I highly recommend you check out the Hero System and their supers setting Champions. Though I cannot recommend the current 6th edition. 5th and earlier are all great mechanically, and while character creation can get crunchy. Once characters are made and you are playing it runs smooth. Hero games still has a store selling pdf and printing most of their older content.

Great episode gentlemen!

Well said. I completely agree. I've been playing the game since the 80's. HU is a stand alone game that allows for innovation of thoughts. You have a great grasp of the game and concepts within.

16:30 Would “it’s obvious that…” work here? Obvious implies that anyone could pick it out.

Cool video. But I struggle with the too light of rules in a GAME. Starfinder and its type of game, is clearly meant to be a game. Theres a certain aspect of challenge that is supposed to exist. That’s impossible to replicate with a free flow system. Why can’t I just put a force field in the opponents mouth and choke them to death? How do I level up if I have such perfect control over an ability?

There is a lot of unnecessary crunch in the the Palladium system, but one of the things I really liked was tracking whether you dodge or your armor gets hit. Damage against armor, especially concerning medieval roleplaying games, was always compelling to me and makes blacksmithing, leatherworking and tailoring suddenly important when your armor takes damage and might potentially break. This gets crunchy, but also provides opportunity for character interaction and roleplay in a way that D&D kind of handwaves.

Sounds like there's enough trust at your table that a system like this can work very well. I prefer rules light systems and games where some rules are squishy enough that they may require some interpretation or limitation. And that's where I think genre can help guide the judgment of the players and the GM. Does applying the rule feel (in this particular case) enough like a comic book? If so, I'd say you're on the right track. I do wonder, though, if players who are too steeped in a 5e mindset (where there's probably a definitive answer to just about every 'what happens when...' situation) might find such a loose game system unsatisfying and/or unpredictable.

THe audio is coming through just fine.

Really warms my heart to see more people showing love to Palladium! Thanks for this video, I really enjoyed it!

One of my brand new players is playing a cleric. Having never played a TTRPG; he wants to call upon the power of Bahamut for all sorts of reasons. The party came upon an evil cleric praying at an altar. He started to out-cleric the evil cleric and prayed loudly to his god (sort of like countersong) and tried to overwhelm him with the holy power granted to him by his god. Another time he called upon his god to convict and compel and ultimately convert a group of bandits. He rolled extremely well and managed to convert like 3 of the bandits. There are no mechanics for these, so I am having to make it all up. But it’s worth the ad-hoc rulings because for starters he’s actually playing a cleric as something other than a heal-bot. Two he’s not being tied down to what the rules says he can or can’t do. He just declares he’s going to do it and I have to come up with something. Since we’re playing D&D 3.5 asking for an opposed roll or choosing a DC isn’t all that hard. I sort of feel that the more we engage with the rules of a game system; the more we allow ourselves to be constrained by them. I think that’s tragic; the rules should gives us the tools to be creative and innovative in our own games; not so constraining that we are left with only the “best” option; all else being inferior. It’s refreshing to see someone “just go” and play; without worrying about what the rules say.

While I agree that innovative actions are much more interesting and dynamic than prescribed ones, I worry that you end up opening a can of worms if there is any kind of magic system, which are already prone to problems. Drawing inspiration from Avatar, consider how busted magic would be if every wind/air spell could be used to suffocate someone or rupture their lungs, every water spell could freeze a person's blood or give them a stroke, etc. The only solution I can think of is for the rules to have explicit limitations, costs, and weaknesses to the magic / superpowers

For Mechano Link, with relationship to Computer Hacking, Must pass all three skills, when hacking a system.

I only ever got the same book as you have, the 2022 update of the Mongoose 2nd edition. And I got that quite recently. "Lifepath character creation" and "easy to play, difficult to master" were selling points to me, and I understand the lifepath system all too well. I envisioned myself as a teacher first, when that failed as a computer tech second. Yet I ended up in prison. Fortunately, on the right side of the doors, with the keys in my hand, still working there after 24 years and enjoying myself, but still. When I looked at my own 'lifepath' you might understand I laughed, and somehow I got to a place where I am getting close to having worked for a quarter of a century. Interestingly, Star Trek Adventures I can't say I have played this game much, yet. The amount of sessions we had was 1. Of character creation. For the fun of it while we were waiting for something to arrive. However, I do intend to play a couple of one-offs to get the hang of the system, expecting the hype to be true up to a certain point. If we like it, I may start the hunt for the Companion and The High Guard, which seem to be quite valuable extra resources for this game. The High Guard for everything about ships, and the Companion for all manner of rules variants and extras. Stuff like Luck and Sanity stats, for example. The latter seeming interesting for a Sci-Fi horror setting. And I heard that the alien species splatbooks are of quite a high standard too, with regards to their content.

Good video. A lot of RR are coming up with creative ways for advancement. I use one that's based on your wealth status. My players really like it.

Great review!! Thank you. This was a genuine review instead of someone selling me on a game that seems like they’ve never played, and then telling me why a different version is better. Thank you so much

Great commentary on the video! If you need a back up player, for sure keep me in mind.

Wow you're smart!

Interesting! Thx. Would you consider sharing the chatgpt prompts you used?

Having players use to Class based games (cough D&D cough), and taking away any sense of choice is a huge culture shock. But here is the thing, you do start as a "level 1" character in traveller after you pick your Race and select your Edu DM+3 skills to start , with all your hopes and dreams, then you play your first adventure wich is going through the life path, ala what have you been up to since you were a hopeful young thing and life battered the tar out of.

I brain farted when I said digital, what I meant is 'fingerprints' or any other bio residue.

Interesting discussion, the idea the player must 'become' the character. Must be 'immersed' in the world. Not accounting for the idea the player may know things and still 'play' the character. The assumption a player will automatically use information available to the player the character wouldn't have. That they can't put themselves in the role of the character. And are inherently dishonest in the purpose of the game, and in how they play their character.

Fun video Chris! I had this book eons ago and remember enjoying flipping through it. I’ve been looking through supers game forever now trying to find the right balance for what I envision for the table.

You're enthusiasm and smile for this is infectious. I was smiling watching you, and I'm smiling typing this.

Thanks you guys do a great job. I listen to a lot of live play and yours is very high-quality. Thank you for sharing.

Have you released the live play game of easy D6?

Just bought this myself as one of my two game groups mentioned enjoying it in the past so I had to go see what all the hype was. Just got it a couple days ago and as a gm I can already see ways I can 'use' the career system to create a game motif. Think something like, on the last pass through, make all the players take the prisoner career and just like that you've set yourself up for a 'Far Scape' type of game of players always on the run after escaping. But so far, from what I'm reading, I do like the character creation system more than either DnD or Pathfinder, because it feels a bit more 'real' and with the game it is trying for 'real people put in extra ordinary situations' which I think can potentially create the best stories.

The thing I love the most about Traveller is that it has no baggage. Star Wars has the force and the battle of good vs evil. Aliens have corporations and xenomorphs. With Traveller you can do literally anything. You can be space truckers who do side gigs to try and get the scratch to pay the mortgage, you can be mercenaries fighting in the endless interstellar conflicts, or you can be explorers on the edge of charted space literally exploring new worlds, you can be space pirates plying the trade lanes looking for an easy score, you can be spies involved in either interstellar conflicts or internal imperial conflicts, space smugglers with lots of shady characters and lots of dirty deals where every name is an alias in case somebody squeals. The possibilities are as endless as space itself. And the lifepath system prevents people from optimizing skills. You end up with a smattering of skills some of, which you may never end up using as intended, and some critical skills that you may have to learn along the way. And every new world you visit is a new environment, culture, and experience. You could be sitting in a dive bar on a tech 3 world where everybody around you thinks that ball and shot rifles are pretty badass, then three weeks later sitting in a floating castle with people who use plasma generator rifles and powered armor. And lastly, I love the moral ambiguity of the game. No alignments, no force dice. Your morality is what you make of it. Sometimes you do good things for bad reasons, and sometimes you do bad things for a greater good. Sometimes you steal a bunch of nerve gas from some people and inadvertently start a strategic nuclear exchange. I have played RPGs for 40 years, started playing AD&D when I was 12 years old. This is my favorite system by far.

My house rule for terms are the first term is 4 years and each one after that is 1 year.

This was very well done! Love what you did here. Great table team and great way to engage the audience!

I'm glad we discussed your metal dong in session 0. One of the few things we kept in.

😂 I think that the "pink monstrosity" thing is a constant among people owning this book. Regarding some rules you may like or not, view Traveller as a tookbox from which you pick the tools you like. Companion is, IMO, a must-have. I haven't mastered a play at the moment, but I intend to let my players automatically qualify for the first career they choose in order to mitigate the frustration of not rolling what they want.

A magic user character was meant to be. I like your house rule of rerolling the ones.

Yellow Lightning!

Seems like the sonic flight benefit of vision should have been radar/sonar instead of vision and dark vision. Thanks for the character creation. I want to run this for my group.

My favorite old school system. I have been running it with the same group for seven years now. Hey I am always open to join a game if you need players or heck, if you want to join an on-line game, reach out and I'll squeeze you into our digital table. Great video.

LBB's for the win

Great review of a classic. Abstraction is needed. This was the first game I ran as a GM. Before we moved into other Paladium products. I still wonder to this day if we ever had by the book combat? I think we did.

Just started a mini-campaign with my group using the old TSR Marvel game. It also feels a bit 80s in its mechanics, but overall I think it's a pretty smooth system. Good to hear some other hero games getting a bit of love. ;)

Good stuff, Crispy! I’m in “final refinement” of a TTRPG I’ve been designing for twelve years and this content is helping a lot. Thanks!

I agree with you on what you say is wrong with this game in particular, and with games of this time in general. What I loved about the game was the potential for over-the-top fun. What I did back when this first came out was, I took the powers from this game and combine it with TSR's Marvel superheroes. As for character creation, most of the RPGs of this time suffered from over complicated rules. The worst example of this was GDW's Twilight 2000 1st ed. I have likened the character creation system of this to doing taxes. The game was a blast once you got past the creation stage, and this was also one of the deadliest games I have ever played. with Twilight 2000, you do not want to get into a firefight.

I have played almost all of the versions of Traveller, to me the Mongoose is the best for Ease of play, I started with classic Traveller back in the later 80's, and then there was Mega Traveller, which suffered from what was common of most games of the late 80's to mid 90's, overly detailed. Then there was Traveller The New Era, this took place after a massive computer virus destroyed the Galactic Imperium, Vampire starships can make for interesting encounters, a Vampire starship is a ship that has killed its crew and fly's around looking to infest other ships and kill the other ships crew. After New Era there was GURPS Traveller, if you like GURPS then this one would be fun, I looked into this one, but GURPS has a habit of wanting you to have ten plus books to play lol. Then there was Marc Miller's Traveller, this one suffered a short life due to so many errors in the book that it was unplayable Next was Traveller5, this did not last long due to overpriced books. People heard that the main book was 5000 pages and close to $400 dollars ( I may be wrong on price and page count) and did not sale many Then was 1st edition of Mongoose Traveller, Mongoose wanted to go back to classic traveler and modernize it, it had ALOT wrong with it, but 2nd Edition fixed a lot.

I've been nostalgic for this game since the late 80s when I first encountered it. My group for whatever reason just nerded out over all the calculations. If you go into it with the right mindset, like you said, roleplaying the total bustedness of the chars can be really fun and challenging. I also really love that you can set the tier of your adventure by giving people maximum point spend. Is this Daredevil and Frank Castle? Is it Batman? Is it Spider Man, on and on. And the whole system of advantages and disads makes for some insanely cool RP-driven powers you might not think of otherwise. So much cool stuff.

What if it was Heroes Unlimited but in Total Party Skills? Should we just be playing it straight Palladium Crispy!?

More Palladium Books! More Heroes Unlimited! Palladium Books gets so little attention and it is a shame. Like you did initially, many people have heard or assume the mechanic is clunky and un-runnable. This is simply not the case. The mechanic is pretty solid for its era and still holds up today. Once you get into the groove, one will find that it runs smoothly and quickly as long as everyone involved has a good understanding of what their characters are capable of. Usually when you find yourself spending a lot of time looking things up it is because someone doesn't have a clear understanding of what the character is capable of. It's like handing a magic-user to the brand new player and expecting him to know what all his spells do.

As far as experience is concerned to improve characters I use a system inspired by Seth Skorkowski. (Spelling) Where I give characters one experience point heard venture and any skill they successfully rolled an 8 plus on or higher without the expenditure of lock they get to make A1D6 −1 roll on. If they roll higher than their existing skill or they roll a 5 they get to add 1 experience point to that skill. At the end of each adventure all experience points must be spent towards skills.

Moongoose art has often seen hit or miss. Sometimes it is fantastic.

I absolutely love some more palladium talk! The games are fun. I do think they get more hate than they deserve on the internet and that drives people away from the system but it's not as bad as people will talk about.

Regarding making a choice you really want to succeed in the Lifepath system, I have a suggestion. Use the following option from the similar lifepath system in Mutant Chronicles 3e. Give each character a small & specific number of guaranteed success rolls in character creation. Just two or maybe three automatic successes they can spend on any roll they want. It is a small step and easy to implement. This way you can still get most of the lifepath backstory & brain-stirring surprises but have more control over a few specifics you really want.

Yeah, create the character. Those videos can be fun. Actually, maybe live stream it.

Great review. I recently played Traveller for the first time. The table didn’t work out for me, but I did like the system.