation. There's also a list of what-all was stolen, including a bunch of stuff that was sold on eBay. It seems to be mostly artwork, including transparencies of covers of many of their books. If anyone ended up with something that was on that list, they'd like to get in touch with them and see about trading for or buying it back.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at April 20, 2006 4:07 PM

I'm quite familiar with that island you mention, Eric. I remember back when the second edition of the Role-Playing Games Bible (which is a fascinating read, by the by, though it could use an update) talked about Palladium in general and Rifts in particular. It was on their top five most popular systems, and the blurb about it started "It's the most popular system nobody plays." While the Internet has done much to mitigate that, the segmentation between Rifts players and everyone else is remarkable.

Now, based on RM's take on Rifts, I'm actually surprised they didn't pursue video gaming more aggressively, and into a more concentrated marketbase (I probably would have picked the PC or Game Boy Advance for Rifts, myself, given the market saturation and the comparatively low cost for developing for those platforms if done well). If anything, tweaks to that scaling system would work marvels for a video game system. Even without, I've seen games work with a similar layout. I might need a better description, but it reminded me a bit of Xenogears, which sold well and got fairly positive marks from critics.

Heck, I could see a video game being part of what could save Palladium. But I'd honestly need more details about some of Palladium's issues (mostly regarding their deal with Nokia) before fleshing out something resembling a plan.

Comment from: Scarybug posted at April 20, 2006 4:11 PM

A friend of mine has a rant regarding this that I assume (since he emailed it to our mailing list instead of putting on his blog) he doesn't feel is fit for public consumption.

Suffice to say he was a big supporter of the Megaverse in his youth, but feels that Siembada deserves to go under because of the way he's run the company and mistreated freelancers.

Comment from: Montykins posted at April 20, 2006 4:12 PM

I remember participating in an Emergency Auction for Steve Jackson Games on the old Illuminati Online BBS (I got a signed copy of "Man to Man", the proto-GURPS book!). I think I may have played and enjoyed enough Palladium in my life to get in on this. Rules complaints aside (and I still say they're the least important part of any RPG), Ninjas and Superspies is a great product. And I played in a TMNT campaign for almost a year.

Thanks for the tip, Eric.

Comment from: Matterhorn posted at April 20, 2006 4:40 PM

I feel physically ill right now; I can't stand this feeling of helplessness.

I own hundreds of RPG books from a good half dozen systems, D&D, BESM, Call of the big C, and Inomine, but Rifts is my game. Even with all its flaws and troubles (which I've never found to be all that bad) I love it. I love it so much that I own every single, world, dimension, source, and rifter book ever produced (a stack I detest having moving). I will spend time just reading the books, and mapping adventures I know I will never get around to playing.

These books were some of the first things that I ever bought for myself; they helped me form the group of friends that kept me sane through high school. When I feel overwhelmed by work or school, they provide a bridge to a time when I was dumber and happier. Rifts is an escape, a wall I can throw up every once and a while to get away from the real world and clear my head.

If palladium folds it would very likely be the end of role-playing for me. A terrible black mark tarnishing the face of something I loved, the walls come down. It seems every time I turn around I'm forced to grow up a little more by sacrificing something new; this of course is how life works, but I don't want to grow up this much yet.

So thank you Eric for brining this to my attention, at least now I’ve done something. I apologize to anyone who had to read what was probably a terribly written post; I'm still trying to process this into words.

The waiting is the worst part.

Comment from: masque12 posted at April 20, 2006 5:04 PM

I've never played RIFTS, but I've mentioned to Evil Stevie the idea of a GURPS RIFTS book. The scary thing is that he said it had been considered.

I may go for one of those limited edition books, to support them. I wish this had been done for West End Games back in the day when they still had the Star Wars license. It would be nice to have them still making the game, as opposed to the D20 travesty around now.

Comment from: Fishdinner posted at April 20, 2006 5:53 PM

For what its worth, the Rifts game for the N-Gage is actually a *really* good game. You can see videos and screenshots at its home site here : http://www.n-gage.com/rifts-promiseofpower/

Comment from: Copper Hamster posted at April 20, 2006 6:13 PM

You know... Palladium was one of those companies I figured would hang around till KS died. KS might not have been (from what I've read) the greatest manager in the world but he wasn't as bad as some I've heard about (Something someone told me about a company holding onto a finished, playtested, edited, ready to print new version of a game that was 4 years old for 2 more yuease becuase they had just published a supplemment 6 months ago and didn't like to put out more than 1-2 products a year.)

Yes the system was cludgey with too many bits tacked on, but like a Malcontents stinger it just seemed to work.

BTW RM, I've read that one, if you are the RM I'm thinking of. From the Cantina?

Don't look at me like that. It was a long time ago.

I hate to see things like this, especially as the result of a criminal act on the part of someone who was apparantly a trusted member of the company.

But you should take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough chee.. sorry wrong thought train (leaps)

Rifts players will mourn the passing of Palladium, but Rifts won't die. Not yet. There were still people playing with their tattered, dog eared black covered copies of Traveller, hoping to track down Beowulf and save her, as recently as 5-10 years ago. Now of course they've picked up the reprints. ^_^. Just because your game company dies, or a product line dies, doesn't mean your enjoyment has to.

To paraphrase... Somewhere, out there, Tolkeen is burning, Prosek is asleep and the Alanteans dream. There are MDC creatures made of smoke and Cities built on Lay lines. Come on Juicers, we've got work to do.

(Yes I watched the last season of Dr. Who last week. So what?)

I wish Palladium and KS all the best. If they survive, maybe some of the things that are wrong there will be righted. If Palladium dies, maybe Rifts will see new life in another system (I don't really see KS selling it off unless he has no choice though.) In any case for those watching with anxiety, it is YOU that keeps the system alive. You that bring the battle torn wastelands of RIFTS to life. Never forget that. You have 13.23 x10^54 power books, you have room to wander beyond most gamers imaginings.

Good luck.

Otoh, maybe this is all karma for having published the travisty that was Lancer's Rockers...

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at April 20, 2006 6:29 PM

32_footsteps: The N-Gage game wouldn't have had to cover the shortfall. Just provide a solid enough income stream to convince the creditors to be patient and wait for money instead of carving up the goose right away.

Comment from: JoeFF85 posted at April 20, 2006 6:31 PM

I'm another one of those Rifts die-hards. It was the first RPG I ever played, it is the RPG I play more than any other. I run it, I play it, I read the books, I dream Rifts. Hell, I converted it to use on the Sluggy Freelance forums and have been running it there for just over a year now.

Like others, I bitch about the rules. Hell, I've pretty much home-ruled away all of the game mechanics at this point. But I LOVE the setting. Rifts is just the most insanely cool world setting I could think of, and I love it so much.

I heard about this situation this morning, because it was linked on the main page of 8-Bit theater. When I got over to the Sluggite zone, I'd seen that one of Palladium's fan core had started a thread in General Chat about it before I could. Then I linked it in the OOC thread of my Rifts game, because people need to know. Because Rifts needs to be kept alive.

That said, if it dies, it wont be gone. I own three fucking Main Books, plus the new Ultimate Edition. I have EVERY Rift book on .pdf, just in case. I'll keep playing this game untill I die, not untill the company dies.

And besides, Rifts is the only system with a StarCraft Total Conversion, how can you not love THAT?

Comment from: Robotech_Master posted at April 20, 2006 7:25 PM

Apparently Websnark ate my prior attempt at posting this, so I'll try again.

The Wikipedia entry (oooh, two Websnarks collide!) for Palladium Books has been updated with a financial crisis section. Interestingly, it includes some links to RPGnet postings by former co-workers and freelancers who've dealt with Siembieda who stated (well before all this happened) that he has a very archaic, centralized, do-everything-yourself style of management (and general a-holishness when it comes to dealing with freelancers), out of step with how large the company has grown. The Wikipedia entry suggests that this may have been responsible for creating an atmosphere in which the thefts could occur.

It also includes a link to Palladium Books's theft page which lists what was taken (I'd link to it myself, but I suspect that including more than one link in my prior version of this post is what caused Websnark's moderation system to eat it, so you'll just have to get there via Wiki), including a bunch of animation cels, cover art transparencies (which are needed in order to print new artwork or book covers), crates full of printed Palladium books, some numbered-edition books with sentimental value (having been autographed by Kevin's late mother), and so on. Some of this stuff has ended up or might soon end up on eBay and they ask for people's help to track it down if anyone you know of bought it. Apparently the thefts happened unnoticed over a fairly long period of time.

Comment from: Scarybug posted at April 20, 2006 7:45 PM

Robotech Master - That's sort of what I was alluding to in my earlier post. I've heard that freelancers have complained of having their contracts retconned into allowing their work to be used in any product when they'd originally only signed for its use in one, for example.

Comment from: cartoonlad posted at April 20, 2006 8:11 PM

Hindsight: Kevin Siembieda should have released PDF versions of the Palladium backstock through DriveThruRPG. With publishing game books as PDFs, he'll have a larger profit margin than going through traditional retail channels. If he manages to make it out of this and still doesn't offer PDF versions of his backstock, I've got to wonder if it's part of his managing style that helped to bring him to the current state. (Then again, http://spleen.mearcair.net/rifts/coffin.htm might explain a few things.)

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at April 20, 2006 8:51 PM

Dave, in order for the N-Gage game to provide enough of an income stream to convince the creditors to hold off, it really would have needed to sell at least on the level of Katamari Damacy. Companies mostly get the money from a video game license up front, and the residuals are relatively low. I don't know the particulars of the deal, but I imagine that Palladium saw almost all of the money they were going to get from Nokia out of the gate, and even if the game had been for the Playstation 2 they shouldn't have expected too much beyond that. Video game licenses are not a solid income stream by any stretch.

Comment from: Kirath posted at April 20, 2006 9:19 PM

Wow, yeah, that's wild. D&D was my first game, the one my cousing taught me to play back when I was nine, but we also played a LOT of Palladium games. Just about everything in their catalog through the mid-late eighties... more RECON and TMNT than anything else.

I don't have the cash for a print, but in the interest of spreading the word, I have posted links on my Guild board and a couple of the roleplaying boards I frequent. Good luck to them all.

Comment from: Robotech_Master posted at April 20, 2006 10:43 PM

Given that he apparently puts those books together by hand, I would be surprised if he even had any easy way to make PDFs. He seems to be something of a luddite in general, given that he doesn't keep an email account. Strange for someone who makes a living putting out such futuristic games, but there you go.

Comment from: djcoffman posted at April 20, 2006 11:00 PM

RIFTS always sucked.. I think that was Palladium?? But even though it sucked, we seemed to play it every weekend for months back in the old high school gaming days.

I wonder if it's just hard for the RPG table top games to compete with things like Warcraft and online massive games-- I think the MMORPG is to tabletop games what the MP3 and online downloading is to the music industry. Fucking Internet, all changing everything and that.

Comment from: prosfilaes posted at April 21, 2006 1:39 AM

Palladium has done a lot of interesting stuff over the years, and whatever else it's been, they've usually been cheap books full of ideas. I've got several of their books on my bookshelf of misc. RPGs, even if I've never got to play any of them. I think TMNT was my first non-D&D game to read through.

I don't believe that Palladium is in their rights to stop published conversion systems, though. Legally, the only way to protect how a game works is through patents, which I'm pretty sure Palladium doesn't have. What copyright covers on an RPG is an open question, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't cover the pure crunch like character stats, which fundamentally no different from any other set of uncopyrightable game rules.

Less legalistically, in the computer world, I hate it when companies go out of their way to make it hard to work with their programs; I want the ability to load my wordprocessing documents in whatever word processor I want. I don't want a Microchannel Bus that only IBM-approved products can use; I don't want some patent-covered or DRM format that I can only read in certain programs. Likewise, I want the ability to move characters and monsters and other junk between RPGs as easily as possible. I liked the fact that the Primal Order contain conversion rules for many systems, and I'd like for future publishers to feel free to include conversion rules so I can take their stuff and run it under my favorite system.

(And part of the reason I can't do the last is because WotC got sued by Palladium for including those conversion rules, and no matter what a court would say at the end of the day, they made it clear that doing such a thing may invite legal action, which will cost more than it's worth.)

Comment from: prosfilaes posted at April 21, 2006 1:44 AM

I think the MMORPG is to tabletop games what the MP3 and online downloading is to the music industry.

What, having little effect? D&D 3rd ed. is the best selling D&D edition ever from what I've heard, and Steve Jackson posted a note saying that 2004 was the best year in a decade and the second best year ever for Steve Jackson Games. Computer games of any sort don't replace face-to-face games, and I don't think there's much direct economic competition.

Comment from: Tephlon posted at April 21, 2006 4:27 AM

Robotech_Master's first post just gave me an insight...

Rift and TORG....

I'm going to say Pete Abrams is interested in this news...

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at April 21, 2006 9:52 AM

My first exposure to the Palladium System was the first edition Heroes Unlimited. Which, frankly, sucked. Even as a kid I realized it sucked. I also couldn't figure OUT the system, especially the to-hit rules. Only after getting the free Valley of the Pharaohs game at GenCon, with its stripped down rules, did I figure out what it was. And that on a roll of 6 you'd destroy your opponent's clothing. :) (Okay, that's not really what "Cloth" armor type means, but still...)

Oh, and I crossed my Champions game over into Torg in the late 80s. :)

Comment from: Darrin_Bright posted at April 21, 2006 10:05 AM

Some thoughts about copyrights and patents as they apply to RPGs (this is one of my personal bugaboos):

Copyright only applies to the actual text of a book. It does not apply to book titles or proper names. Stat blocks for creatures/classes/equipment generally appear as text within a book, and would thus be protected by copyright. (Note: there are some exceptions, such as "fair use", where you may use a small portion of text for things like reviews, but if you used them in something like "conversion rules" in another commercial product, that might not fly.)

The description of the system mechanics are protected by copyright, but the actual mechanics of rolling, using random-number-polyhedrals to direct the structure of a collaborative storytelling game... those aren't protected by copyright. So you could, in theory, lift the resolution mechanics of any game out there and, so long as you didn't use any of the original text to describe how they work, you wouldn't be directly violating any copyright. Resolution mechanics would fall under patents, and so far, no one has ever tried to patent any RPG mechanics (which is kind of surprising, because the U.S. Patent Office would most likely completely miss just how incredibly murky and poorly understood the whole "who did what" in the initial development of RPGs).

Trademarks are a whole different ballgame. Most established RPGs have a whole host of trademarks (you'll notice Kevin never forgets an (R) when he mentions Megaverse(R) in his post). RIFTS, Hit Points, Noun: the Gerund, all the important terms are usually trademarked (I'm not aware of the specifics of the case, but this might be where WotC/Primal Order got in trouble). You can get around the "copyright doesn't apply to titles or proper names" by just making the title or name a trademark (hence Cheapass getting nasty letters about "Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond"). Trademarks, unlike copyrights or patents, have to be zealously enforced or you risk losing them, as you might see with the common parlance of aspirin, kleenex, and xerox. One small bright area here, recently, though... the Victoria's Secret case established that a company must show specific, actual damages to sue for trademark dilution, they can't just "claim" that a similar trademark may hurt their business.

Of course, the real big elephant in the room is if someone goes after you for creating a "derivative work", and conversion rules based on someone else's intellectual property might qualify. The problem with determining "derivative work" is it's a huge legal gray area, and the side that spends the most money generally wins (in other words, never ever bet against Disney). The courts don't like these cases, because it usually boils down to personal opinion. And if you want to get into international IP law, different countries have different ideas on what constitutes derivative work. You'll notice when the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" went after Dan Brown, they did so in the UK, where they have a bit broader concept of copyright infringement. If they'd tried that in the US, without any evidence that Dan Brown had directly plagiarized their text, a decision in their favor would have been extremely unlikely. And no, I have absolutely no idea why James Cameron settled with Harlan Ellison over even less evidence of infringement.

The problem with RPG companies is they have such razor-thin margins and such meager financial assets, they just can't afford any litigation, even when the odds are stacked heavily in their favor (I think Cheapass would have totally kicked UA/Danjaq's butt under the "parody" exception of fair use, but parody cases have a history of being a bit of a craps shoot). This was WotC's situation with Palladium, a new start-up company didn't have a lot of assets for a protracted legal fight over conversion rules, and they had to be EXTREMELY careful of how they defined their corporate assets if Palladium had won any damages. Peter Adkinson managed to keep the Richard Garfield games (Roborally, Magic: the Gathering) under a separate corporate entity (Garfield Games) until the Palladium lawsuit was settled.

In any case: Copyrights don't apply to ideas. Patents can apply to ideas, but only last for a specific period of time. Trademarks can apply to anything used to sell a product and must be zealously protected.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so don't consider any of this legal advice.

Finally... I'm not a big fan of Palladium, but I wish them the best of luck, and hope they pull out of this mess.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at April 21, 2006 12:31 PM

"And no, I have absolutely no idea why James Cameron settled with Harlan Ellison over even less evidence of infringement."

Like the rest of the post, but I think I can answer this part.

Generally, when someone settles in a case like this, it comes down to time and money - it would cost too much of one (or possibly both) to prevail, and the person settling finds it would be much better in the long run to settle. In this case, I imagine money was the deciding factor - just cheaper to pay a settlement than various lawyer and court fees.

Also, given the prevalence of the use of the term hit points in various situations, I'm fairly certain that one isn't trademarked.

Comment from: Scarybug posted at April 21, 2006 12:33 PM

Teflon, actually Abrams has gone on record as saying "Riff" is from "riff-raff" from Rocky Horror, and "Torg" is from "Torgo" from the Manos: The Hands of Fate episode of MST3K.

Comment from: Bahimiron posted at April 21, 2006 1:08 PM

"What, having little effect? D&D 3rd ed. is the best selling D&D edition ever from what I've heard, and Steve Jackson posted a note saying that 2004 was the best year in a decade and the second best year ever for Steve Jackson Games. Computer games of any sort don't replace face-to-face games, and I don't think there's much direct economic competition."

Funny you should mention this. 2004. Best year for Steve Jackson. I wonder how 2005 was, given that World of Warcraft was released mid-November 2004 in most countries. DnD 3.0? Released 2000. How have sales on 3.5 compared? How about suppliments released since World of Warcraft? I mean, you know, other than World of Warcraft suppliments.

I do not think that MMORPGs can really take the place of actual RPing, and not really cos of any face-to-face bullshit. I do a lot of RPing, but none of it live. For the better part of the past fifteen years I have been playing on one MUSH or another, whether superhero, DnD or WoD. However, I can fully admit that when a friend of mine started playing EQ, I found myself drawn to the instant gratification kill, loot and level grind of EQ.

After a year or two of that, I lost interest and went back to RPing. Couldn't keep chasing the carrot. However, when WoW was released, I went back to it. Only took me a few months for interest to fade then, but I can still see how someone could decide to spend their finite free time in a pre-set world like that rather than try and TT.

Comment from: sinless posted at April 21, 2006 2:06 PM

In my mind Palladium rules are something you occasionally have to put up with to enjoy setting X (TMNT, Rifts, whatever). It is most definitely not on my 'like' list, but I hate to hear about bad things happening to any decent sized game company. I hope the fans pull through for them (I personally can't really afford game books for things I am willing to play at the moment, so helping out just because isn't really in the cards).

Comment from: miyaa posted at April 21, 2006 6:17 PM

I'd disagree strongly about helping a RPG company stave off its own death. And it's not strictly because of the whole "it's a business" kind of thing.

See, I used to love 7th Sea, and somewhere towards the end, they thought that they could survive by becoming d20-ified. Alas, it only hastened its own death. Exploding d10 fans like myself couldn't embrace the alterations and there's better d20 sea adventures or campaigns to get yourself into than 7th Sea.

The problem I've had with RIFTS and Palladium is that it's so generic that there's no way you could play it without feeling confused. It was different, sure, but it gotten to the point where it was so different it seemed unplayable. Gaming systems have to adapt and change or they turn out to be some sort of dinosaur of a gaming system. D&D went through a change much like how T. Rex. died out but somehow evolved into becoming a chicken (which come to think of it, pretty much describes what I think about 3.5 edition).

As for the online game killing the pencil and paper stars, I'm not sure how that would explain why I see new RPG games coming out based on mmorpgs like World of Warcraft. I think there's an Everquest d20 version coming out soon. As I think I've heard before, people play these games on and off. It just seems to me that everything in the gaming industry runs in cycles. We're just on a rinse cycle right now.

Comment from: aaronbourque posted at April 21, 2006 6:26 PM

I wonder what the malfeasance was.

They stopped wearing pants.

Good for relaxation. Terrible for business.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque

Comment from: Bahimiron posted at April 21, 2006 9:55 PM

"The problem I've had with RIFTS and Palladium is that it's so generic that there's no way you could play it without feeling confused. It was different, sure, but it gotten to the point where it was so different it seemed unplayable."

I'm not certain you fully understand the definitions of all the words you are saying.

Comment from: miyaa posted at April 21, 2006 11:58 PM

I probably don't.

Let me reclarify. Unlike most systems which has a particular purpose, RIFTS tried to have its system so that you could play just about anything, in any setting or situation. It is a very generic system this way. The way it tried to get you to play it really confused me. And that's what I really meant.

Or maybe I'm confused it with Gurps.

Comment from: Bahimiron posted at April 22, 2006 12:10 AM

Yeah, you are.

GURPS is the Generic Universal Role Playing System where one system is supposed to cover every kind of game. GURPS had a million little suppliments that offered expanded rules and setting information for everything from superheroes to hard sci fi, Mage: the Awakening to Bunnies and Burrows, Discworld to Traveller.

Rifts was one setting, but the setting was a post-apocalyptic Earth wherein the deaths of so many people in nuclear fire lead to the reawakening of ley lines, causing vast dimensional tears to form in the skies, letting in all sorts of extra-normal creatures in. So it mixes magic, mecha and horror that ranges from Lovecraftian to ludicrous. It's got a lot of decent ideas, but those ideas are buried in vast mounds of stupid.

Comment from: Ununnilium posted at April 22, 2006 1:14 AM

I remember getting the two confused, though, because of seeing a Rifts ad early on where it claimed you could play "anything" in it. (It mentioned psychics, magicians, super-science warriors, etc.) And the names are pretty similar. Plus, the ad showed other Palladium products, and made it seem (to me-back-then, at least) like they were all part of the same thing.

Comment from: Copper Hamster posted at April 22, 2006 2:04 AM

Miyaa, EQ d20 has been out for several years.

it's very blah.

Comment from: Darrin_Bright posted at April 24, 2006 9:26 AM

RIFTS is the "Kitchen Sink" approach to a universal multi-genre RPG, where every Kitchen Sink you buy after the first one does more damage than the last one without any corresponding limitations or trade-offs.

GURPS is the "Bridal Magazine" approach to a universal multi-genre RPG, where every book you buy contains endless variations of the same basic thing over and over again, but the names and pictures are all different.

The MMORPG d20 books generally have the best retail penetration of any self-contained "non-WotC" RPG, which means they're stocked at every WaldenBordles, but I'd have to see some sales figures before I made any statements about whether they have any impact at all on the RPG market. I haven't seen any evidence that these things have attracted a large influx of players in either the videogame or RPG market. I suspect they're a niche "collector's item" that sells marginally well because they have a multi-million-dollar videogame brandname on it.

Comment from: John McMullen posted at April 24, 2006 11:00 AM

"And no, I have absolutely no idea why James Cameron settled with Harlan Ellison over even less evidence of infringement."

If I recall correctly--and it's hearsay on my part--he might have won except for the part where he quipped to crew members about ripping off these old Outer Limits episodes.

Craphound mentions this: http://www.craphound.com/nonfic/lawsuits.html

Of course the actual details are confidential, so this is merely rumour.

Comment from: quiller posted at April 24, 2006 4:51 PM

What I've heard about Rifts reminds me of the second RPG I ever played, Lords of Creation. (The first was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which I think I started playing at 11 or something) It was not a particularly good RPG, but if I remember correctly you played as part of some dimensional police type organization, travelling to various dimensions and generally stopping incursions by other dimensional travellers. So the general setting was "Any possible setting you could possibly visit", but you might wind up having equipment from other dimensions (though not all would work in any given dimension, I believe). I think we played through the modules my friend had, but without the modules we were kind of lost. (Which reminds me of Amber, which I love, but can't create a campaign for to save my life.)

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 24, 2006 10:48 PM

Quiller
(Which reminds me of Amber, which I love, but can't create a campaign for to save my life.)

That's odd, Amber has always been about the easiest game to run a campaign for in my group. The GM needed to have some neat items and people in the back ground and you needed a decent first adventure to set the stage, but in my experience, further sessions ran themselves. Sure you would pop out new bits of the plot, but unless it was a totally dead day for your group, the players usually created the new plot points by their own expectations (which makes it really easy to pull the rug out from under them. You just change directions hard and suddenly this game that was going just how they thought it would go was something alien and mysterious.)

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 24, 2006 10:53 PM

oh and for an Amber game, one tried and true method of getting the players to hand you everything you need for a long and exciting campaign is to make them write up some back story along with a definate set of character motivations.
And by make them write up some back story et al., I really mean announce that they get some disproportionate number of character points for doing so (15-25 is about right) They will usually do it because it is mostly easy and if they don't they will be considerably behind the other characters, both in points and in resources as that you can pull out of their history topull their buts half an inch further from the fire.

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 24, 2006 10:56 PM

Gods, I need a group to play Amber with again...

Best part of running Amber was that it never seemed strained when you made it up as you went. And if you later refered to something that happened differently than you remembered it, well, obviously something wasn't quite as it seemed back then.

Comment from: Copper Hamster posted at April 26, 2006 2:10 PM

An update.

http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.php?t=57457

The light at the end of the tunnel might NOT be an oncoming train.

And Kevin references It's a Wonderful Life.

Comment from: KennyCelican posted at April 26, 2006 3:54 PM

Argh. Put in a long post about Amber and why I grew disgusted with Palladium, Typekey ate it (I think my proxy kills my login).

To sum up - Lost interest in Palladium pre-RIFTS (mostly playing Robotech and TMNT) due to a combination of -

a) strong indications that economics are important, but no economics system. How are characters supposed to buy stuff in your world, guys? If equipment is at all relevant, there should be a way to balance it.

b) no movement system in the game - how do you overlook that, when you've gone to the trouble of noting how many HP's a friggin radio antenna on a mech has? Be Amber, where you vaguely define a character's abilities and resolution is subjective, or be Tri-Tac, where you know (if you care) how many hp's it takes to sever your ulna, or be anywhere along the spectrum, but don't go into mind numbing detail in one aspect and completely ignore another.

c) KS justified using a level based system by stating it was more realistic, and using quotes from comic book characters about experience as proof. Not that I think he was wrong about using one, but that line of thinking is, um, completely and utterly messed up in the head. Tell me you didn't want to put the work into a different system. Tell me you thought the system was the most playable. Tell me you liked the pretty colors of the fish at the aquarium. Tell me the person who developed the levelling system gave you head until you were no longer able to discern reality reliably. But for the love of god, don't use marginally relevant quotes by fictional characters as a demostrator of reality. Please. It makes my brain hurt.

As to Amber - that's the one where during generation, players bid to be ranked in Tactical Ability, Psychic Ability, Physical Strength, and Durability, is it not? And conflict resolution is very subjective? You need a VERY impartial GM for something like that, or the game flies apart at the seams. You also need players who can tell a possibly competetive story cooperatively.

Still, if it works it can be really fun. Heck, you don't even really NEED the system.

Also, made a point about the system being the only important part of a game system, although not the most important part of a gaming book. The rest I can (and usually do) come up with on my own, but the system is the one thing the players and gm should all have full access to and agree on. It's the physics of the world, and while the characters may not be physicists, the players need to know those physics well enough that the character aren't doing unintentionally stupid things.

Comment from: KennyCelican posted at April 26, 2006 3:57 PM

Ok, now I see why Typekey vomited. That WAS summing up.

My learning to touch type was not a good thing, apparently.

Comment from: gwalla posted at April 26, 2006 9:34 PM

My old high school gaming group had a sort of homebrew Rifts-lite meta-setting we referred to as "D-stew" (the D was for dimension). We played it in Hero System (from what I've seen, GURPS is very similar—in fact, one GURPS manual I looked at had wording that seemed almost identical in the section on stats! Not sure which came first): everybody started with the same pointbase but otherwise could create pretty much any character they wanted with no GM interference, regardless of premise or home setting. Every character would get a brief solo opening, which ended with them getting knocked out, then they would all wake up together at the bottom of a box canyon in an unfamiliar world.

This led to some interesting situations. Like the time one guy thought he'd gamed the system and created an absurdly powerful psychic on a fairly small pointbase, only to find that the END drain from actually using those powers would instantly kill him. Or the time I played Arjuna Pandava (from the Bagavad Gita), who could only speak Vedic Sanskrit while everyone else spoke English. Or the times bad blood in the real world would transfer over, with people designing characters for the sole purpose of killing the other guy's character.

Ahh, good times, good times...

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 27, 2006 8:51 AM

I've never had a game of Amber fly apart. I've had them end, but they've alwasy held together.
I will admit that I've had good luck with gaming groups, but honestly, both rule books deal with keeping thiongs from going totally off the handle.

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 27, 2006 8:57 AM

Oh and imaginative players are much more important for an Amber game than an impartial GM. Unless your GM is actually bad at being a GM, undue partiality tends to kill or incapacitate the character who is the focus of the GM's beneficence.
If you are talking about PC vs NPC conflicts, that is the case with any RPG I've ever seen. It is always possible to nuke the party from orbit. Just because the GM in Amber doesn't have to roll dice to do it (not that rolling dice in another game influences the results of an intended nuke) doesn't mean that it is particularly easier to do in Amber than in say Bunnies and Burroughs.

Oh, actually, it would take alot of effort to do that in a Toon game, wouldn't it? I don't know that a GM bad enough to do that to a toon game would last long enough to so completely suck the fun out of the game.

Comment from: KennyCelican posted at April 27, 2006 9:18 AM

Actually, I recall a GM from college who specialized in one shot, everybody dies scenarios. The fun was in trying to live the longest, or possibly die in the most memorable way. I'm pretty sure he could nuke a party in Toon as well as he did in TriTac.

Not quite sure I follow the beneficence being a problem, but I'll bow to your obviously more extensive knowledge of the game. I'm supposing our group at the time had a poor mix of... How to say it? Rules Lawyers, Weirdoes, and 'soft' imagination people. Not quite sure how to describe that last group. People who can come up with wild flights of fancy, but there's no rhyme or reason behind the flying? The problem with that is that unless everyone is on the same 'wavelength', you get one story per person, with no real 'meshing' between them.

The Hero system works fairly well for cross-genre, although it does so by exposing the mechanics behind the rules, so that the only difference between a fireball and a hand grenade is special effects, which can inhibit suspension of disbelief for some people.

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 27, 2006 11:34 AM

There are two major ways, as I see it, for a GM to not be impartial. First is to unfairly favor the NPCs over the PCs (and the inverse.) If the game is not reasonably fair, that sucks the fun out of it.
In Amber this can cause problems, but unless it is wildly skewed one way or the other, everything really works out for the best.

The second, and the one I thought of when you were saying that the GM had to be incredibly impartial, is when the GM favors one or more players over the other players. This type of unfairness is pretty bad in Amber since about half of the story/conflict is usually intra party conflict. Suddenly what was annoying in a D&D game (Wait why does Bob's character get a staff of power while mine gets a silver dagger?) becomes a game killer.

(of course that only holds so long as no one has good stuff and bad stuff points. If you have 25 points of bad stuff, expect things to seldom work out in your favor. After all, it was your choice to take them. On the other hand, if you are in a conflict with a PC who took 25 points of good stuff, realize that even if you win, the other player will probably come out ahead. (25 points of good stuff or bad stuff are a lot. If you take 25 points of Bad Stuff, you shouldfigure that without a constant and consistantly good job of roleplaying, you'll be making a new character soon. Especially if there are other players with less bad stuff. Tom has tem points of bad stuff and while climbing that cliff he got hit in the arm by a cross bow bolt. You have 25 and were hit by a similar bolt fired by someone who was trying to help you.)

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at April 27, 2006 11:40 AM

Heh, the thing about Toon is that no one can die.

Comment from: Michael Weaver posted at April 27, 2006 1:48 PM

Heh, the thing about Toon is that no one can die.

Or can they?

http://somethingpositive.net/sp12042003.shtml

From my experience, anyone who plays with others as badly as Mike did here (see previous strips) forfeits their character, regardless of the game being played. This is rare, fortunately, and rarer is the GM willing to twist the rules this hard...

Comment from: Copper Hamster posted at April 27, 2006 5:37 PM

And for those listening in at home to the saga of Palladium...

http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.php?t=57557

Comment from: Fitz posted at April 28, 2006 5:23 PM

I hate to be harsh here, but in this rare instance I will be.
I don't know the details of what inside problem is causing Pallidium to go down, nor do I know if Pallidum's long noted bad game system or bad community relations are karmically coming back at them. I will say however, that while I have played several of their games over the years, Pallidium going the way of the dodo might be the best thing for it.
Face it Rifts is a popular intellectual property, and if Pallidium died it would be on the market before the ink dried, hopefully to be bought by a company willing to let its core rule system be revamped.
True karma of course would be if WotC bought them, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

my 2cents -Fitz

Comment from: Fitz posted at April 28, 2006 5:23 PM

I hate to be harsh here, but in this rare instance I will be.
I don't know the details of what inside problem is causing Pallidium to go down, nor do I know if Pallidum's long noted bad game system or bad community relations are karmically coming back at them. I will say however, that while I have played several of their games over the years, Pallidium going the way of the dodo might be the best thing for it.
Face it Rifts is a popular intellectual property, and if Pallidium died it would be on the market before the ink dried, hopefully to be bought by a company willing to let its core rule system be revamped.
True karma of course would be if WotC bought them, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

my 2cents -Fitz

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