While I am still working on my Traveller stuff while sick I spent some of my time on classic stuff.
Palladium Fantasy
In 1985 I went to the Defense Language Institute in California (the Monterey one). By the second night I had a D&D group going and within 2 weeks I was part of regularly scheduled Starfleet Battles, AD&D, and Champions games. The guy running the Champions game, Bill Williams, wanted to run Palladium Fantasy (just Palladium back then) and I said 'sure!'.
Cue a year long campaign that met twice a week.
As a gamer, DLI was tons of fun. Sure, total immersion language class with weekly testing wasn't easy, but it was a fun challenge and I had great classmates. But my week in gaming was:
Monday- Rolemaster; Tuesday- Palladium; Wednesday- AD&D; Thursday- Champions; Friday- Starfleet Battles then Champions; Saturday- Palladium; Sunday- [beach and study].
That's right - twice as much Palladium as AD&D.
Bill ran his own campaign world that was fascinating and complex. The party was a gnome druid, a human mercenary, a dwarven priest of light, and my elven air warlock.
Three of us went on to be assigned to Goodfellow AFB together for a few months where we ran a short-term Palladium game with an orc witch, a human water warlock, a troll soldier, and my elven palladin.
At Bragg a friend ran a long (30-32 months, I think) Palladium campaign in the Official Universe where the party was my troll wizard, an ogre soldier, an orc assassin, a human shaman, and a human diabolist. After my troll died I switched to a human summoner.
So I am that rare creature: a guy that has not only actually played in a Palladium campaign, I have played in more than one!
I have to admit to a certain fondness for Palladium. While obviously a D&D derivative it is a thing all its own at the same time. The witch is a great evil NPC class, for example, and the diabolist is wonderfully weird and different. Kobolds that are more 'the ambiguous creatures of myth that can be bad or good' rather than 'lizard/dog thingies'.
Many years ago I was so sick the army put me on 3 weeks of bedrest, that turned into 6. I spent a month of that time converting my original Seaward campaign *AD&D 1e) to Palladium. Those 2 notebooks are in the basement.
Almost a decade ago when I was creating the Blackstone campaign I very, very seriously considered making it Palladium before going with AD&D 2e S&P.
After reading the revised 1st ed rules for the first time my oldest son described Palladium as 'redneck D&D' in a good way. He also realized that the over-the-top language of Hackmaster 4th ed. points to Siembieda not Gygax.
Recently
I've owned a PDF of the 1st ed revised rules for, well, since they came out as a pdf, I think. Taking a break from Traveller and being sick in bed again for the first time since back when, I broke it out.
Still fun.
I shared it with the kids.
Now they have characters. Even the wife has agreed to make a character.
As much as I like Palladium the game system I dislike Palladium the official setting. The flaws that creep into an "official setting" that plague Traveller (see what I did there?) and Rifts also slam into Palladium Fantasy causing easily as many problems as the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. So I have always ignored it.
But if the family wants to play...?
So - I am working on a setting. Here is the map after a few hours:
Each hex is 10 miles across. I am considering turning this into a map + gazetteer as something free for Patrons and for sale on RPGNow, etc.
There are human, elven, dwarven, kobold, orcish, and troll realms, a desert area with a hypersaline sea, and a huge grassland area.
As I add to this I will post updates.
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