#194 – After the Bomb RPG 1E vs 2E

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 Radical. First off, I want to give thanks to multiple folks out in our Discord community who assisted me with this task. And that task was going through the entire Palladium books back catalog, finding out when each one was published, and then building a massive spreadsheet with those publication dates and updated releases, trying to even track down some of the stealth edit dates and such like that. It has come to great fruition. Thank you all so much, because now we can actually start releasing these episodes that look at the older books in some attempt at a semblance of chronological order. And looking back at the stuff that's on this list, as it turns out, the, the next one that we need to do that we haven't done in the chronology would be After the Bomb. Now we're talking about first edition, but first edition is a tiny, tiny book, basically a supplement for the original Ninja Turtles game. So in order to have more content in this episode, we're both looking at the original and the second edition released in 2001.

The first one, After the Bomb by Eric Wardrick, clearly a TMNT product right after TMNT and Other Strangeness came out, or not right after, but shortly thereafter it came out. kind of a different take on what's going on. And it was in line with a lot of the other supplements that came out, right? You had Into the Universe and Multi-Universes and Go to Hollywood and all these different books that came out. It's, it's, it's a supplement. It's not a complete role-playing game, as we like to say. If you just had this book, you would struggle immensely to make a character because the character creation stuff just isn't here. Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a couple of cool new, um, animals and races, and we'll get to it a little bit later, and my favorite ship in almost the entire Palladium game, which we'll talk about in a minute.

Okay. Yep.

Yep. It's fun. And it totally, again, you look at this book and you have the Empire of Humanity. Well, that sounds a heck of a lot like the Coalition States being the saviors of humanity. You have these diabolical people trying to fight off the mutant animals. And you have some of the organizations, the New Kennel, the dog people, who of course are friends with the Empire of Humanity. Like, and you have these highlights, you have this nucleus of that you're going to see in Rifts, you know, in 5, 6 years down the line, but taken, of course, Rifts taken to the nth degree. So.

Yeah, this book is slim. We are coming in at what, 53, 54 pages, something like that. It's got 10 pages of setting and character stuff. And the entire rest of it is just adventures.

Yeah.

The adventures are pretty cool too. They're very well fleshed out in that Eric Gugick way that we, we all dearly miss.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and, and it's just filled with artwork from Laird. So like you have original artwork that probably never showed up anywhere else except in Palladium products. And you're like, oh, it's so good.

Yeah.

Just so good.

I wonder if we could get him on.

Oh.

Hmm. Oh, note to self.

Yeah.

Yeah. That'd be, that'd be pretty cool. I'd love to have a chat with him. Yeah. So yeah, seriously, like 10, there are 10 pages of setting here. Very, very little. Most of it is dedicated to shit happening in the Empire of Humanity and what, uh, Cardania, a little bit on Cardania, a little bit on Niak, Bird Island. And that's it. Like we, we get almost nothing. There, there is more filled out on some of these factions inside the adventures.

Yep.

But other than that, it's, it's very slim. And yet, and yet it is not a complete role-playing game. There's more information here to work with a role-playing game in this setting than there was in Chaos Earth.

Shots fired. Shots fired.

There's people, there's factions. There's, there is exactly 10 pages of setting information, which is packed with info that you can take this and run with it.

And even though it's that small, you know, and it has some great original artwork, it is dense with information, right? Like I had a friend of mine borrowed a couple of books from Palladium for me because he was wanting to do some research and he handed them back and he goes, I couldn't get through these. I'm like, why not? It's just all words. It's just, it's just all, yeah. I'm like, yeah, that's a Palladium book. It has information for you to use.

And yet, despite it having a lot of words, I will say that these words are more useful than some of the more Bill Coffin level of rambling Palladium books where you just have these like half-page long paragraphs of nothing but just rambling text. Yeah. Like, Wojcik knew how to write a fucking book.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Each paragraph contains the information that you need, maybe a little bit of flavor, and that's it. Yep. He doesn't go off on these long-ass rants. He doesn't just dive into weird esoteric stuff that doesn't matter in this situation. Again, this is something that is sorely missed.

You do have a little tiny character creation, you know, the first page, you know, like some mutation backgrounds.

You got the best kind of character creation, random.

Right.

They redo the skills, uh, how you get skills from TMNT, a completely different random table, uh, more in fitting with a post-apocalyptic setting. Uh, this book, as opposed to some of the supplements that come after, focuses primarily on the Northeast through Central Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Not much outside of that.

Yeah.

Um, the only thing I ever found wanting out of this book was a little bit more Appalachian representation.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the, that's the only thing, because you literally have the Empire of Humanity being cradled in upstate and western New York, and then so much of it is like at the foothills of the Appalachians. Yeah.

I think that if you wanted to do something in the Appalachians, so I, you could just find the Fallout 76 stuff and convert it very easily. As Fallout, okay. Side, side discussion here. Fallout 76, as a lifelong Fallout fan, I have a love-hate relationship with that game. The lore makes no fucking sense whatsoever, given the time that it's what, like 20 years after the bombs dropped?

Right.

It doesn't, none of, none of the stuff in there makes any sense, but Whatever. I'm playing Fallout with friends.

Yep.

I'm enjoying some the hell out of it, but the setting stuff is just generic post-apocalyptic with a little bit of humor.

Yep.

You could so easily take anything out of the Fallout 76 game, just remove Fallout references, replace them with the Big Death, and boom. Replace the people with mutant animals.

Yeah.

And it would fit 100%. You could just lift, drop. It'd be perfect. Absolutely. Yes, Jacob, get an Appalachian game going on.

Uh, I've actually run an After the Bomb Appalachian game before. For those who know me, I have a deep, deep love of the history and culture of the Appalachians, and I, I always enjoy setting games in Appalachia or Appalachia, um, pastiches. So Nice. It is kind of interesting how in After the Bomb, the Empire of Humanity does kind of foreshadow what we'd see out of the Coalition, but is different in some key ways. One of the big ones being they don't have as big an issue with psionics as the Coalition does. In fact, they kind of look at it as a resource, not the most trusted resource, but not one that they're trying to wipe off the map as long as the user is a human.

Well, in the new kennel, the mutant dogs aren't their creation. It's a whole other kingdom, empire, however you want to call it, that are their allies because dogs and humans are friends. And so it makes sense that dogs and humans are friends. So that's a big departure.

Have you, have you looked at the numbers?

Yeah.

The numbers, specifically the population. This is something I noticed immediately when reading it recently for this episode. The Empire of Humanity has roughly 28,500 people.

Right.

Now, if you go by this book and you're just using the setting, that means if the Empire is correct and they are the last bastion of actual humanity, and whether or not they're all even human is questionable, of course.

Right.

But if they are the last bastion of humanity, There's 28,500 human beings left on this planet.

Right, right. Well, yeah. At least here.

Yeah. And that's a very small number.

And they're all in one place. They're all in Techville, right?

Yep.

But then you flip the page or 2 and you go to New Kennel. There's 250,000 dogs.

Yep.

Right? So they're outnumbered significantly.

Significantly.

Around roughly 10 to 1, depending on how you want to count it. Right?

Right.

is a serious issue. And then of course it talks on, oh, these are not nice people because they have 200,000 basically slaves that work for them. Over 10% of their population's in the military, or excuse me, almost half their population's in the military if you add up all the numbers, which is seriously hard to maintain from an economic standpoint.

Yeah.

I don't believe it's in this book, but in one of the other After the Bomb supplements, they do reference that that mandatory military service is a component.

Other numbers. If you look ahead, there's the power armor suit. Yeah. Right. And you talk about how, I mean, first off, you look at the power armor suit and it's fucking powerful. Yeah.

Yeah.

The amount of, or where did it go? The Type 1 robotic armor. Here we go. AR 18.

Yep.

This is a setting when you don't have high attack bonuses, strike bonuses.

Nope.

And 1,200 SDC.

Yeah.

Yeah, that thing could go toe to toe with most of the tanks listed in Palladium supplements up to this point.

Oh, absolutely. 1,200 SDC. And again, this is a setting where your weapons are— where a 3D6 weapon is good.

Yeah, absolutely. You're— and well, it's an AR-18. So first of all, most of your shots are just bouncing off of this thing, right? Just like to start with. Right. And so, you know, if you're doing that long range sniper shot with a big rifle and you have all your stacked up bonuses, You're still maybe a +5, right? You know, and so you're still, you're still having to roll really well to get that thing. It has some decent weapons that can do, you know, a lot of damage. Of course, this is TMNT, so its attacks are interesting. Like it has 2 physical or 3 weapons. You know, you haven't had the, the attack per round inflation that happens later on, right?

Yep. But still, oh yeah, AR-18, 1,200. 2,800 pounds. It provides a PS of 28. Pretty massive in this setting where every character is rolled on a 3d6.

Right.

There's 210 already assigned and another dozen are manufactured every month.

Right.

Okay, so we have civilization with 28,000 remaining people.

Yeah.

Half of which are in the military. They're popping out these things at a rate of 12 a month, right?

How?

Where people— we talk about the, the concept of logistics.

Yeah.

And such.

Yeah.

Now we also have to assume that, you know, they're doing other things in society as well. Like their entire society isn't built around popping out these 12 suits of armor every month. Well, yet the amount of resources required to generate these 12 suits of armor every month would be massive. So where are they getting them?

Well, the people resource is their 200,000 slaves.

Yeah.

As the Egyptians know, slavery gets shit done. And so you got this huge workforce so that, that are, that, you know, in a very negative mindset, they're expendable people that you can just keep working until they fall. Right now, you, that's just one of those aspects. You still need supplies, your manufacturing base, you need mining, you need things like that. Um, Palladium's never really gone into that. You have to always be careful when my economic hat goes on. I have to go, uh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a game, a game I love very, very much, but I, I have the part of my brain that knows far, far too much about industrial and military logistics screams constantly through this. Like, like we were talking about the Mark I, the Type I.

Yeah.

They actually have a IIXD that they're like basically phasing out the Type I at the moment.

And there's 2,400 of them.

Yeah, there's 2,400 and they're producing 100 a month.

Okay. Yeah.

Like, and these are also AR-18, right? Not as much SDC, but still.

I'm— I want to say the SDC on this is actually a misprint.

It's just 240. I think it's smaller. Smaller.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's more of an exoskeleton. It's not robot armor, right? So, so this is going to be your main soldier suit, right? Right. It's going to be the The Dead Boy armor, but with some better enhancements.

Yep. Right.

In some ways there's stuff in here that they don't— I mean, they made some fundamental changes when you go like they have built-in targeting system, computer, com links, loudspeaker. Radios would work in this world. Right. Like, like radios would have maybe a good distance. I don't remember. Oh, well, Mutant Snowbird is part of this. So they don't have satellite communications, but they—

Correct.

There's no ley lines. You know, there's not this big magic, you know, screw you and your, your long-range Radio communications.

Depends upon the version you're looking at. Mutants in orbit didn't exist at this point.

This is true.

This is true. We're still in First Ed.

Right. Right.

And then, and then you, of course, you know, you talk about your, your typical soldier with your typical rifle and you, then you have fighter craft and you have helicopters and you're like, and tanks. I don't know why you would have tanks if you have the Type 1 power armor or excuse me, robot armor. But, um, uh, okay.

Yeah.

'Cause they only have 36 of them.

36 tanks?

Yeah.

Why? What?

Like, I don't—

okay.

Anyway.

So, I mean, mobile artillery, there's something to say, but it's not really, I guess.

The, the big point for tanks is don't think about them the way the US or Russia approaches tanks. Think about them as Great Britain approaches tanks, where it's, there is a hardpoint, a bunker, a something like that. Look at the laser cannon on it, look at its loadout. This is not designed for open field combat against other tanks, it's against entrenched positions.

Yeah.

And that's what they're doing with it. So it's more like the Challenger 2.

Right, okay. Yeah, or, kinda like what the Germans did in Normandy, they kinda just put 'em all in placement, and just, their cannons—

Oh, you mean when they took all of their broke-down tanks and turned them into bunkers because they could not actually keep them all running because Porsche engines suck?

I still think, though, against entrenched positions, trench positions, smaller, lighter AR-18, fast individual units that can spread out, swarm, and just attach fucking, you know, limpet mines or something.

They have a 10d6 laser.

Okay. Well, nevermind.

Yeah. It doesn't give you range, but let's assume that it's a mile.

Okay. I stand corrected. I didn't look at the damage output. Yeah. 10d6 is—

And they, and they, um, every round. Okay. Oh, so a 2,400-foot range. 1 round every 3, every 3rd melee. So they don't fight, they're artillery. These are just basically +4 to strike.

Yeah.

They're artillery pieces. Yeah. They call them tanks, but they're really artillery. Yeah. With that short range.

That machine gun nest over there that is causing our armored troops a lot of problems behind the, you know, improvised barricades and stuff needs to go away. Now you call the tank.

Right, right.

It's there to support your troops.

But, um, and then, you know, go into New Kennel, which has 2,500 dogs. Um, uh, and they are ruled by their military dictatorship. So they're fully a military organization. Yeah. And, you know, they're running around with their— just being dog boys.

Yep.

Basically, but not dog boys, right?

Yep.

Not dog boys. They don't tell you too much about them per se, like what's the average soldier or whatever, but you have a couple examples of their leadership. So you could pretty easily adapt those. Not nearly as much information on, you know, the, the New Kettle, just some breakdowns of information of like economics and what they're doing, how many soldiers and stuff like that.

And you get a pretty good, you know, understanding of how expendable they are.

Right, right, exactly.

I giggle every time I remember that the twins that run the— run New Kettle are from Greyhound stock.

Yeah.

Great. Your leadership's high-strung and expendable.

Yep.

Um, and a spider is your military person.

Well, the spider's not a spider. No, it's called the Spider.

I know.

And the Spider's a revolutionary.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. He's the one trying to— so there's this, he's trying to overthrow the current new kennel, right?

Yeah. She's not even a dog. She's actually a coyote.

Yep.

Who's passing as a dog.

Mm-hmm.

As you do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, there's, there's—

And this is where, like, from a book layout, they talk more about this in the adventures, right?

Yep.

Um, they could give better kind of background here because you don't find it until later. But, you know, again, you have like these great groups, you know, that you could set up what's going on in the world. You don't, you don't need a lot more than this. You know, throw the adventures in and Away you go.

Of course, my— it gets some of the least words and page count in the entire book, but my favorite faction is the Rodent Cartel of Philly. I mean, the Plains of Free Cattle are awesome. Don't get me wrong. I love where they're going with that, but the Rodent Cartel of Philly, just, just, mm, there's something about it that I just love.

Well, 48, 47, 48 pages.

Yep.

Yep. A lot of good stuff here. A lot of good Peter Laird art. There's just a number of adventures. It's a good book.

Yeah.

Yep.

Very much so. It would make a valuable addition to anybody's collection, especially at that era. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, so, you know, before we wrap this one up, Shadowfade, page 32. The, the lost ship from the pre-big death. It's just sitting out there.

Yep.

Has magic metal. It repairs, it heals. I reread that section over and over and over as a kid because I was like, and it's just this throwaway description of something that's real easy to miss as you're going through this book until you really look at it. You're like, oh, it's well armed. It's designed blah, blah, blah. Oh, And it's kind of just a throwaway thing that you could find in this adventure.

Right.

But they don't really even know it's there.

Yep.

Right?

Yep.

This goes back, and I'm not trying to bring this topic up, this goes back to, gives a lot of validity to NPCs' perception check position because the players have to ask questions. The GM has to describe things. Otherwise this never gets seen.

Right.

You may never run into it unless the players ask about it. So it's like, it's up to the GM to say, do I really want this in here? And how do I describe it so that the setting will pop— it makes it pop out, right? Otherwise it's like, no, that's too powerful. I don't want the players to have it.

I would never let someone find this with a good perception check.

Right. Like you shouldn't. It's just debris.

This isn't a roll a d20 to find God.

Right.

Yeah. It's like, This thing is awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah. It should definitely be something that they find or that they stumble into. You could introduce it in kind of an Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, right?

Right.

Kind of incarnated adventure for this setting.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Or you go the other way and just go Monty Hall. It's like behind door number 3 is this awesome thing. And then the adventure is protecting it to get it to where you need to work on it. Right. Yeah.

Those are always fun.

Yep. All players love escort quests.

You know, escort quests are a lot more fun in tabletop than they are in video games. This is true.

Because you convince the NPC not to do the stupid thing. Yeah.

Well, okay. So an escort quest in a video game is a barrier to you moving onward.

Yes.

If you fail it, you frequently, you have failed and you cannot proceed.

Right.

But that's not how tabletop games work. If you fail an escort quest in a tabletop game, congratulations, life goes on. Now you have to deal with the consequences of failing said escort quest. That's much more interesting. You don't get to redo it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Before we move on, I do have one opinion. I do want to get one opinion from you, NPC. Okay. What are your thoughts on the encounter tables?

I thought they were fine. They're fun. They're very interesting. And they, they all have like, Story behind them.

Story, but not too much story.

Not too much. Yeah, it's something you can work with here.

This definitely hit a sweet spot for me where it— between the fact that they actually kind of point their point towards things going on that the rest of the book doesn't talk about, such as 41 through 45 Empire K-9 Rangers. Which aren't really talked about prior to that. But like the Empire K-9 Rangers in the future, that's a Dead Boy Pack and a Psi Stalker.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, but very well done. Uh, they're not stitching you into a very scripted encounter. It's like, here is an idea with enough information to take it and run.

They are almost the Hook, Line, Sinkers that show up later, but not Quite, not quite there.

Yeah. I think that the hook, line, sinkers tend to be a bit too much sometimes. Sometimes it's hard to work with them, you know? They like, they have enough that they're, they hook the HLSs tend to be very specific in some ways, but not specific enough in others that they, I just feel that they require too much work on the GM to ever even try and use.

Yeah.

Yeah. This is my take.

They're not, they're almost, It's like the one-pagers that Pinnacle does and other gaming companies do that have almost everything you need to just run from that one page. The HLs, the hook, line, sinkers, they don't have enough. And then as you say, it's like sometimes the sinker is like, wait, how would you get there? How would you get here from this? But yeah. Um, but I can see these random tables, like, uh, these are great. Like I could use these as a GM now.

Quick roll mutant bugs. Love those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

And then the book ends with a layered picture of the city of Philly.

And it's awesome.

It's just so much little detail packed into what's going on in this picture. And you get the feeling of how the city was put together, you know, very ramshackle, but, you know, we're going to have a skyscraper or, you know, we're going to have a tower, right? Like—

Can you see the ruins extending onward in the back?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's very nice.

Okay.

Let's talk about Second Ed.

Well, it's not, is it officially Second Ed? It's just the complete role-playing game of After the Bomb, right?

Yeah.

Um, everybody calls it Second Ed.

Everybody calls it Second Ed. And yeah, first off, quick comment about the print date on this one. First printing was December 2001.

Yeah.

What a time to hit the market.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is a year and some change after they lost the, they gave up the TMNT license.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

So that was 2000. Um, hold on. Uh, they mentioned it in Rifter number 9. Rifter number 9. Yeah. That's when it happens. And that was January 2000. So just about 2 years from that. announcement to the publication of this. Right. Right. Yeah. Which, and this is a fucking big book.

Oh yeah.

This is compared to the other one, which was 44 pages. This is 220-something pages.

224 if you count the back ad.

Yeah.

Now, a quick question. You have both the original TMNT and After the Bomb in front of you.

Yep.

Can you grab that first edition TMNT and let's add the page count of that and After the Bomb together.

110 plus 44 is 154.

Yeah. Versus 224. Yeah. Right.

Yep.

This book opens up with Eric Wojcik doing what Eric Wojcik does best and telling you stories.

Yep.

And he starts off telling you how everything came to be. Starts about his epiphanies of how this is actually much closer to reality than we think it is. And it's a cool story told in Eric Wojcik's special way of, imagine this. Now, okay. Now then this thing happened.

Okay.

Now imagine this. And you can picture it now that we've had all of these chats with Kevin. I'm always like, back in 1995, when I first wrote After the Bomb, it seemed kind of silly. I just got to picture him saying it that way.

Having met and talked to Eric Wojcik, he writes the way he talks.

Yeah. His, this introduction where he talks about how to play a role-playing game. It's really good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of games in this era still insisted on having this. Sometimes they do now. People tend to assume. Yeah. Writers tend to assume now that you know what a fucking role-playing game is. But I don't know. Sometimes I do like reading them because it gives me an understanding of what the writer thinks a role-playing game is.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I like the way that Eric presents it. He, again, he goes in and it's like, okay, imagine this now. Picture this.

Okay.

We're going to do this. Okay. Now imagine this. Now think about that. And his, His way of doing it is he tells you about what a role-playing game is by guiding you through role-playing, which is not something that a lot of books would do. They'd be like, a role-playing game is a game where we sit around and kind of play a game of cowboys and Indians. You remember cowboys and Indians we used to play? No, boomer. I never played cowboys and Indians. I played Star Wars.

I've always, you know, for the same reason you just said, I've always liked these types of things in game books. especially the first book for whatever new game system or whatever new world, a page or two. It doesn't have to go overboard. Some of them go on and on and on and on, you know, just like high level, just to tell the kid who's 12, who was given this by their mom as a birthday gift that they didn't know was coming. And the mom thought it was cool and they have no way, they've never seen it before.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, today that's much less likely, but still it gives them something.

I think something else that was common in this era was seeing this book for yourself on a shelf at your comic or game store.

Yeah.

Or Barnes Noble or Books-A-Million would have these things too. So you, I think kids would see these things and grab them and be like, this is cool.

Right, right, right. What do I do with it? Yeah.

Yeah.

Waldenbooks in the, in the, in the mall.

Yeah.

B. Dalton's. Uh, depending on where you grew up, what you saw.

Or, or you were in the border regions like I was where one end of the mall had one and the other one had the other.

Oh no, we had 2 malls across the street from each other and they had one had a B. Dalton's and one had a Waldenbooks. It was also a Bookland and a Books-A-Million and then Barnes Noble all attached to these same 2 malls.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, yep. Well, I grew up where it's like, I'd see it in the back of a Dragon magazine. I have no idea what was in it. Go in and try to convince the local bookstore to order it sight unseen with my, my couple of bucks that I had. And they're like, well, we don't really have access to that distributor. Well, could you try? And they're like, well, we'll try. And then 3 months later, the book would show up if you were lucky, or you'd show back and, hey, did you ever get that? Yeah, that order never went through. We're gonna have to pay you back. Like, oh, okay. Yeah. Anyway, um, rural, rural areas. Um, and then this jumps into, because as we were saying, After the Bomb is a supplement to TMNT and Other Strangeness.

Mm-hmm.

This jumps into character creation and it's your cleaned up uh, Palladium character creation that you're used to. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and it's, you know, here's your step 1, here's your attributes, here's how this goes through, here's how the attributes play out, here's your chart for your attributes. Speed type 2. Well, we are playing After the Bomb, so step 2 is you're a mutant animal.

Yeah.

Yep.

And guess what? You're randomly rolling this shit because you know what? You're a mutant animal and you didn't get a choice.

Um, I mean, and it has some interesting animals already. So you might come to this thinking, okay, I get to play a mutant animal. So that's like a cat or a dog or a bear, maybe a raccoon or an eagle. Okay. You could also play a grouse.

A Jersey Giant.

A skunk, a Jersey Giant, a turkey.

A chicken. Skunk.

A goat.

I'm going to be a mutant ninja turkey. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turkeys. That would work. We could make a new brand.

And they have, now you could be a bird and you could be a parakeet. Okay. You could be a parakeet or you could be a budgie or you could be a parrot, right? All of these different things. Guinea pig. You wanna play a mutant guinea pig? You play a mutant guinea pig. That'd be awesome.

I, I, I just want to know like the subtable for purebred animals of North America. I want to know who had the fun time looking like for some of the most iconic pure breeds in North America.

Angus. And the stuff about purebreds and throwbacks and chimeras is really cool. And the fact that you can actually just work with the game master and create your own chimera and it's super, super easy to do.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

The, but the, what is it? The, uh, the chicken dinosaurs.

Yes.

Yes.

Those, those are lovely. Yep. So something I love about this character creation system. And Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did this as well, but I think this does it and portrays it in a way that is updated. There's no classes.

No, no.

And it got everything that you need to do to create the character is in the character creation section.

Yep.

It guides you one by one through everything that you need to do. It's great.

Yeah.

It even tells you like, like you randomly roll your background and that determines what skills you get and it tells you what skills you get. And then you get only very few choices after that.

Yep.

You create these characters that are very fit for their environment. It's great.

And not just skills, you get special bonuses such as extra bio-E, extra SDC, some attribute bonuses. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, it's, it's nice.

I dare say that as far as Palladium game goes, this is one of the most quote unquote balanced because thought went into making the quote unquote shittier background roles somewhat compensated for not being as good as the ones with the more skills. Like the, uh, the very first one, the Feral background, you get like 10 skills.

Yep.

10, 12 skills. Whereas some others get many, many, many more skills, but you also get more of IOE, right? 20 more SDC. You get +2 to PE, +3 to PS, and so on. That's actually pretty fucking good.

Yeah. And yeah. And it really, yeah. If you, if you look at this in 25 pages, we haven't gotten through all the way through the character creation yet, but in 25 pages you've made your character.

Yeah.

The rest of the 200 or excuse me, 199 pages of this book, it's stuff for the setting and background and some skills and animal types, you know, but, but like, but like the character creation portion itself is fairly dense.

Right. And it's like, Um, that is basically the only, the only referencing that you're going to be doing outside of the character creation system is looking at the master skill table and looking at your animal. 100+ pages.

Right.

How many, how many damn pages of mutant animals are there? Like a lot.

A lot.

Okay. There's a lot. Yeah. And all the animal traits and pleasure bunny and stuff. Yeah.

Your psychic abilities. But, but like the character core, core character creation is It's pretty quick. Like, like it's, it's there. And, um, and then, you know, we come to the step 4, which is the bio-E, uh, which we'll, we'll dig into.

Um, we actually have plans to talk about bio-E in its own dedicated session after this one.

In essence, this is the way you tweak your mutant on how much of an animal, how little of an animal they are, and what, what animal aspects or mutant aspects you pick up.

Yep.

In a very point-driven way. And it's, it's, it's interesting to me that outside of TMNT, I don't know if any of the other worlds or systems in Palladium really use something like it. TMNT and After the Bomb.

Heroes.

Heroes does, but Heroes literally copy-pastes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, in, in essence, like a point system like this, um, is interesting that point-built characters were in Palladium before it was cool.

Well, I mean, I guess so. Yeah. Bio-E was present in the original.

Yeah. It was '86, right? Like it wasn't the whole system though.

Yeah.

Right.

So they had the point buy. I mean, it's most of it.

Yeah.

Most of the stuff that you're going to be buying with Bio-E is going to be a significant part of your character.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

It is, is it is a really good system. And yeah, we'll talk about that soon, but I think we'll have a lot to say.

Yeah.

So what's your favorite animal in the book?

Because it's so— octopus. I want to be an anthropomorphic air-breathing octopus that runs around with hands and arms.

I need to get you in one of my Eclipse Phase games playing an uplifted octopus.

I think when I'm going intelligence, otherwise I want to be a fricking shark. I want to be a land shark. Like those are my 2, like I flip back and forth. Aquatic animals on land just kind of do it for me.

Oh, Jacob. I have a hard, hard time answering this one. Uh, part of it is because I do love the fact, the addition of pure breeds to the game, just because it tickles me immensely that like I can be a, I can be a Jersey blue pig or, or For me, you— I can actually play a Jacob's goat, which, if you've ever seen a Jacob's goat, um, like, I, I love them. Um, but for ones that are actually found in this book, I kind of, kind of gotta go with the beaver.

Beaver's nice. Beaver's nice. I always love a good beaver. I always love a good bear. But I gotta say, my favorite in this is As I've said before, the Allosauroid, the dinosaur chicken, it's— if you just— it's okay. It takes that old joke that, you know, you look down at the, the, the pocket poodle and, you know, there's that like, I used to be a wolf. I have the blood of predators in me. And then you apply it to a chicken and you look at the chicken. You're like, I used to be a dinosaur. Well, now I am a dinosaur.

I'm a dinosaur again.

Yeah.

I recalled that this actually was in this book and not in one of the supplements that they didn't reprint into here. I do have one that actually surpasses the beaver. What?

The otter.

Otters, yes.

Yes, like, I mean, forget your Navy SEALs. We have your Navy otters.

What is that one from? That joke from Hurricane Katrina where somebody wrote, You know, so on they was picture of somebody's garage where they had spray painted "looters will be shot." Yes, but they misspelled it. Yeah, yeah. It said "lotteries will be shot," and then somebody drew this picture, took this photo shot, this picture of an otter with like a beret saying "lotteries are not afraid." So the one thing when I'm looking through the character creation here, one thing that was a little.

disappointed because I don't think it's in here, um, is the team rules from the original TMNT where basically your group—

I didn't see them.

What?

Yeah, I didn't see them.

Yeah. Um, and for those that don't know, in, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Other Strangeness, the original supplement, there was this concept that all of you would play like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You'd all be the same animal species and you'd get these synergy bonuses with the group. And I thought that was a really cool way to kind of build your party dynamic, right? Um, now this game doesn't necessarily have that aspect. It's, it's had the TMNT stripped off of it for, for, for, you know, for reasons.

And it doesn't expect you to play like a team of heroes.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

It very, very, very much wants you to just, you know, go, go all in and create and everybody plays something different. Right.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So after the Bio-E, um, We get into, uh, well, it goes for a bit that, you know, talks about how you modify your thing, modify your character, modify your mutants, um, hit points, SDC, talks a little bit about SDC and armor rating. Um, goes into damage rules, which from a layout perspective, I kind of know why they put them here, but, um, at least you get them right up front, which is nice. Um, alignments. Don't think they did anything different with alignments.

Nope.

Um, it's your, it's your, nope, you're too good.

Mechanics are pretty much what you think they are. The combat system's a little streamlined. I like some of the things that it does, but a lot of it you're used to. Some things are very different. The aiming and called shot system is a little simplified. Yep. And I think it's actually kind of better. First, if you're used to the Rift's way of doing things now, called shots don't take an action. That's it. They just allow you to hit a spot, right? You just have to say it before you shoot.

And there's a penalty usually.

Sometimes.

Sometimes. Yeah.

It said the GM can impose a penalty and require a 12 or higher for certain, like, you know, critical locations. Right. But it doesn't apply a normal action penalty. And Aim Shot, whereas in Rifts Ultimate Edition at least, it's just spend an extra action, get a +2.

Right here.

It's an escalating— it increases with your level.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So the higher level you are, the better your aim is. Um, and it seems connected to just character level, not anything else. Not anything else. Yeah.

Uh, experience points. There's one experience points table for all the mutant animals, right? Just, just one kind of previous conversations, how experience points tables were just pretty much arbitrary. Well, they arbitrarily said, doesn't matter. There's just one table.

Cool.

All right. That's great.

Move on.

Uh, one element of the combat I'd like to call out because it's not always clearly stated in Palladium is the Shooting Wild rules. Uh, if you're coming from other Palladium systems, it's definitely, definitely, definitely worth reading through.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, just because it, the same things have appeared in other Palladium systems, uh, but not as concise and filled out. The fact that, and honestly, it makes Emperor of Humanity power armor troops absolutely freaking terrifying.

Honestly, I'll admit, I've never really liked any of the Palladium shooting wild rules. I think oftentimes they're a little arbitrary because they basically make everybody roll a single die with no modifier whatsoever, regardless of your skill level. Like, it's just, eh. I mean, it takes away the ability to really play out the role-playing game based upon the movie Shoot 'Em Up, you know? Yeah.

I would argue that almost everyone in the movie Shoot 'Em Up though has some sort of training or proficiency in the firearms. Whereas Wild is supposed to be—

I mean, it's just Bugs Bunny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just, I never liked the call. I mean, it just seems like a whole other thing to tack onto a system that already works.

Mm-hmm.

You can be like, okay, you're in a weird situation or something that would take away your ability to fire as well. Just give them a penalty and call it good.

Yeah. Well, that's why I love the Shooting Wild in here. It really more clearly than a lot of Palladium sections— it's on page 52— far more clearly calls out when it applies and when it does not apply. It, it really calls out that this is suppressing fire from an enemy.

Oh, and this one is just a -6 penalty.

Yeah, okay, -6.

That's so much better. And I can go with that.

All of the bullet points are very clear, concise. Literally, like, it doesn't apply unless you are base— if you're doing it from any support, any sort of supported firing platform, it doesn't apply unless you're literally doing suppressive fire. And, and so it, it is my— one of my favorite interpretations of shooting wild.

Good.

I'd probably lift this up and drop this in any of my Palladium games.

Yeah, I highly recommend, unless you're gonna go down the path of madness that I go down and get the Compendium of Modern Arms.

Oh God.

Um, and just go ham on that. This is possibly the best Shooting Wild rule set in all of Palladium.

And then after that, we've got what really just seems to be a reprint, an updated reprint of the stuff from— well, okay, no, sorry. We have a lot of setting information followed by the same adventures.

Right, right.

But I, you know, I'm doing it a disjustice. The setting information is not a reprint. The setting information is much more expanded. We see city populations. We see settings across the world right now. Like we get more than just the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.

One thing I definitely like, which was the Disconnect we saw in the first edition that we all mentioned, that—

Population.

Well, with the dis— where they literally refer to the Empire of Humanity as the sick old man. Um, and it's, it definitely gets that feel.

The sick old man. Yeah, I like that. We get more detail on how everything started.

Yep.

And it's a pretty cool story. Pretty neat. Again, it's with Eric's You know, trademark method of storytelling too. You know, he starts saying, saying something. Yeah, it starts happening to this. And then, hey, what was the harm? Just good fun, right?

What could go wrong?

It's like he's talking to you. It's like he's telling you the story. And I love it when he does that.

They also vastly increased the size of the population of the Empire of Humanity, which helps a lot.

Yeah.

Where the true human population is about the same.

28,500.

Um, but we're up to an official population of 250,000—

Dogs?

Uh, slaves.

Oh, oh, definitely. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Uh, and they scale the— they explain a little bit more about the military forces, um, and give— one of the things that this edition does is it ties New Kennel And the Empire of Humanity far more tightly together than they were in the first edition, to the point where 6,500 mutant dogs are literally serving in the Empire of Humanity's armed forces.

So they outnumber the humans.

Yeah.

I mean, they even give you a breakdown of the, you know, military force for the army, which is 37,000 human soldiers in Type 1 armor, 2,400 suits of Type 2 armor, uh, you know, and then 5,000 dudes running around with automatic rifles, basically your military police and border guard.

The robots are the AI. I think the AI, the Type 3s are new.

Um, yeah. Yep.

The armor didn't get much, did not get anything of an armor upgrade, but they do more damage now. They get some nicer bonuses.

The sensory equipment package is more detailed.

Yeah. These things are, Badass.

Like, take a look at the picture on, uh, 178. Oh, which is far more in line. It's a modernization of the, uh, Type 2 XD. Yeah, from what we saw in 1st edition.

Judge Dredd armor.

It's a little bit more Judge Dredd-y, but it still has the Um, interconnected either electrical conduit or myomer cabling between the pieces.

Yeah.

Still has that nice mesh bodysuit under the armor.

I think we can see this armor in action on the COVID Yes. We flip back and look at the COVID of this book, which is a fucking badass picture, by the way.

Oh yeah.

That horse. I love that horse so much.

Yeah. The Snake Blitzkin of horses. Yeah.

I was going to say. Yeah.

The eagle, bald eagle with a sword. Uh, yeah. Bald eagle ninja, I guess.

Yeah.

This is such a great picture. I think this picture really does encapsulate kind of how this game, how zany this game can be too.

Yep. Absolutely. And who else, who doesn't want to play a giant alpha elephant with a band of .50 caliber shells around your chest to go into town?

Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, a little bit more detail in the setting. We get much, we still don't get as much on Philly as Until the adventure.

Right.

Again, um, some reprinted stuff, some expanded stuff. The, the wilderness encounters are a little bit more expanded this time. Uh, the mutant animal reroll tables, roll tables here. We got mutant bugs again, which again, these are much more expanded instead of just being a list. It actually gives you details, the kind of things. Random scavengers. I love random tables. Random, random, random stuff, random junk. All this cool stuff to find. And then we're back to the same adventures we got last time, but with a, you know, 2nd edition update.

Yep.

And some cool art, but yeah, pretty much the same thing. The exact same adventures as last time.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, Shadowfades in here.

Yep.

Page 212.

Hasn't really changed.

Yep.

That cool pre-fall ship is just waiting there to be found.

There's a lot of callouts in this book to other books. Yeah. It expects that you're going to be grabbing Mutants in Avalon, Mutants of the Yucatan, Roadhogs, and all that stuff.

Mutants Down Under.

Yep. And it also is like, oh yeah, future supplements will have this. There weren't any.

There weren't any. Yeah.

No, there weren't. I mean, with Woodrick's passing, a lot of these things, these projects just sort of Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and I, when this came out, um, when this 2nd edition book that came out, um, TMNT was kind of fading. Um, they lost the license. And when I saw this, I was like, that's interesting. I don't know if I'll ever play that. Um, because it just wasn't where I was. Like I was much more in the Rifts world. Right.

Yeah.

I definitely should have given it a better chance because there's a lot more in here than you might have realized. And I was like, oh, it was just a reprint of the first one. And then when I saw it in person again, you know, I couldn't find this in a store. I was like, wow, that's way bigger than I remember it being. And yeah, it's like, oh, there's a lot more in here to play with and to use and to really go out and do your own thing with.

Mm-hmm.

And it does, you know, like we were saying, it does go over the entire planet. Like, what's going on in the rest of the world in a very, you know, dare I say, Aaron Tarn-esque kind of way. It tells you what's going on so you don't have to stay in the little slip of North America. You can go anywhere you want, which is way more expansive than you originally thought it was going to be. Yeah. Yeah.

Admittedly, A lot of the stuff in the rest of the world is cribbed and updated from various supplements.

Yeah.

But now here's an interesting question. 2nd edition of After the Bomb, when it became its own complete role-playing game, do you need the other After the Bomb supplements or not if you have this book?

Well, if you want to do something in any of those other supplements, then yes, because like It literally, you will look in the world info section of this book and it's like, you're looking at something that's like, oh, this is detailed in that book. Check that out. And it doesn't tell you anything else.

Right.

So if you want to go to Australia, you need that. Like if you want to do the Yucatan, you need that. Also, you do need those things.

If you want to play around in France, which is a major component of some of the world and the, one of the biggest rival powers, the Empire of Humanity.

Is that in Avalon as well?

That's in Avalon.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

So this book does not replace the need for those supplements, but gives you far more about the teasers for those supplements than you would otherwise.

And in a, in a nice way too. Yeah. It gives you a little bit, but it's like, hey, there's more information over here.

Go find this book.

Yeah. And at the time those other books were, $10, $12. So it wasn't breaking—

I haven't looked them up recently. I don't know if you can still get those.

You may not be able to. I think, uh, actually I was just looking—

You should at least be able to get them in PDF.

There. Yeah, there's, there's, so, um, Roadhogs, Mutants Down Under, Mutants of the Yucatan, and Mutants in Avalon have been rebranded as After the Bomb book supplements. And there are PDFs of them.

Nice.

Um, uh, so you can get those in the After the Bomb post-TMNT licensing. Um, which, which gives you, again, I'm, I'm gonna guess they basically have all the TMNT stripped out and with a little bit of fluffing and polishing to bring them in 15 years into the future.

Um, I would imagine very little. Yeah, I think it's probably just some Copy and paste of words due to the way that those books were originally made. I don't think they could have done much alterations to the digital version without like really overhauling them completely. But I can't attest to that. I haven't looked at those.

Yeah.

So something that we have done before frequently whenever we review a book is ask the question in general. Jacob already started going there. Do you need this book? So first ed, maybe not. Could be hard to find. Second ed though, you can get this right now.

Yeah. Um, you can get this right now, uh, for like $20, $20, $22 or something like that. It's a full game. Um, you could be off to the races. You don't need anything else. Uh, do you need it? If you want to run an after the bomb game. Yeah. You want to run like a cool after the bomb game. You know, some game is like mutant animals. And you could drop this into pretty much any setting, you know, that you could imagine. I could, I can do this. I could run a Thundarr the Barbarian game with this book.

Yes, very much so.

Like done. Right. I could run, um, uh, Darkstar, which is Orihime. These are all the same thing, but, um, I could run any sort of like—

You could run a Bucky O'Hare game.

Yeah. I could run any Bucky O'Hare game. I could run a Fallout 76 game. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a great book for what it is. I've been really surprised every time I go through it. So.

I, I, so if there is no reason to buy this book, if you are not interested in playing After the Bomb.

True.

Or Mutant Animals in general.

Or Mutant Animals in general. However, if that interests you, it's a must-have. It's one of the best mutant animal systems ever, period, full stop. Uh, to the point where I've run Gamma World using this rule set.

Yeah.

Uh, and it, it converts over real smoothly. The— I've done other weird hacks where System Shock meets After the Bomb. Oh yeah, watch, watch the empire of humanity go from the sick old man to the terrified sick old man.

Well, and with System Shock, you aren't the sick old man. You're actually fighting against an invader, right? Right.

So, right. Well, when you're the most technological dependent nation, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then electricity becomes bad. Yeah.

Um, well, you mean System Failure?

System Failure. Sorry.

I was talking about the video game.

No, I, wait, how?

Yeah.

I meant System Failure.

We were on the same page.

Yeah.

Not System Shock. System Failure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

System Failure. Um, but basically you just created splicers.

Yeah.

Yes.

Uh, if you're interested in running After the Bomb, I really recommend picking up the main book for Dead Rain, not to add zombies, But a lot of the environmental rules and stuff can add a lot of flavor. You know, the reality is that even more so than Rifts, you're traveling through wide, wide stretches of wilderness to get from point A to point B. And there's no ley lines to get, find a friendly ley line walker to run you down. It's, you're going cross-country.

It's got a good combat system. It's got, the standard skills and stats that you expect from any Palladium game. It's a balanced SDC system that you can fit into any of their others, especially those that, as Palladium tends to do, are following some kind of an apocalypse.

Yep.

I think it's a good game to have in your collection. I mean, do you need it? No. Do you want it? Yes. Yes.

Yes.

The mutant animals alone just are wonderful.

Yeah.

And you can just Just rolling up a character in this is also so much quicker than any other Palladium game I've ever played.

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah.

If you are interested in After the Bomb, do yourself a favor, go to Palladium Books, order directly from the publisher, and pick up the After the Bomb Starter Bundle. You get the main After the Bomb book, plus Roadhogs, plus Mutants Down Under, plus Mutants of the Yucatan, and Mutants of Avalon. For less than $45.

Wow.

It's an amazing price for what you're getting. Definitely worth doing.

Mm-hmm.

Do it. We command you.

The only thing you really get— don't get in there is Mutants in Orbit, which I have a huge soft spot for.

I think it's a great book, but it's also— it's a dual-purpose book, right? It's a great book. But it's also very specialized.

Have we done a show on Mutants in Orbit?

We have not yet. We haven't gotten to it. But now that we have everything chronologically ordered, we definitely will.

Yes. Yes.

And probably soon, because I think it was one of the earlier ones. Yep. Yep. Uh-huh. So folks, once you have bought that boxed collection on Palladium Books, go online and take a picture and post it in our Discord and share your haul with us. Show us the signatures that you got, because Kevin and anybody who's standing to his left and right at the time that The order is made. We'll sign your books. It's wonderful.

Yep.

Yep. Tell us your stories of your favorite characters, and we'll we will bask in that. What was the word? We will live vicariously through the games that you're playing that we're not because we're old, busy, ain't got time to play childish things like that. I say this, you know, I'm. Just coming off yesterday's game, still thinking game, game, game. Gotta write down more notes. Those are lies.

Well, and after we get done here, I have to go and prep for the game I'm running tomorrow night.

Oh, nice. Yeah.

So I have to go back to, uh, reading, writing on for my, uh, project on doing a conversion of Valley of the Pharaohs.

Oh, good. I thought you were about to talk about some work stuff and I was about to be boring.

No, no, no, no. That doesn't happen until 10 PM tonight. Oh, all right.

Well, folks, in the future, when you hear this, pour one out for poor Jacob.

I'm just logging into a system and making sure an update went without— went through without a problem.

That was the last we heard of Jacob. Good night, 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 and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one.

You've been listening to The Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse, and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally at DriveThruRPG as well. Our opening music is 8-Bit Bass and Lead by Furby Guy from freesound.org. This Closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org. All sound effects used are self-made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as The Glitter Boys—that's B-O-I-S—and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys. And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.

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