Palladium Books Going Out of Business

kainewynd2 writes to mention a public plea put out in the Palladium books forums by the company owner Kevin Siembada. He bemoans the Rifts publisher's poor financial outlook, and asks people to buy a $50 print to save the company. From the post: "The truly wonderful Rifts® videogame - Rifts® Promise of Power - was stillborn. The N-Gage platform never took off in North America. That meant the N-Gage and Rifts® Promise of Power would NOT be available on the mass market in the USA and Canada. Finding it anywhere in North America required an act of God. There would be no Nokia royalty-based revenue stream. Nor would there be a Nokia videogame sequel and the money that might come from it. Nokia treated me nothing short of GREAT. They lost truckloads of money on this venture. We're both the victims of marketing fallout. Please don't blame these wonderful people for Palladium's woes - circumstance just didn't make them part of our solution." Wow, they made a game for the N-Gage and then lost a bunch of money. Who ever could have forseen that?

Comments

Finally?

[revlayle]

Palladium made interesting and rich game worlds. Unfortunately, their game system is much to be desired, IMNSHO. Book formatting, editing and quality were always under par (I had trouble looking up most things in any of their books). Great ideas and poor execution. I'm personally suprised they lasted this long.

Palladium

[Tebriel]

Great settings, horrible game mechanics.

I am a huge fan of the Rifts setting and I love the Robotech material, but the character and combat systems are unwieldy. If they had better game mechanics, I'd start buying and playing their stuff again.

I think it 's a little late

[eln]

If your company is resorting to pleading with people on the Internet to buy $50 prints in order to save the company, the company is already doomed. Sorry you had to hear about it this way, Kevin.

MMO Material

[Profcrab]

Rifts is a fantastic setting for an MMO. As other people have said, the game mechanics are attrocious. When making it into a computer game, however, all those mechanics can be trashed and just the world setting used. If they got a deal going, I would definitely be paying attention. I bought the Rifts rule book when it first came out.

Re:MMO Material

[BDZ]

I never GMed a Rifts campaign, but I played in one that ran on and off (switching off w/ my own Shadowrun campaign) for years.

While I agree, putting different archtypes up against one another could be a slaughterfest, I never found this to be a detriment to the game. Or, at least to how my group played it. We stuck pretty close to the combat rules, but the game was a lot more about role playing and exploring the incredible world of the game.

My characters always tended to be "squishy" -- a technomancer, a dog boy and such -- while my group also included a juicer, tatooed person, dragon, cyborgs, and a glitter boy (glitter gal in this case) to name a few of the heavy hitters. While I couldn't stand side by side in combat directly with the dragon for instance I never found it a problem. And most importantly, I had fun.

My GM always had things for all characters in his game to do. Including in combat. While I wasn't facing the incoming fire that the dragon and glitter gal were getting I could do other things in combat. Things that required more in the way of stealth or cunning for instance. In other words, I and the other easily killed always had things to do even as combat raged.

I do agree with other posters that the system wasn't always as clear or streamlined as it could be. However, for me and my group, the rules were useable. More importantly, the world of the game was incredible and that was what we were there for. To live for a while each week in such an amazing reality. Not dice dynamics.

One final note, I think the art work for the books has always been above board and added to the atmosphere the rules/setting info was trying to get across.

Bad Things about Paladium Products.

[RexRhino]

1. They are cheap and ugly. They are not hardcover bound books with full color pages. Look at a Paladium book, then look at a new D&D book, or at a White Wolf book, or whatever. The non-Paladium books are cool even if you don't play the game. If I am going to buy a product, I want the product to be high quality, and have an instant "cool" value. Printing a web page on your printer will give you as good production values as Paladium books. They didn't even lay out the books on computer. They used the old fashion past things to cardboard, take a photograph, make a plate from the photograph method of printing.

2. The books would reprint lots of information. At least a third of the info in any book you could find in just about every other book. They definitly liked to recycle as much content as possible.

3. All the settings were lame. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Yeah, OK. Rifts? "It is like D&D, but with Cyberpunk thrown in, but with Cthulhu thrown in, but with Vampires thrown in, but with Sci-Fi thrown in.."... no thank you. Ninjas and Super Spys? Uh.

4. They had a terrible, hard to use game system.

Sorry, a company making products that no-one likes will go out of buisness. Role playing games are already an extremly small niche product as it is... so there is no longer any room in the industry for people making crappy product. They could cut it in the 1980s, when expectations weren't that hight, and we were all 9 years old and didn't know any better. But the market is more competitive today, the expectations and production values are higher, and no-one is going to pay for that crap.

Re:Bad Things about Paladium Products.

[dsraistlin]

What are you talking about with the reprinting? Have you looked at D&D and White Wolf Lately??? The reprint much more content for nothing than Rifts ever did. Not to mention all the fluff books that get released by both game lines. Add on top of that the fact that both lines have released completely new verions of thier worlds some twice while Rifts has been constant. I would much rather pay 35.00 for a book that is meaty and worth while than the 40.00 for the pretty fluffy waste that is most White Wold and Wizards publishing anymore.

Re:Bad Things about Paladium Products.

[idontgno]

I have to cry shenanigans on some of your commentary.

They are cheap and ugly....If I am going to buy a product, I want the product to be high quality, and have an instant "cool" value.

No gamer, you are. "Cool" is in the product, not the packaging. Sheesh. If you have to have "Ooooh, shiny" to appreciate it, well... i guess that's why "cool" rhymes with "tool".

The books would reprint lots of information.

Like every D20 game ever written.

Rifts? "It is like D&D, but with Cyberpunk thrown in, but with Cthulhu thrown in, but with Vampires thrown in, but with Sci-Fi thrown in.."...

Gosh, that sounds like Shadowrun, the coolest product TSR ever came out with. I don't see the problem here.

They had a terrible, hard to use game system.

OK, fair cop there. The mechanics always seemed too fidgety to me, and balance was always terrible in most every game they wrote.

You're right in your summary, though: it is a shrinking market, and between the legendary weakness of their paper-n-pencil games and their evident lack of marketing savvy, Paladium seems to have doomed itself. Still, I feel bad watching one of the pioneers going under.

Re:MISLEADING HEADLINE!

[gowen]

Kevin is asking for help to keep them afloat

Dude. If your company needs help to be kept afloat, then it is going out of business.

However you want to spin it: Not afloat = out of business.

Re:MISLEADING HEADLINE!

[Zonk]

A plea for their fans to bail them out of several thousand dollars worth of debt sounds like a 'going out of business' sign to me. I understand your objection, but the content of the post is pretty clear.

I have very, very little sympathy for Palladium. They're a business. They may be selling fantasy, but they work in the real world. In the real world, if you want to call yourself a business, you don't go screaming to the people who have been propping you up all these years because you have some financial troubles.

That's what Chapter 11 is for.

Wizards of the Coast should buy Palladium

[rubberbando]

Then they could re-release all those great books / worlds to be compatable with 3rd edition AD&D thus giving us the best of both worlds. :D