#173 – Fantasy Book 9: Baalgor Wastelands

Breakfast puppies?

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

You're listening to The Glitter Boys.

Well, it is the day after American Thanksgiving and we're finally Finally back at the microphones to record something. Yes, it has been quite a spell. We've been, we've been busy here at the Breakfast Puppies home central offices. You know, the, the staff has been in quite a blur getting ready for our Black Friday extravaganza.

NPC, can we talk about the crunch you have us all working here?

No.

I want to see my spouse.

Okay, we will let you have one extra piece of coal.

Just one.

You better make it last. But speaking of Black Friday, well, I don't even think this is Black Friday. This is just a bundle of holding thing that came up over the last week. Thanks to that bundle of holding, I now officially have a digital copy of the book that we're about to talk about.

What book would that be, NPC?

This would be Palladium Fantasy 2nd Edition role-playing game, Book 9, The Balgor Wastelands.

So I want to start by raising a question about this book.

Bring it.

Is it Balgor or is it Baalgor?

It depends on my mood. I've called it Balgor. I've called it Balgor. I've called it Balgor. Baalgor. I don't know.

That's something we're gonna have to check in with Kevin about because I'm kind of curious. I— this was one where I have had people look at me weird in the past just because Growing up with a somewhat religious background, when I see double A's, I always go for Baal.

Why?

Because a lot of the double A's carry over from old Aramaic or Sumerian or Egyptian, where it got moved over to Greek and then Latin alphabets and was originally a B-A-'-A-L. and they just nixed the apostrophe between the 2 A's. And so like the ancient Sumerian god Baal is routinely spelled B-A-A-L in earlier texts. And so I always wondering when I see a double A but used in a fantasy product by the author, it's like, give me a clue on what language base you're pulling from here.

Okay, now I'm getting flashbacks to our Nightbane discussion.

Nightbane does the same thing in a couple places, and this is not a complaint by any stretch of the imagination.

No, I don't see why it would be.

But when you run into weird people with, like me, who have weird linguistic databases in their head and shit, you know, it's clue me in, clue me in. Give me a sense.

Well, so let's talk about this book and the word, what it's meaning here. So, oh, definitely, we'll go with Baalgor. I like that. That works for me. Baalgor. Baalgor Wastelands is a setting in the, uh, is a region of the Palladium Fantasy known world setting, which has a history in, uh, one of the most often referenced events of the past of that setting is the Elf-Dwarf War. Baalgor used to be a rainforest until some snotty little dwarves Put together this little thing called the Circle of Unmaking or something like that. The Great Circle, the circle of gonna kill a shitload of elves.

I just want to point out that this is elven propaganda, sir.

And they unleashed the power of that circle upon the, the city of Baalgor at the center of the Baalgor rainforest and just turned the whole thing into a wasteland. So First note here, Baalgor is an elven word, apparently, because it's the elven land. It was the elven rainforest, the elven city of the rainforest. So Baalgor, one of the most un-elf-sounding words that I've ever heard attributed to an elven tongue.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Yep.

So I wonder, I wonder how much of that was Kevin and how much of that was Mr. Bill Coffin, because at least up until that point, I think that we had had very little information on the Belgor Wastelands.

Mm-hmm.

Except that, you know, a great atrocity was unleashed here. Some, some elven lands were destroyed and the rest of it was just kind of left open for players to interpret. So Bill kind of went wild with the history here. I guess he had Kevin's blessing, but I don't know. I would have given it a different word, you know, and had Belegor become what it is called now. But yeah, then again, I guess Palladium elfish isn't the same as Tolkien elfish.

Oh yeah, no, we're not talking, you know, Quenwa or Silvestri here in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah.

Okay.

So anyway, here we are. Baalgor Wastelands. I'm going to get it right. Book 9 of the fantasy series, hot off the tail of Western Empire, which I had mixed feelings on. And those mixed feelings persist here. There's a— what exactly was the words right here at the beginning? Uh, ah, yes. The first words of the fucking book. Now you're playing with power.

Really?

Really, Bill?

I mean, whenever a book leads in on that, I like kind of sigh.

Yeah.

I am expecting some edgelord shit and I get some edgelord shit. We got elven heads on pikes. No, again, don't get me wrong. Palladium is pretty fucking metal. So I'm all right with that.

And I'm always down for some elven heads on pikes.

Just, yeah, that's kind of the best place for them.

Yes.

But the, uh, every, everything in here is like, It's, it's like they ran it through the Spinal Tap converter. Yes, turned it up to 11.

Yes, this, this one goes to 11.

Yeah.

There's new races. There's new character classes. There's new regions, new lands, new factions. Not so much in the way of factions, but—

Can you tell me when this book was first printed? I, I, I, when I was reviewing this book for this episode, a thought occurred to me.

This was 1999.

Okay, so this definitely predates Avatar, right?

Uh, which Avatar are we talking about?

We're talking— Blue people or the blue people Avatar?

Yeah, this definitely predates them.

There are points where it has quite a kind of Avatar-esque feel though, let me tell you.

Yeah. Which, which points of those stand out to you the most? Well, let's start with the COVID Yeah.

Yeah.

This is, you got a, like a blue-skinned orc person. Fighting a thing.

Yeah.

It's, it's all right. It's a Zalesnik piece. Yeah. I'm pretty sure Zalesnik's a pretty nice guy, but I feel that a lot of his earlier stuff around the Palladium lines, I didn't really get a sense of people live in this world.

Yeah.

Just more like, I don't know. It's an action pose.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. It's an action pose. The, now Mr. Perez, on the other hand.

Oh yes, Perez has some great art in this one.

Once again, Ramon Perez is just all throughout this book, knocking it out of the park. Everything from the, the Ba— the Balazod, which I actually think is a pretty cool species, uh, an interesting role-playing opportunity here. The Cyclops Spider, which I've seen in several other— that I've seen that art reused, but the Dragon Man. That dragon man looks fucking dope. Just say it. Like, he looks, he looks dope. He kind of looks like somebody I want to hang out. No, no, no. He looks like he would be part of our adventuring party, but he's the cook and he's seen some shit.

Yep.

And he's not going to put up with your shit. And it's almost as if that staff that he's holding is actually a big old spoon and he's about to take a taste.

Yes.

That's what's in my head.

That's, that, that is definitely right on the money. I got it up here and it's I'm seeing what you're laying down.

Yeah.

Uh, his take on the Yndriths are—

So let's talk about the Yndriths a little bit. What are the Yndriths?

They're, they're lizardmen who aren't lizardmen. They're reptile, right? They're, they are desert lizards, right?

They, they are, um, oh God, I'm suddenly spacing the name. Uh, dragons. Uh, the, the lizard that lives in the desert, the Our friend Quasi has one for God's sake.

The bearded dragon?

Bearded dragon.

Yeah. Or Hyllas or any of those. Yeah.

The reason I wanted to go into that a little bit is I really, really, really appreciated someone putting lizard men in a non-swamp context.

Yeah.

And I super appreciated that. I was like, mm, uh, you know, because whenever you see lizard men, they're either in the jungle or they're in the swamp and someone is breaking that narrative constraint that we've put on fantasy and done lizardmen outside of that. And it was like, hmm.

Agreed.

I love the whole lizards who sun themselves in the hot stone kind of take on lizards instead of the lurking in muddy, murky depths and popping out and stabbing you kind of thing. These are a much more interesting race than most lizard people that I've seen in RPGs, including the lizardmen in the Palladium Monsters and Animals book. Now, I know that we have talked about that book a bit, but I think we've primarily just talked about its cover. We haven't really done a dive into Monsters and Animals.

We do. We haven't. And I think that's one that we might want to break up because it's got some sections to it. And I feel like Rather than doing a review of the entire book in one go, there's a lot to mine there. Yeah, just because it tells you so much about the approach towards the fantasy, Palladium fantasy world.

Yeah. Well, the Andriths are actually from that book originally, and it's nice to see them given more detail here. I like the deeper look into their culture. I like, I always love getting more art of these guys. They are one of those fantasy species that has a noteworthy point of evolution in their life. Not, not their, the life of their species, but the life of the individual.

Mm-hmm.

They will reach a point where they go wandering, and then after that point of wandering, they will return back to their home and evolve in one of two ways. It's interesting seeing this division. You know, men do go one way and women go another, but they have like a distinct biological shift of both physiology and power that is fascinating to see.

Yeah, the weird racial, cultural, um, basically their version of the Amish Springbok, uh, was super interesting. I really enjoyed it. Um, Eric Wojcik originally created them and he, I mean, he knocked it out of the park with the original creation and I think in this book, a good, good service was done to them.

Yeah.

Honestly, when you originally started up your Palladium fantasy game, in the back of my head, I was almost wanting to run in Androth on their, you know, Walkabout.

Yeah.

Or what was the Midden Night version? The, the Rumspringa.

Rumspringa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The—

so a side note on that, I'm actually a fan of people playing other creatures outside of the standard array. With Palladium, my general approach to that is that the species, the cultures, whatever, that are not in the core book are off-limits until they have been met.

Yeah.

And once some— once we find someone of that species and we introduce them to the story, Then we start seeing more of them. Like, a friend of mine wanted to join our game and he started— he's like, he wanted to play a minotaur. And I said, I'm not opposed to someone playing a minotaur, but I am opposed to someone playing a minotaur right now.

Yeah.

But if you want to join and play something else, I can make sure a minotaur will appear soon enough that we can then have introduced that as a thing that exists in the world beyond the normal. Anyway, yeah.

We skipped over one of my favorite creatures that I just want to circle back on. The Drayback.

Drayback. Okay. What is it that you like about the Drayback?

I, I, I have a hard time explaining this one, but I've had this conversation with others. Um, they, they resemble big, slow Komodo dragons or monitor lizards. Um, which admittedly part of it is, is I like both types of lizard. And, but they seem that they're, they're not a playable race.

Mm-hmm.

But if you read the description on the Drayback, it tells you so much about what the Balgor Wastes are actually like when this is one of the most common life forms.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it's, it's all about endurance and the, the fact that you have to be able to go without food and water for 3 days and the fact that they're not exactly bright, but they're, shall we say, determined.

Yeah.

So they, they evoke for the Balgor Wastes what camels evoke when you talk about deserts. That's kind of how I treat them in the setting.

There's another creature. I don't remember if they appear in this book, but I know they appear in Monsters and Animals. Yeah, I don't see them. which is another lizard, the Silanar, which are— the first picture I think you see of a Neanderthal in Monsters and Animals, the original, it's riding a Silanar, and they're just big stupid lizards.

Mm-hmm.

The difference being between the Drayback and the Silanar is that the Drayback seems completely non-aggressive and just is only interested in running away and getting some water, whereas Selanar is like really dumb and also going to eat you. We've got some giants here. And honestly, giants are— the Palladium giants are fascinating. But I think for now, I want to skip over the giants because the giants are going to get their day in a book very soon. It might even be the very next book. A book all about giants. So let's move to the Gossai.

Ah, yes.

I think the Ghostscythe are fascinating. I remember when I was a teenager, I thought they were the coolest fucking thing and I wanted to play them because I was an edgelord and wanted to play cool-ass, you know, leapy stabby slashy assassins.

Mm-hmm.

They're kind of neat. These days I don't get much of a feel for them because I'm not in that headspace anymore, but I do really like certain aspects of them, such as they walk everywhere. It's neat having a race that's like, well, we could ride, but we prefer to walk. They quite chain cane that shit. They go across the world on only their 2 legs. And it's great.

So when it comes to Gosai, my thoughts on them have evolved over the years. Uh, having started my early role-playing career on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, when I originally came and saw the Gosai, my first thought was, oh, so this is just their Rith riff on the Githyanki, Githzerai.

Yeah, right.

Leaning far more towards Githzerai than Githyanki. And I kind of just pushed it aside, as it were, because it's like, oh, it's just a, you know, carbon copy, etc., etc. Because of things like the walking, because of the little tidbits in there regarding their mating and family habits and stuff, I've like found them to be far more interesting. And while I had never drawn the line to the Kuai Chang Kang the way you just did, um, I got to the same point. I just didn't have that cultural touchpoint, which I'm gonna thank you for. But yeah, um, I, I, you know, yes, they're the stealthy stabby thing, but I think They're kind of an untapped interesting culture to explore in the game.

And I like that they are largely culturally ascetic. And that creates an opportunity, some might say conundrum, for game masters to come up with new ways to entice player characters to do things. Then loot the dungeon, get rich. When you don't care about wealth and you don't need all of that stuff or loot, it creates more, I think, of a personal approach to, to going on an adventure. You have more reason to be there than someone who just wants to get rich.

I generally agree with you. It does create a conundrum for GMs. Uh, I, I have 2 answers to that. One, now that you've brought it to my attention, go watch Kung Fu and see why he does anything.

Exactly. Yeah.

But the second of all is if a player is going to be playing an aesthetic character, whether it's a race that's aesthetic or someone from an aesthetic background.

Ascetic.

Ascetic. Yes. Thank you. Uh, appreciate the correction on that. The— there is often very, very, very strong beliefs attached to that. And you really got to work with the player to make sure that they're— if they want to play it, that play that character that way, they have— it's really incumbent on them to have that pretty fleshed out. And they have the lift of staying in the lines on that one rather than Yeah.

I just remember me as a teenager looking at their numbers. And again, now we're playing with power, like all, all of the creatures here, all of the creatures here have higher attributes. And this is around the time that we start seeing more and more creatures get static bonuses to attributes instead of—

Yeah.

I never liked that direction. I liked that it was just xd6, you know, and you had a number of 6s that are actually rolled. Now, for example, their speed is 3d6 plus 6. I would prefer to just make it 4d6, but whatever. Well, I remember specifically being a teenager looking at these and having experience with Palladium Fantasy 1st Edition, and at this time finally getting into 2nd Edition and just looking at things like the amount of damage that they do. Like by level 5, their claws do 3d6 damage. And I'm like, 3d6 damage?

Yeah.

It's like a fucking greatsword on their fingers. I just remember seeing that. Now, you know, today we look at rifts and other things and we're so used to these super high damage numbers that it can be difficult, uh, or it can be easy to miss them when you go backwards and look at things and see that, oh, like you might just see, think 3d6 and that's nothing, but 3d6 is a shitload.

Yeah.

For, for this scale of power.

It is a crap ton.

Yeah. Yeah. Like they have a 4d6 to melee attack out of the gate with their kick. It's pretty, pretty intense. Grommik are another one that I want to skip because, well, okay, maybe not. This gives them more flavor. The Grommik are Well, they're reptiles and they fly and we sense a theme here.

Yep.

They are, they are the remnants of an advanced civilization. And if you go back in some of the prior books, prior books like Island at the Edge of the World.

Oh yeah.

You meet a basically cryogenically frozen ancient Grommik wizard. who is a remnant of that civilization, a holdover from when the Grommik were great and powerful. And, you know, if you release him upon the world, I believe his name was Selcestison. If you release Selcestison upon the world, he plans to bring his species back to power. And—

Like you do.

So getting a little bit more insight into these still current barbaric sky warriors is pretty fascinating. But again, they do that, that IQ is 2d6 plus 1.

Yeah.

Why? Why is there a plus 1 there? Yeah. Like, why not just leave it at 2d6? Or their physical strength is 4d6 plus 2. This is—

I am not—

I'm not a fan.

I'm not inherently opposed to that method in attributes as long as it's a ground-up convention within the game.

Yeah.

Like from your first initial race types you introduce upwards. That's how it works, where you're using those modifiers to skew the, shall we say, for lack of a better word, bell curve, and to skew the bell curve for the race compared to other races. If that is a conceit of your mechanics, I'm fine with it. When you start dropping it in later in the book, like in the system, I have a huge problem with that unless you're like talking about really weird edge cases like demons or something, you know?

Yeah. Or I want to, yeah, I want more consistency with the numbers. You know, I prefer to shave those numbers off or just convert them into dice. It smacks to me, it gets me twitch flashbacks towards the baseline systemic conventions of the old West End D6 system where your stat was a pip. No, it was a, you had a die and a pip. So it'd be like, it would be like 2D plus 1, 2D plus 2. At the moment it became a plus 3, it instead shifted up to 3D.

Yeah.

This just gives me those flashbacks. And I thought that was, it was elegant in its time for what it was, but I don't think it works here.

No, no. Especially when you're bolting it onto an existing system with existing conventions.

Yep. Oh, and speak of Minotaur, Minotaurs are here.

Yes.

We saw them a little bit in Old Ones, but now we have a lot more about them. And what's fascinating is that the Minotaurs seem to fall into 2 groups. There are the, the, the murderous cannibals or whatever, but then there's also kind of peaceful vegetation— vegetarians. And we, you get to see them more and more frequently as this book goes on.

I love that take on Minotaurs, by the way. I mean, it's, it's such a nice riff on a quote unquote cattle-based race. Yeah.

I mean, they're bovine. Why would they be meat eaters?

I mean, I understand why they were that way Greek mythology. And, but even in Greek mythology, you know, there was some conceits in there as well.

And again, we got more dinosaurs. We got more things. We've got, we are spending so much time on these races, but they are fascinating.

Yes.

The Quillbacks are like, what would you get if you took a hedgehog and a kender and you crossed them together and there you would have a Quillback.

Yes.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

That, that, that's right on the money.

Yep. They are Kittender from Dragonlance crossed with hedgehogs. That, that's pretty much it. They're, they're small. They're secretive. They're short-lived. They have lots and lots and lots of quills. They only live about 15 to 20 years. So yeah, we've got the Quarians who are the racial balancing pair to the Gossai. They were each summoned by the elves and the dwarves. They are rather strong, rather tough. Um, I guess their whole thing is that they're tough as nails and they have a healing factor. So, uh, it's a nice balance to the Gosai who deal a shitload of damage. And they've got some interesting mages. We've got some fucking insect mounts. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

If you wanted to fly on a giant bee, you can. More, more big-ass monsters, more big-ass monsters. We have, yeah, we got a lot of monsters here.

Lots and lots of monsters.

If you as a player or as a game master have no other interest in the setting, this book is good alone for the creatures. They're good creatures. They are fascinating takes on classical monsters. Like these, like, okay, what am I looking at now? The Slodary. What would you get if you crossed a velociraptor with a flying squirrel?

Literally.

That's the Slodary. The Slodary. Or what if you get, what would you get if you crossed a Dune sandworm with a chicken? You have the sandworm here. And then you have truly alien fucked up creatures like the Thin Ones.

Oh yeah.

Again, another Ramon Perez piece just knocking it out of the park here.

Yep.

Body Snatchers. Who doesn't love Body Snatchers? We got, we've got Amphibia. Are they reptile or are they amphibious?

Uh, the Vril. The Vril. I was going to say, are you talking about the Vril? I am not entirely sure. Uh, they're another old race though.

Yep. Yep. Um, yeah, they seem to be reptile. They don't enjoy moisture.

Yeah.

So yeah, we're going with reptiles here. Um, and you know, another weird race for the Palladium world. Hey, we are now 70 pages in of just like creatures, people and creatures, a little bit of history. Now we get to the rest of the book, which is all right.

Yep.

It's okay. I don't really have much to say about it. It's a whole lot of wasteland.

Yeah.

There's— I just didn't really— the book doesn't otherwise bite me. Like, there's some fascinating history, and I really like the historical texts, all of the stuff written from the journals of Rystrum Casius. I love all of that stuff. But then we finally start getting into the details of this setting, and I Nothing really pops for me.

So I have a slightly different take on that.

Okay.

I actually kind of really like the wastelands as the fallen desolate place that a group of players from elsewhere in the world can explore looking for the remnants of ancient empires and lost treasure. And it's, in so many ways, it's totally alien to the rest of the Palladium world, and but still fits in it.

Yeah.

And so I, I see it holding this, not a place you necessarily set your entire campaign, but a series of interconnected adventures trying to recover artifacts from the pre-elf-dwarf war.

I could go with that.

Yeah, it has its place. It— and one thing I will say is it does give you a little bit of a, shall we say, um, oh God, D&D setting, a Dark Suns setting. Yeah, it gives you a little bit of a Dark Suns feel to it, but without a lot of the— this was atomic bombs rather than ecological disaster, magical ecological disaster feel. So.

Yeah, I am. I mean, I don't have anything bad to say about the content of it. It's just none of it really sunk in with me. I mean, the, the Minotaurs, the sections on the Minotaurs are pretty cool. Uh, the various tribes that we see, um, The, the details on the Eandrith tribes I found really, really interesting. But I don't know, there's— it doesn't feel— it doesn't have the same hooks for me that some of the previous Palladium books, even Western Empire. Like, I miss those key locations. Here's— there's, there's one of them.

Mm-hmm.

Only partially. And that's Trokar. Nope, nope, nope. We got 2. We got 2. We got Gorthasi Tor, the City of Giants. So we got, we got 2 locations with some keys and then just lots and lots and lots of, I don't know.

And lots and lots of wasteland.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even, even the later stuff like Land of the Damned and stuff felt a little more fascinating than this to me, I guess. I don't know. I will say that of the art in the book, my favorite is the 2-page spread, page 90 to 91. The spread across the top of those pages, the street scene of the city of Trokar, yet another fantastic example of Ramón Pérez doing what Ramón Pérez does best, which is drawing people. living in a world.

Mm-hmm.

God, I love it. Like, that, that is just a wonderful smattering of all the Palladium races, including some that are only mentioned in other books. And you can just, you can look this over and get just so many good ideas of the way that the world looks.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what else do we have to say about this book? Because we covered it. And I think we did more than enough on its high points, its creatures, some of the interesting cultures. Yeah, I will say I still feel like for a book about a region of the world that was created by the elf-dwarf war, we don't get as much as I wanted on that topic.

We don't. And that, that is a big complaint of mine.

Yeah. And it's like, if there was a book where you were going to really start dropping the facts and truth about it, it seems like this would be the one you would do it.

Yeah. I feel that we're given like just more hints and breadcrumbs, but it doesn't lead to anything, any kind of a delicious treasure trove of information.

Mm-hmm.

Another disappointing thing for me about this book is this is the first one that doesn't have an adventure in it. There are seeds of adventures. But everything up to this point has had adventures in it, including Western Empire. This one doesn't. It gives you this vast setting, the area that you would expect to be just lots of places for adventure, and it just kind of glosses over them. There's nothing here. There's no, we don't have any dungeon maps. We don't have any of those classic Palladium style. Here's a group of people in a place at a time and something's going to happen, insert players.

Right.

Right.

We don't have any of those.

And while I don't necessarily, generally speaking, in the field of roleplay have a problem with that approach, because oftentimes I don't even look at pre-designed adventures other than to, if it was written by the game's creators, to be able to get a little bit more in their head. Yeah. About how they see their world working. It's such a standout differentiator from the rest of the Palladium line that it does feel kind of odd.

Yeah. And of course, as we established in the previous book, something I— Bill and I have— we have differences. Bill doesn't like random tables.

Fuck you, Bill.

That's a little harsh, sir.

He can, he can like or dislike whatever he wants, but he's coming into a series that up until this point has been full of them. And he's just like, nope, I'm not doing that.

And I will—

it grates on me.

I will point out there are a few random tables. There is some random encounter tables.

Not enough.

Yeah, I know. I know the wilderness encounter tables exist. Um, I could, I would have preferred to see them fleshed out there because functionally it's about a little over 20 options. Well, okay, more than 20, but I understand for those of you who like NPC who, uh, never met a random, a random table they didn't like, uh, and squirreled away for potential later use.

Indexed, filed, sorted, and tagged for quick reference.

Oh my God. If you I've seen the man's filing system for random tables. It's, it's disturbing. It's vaguely fetishistic.

It's based upon the way my brain works, which most people's brains don't really follow. The thing about this encounter table is it's really just a bunch of preset adventure seeds. Yeah. Like, and I appreciate those, but Like, I like to come up with the stories myself.

Mm-hmm.

Like, I, I can take a random table that is just nothing but 100 lines, and each literal lines, not sentences, but lines, 100 lines of, you have found 2d6 ogres or whatever. I can turn that like into something. I just want to know a quick glance of the kind of creatures or people that I might encounter in any region. We had those in previous books. You know, I want each region to have like a few lists. If, if I've, if I'm out of ideas, I'll roll on that table and what, but, but this is, you rolled this and now we have a clearly fleshed out thing. And I'm like, I just wanted some fucking kobolds or something. I don't, I, it, it's clever, but it feels like Bill's kind of pushing back against the— The people who like random tables.

Yes. Yeah.

It's a, it's a direct attack on you and your people. It is. Yep.

Yep. This, this doesn't feel random. This feels like a bunch of preset encounters.

Yeah. It sounds, it is almost, uh, and some of them verge on plot hooks that have been dumped on a random encounter table.

Yeah. Like there's a handful here that are good. 1d4 owl things in a bad mood looking for trouble. I can work with that. That oh, I can I can take that and run with it. Thank you, Bill, for for letting for for believing in the power of my imagination. I appreciate that. Just all of these others that I'm like okay oh yeah yeah I'm just grumpy grump grump grump.

You're an old man. Get off my ear lawn.

And unfortunately, Bill's going to be around here for a while. I think he does the next dozen or so books.

Get used to it, my friend. Not anymore.

Okay, uh, aside from this Bill rant, I don't have anything else to say about this book.

Yeah.

I think that it's not one that I would say people need to get.

You know, I, I see. Yeah, I would agree. I, I generally would agree. If you are like me and some part of your soul yearns for Sword and Sandal style adventure, or you want to see what you could do if you set Sahara in the Palladium world, this is a book you should pick up. But even the really cool races that are introduced by and large are hemmed in and sectioned off in this little section of the world.

Yeah.

So it's a, it's a nice to have. If you want grand adventure exploring the remnants of a lot of a fallen empire, maybe take a look at it.

Yeah.

If you want a little, throw a little Sword and Sandal style play in there, great. If you want a game where every, almost every single culture and race you meet is so alien to the players' concepts and baseline assumptions, it's worth picking up. But if that's not what you're looking for, give this one a pass.

Yeah.

My, that's basically my feelings on it as well. In the past, we have advised players or game masters to get certain standout books regardless of it the scope for the amount of inspiration that you'll be able to get from it long-term or the amount of useful content that you'll be able to, or mechanical stuff that you can apply to your own games. This is such a contained location.

Yeah. It's very much a game in a container.

Yeah. All of the stuff here, even this and the stuff that you can take out and use elsewhere has been printed elsewhere. The, the Yandrith, the Grommok, they're in Monsters and Animals, which you probably already have. You don't need this for if you're, if you just want them. Um, there's a few other races, but they're so specific to the region that like a Gossai or a Korion or even a Quilbeck, finding them outside of this region is going to be so extremely rare. And they're also in their own way rather uniquely powerful. So if a player comes to you and says, oh, I want to play a Gosai, and your group consists of a group of, you know, low-level standard Palladium characters, you might want to step back a bit and think, this character is basically going to outclass the thief and the fighter and the other fighter all at the same time.

So yeah.

Again, it's, it's a very contained area. If you want to play with power, as Bill says, then get this book. But otherwise, I'd say skip it. I think the next ones are going to be much more useful.

I totally concur. Yeah.

Okay. Well, that's Beilgor Wastelands, book 9 of the Palladium Fantasy RPG. 2nd Edition series. I'm not sure when this episode's going to release. I'm going to try and get it out as soon as we can, but we've already been talking about this on our Discord server, which, dear listener, you should join so you can tell us your thoughts on this book.

Definitely.

But what I was getting at is there is a bundle of holdings sale right now on the Palladium Fantasy 2nd Edition role-playing game. Most of the books are in it. I got to finish up my digital collection from that. There's some other stuff in there, like, uh, some of the best books in the fucking series. Dragons and Gods is in there.

Oh, cool.

And, uh, the Mysteries of Magic is such a good book. It's in there. So it's a, it's a fantastic collection. Hopefully I will release this episode with you having enough time to run and Hit buy on that bundle of holding. It's worth it.

And again, drop by our Discord. Maybe ask, ask Jacob, Just Jacob, about his old Palladium campaign that the key point was the smuggling of thin ones out of the Balgor Wastes and using them, turning them loose in cities to create terror and fear.

Ugh. God, I— no, sir. I don't like it. Thanks for listening, folks. We'll catch you next time.

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. It's available in 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.

Thank you.

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. Thanks for listening. 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. 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.