#196 – Skills Acquisition and Adjudication

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Today we're talking about skills.

Again.

Skills, skills, skills, skills, skills, skills. How you use them, how you arbitrate their success, failure, or degree thereof. We play— this podcast is primarily about Palladium games, which one of its big differentiators since its early days has been being chock-full of skills compared to the games that were around at the time with some noticeable, notable exceptions.

A shitload of skills, a metric shitload of skills.

And we're going to add skills every book we release almost, which may or may not invalidate other skills that other books add. Then we're going to release a book that will have all of the skills to that point mostly in them. With mostly the same percentages, perhaps.

I was about to say something like, love them or hate them, and then I realized, no, you're playing Palladium. You love them.

Yeah.

Because if you hate them, you've probably given up and you're playing a different game. Right, right.

Yeah. I love to look at the Palladium system in general and I go, you know what? I want to learn how to make radioactive solar cells in space. I bet you there's a— oh, yep. Okay, cool. Um, can I be a botanist who works undersea labs with— oh yeah, there's the skill for that. And it can become overwhelming, like really quickly. Uh, and one of the things though, I think is a trap is that when a GM or a player or a group goes, well, if you don't have the exact specific skill to do something, you cannot even try it.

Yeah.

And there are lots of ways to go around that. And there's enough overlap in the vast majority of the big skills that I'll tend to look at it. If you have one of the general skills, you have weapons engineering. Okay. It's a great skill. It's actually not easy to get. And you want to work on power armor. I'm totally going to let you use that as a cross skill. Rules as written, that may not be how you should do it, but okay. Right.

But—

The Palladium skill system is vast. encompasses many, many, many paragraphs of description.

Yep.

And it— the, the amount of paragraphs and words dedicated to the description of a skill, there's, there's no standard to it. Sometimes the skill might get a sentence, other times it might get 5 pages. It depends on what the skill is and how useful it is and whether or not they decide to bake all of the mechanics for an entire game system right in this one skill. It's weird. My personal recommendation is to ignore the skill descriptions entirely and just go with a skill does what you think it does approach. I find it so much easier. It leads to a lot more creative situations, just like you described, Buckley, of taking a skill that probably wasn't meant to be used in that way. But if you look at the words Written on your character sheet, it makes sense.

Absolutely. The one thing, I don't think it was in the Butts edition. One of the things that really helped me, one of the things that really helped me when I was thinking about how skills are in Palladium is somewhere there's a table and it actually gave some percentage penalties and bonuses for when you're trying to use a skill. And there are some of those scattered throughout the books. And I know it's in Ultimate Edition. And it might be in Game Master Guide, but I don't think it's in the original, um, uh, Risk main book.

I've seen them and I'll— unfortunately, there's a lot more penalties than there are bonuses.

There are a lot more penalties. Absolutely. But that opened my eyes when I started thinking about skills and how they should be handled. And it's like, oh, if you have a full toolkit in a garage and you're working on something and someone's helping you and no one's holding a gun to your head and no one's holding a gun to your head, it's not mission critical. You have to do in the 15 seconds of the round. You probably can just succeed. That's one of the things that I started doing a lot of is, is this a situation where a professional who's trained in this, whatever it is, should just be able to do it? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, do I need to roll? No, you don't need to roll. But I only have a 30%. Yeah, but you have all the time in the world to accomplish this. You have all the materials, you have everything. Now, you have a gun to your head or your group's being shot at and you're working on the panel and your name's R2-something.

Yeah.

And you're trying to open the blast door.

That's when you roll.

That's when you roll, right? That's when you roll. And, and you're like, oh crap, you just rolled a 99 or 100.

Yep.

You may have just added the extra security door, right? You know, like—

Or you go shooting across the hallway because you just got electrocuted.

Exactly.

You know, and you can even do mitigations with that. Uh, but If you kind of take them as an open thing and you ignore the fact that, um, there's 40 different versions of how you work on an engine, right? Like every other skill. I have gone down rabbit holes before where it's like, oh, you want to work on robot armor? Well, you need the robot armor repair, you need weapons engineering, you need electrical engineering, you need all these 5 skills or 6 skills, and you have to make them all succeed or else it breaks.

Why?

You know, like, no, that, that, that gets a little crazy. Yeah.

So I remember, I forget what game it was where I was first introduced to this concept, but it was, I want to say it might've been Burning Wheel, but it could have been something else. But the idea was linked skills.

Shadowrun.

Well, Shadowrun, you're thinking of the skill table, the matrix. Oh my God. My pants twitched, but my heart also skipped. Double response here. Anyway, um, no, the, the linked skill concept being you, let's say you have the, the thing. It's also kind of tied into the idea of what some games call either a skill challenge or the complex skill check, which is ultimately you want to repair this robot. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

But you want— so you have robot repair as a skill. However, part of that is going to require working on the weapon systems. So you want to add in the weapon systems here. However, you also have field armor as a skill, and you also have like complicated electronics. The idea being that you need to pick the final skill. The final skill is that robot repair, but everything else, you start with 1 and you roll it. Succeed or failure, it will affect the next roll. Succeed or failure, that affects the next roll. And then succeed or failure, that affects the final roll. So if you like do all of them successfully, your final roll is going to have some mad bonuses. But based upon how you do the ones leading into it, you could seriously hamper your chances of repairing that robot.

Or with Palladium, you just make your field— I love the field armorer skill because it's very simple, very specific. You could only do so much to it. It's usually you have a pretty high percentage and it's the one that you're going to make this quick. I got to fix the engine. I got to patch the one hole where I'm going to die, but that's it. Right. And then you're running off in the field. The other side of me is the builder who wants to build really complex things. And I take your idea, NPC, and I like go, okay, you have 10 checks you got to make. And they all roll up to the big check and we'll see what happens.

And I think I find that so much more exciting than just taking it as a single skill check, pass, fail.

And it helps breed into this other idea that a failure and a success aren't always a failure and a success. Ah, right.

Yes.

It makes it a more interesting conversation. If you're making a stealth check, that's a pretty pass/fail thing. But if no one is at the base and you fail, you don't know that as a player. Maybe everyone's at dinner and you make the stealth check. Oh no, the one Bob failed his stealth check again. And the players are like going through and there's all this tension and they get in there. Wait, there's no one here.

Why?

What, what happened? And now it's a different thing because 3 out of the 4 players made their stealth check. The one dude didn't make a stealth check. You don't think the other 3 players are going to notice that he's clumping around in glitter boy armor and going to tell him to stop it?

He accidentally knocked over that pile of paint cans standing right next to the door. And yet the place was empty. So nobody cared.

Right, exactly. Like, so there's some stress that you're going to, you know, bad things are going to happen, but maybe not. Now you roll a double, you roll the 99 or 100. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone hears you from a 10-mile radius. They're all coming, right? Multiple players fail. I like to look at things in a dramatic kind of like a group trying to succeed sort of thing and not trying to penalize the players. But sometimes I'll look at a situation. You can't succeed at this, but give me a chance.

Okay.

Like you're trying to stop a nuclear reactor and you can just say no. Yeah, you can just say no and not let them roll.

That's probably not everything. Not everything should be rolled.

Yeah.

Some things are impossible. Just because somebody's really, really, really good at persuasion, they're probably not going to charm their way into the Oval Office unless they have some leverage to get them through each checkpoint. You know, it's— yeah, I mean, leverage, leverage is important in any situation. If you don't have the right leverage, you're probably not going to do certain things. There's just no chance.

One of the big advantages of the, especially RIFs, but also many of the more complex beyond Palladium Fantasy skill systems, is that there is that crossover where skills are fundamentally related and cover the same general broad areas, but they have specific emphases. This is a positive because first of all, it allows for character differentiation.

Yeah.

It also allows for a game master at the table to let the person who took power systems engineering— I know I'm giving it the wrong name, but it's, it's power generation and that sort of thing, related systems— that person can tell you far more about what's going on with this power plant, whereas the person with mechanical or electrical engineering can probably scram a reactor before it blows up, Mm-hmm. But they're not going to be able to tell you how it's load balancing the system to the local population.

That—

so being able to use them both in the ability to cross over each other for very critical basic things, but then let the players who made the specific choice to take those special emphasis skills to get a little more out of them is a huge thing.

Yeah.

So I've mentioned this in the previous discussion, I know, on it, but I will mention it again because I think it's very useful, which is my own take, my own house rule on the idea that you presented already, Buckley, about, you know, let them just do the thing when, unless it's a stressful situation. Is inspired by the Unknown Armies role-playing game, another percentage-based system where if you have a skill at 15% or higher, You just get to do it unless your hair is on fire or something weird is going on. You're being shot at. There's an alien digging its way through your intestines. Like, it's 15% or higher. You just get to do it unless there are extenuating circumstances. And I find that's just so easy.

Yeah.

You know, like it falls back to before we had skill, before skills were pervasive. when you just had stats, like I was the fighter and these were my stats. Well, but I'm also a fisherman. I was a fighter and I was born from fishermen. So the game master could just assume you are a trained combatant. You are from this culture. You are a fisherman. You know how to do that thing. You just get to do it, you know?

And you could take something like that for Palladium and say, if you have above a 40% or something, if you're 40% or something like that, because you start so low or what have you, Or actually, I think if it's 15, yeah, a different system, you could draw that line somewhere. You just do it. You know, stress, you just do it. If there's no penalty for failure is really what we're getting at. When I'd play builders characters like a techno wizard and I'm building the really cool thing, there's a penalty if I screw up my creation check.

Mm-hmm.

I'm going to break components. I may blow it up. Even if I'm not in a stressful situation, just the purview of what I'm trying to do could cause the stress. Right. And so one of the things I do like though, is when you're looking at penalties and bonuses, taking your time at doing something, it's a luxury to be able to take your time. I'm going to plan this out. I'm going to take a lot of time putting it through and giving people bonuses and really working the system back and forth. You can also look at what you were saying, uh, Jacob, is that like, if it's a very refined skill, and you succeed, you're going to get a lot more information.

Yeah.

You can just throw out penalties and bonuses. But if you have a broad skill, you have the field armor skill as opposed to the weapons engineering background, you're just going to do something really quick. So like the scope of what you can accomplish becomes different. You still can succeed and you not feel like, oh, I'm going to give you a -45% penalty. Well, I only have a 45% skill. So, um, okay, thanks, you know, and, you know, figuring out a way it works for you at your table. Um, I've seen it go both ways. I've seen players just say, I want it. I want big penalties. I want big success. I want big failure. And that's okay. Cool. Awesome. Um, other players get really nitty-gritty into what they want. Well, I, I took all these special skills and I want to use every specialized skill.

And I took these because these add a complementary bonus to this other skill.

Well, and that opens up a whole can of worms even outside Outside of the physical skills, ignoring those for a second.

Oh yeah.

I've known players that figure out how to stack all the different skills that give you bonuses to all the other skills. And at first level, they don't have anything lower than 55 or 60%.

Good on them.

I'm like, wow, that's amazing. But they only can do that with one OCC and one RCC combination.

Good on them. Yeah.

And I'm not going to penalize them by adding everything they do is going to have a big penalty. Because that doesn't make any sense.

Right.

Right.

I mean, there's a reason everybody takes boxing.

Because Kevin says it's awesome and everyone should have it.

Boxing is awesome. I'll just say that.

Yeah. Physical skills would be a whole other discussion.

Yeah.

Really. Ultimately.

That's the same conceit. It travels across.

What are your thoughts on the skill percentages as they are presented in the Palladium games?

They are just as consistent, concise, and specifically thought out as the experience point table for all the different classes. I think they're as arbitrary as fuck, to be honest. Like, uh, there are some that make sense kind of, but it's like if you picked 25% and 5% per level, I think that's the vast majority of skills.

Yeah. Nowadays that's— it didn't used to be, but yeah, it, it, it's gotten that way. I mean, I remember when it was +2 per level, +4 per level and all of that weirdness.

Some of the weirdly arbitrary stuff like your initial value. 17% plus 2 per level. Like, wait, how did, what? Where did this come from? That is something I really did like about Valley of the Pharaohs. Now, the Valley of the Pharaohs took an interesting approach to each skill having its own weirdly complicated way of calculating its initial value. I love it. I, I, let's just say that making a spreadsheet that did that was an experience. But yeah, so, but they're all derived from your stats and I love that.

I, I will say though, um, probably one of my biggest, uh, bugaboos on the skill system completely were the ones that had the multiple embedded ones. Gymnastics, acrobatics are the 2 worst, but there are a lot of others that have like, like demolitions and demolitions disposal. It's the same skill, but they have different percentages and you're like, uh, why?

Oh, that makes—

That makes sense. Yeah, right. And they have different percentages and different things. Um, but—

Or the ones that have multiple skill tracks. That's like the first value is for this. The second value is for this, but the third value is for this. And I can't— what, what, what? Just give me a single skill value. Give me a penalty or modifier in certain situations. But yeah.

Having had to code some of that in different things, uh, it just makes it a bloody nightmare.

Yeah. I chose to ignore them.

And you just have one skill.

Yep.

I'm going to make an acrobatics roll and you succeed or you fail. I'm going to make— yeah.

Um, or, okay, if you have a character as, as I am experiencing in the Rift game, a character with both acrobatics and gymnastics, you get things like parallel bars, tightrope Walking and backflip and stuff. And, but each skill gives them different base values.

Yep.

So you take both of them and you mix and match. This is ridiculous.

Yeah.

So to dive in a little bit how you get skills, let's look at how you get skills. So in the game, you get skills based on your, your OCC or RCC. And they tell you, you know, what are the, what are the skills you start with? for your class, your core skills that should be something to do with your class. And then you have the related skills. And these are skills, the big differentiation between the related skills and the OCC skills or the main skills is you get to choose these for the most part. And depending on what they are, you get an arbitrary bonus to that skill or you just can't take it.

Right.

Like, like we're not sure why, but for some reason you cannot take it. And then you have secondary skills.

Yep.

And secondary skills to me are the, in some ways, some of the more interesting ones. Um, they're still, they're still applicable to the OCC-related table. So if there's ones you're barred from, technically you can't take it even as a secondary skill, even though secondary skills are supposed to be something you pick up on the side. You decided to become an underwater basket weaver on your own time and you went and learned it.

I think it depends upon the game itself. Some, have very specific lists of skills that can be taken as secondary skills. And I think others are like, you can take whatever you want, you just can get a penalty.

Yeah. I know in Ultimate Edition, there's a list of skills that you cannot take as a secondary skill.

Right.

Period. And I think that list—

Such as boxing.

Boxing, weapon systems, weapons engineering, a lot of the hard— MD, doctor, I think, or doctor MD. Um, and some of them make sense that you wouldn't just go become a professional boxer on the side, which doesn't make sense at all. I think that's totally somehow a game balance thing, which it's rifts, which doesn't make sense to me. Um, you, you can take gymnastics, but you can't take acrobatics or vice versa. My question is, in games you've run, have you created a house rule system so someone could pick up a skill that either they're barred from Oh yeah. Or they wouldn't normally get— like, they're 4 levels away from getting a skill and they want to learn a skill. And how did you handle that?

In Palladium?

Yeah, in Palladium.

Yeah, in Palladium. Yeah, I've definitely done that. Um, usually because there was a core conceit to the character concept. That's usually one of the big ones that I have required. Um, picking it up in between your level break progression break has happened less frequently, but it's usually because, because of extraordinary circumstances, by and large. I haven't seen much call to do it outside of that.

Have you handled it?

Uh, well, okay. For with character creation, I don't do skill restrictions.

Oh really?

At all?

I don't like them.

Okay.

I think you should be— you should have the freedom to come up with a character background that might not fit what's written on the sheet in front of the— on the, the, the book, you know, like I think a vagabond is a prime example. I don't think a vagabond should have any skill restrictions whatsoever because I think any path of life could have led you to that point, you know, and it happens in movies and stories all the time where The weird-ass drifter, by the way, it turns out he's a retired general or something. So having those weird things happen, I just, I just don't like having those restrictions on it for character creation. I mean, I've done all different things in the past, but I'm really spoiled on the value of the Pharaoh skill system. Like, I just think you should learn skills on the fly that you can pick up or If it's a more advanced skill like medical doctor, you need to take some time and go to some fucking school. Like, I think, I think any of these skills should be learnable by any characters provided you take the time to do them and you have a source.

That becomes a whole other conversation about downtime and how you learn stuff, which is not something that's really addressed in Palladium at all.

No. In fact, most level-based skill systems, level-based role-playing systems don't.

Yeah.

Skill-based progression systems almost always do.

They shoehorned it into even 3rd Ed, but it's really—

That's slow-paced.

I think it was Pathfinder. I think Pathfinder does some downtime stuff. But anyway.

I seem to remember like maybe it was AD&D 2nd Edition or the Rule Cyclopedia or something had like rules on training skills.

And it all came out as an outgrowth of both a series of articles in Dragon Magazine when they were first kicking around adding non-weapon proficiencies and all of the bullshit a cavalier had to go through in Unearthed Arcana in order to— you got the experience, but you don't get to level up until you go find training.

Right, right, right.

I mean, I like the concept of that. Like the, the idea that one doesn't just spontaneously level up all of their skills on an adventure. And one, you know, some of your things, if you do them, they get better. And others that, you know, you might need to go get training on this or take a remedial course at community college.

I think rules as written with the Palladium system, one of my only complaints is that exactly what you just said is that you go up a level, all your skills, even if you've not used them, go up a level. And there's a part of that, but I'm like, Well, that's just how the system works. Okay. I can accept that. And the other side is like, I didn't use any of these skills for the last X amount of time. They will atrophy at some point. Right.

You can always convert. It's so easy. It's so easy to convert to the use them and improve them.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Very simple. Improve by using. Don't get any new skills for free.

Yep.

Done.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that is, you know, it's— here's, for me, the core thing is, is that, okay, I'm sitting down to play a role-playing game that's level progression based. Cool. I'm buying into a set of concepts here where leveling is how my character advances. That's how it goes. Usually it's a class-based system, whether that's a Dungeons and Dragons style class or an OCC class or any of the other myriad versions of that. It's since I have already agreed to those conceits and assumptions, I don't have as much of a problem with it.

Yeah. That's fair.

Yeah.

Totally.

If that's the mechanics that you're playing, just roll with it. You know, be aware, like, like the person who was in one of my Palladium Fantasy games who had a very near-death experience that wiped out half the party. They made a very wrong choice. And, and I had warned them that they were making a very wrong choice.

Did they make a spot check?

Oh no. Well, yes, actually, they made a spot check. They passed the spot check. And then they did the dumb thing that the spot check told them not to do anyway. Um, you know, when you're 3rd level, maybe don't fight a demon lord.

Um, loads of treasure, hordes of experience.

But if the game master put it there, right there, because I should be able to kill it. We should be able to kill it.

Yeah. Expelliarmus, boys and girls. No, no, run away.

Um, what's the challenge rating on that thing?

Well, 4,000.

The, that, that particular player who had been playing as a man-at-arms And ended up being really screwed up by the experience, ended up spending some time at a temple working through a whole bunch of shit. And he came to me afterwards and went, hey, could I get the— I can't remember the Palladium Fantasy religion lore skill proper name.

Religious Doctrine.

Yep, there we go. Could I just get that? Because I've literally spent the winter in a monastery recovering from this? And I went, absolutely, sure, that's a fringe case. We'll, we'll, we'll shoe it in.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I had one player who, funnily enough, was raised in a fishing village but was a man-at-arms, and so he wanted to take one skill from High Seas to, as a character creation one and basically handling small craft. And it's like, yeah, go ahead, knock yourself out. You know how to row boats, set small sails, yada, yada, yada. Um, be flexible on it. But like, if you're playing the system and you're giving it, going with those conceits, just go with the conceits, figure out how to tweak them a bit here and there. You know.

I'm still not a fan of restricting the available skills. Especially once the game begins. My idea, my belief is that your character creation is your life up to this point, regardless of how, whether or not I ignore those. But once the game begins, all fucking bets are off. You can go, you should be allowed to do whatever you want and go in any direction you want and follow any threads and any opportunities that life gives you.

Yeah.

And if life offers you the opportunity to go to medical school for free, you should be able to learn that medical doctor MD skill regardless of whether or not your character OCC says you can get it.

Hopefully the rest of the party is willing to sit around for the 6 years that you're going to be out developing crippling caffeine addiction, probably a sex addiction, and more than likely more a personality that they will no longer tolerate. Things that you don't have to worry about if you start the game as a doctor, by the way.

Exactly.

Because they're all sane.

That only happens if you learn it in the game.

Yes.

Um, I will say that, uh, I've had a number of players come to me and they're like, at character creation, kind of like you're saying NPC. Um, and they're like, I had this background core idea and I want this skill. I would like weapons engineering because I learned it somewhere. I'm like, eh, what are you playing again? Okay. Um, that's a hard sell for me.

I don't know if you can come up with a, if you can come up with a plausible reason.

Sure.

That doesn't just sound like min-maxing.

That, and that's the part that, that's the key.

Yeah.

Like if it's a discrete skill, that's pretty unlikely to come up in play, go nuts. If it's one that's really applicable to what's going to be going on in the game, I get a little more interesting about how you're going to justify that. Um, but that becomes a conversation between the GM and the player.

Yeah.

And, and, and it, and it's a very easy conversation to have, to be honest. And very quickly, the player will usually admit, well, it's a really cool skill and I've always wanted it, even though I'm playing a character that has no business knowing this skill.

Right.

Like, okay, think a little bit harder and convince me on how you learned it. You grew up in a Native American tribe that are all traditionalists, that no technology is there, yet you know how to reprogram a nuclear engine?

Really?

Not really?

Okay. I mean, possible, but unlikely, right?

My dad was a nuclear engineer. I remember he read that book to me many times before bed. And in fact, oh, he just read that one chapter over and over again. I don't know, maybe it was the only one he could read, but it's the only one I know. I know how to turn that shit off.

Right.

Okay.

But that comes back to, you may have other skills that could do the same thing in the clinch pin situation, right? Um, uh, but that's, you know, kind of figuring out what skills you want as your character can be really like, I don't know if I'd go as far as you say with no restrictions, but that's an interesting idea. I might, I might play with that sometime. It's very point-based thought process though.

Different approaches to it work for different games. I think that if you are, if you want a more varied group, then consider lifting those frequently arbitrary skill restrictions from the OCCs. But if you, you know, just want to buy into what you're playing, then go with it.

Mm-hmm.

But I do wholeheartedly recommend don't restrict it once the game begins. Just let things happen how they happen and see where it goes. But use in-game opportunities to inspire the skill choices that you get, like in the Rifts game that we're playing right now. I got a— Mr. Cat got a skill when he leveled up. And I was like, you know, the only thing I can think of that makes sense is I learned a little bit of Spanish by my psychically melding with that Spanish ghost person. So, okay, cool. I picked up a little bit of that. So that explains it because I'm oftentimes the whole spontaneously acquiring skills thing. It's, it feels a little weird.

Yeah.

And I like to find a way to— I personally, as a player, like to explain how I got the thing and find a way to hook it into things that have happened in the game. That's not always going to be the most advantageous choice for my career progression, and it might not give me the most cool points, but I don't know, it fits. It fits the flow of the story.

Yeah, I would agree. Um, after the game has started, uh, it's really easy to find story ideas on how these things will play and how you'll pick up new and interesting skills.

Yeah.

Uh, I'm a little more hard-lined on character creation than you, I think. But, uh, after the game has started, yeah.

Yeah.

Um, there's even a couple of, uh, a couple of the books, I'm trying to remember which one it was, where the players end up in a new organization and they all go through some training and they do a training montage, right? And they pick up some new skills. Well, some of those skills you probably wouldn't learn, but it makes sense if you're doing a boot camp for, you know, 6 months of in-game. So, um, yeah, absolutely.

I think we started talking about like how to do skills and how to roll skills, but we largely drifted into the acquisition and explanation of skills. I think that's what I'm going to focus the title in this discussion.

Yeah.

Skill acquisition.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Yeah.

Fits more what we talked about.

Absolutely.

Well, folks, unless we have something else to say, let's close this out.

I just recommend that rather than ever going for a perception roll most of the time, does the player have a skill that would somehow be related to it and use that instead?

Yep. Like detect ambush.

Detect ambush. Roll against that rather than trying to Search a room. Oh, you're power plant maintenance.

Mm-hmm.

You're more likely to notice when something's a little off, out of place. Why is that panel a little loose?

Why is that 5 inches to the right when it should be flush against the panel? Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Use those skills.

Yeah, I dig it. Folks, join us on Discord. Please drop by, tell us your favorite skill stories and how you handle skills in your game and the acquisition of them. And then if you're feeling generous, drop by our Ko-fi site or throw us a tip on Pinecast to help us pay some of the bills. We greatly appreciate it. Once we get enough people, we might start throwing some names in some of our games. I don't know. I'm trying to think of some ways to benefit. Right now it's entirely, entirely a frivolous expense. So I understand, but we appreciate anything that—

Yeah.

you throw our way helps make these a little cheaper. Buy more Palladium books. Oh yeah, we have t-shirts and hoodies and shit too. You should get one of those. The hoodies are really nice. I really, and I have the stickers on everything I own. Yeah.

I'm literally staring at 2 of them from where I'm sitting.

Yeah. Right.

Well, catch you next time, folks.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts.

Romance.

All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one.

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 directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally 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 The Glitter Boys— that's B-O-I-S—

and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys.

And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/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. Bye.