Among my shortlist of game changing experiences in our role-playing hobby, few can out-rank my discovery of Kevin Siembieda's Palladium Fantasy. I recall finding the evocative red and black cover Palladium Fantasy 1st edition on the shelves of a local store shortly after its release circa 1983 (the current edition is pictured above). Back then I had recently graduated from a small college where I cut my teeth on the original edition in the white box 9and somehow found time to earn a degree), adding in material from the Advanced hardbacks as they became available while also incorporating some gleanings picked up perusing a friend's copy of Holmes Basic - all to produce an unwieldy self-interpreted version of classic D&D. The perfect bound Palladium Fantasy tome literally blew me away with its detail, illustrations, diversity of playable characters and imaginative content throughout. I fell in love with Palladium Fantasy that very week - even before I had a chance to convince my friends to let me bring it to the table for play.
Obviously without the World's First Role-Playing Game we might not have this hobby, so all of us who greatly enjoy role-playing games (even those played on computer and consul) owe a debt of gratitude to the designers of that first RPG, namely to E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson. New game designs of note soon followed suit as others reinterpreted the original concept of playing a personalized individual character in a fantastic setting of mystery and adventure run by a referee or GM.
By 1983 when I acquired my first copy of Palladium Fantasy rules my friends and I had been playing FRP games for 5+ years and we thought we had it all figured out. We were also itching for something new. The elusive concept of "realism" has its appeal for most gamers at one time or another and as a history major in college, I had some awareness of what I thought were the shortcomings our then-favorite system presented in terms of armor and knightly combat. Palladium Fantasy offered and continues to offer much that is familiar to any veteran of the TSR FRP game. There are character classes, level advancement and alignment - and Palladium Fantasy adds depth and diversity to each of these game system elements.
Palladium Fantasy tackles combat "realism" with a simple mechanic that I still "house-rule" into many of my traditional d20 style games. Simply described, the Palladium system says a "hit" is scored any time a 5 or greater is rolled on the d20 attack die. The "hit" lands on armor if the number rolled is between 5 and the armor class value inclusive and scores damage on the armor. A final score above the armor rating scores damage on the body of the creature. Armor has its own version of "hit points" and can be damaged to the point that it fails to further protect its wearer.
I found much more than combat to my liking in the pages of Palladium Fantasy. The Occupational Character Classes (O.C.C.s) are more numerous than those found in the published volumes of the Advanced game and include such engaging characters as the Longbowman and the Diabolist - two of my favorites. Each O.C.C. includes the usual combat and magical abilities and a list of skills in which the character has aptitude for. Testing for the outcome of skill use in the Palladium system is a percentile dice roll-under target number mechanic.
Alignment in Palladium Fantasy makes more intuitive sense than any such system in any game that I have experienced. The basic axis is a choice between Good, Evil and Selfish. Each of these has its own selection of "flavors". Good beings can also be either Principled or Scrupulous. Those of Evil alignment are either Miscreant or Aberrant or Diabolic. The Selfish operate in Unprincipled and Anarchist ways.
Palladium Fantasy is set in a rich world of Kevin Siembieda's creation, a world that is revealed to us across several volumes containing a wealth of very imaginative adventures awaiting use at the table.
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