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Hi all,

I played a lot of Rifts RPG back in the early-mid 90's, it was the RPG of choice for my friends. We enjoyed the heck out of it, then it petered out after high school as one by one we went our separate ways.

Recently, through following the story on the Rifts boardgame kickstarter, I learned that the Palladium name is not great in the community.

Can anyone point me towards a good source of info as to why this may be the case? I feel like I found out my friend's cool older brother was in fact a child molester the whole time

I felt pretty much the same where I had good memories and had no idea the various trouble they get into.

A good "tame" start is the wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladium_Books

I would then say this site is rather definitive prior to the RRT Kickstarter:
https://sites.google.com/site/pbpubprobs/

Now if you have fond memories of the universe of Rifts, I would strongly suggest the Savage Worlds version:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/rifts-for-savage-worlds

Now if you are wondering about all "the hate" it is Robotech RPG Tactics where me and 5000 others have been strung along since 2013 with no end in sight:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm
Here is the "restarted" thread for RRT and gives a very nice summary at the beginning.
I have been a rather active participant because I think this is the first time I have been "ripped off" by a supplier and kinda think PB should not be in business:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/651554.page

In the end, Keven S. by my inexpert opinion is a narcissist and will do whatever is expedient for himself and is not worth any attention other than to warn others that their hard-earned money may not go as intended to get the product in the time they intended (if at all).

Honestly, I have never been quite so bitter about a company in a long time but I really would like you see the above and make your own decision.

Good luck!

You might find some insight here:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?74137-What-s-up-with-Palladium-and-BTS&p=1445566#post1445566

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?516154-Why-the-Palladium-Hate

Search for the rpgnet exchanges related to Palladium and Bill Coffin, while Bill later apologized for airing personal laundry in a public fashion he didn't retract the details and his insights into how Palladium is run and mismanaged which explains a lot of the company's history and why there's a large portion of gamers who have bad blood with Palladium.

Thanks for the info.

Once again, the phrase "don't meet your heroes" (or read about personal habits) is proven true.

 feeder wrote:
Thanks for the info.
Once again, the phrase "don't meet your heroes" (or read about personal habits) is proven true.

BTW met Kevin at Anime-North (Toronto) a couple times.
Bit of an odd duck.
That phrase may very well be true.

Then there was the whole mess with White Wolf Magazine - where Mr. Siembieda would write a letter complaining that the magazine never carried any articles for Palladium games. (Mostly because nobody was submitting any...)

Then they finally received a submission, and joyfully sent word to Mr. Siemieda - who promptly told them that Palladium Games does not allow third parties to publish any material for their games, and that had always been their policy.

If somebody cast Summon Bigger Fish and dropped an enormous cod on Mr. S, I would be neither surprised not upset.



The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Then there was the whole mess with White Wolf Magazine - where Mr. Siembieda would write a letter complaining that the magazine never carried any articles for Palladium games. (Mostly because nobody was submitting any...)

Then they finally received a submission, and joyfully sent word to Mr. Siemieda - who promptly told them that Palladium Games does not allow third parties to publish any material for their games, and that had always been their policy.

Back when D&D 3.0 and the D20 open license were a thing at the turn of the century, Kevin was particularly rabid about making sure any fanpage that had conversion guides for taking Palladium to D20 were taken down because otherwise 'WotC could claim ownership of his games.'

And weird little quirks, his insistence on the superiority of doing physical layouts of books well into the digital age, leading to some errors, misprints, and typos persisting for decades across multiple books because sections were literally copied and pasted. Which is kind of emblematic of the kind of micro managing he insisted on doing with everything, generally to the detriment of books getting released only a year or so late, if not decades.

The amateur hour work on the Robotech mini game is another good example of this. The model quality and sprue design feels like something fifteen years behind the time, cause Kevin groks how that stuff works. And that means it's better than whatever this stupid new crap you're trying to foist on him.

As Bill Coffin was mentioned above, that was not the only time he screwed a writer. It was a story repeated several times, where he would be into the writer's initial idea, loving how things were developing, excited every step of the way, and then the final manuscript was handed in, and suddenly everything was terrible, it was nothing like had been discussed, utterly unacceptable, but Kevin could save it by redoing the whole thing himself, but they would have to take a pay cut to what was originally agreed for all the work he had to do. That's what happened with the 'Dead Reign' book, when despite loving the original version that had been published in Pallidium's Rifter magazine, and gushing about the manuscript the two writers handed in, when the book was actually released, they'd been demoted to, 'additional ideas by-' because Kevin had had to invest blood, sweat, and tears to save the disaster he'd been presented with. Funny though, that that was the first the original writers had ever heard about it!

If you've ever worked with artists who do commission work, or commission mini painters, but Siembieda really sounds like the kind of client who is totally into a project, loves every progress update provided, but when the work is done and they're shown the final thing, oh no no, everything is wrong! There's this, that, and the other thing that are totally unacceptable! And I don't think most people, including him, do this because they're deliberately trying to screw anyone, but they've got this amazing, unrealistic idea in their heads of how awesome this thing is going to turn out, and all the progress are steps in the right direction, but once the final product is there and can't live up to the amazing perfection they hold in their heads... well oh no no no, he's not the one with the problem, it's the artist who has suddenly turned into an enemy and let them down!

 Bookwrack wrote:
Back when D&D 3.0 and the D20 open license were a thing at the turn of the century, Kevin was particularly rabid about making sure any fanpage that had conversion guides for taking Palladium to D20 were taken down because otherwise 'WotC could claim ownership of his games.'

Fun fact, the warning that there aren't to be any D20 conversions of Palladium material is still up on their forums.

It was posted in 2006.

 Forar wrote:

 Bookwrack wrote:
Back when D&D 3.0 and the D20 open license were a thing at the turn of the century, Kevin was particularly rabid about making sure any fanpage that had conversion guides for taking Palladium to D20 were taken down because otherwise 'WotC could claim ownership of his games.'

Fun fact, the warning that there aren't to be any D20 conversions of Palladium material is still up on their forums.

It was posted in 2006.

When PB didn't jump on the d20 bandwagon back in 2000 - when their own system is a d20 derivative in the first place - should have been the first clue there were big problems at PB. The OGL/d20 license was not only a quick win to making a fast buck, it was an easy road to update their own system to something more modern and well-known the rest of the gaming world. I honestly thought when they didn't jump into a d20 version they'd gone out of business for lack of customers, at a time when anything d20 was being devoured by the bucketload (of which I am extremely guilty).

If PB had taken five minutes to read the OGL/d20 license in the first place, he would have know his IP **cough**rip-off of every other trope/movie he's seen since the start of time**cough** was completely safe.

When I met Kevin Siembieda, he was doing custom character sheets for the first edition of RuneQuest. (Hey, I'm old.)

Back then, he seemed like an okay guy, just... very intense about RuneQuest. (As in One True Game intense.)

The Auld Grump

Despite Palladium resembling a dumpster fire by now,

and Kevin Siembieda apparently behaving like a jerk from his behaviour towards lots of other folk in the industry (I remember Magazines having hassle with him back in the day too) and from the nonsense about the KS

it is worth noting (that despite the crisis on infinite treacheries) it's still his dumpster fire, small and smelly as it is, and very few other companies from that era have lasted, most are gone or have folded and been bought out, often more than once

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Despite Palladium resembling a dumpster fire by now,

and Kevin Siembieda apparently behaving like a jerk from his behaviour towards lots of other folk in the industry (I remember Magazines having hassle with him back in the day too) and from the nonsense about the KS

it is worth noting (that despite the crisis on infinite treacheries) it's still his dumpster fire, small and smelly as it is, and very few other companies from that era have lasted, most are gone or have folded and been bought out, often more than once

Palladiums' longevity as a business is not a feather in Kevin's cap if the continuation of said business has been achieved through questionable means and at the cost of community resentment.

On the plus side, when Palladium sued Wizards of the Coast, the owner of WoTC, Peter Adkison-- the then owner of WotC and current owner of GenCon-- had to pay some of his staff in stock because of cash flow problems stemming from the lawsuit. The lawsuit nearly killed WotC, IIRC. Later, When he sold WotC to Hasbro, those staffers mad a comfortable profit from the sale of their stock. Several of them ended up starting their own business ( presumably with a bit of that money) and calling it Paizo.

So, in a very roundabout way, Palladium is responsible in part for Paizo, and thus the Pathfinder RPG, which has utterly trounced Rifts in sales and popularity. Irony? Karma?

 Red Harvest wrote:
On the plus side, when Palladium sued Wizards of the Coast, the owner of WoTC, Peter Adkison-- the then owner of WotC and current owner of GenCon-- had to pay some of his staff in stock because of cash flow problems stemming from the lawsuit. The lawsuit nearly killed WotC, IIRC. Later, When he sold WotC to Hasbro, those staffers mad a comfortable profit from the sale of their stock. Several of them ended up starting their own business ( presumably with a bit of that money) and calling it Paizo.

So, in a very roundabout way, Palladium is responsible in part for Paizo, and thus the Pathfinder RPG, which has utterly trounced Rifts in sales and popularity. Irony? Karma?

The thing is that I don't think that Pathfinder has, in any way, helped or hindered the sales of Palladium games - they have a niche. It is a niche, but the people in that niche seem happy enough to be there.

As a game, I like GURPS better than Palladium - but the players at a local GURPS game were militant a-holes, at one point pulling a starter set for D&D out of a kids hands because it was not The One True Game - and the kid ended up leaving the store with neither D&D nor GURPS.

By contrast, the players for the local Rifts game were a quiet bunch, didn't get in other people's faces, and did let other people try the game, without being militant a-holes.

So, I have a soft spot for Palladium players, even if I detest Mr. Siembieda.

And, like I mentioned above, I think that it is more a matter of Siembieda becoming a jerk, rather than starting as one - he seemed okay, at that long ago Origins convention. Just... militant about RuneQuest - without ripping the box of a competing game from the hands of a potential player.

He wasn't always that way.

And, somewhere, I have a signed copy of one of his Castles & Weapons books, from way, way back when.

The Auld Grump - heck, I have heard rumors that I might be a bit of a grump....

I do know it's great playing the Savage Worlds version of Rifts, just to see what a fun game it can be when things are balanced.

 feeder wrote:
Hi all,

I played a lot of Rifts RPG back in the early-mid 90's, it was the RPG of choice for my friends. We enjoyed the heck out of it, then it petered out after high school as one by one we went our separate ways.

Recently, through following the story on the Rifts boardgame kickstarter, I learned that the Palladium name is not great in the community.

Can anyone point me towards a good source of info as to why this may be the case? I feel like I found out my friend's cool older brother was in fact a child molester the whole time

Forget it Jake, It's Palladium..."