#228 – Catching Up with Kevin and Sean

Breakfast puppies?

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

Hi, I'm Kevin Sambita of Palladium Books, and you're listening to The Glitter Boys.

Welcome back to the Glitter Boys, everyone. Today we have the pleasure of recurring guests and really the whole reason why we have the podcast. We have Kevin and Sean both visiting here in the studio virtually and, uh, are going to be here to talk to us about all things Palladium. Thank you very much, Kevin and Sean, for joining us once again. We always love this. Our fans always love this. We get a lot of traction out of you two coming and just talking with us about Palladium and everything going on. So. What's going on in the world of Palladium tonight? Now, I've heard about another Kickstarter.

Nothing's going on. No, there's all kinds of stuff going on. By the way, thanks for having us back. We love, we love coming and talking on your show.

Yeah, excited to be here.

It's always a lot of fun. And, uh, so, uh, yeah, we got all kinds, all kinds of stuff going on. Just, just, uh, a quick summary is Christmas surprise packages have started. Um, we have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness closeout sale. Um, so the books are available at a 40% discount. Uh, and the— for us, the big exciting news is, uh, this is Sean's baby. We have the Rifts Glitter Boy Codex backer kit crowdfunder going on, and it's just kicking ass. We, we, what, Sean? We, we, uh, made our goal in less than 2 hours.

Oh yeah, we, and we, and you know, you, you know, Kevin and I, we talk behind the scenes about this stuff because, uh, I'm not gonna name any names, but there are different, um, publishers out there that they'll put their goals artificially low in order to have that kind of like, oh, we made our goal really fast. And, and I get it, especially if you, if you're being honest, you already have a manuscript and art developed and you're gonna publish the book anyway. Like, I really do get it. But for us, we try to make sure that we put out something that, you know, if it didn't hit this number, we'd be kind of worried. Yeah. So, and it really is what is going to enable us. And, you know, if it's 5 minutes, if it's 5 hours, I hope— I don't think it really matters to the true fans. And but yeah, even so, I doubled the number that we did for Titan Robotics, even though The minimum goal for that was $25,000. We were already going to publish those books. And this is a very similar offering, except this time we have all this extra cool stuff that we tried out first and have kind of— I don't know if the proper word is perfected, but we've elevated for Palladium fans in the Ninja Turtles, the TMNT and Other Strangeness Kickstarter. The dice, the game master screen, all this fan favorite stuff. We're bringing that now to Rifts with this crowdfunder. And so we're really excited. And again, it's, uh, it isn't a Kickstarter, just to make sure that, that, that nobody goes and tries to look it up on Kickstarter. You're gonna have a bad time. Um, so make sure you can put it into Google or you can go to BackerKit, but if you just put in Glitterboy Codex, it should pop right up on Google. Or whatever your favorite search engine is. And yeah, we're really stoked. We smashed our goal. We had doubled it from Titan Robotics from $25,000 to $50,000. I was hoping that over the course of the campaign, we would increase our number of backers and our total pledges by maybe 50% over Titan Robotics. We did that in the first 24 hours.

Wow.

So yeah, well, Kevin and I, we talk about numbers. We're trying to game theory through things and make sure that we're adjusting because When you run a crowdfunder, it's extremely involved if you're, if you're doing it right, I guess. And you try and tweak and adjust numbers and the different things going into it. And the fans are always asking, well, can you do this? Can you do that? And once you launch, you don't really have as much flexibility as a lot of people would like to think, because especially with all these different kinds of rewards and stuff like that, some of them like the, the defray the costs of others, or you're trying to hit certain print minimums. It gets really kind of complicated. And I hope fans are patient and understanding about that when we say, well, that was cool, but no, I don't think we can do that. But, uh, but no, it's been a really fantastic campaign. And, and Kevin's like, oh, I think that the number's gonna hit this or this. And I, I've just been kind of like, well, you know, we hit— we're like way beyond what I wanted. So I'm happy as a clam. I mean, you know, if the, if the final number is X or Y or Z after the crowdfunding ends and after our, our, our after the crowdfunder ends, we still have a, a pre-order time period. Um, and the cool thing is if you back the crowdfunder for like even just like a buck during the crowdfunding period, during the pre-order period, you can still get the exclusive stuff because you got your foot in the door during the crowdfunder official time frame. Um, but I always try and put that out there. But yeah, no, it's like I'm really happy in it. And, and, and so for me, it's like, well, those numbers all sound great, but we're like way beyond what I really thought was critical. So it's been really fantastic reception from both fans.

So ahead of—

oh, go ahead, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, I think fans are excited because first of all, it, it's all new material for the Glitter Boy, which is, you know, most Rifts fans' favorite power armor and favorite character to, to play, uh, especially if you're into, uh, you know, power gaming and, and you want a badass walking tank, that's the Glitter Boy, baby. And, uh, I think they're excited about the dice and the Coalition flag and the game screen. But the other cool thing, and this was entirely Sean's idea and I, I was tickled with it, is we're offering, um, a Redux Edition of the Mechanoids RPG. Now a lot of people are thinking, I'm sure Well, yeah, I'm familiar with the Mechanoids. Some of them may even have the original comic book size trilogy or the collected blue, blue cover edition or, or both. And, um,

Rift Sourcebook 2 Mechanoids, that's how I got into the Mechanoids.

Yep. But what people don't know, or what most people don't know, is that in 1985 I decided to kind of build on the original Mechanoid invasion part of the trilogy. And I came out with, uh, the Mekhanoid role-playing game in 1985, and it had like an extra 100 pages of material, new weapons and vehicles and stuff to give, to give the humans more of a fighting chance against the Mekhanoids, uh, and to make it slightly a little less dark. But, but it's still like, uh, it's, it's kind of, uh— You know, Aliens meets Terminator, and, uh, except they're all out to destroy humanity. And Sean didn't know about the book, like you just said. And, and, and so I knew it

existed. I'd seen it, but it hadn't been in print since 1989.

'85. Oh yeah, since '89. Yeah, when we sold that.

Well, it hadn't been on sale. Kevin did one big printing of it and it hadn't been on sale. And Kevin had kind of soft, like extremely softballed the extra material. He's like, oh, you should take a look at this book. It has, you know, some extra vehicles and some, a few extra character options that, you know, might be cool. It's got 100 pages of material that's not in the Mechanoid Invasion trilogy.

I was going to say it, there's a lot in that blue covered book that wasn't in the original comic books and fleshes out some stuff. It's, There's a lot in here.

Well, this isn't the blue cover book. This is a different book.

Oh no.

Okay.

Oh wait, I have that.

Most people don't know this exists. So what happened was it came out early in 1985, and then this other game came out in 1985 by Palladium that slightly overshadowed it, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. And then in 1986, this other little game came out that overshadowed it, Robotech. And, and, you know, if you could get Robotech or Mechanoids, you're going for Robotech. And it just kind of got, I think, buried by that. And then I, I didn't tell people about this 1985 book, uh, and I'm showing it to you guys because I know This is a podcast, but, um, and by the way, even we only have one. This is my only surviving copy. I've got

a copy. Of course you do.

I always thought I, I dropped the ball, then it must be not very good because we only sold like 5,000 copies in 5 years. And I'm like, well, you know, you can't knock them all out of the park. And, uh, And so I was really tickled when Sean finally gets around to reading it and he's like, holy crap, Kev, this is a forgotten gem. This book is great. And I'm like, it is? Stupid bastard.

Well, and it was, yeah, it was so funny because I had wanted to do a Mechanoids collection. I had wanted to take the next generation of Mechanoid stuff out of Rift Sourcebook 2, you know, give it a little more context within the Mechanoid Invasion trilogy, the original trilogy. And Kevin was like, well, there's this other book that has a little bit of extra stuff. And it went, it covers the first chapter of, you know, the Mechanoid Invasion. And that book goes from 48 pages.

Yep.

To 148 pages. And so I was like, it's got adventure material by Eric Wojcik. It's got a bunch of tons of expanded world and setting building by Kevin. Kevin, new mechanoid details, new human weapons and options and vehicles and water vehicles, all kinds of crazy stuff. So it just really blew my mind. And Kevin thought it was just like this piece of junk, but like he said, he had just come out with Blade and Fantasy Heroes Unlimited. He comes out with that, and then immediately at the same time, the same year, Eric Wojcik finishes up the Turtles, TMNT and Other Strangeness. Yeah. And then Robotech comes out, and then there's this little thing called Riffs that comes out a few years after that.

Yeah, 1990.

Yep. Yeah. So it just— I think it was one of those things where it just got so eclipsed. If maybe there'd been some lull in Palladium awesomeness, maybe fans would have found it or, you know, gone back to it. I don't know. You know what I mean? But it's just—

Some people found it because, in fact, it was funny. I couldn't believe my eyes when we had the opening at the Detroit Historical Museum. for the Rules of Palladium exhibit, you know, a bunch of people showed up with books for me to sign. And this guy walks up and he hands me a copy of the Mechanoid RPG from '85. And I'm like, holy shit, I haven't seen this in like 10, 15, 20 years. And he's like— and it was like in mint condition. And, uh, he's like, yeah, I know, pretty cool, huh? He had the original 3 books too. And, uh, I'm like, wow, that's Awesome. So, you know, Mechanoid's always had its cult following, but it's always been kind of this small cult following. And, you know, Sean also pointed out that— and so did Matthew Clements, one of our freelance writers— that the Mechanoid books were kind of ahead of their time because it was all dark stuff and interesting concepts and things that weren't real popular at the time, especially in role-playing games. I mean, what, you had Gamma World? Oh boy, you know, and not to slam Gamma World, it was a cool setting, but it was more space opera. And this was dark, gritty. This is sort of like comparing The Dark Knight Batman to the 1960s Batman TV show. You know, it's just totally different. And, you know, The Dark Knight wouldn't have flown well in 1960, but You know, it was great in the '80s. And, uh, sort of the same thing with Mekanoids. I think it was a little too, too grimdark for, for most people at the time. You know, it just got overshadowed by, uh, like, like 3 mega hits and some cool in-between hits like Ninjas and Super Spies and Beyond the Supernatural.

Yeah, I just— those little things, you know.

So I, I got a quick question here. There is a fair amount of listeners who are like, they know the name Mechanoids. They know that it's something that Palladium published, but there's a certain portion who that's literally where it ends. So give me your elevator pitch of what the Mechanoids is and why people should want to read it and read and play it.

Kevin, do you mind?

Yeah, no, go ahead.

So I think that the Mechanoids is really interesting. Again, Kevin is, I mean, he's repeating me, I guess so. But yeah, he's right. I think it was ahead of time, its time. And if you look now at gaming, Aliens is very popular. Mothership is the most popular science fiction RPG out right now that I know of, right? And it is similarly like a dark space future, very grim and deadly. And I think people are, that's really come back into vogue for a lot of players to play stuff that is menacing and scary and exciting that way. And for the Mechanoids, what it is, is there's a race of They're not just robots. They're genetically engineered psychic organisms that are tied cybernetically into their bodies. And you'd say, well, how does that evolve? Well, it doesn't, right? That's— it was manipulated by their original— they were manipulated by their original creators. Then they continued to perfect themselves. And now they clone themselves. Normally when you clone something, you don't get the memories, right? But with the mechanoids, since they're all powerful psychics, they've, through the genetic engineering, they unlock their own psychic abilities. They psychically imprint their experiences in like kind of a really rough kind of, I don't know, I don't think you use the term in the books, Kevin, but like kind of like a psychic scream of their tortured birth to all of their clones. Yeah. And so you— what you end up with is whole legions of these things that are like the same guy who's a homicidal maniac murderer bent on revenge for the pain, the birth pains of his cybernetic creation. And so they, they, uh, they are homicidal and fratricidal. They, they destroyed their creators and they're looking to wipe out all humanoid life forms, all bipedal life. in the— well, I would say the megaverse, but at minimum their universe. And so, and they're masters of biotechnology, as you could imagine. They can manipulate and control biological constructs or beings or bioforms with amazing ability because of their psychic powers and their powerful technologies. So they're a real menace. Each one is like a 12-foot-tall biotechnological horror of a tank walking around with the firepower of a small battlecruiser, it seems, compared to like the humans and the other science fiction races that inhabit this dark space opera setting.

Well, and I know When I originally was going through those books, the term grimdark really wasn't there, and you've used it a couple of times, and it really was a grimdark setting. The humans, you're pretty much out of luck. Like, you tried to fight until you all died. Like, there wasn't a lot of chance you were going to survive once you really laid out the spectrum of the planet and how many aliens.

It's like you're in space. Yeah,

it is. And that's, that's what I think is really cool about it too, is it jumps right into the action. So there's Kevin came out originally with 3 different zines. And the whole idea was he wanted to create the Palladium Fantasy roleplaying game. He was, he had created it in its basic, you know, I guess you'd call it like its alpha form. Um, and so he was, I think, uh, codifying a lot of his ideas on game design and how he wanted his system to work. Yeah. So this game is like, the original is like a prototype of the Megaversal system, but it's not the same. And it's a little confusing for a lot of players who are used to the Megaversal system to go back and look at it and play it. And it's really hard to just pull out and play. I ran into that same thing. We talking to John from the Glitter Boys and— or not from Glitter Boys, from Legion of Myth. Legion of Myth. He wanted to run it. And so he was— but he ran and said, he's like, wow, this is kind of, Daunting to make sure I understand everything and have everything converted over and we can easily create characters and blah, blah, blah. And so when he heard we were doing this and I was doing this, he was like, oh great, I can just wait till Sean gets it done. But that's kind of the point here is that, is that we are going to make this very accessible because you can jump right into the action. The first chapter in the adventure is called Invasion. And you're human colonists on a planet called Gideon-E, and you're being invaded by a Mechanoid mothership that's the size of North America and 24 stories thick. It's like, it's— It's got more surface area than planet Earth, right? I mean, it's— and that's the cyclops. That's what I— one of the things I love about the Mechanoids is this cyclopean architecture. These just out-of-control threats that the Mechanoids pose. And that's— this isn't like the whole entirety of their forces. This is just one of their ships. And you're doomed with this really kind of pyrrhic battle that you're engaged in. And then the next chapter, Journey, you're, you're, you're playing the, you know, the next generation or step in this storyline, and you're hiding inside the walls of their mothership. That's how the humans escape the planet, is hiding inside their massive, massive ship in tunnels that the Mechanoids themselves can't fit in. So they send these little robots and these tribal humanoid clans that they torture and manipulate to harass the humans. And because they're the Mechanoids, they aren't just homicidal. They're like the worst of the serial killers. They live to torture and torment their prey, which, you know, again, feeds into the psychic aspect of their anger and their revenge fantasies. And then the 3rd chapter, you actually play as part of what's called the Nigellian Confederacy, which is a— it's like if it wasn't for the mechanoids, it would be like this cool space opera that would be very familiar to a lot of people, I think, like this late '70s, early '80s space opera setting that would be pretty neat to adventure in by itself. But with the Mechanoids in the mix, it becomes a dark space opera. And you're trying to figure out what happens to the Mechanoids because they kind of disappear at that last part of the chapter. And so it's called Homeworld. Because you're going and trying to figure out where they are, where they went, what happened. Have they— do they have some new dastardly plans? You know, so I don't know if you want to add anything there, Kevin, but, uh, oh, and then the last thing I'll say is that people are probably familiar with is there's also the Rift Sourcebook 2 Mechanoids, where a new generation of Mechanoids, even ornier than the first and bigger and meaner than the first, invade Rift's Earth when Archie and Hagen screw around with a shifter and opening dimensional portals. And they end up having to basically— the bad guys have to become the good guys to stop Riff's Earth from being destroyed. They want to rule Riff's Earth, not see it wasted and laid low by the Mechanoids or some sort of threat like that. It's like their very worst fear. So that's where I encountered the Mechanoids. And so I was originally really excited to take that concept and that kind of next generation of stuff and combine it with the original Mechanoid Invasion trilogy into something that— a collection that all Mechanoids fans could really enjoy. And, uh, yeah, that's where we're at with it because I want to do a collection. And then I was like, well, Kevin, if I'm gonna do the remaster, why, why don't I also, uh, you know, uh, we get the, the art done in full color? And the fans really enjoyed that. And then I was like, If we're gonna do that, I might as well take the rules from the TMNT Redux. And, you know, obviously there's some stuff to add to it to support the mechanoids. But, you know, I'd like to take that stuff and put it into it because it would be much more approachable by the fans. And yeah, before long it was. And Kevin was, was, was humoring me at first, I think, because he was just— we were just kind of like, I really wanted to do it. And we're just hoping like, well, Kind of like when we talked about the black, white, and red edition of the Turtles books, we're like, well, we'll do it. We'll see if it's— if it makes any money, but we'll just hopefully we can break even. But the fans have gone really, really, really rabid over it. So,

so,

you know, it's pretty awesome. Yeah.

So one question. Um,

yeah,

so I'll be honest, my introduction to Mechanoids was an ad in a Dragon magazine for Mechanoid Space.

Hmm.

And then I saw Sourcebook 2 and I was like, oh, and then I got ahold of the comics and then I got ahold of the Blue Book. And then I had, now I've just double-checked. I have 2 copies of the one that you have, the 1985 publication. But what about Mechanoid Space? We add some of that into this book or a splat, or is that in the, you know, 250,000 mark, you know, the undisclosed, uh, you know, limits that we can leak out and like try to drive for the next 10 days?

Actually, it is because, um, we just— I did— Daniel post the update? Do you know? Yes. Um, he did. Okay, great. I was just working on it last night, my last night, because I'm in a completely different time zone. And so, um, we're actually— Kevin and I have been cooking up new material. Some of it is, um, you know, inspired by the Caliber Comics material. And, um, we had originally, when we announced this project, I wanted to add some of those unique Mechanoid or Mechanoid-associated stuff from the Caliber comics. And the original plan was just I would just write them up and include them, you know, without art or anything like that. It's pretty simple stuff, maybe a page or two of material. And then of course Kevin and I can't help but talk and machinate and, and, and really dive— I started asking him all these crazy questions and We decided that we are going to add some material that's never seen print before, never even really been conceived of before, to this book as part of the $250,000 stretch goal for the campaign. So some of it, for instance, when we did the new update, you can read it, our fans can read it there. Anyone interested can check it out, look at the campaign page. We have lots of details about this, but I dragged Stephen Cummings, the artist that did the art for the Blu-ray Codex, also famous for, um, his, uh, comics with Image Comics. Uh, he's worked on DC. He did a whole bunch of Marvel Star Wars. He did The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and some other really cool stuff. Um, and he is on board now, and he's going to be illustrating all these new things. So we're going to have— one of the things we're teasing so far is the Mechanoid Raider, which is a new Raider that you see in the Caliber comics. And it's going to be Steven and mine and Kevin's kind of update on that concept for canon inclusion. And then— and those comics are canon. They're really great. But, you know, the look might be updated a bit. And then we're also adding a power suit to the game, which is constructed using the crude human equivalents of the biomechanical technology of the mechanoids. Mm-hmm. And so for the first time, the humans have been developing their light body battle armor, their environmental battle armor. Then they have the, I think it's called the Juggernaut. It's like this clunky suit that you could wear there. And so this is going to be the next evolution of that concept. using human armor weapons, but motivated by the bio— their crude take on the biotechnology that they've captured from the Mechanoids. And it requires a human pilot that's an Esper that's highly trained so that they can interface with the biomechanical technology. But it's pretty neat stuff. And I think that that should be exciting for a lot of fans. And it's interesting you mentioned Mechanoid Space. That was announced of many, many Well, I don't even mean more than moons, like cycles. I don't know what you call it, right?

I think, Kevin, you started talking about it late '80s, early '90s, I think is when it originally was possible or as mentioned. And it's been a running joke, like in some ways that it won't happen.

But no, if you check out again, fans can check out, we have a Palladium, uh, on our Palladium Books website, we have a project status page. You can check the official status of all these different projects. And that's one of those ones that's on this like indefinitely shelved because, correct me if I'm wrong, Kevin, but the author that was working on that, he lost his muse on the project and had to come back to Kevin and say, hey, Kev, I thought I had some really great ideas. They're all terrible. I'm going to have to step away from the project. He was just like self-defeated over it from what I understand. And so Kevin wants— doesn't— he'd like something to happen with it, but he's just been busy.

Yeah, exactly. So, so if there's a Mechanoid space in the future, this is sort of a prelude to it.

2 questions for you then. The first question, the mechanics in the Mechanoids, I'm assuming you're still using the old Mechanoids RPG mechanics. And if so, what are the chances of getting a fully Megaversalized redo?

Well, no, that's why it's called the Redux Edition. We are using the, the new, the new Redux rules that Kevin and I developed for the TMNT and Other Strangers. It's not just a remaster with color. It's actually bringing in what we consider to be, I guess you would say, Kevin, like the, the easiest to play version of the classic Megaversal system, right? Yeah. That's, that's what we kind of consider the— we call it the Redux Edition rules, but it's kind of like what we consider to be the new classic rules, the, the, the, the newest edition of the Megaversal rules that are designed to be as, as approachable by, by fans as possible. And by the way, anyone who's listening, we, we had so much positive feedback on the Redux Edition rules at at Gen Con this year that I was floored. I mean, it wasn't a negative comment. Everyone's just really enjoying it with their gaming groups. And you just never know how, because it was, yeah, it should play like the classic Palladium Megaversal System, but I went in and rewrote a lot of the instructions to use modern gaming parlance and design theory. So that is going to be integrated into the Mechanoids Redux Edition. So you can jump right in, just like I haven't heard of anyone who said, oh, I had a hard time understanding the TMNT Redux Edition rules. If you enjoyed that, or if you are nervous, it just should be something you could just jump right into. And it'll feel like the game you're always familiar with. It's just, it should be really easy and go really smoothly when you're reading through the rules and all that, because we wanted to remove that barrier. Like you said, NPC, it was daunting to me. Yeah. to play the Mechanoids. So,

well, you guys love 1st Edition rules for Planetary Fantasy. That's fundamentally what, what these are. These are the cleaned-up, clarified version, because Planetary Fantasy 1st Edition, Mechanoids, and, uh, Turtles all use the same basic, basic rules, and everything that came to follow that most people now consider to be 2nd edition rules. We're all very similar to that, but we added MDC and SDC and that kind of stuff. So yeah, especially people who, who, who like, uh, old school gaming and, and love Planescape: Fantasy 1st edition rules. Yeah, you, you, this is basically Um, the same original rules. And, uh, so does that mean we can buy Palladium Fantasy and Ninja Turtles with Mechanoids? That's up to you.

So that leads to another question. That does lead to another question then. When are we going to get the Mechanoids invade the Palladium Fantasy world sourcebook?

That would be a complete Oh yeah,

I think so.

I don't know how, uh, how close you follow our podcast, but, uh, I was riffing on an episode that was released a couple months back about, uh, crossing up Palladium Fantasy with the Nightbane Nightlands. So yeah.

Well, and that is the cool thing. You can crop, mix and match and crossover. That's one of the things we loved about, uh, working on the TMNT Redux Edition, and I really enjoyed about the 3 books that were combined, that I combined into the Transdimensional Adventure books, because Transdimensional TMNT, originally written by Eric Wojcik, just has fantastic, groundbreaking, almost mind-bending rules for time travel and dimensional sliding or hopping. Yeah. And also it had some, the TMNT Guide to the Universe had some really great space and air combat rules. And so when I did the Transdimensional Adventures book, I also added ground vehicles and water vehicles, surface vehicles. So it's— and then combine the air and space rules into aerospace because they were very similar. And so that's one of the— those are some of the really cool ingredients that are going to be going into the mechanoids. Redux Edition. So for the first time ever for the Mechanoids, you're going to have really, really great support for high-flying vehicular, um, or, or, or, or, or I guess, you know, intense ground battle combat.

For the few minutes that you are airborne before the 10,000 anti-aircraft batteries just wipe you out of the air.

And you get swarmed by Mechanoid wasps.

Right, exactly.

And all of that. Yeah, absolutely. But you'll have the rules.

So besides that, you know, moving on from the Kickstarter a little bit, I know you talked about the Christmas grab bags are back and we rave about those. They're probably, I think NPC says they're the best buck that you can spend.

Best deal in gaming.

Best deal in gaming. Yes. Anything hands down. I've always loved them every year. I think I start getting nasty notes now. They're like, we're out of artwork, Matt, stop asking. But I've gotten over the years some amazing original pencil sketches, which is phenomenal. And I keep in a really big folio that I will look at all the time. And then there's the big Turtle sale. We briefly talked about it.

Yep.

The, the clearing— we're the— clear the warehouse of all your Turtle stuff. And so that's a big one. You're up to 40% off on some of the stuff you said.

On everything. Yes. The dice, the game screen, the black, white, and red editions, the Redux editions.

And this is while supplies last because there was the first printing of this material. There will not be an immediate new printing of any of this material. We did not renew— Kevin and I chose not to renew the license with Paramount. So I don't know if you want to say anything extra about that. You phrase it better than I do.

Yeah, we wanted to do more with the license, but we just could not come to terms that were agreeable to us and Paramount. But that's okay. I mean, we left on good terms. You know, we have only good feelings about it. I mean, we love the books we did. We're super proud of the books we did. In fact, a funny story about the time travel rules in Transdimensional Adventures is that I'm generally not a big fan of time travel because it's so rarely done right. And so when Eric Wojcik said, yeah, Kev, I want to put in time travel, and I'm like, no. No. He's like, no, you'll love it. And I'm like, no. And he did it up and said, just give it a look, and if you don't like it, it won't go in the book. And it was the best time travel rules I have personally ever seen. Uh, it just made sense and it works like a dream. And Eric Wojcik was a freaking genius. So, uh, you know, that book is practically worth it just for those rules, but there's so much other cool stuff in there. And, uh, so yeah, you know, we, we have a bunch of the books and, and dice and game screens in our, you know, warehouse, and we need to sell them. And, uh, because the license ended sooner than we expected, um, Yeah, it's still all the first printing, which means these, like the original books, will become collector items. In fact, it's insane to me, but the foil editions with the— Yeah, the Mutagen Green foil. The Mutagen Green foil editions online, if you can find them, they're typically selling for $300 to $500

Yep.

Um, you know, I'm offering them in my store, a few of them for like $130, I think.

Yeah, your eBay store.

Because I don't like to rip people off. But, um, those were super limited. So, so, but that means all these books, all these things, the fan-rolled dice, the mutagen green dice that come in a, uh, TCR Alien—

TCR, yeah.

It's, uh, Which are super cool. And the funny thing that we're getting with this is people, when they get the physical books, they go crazy over to color, whether it's the black, white, and red edition or the full color Redux editions. I mean, crazy. And we're getting comments like, these books are amazing. You know, it just— I can't believe how good they are. And it's like, well, but We showed you pages and you've seen stuff online and, you know, you saw the digital art and you're like, no, but this is different somehow.

It doesn't compare. It really doesn't.

Yeah. I mean, like, I, I looked at the stuff you put out online and I was excited about it, but especially the white, black, white, and red, how that looked when it was in my hands versus how it looked on a computer monitor. Was night and day.

Also, nobody digitally can really see the finer details that are put into like the page backgrounds and like,

yes,

that the everything, every aspect of those books was designed to just be awesome.

Well, yes,

you can, but when there's a 100-meg, you know, JPEG sitting on someone's site for all the detail and the 8K, you're like, it can't be that much detail. And then you open the book, you're like, oh crap. It's all there.

The files are actually like— I, I want to use expletives, but they're crazy big because I insist on 600 DPI from our artists, which is— if anyone knows, you only need 300 DPI to print. But just in case I trim things, just in case you want to blow something up. So we're, we're basically structurally, right, this is— and we talk about all these things that Kevin and I've been doing since I joined the company to really up our game. And there's these certain standards that we've just— we've discussed them and we decided we're going to enforce this. We don't care if it's a little— if it— if the artists think it's a little extra, right? But we know it's the right move for us in the long run. And so that's one of the things. And I appreciate you guys saying that. I'm just glowing over here because that was my project and that was my baby. And Kevin really let me loose to— as long as I stayed within fairly within reason, we really went ham on this. So I'm super glad to see the reception. But you're right, I have a giant screen on my computer in the office and we're looking at it. It's like calibrated, one of those ones that's calibrated to show everything really clearly and match the colors. Yeah. Even we were shocked when we got the test prints.

Well, I think people forget print is its own medium. And so you have these colored inks and, you know, the paper stock, it all makes a difference. And when you focus on quality and you get these things in your hands, people are just amazed because it was something I like to say a lot is There's color, which you see in 90% of our industry, whether it's Paizo or WotC or whoever, and it's good. And then there's Palladium Color, because we're all artists and we want— we approach it from an art viewpoint, and we put in that little extra money for a better paper stock and for a higher level of quality printing. And And

we work— we're working with top artists and we're paying them fairly, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, we all told the story about the black, white, and reds, um, that everyone has gone gaga over, um, and they love both. But, but with the black, white, and reds, it was a situation where originally we're just going to reprint the— reproduce the black and white art, which by the way is amazing too. I think people forget how incredibly talented Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird are. Oh, it's timeless. And, and, and, and, uh, um, Jim Lawson, who did the, uh, dinosaur stuff and, and all the, all the art in, uh, Transdimensional TMNT. They just forgot how amazing that art was. And then, you know, so we were planning on just though reprinting that with the duoshade and doing spot reds. You know, they're all— the turtles would have red masks You'd have a little, you know, maybe there's an explosion that's red, or, you know, some, some sound effect that's in red, or, you know, the sunsets in red. And the colorist, Jeremy Caldwell, didn't really understand what we wanted, even though he's a comic book guy, and comic books have been doing these black, white, and reds for a long time. And so he sends us these like 6 samples. And he's like, is this what you're thinking? And Sean and I are like, what the hell? Because they're, they're incredible. And there's like shades of red with touches of yellow. And, and, and he adds all this grayscale. And we're like, no, that's not what we were thinking. But yes, that's what we want. And I think a lot of companies would have walked away from it because To get that quality, it cost us a little more than 3 times our original budget.

Yeah, almost 4 times our original budget.

And, and, and— Well,

I only said yes because Kevin thought it was only about 50% higher, and then the back of the envelope math was wrong.

Oh, so I just thought it was 50% more, but in reality, it was a lot more than that.

But it didn't matter.

I mean, we knew we Originally we were thinking like it's going to cost us around $5,000 and it cost us close to $20,000. And Sean's like, Kev, you sure you want to do this? And I'm like, Sean, this is amazing. People are going to see these books.

And it was— I couldn't— I, I just, you know, that again, I, I'm, I'm, I was very nervous. Um, I, I wasn't sure that how the black, white, and red would be received. That's why it was $5 more in the crowdfunder, is I was just trying to make sure We made back our investment. And then of course it was wildly popular, and I think 40% of a lot of our sales and our distributor sales have been the black, white, and red. So again, if you get in on this sale, get the— if you're interested in the black, white, and red, you need to get in quick and get them before they're sold out because they are going fast.

Because we did print considerably less of those than the color Redux editions. But the Color Redux editions are also magnificent. And I want to say, I think that's why people are kind of like freaking out, because we've shown a ton of the art that, that's going to be in the, uh, Glitter Boy Codex. And people are freaking out because I think they thought the color they would see in TMNT and Other Strangeness was special for that product. And in Sean, in my mind, is this is what the future is going to be for Palladium's color books, all of our color books. So, you know, it's the same caliber as what you see in, in the Turtle books.

Speaking of the Codex, let's talk about that for a little bit here because we've talked so much about Mechanoids and Turtles.

I know, right? We're not talking about the main dish.

So the Codex, give us the elevator pitch.

Well, the, the Kev— when I first joined Kevin at Palladium, there's 2 big things we talked about. One, I was like, I really want to do the turtles. What do we got to do to get to, to get the turtles back? What's the— and you know, we've got to time things and get it in the right pace for the business. And then the other thing is Kevin told me, he's like, well, I had this idea. We did the Secrets of the Atlanteans. I'd really like to do a series of books that are focused on the different heroic archetypes in Rifts and maybe our other games if the fans enjoy the sourcebook type, but it's not a normal sourcebook. And it's— and we talked about it was a little more like Juicer Uprising, which is one of my favorite books ever. Yeah. And I actually took a lot of inspiration from that when I was working on Rifts for Savage Worlds when I was working on the Glitter Boys, the Cyber Knights, a lot of things actually. And that's actually where the original idea for the Glitter Boy Brotherhood came from, is it's not strictly a fraternity, no women allowed or something, no girls allowed, you know, but the idea is that it's this open fraternity of different pilots that unites them. So that we talked about that pretty early on, but there was a lot of different titles that had already been announced, and I wanted to get those across the finish line first and do the TMNT and Other Strangeness first. Now that that's done, a lot of the remaining books that have been announced are Kevin's to write. And so I turned my attention to this, and Will Irwin, who's a great writer, has written some novels and other things. He wrote some articles for the Rifter, and I curated Rifter 85 when we brought back the Rifter, and they were really great. And they, they, they had slight— he had slightly different wording. He wasn't familiar with the Rifts for Savage Worlds material, but he had basically created this big outline for what I thought of as the Glitterboy Brotherhood. So we worked together, Kevin and I. We've actually made a lot more updates to that article that went into the Rifter '85. It was actually 2 different articles that he wrote than we would normally make because we said, you know what, this is a really cool concept. Let's put some elbow grease into it and see what the fans think when they see it in the Rifter. And I even went and talked to my friend and fellow writer Johnny Rocha, who I met and had brought onto the Rifts or Savage Worlds writing team that I had developed working with Pinnacle and asked him to come in and write an article. And he wrote, uh, the article that had the concept for what's called the Glitter Boy Codex, the Chromium Codex, which is a supercomputer, a quantum computer inside each Glitter Boy USA G10, the original Glitter Boy, that connects to other Glitter Boys and does a handshake and shares targeting and battle history data. And the idea there is When you— when one Glitterboy pilot meets another Glitterboy pilot, there should be this trust, and you let the handshake happen, you exchange all your data, and now both of you know all your battle history, your friends, your enemies, your battle actions. But what that creates is this bond, because if someone doesn't do the handshake, you know you probably can't trust them. They don't want to share with you all of the data that's stored in their system. And, and, and they— and you're, you're sharing friends and foes. And so it, it's the basis for this really special relationship that develops amongst the Glitterboy pilots in North America. And these systems aren't in any of the variants. They weren't able to copy that Golden Age technology, um, or the U.S. government back before the cataclysm didn't share that technology, right? So it just, it's something that's really unique about the Glitterboy pilots in North America and piloting the original USA G10 suit. And so this sourcebook focuses in on that and gives you lots more pilot options. When Kevin did the Rifts Ultimate Edition, he really clarified and gave some mechanics to what it means to be a Glitterboy pilot descended from this legacy of heroes. that it's actually, in a lot of ways, the suit is more well-known than the pilot necessarily, because it's almost like the pilots are passed down between the suit as opposed to, you know, a father and son who wear the same armor. This is the armor starts to get its own pedigree and lore. And so this book dives into that. It has lots of different character options, not just the Descended. It has Some, some bonuses depending on which faction of the Glitterboy Brotherhood that you're a part of, because they have some that are all about— the riggers are all about updating and hot-rodding the Glitterboys or rebuilding suits when you can't build it back to the original form. Maybe the RG-14 boom gun's missing, maybe you don't have access to the chromium plating, or other things happen, um, or the suit's just so bald and you're trying to put it together and it's the post-apocalypse. It's not everything is going to be factory showroom perfect, right? There's the Minutemen, which are the descendants of the NEMA groups that dispersed during the New Dark Age after the cataclysm, the Great Cataclysm. There's the Old Guard, which are the very, very tradition-driven pilots that hail from Free Quebec and their tradition of Glitterboy pilots. in their military because they're one of the few places that can still— known to still be able to produce the USA G10 with the quantum computer and all that kind of stuff. And then there's the Boomers, which are mercenaries. They're more of the glory for profit and fun, right? But they love to get in a good scrap. They're still good guys, right? But they're They play more fast and loose than, say, the Minutemen or the Old Guard would with the morality of what they might get involved in. And then there's— I mean, we've got legendary Glitter Boy suits that people know and love, that if you pilot it or you see it, you know what's going on. There's modification packages that the riggers have helped develop these kind of tried and true modification packages. You know, you're not gonna fritz out the, the Chromium Codex quantum computer. You know, you're not gonna jack this up. And then we have adventure material. So it's a pretty cool book.

Is there perhaps the seed of the, the phantom unknown Glitter Boy that's out there that people see but no one's ever identified it? Because that would be cool.

Yes, that's one of my favorite ones is, um, there is, uh, And we have an illustration for it and it's called Old Chrome Bones. So there's some really cool stuff. Johnny wrote that up. Um, but yeah, we took all these ideas and that one's really, it has a neat story where there was 2 pilots. There was a pilot and a Cyber Knight. They were best friends. The Cyber Knight ended up going bad and going rogue. And so his, his, his best friend, his former best friend, the Glitterwood pilot tries to bring him in and they end up He kills the Glitterboy pilot and ends up locked in the suit. The suit won't release him, and he becomes this phantom Glitterboy pilot that doesn't appear on your sensors because of what the Cyber Knights can do with technological sensors and stuff like that. And he becomes this kind of— this legendary wraith of a Glitterboy. But no, we have that. We have— there's so many cool ideas in this book. And what happened was Will Irwin came to me, uh, what was it, 2 years ago, Kevin? Yeah. 2 and a half ago. Um, so there's— we talk about there's things brewing in the background that are really exciting. This is one of them. Will Irwin came to me and said, I really want to write a book. And I— and he's— he didn't know what to write. He had these different ideas. I'm like, I mean, that's okay. I don't know if the fans are really cottoning to it. And I said, you know, we, we should take those really great articles that you and Johnny Racho wrote for the Glitter Boy Let's turn it into a full sourcebook. Let's expand on that. Let's grow it. Let's, let's refine it. And he said, do you think people would like that? I'm like, trust me, they'll like it. You know,

it's a glitter boy. Of course. Yeah.

I mean, and it's great. And, you know, to his, to his credit, later when he saw the— after we did our announcements, the fan reaction, he was just like, okay, Sean, you're absolutely dead on. This is gonna be a hit with the fans. And I'm super glad to have him on the project. He's very collaborative. He's all about, you know, he says, hey, this is my crazy idea. If kind of like Eric Ujic said, if you don't like it, you can take it out, but I'm just going to write it up. And I like that. Even if it's a little like power gamey or a little not exactly what, what we would want in a final product, I can work with that because it's easy to dial back a little bit of— Yeah. maybe the numbers for gaming and dial some stuff in than it is to be sitting there and you're looking at something that's kind of like a bowl of oatmeal and you're like, I mean, I can throw in some berries or spice this up somehow, right? So that's been really awesome. And then working with— I told Stephen Cummings about the sourcebook and the codex, which is this new idea for these archetypical heroic books we're calling codexes. He was like, I want dibs on the art. Can you just— he says, write Now I've got some time with— between Marvel and my other gigs. He said, I really want first dibs on this art. And I said, you can do every piece in the book you want to. You have first dibs, buddy. And he nailed it. I mean, if you see the— I mean, you just check out our backer kit page. The— he nailed Kevin Long's vision and Kevin Sambita's vision for the Glitter Boy. The, the proportions, the way that we have illustrations where you can see a pilot standing in it opened up. You can see how it's basically— the pilot is on stilts with grabby hands, right, in the Glitter Boy, because it's like 10-foot tall before you add in the helmet horns and all that jazz. And then when you add on Mike Majestic, who did the painterly color work for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Another Strangeness Redux Edition, as well as the COVID art. So it's like the color on the interior of the book is done by the same guy to the same caliber as what you're seeing on the COVID It's the same skill executing it, right? There's a lot of the people— Will Irwin messaged me. He's like, Sean, what is going on with this art? It's out of control. Like, is this sustainable? Like, what's happening? Like, he just— Like Kevin said, I mean, people I don't even— I'm not sure if Will even picked up those TMNT Redux editions. And if you don't see those books physically, you don't know what's coming. And Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, their art is iconic, and the legendary art in the Turtles books is awesome. But, you know, we're working with— we're not working with schlubs. We're working with top guys. Um, check out the BackerKit page. We actually did a spotlight on all the artists involved because They are premium top pros from the comics and, and entertainment industry. These guys have video game work, Hollywood work, all kinds of stuff. And so they— and you can see it. I mean, Stephen's stuff is great. When you put Mike Majestic's colors on top of it, it's, it's just— it's mind-blowing.

Yeah, it's next level. And then when it came to the COVID Sean's like, So, Kev, what do you think we should do for the COVID And I said, well, I don't know if you'll like this idea, but I said, I've got this old pencil piece of Kevin Long that we were gonna do. I said, I forget if it was supposed to be a cover that we never got to, or whether it was supposed to be just this cool full-page illustration. But, and, and I pull it outta my archives and Sean's like, what?

Yeah. I geek out sometimes.

Well, as of recording, a little over 1,300 people have agreed that this was a great idea. So that's pretty amazing. Like, the money, you know, you're approaching $250,000, I think, getting close to the next mark. And hopefully you guys can get over that, which is awesome. Like you were saying, you went way over what you thought you were going to do in this little codex. So there might be some legs here for codex ideas.

But I promise you, you'll double, if not triple or quadruple that number if your next project is a codex for the best class in the game, the Vagabond. I'm not even joking. I want a Vagabond. I want more totally low bottom tier, low power, just a whole book of them.

But no, it's funny because it was really interesting when we launched them. We did one of the things we did with this, and props to the new guy, Daniel Lansdown, who is our Palladium's marketing manager and also helps us manage around the office. He helped me schedule, you know, and Kevin schedule this thing with you guys because we're in different time zones and everything's crazy. He's a fantastic guy and he did a really great job helping us put together the pre-marketing campaign for this. And yeah, the fans have spoken. They're really excited. A lot of people didn't know— I mean, of course we come out with this title of Call of Cthulhu Codex, and there's like, Codex? What is this, like, you know, Warhammer 40K or something? It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. A lot of people use this term, but we're going to use it in a very specific way. And we really liked it. A codex is the, the Historically, they're these illuminated or painted, artistically rendered and embellished manuscripts. Back when books were hand-copied, if you really wanted to go premium, it made sense. If you're going to handwrite the whole book anyways, to also have someone do some fantastic artwork on, on the important pages and themes in the book. And it kind of matches because also I don't think we've mentioned this yet. This is the first time we are going to have not only the standard, what's called perfect bound softcover familiar Palladium book within the beautiful painterly cover, black and white interiors. We are also doing a premium edition hardcover full color of the same sourcebook. A lot of people are getting The black— I mean, where people are at doing the, the most popular add-on is the softcover. So a lot of people are backing at premium levels, adding softcovers to use at the table, and they're going to have the color version that they sit on the shelf or use when they want to do a deep read or whatever. And so we're trying this out. We were like, well, I don't know if the fans will cotton to it, you know, we don't know if they'll like it, but, uh, the response has been really awesome. And so to me, it was just kind of cool because having those illuminated manuscripts and having the Glitter Boy Codex be the first full-color Rifts book ever is, is, is really exciting. Um, but yeah, a lot of people were confused about what it meant. We used the 6-week pre-launch campaign to kind of educate people on, hey, this isn't a reprint. We're not just like reprinting all the variants of the Glitter Boy in this book. Where aren't just— this isn't, this isn't rehashed material. Yeah, about 3%, 2% maybe, you know, a few pages of the book is, um, an updated version of the basic stuff you get from the Rifts Ultimate Edition or the Anniversary Edition for the class material and the Glitterboy build-out. But all of it's been revamped and updated, so it's not like you're getting just a reprint of that anyway. So yeah, I would say 99% of the material in this book is brand spanking new. Yep. Um, and, uh, it's It's really exciting stuff. And we were talking during the livestream on launch day. And once the fans got it, they're like, I want a Cyber Knight Codex. I want a Vagabond Codex. I want a Dogboy Codex. I want the Shifter Codex. So it is an exciting concept. And we're glad to hear that the fans are enjoying it. One of the things that we want to make sure that fans get used to is there's been a lot of titles that have been announced or previewed over the years because Kevin was very forthcoming whenever something was in development and fans asked questions he wanted to answer. But we've come to realize most fans can't handle— you can't handle the truth, right? Most fans can't handle waiting years, or in the case of Mechanoid Space, decades. Is it ever gonna happen? Yeah. So our— since I joined Palladium, our new way forward is we're not announcing any new titles until they're imminently going to go direct to release or, or to crowdfunding.

And that, I will say that I actually appreciate that, uh, as someone who, you know, does like to bring up things like those books that have been on hold or now pretty much have been officially canceled. Um, a lot of us got super excited and, and I like that you've moved to that. If you talk about it or you allow us to listen to you talk about it, it's real and it's gonna happen. Within a reasonable amount of time, which is, which is really cool. And one of the—

Yeah, it's like I— oh, sorry, go ahead.

Well, I was gonna actually just kind of shift a little bit here because there's another Kickstarter going on related to Rifts right now over on the Savage Worlds side of the house.

Well, and it's, it's not a Kickstarter, it's a BackerKit.

Excuse me, it is a crowdfunding project on BackerKit. Is that better? Let me start that over.

I mean, I just, I want to make sure that fans go to the right place because we were surprised. I mean, we work closely with the folks at Pinnacle Entertainment Group, but they have a legacy of doing all their crowdfunding primarily on Kickstarter. So when they launched this one on BackerKit, we took notice too. We're like, oh, looks like they came to similar conclusions as we did. But it's very exciting.

Yeah. And they have about 700, 750 people right now. It's doing fairly well. And as someone who plays both sides of the house, I was super excited with this one because it's another one that's hitting a bunch of regions, you know, China, Japan, Australia, Antarctica, which is interesting that they're going to get to Antarctica before Palladium does, but we won't, we won't go into that. I'm not bitter.

Well, based on what I'm doing, I got to give them the summary.

I'm sure it is because so much of the material. All the material has been— you can go back and forth with it. Savage Worlds Palladium, it's all canon. And that's, that's something I love. And I get into, uh, some arguments with people over that and like, no, no, no, I've asked them directly. It is all canon. They're like, meow.

To confirm it is. And that's actually one of the exciting things that when I, um, started working on Rifts for Savage Worlds, I went and talked to Kevin. I said, I want to make sure that there's something interesting in each of these books for Palladium fans too. And a lot of times Rifts moves forward in its timeline. When it launched, the core book was 101 PA is when it was set. And then you get to the Coalition War campaign in 105 PA and it stepped forward. And then you get to 109 PA with the, the Fall of Tolkien. And then you get to 110 PA when the Minion War really kicks off. And so Rifts or Savage Worlds, just so everyone knows, is set in that interregnum right after the fall of Tolkien, right before the Minion War kicks off. And I think it's a great spot to kind of take a breather. And, and so all of their books are set in that exact timeline. And the nice thing about it is, is where, when we're doing those books, is were able to take a lot of the ideas in them and talk with Kevin and bring the timeline up to date for the South America book, Land of a Thousand Islands, because the original books were set in 102, 103 PA.

Yep.

Bring those up to 109 PA. Same thing with your— with the Europa book. We brought the Russia, the, the, the, the Triax and the NGR and all that material And well, and we added, right, we added the huge faction. Uh, we expanded on the Scandinavian stuff, which was hinted at in the Palladium books. Um, we added Neo-Rome as a faction that to answer that, because everyone wanted to know what's going on with Rome in, in, in Rifts. Um, and Ends of the Earth is going to have some of that too. And so we don't want to oversell or overhype the Antarctica portion of, of that book because it's not really, it's more of like a teaser and trying to be inclusive to let people know what in general is going to be there.

Yep.

And set that up for the— when Kevin finishes the Antarctica Rifts book. But the cool thing with this is, just like we did with Titan Robotics and, and then the Cyberworks Collection, we provided a Savage Rifts conversion, uh, document. We're doing the same thing with the Glitterboy Codex. You back this, you also get access to that Savage Rifts conversion document. And at popular request, we also added those conversion documents for anyone who adds Titan Robotics or the Cyborgs collection as an add-on during the campaign. So those conversion documents have proven— when we first did Titan Robotics, I think there were some people that were on the fence, like, is it going to be very good? Is it going to be very useful? Am I going to enjoy a Palladium book? And it seems to be wholeheartedly the response that yes, the fans, the Savage Worlds, the Savage Rifts fans have really enjoyed the material and using it in their Savage Rifts games. And so we have a lot of people coming in that are suddenly asking that question, hey, I missed Titan Robotics. I didn't back that campaign. And so that's one of the things that we were kind of surprised. I was, you know, in my thought, I'm like, Well, I just want to make sure that we can maintain the fans that back Titan Robotics. We have a lot more Savage Wrist fans coming in that are new to it asking for that. So that's something that we're excited to provide as well.

We actually— I had that same exact conversation with at least 3 different people who didn't know if you didn't get into that, you couldn't get that PDF. And they're like, where is it? Where is it? How do I buy it? Can I buy it? I was like, nope, it was only on the crowdfunding. And they're like, oh. And so it's great that you're offering it again for people who can, you know, kind of sneak in and get it now. Because it was— because a bunch of people, like, they all went to drive-through and they all tried to go find it, or they went to the Pinnacle site and they're like, ah, it's not there, guys. You have to— you had to have been part of the Kickstarter. And they're like, oh, and they were disappointed.

Yeah, when we say this stuff is crowdfunding exclusive, we, we're serious, you know. And we're not— I try not to play games with stuff like that, right? And, yep, um, you know, I leave it, you know, we, we Of course, things can change in the future. Like in this case though, I think it's changing in a very positive way that we're offering it if you get those same books as an add-on with the next generation or the next round of crowdfunding for that product line. But no, we're super excited to work with the Pinnacle folks. And Aaron Burkett is a good friend of mine. He heads up the Savage Rifts development team now and has been doing a great job with it since I moved over to Palladium. And anyone who may not have heard, Shane Hensley, the creator of Savage Worlds, a huge name in the video game industry, computer game industry. He, him, Simon Lucas, these are great people at Pinnacle, and it's fantastic to work with them. They were super supportive when Kevin asked me to join him as his business partner, and they made that the a really rewarding experience. And it's kind of crazy that I know now go from contractor, a contract writer working on licensed Riffs material, and now I'm Kevin's business partner. And, uh, I'm, you know, now on— I'm now the co-licensor talking to them. Oh yeah. They're licensing from me the stuff that I wrote. It's so weird. But, but it's cool. And the things that they're doing with the Ends of the Earth are really great. And it's, it's like people told me, they said when I did Atlantis and the Demon Seas for that, I— these books cover a larger breadth of things. So Atlantis and the Demon Seas covered the Atlantis book, the Splendid Dimensional Market book, the Rifts Under Seas book, and a lot of other material related to that and some of the Lemurian book. And so similarly is going to happen with this book. And a lot of fans get a lot of mileage out of that though, because seeing it all in context and how it all interconnects without having to hunt through your—

6 books.

80 Palladium book library to find all the references. is really convenient, especially when it adds in lore and canon lore and material that you can use in your game and as a launch point. It's, it's, it's a really fun combination.

So we've talked about this Kickstarter. Um, I'm gonna mention briefly, it's closed now, but the Phase World Kickstarter that was, uh, by Star Anvil Productions, I think.

Star Anvil Studios.

Star Anvil Studios. Um, I was blown away by that one. I, I talked to, uh, Brandon occasionally. And so I was like, he was super excited for it. So like, that's 3, like bam, bam, bam. But so far, all of the crowdsourcings have done really well. And I know as someone who's consumed a lot of them, I've been really happy with that. So looking forward, looking future, you know, I know 2 of those crowdfunds aren't done yet, right? So I know that you're still focused on getting to the finish line there, but what's, what's next? What, what's the, what's the future look like?

Well, that's a great question. And just so everyone knows, Pinnacle is the same way as us. We don't go to crowdfunding until we have a manuscript and a big chunk of the art at least done. So that— I just want to make sure everyone understands. Yeah, these are in the final stages of production, but just like with Titan Robotics, that turned around fairly quickly. I delivered within 2 weeks of what we wanted, the delivery timeline I wanted for that crowdfunder. And that's with us having to switch our distribution partner in the middle of things. And the printer was bought out in the middle of production of that book. So we faced extreme challenges and still delivered very timely. And that's my goal, is to do the best we can. I can't control— that's one of the crazy things is it's really hard to control printers and paper availability and logistics when there's a global war and all this crazy stuff, right? So we— but we do our best. And, um, the— there's a lot of stuff that's coming up. You're not going to hear about a lot of it. You think you know what's been announced when you kind of do. Go check out again the Palladium Books project status page. But a lot of the stuff that you're— that you're waiting for are titles that Kevin is working on and developing with artists. And that's why a lot of our stuff, even if it's an active production, takes some time because we go back and forth with the artists. We're very art-first. And so I, I, we— Kevin and I really want fans to understand that because some fans were like, well, where's Antarctica? Why am I getting this book that I didn't expect for Riffs? Now I think they're all happy at this point, but at first there was some confusion. So I just want to kind of set the record straight. Kevin and I work in parallel, and there's been so much stuff going on behind the scenes. Kevin has really been focused on finishing up some of these, I would just call administrative things behind the scenes.

Yeah.

So, we can free him back up to focus on writing books. Getting in Daniel Lansdown has been a big part of that to free him up. We had Jeremy Colantonio before helping us push that forward. We are looking to expand Palladium more in the coming year. years, but a lot of it's support just to free me and Kevin up while we're doing all these different things. But I can tell you that there is some— the Best Jerry 2 is nearing completion. The Jensloth Expeditions is really close. Kevin is hoping to finish that and bring that across the finish line this quarter. And the Chaos Earth, Rifts Chaos Earth: First Responders is actually, it's funny because I switched off of that to try and help finish up Bestiary 2. But that is in advance. The manuscript is, I would say, 80% there. It's in advanced stages of production. The art, 99% of the art, we may, I may add some art, but Stephen Cummings did, before he did the Glory Boy Codex art, he actually did all the art for that book. And let me tell you, it's awesome. We have cover art. So that one is the next Rifts book that you have heard of and has been announced and that we will be bringing across the finish line. So look for that one next year, I'm guessing. And there's some other exciting stuff behind the scenes that we can't talk about until final, final versions of contracts are signed and crowdfunding is imminent and we start our pre-launch campaigns, Which we're starting to learn that the longer you run that pre-launch campaign, it can be a lot of work. It really pays off dividends because the fans really reacted very positively to this pre-launch campaign. So, um, I don't know, is there anything else you want to put out there, Kevin, that without announcing anything we shouldn't announce? It's exciting stuff. There's a lot of exciting stuff coming down the pipe.

Now, now I will say this. Nathaniel might not do this. But I will say anything you want to tell us that it's off the record after the fact and like send us that emergency email going, no, no, we shouldn't talk about that. I won't include it. I don't do any of the editing and don't have any control over that, but I won't include it in the release that I put out.

Man, they've told us so many books are coming out that I just haven't left in, just so you know.

Like, we, we do have a lot of cool stuff, you know, floating around. Um, you know, one reason we don't like to say a lot of what's happening, especially things that are being done by, by third parties is sometimes— hell, most of the time— they just don't come to fruition, especially when you're dealing with Hollywood. Um, you know, we've had so many Hollywood projects that have just gone absolutely nowhere, from, from the Rifts movie with, you know, little peon company like Walt Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Productions. Um, You know, since we have a lot of stuff, so I can say we're we're focused mainly on what Palladium can do and what Palladium can release. There's a lot of things that we want to get done and out, especially books that have been promised, like like the Beyond the Supernatural stuff and some other things. But you know, I feel like even now, even with Sean here, we we've said, hey. Those Beyond the Supernatural books will be coming next year, and I think we've said that like for three or four years now. So hopefully, you know, those will be in our our future. It's something I really want to complete. And then we're talking to a couple of folks we know that have approached us. Should I talk about? Ramon and Dudley.

What? Oh my God, you're reading my mind.

I mean, we can just say that there's some exciting discussions with Ramon Perez and Mark Dudley. Machinations of Doom 2.

Please

be Machinations of Doom 2.

I'm going to start—

I'm going to schedule— we've talked to Ramon once on the podcast. I will now be attempting to get him a second time. So whatever you don't tell us, we'll wring out of him.

He is one of the nicest people I've ever spoken to. It was a great— he was lovely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I had dinner with him, and I was a huge fan of his art and the storytelling in his art. And Kevin told me all these fantastic stories about working with Ramón. And then he was in town a couple of years ago, and I can't believe it was a couple of years ago now, but he was in town for a comic convention and we had dinner with him and what a great guy. I mean, just he and I really, we hit it off. And I mean, naturally, if he gets along with Kevin, if you get along with Kevin, you're probably gonna get along with me. Um, and I think vice versa. But, but yeah, what a fantastic guy and what a successful and creative guy too. I mean, he just does really killer stuff. So we're, we're, yeah, we're, we're, I, I don't want to say anything. I don't want to get ahead of anyone, but, uh, We're, we're happily, happily having conversations with Ramon, and, and not just remembrances of times past, but exciting things for the future.

Yeah, in fact, uh, I should be meeting with, uh, Daniel and I will probably have lunch with Mark Dudley at the Motor City Comic-Con in a couple weeks and dinner with Ramon at that same convention.

Oh,

wow. Yeah.

We'll send you a recorder so you can just record the dinner conversation. We'll splice it in randomly.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting. People ask us about a lot of different things. There was the Rift's Promise of Power Reforged campaign that we launched and then ended early because it wasn't going to hit the numbers we needed it to, to bring back the video game. But there's discussions about that too behind the scenes. There's multiple publishers, or developers I should say, interested in this. We have talked to a publisher too as well. But, um, but no, it's, it's exciting stuff. And we don't, we don't want to talk about anything that again isn't a guaranteed thing yet and is that we don't have the details on. But it's exciting. It's exciting time. Uh, so I remember there's some people when we were doing the live stream for the launch of the Critter Boy Codex, they said, One of the guys said, wow, this is a Rifts renaissance. And I feel like it is. That's what we're trying. That's what we're trying to do, man. We're just trying to make the best books we can with the best art, the best writing, the best production values, all the best accessories. So you've got just the killer game screen, game master screen, the killer playmats, the killer art prints to put on your wall with posters and dice sets and a Coalition flag. And you guys can just, you know, we just really want the fans to be able to enjoy everything and have the best time gaming possible. So that's really been our goal. And we don't like to talk about things too far out of turn, but it's great when we have these, I mean, just the kind of a runaway success with the Glitterboy Codex. This has been really fantastic to see that it's exceeded our expectations and our previous entries. to crowdfunding, which we're super excited about. And so this kind of stuff supercharges our engine as we're moving forward because we'll be bringing lots more stuff to the fans in the future. These crowdfunders— just so fans that maybe aren't familiar with— Bill, so why is an established publisher like Palladium doing crowdfunding? Well, that's pretty standard now in our industry, and it lets us do really exciting stuff that we couldn't do otherwise. Yeah. Because normally one of the big blocks to doing cool special editions and collector's editions and limited editions and dice sets and, you know, all this gaming stuff is you need to have some sort of measure of what the number you need to print and what the fans want. Yep. And so these crowdfunding campaigns let us do that and have really sharp numbers that really help us understand the print runs that we need to do to fulfill the campaign and to deliver after that. And it's just really exciting. It really gets everybody engaged and involved. And that's how you get all these cool things where we are also saying, hey, you know what? You guys asked for this. We're going to do it. You want this conversion doc? You got it, right? Without the crowdfunding campaigns, that the Savage Rift conversion doc for Titan Robotics never would have happened. What would have been the point, right? But if we have a crowdfunding offering, well, now tying that into it makes it, hey, you know what? If we're doing this crowdfunder, then let's do this and we can provide it basically for free. Is it free free? No, there is a cost. It's the crowdfunder, right? And so that we want fans to know, that's why we do it. The other thing is, is a lot of people have asked, are there going to be PDF-only pledge levels? And Kevin and I, we looked at the data from Titan Robotics, we looked at the data from our sales and the feedback from our brick-and-mortar stores, our distributor partners, and our retail partners. And we realized that— and this isn't, you know, different companies have different approaches and different business models. Yeah. And actually, fantastically, you would think, oh, this RPG publishing company is just like that. No, we're— there's really different business models going on out there. Not a lot of companies don't have physical offices co-located with a warehouse like we do. That's why we can do the Christmas surprise package. Yeah. We couldn't do it otherwise, right? Um, but that is part of why we, we basically, we look at early access to the PDFs as a premium option. To go along with physical books because we are really focused on the physical product releases and making sure that the stuff that— that book that you get and you hold in your hand that everyone is wowed by, that's intentional. That is our focus, is to provide the most killer physical product we can. And then we need to let the— when the book releases to general retail, We need to let it have its moment and for people to enjoy it and discover it and for our distribution and retail partners to be able to sell it. And then the general release of the PDF happens long after that. So we look at PDFs a little differently because we're very physical book and product first. Yeah. And we really wanna support again, brick-and-mortar sales of physical books. We don't want that to go away. We— and Palladium still has that distribution with— I mean, I know it's, it's tough. You go and you say, you know, it's different than in the '90s when everybody had everything, including Palladium was everywhere. Well, there was kind of this in the early 2000s, this kind of apocalypse for, for, for brick-and-mortar tabletop stores and, and comic stores. And so That, but so now you often just see maybe, you know, Dungeons and Dragons or something like that in stores. That's starting to change a lot. And, um, but that's one of the things that we're trying to support is those, those, those stores, especially the ones that have the floor space. They're not a small location and can hold more product. And a lot of people have been spotting the TMNT Redux Edition stuff out in the wild. You can find— you still find a lot of Palladium books out in the wild because we still have traditional distribution. We don't want to give that up. We don't want to betray those partners. So just, just so that everyone understands, we've added a FAQ about this. It's a little bit different approach, but we just want people to understand why that is.

Well, and one of the advantages of doing Kickstarters and crowdfunders is our customer base don't always understand what we can offer until they see it. A great example is the Glitter Boy Codex is going to be Palladium's first full-color Rifts book. Um, actually the first full-color, uh, well, I was gonna say any book, but I guess not. Turtles beat that. But it's the first full-color Rifts book.

Turtles will beat this book.

But they didn't know what to expect of Turtles. They didn't know what to expect with, with this until they saw it. And, you know, the initial response when we announced we're doing a softcover black and white edition and the hardcover edition is a lot of people— that is full color— a lot of people said, ah, we don't care about color. Palladium's got fantastic black and white art. That's, that's all of our books are black and white. Who cares about color? And then they start seeing it, and then I think when they see it in print It's gonna be

another shock.

Even harder, and they're gonna be saying, yeah, man, we want color books. But until we offered it, they didn't seem to know that they did want it.

I think part of that

is

the general stuff that you see in the industry is paint. I don't know if it's painterly how we would— Kevin and I think of painterly, but it's It's this digitally, often digitally painted, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's often digitally painted by one artist and of varying skill levels and often not the skill level that you would want for a cover, right? So that there's this big contrast between the COVID art and the interior art. Well, we're not doing that. When we did decide to do full color, we decided We're gonna go big or go home, right? Either the fans like what our vision is or they don't. And if they don't, that's okay. We just, you know, we then adjust and maneuver. But we've got top industry artists with top industry colorists. And I'm not talking tabletop game industry. I'm talking comics, Hollywood, and video game people. And when you see— then, and one of the things that's different though, this process that I didn't learn about until I was doing art direction in the industry, is it's one thing to have one person of, you know, good skill do some sort of digital painting. It's another thing to have a guy who his thing isn't— is just line art. Just fantastic lines. Yeah. And then another guy comes in, He doesn't have the same skill in lines, but his color is next level. And so when you combine those 2 skill sets—

Yeah.

The comics figured this out a long time ago. But when you combine that in our books and a lot of comics, yeah, the color work isn't the same as the COVID of the piece because they hire a completely different artist to do that. No, in this case it's the same guys, right? And so I think that's what's been blowing a lot of people's socks off. with the Glitterboy Codex, and we plan to continue to do that with our other offerings in the future. And to be honest, the premium full-color hardcover has been so popular and well received, I think this is probably going to be a thing that we're going to do moving forward. So look forward to that as well, not just with Rifts. We really want to bring— I don't think there's anyone else doing anything like this in the industry right now, so it's pretty exciting.

Yeah, I know the artwork in the Redux And the artwork that I'm seeing for Codex, I'm super excited. I think we have always loved the artwork in the entire Palladium line. It's always been hands, shoulders way beyond anything that's out there, especially now. So to kind of wrap up everything for the evening, again, we appreciate your morning, Sean, and your evening, Kevin. Uh, any final words as we close out?

Well, um, I'll just say I'm really excited about this again, just to top off that last point. I think Kevin was talking about a lot of fans thought they were gonna sacrifice some of the awesomeness of the line art in order to get color art, but in the end, they're getting the best of both worlds. And we're really excited to be pushing the envelope for the Glitterboy Codex. We're excited to be pushing the envelope for, you know, written material, gaming material, and visual presentation. for the Mechanoids Redux Edition, who we've got Luis Antonio Delgado did the color work on the New York Times bestselling Last Ronin books, as well as a lot of other stuff. He is, he's doing all that. We're, you know, so we've got a lot going on. Don't miss out on the Turtles books, the TMNT and Other Strangeness books, the Redux Editions. We are having the closeout sale on that. It's not a joke. It's not a drill. Go get it. If you're interested in the black, white, and red editions, like, get those ASAP. I know that's not a sales tactic. That's me talking to fans saying don't miss the opportunity. When it comes to the Christmas surprise packages, yes, best deal in gaming. Nail it, get it. You're gonna love it if you haven't tried it before. Feel free, go online, ask other fans what their experience is because it's awesome. Kevin, write— you give Kevin— he's like Santa. You write in your wishlist. the things that you've played, the things that you're, that you're interested in playing, what you don't have, what, you know. And, and, and it's, it's, it's a curated box. It's not like you'd say, I want this, this, and this. You really get Santa considering what you, your unique experience would be to enjoy. A lot of people love to get them for friends. And then go check out the backer kit for, um, the Glitterboy Codex and for the Savage Rifts Ends of the Earth campaign. Uh, they're really exciting. And yeah, thanks everybody for their support.

Now, I did want to ask one clarifying question because I didn't see it mentioned in the emails regarding the surprise package. But just in case any— but we had some people on our Discord server wondering if it would be possible for them to request Turtle's things in the surprise package, or are they being kept separate?

No, you can definitely request Turtle products in the surprise packages. Just, uh, be aware that the value is the listed MSRP. Um, so it's a $60 value even though you can buy them right now for $35.95.

But things like dice or anything?

Yes, you could request— yeah, so, so, so the— for this Christmas surprise package season, while, while we've got them still in the, in the house, You can absolutely— the fans can absolutely say, I'm interested to try the D&D Redux Edition. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, so that is valid. We got dice still, we've got game master screens still, we've still got some black, white, and reds. We have the full-color painterly ones that are awesome. Um, so that definitely can be requested. But just remember, even though we're concurrently running a sale on that, and we may concurrently run other small sales.

Yep.

Um, any, any book that's in the Christmas surprise packages is valued at the full retail value.

Yep.

But it's a great deal. You're going to get a great deal.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, uh, yeah, and I just want to say, look, you know, these are like turbulent weirdo times that we're living in, and try to stay frosty. Try not to let all the political stuff and, and economic stuff get to you too bad, and You know, when you need escape, go turn to your hobby, turn to role-playing, turn to— because it is, you know, you play a game and you forget about the real world for the next 3 to 5 hours. And you need that break. It helps give you a little bit of opportunity to catch your breath and to be the good guys. So do it.

It's really It's really funny that you say this because yesterday in our private chat, so we do an actual play series of Rifts here on the podcast and it's a lot of fun. And given everything that's been happening in our lives and in the world and in my own personal life, I, we've had to reschedule a few times. But in this private chat yesterday, it's like, please folks, can we try and not reschedule because I need to roll some dice and do something awesome. And there's very— there's basically nothing else in the world more awesome than playing Rifts. So let's stick with the schedule, please.

I agree. You know, and if you already own a shitload of books, you don't need to buy new stuff. Pull them out, reread them. There'll be stuff that you go, gosh, I don't remember that, or man, that's cooler than I thought it was. Um, And, uh, you know, you know, game with what you have.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and one of the things that we've tried to do with this crowdfunding campaign is we've tried to make sure that there's— you can get in, you can get the Glitterboy Codex for $20. And even if you can only back for a dollar now and you're like, hey, I don't have money right now, maybe I will, you know, in a few months or after I get grandma money and Christmas money. Do that so that you don't miss out on the opportunity because you get your foot in the door with the crowdfunder and you can get the stuff later. We also enabled, if you're spending, I think it's over $150, you can break it up into payment plans through the BackerKit interface. BackerKit, yeah. So a lot of fans— we didn't have that enabled initially. We just weren't really aware of where the setting to turn that on was in the interface. And so fans, during the launch day, fans were like, can I have this option? We're like, absolutely, we turned it on. So we just want to say we tried to make sure that there are accessible levels for all, for fans of all budgets and all gaming interests, um, to get in and, and get, you know, just the Glitterboy Codex or just the Mekhanoids Redux Edition, or if you want to go premium, get both, right? Um, so, so we hope that fans can come in and enjoy that. Um, and like I said, that's a big for me and Kevin. We, we try and support all kinds of budgets, um, because we grew up, you know, poor, I guess you'd say, um, just to put it bluntly. And, and so we— and that's important to us. And, and, uh, and yeah, so, but we, you know, game, game on, have a good time, check it out. Even if maybe you don't want to or can't back the campaign, check it out because I think it's just exciting, cool material. Yeah, it's fun. Look at it as a preview page of what's to come, uh, next year for these for these game systems too, because we're excited to be selling these books in general retail as well. So,

well, thank you very much, both of you, uh, for spending time with us. And, uh, hopefully we'll do it again. Maybe not soon, but because everyone has schedules, but we'll do it again soon at some point.

Absolutely.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, you guys.

Bye-bye.

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.com. as well. Our opening music is 8-Bit Bass and Lead by Furbyguy from freesound.org. This closing music is Caravana by Philip Grass, 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.