Palladium Games

[42]

RANT WARNING

So I have been flipping through Heroes Unlimited and I’m appalled at the publishing quality. I have nothing against it being soft perfect bound or b/w interior, it’s the poor layout design and art direction.

First of all you know you are in trouble when the writer and the art director are the same person. So I quickly noticed that apparently they only know how to use Arial. Course once I did find a different font I quickly began to wish they hadn’t found out how to change the font. Apparently they get all their fonts from fan-boy web sites. Not to mention they must get only a few characters with each font, which explain the patchwork effect they have throughout the book. There is no consistency and they show no confidence or understanding in their font selections.

Another thing, kerning is good. Course I would settle for just some plain traking as there are enough rivers to let the entire state of Texas go rafting. Perhaps the rivers are just to make up for the lack of a bottom margin and the incredibly small gutters.

I also wonder how some sections get splashes and others don’t. I guess the sections without splashes we are just supposed to ignore. And they could save some money by not repeating the same illustrations over and over again. Or better yet the could use that space for margins and gutters.

Finally, would it kill them to make an index. Apparently the risk of adding an extra sig is more important than providing an easy to use format and clear information.

END OF RANT
You may disagree with me if you have a BFA in art from an accredited institution of higher learning; or you are an award winning, acknowledge graphic designer; or you are more bitter than me (which you are not).

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Palladium books were cutting edge when no one owned a PC with a decent publishing suite.

Now their just kind of jagged.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'm not going to disagree. After all, these are all things I noticed. Basically, a monkey could print a Palladium book. But I also think Siembieda could use a good editor (besides someone who's been playing Palladium for 20 years) to just read it and say "This rule here is not easy to understand)"

[Fellfrosch]

I'll grant that the art direction is poor, but I prefer small margins and more text to the WotC tradition of insanely large margins and pointless graphics. Palladium books are blunt and functional, which (combined with the soft bound cover) gives you more content for your money.

I would also argue that the layout of a book doesn't really fall in the realm of fine art, so my degree in editing allows me to disagree with your BFA on this issue. I really don't disagree, though, I just wanted to point out that I could.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Ok, WOTC books *look* good, but if you don't like the readability, that can still be a problem. On the other hand, Palladium books *look* terrible. Yet I'm still charged as much for a soft cover Palladium book as I am for a D&D core book, which has more care and work put into it. Really, if Palladium is going to go for just information overload and skip any frills, I'd rather they send me a .txt file and let me print it on my laser printer. They can charge 5 bucks because that's how much work went into it. Don't charge me $25 for a b/w book that you spent minimal effort designing.

[Fellfrosch]

The new HU that we're using in our game is 352 pages long. I'd like to see WotC sell a book that size for under 40 dollars, let alone the 25 that Palladium charges.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Frankly, it wouldn't be difficult if they didn't put any effort into design, printed in black and white on that rough paper, and didn't pay artists to do anything, and then failed to also copy edit the material.

[Fellfrosch]

That's my point. Why should I have to pay for a graphic designer and some nice paper and a hardbound cover when the simple stuff is just as functional?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Then you missed my point. A) with D&D core books, you don't pay more. The rules ARE clearer (with exceptions like Attacks of Opportunity) AND you get a better looking book, one that you can keep and show.
B) I don't think that Palladium books are as functional. There's no index, There isn't a good order, and it's hard to read quite a bit of it. I think this is a major reason why I didn't get into Palladium as a teenager. I *really* liked TMNT, I wanted to play it, but I couldn't figure it out. And THAT one had better design. The art was pretty cool.

[42]

Because pure functionality doesn't sell. People like to have options and in general people like to have all the bangs and whistles. If you doubt, you can go to the WotC company info and the Palladium company info to compare. In 3 months, WotC will typically sell 100,000 copies of a new RPG book belonging to a popular product line. In 3 months, Palladium will typically sell 10,000 copies of a new RPG book belonging to a popular product line.

Also, the new core books have been promised to retail at around $20 they are hard-bound, full color and 320 pages. The key is that if you produce a superior product you gain a larger support base and therefor can offer your product at a reduced price thus increasing your demand. If Palladium spent more time on producing a quality product visually, they would likely sell more and then more people would play Palladium games. Just having all the information there isn't good enough for most people.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

It seems Fell and Ehlers have different views on functional. I tend to agree with Eric that Organization is key to functionality, a good index and TOC can save hours of flipping back and forth. Art like it or not can break a game, and Palladiums art is often sub-par. 42 is also right I don't want functional. Give me a choice between a high production value rpg book and something written on college ruled paper and I'll select the high production value every time. (I might regret it later but I'd buy it)

[Fellfrosch]

Okay: I admit that I'm a Palladium fanboy, and I admit that I've been playing their games since Junior High (thus granting me an innate ability to understand their organization). That said, I find them to be the clearest RPG books to understand, even without an index. D&D confuses the crap out of me, and Decipher's new books (despite their high production values) are a jumble of weird information in the wrong places. I've never read an RPG that, in my opinion, explained the process of character creation so clearly.

I realize you don't agree with me, but that's tough. It's not like I'm forcing you to.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I got rolling up a character pretty quick, but there's a lot of mechanics that are mindbogglingly bad.

The combat section of PFRPG doesn't explain dogding or entangling clearly, for example. Somewhere in there they talk about an attack that knocks people down. However, I couldn't find where the effects of being knocked down were. Anywhere. So I pressed on. I happened across that in the middle of a skill description somewhere.

I had the same sort of problem with TMNT. They had you roll for the education level you had, but never described any game effects (and I can imagine that impacting what sorts of skills you have, it's not like birthorder where it's purely a background thing). There are other things like that throughout both books. And this is "clear?"

It's not like an index is hard to generate. You could even do it by hand in the course of a week. Writing your document in MS Word and then having it generate an index for you automatically only takes a few moments. It won't be the BEST index in the world, but it's better than nothing.

D&D and Decipher, on the other hand, have indices (though Decipher's ToCs suck terrible terrible eggs). Every effect of a combat maneuver is described in the combat sections. One read through of both their core books left we with an understanding of the system. I didn't have to ask anyone.

[Fellfrosch]

I've been thinking about this, and I believe I've identified the problem: I learned the Palladium system so long ago that I just don't remember these problems. As you describe your experience I can think back and say, "yeah, I remember being confused by that," but I found where all of that info was hiding 13 years ago so I don't remember having to look for it. Really, it's been at least ten years since I bothered reading the mechanics section of a Palladium book.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yeah, that can be a problem. When I was younger I couldn't believe people didn't understand D&D (but I look at it and I think, why the heck did they do THAT?!). It's like my new friend at the game store says. Gary Gygax did something that got roleplaying out there. Then everyone else made it better.
Well, not EVERYONE else (looks askance at WW). But you get the picture.
I'm really liking Palladium's actual SYSTEM better (I don't know that it will ever be my favorite, but it's certainly not comparable to a prickle in my butt anymore). And I'm seriously wondering if I should try approaching them and saying "Let me revise your books." Maybe it's a bad time, have they just come out with a new edition? But maybe something could be worked out.
And like I said, Palladium isn't the only bad organizer out there. Steve Jackson possibly needs it even worse.