Unofficial Palladium Repair Kit Part II

Part Two – General SDC Combat

Here is the second installment of the Palladium Patch. As before, the houserules are in suggestive order of implementation, so try the first and work your way down if you like it.

1) Armor Rating

AR is changed to reflect how much damage a character or object can take. For living creatures, any damage up to AR is subtracted from SDC, while any in excess of AR is taken directly from Hit Points. Armor takes SDC damage up to AR then passes it on to the wearer.

Watch players get wary of hand to hand and start running from guns…

(NB: Also, use the optional critical damage tables! The risk of a broken arm or leg will force the characters to be creative and not rush headlong into combat).

2) Combat Momentum

Since most characters have multiple attacks/actions, a different style of adjudicating combat is suggested to make the game run faster and build excitement. Roll initiative as normal, but whichever character gets it keeps on attacking until one of the following occurs:

1) they run out of attacks, 2) they fumble (roll a natural 1) 3) they run out of actions (also means no dodging or piloting rolls to dodge), 4) they decide to stop attacking and use their remaining actions later. Note that if you run out of attacks/actions using the CM system, you become a sitting duck and can only parry. This makes burning an action to dodge behind cover essential.
Implementing Combat Momentum made the game much more cinematic and sped up combat immensely for us, but other groups found it jarring after D&D style one attack/player rounds. Give it a try and see where you stand.

3) Target Values

Target values reflecting difficulty to hit, and attackers most roll equal or over the Target Value to hit. Use judgment and be fair in deciding Target Values.

Target Value	Description (Apply the most appropriate descriptor to find the row for the situation)
0	Unmissable – Immobilized target, automatic hit
5	Easy - Huge, slow moving, close range, or no cover targets
10	Average - Large, walking, medium range, or in 1/4 cover targets
15	Challenging - Small, slow vehicle/dodging human, far range, or in 1/2 cover targets
20	Difficult - Tiny, fast vehicle, extreme range, or in 3/4 cover targets
NA	Not allowed - Impossible to hit

4) Automatic Fire & Recoil

When firing a burst from an automatic weapon, decide the number of rounds fired and roll to hit as normal. The first round takes the number rolled (after modifiers) as its hit number, while every subsequent round takes a penalty equal to the gun’s Recoil Value, which is equal to the number of dice it rolls for damage.

For example, a .45 automatic does 4d6 damage and thus has a Recoil of four. If a character is firing a burst of 3 rounds and the player rolls an 18 to hit after modifiers, the first round uses 18 as its Hit Number, the second uses 14 (18 minus the Recoil Value), and the last round’s Hit Number is further reduced to 10 (14 minus Recoil). Firing two-handed, braced, or using a stock reduces Recoil by 1 each, and effects are cumulative, although Recoil can never be reduced lower than 1. Recoil can also be reduced by PS bonus. Beam weapons have no recoil.

(NB: When firing on multiple targets, the space between them requires one round to be shot into it. In the above example of the .45 auto pistol, the player could try to hit an assailant with the roll of 18, sacrifice the roll of 14, then try to hit another foe with the roll of 10).

5) Dodging Missiles

When dodging missiles, apply the following penalties:

 – 1 vs thrown, – 3 vs arrows / spears, – 4 vs guns & rockets, – 6 vs beam weapons, – 9 vs invisible weapons.

6) SDC Damage types

Different weapons have different effects. Blunt weapons doing HP damage also have a 50/50 chance of knocking out or breaking bones. Victim gets a PE save to avoid. Bladed weapons doing HP damage also cause blood loss of 1 HP per minute until the bleeding is stopped. Bullets do damage as blunt and bladed (i.e. KO or broken bones plus blood loss). Burns cause 1 point of PB reduction whenever HP damage is done

Enjoy!

Oh My Zod It’s Full of RPGs ‘March Madness’ Days 30 & 31 Finale!

Other blogs can be found HERE. It is over a dozen now, so I am pretty happy with that.

The questions can be found HERE. They’ve proven not to be perfect, but they are stimulating some good discussions and sharing of experiences.

It’s funny that although I started this blog challenge, I have fallen the most behind in it. If you know what kind of a hellish ride life has been this month, you’d probably be surprised I finished it at all.

I’d like to thank all the participants – their responses have made me laugh and add quite a few entries to my future gaming list. Personally, this challenge has served its purpose of learning about various games from people with a similar interest in, so I’ll also be watching their blogs in future.

On with the last hurrah!

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

Back in the day, Palladium used to produce a range of ‘complete guide’ books that every GM I knew had on their shelf. Want to see the difference between a voulge and a Bohemian ear spoon? The Palladium Book of Weapons & Armor is for you. Want to know the difference between a H&K 9mm SMG and a Skorpion? You need the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons. They were great for players to thumb through when the DM was in the can or working through some issue with other players.

I see that in addition to the old favorites such as the Compendium of Exotic Weapons, they have put out some newer titles, such as Weapons & Castles of the Orient. If they’ve kept up the art and research quality, definitely pick up a dead tree version at your FLS or PDF at DriveThruRPG.

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

Tough, tough question as usual due to my narrow repertoire of played games. I have seen people take PDFs of older games and print them through a POD service such as Lulu, so I guess the question is moot, but I would pay for a reissue of the Games Workshop version of Stormbringer. It was the revised Stormbringer 2e plus all the material from the first Companion stuffed into one heavy, gorgeous tome with an iconic cover image of Elric at the end of his world. 

I am sure there are better games that deserve a reprint more (Unknown Armies springs to mind), but I can’t help what I want.

And that’s a wrap! Far from being a chore, this challenge has diverted me at a time when I sorely needed diversion and made me feel far less lonely ensconced in my ivory tower where I pump out questionably useful academic writing. Thanks to all who wrote, replied, and read.

It has been a hoot as writer and reader, and inspired me with a dozen or so post and game ideas to work on the coming months. Since I am getting up 6 am for my 2 hour commute to the new workplace, in addition to fatherhood and an encroaching phd deadline, I am sorry to say the blog will be slowing back to its weekly or less pace.

Cheers!

Escape from D&D ‘March Madness’ Blog Challenge days 23 & 24

Other blogs can be found HERE. It is up to an even dozen now, so I am pretty happy with that.

The questions can be found HERE. They’ve proven not to be perfect, but they are stimulating some good discussions and sharing of experiences.

23 What is the most broken game that you tried and were unable to play?

Oh wow, the old Aliens game based off of Phoenix Command was too terrible to run. We fudged it with BRP or GURPS (not sure which) but it all fell apart anyway. I think army blokes used to data processing could be bothered with the game, but not us mere mortals. I am itching to run or play Aliens, using the Aliens: Game Over PDF available on the web but cutting it down from d20 to an old school simulacrum and running an adventure based off that terrible colonial marines PS3 game.

24 What is the most broken game that you tried and loved to play, warts and all?

No surprise that I’d say Palladium for what I’ve run, played and enjoyed. I played in a Warhammer 3e game the other year and everyone but me seemed to enjoy it. It was mad busy with cards and chits and a sort of unholy fusion of RPG and boardgame.

Takes all kinds, it does.

Don’t Need No Steenkin D&D ‘March Madness’ Blogfiesta Day 18 & 19

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

18 What is the crunchiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

There is good crunch (i.e. rules and mechanics) and then there’s bad crunch. Palladium crunch is bad because it is ill-explained (i.e. how AR works) and half-conceived (i.e. the skill system), but I have heard that Siembieda changes rules and runs things differently in person. Using houserules I have had a blast with Palladium games, but heaven knows I couldn’t run or play them RAW (Rules As Written) anymore.

GURPS can have terrible crunch if you have a GM and players who don’t know where to draw the line, but good crunch if they do. Honestly, all you need for a decent GURPS game is the free sample plus the corebook of whatever genre you play and voila, great game with the right amount of crunchy rules. For us non minmaxers, I made up random roll matrices for the GURPS games I ran, where players could get one drawback for every two advantages they randomly rolled.

Good times.

19 What is the fluffiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

Sadly, the few homebrew games I have played in have all suffered from highly detailed worlds in the DM’s mind that never translated well on the table. I think this is why IP (Intellectual Properties like movies or books) do so well – players and DMs already have a shared image of the gameworld and how it works. It is probably why I love Stormbringer so much, and would play d20 if it were one of the many IP games (i.e. Slaine, Aliens, Judge Dredd, Predator, etc etc) kicking about.

Unofficial Palladium Repair Kit Part 1

There’s been some demand on my blog for a re-issue of the Palladium Patch, a houserules document I floated on the internet a few years back that seems to have disappeared, despite the good reception it got at the time. The patch is a set of houserules that are easily implemented (i.e. no complex calculations), make chargen simpler, and combat faster and more thrilling.

I’ve decided to split the patch into three parts – Character Generation, General Combat, and MDC Combat. I’ll be ordering the suggestions from the easiest to implement to the hardest, so you Palladium diehards can try the easiest and work your way down if you like how the game is changed. Since I’m re-making this patch from memory, I’ve included my reasons for the houserules, and will post a shorter rules-only pdf when the entire document is done.

Part One – Character Generation

1) Simplified Skills

Palladium skills are marked by arbitrary percentages and attribute or combat bonuses that unbalance the game – witness the overpowered Boxing skill. This modification should make chargen faster and customizable besides balancing it out.

Forget rules as written – instead, characters start with a number of skill slots as determined by their OCC in games that include them, or the random roll background in games that don't. Players use these slots to 'make' skills, using the old Palladium nomenclature (without the arbitrary bonuses and percentages) or making up their own. For every slot spent, the player can choose one of the following:

- A skill percentage equal to an appropriate attribute x 1% (can be chosen multiple times for cumulative higher skill level)
- A + 1 to ONE combat roll (initiative, damage by a specific weapon type, dodge, parry, or either melee or missile strike - can be chosen multiple times as above)
- A + 1 to ONE attribute (can be chosen multiple times as above)
- For three slots, a character can get one extra attack, specify melee or missile

For instance, you could recreate the original Palladium Climb skill of 50% + 5 per level for five slots (5 x attribute, either PS or PP seems applicable), or make your own Climb skill of 3 x attribute (either PS or PP)%, plus + 1 to PS and PE for the same cost. Use your own judgment to determine which attributes should be the base for which skills. Some skills could be based on  more than one attribute (i.e. Climb could be PS or PP based), in which case the player may choose to apply the highest one.

2) Balanced Attribute Bonuses (Choose option a or b)

The Palladium attribute bonus system is super top-heavy, with no penalty for low attributes and a wide range of unremarkable attributes topped by overwhelmingly powerful high attributes. To remedy this, you can either add modifiers for low attributes (option a) or replace the existing chart with a more balanced bell curve (option b).

2a) Low Attribute Modifiers

To balance out Palladium’s high attribute modifiers and encourage roleplaying, here are modifiers for low attributes.

Roll attributes as normal, but just as a roll over 16 allows an extra d6 to be added, a roll of 5 or under subtracts d6 from the attribute. Add the following data to the lower spectrum of the attribute bonus chart:

	Below 3	3	4-5	6-8
IQ Skill modifier	- 6%	- 5%	- 4%	- 3%
ME Mental save	+ 4	+ 3	+ 2	+ 1
MA Chance to Annoy/Bore*	60%	55%	50%	45%
PS Damage modifier	- 5	- 4	- 3	- 2
PP Strike, Parry, Dodge modifier	- 3	- 2	- 2	- 1
PE Save vs coma/death, poison	+ 10% + 3	+ 8% + 2	+ 6% + 2	+ 5% + 1
PB Chance to Repel/Disgust*	50%	45%	40%	35%
Spd

* These rolls are involuntary and the GM makes them in secret whenever the character is in a social situation.

2b) Simplified Attribute Bonuses

This is suggested for a simpler, universal attribute range to avoid the unbalanced attributes and superhuman bonuses. Forget the original attribute bonus chart, as well as the added d6 to attributes for high rolls on 3d6. Substitute the following table and just roll 3d6 or the racial number of d6 for the character.

Below 3	3	4-5	6-8	9-12	13-15	16-17	18	Every 2 above
–        4 or –        20%	–        3 or –        15%	–        2 or –        10%	– 1 or – 5%	0	+ 1 or  + 5%	+ 2 or + 10%	+ 3 or + 15%	Add + 1  or 5%

The top number is added to d20 rolls such as saves, the bottom to relevant skills or saves. For instance, IQ would modify all intelligence based skills from the Science and Technical categories, while PP would modify Physical skills such as Prowl and Acrobatics. Some skills could be modified by more than one attribute (i.e. Climb could be PS or PP based), in which case the player may choose to apply the highest one.

If using this attribute chart, it is also suggest that Social Skills be added as a category and skills such as Charm or Intimidate etc be based on MA, while skills like Seduce or Impress etc be based on PB.

3) The R.A. Attribute

Combat strikes in Palladium are not specified as melee or missile, so it is unclear to which type strike bonuses apply.

This ambiguity is cleared up by introducing the Ranged Attack (RA for short) attribute. It uses the same modifiers as PP, but only applies to missile weapons, from thrown knives to bows to guns to cannons. If RA is introduced, PP now only applies to melee attacks from handheld weapons or barehanded fighting.

4) Drop Levels

Palladium characters get enough SDC that the extra Hit Points from levels are superfluous, while the arbitrary improvement of skills with levels is a pain to look up. Especially for gritty games, drop levels entirely.

To improve skills, use the BRP method – once a skill is used successfully for a dangerous or dramatic reason, mark it. At the end of the game session, roll against each ticked skill again. A failure grants an improvement of 1d6%. This reflects how improvement is easier for the unskilled and harder as you master a skill.

For Hand to Hand and WPs, instead have characters gain an Improvement Point each time they roll a natural 20 when using that hand to hand style or weapon during combat, with a limit of one point for each HtH skill or WP per fight. When the character accumulates a number of Improvement Points equal to the next skill level, their WP rating advances to it. For example, a sniper with level 3 WP in Rifle needs to roll a natural 20 four times before progressing to level 4 in the WP and getting the relevant WP bonuses.

Nope, Nope, Nope D&D ‘March Madness I Say’ Blogaria – Day 9

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

9 What superhero RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

Once again, my ignorance shows – I’ve only played 2 games, and none of the ‘big’ superhero games either. I have a dim recollection of a GURPS Supers attempt that collapsed under its own weight in uni. Characters were made with a Herculean effort, one session was played in which the characters trounced a rogue ice mutant who just wanted to be left alone, then the GM realized the rules had been misunderstood and things would have to be redone.

That was enough of that.

Inevitably, the next was a successful game of Palladium’s Heroes Unlimited. Characters were rolled, and they almost made sense being overpowered by the game’s clunky system in a way that set them apart from the common man which was perfect for the genre. An invasion of aliens who were after our banks was fought off, only to discover the ‘aliens’ were robots created by an evil genius.

Good times. Although I never played the original DC or Marvel RPGs, I have read criticism that the range of attributes didn’t provide a fine enough granularity, especially for street level characters. Palladium’s old SDC system does street level heroes very well, and might conversely fail to emulate cosmic heroes. I think adding some lethality in the form of my houserules might make for a great, gritty game of Heroes Unlimited a la Watchmen.

No D&D No Cry ‘Madness of March’ Blogstafarian – Day 8

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

8 What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

The more of these questions I answer, the more I see how narrow my roleplaying experience is. I think once my degree dies off and I have free time again I owe to it to myself to go Constantcon crazy and play some of these older (and even some newer) games and genres I know of but have not experienced directly.

OK, so for spy games I have only played two. The first was a disastrous run through the old Top Secret RPG. We were kids and had little clue of what we were doing, so ‘play’ is a relative term. The second time was in uni, and our traipsing around the town of Sprechenstale was a mess of gunfights and intimidations that was far removed from ‘spying.’ I figure the Admin ‘pixel bitched’ too much, expecting us to magically find the right NPC contact and get the clue, so we responded by shooting the place up. It was fun, but I think the game could have been more a classic spy game with clearer objectives, a consideration borne out by the rules themselves, which have clear roles (investigation, confiscation and assassination if I recall) for each character.

That leaves the other spy game I’ve played – Palladium’s Ninjas & Superspies. Like Top Secret I have had two runs at the game. The first was an abortive mercenary style game where the unkillable characters and plethora of attacks and martial art moves made combat a turgid mess.

I am lucky that I gave the game a second chance, for when I GMed I made lots of observations about Palladium and changes that made the game really hum. First, I realized from prior experience that the game need some lethality, so I composed the house rules that would later form the nucleus of my Palladium Patch, which floated around the internet a few years back. Here are a few of the changes:

Armor Rating – AR is changed to reflect how much damage a character or object can take. For living creatures, any damage up to AR is subtracted from SDC, while any in excess of AR is taken directly from Hit Points. Armor takes SDC damage up to AR then passes it on to the wearer. Watch players get wary of hand to hand and start running from guns…

(Also, use the optional critical damage tables! The risk of a broken arm or leg will force the characters to be creative)

Combat Momentum – Since most characters have multiple attacks/actions, a different style of adjudicating combat is necessary. Roll initiative as normal, but whichever character gets it keeps on attacking until one of the following occurs: 1) they run out of attacks, 2) they fumble (roll a natural 1) 3) they decide to stop attacking and use their remaining actions later. Implementing Combat Momentum made the game much more cinematic and sped up combat immensely.

(NB: Also, find the older unrevised edition if you can, but the newer edition works just as well. Just don't mix the two as power levels vary greatly.)

In addition to the above houserules, what made the game shine was the story we chose to copy – not James Bond, but Remo Williams. Bond may be good on paper or in the movies with scads of conversation, seduction, politics and scuttling about, but games need simpler and faster action. Remo Williams the Destroyer delivers that in spades, and with a game like Ninjas & Superspies all characters have varying degrees of Shinanju-like mystic combat prowress.

In fact, if you’re thinking of running a spy game, I’d suggest Remo Williams or Mack Bolan as inspiration. Let’s face it, for starters cheap pulp is a better fit for a game of action than stirred martinis, which needs a certain frame of mind and GM-player understanding of genre.

Makes me want to play Victory Games’ 007 now….

Anything But D&D ‘March Madness’ Human Blogipede – Day 7

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?

Looking back on this question, I maybe should have specified mechanics, setting, or whatever. Still, I find it hard to limit myself to just one answer, so I won’t.

Mechanics and setting wise, I’d have to say the old Stormbringer game and Dragon Half, a Japanese RPG I’ve reviewed last year, pleased me the most. Although Stormbringer is a member of the Basic Roleplaying family, it is not exactly the same system as Call of Cthulhu for which BRP is best known, but has certain differences that gave it a lot of unique charm.

First, the game used a series of skill set bonuses derived from the attributes. For example, Stealth skills are modified positively by Dexterity and Intelligence over 12 and Size under 9, and negatively by Dexterity and Intelligence under 9 or Size over 12. Although it was a bit fiddly, it made attributes matter in a quasi-logical way that was nerfed by the pool of points used in CoC and later iterations of Stormbringer, such as Elric! and Mongoose’s version. Second, Stormbringer uses a brutal Major Wound table that rivaled Warhammer or Rolemaster in its capacity to make melee combat feared and avoided, and had us laughing out at the amputations and disfigurements even minor scuffles would provoke. Third, the point-buy demon summoning system was a marvel of mechanical elegance that I found much more graspable than the voluminous and chaotic Vancian magic of D&D, as well as emulating the source material nicely. Finally, it goes without saying that Stormbringer was set in the Young Kingdoms of Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, an antidote to Conan that dominated the fantasy scene for anyone growing up in the 70s or 80s and thus proved a very vivid gaming experience. Add in great scenarios and art (French and Japanese versions are especially beautiful) and the continued popularity of the identical first 3 editions of the game is understandable.

Dragon Half, on the other hand, was based on manga and anime parody of D&D tropes, using a simplified version of the terribly crunchy Sword World RPG. As I’ve mentioned before, the extending of fantasy tropes to their illogical ends (“Ma is a red dragon, pa was a dragon slayer who fell in love with her.”) made the games we played quite hilarious. If questing to revive the Great Dead death metal gods, making terrible puns, and failing spectacularly seem like fun to you, you’ll enjoy doing these things as much as my old group did.

However, for pure fun and playability the old Palladium Fantasy RPG could simply not be beat. It was barely a step up from the LBBs or the original Runequest in terms of art and editing, but was it ever fun. Rolling around Kevin’s gameworld, Palladia, trying to unite humans and wolfen with a motley party of doppelganger assassins, trollish hunters, giant warriors, and gnomish elementalists cured us completely of the vanilla D&D blues of Tolkien races and uninspiring settings, and made Palladium’s rules seem almost unbroken. Too bad the 2^nd edition was a watered down Rifts clone that threw the charm of the old version under the bus.

I’ve wanted to play other games, notably Ars Magica and MERP, but never found the time or players – hopefully Constantcon can make this a reality after my studies finish.

Non-D&D ‘March Mania’ Blogcornocopia - Day 6

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?

Jeez, what was I thinking when I made this question up? I think D&D is iconic largely because of its monsters, so that gives it a huge edge over other games in terms of memorability. As for Cthulhu, a lot of people would go there, but since its bestiary is ripped from Lovecraft, I’ll try and stick with a non-IP game.

And that game would be RIFTS! Palladium’s Rifts is bubbling over with gonzo ideas, some great and some terrible, and so it is with its monsters. There is a cybernetic-stealing demon in one of the smaller supplement books (I forget the name) that had us quaking in our boots back when I played the game. Since non-magic characters invest heavily in body modifications to even survive in Rifts’ crazy Megadamage world, having some dimensional being rip them off your body (OUCH), attach them to its own, then use them against you is both terrifying and iconic for the game.

Sadly, PCs are usually so overpowered in Rifts that even this creature didn’t have as big an impact as it should have. When I GMed Rifts, only the times that I gave monsters every power and trick and let them use equipment and subterfuge would they pose much of a challenge to the player characters, who often cried foul that monsters and NPCs could act as intelligent and duplicitous as them. Sad that the lack of menace due to player entitlement undercut so much promise in the game and its bestiary.

Non-D&D ‘March Madness’ Blog Battle Day 4

A new player has entered the ring!

Ralph Kelleners in Belgium has begun the March Madness challenge. This thing is really international!

Ralph’s blog and others can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

I like the way this Blog Challenge has gone organic, with some people answering in one fell swoop, many choosing to decline some questions, and people finding their own reasons for answering. There are responses about games old & new, English and other languages, many I knew and some I didn’t.

This is more than I had hoped for, and I thank all respondents. If you are participating, just leave a link to your blog or latest post below. Or don’t. It’s all good.

Today’s question:

4 What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?

I would have to give two names - the late great Erick Wujick and the underrated Greg Costikyan.

Palladium games are known as enthusiastic cauldrons of ideas smushed under a hot mess of an old school system, but the ones that Wujick had a hand in attained a higher level of polish and substance that made the clunky system matter less. TMNT, Ninjas & Superspies, the original RECON and Robotech all benefited from Wujick’s creativity and technical exactness, and they as well as his Amber diceless RPG still hold fans today. Besides being eminently playable, Wujick’s games are great reads that invite multiple visits over the years.

As for Costikyan, he was one of the creators of Paranoia as well as the original Star Wars d6, which should be enough to cement his cred as a gaming legend. For me, it is his Violence: The RPG of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed that catapults him into legend territory. Violence is one of the few gaming books that had me shedding tears of laughter while also making me question the hobby I love. The book, although debatably not meant for play, is a ripping satire of the imaginary violence of RPGs, pretty amazing since it came out back in 1999 long before ‘murder hobos’, ‘orc holocaust’ or ‘WTF D&D’ became buzzwords. The book is written in first person and talks directly to the reader, lambasting him for his choice of hobby and refusing to make things easy. I still recall bursting out laughing when I read a section on dice rolling that gave no explanation but instead asked, “My god man, how long have you been at this?” If you’re at all interested in taking a meta or reflexive look at roleplaying games, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Non-D&D 'March Madness' Blogging Water Torture Day 3

3 Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?

Most would have to be the Dragon Half RPG. Roll your parentage (characters all had a high chance to be half - I rolled a half vampire - with HUGE effects on stats), choose a 'skill' - basically a profession such as 'cook, fighter, or prince', grab some gear and GO! At the time I thought the skill system was incredibly unfleshed out, but after discovering Risus I realize the game (1991 maybe?) was ahead of its time. Chargen was a nice minigame of chance, and unused characters were recycled as NPCs and significant others.

Least would have to be Ninjas & Superspies. My Zod it took hours for negligible effect. Only IQ affected skill percentage, so even strong or coordinated characters were out of luck if they were dumb. The whole thing felt like a con, which inspired the simplified chargen I included in my Palladium Patch. You know chargen is bad if it pushes players to create a different system.

Improved chargen works like this - forget rules as written. Characters start with  a number of skill slots ad determined by their OCC in games that include them, or the random roll background in games that don't. Players use these slots to 'make' skills, using the old Palladium nomenclature (without the arbitrary bonuses and percentages) or making up their own. For every slot spent, the player can choose one of the following:

- A skill percentage equal to an appropriate attribute x 1% (can be chosen multiple times for higher modifier)
- A + 1 to ONE combat roll (damage, dodge, parry, or strike, can be chosen multiple times as above)
- A + 1 to ONE attribute (can be chosen multiple times as above)
- For three slots, a character can get one extra attack)

For instance, you could recreate the original Palladium Climb skill of 50% + 5 per level for five slots, or make your own Climb skill of 30% plus + 1 to PS and PE for the same cost. Much more flexible, customizable and therefore fun.