#153 – A Palladium Retrospective Part 1: The Early Years (with Kevin Siembieda)

Breakfast puppies.

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Okay, man. Roll a saving throw versus listening to the Glitter Boys.

Righteous. All right, Cool, cool.

Co.

Welcome back, Kevin.

Good to be back.

Good to have you back.

You.

You really, really, really, really got my brain spinning when we called the other day to try to get you on. And I'm really, really, really glad that we could all make this time work and hear stories of how it all began.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's, you know, it's. I think it's kind of fun and interesting and most people aren't familiar with it, so I'm happy to blither on as much as you guys want.

Excellent. Excellent. I was so sad that I missed the last one, but I am really excited to be here today. I get to hear the early days of Palladium, and that's what I really want to hear today, if that's all right. I'd like to hear what led up to you deciding that. I have this great game, I have this great group, I have this great idea. I want to take this and make something of it myself. And I'd love to hear that process today where you were the people that were around you at that time, and kind of the trials and tribulations of starting your own game.

Absolutely.

And just in case somebody is out there actually listening and doesn't know who you are, give us a quick introduction on this podcast.

Yeah. Well, hi, everybody. First, let me apologize. I've got a head cold, so I'm a little raspy and nasal, but I'm Kevin Sambita. I'm the founder and publisher and chief game designer at Palladium Books. We've done games like Palladium Fantasy Heroes Unlimited, Robotech, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other Strangeness Rifts beyond the Supernatural, Ninjas and Super Spies and a whole lot more. Been doing this for about 43 years now. Yeah. And my start goes back very much the early days. I think I discovered role playing in the winter of 78 or the spring. Yeah. So it was early on. I was working at an art supply shop, and one of my buddies there, one of my co workers, Julius Rosenstein, who would later come to work for me, he had discovered role playing and was all excited about it and kept telling me about it and kept saying, oh, Kev, you would love this. And I'm like, I don't know. It sounds kind of stupid. It did. It sounded kind of goofy to me. And he's like, no, no, you would love it. You would love it with your imagination. And I'm like, okay. So he finally got me and like three or four other co workers to join this other guy's campaign. And then looking back at it at the time, I thought the guy was a jerk. But looking back at it because, I mean, he just, he didn't really do anything to the game master. Didn't really do anything to accommodate us there, you know, not knowing what to do. And every time we wanted to do something, you know, one of the other players were like, don't worry, little, little first level thief, we'll take care of this. I'm like, when I want to do something. No, no, you're too fragile.

Right, right.

I mean first, first level thieves are pretty fragile.

They sure are. You can hit slapped hard by by an ogre, you're dead. Yeah, you probably, I probably had five or seven hit points, for God's sakes. I, I, looking back at it, I realized the guy, first of all, Julius has kind of foisted us upon him. And he was running, he already had like four or five regular players and now you're adding another four or five. A lot of people handle a large group. And so anyways, the next two games I played just sucked. And I'm like, yep, just what I thought. Stupid. You know, I didn't want to play anymore. And Julius was like, kev, why don't you let me just run. You and your three co workers, I'll run a game just with you guys, see what you guys think. And I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm done with this. And then the other guys were like, well, if you don't play, we're not going to play. I'm like, what is this, grade school? Well, it's like, what the hell? And I didn't want to hurt Julius's feelings, so I said, okay, I'll, I'll play. So we play this game and in this adventure and it's freaking great. We're, we're up against gnolls and all kinds of stuff and I'm doing cool. Like I carved up my thief, carved up this, the staff just, you know, horseshit images and emblems and, and I was able to bluff orcs because, you know, they're like a superstitious lot the way Julius was playing them anyway, right. And I was able to bluff them, you know, if they'll be where the staff or whatever. And it was great. And then, you know, my, my fellow players were stupid. So like one Guy's holding a door, so it doesn't work. Another one's doing this. Who are they sending in to check out the treasure chest? So, of course, my character is over the box. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And they're like, what do you see? What do you see? And I'm like, oh, well, hold on. And my thief is stuffing all kinds of shit. You know, I walked out jingling. Right, right, right. All that was there. And they're like, huh? But anyways, we're getting chased out the dungeon, and we get out, and it was awesome. It was a great adventure. And I turn to Julius and I say, I open up the door, and I flip off the goals. Shoop arrow. And Julie's like, how many hit points you have left? Only had, like, seven, you know, star. And I took some damage. I'm like, three. And he's like, oh, you're dead. And I'm like, I'm dead. You know, one of those guys. Newbie, right? And he's like, well, you shouldn't have done that. It was really stupid. You got away. And then you open the door and you put the one off, and that rolls high, and it happens. And I'm like, this is great.

Oh, man.

So that brings a question to my mind. A lot of the early folks from that 77, 78, 79 period, not all of them, but a lot of them came from wargaming. Had you been a war gamer at all prior to your introduction to role playing? Or are you one of the people who came across as just having a creative, wild imagination?

I think it's the latter, unless you count Risk. I had discovered Risk just a few years prior and fell in love with it. But no, I was not a war gamer at all. So it was just this whole new concept. And anyways, I loved it, and Julia started running games. And then he introduced me to his. He was part of a group called the Wayne Waregamers at Wayne State University. Eric Woodjick was also a member of the Wayne Waregamers. And so I met Eric and his crew, and they were all pretty smart, creative people and played in a couple games with him. And then Eric, you know, like myself, we just had that kind of entrepreneurial leaning. And he's like, yeah, Kev. I always had this idea to start, like, a Detroit gaming center. And I'm like, ooh, that'd be great. Let's do that. So we had a couple, like, false starts off campus, and then we found this, what used to be a methadone clinic Gives you an idea of what a great neighborhood we are in. It was like this 10,000 square foot area upstairs, and we rented it, and we started the Detroit Gaming Center. There had already been a big group in the area called the Detroit Metro Gamers, and they were running what they called Winter Con and Summer Con at Oakland University. And they were a pretty big group. For some reason, Detroit was, at the time just really into gaming. There were a lot of people. When I say, you know, a lot, I mean, this is, you know, 1979 and winter con, summer con would have 1500 to 2000 people. That's a lot for a little local con, even today. So I thought it was all pretty cool. And then the really neat thing about the gaming center was that it was sort of this hot house environment. So I got to see first everyone there who was there on a regular basis got to see everything that came out new, because somebody would walk through the door with, you know, look what I got. It's the latest D and D adventure source book, or it's a Judges Guild thing in my door. And it's like, okay, cool. And another really cool thing was you got to see all these different styles of play. So, for example, Matt, I'm sure you play very differently than npc, and, you know, and. And maybe not, but, I mean, you know, you got to see all the different. Some people played really, like, even Eric Woodjack. Eric would watch some of my games, and he was, like, in awe because I would let my players know if they dug up the information, they took the time to find things out. I would give them everything. I mean, they knew exactly what they were going up against. I think part of that came from my comic book roots. In comic books, you'd know they kind of set up the villains. And Eric was convinced I created the best villains on the planet. And part of that is you let them know what it all is. While Eric's approach was he was more a puzzle and mystery guy. And he played it so tight where if you didn't actually draw a map, you were going through, and you said, I want to go back to that room. And he's like, well, do you know where it is? And they're like, I think so. You think so? And, you know, and I played a bit more fast and loose, and so my guys knew everything. But the thing is, what Eric quickly realized is that set up is vast anticipation because, you know, you know, you're going up against Thanos, and, you know, you're going up against this or that. Just to use that as a common analogy. So you had a clear idea of what you're going to go up against and then you could really plan and kind of figure that out. So it was awesome, it was fun. And that's where I experimented a little bit. You had asked me about war gaming. I fooled around a little bit with some war games at the gaming center. But I really love role playing. I love that story, helping the characters and stuff. And so I started my game was, was really popular and I was running D and D and then there was a bunch of stuff I didn't care about D and D And that's not to slam Dungeons and Dragons because, you know, some people like to and some people, you know, it's like whatever your favorite game company, everyone else is no good poo poo. And I don't, I don't ascribe to that. You know, if there wasn't D and D, there'd be no game industry, there'd be no other. My favorite game company is this company or that. We wouldn't exist. So give them credit where it's due, you know, and it's obviously popular. It stood the test of time. I mean there's been a million versions of it, but there is that. Anyways, I didn't care for a lot of the stuff that they did. It was a little too, I think, rulesy as opposed to role playing. So I started to make changes, a lot of changes. And then because I didn't like to, I don't like to disappoint people every time someone new came and said, hey, you're running this great fantasy game. Can I play? I'd be like, yeah, sure. And the next thing I knew, I'm running 26 players.

Lord.

Lord.

Yeah, you know, thankfully, you know, we're crazy 20 somethings. So we'd start playing at 7 o' clock in the evening and.

Yeah, oh yeah.

And like 8 or 9 in the morning. Sunday. Yep, yep. Oh man.

Power of youth and caffeine.

Well, it was great. And I had to come up with, you know, ways to do really fast, fast ways to run so people, you keep their interest and the cool thing. And I've talked about this here and there in the past, but the reason you can run that many people if you can keep it all in your head, which I could, is again, I think I drew from my comic book background. Originally I wanted to be a comic book artist, writer. And also my mom had cancer and I would go and visit her every day for like two hours and we'd watch our favorite soap operas. And so, first of all, if a large group, just like at a party, they tend to splinter off into faction. So these six guys are doing this, these two guys are doing that, These eight guys are doing this other thing. And then you use sort of the comic book and soap opera trope of, you know, you're. I kicked in the door. What I see, you see this horrible vampire leering at you. Npc, what's your group doing?

Yeah, yeah, I love doing that.

Yeah. And the cool thing would be they would, you know, by the time I got back to, say, your group, NPC, you guys have had that 20, 30 minutes while I was dealing with these other three groups to think about exactly what you guys wanted to do. So I get back to you, and you're like, this guy's like, I'm drinking my potion of this, I'm pulling my fire sword of that, I'm pulling out my. You know, and they're all ready to go. Not that it necessarily helped them. Anyways. It was my guys who convinced me that, because I didn't even think about it. They're like, hey, Kev, you know, your. Your game, it's really not D and D anymore. I mean, you've taken. Made so many changes, and we love it. Have you ever thought about, you know, doing formalized rules and trying to sell it? So I kind of formalized the rules, especially the psionic combat system and the combat system, the character generation and, you know, the armor rating. You know, a lot of basic core things in the Palladium game system, which I felt were more intuitive, especially in the time, like, it always confused. I'm not a math guy, so it always confused me. You know, when I'm playing D and D and I've got this armor, and if it's. If the number is lower, it's better, and this to that. And I'm like, just, you know, make it simple. I need to roll above this or that to hit.

Yep.

And so they convinced me to go try to sell it. And, you know, I. Again, I'm 20 something. I get. You know, I'm full of piss and vinegar. So I actually called TSR at one point and said, hi, your art sucks. Be your new art, Right? Punk and Punk Detroit Gaming back then, no offense, TSR people. You know, it was. It was pretty crude. And I have to say that whoever was on the phone was actually very nice. They said, you know, I don't think we're looking for an art director right now, but you need one, I'm your guy. And they're like, well, that's okay. So then, you know, these, these winter con, summer cons by Detroit Metro gamers, they were pretty big. And they had a lot of the big companies of the day there. And they had guys because, you know, it was just this infant industry. So you had the guys who ran the company often at the booth, which was cool. Bob Bledsoe from Judges Guild was there and, oh, you know, the Akinto people and all these folks. And I took my, my, you know, game pitch to every company that was there, probably 30 different companies. And you know, most of them was like, you know, thanks kid, go away kind of thing. And Bob Bledsoe at Judges Guild was the only one who made me an offer. And, you know, Bob's pitch was, I'll give you 500 bucks, I'll give you a 2% royalty. That goes down to 1% after we sell 10,000 copies. And I'm like, well, if you sell 10,000 copies especially quick, shouldn't that be like, go up, not down? And he's like, nope, that's the best deal I give you, kid. And I'm like, well, no thanks. And he did hire me as an artist because I also showed him my portfolio. So I'd go on to do work for Judges Guild artwork for like the next six months. Knocked out like 400 and some illustrations. Bob had a very sweatshop kind of mentality. So I had to knock out 72 illustrations a month. Yeah, you know, now a lot of those were half page and quarter page, but, but still I had to do like 20 or 25 or 30 full page illustrations. Like 10 of those are supposed to be cover quality. And I was getting paid, get this, $15 for a full page art.

O.

So, you know, I'm like, after like four or five months, I had, it was funny, I had my brother ghosting for me. My, my buddy Alex would go on to become sort of a famous comic book guy. They would do pencils for me and I would income or I do the pencils and they would income. And it was kind of crazy just to meet my deadline and stuff. And I'm walking up in my mom and dad's attic that didn't. Unfinished attic didn't have heat in Detroit. Oh yeah. No, I'm like something out of, you know, a Dickens novel. I've got fingers cut off. You know, you can see my breath. You know, it's like Eric Woodchuck came and visited me one day and he's Like, Jesus, Kev, please can I have

another scoop of coal?

Coal? Yeah.

I'm just picturing Bob dressed up as. As Scrooge now.

So what you're saying is you drew a lot of ducks,

so.

Yeah, I did a lot of art. You know, I also did some art for Steve Jackson games for his cardboard miniatures. I did a little bit of stuff for FASAW when they were still doing other game companies before they launched all their stuff. I did. I did art for a traveler source book or two.

Oh, really?

And they really like my, my, my stuff. And I don't know npc. If you wanted this to be mentioned later, it's in some other episode. But I was actually the first guy they approached to do battle droids.

Art for battle droids.

Oh, wow.

Tell us all about that.

And so I met some trade show. I want to say it was the American Book Sailor Association. I had already been doing art for Judges Guild and I had done again, that's a source book OR 2 for Fatsaw. And they really, really liked my work. They were familiar with mechanoids that kind of put me on the map, especially as an artist. So we're kind of jumping ahead a little bit. Sorry, guys. But so they love the mechanoids and they wanted me to do the art. So they show me images of the Macross cartoon and they're like, we have to write these images. And I'm like, really? That's amazing. Through 21st century imports, which was a model kit import company. And I'm like, wow, this stuff looks really great. And he gave me a bunch of little snapped together model kits that I still have to this day for, for Macross. And I'm like, yeah, I'm very in. You know, like, we want you to do our mech. You know, mech designs, you know, they'll be based on these at first, and then, you know, you'll be able to create your own. And I'm like, great. And they wanted to pay me $60 a page. And I'm like, oh, drawing mechs is a pain in the ass. It's a lot of work. Very time consuming because, you know, when you're drawing human figures and monsters and stuff, you know, it's very organic. You don't need clean, sharp lines to do Convincing Mecca. You need to have very sharp lines. So using rulers and templates and curves and making sure those lines are very sharp and clean, and it just takes a long time. And I don't particularly enjoy doing a lot of that kind of work. Says the guy who illustrated contemporary weapons Guns. So I said, no, man, I gotta get at least $100. And they said, no, the best we can do is 65. And I said, I'll pass.

Yeah.

But again, it was just one of those weird moments in my life. And there's been several of them where, what if I had done the art for BattleTech? Because, I mean, that's what battle droids became. You know what? I had been one of Faso's first main artists, would I have continued to do my own thing? Because I was freelancing to help pay the bills. My own company. So anyways, 1979, 1980, I shopped my game around. No one wanted it. So I went back to my guys and said, yeah, I dropped it around, and no one wants it. I told them the Judges Guild offer. I said, you know, for 500, I'll just sit on it. I'm not gonna do this. They're like, but, Cap, this is too good. Your game is too good. You got to do something. They said, hey, you have publishing experience. Because I had done a. I had done a comic book with Alex Marcin and I. Megaton Publications. Not the one that's more well known. Someone else took that name later. But in, like, 1976, we did a series of black and white comic books. And my guys knew that. And they're like, but you have publishing experience, you know, and you worked for a magazine. You know, you could do this yourself. No,

for those in audio format. He is nodding right now.

I had this publishing bug. I had worked on a bunch of fanzines. I had published a couple fanzines that went nowhere. One of them, by the way, called Night Spawn. Oh, and the logo, just like this logo, is by Tom Orzikowski, who went on to do the logo and lettering for Spawn since its inception and did a bunch of stuff for Marvel Comics. And I was keeping that name, Night Spawn, for something special. And I waited too long. That's a story for a later episode. But anyways, once they planted that seed in my head, and I'm like, I could publish this. And so what most people don't realize is Palladium Fantasy was my first game. It was the first game that I designed and completely wrote and had most of the artwork done. You know, I was a poor kid in Detroit and couldn't really afford to hire people. So which is why the mechanized, when it came out, had. And I'm not kidding you, it averaged, if I do recall correctly, 20 typos a page. Not a great scholar it was four spell check days. Right.

And editing costs money.

Yeah.

Mammal. Who knew mammals have two M's in it? And I use that word a lot apparently. So I really want to do Palladium Fantasy. I really wanted to do it as a book. Originally. I investigated it as a hardcover, but that was super expensive back then. I couldn't afford that. And I couldn't afford to do a box. And I looked at box games anyways and I thought, you know, you're paying all this money for a box at the time, especially printing it in the United States. You're paying, you know, seven, eight dollars for that box, you know, and then the publication inside would be, you know, this flimsy magazine thing with some cheap dice. And I'm like, do we really need that? What if we just did it as a book? And at the time in the trade it was known as trade paperbacks or soft cover. The whole perfect bound is what most people know it as now. The whole perfect bound, soft cover book. That was a new concept back in the, in the 70s and early 80s. And so I found a company, actually several companies that could do soft cover books. And that was great, except I couldn't afford that either. I mean, I just didn't have the money. I needed like a solid 10 or 12 grand just to print it as a soft cover book. Five or six thousand copies. And I didn't have that. I didn't know what to do. And Eric said, well, Kev, why don't you just come up with something else and you know, something smaller or even release Palladium Fantasy in a series of books. And I'm like, no, it will have the full impact a plenty of fantasies. Got to be one big juicy book. So he was like, why don't you do something else then? And that's when I came up with the Mechanoids. And it's a, it's. What is it, a 48 or 64 page? 48 page, you know, little game in itself. So many typos that I had to do an immediate oops sheet back in

the days of OOP sheets. I remember those. So that's a quick question for you because a lot of people probably don't know this. Which came first, the Mechanoids comic or the Mechanoids role playing game?

The Mechanoids role playing game. Okay. Oh, it was supposed to be a 6 issue series or 12 issue and published by Caliber Press.

Yeah, yeah.

And I knew Gary Reed, the publisher. We were good friends. And he's the guy, by the way, who first published the Crow.

Mm.

Yeah. Street and some other. He discovered some pretty big name.

I think they also did Negative Burn, which was a good one. I think they also did a series called Negative Burn which was kind of like.

Oh yeah, yeah.

That was one of my favorites.

And they did Dead World, I think it was called. And they did a bunch of cool stuff. Yeah, they had quite a concern going. But that came out in the. That came out in the 80s or. Or late 80s, early 90s.

Let's see this one, I think. What is the date on this? Does it even have a date?

86.

1990.

Well, yeah, yeah. This.

No. Well, okay. It has an ad for Rifts, so I'm assuming.

Yeah, yeah. It's gotta be 88 or 90. Yep. Yeah. I thought it came out much later. So the mechanoid invasion came out in 1981.

Mm.

So I was telling NPC when we were talking it was kind of wild because I go to my first Gen con and it's just me and my buddy Matthew Ballant, who is also a Detroit gaming center guy. And we had this. And we had this. This was his. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. The old. The older weapons.

Yeah. I'm sorry. Yep. This is comic book size newsprint, which is why it's all yellowed. And it's a relic like 8 net by 11, folded in half.

Oh.

People familiar with our weapon series will recognize.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The only ones I have are these. The.

Well, this would spawn those. Those later, later books.

Yeah. I got the two castles because I like castles.

So I. I learned. So for every one mechanoid I would sell, Matt would sell four or five of these.

Oh.

And granted, you know, this was a buck or. Or you know, I guess he sell them for four bucks. Four bucks. You know, I'm selling this for 395. So I learned first of all, don't under or 375 because I could produce it cheap. This cost me like 32 cents to make. Right. So like I'll sell it cheap. And by selling it cheap, a lot of people go, oh, I can get this cheap. I'll buy it. No, people say, sounds kind of cool. 375. What's wrong with it? Yeah, it was too.

What a strange question to say about a book. What's wrong with it?

Well, you know, most game books at the time were selling for around 10 bucks. Yeah. And it was just, you know, and here it's a complete game and you know, people were just not buying it. But the thing is with this Little weapon book. You know, it's before the, the Internet. You know, if I say, what's a flamberge? A lot of people don't know. You say, hey, you know, what's a pole arm? Most people don't know, you know, what's a halberd? You know, it's a type of polar. Most people don't know. And Matt realized that at the gaming center he was a history buff. Oh. So he spent like, I don't know, at least two years compiling all this crap which was super, super useful. And even though the drawings were very simple, they're really effective. And the little dash mark show you exactly where the blade is. It told you how heavy it was. It told you whether it was a single hand or, you know, double handed weapon. And with the popularity of dnd, this sucker was selling like crazy. So we get back from Gen Con and I'm like, Matt, we gotta do something with this. This, this is a potential gold mine. And you know, meanwhile, you know, Mechanoids is doing all right, but it's. I only have a couple of distributors. And I said, why don't we, I said, can you expand it? And he's like, well, I don't know, I've got like 700 weapons. That little book. I don't know how much more I can expand it. I mean, I'm sure there's some stuff I haven't included. And I said, well, what if we did armor and kind of gave it the same treatment where we point out the different types of armor and how they work and all that. And he loved the idea. And we came out with Weapons and Armor. That's the first version of it. Yeah.

Oh, the green and white cover.

And then we came out with know, Weapons and Castles. And then Woodjick did, you know, Weapons and Assassins. And we did Exotic Weapons and Weapons of an Orient and all kinds of stuff. You know, of course today, now they're, you know, they're nice pretty little perfect bones with color covers. But the Armors Weapons and Armor book was our first quiet mega hit. We sold like 100,000 copies in four or five years.

Wow.

Back in the day. That's amazing.

That's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were huge. We had them in libraries, we had them in schools. It was, it was pretty neat. So that was cool. But you know, we're still, you know, we weren't selling those for a gazillion dollars either. And we were doing good stuff. But. And then I wanted to do more with the Mechanoids. I had a bigger story in mind. So the Mechanoids was a trilogy. So the second book in the Mechanoids was the Journey, and the third book was Homeworld. And I did most of the art for them. I wrote them. Eric contributed a little bit here and there. Those are doing all right. Those came out in 81 and 82, and they were starting to get some momentum. I'm getting to the point where I might be able to the print, you know, the. The Palladium fantasy game the way I envision it. And then Matt came up to me and said, I've got a cool idea. Let's do. Let's try doing a box game. Because we found a place I could do it simple or cheaper. And we came out with Valley of the Pharaohs.

Oh, my God. Is that in shrink wrap still?

Yeah, yeah. I've got like three copies that are. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I have never been able to.

Yeah, I used to have an opened one, but I think I sold it at a. At a Palladium open house. So I can't show you the interior pages. I do have the little booklet that was inside. Again, you can see we're still sticking with the comic book size.

Yeah.

I mean, you have to understand, to us, this is like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where you're just. Where they're wheeling it into the warehouse and we're.

Well. And the problem with this was. And that came out in 82. I put. I put a ton of money in it. Well, ton of money at the time. Probably like grand. Six or seven grand. And it just tanked. And I learned two things from that, you know, and that's the thing is, you gotta understand, especially for all you guys out there who are watching this, all you people who want to be a game publisher and start your own stuff, follow your dreams. It's awesome. But it's a lot of work and there are risks. You know, you need to learn as you go along. And so I learned from that, that one. Historical games, unless you do them just right and they have the right spin on them, they don't sell. Yeah, you know, there's always exceptions, like. Like Bushido and Aces and Eights and some other stuff out there. For the most part, historical games are not real popular. Second of all, it didn't have enough wow factor. It was kind of a more historically accurate game. And even though there's some really simple magic, you know, compared to D and D or what we had in Mechanoids the Journey and what you could find in RuneQuest and other stuff, you know, who wanted to play this? You know, there was just not enough world development, not enough wow factor magic that was really, you know, monsters and shit. You could fight and kick ass and have fun. It was like, it's like a history lesson. Sorry Matt, if you're watching this because

Matt, even things, I mean that's so true because even today like people are discussing on RPG conversation forums about, man, I sure would wish that I could find a Wild west role playing game that wasn't magical or wasn't horror or didn't have aliens or I wish I could find a Bronze Age role playing game that wasn't gods and stuff. So the people are out there, but they are not the majority of their customers.

No.

And, and there's something strange, you know, Valley of the Pharaohs, like when I first found out this existed, it was became and still is to be perfectly honest, one of my, you know, holy grails of achieving. But because I as a kid was super interested in that particular period of history, the, you know, of going from the early dynasties through the Ptolemaic period. But there is something about Egypt where it's both incredibly fascinating to a lot of people and every single time somebody tries to do a role playing setting based on Egypt, it tanks. It doesn't matter how much magic you have in, I mean like I have a copy sitting at home that's like a 290 page role playing game supplement for third edition dungeons and Dragons that has like, other than the rules, nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons. It's not associated with Forgotten Realms or anything like that. I've talked to the publisher of that game. It is their worst selling product ever. And it's, it's like people, if you like looked at the early days of the History Channel and A and E, people would be eating up the documentaries. Can't get an Egyptian selling setting sold on as an RPG and oh, I don't know why the shame.

I, I, I don't either. Because you're right, the, the gods are amazing and, and you know, we incorporated a ton of them into play in fantasy and people love them. The gods are, are amazing. Their abilities and powers and stuff are really cool. I didn't know much about it until Matt started to do research for that book and I'm like, holy crap, man. Egyptian gods are, are, are amazing. This is really interesting stuff. I fell in love with it. I did a lot of art. Me and Mary Walsh, the same people who did the weapon series Yeah, I had a blast with it. You know, one of the cool things that you can't see, unfortunately, is there are like a dozen 11 by 14 folded drawings that were really cool. Some of my best early work, I think, with cutaways of. Of the pyramids and a bunch of maps and other cool stuff that's. That's really nice, and it was a nice product, but, I mean, I admit it, it's not something that would be easy or super fun to play. As it stands, Matt's been talking about maybe redoing it for a more modern audience and expanding it. So that's. That's something that might happen whether we publish it or whether it's something I let him publish.

Excuse. Excuse me while I go steal a child so I can offer you my firstborn.

Make it happen make it happen. I want it One day it will be on my shelf, you know, and

that's the thing is, you know, we learned everything through research and trial and error. Yeah, doing it was pretty crazy. You know, we had some success. We had, you know, weapons and armor, cooking and weapons and castles and the three mechanoid books, and unfortunately, Valley of the Pharaohs that sat in my attic for about 10 years. You know, that's the thing, too, is we only printed like 5,000 copies of Valley of the Pharaohs, and I think we only ever sold about half of that, and the rest just got thrown out eventually.

Oh.

So I kept like a half a dozen, which, like I said, I've got three copies left, I think, and all in pristine condition.

But we'll talk turkey after the episode.

All right. You know, it's funny that that's, you know, everyone wants it now because it's so rare, but so I, you know, we're getting there, and I'm going a little bit slower than I would really like to do. Although, if you think about it, I mean, we had produced in, like two years, we had something like eight products, which. Which ain't nothing, but, you know, my. My holy grail was, you know, let's do this. And I also. Because, again, I mean, not no slam, it was just sort of the industry norm. The art was so bad in most games. I wanted people to be able to pick up. Pick up this book and flip through it and just see and detailed artwork, great artwork.

In fact, I'd like to ask a question about that, if I may. Flipping through the mechanoids, the early ones, you use a lot of the 70s and 80s.art that was really, really popular in some of the illustrated Novels specifically. I'm thinking like the old Keith Lommer Retief death world kind of novels, if you're familiar with those.

I don't know.

But somebody like. I think it's your esper in there. Looks like just the style and the feel of it just comes from that era. And I love that era. And I was just wondering, was that something you were interested in at the same time? Did you ever read those? To those? Yeah, yeah, that one like that could be Retief's sister, the Mercenary.

I was mostly a comic book. Well, I mean, I read a lot of different stuff, but yeah, that. By the way, those, those dots are zippitone. You would actually cut them out, almost like color forms. When you cut it out of a sheet, trace it over your art, peel it off and paste it. I mean, it had a sticky back.

Yeah.

Rooted on. And it was crazy. Yeah, I think I, I think I read a little bit of that and I was into, you know, heavy metal and all kinds of. So, you know, if it was a comic book, I probably read it. Yeah. You know, because I. That was my thing. I mean, and that's, that's the other funny thing. And I've said this before, but Palladium Books was supposed to be just temporary until I broke into comic books. And you know, the next thing I know, you know, I've got this burgeoning company that's take off like crazy. And I'm like, oh, well, maybe, you know, at some point I'll also do comic books. And then, you know, that. That kind of never happened. And you know, I wake up one day and I'm like, oh, I got a 2 million dollar company. I love what I do. I love world building. Maybe I'll just hire a bunch of comic book guys, which I did. Which is, you know, why you see guys like Freddy Williams and Ramon Perez and Jim Starega, Richard Corbin and Stephen Bassett, you know, and others.

You, you worked with, with Corbin.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which, which book is that? I don't seem to have that one yet.

He did the COVID to the original beyond the Supernatural.

Oh, that's.

That's right.

Which is still one of my favorite covers you, that you ever put out.

The art. And beyond the Supernatural first edition was some of the best I've ever seen in the gaming industry. So yeah, it, it really sold the entire concept.

And talk about a cover piece that nails the content. Just saying.

Yeah, well, Corbin was really good. Was funny because for people who are not. I'm Personally surprised at how many people aren't familiar with Richard Corbin. I'm glad you guys know him. He rose to fame doing underground comics, and it's one of his famous things. So what people do now is heavy metal, the animated movie, and a lot of that, especially the one long sequence that's all based on Corbin or inspired by Richard Corbin's work. And so he was famous for doing women with, quite literally, watermelon boobs, men who had penises that were, you know, like jackhammers and, you know, 18 inches

long and manly men, womenly women, and horrifying monsters.

That's Corbin, and he did the greatest horrifying monsters. So I loved his work, and he did so. One of the amazing things that people don't know about Corbin, a lot of his early work that appeared in Heavy Metal magazine and elsewheres, he actually did the color separations himself.

Really?

He airbrushed each. So this is your red, this is your yellow. This is on separate layers of acetate. Unbelievable. Talk about a guy who had technical proficiency and an eye for color, where he could do all of that in gray. I mean, he's painting in gray and, you know, grayscale to come out with these amazing colors. The guy was phenomenal. So I was very honored to work with him on that, although I was worried. So I'm talking to Rich, and I'm like, you know, Richard, I love your art. You're fantastic. But I'm sorry, but I'm going for, like, PG 13.

And let me be really clear on what PG 13 is, because this is the 80s.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we can't have watermelon breast, and, you know, we need to have them. And you guys are all familiar out of here someplace, right?

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

I mean, it's beautiful. Yeah. And, you know, I needed a woman that had, you know, good proportions, natural proportions. And he did it. He was not offended at all. He's a really nice guy. It was funny. I don't know if it was the age difference or what, but, you know, I had nice conversations with Richard, and he was a sweetheart. My company's just started taking off. This is what, 80, 88? Yeah, we're really starting to take off, but I don't have a ton of money. And I said, richard, I adore that cover. I would love to buy it. You know, what are you selling them for? And he goes, well, I'm getting, like, at the time, like, $5,000 a cover.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, I absolutely believe that. Yeah. I can't afford that? He's like, well, what can you afford? Then I said. I said, no, that's okay. I said, I was hoping it'd be more like, you know, 1200. And he's like, I'll do it. I'll do it for you. You truly love it so much, I want you to have it. And I'm like, great. And he's like, talk to my agent.

Oh, no,

I talked to the agent. He's like, that'll be, you know, $5,000. And I'm like, I talked to Richard, and he said I could have her 12. 12? There's no way you can have it for 12. Maybe three. Let me talk to Rich. And I'm like, okay. So, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm like, I don't know, 30, 32 at the time. And I'm like, hey, Rich, thanks. You know, your agent said he can't take less than 3,000. And Richard, like, he did. Did he? If you're at the 1200, write the check, mail it to this address. I'll take care of my agent.

Oh, my God.

How cool is that?

That's amazing, because for folks who don't know, I mean, at this point, Corbin's already got Heavy Metal up and running. He's already done the COVID for Meatloaf Back out of Hell, you know, and it's like, this is amazing.

You know, his art books are, like, bestsellers. Den has happened. Yeah.

Yeah. He's one of the hottest guys at that time. He's one of the hottest guys in comics. And, you know, he's quickly becoming a legend. And so that was amazing. So get this. The story doesn't end there. Oh. Oh.

All right.

So I get the painting. I'm, like, thrilled. I mean, singing in our. In our office right now in our hall. I love that thing. And in the mail, I get something like a small package from Richard. I open it up, and it's the two watercolor roughs. Oh. And I call up Richard, and I'm like, richard, I got these two watercolor roughs, but, you know, I could barely afford the painting. I can't afford these two. And he's like, no, no. You love it so much. I want you to have it. I thought you.

And this is how palladium nearly didn't become a thing because you had a heart attack at the age of 32.

Yep.

Yep.

Wow.

He was just a sweet guy. He was a very nice guy. What am I starting to say is. It's funny because Steve Bessette who was hot as hell at the time. He was the new artist on Swamp Thing, and people were going crazy. And Steve has said most of our original art in that first edition. He's like, oh, man, Richard Corbin. I'd love to talk to Richard Corbin. Kevin, can you hook me up? And I said, well, you know, I'll let Richard know, and I'll pass along your phone number. And, you know, I don't know if he'll call you or not. And he's like, that'd be great, Kev. And so I'm like, okay. So I pass it along, and I talked to Steve Bessette a few weeks later. He was like, oh, that Richard Corbin. He cracks me up. Doesn't he crack you up? No, really, just business. And, you know, there wasn't a lot of. Like I said, I don't know who was the age difference or. Or what, but we. You know, I usually hit it off with people, but I didn't really hit it off. I mean, he was sweetheart, obviously, and we had conversations, but it wasn't like, man, it was so much fun talking to Richard, and, man, what a card. He was just very serious.

That's crazy, though.

Yeah.

Wow.

You've.

You've been so. In these early days. You seem to have a gift for networking. You might not always get the yes, but you always seem to leave people with a good impression. How much of that was your key to your success? You think?

Well, I think networking is hugely important. It's funny you said that, because I wasn't very good at it, especially in the early days. I mean, obviously good enough. And I think I felt comfortable with fellow artists, especially comic book guys, because we kind of spoke the same language, and I would be fans of their stuff, and I would. You can tell when you're talking to someone if they really know your stuff or whether. I mean, this is a great example. I mean, you guys clearly are immersed in palladium stuff. You know, our books and our characters and the lore and all that stuff, our history and have a genuine interest versus someone who says, hey, I hear you doing Ninja Turtles, and that's topical. So let's do our interview on that. And. Which is awesome. We appreciate everyone who did that for us, but it's different. And I think I connected with a lot of guys. And because I love art, it shows. And I think also because, as 99% of artists will tell you, when they first start out, they get screwed. Publishers take advantage of them, and they get screwed. That happened to me, of course, And I vowed if I was ever in a position where I could hire artists, I would not take advantage of them. I would not screw them. And I think that has served me really, really well. And it shocks me how many. It's changed some degree nowadays where artists are treated a bit more fairly and more equally. But I used to say that artists don't realize it, but when they go up to a publisher, there's this for them. It's this big invisible neon sign that they can't see the artist, but the publisher sees this big neon sign with an arrow pointing down and says, artist, please fuck me. Because they did, or would try. And I'm like, I'm never going to do that. So we offered some of the best rights. You know, one of the things I took as a huge compliment from Steve Bessette is like. Like, like three, four years after beyond the Supernatural had come out, he said, kevin, I wanna. I wanna compliment you on. You're like the only publisher that has continued to send me royalties, even if they're small, you know, even if it's like a $15 check, I'm still getting that $15 check or 200 check. And I'm like, well, but that's the deal. He's like, yeah, but most people don't live up to that.

No.

And that goes a long way, you know, it just. It just does. And people talk. Like, even now when I. When I talk to new artists who aren't necessarily familiar, first off, like at Gen Con and other places, and they come to my booth and they're like, looking at our books and they're like, holy shit, you worked with Richard Corbin. I'm like, huh. Steranko cover, huh? Are these Dave Dorman covers, huh? Keith Parkinson, Huh? Huh? You know, and they're like, em. Gist, huh?

How many Brahm covers did you get?

Unfortunately, I was stupid. I love Brahm. He loved.

So do we.

You know, and hopefully he won't be offended by this. But one of the things. So first of all, Gerald Brahm is like one of the nicest, sweetest people on the planet. He is just a great guy, and I cannot say enough of him about him. And I only got two Brahms covers. Plus I think we got second publishing rights for two covers on something that had already been published someplace for two issues of the Rifter. So. So, like four covers, I think we published with Brahm. Why they're not 44, I don't know. And, you know, he was just a sweet guy. I could afford him. So actually, I Guess we did like five covers because Nightbane, Yin, Sloth Jungle. Yeah. And South. South Winds or not South Winds up South America.

Wasn't he the Western Empire too?

Oh, Western Empire. So yeah, yeah, Western Empire, yeah. So that, that's six covers plus a couple of rifters. So

Matthew's sitting there stroking the COVID

hanging in my office. The original painting.

When NPC and I were first getting going, whenever we did a Brahm cover, we'd do it with the Inception noise.

We go brah.

Yep.

No, Brahm is. Brahm is the best man. And what I used to find funny is in his youth, I swear to God, he looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

I mean, I'm holding the best cover ever, but I mean, it's just. I'll put these back away.

So. But, but it's interesting about, you know, the early days and sort of being a trailblazer. So nowadays everyone's like, yeah, of course, perfect bound books, you see them everywhere in every, you know, every genre, especially in role playing. But when we did this, nobody else was doing it. I think the only other company that came out with a perfect bound soft cover edition was Runequest at one point.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Nobody did it forever. FASA, I think, started to do it with MechWarrior. Yeah, yeah. A few years later.

Yeah.

I will say this, they hold up. There's the plastic peel, but I still have them and they're still good to varying degrees.

All of the palladium books that I have have held up, except for some of the early ones that had the plastic peel. But the FASA books, I don't want to put anybody down specifically. But those FASA books apart, like all of my early Battletech and Shadowrun and Star Trek perfect bounds, the pages just started falling out very quickly wherever you

got it from Washington, just better.

Thing is, I love, as you can tell from my office, I love books. Not just role playing books, I love books. And I've always been interested in print and quality. And so in the early days of role playing, books falling apart, pages falling out were really common and I didn't want that. And so we became known as, as the company that the pages would never fall out of because we never understood this. It's like put your money in the product, an extra. I don't know what it was, like 15 cents or 20 cents a book. Yeah, that's cutting into your margin times 5 or 10 or 20,000. But I mean, God's sakes, that's nothing. We would Spend the money to get our books Smythe sewn and glued. So just like most hardcovers, these books are sewn. The pages will not fall out. You'd have to tear them out or cut them out. They cannot fall out because they're sewn together.

So fun little story going off of this. About decade ago, I was over at a person's house, didn't know that they were a role player. And I walked into their study and saw their shelf of role playing books. It included a first edition, first printing of Ninjas and Super Spies that I don't know if it was his particular copy, but I've seen other copies of that one where it had the split issue in it and in the front cover of that one because he pulled it off the shelf to show it to me. There was a letter from, when he had reported the, that it had split within two months of his purchase from you all. It was signed by like, I guess your office manager at the time or whatever, apologizing profusely, was hysterical. He kept it with the addition as like just a sign of, you know, how much you folks endorsed your product and.

Well, we do and we know so you know. But so, so doing perfect bound was new. Now the original book or two, the first few books, they were varnish, not plastic lamb. And while the lamb, especially the early lamb, will eventually peel off with profound use and age, I felt like they held up better. That's why we always go with the plastic lamb. But it's funny, other things we had to sell is at the time in 1983 when this came out, there was the perception that these are much more flimsy and must be shrink wrapped to protect them. Oh my gosh. I had to fight with my distributors to not shrink wrap my books because I wanted people to be able to flip through and see the cool artwork and go, holy shit, what's that? Yeah, that dragon's cool. Oh, wow. What's this? You know, I mean, you're not going to find that in a D and d book in 1983. No, you're not. I mean, the biggest distributor at the time, Windmill Hobbies, Joe Butter Budricks. He's, he's a. I, I loved, loved Joe. A really good guy. He was sort of your typical cranky old man. So he was a holdout. He didn't buy our stuff for the longest time. Oh, that's not true. Because he bought it in 1983. But you know, we kept sending him product every new release. We never hear a word. And so finally, one day I get a call from, from Joe Budrick at Woodmill Hobby. And he's like, you know, I want to buy, you know, 50 of these and 30 of those and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I was so excited to have him because that's the thing too. You got to realize in the early days, I mean, I was pretty much Palladium Books with some help from Alex and then my fiance, Marianne Dietrich, and then, you know, and some other friends, Woodjack and this person, that person would chip in. We were kind of talking, Alex and I were talking about that before the show. And he's like, who is that woman that you were so impressed with that, you know, could really, you know, do key lining super fast? And I'm like, I don't know who you're talking about, Al. And he's like, you know, it was some woman, you know. And he's like, from ccs, maybe center for Creative Studies. And I'm like, oh yeah, Lori Mazur. But you know, people would, would come in and give me a hand, especially Alex and Matthew Ballint and Eric Woodjack. But it was pretty much a one man show. And then I think Alex was my first part time employee. And Alex has been my. Alex Marcinis and has been my best friend since 8th grade. Anyways, Joe calls up and he's like, you know, and I'm like, joe, I'm so glad you're picking up. I think you'll be really happy with this. Your competitors are buying this like crazy. And he's like, no shit, kid. What do you think I'm buying this for? And I'm like, oh, yeah. But he was a cool guy because when he saw plenty of fantasy, he believed in it so much that, you know, the whole hobby industry, no matter how nice it looks, you know, it has always been direct sale. Which means if your store buys it and they don't sell tough cookies, you know, you, you, you, you eat that loss.

Yep.

Joe actually went around to like a hundred of his top clients and said, you take five copies of this book and if you haven't sold them in two months, I'll take him back.

That's actually amazing for early model booksellers. That's, that's wild.

It was, yeah, what a great guy. Good guy. But at the fight with Joe, because he would shrink wrap the fucking books. No, I want him to work like this and get a hard on.

100%. Yeah. So my original brick and mortar gaming store was collector's connection up in Duluth Minnesota, which I'm probably gonna end up mentioning, because they had a lot of positive things over the almost two decades. I did business with them. And one of the things they absolutely hated about Palladium books is they'd come in shrink wrapped and, and then they'd have to have somebody sitting there for hours, unshrink, wrapping them before they went on the shelves because they knew that people wanted to open them and see

the product that wasn't us. I had to fight with them like crazy. It took, I don't think Joe stopped until like 88 or 89. I'm like, Joe, don't make me come over there. You're just in Ohio or just in Illinois. I can drive down.

That was another reason why, as you were saying earlier, the whole box set thing, for me, it was always another strike against getting a box set was that I couldn't look at the components. And I understand why they did it. They didn't want anybody to just opening it up and taking the dice or whatever. But when you have a box set that actually has books in it, I want to see inside the books. I'm not buying it for the box, I'm buying it for the books. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that gets back to what you were saying, where it grew out of the war game, which is all boxes. And so a lot of people had the mentality of if it's a game, it's got to be in a box. Which I understand to a degree you're seeing that more and more these days. And we're talking about doing in the future that Palladium will do introductory boxes, sets, because for grandma and grandpa and Uncle Bob, they, they see a big ass book and they're like, holy, this is the rule book. Yeah. It's 250 freaking pages. I'm not buying this. For 12 year old Timmy, the lost

leader, these days, everyone's doing it. BattleTech has a tiny box and you know, Warhammer has a tiny box and DND has a tiny box and.

Yep.

Yeah, but that's because when Uncle Bob goes and sees a box and he can flip it over and he goes, oh, you get these two booklets on how to play. One's an adventure book, one's the rules. Yeah, some dice, you get some character cards, some character sheets, a map, that all makes sense to them because it's what they know as a board game.

It's an old model. The first taste is cheap. After that you pay.

But you know, in the early days, we couldn't afford all that And I sat back and went, I'm a role playing game company. You know, I'm gonna do role playing games. I don't want to be putting all this other stuff in there. I'm gonna create a really nice, durable book and, and sell it as a book. And I want people to be able to, you know, to flip through it and go, oh, yeah. Oh, wow, this is cool. You know what you can't do with a box, no matter how well the box is designed to show what's in it, you know, you can't see it. You know, that was the Kevin Long cover we did later. Yeah. I wish I kept it on there a lot longer than I did. It's a great. I love that cover.

I admit I'm partial to the red and black. That was my first taste of holding an RPG book in my hands. And that red and black, just. Just looking at that, I remember my imagination just going a million miles an hour from that one image.

Yeah, well, again, the mother of necessity. I couldn't. I couldn't afford to do a color cover, but I could do a two color cover. And, you know, I did my homework, you know, and being an artist already kind of knew this. But, you know, red and black, that's a real popular color combination. Yeah. Red, black, and white. And so I'm like, I'm gonna do this. They have a cool back cover, and then we'll have a cool game master screen. Yeah. I mean, that's why Arms of Nargash Tor, our first source book.

Oh.

With that cover, it's two colors too, because I couldn't afford to do color. And, you know, the art was mine because I couldn't really afford to hire artists.

But it's good art, so thanks.

No loss there. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and Judges Guild helped me. You know, I didn't realize it, so one of the things Judges Guild did is they. They would reprint my art, a lot of people's art, over and over and over and over and over and over again. And in fact, one particular piece that happens to be a spider, a very nicely rendered spider. There's a full page illustration. To my knowledge, they reprinted it 26 times. So even though I only worked for Judges Guild for, like six months, people saw my art for, like, six years. And me and Janelle Jacoi were known as the two good artists at Judges Guild, and they had some other good artists, but, I mean, we tended to be a cut above the rest. You know, that was. That was pretty, pretty cool. So people knew my art. So when they'd see my art, they're like, oh, it's that good artist from. You know, I think that helped me the art.

Definitely, definitely. Like your, your commitment to paying the artist shows and the fact that you have good art. And I think anybody that I've met over the last years of my life talking about role playing games, when would inevitably come to the conversation of our love of Palladium games. They're like that art. It always goes there within the first 15 seconds of that part of the conversation. Always.

Yeah. And for me it's one of two. It's either the. We call it the Butts edition, the first Rifter, the first Rift. I don't know if you know that about us. And the second one is the Robotech.

Oh yeah.

This book was the one that hooked me. Such an amazing book. Such amazing art too.

Well, Kevin Long, you don't get much better than Kevin Long. I mean the guy's great and does magnificent robots and machines and I mean he's a great all around artist. But I mean his, his robots are just stellar. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing is, you know, I, I know art and I know good art and like I said, I've always been able to relate to artists. So very quickly early on I came to realize I can find lots of artists who are as good or better than I am. But it's hard to find people who really get role playing and world building the way I envision it, the way Woodjack envisions it, the way Neil. Sean Roberson envisions it. So I started to do less and less art and more and more of the writing, which again, for like the first 15 years, if someone said, well what do you do for a living? And I'd be like, I'm an artist and I write and I'm like writer, publisher, who does some art.

Yeah.

But you know, that was my orientation. I wanted to be an artist for the longest time and was. I am. But you know, I really made my mark is in world building and you know that, that's been a blast. But NBC, we were talking about moments that could have changed a course of history for me and Palladium. Did you want to get into this in that with.

Yeah.

Janine or Janelle? So Jacobs and I, we, we hit it off. Like I said, you can't tell nowadays because I'm a blabber mouth. But I used to be very shy, so I was not a great schmoozer, especially at like parties and things. But you know, one on one and with artists, you know. And so Janelle and I hit it off, and we were Judges Guild's two top artists. So Janelle went on to do work for other game companies and most notably went on to become like, the art director and I think games manager or Games. I forget her title, but she was like the head of games at Kimiko or Kimiko at Coleco.

Coleco, yep.

Yeah. Kimiko was a chemical company. Kamiko. Coleco was Cabot Patch and Colecovision, which most people don't remember these days, but they were like, cutting edge in the video game business. I mean, they really were. And I met. Well, I got a call. So she calls me and says, kev, I want you to be my art director.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, at Coleco. And this is like 1984. She's like, look, $35,000 to start, great healthcare benefits. And this was big money in 1982.

In 84, yeah.

Plus a $10,000 moving budget, which you get whether you spend $10,000 or not.

Holy crap.

Because I would have to have moved up to wherever they were located. I think it was Connecticut. And I. I really thought long and hard about that because, I mean, you know, I had a family. I had just gotten married, and, you know, my. My wife had, you know, a four and six year old. And I'm like, wow, this could be something, you know, big. And I liked working with Janelle. I thought that'd be great. I'm like, holy moly. Maybe I should. Maybe I should do this. And then my mom was sick. I think that was the big thing that stopped me, really, was that she was sick and I'd have to move away and I didn't really want to do it. My mom and dad needed my help, you know, wanted to be there. I mean, when I say sick, I mean like on death's door. I mean, she lived till 89, but she had her good, good years and bad years. And so I turned Janelle down. And then I'm at Gen Con and she shows up in front of my booth and she's like, kevin, you gotta do this. Vayner. It was kind of like just what you and I can do together. And I remember feeling so awkward because I'm like, but Janelle. And leave all of this. And I sweep and, you know, it's like the three mechanoid books, three weapon books, Heroes Unlimited just come out. So it's Palladium Fantasy, Nargash, Tor. You know, Heroes Unlimited was brand new. And she just kind of smiles and Says, think about it, talk about it with your wife.

That's a low blow right there.

Somebody was playing hardball.

Yeah. But man, I mean, if I had, if I had taken a job, would, would I have shut Palladium down? Would I have continued to do this? Would I have gotten turtles a year later?

Right.

Or Robotech two years after that? I mean, none of that stuff might have ever happened. There might never been rifts or supernatural or any of that stuff. Yeah.

On behalf of us all, I'm glad to say that you didn't become a salaryman for ColecoVision, continued to chart your own course.

Didn't Coleca kind of tank shortly after that anyway?

He did. It was one of those things that, you know, one of those rare moments where two years later, in a company that was like sky high is kids. And I'm like, I guess that was a really smart decision. Yeah, yeah.

They were one of the trailing casualties of the great arcade crash. Um, yeah, yeah. But it's weird that you even, you have a Coleco connection in that way because so many other people that were involved with Coleco, Michael Stackpole, a couple others passed through Coleco at some point in their career and went on to be amazing world builders within the RPG related space.

Yeah, Well, I think part of that was Janelle recognized that she was very sharp and knew it made good games and was really trying to put together one of the first big, you know, studio bullpens of artists, writers, creators. Yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence. I think she kind of knew what she was doing and they had faith in her, were letting her run with things. It's a shame they went under. I mean, that's sort of the problem when you, you kind of live and die by fads. Yeah, yeah. You know, they had the double whammy of Cabbage Patch Kids was huge. And right around the same time, Cabbage pat kids were tanking. So was ColecoVision. Yeah. So that was it. It was all over. Well, and then at some point, Jim Sterenko, you know, so again, my comic book, Jim Sterenko was like a God to me. And I kind of jumping ahead, but Striko offered me a job as well, and that was an easier one to turn down. You know, that was kind of wild. What if I had taken that job and did be working for Jim Steranko in Reading, Pennsylvania?

So when did you start? Kind of like you and Eric Wujek did a lot of work together in the very, very early days. When did you start kind of Putting together, like a team of the, of the names we'd start to recognize as time, as time goes on, a lot of the. The usual suspects.

I think pretty, pretty quickly, you know, Eric and I actually had a little bit of a falling out because, you know, the gaming center was really his baby. There was a board of directors of like eight of us, but it was Eric's. It was Eric's baby. He kept it alive in some capacity or another for like the next 20 years. But in 83, I had been with it from the beginning, and my company was starting to take off with Palladium Fantasy coming out in 83. And I said, eric, this is going to be my last year at the gaming center. I'm going to step down from the board of directors. And his best friend, Renee Vega, had just done the same thing earlier. And I think he kind of felt like we were all abandoning him. And I think there were. I don't know, we weren't really estranged for very long, obviously maybe a year where we didn't talk very much. I think his feelings are really hurt. But I mean, what, two years later he's running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, right? Yeah. And we were just so close.

I met you, Kevin. I met you and Eric years ago, very briefly at DragonCon. Oh, yeah, 2001. I believe it was. 2001.

That sounds right.

Because so I had just at that con released, quote, unquote, released the first game that I had ever written, which was a live action role playing game. And we had a booth in the gaming area that a bunch of the friends that I had met, we would all meet down at the booth before we went out and for our evening of partying. And you and Eric were leaning against that table one day when I came down to wait for some friends, I was like, that's.

Is that, is that.

Kevin?

You handed me a.

You gave me a book at. I think it was either one of the Coalition Moore's books or some. Anyway, I was just like, huh, cool. All right, bye.

Yep. Small world.

World.

Yeah. Yeah. I wish I hadn't. I wish I hadn't stopped doing Dragon Con. I, they, they, they loved me and said that I was welcome to come every single year. And I wish I had because it's a great con and I haven't been there in a long time now, and I'm sure the current organizers know me from Adam, but it was great. I mean, that year. Was that the year that Harlan Ellison was a guest?

That was either that year or the year after.

Yeah. Because I remember being there with Harlan Ellison. That was a trip.

Yeah.

I was the last person in the line to get to meet him for his signature booth. In fact, they had already closed the line, and I had snuck into it at the last spot. And when I get up there, the person standing there is like, you're not supposed to be here. And Harlan looks at me like. Like he is just frustrated as all hell. And I say, and. Because the person who was right in front of me had brought, like, 30 books.

Oh, Lord.

He was signing them. And he looked at me. It's like I said, I just want to shake your hand, man. And he said, thank you. And that was our interaction. Yep.

Yeah.

He was my favorite writer for a very long time.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's super prolific and consistently good. Yep. I actually have a Harlan Ellison story, although it kind of ties more to Ninja Turtles. The turtle stories.

We'll note it down for when we get to Turtles.

Yeah, you should.

Yeah, Allison. Turtles.

Yeah.

That's one I gotta hear.

Yeah. It's one I desperately want to hear, but we'll definitely do it.

So anything else that you think would be worth sharing of that lead up to?

Yeah. What do you think?

Yeah. When you finally hit Go on Palladium Fantasy, what All hell. I mean, what was that like? What did that feel like? Finally just being like, bam, I have this book now.

Buy. Feels great. It's like having a baby, you know? Seriously, it's. It's your baby, and you're holding it. And it's funny because I've been able to enjoy this again with. With Sean, my business partner, when Titan Robotics and cyberworks came out. He's like,

yeah.

And the people listening to this might think it sounds crazy, but it's like, even though you wrote the whole thing and maybe even laid it out and you sent it to. I mean, you're there shepherding it every step of the way until it's delivered in your hands. It's not real. And there's just something that feels so good to hold your baby in arms and go, oh, yeah, there. There he is. There she is. And she's beautiful. It's just. It's very rewarding. I mean, it just is. And back then, it was awesome. I mean, we were. We were off to the races, and it just. It felt great. And I got to. I want to give a shout out to Tom Barthold because he helped change the fate of Palladium. So, like I said, we were doing pretty good. We kind of got a little stumble with Valley of the Pharaohs. So I didn't have the money now to do Platinum Fantasy. I would have to wait probably another six months or a year. And Tom Barthold, who was one of my original defilers in my fantasy game, one of the guys that encouraged me to go off on my own in the first place, calls me up out of the blue. It's some evening. I get a call from him, and he goes, yeah, Kevin. And Tom was kind of a goofy guy like this. And he's like, so I've got $10,000, and I need you to tell me why I should invest it in Palladium Books instead of buying land in Alaska. And I'm like, what? Yeah, here's why. I just bumped into my pitch mode and ranted and raved for 15 minutes. And Tom said, okay, I'll give you the check this weekend at the game. And I'm like, hot damn. I work up a contract. And, you know, we worked up a deal, and because of Tom, I was able to do that. Palladium Fantasy and Palladium Fantasy and those weapon books really helped. Helped us get moving. And, you know, it's funny, because I am a comic book guy, and everyone who knew me knew I was very much a comic book superhero guy in those early years. All I got over and over again is, you're doing what? Palladium Fantasy. The mechanoids. Shouldn't you be doing a superhero book? All these other people are doing superhero books. And I'm like, it's just not there. And they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, it's still percolating in my head. What it needs to be. It isn't. It isn't done yet. It's. It's not. It's not ready. And they're like, okay, but it's. When Heroes Unlimited came out, there were already, like, I don't know, 15, 20 different superhero games out. There were a bunch of fantasy games when I came out with my fantasy book, too.

So one of the interesting things is of that period with all the publishing companies that were taking off in the RPG space is how many of them didn't survive their Valley of the Pharaohs moment. And also, like, and this goes, even to this day, how important those angel investors are, those people who believe in the team behind the product and the product themselves, and will write a $10,000 check to bridge the gap. And, you know, I. I so, like, I super appreciate it whenever, you know, folks like, you remember those people who cut that $5,000 $10,000 check during the break, make or break moment. Just to keep the lights on and keep things rolling.

Yeah, well, even the, even the fifteen hundred dollar people.

Yeah.

Francis Loeb's, William Messner Loeb's mom, she knew. I mean, we were pretty close. She was a sweet lady. And I wanted to launch my company in. Like I said, I was a poor kid in Detroit, so I didn't have a pot to fix in. I had fifteen hundred dollars. I needed three thousand to print this. And I said, Mrs. Loeb, you know, could you lend me fifteen hundred dollars? I mean, again, we worked out a deal. She got 10% of the profit and, and she was a sweetheart. And she said, yes, I'll do that for you, Kevin. And she lend me the money. And so, you know, 15, $3,000, half of that borrowed in a dream, launched my company. And that's why I say, follow your dreams, people, and just realize it's going to be work. Nothing's easy and willing to put in the work. If you love it, do it, because it's awesome to live your dreams.

So she did that for a repayment of a 15 to $100 loan and 10 points on the publishing. Apparently she and my grandmother were cut from the same cloth. Yeah, no. Follow your dream and, you know, don't be afraid to ask and get the. No.

Well, and that was the other thing. One of you guys had asked something about how did you, you know, find all these, these artists? And that was the thing. Alex was great where he was. He's always been sort of my researcher, Bloodhound Guy. And even though I was shy, especially in social situations, I was pretty straightforward and bold in other areas. So a lot of people when we got Jim Steranko were like, how the hell did you get Jim Steranko? I called them up and said, hi, Jim, this is what I do. I want you to do a cover. Well, how much do you charge? He told me. And I said, oof, I'll have to see if I can dig that up. I'll get back to you. I mean, it was as simple as that. It never hurts to ask. I mean, sure, they might say no, don't take it personally and explore the possibilities.

Always.

Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't hurt that you were talking about how many superhero games there were and how many D and D fantasy games there were, but I don't think there was one. Npc. What do you say about Palladium Fantasy? That makes it different, especially when you're talking about the Cauldron. What do you call that?

I refer to it. I say palladium fantasy is metal as fuck.

Yeah.

How do wizards gain spin spells in palladium fantasy? By drinking pints of blood and casting

a spell that could drive them crazy.

That's how you get spells. I'm like, okay, yeah, this game's pretty metal.

Yeah.

That is also the most Detroit sentiment I can think of.

Yeah.

Yeah, There's. I mean, there is something to be said for never taking no for an answer and keep going. But it's plain to see that you have a unique vision in the realm of. Because we're all building off of D and D, Right? At a certain level, that was the precursor, that is the, er of it all. But your unique vision is so much different than everything else out there. And you can see it as far back as the bloody mechanoids. And I mean, not to underplay it, but I mean, what. What you have and what you still have is amazing. And thank you for not taking a Coleco job because it's just. It's awesome. We love it. We've. How many episodes are we have? We hit 150. Yeah, yeah, we have. We did.

A while ago or something like that.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've been talking about your stuff for a while.

I do have one question about the early days that I've wondered about for quite a while. How did the Defilers get their name?

Well, they. They kind of earned that name because they. They just. Oh, man. Julius had a whole long thing about Defiler of gods, destroyer of something. And he had a great line about it. It was like a little poem. So in the early days, when I was running my fantasy game for three and a half years, which turned out to be basically my three and a half year play test, but for the rules, they ran across all kinds of crazy shit. I had to play them. I didn't even realize that until again, Tom Barthold in 1995 said, you know, Kev, I've been thinking about our game. And he goes, you know, everything that's in riffs was in that original Palladium defiler campaign. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. Because we had Dr. Articulus who combined the twin. The twin magics of science or of magic and technology. We had a vampire level. We had all kinds of crazy stuff. They. They traveled other worlds. The plenty of desire itself. And again, I think this is going to be a different episode, but it was a dimensional portal, basically, and they experienced time loops and everything. And so Really, a lot of that stuff that you see running through all my games right through Rifts sort of had their seeds planted in those early days. And, you know, it helped to have, you know, great input and ideas from guys like Alex and Eric Woodjack in particular. You know, Eric helped me hammer out my alignment system and the attribute system. You know, he would. He would call me up and say, hey, Kev, I gotta go do my laundry. And he would pick a laundromat that happened to be in my part of town. And so we'd meet at the laundry or he'd pick me up at the house because I probably didn't have a car. And we'd go in the laundry. And people must have thought we were crazy because we'd be getting all excited about demons and monsters and knights. You were told, yes, aberrant evil. And then people are like, housewife.

Oh, man. I think that is actually a really, really good spot to leave that right there with the scaring. And we should come back and talk about alignments because we actually just did an episode on that.

Yeah.

And I would love to hear the early story on your. It's actually our second episode on that. I would love to come back and hear about the development of the alignments.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, absolutely.

Definitely.

We can talk for another two hours just on my love of fantasy alone.

Yeah, that's kind of fantasy to be its own thing because it's such a vein to tap.

Oh, yeah.

So do you guys like alignments?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, seriously? Has it come out yet?

Yeah, it dropped.

Yeah.

Yeah. This is the best toilet or laundry time that you will ever hear about.

Yeah, it's. It's within the last three or four episodes. So if you. If you want to take a listen to it and hear us talk about it.

Yeah, we just gush about it. It's. It's. It's nuanced.

You.

You'll hear it in the episode. We love it.

Yeah, I love alignments too. I'm always surprised when people go, yeah, alignments. I'm like, they're. They're vital. At least the way I run my games. I can't imagine characters without an alignment. Yeah. And we'll talk about that later. Can I give a plug for our current sale, please?

Absolutely.

This will run till. Where's my calendar? It runs to February 13th. We've got our Mutants and Ninjas and Superhero sale going on. The after the bomb books, which can be used with ninja turtles, are on sale at half off right now. Through next next Tuesday or Wednesday. And all the Heroes Unlimited stuff and a couple other things are all on sale at like 30% off. So come on down to the Palladium website, stock up, Buy direct from the publisher.

Buy direct, absolutely.

And we encourage that all the time is like, go, go there and get it from them because we want them to continue.

I appreciate that, guys.

Well, excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time and we really look forward to doing this series.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, these stories, they were so inspiring to us when we see them at the end and the beginning of the books. And we just kind of wanted to get a long timeline of the development of Palladium books and your personal journey through it and any anecdotes you care to throw out, we're here for.

I could spend an entire several hours talking to you individually about each book.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, guys, it's a pleasure, npc. I love the idea of doing this series. So forward to it.

Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for joining us.

Excellent everyone.

And folks, thanks for listening to this. We've got more coming with Kevin joining us. Hopefully many, many, many more of these discussions. We love doing this stuff. As you can tell, we are all fans and just exploding with joy to talk with Kevin. So check us out on our discord if you want to drop by and say hello and tell us your own early stories of playing Palladium games and how they inspired you and we'd love to hear them.

Cool.

Good night.

Starships, Magic, Mystic Martial Arts, Romance. All of these can be found in

a Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher.

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You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally and at drivethrurpg as well. Our opening music is 8 bit bass and lead by FurbyGuy from freesound.org this closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org all sound effects used are self made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero License. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as TheGlitterBoys. That's B O I S and check us out [email protected] glitterboys and also join us on the Breakfast Puppies network [email protected] Discord and if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.