Palladium is to AD&D as OS/2 is to Windows. Technically it's superior, but it's not as glossy, and somehow it never really caught on.
On first reading the rulebook, you think "Hey - this is great", and indeed it could be. Palladium are the people who make those wonderful supplements detailing armour, weapons, castles and suchlike. Their sourcebooks on medaeval weaponry and modern-day firearms are comprehensive and detailed. They've applied themselves to writing a role-playing system with the same care and attention to detail, and the result is very interesting.
There are some lovely tweaks to the more common approaches on things like alignment and magic. Their character races and rough world descriptions are subtly different to the more generic Tolkeinesque types that predominate the fantasy genre.
Sadly, the game does have some serious flaws. The character generation and advancement system is convoluted and unwieldy, and there are some serious holes in the rules which could easilly swallow whole campaigns. The rules for demon summonings, and magical symbols are a delight to read, but won't necessarilly work well for an adventuring character.
So the game as it stands requires a bit of work from the GM to understand these things, and rework portions to their own satisfaction. If you're willing to put in the effort to do this, then I suspect you'll be richly rewarded with a really great game. Personally, I'd rather put my effort into writing adventures than systems.
There is a Second Edition of the Palladium Role Playing System which may well have improved from the edition I own, and on which I have based my opinions. It's probably worth buying for the unique magic resources alone. You can always steal them and use them elsewhere.
All you actually need is the one rulebook, although supplements with more monsters, and world descriptions are available, this contains all you need to get started. It costs aboout £20.
Not many, and perhaps a tad flaky. Reasonably well written, although you might need to fill in some holes yourself. They have a nice not-quite-standard fantasy feel to them. Enough subtle differences to the norm to make them interesting. Because it's a level-based system, you'll buy a module which contains a spread of adventures for different levels, and large parts may not be suitable for your immediate needs.
The World of Erth- plenty of supplementary
material. Some useful, some trivial and a waste of space.
The Official Palladium site
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