ONE GAME SYSTEM – EVERY GENRE – COUNTLESS WORLDS – ENDLESS ADVENTURE

BY KEVIN SIEMBIEDA

Palladium Books® –  Weekly Update – April 10, 2025

Get dynamic art prints from many of your favorite Palladium RPGs and sourcebooks – most at half price! It’s spring, and time to brighten up your dungeon … um, I mean … your game room and other spaces in your home that could use some gorgeous science fiction, fantasy, or heroic art, or to add to your art collection. We also put the poker decks and bookmarks on sale for half-price. Get ‘em while you can.

What’s hot at Palladium this week? Hmm, it’s been a little bit of everything: Rifts®, Palladium Fantasy, After the Bomb®, Nightbane®, and, of course, sale items. But the hottest seller this week has been the Dead Reign RPG® series – the zombie apocalypse Palladium style! It is a great introductory game for new players (After the Bomb is too) and lots of fun. One gamer bought every book in the series, others have picked up DR sourcebooks, and a number of core-rule books (hardcover and softcover) have blown out the door. We have also seen distributors place a number of orders this week. Awesome! I’m so glad people are discovering this compelling and fun setting. Thank you everyone.

For clues to things to come, take a look at Closing Thoughts. I hope you find it entertaining.

Update! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG Redux - Current Production Steps

As we shared in last week's exciting update, all materials for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG Redux project are now with the printers!

Get all the details on the most recent Kickstarter Update by clicking the button below.

A Reminder of What's Coming: The core rulebook stands at an impressive 272 pages of content (remember, that's 16 bonus pages beyond our original promise!) with its sleek layout, full-color artwork, comic strips, and all the expanded content we detailed last week. Similarly, the 256-page Transdimensional Adventures sourcebook combines and enhances multiple original sourcebooks with the same attention to detail.

Pre-Order Store Closing Soon: This is one of your final reminders that our Pre-Order Store will be closing in just a few weeks. Anyone who missed the Kickstarter can still get the mainstream books at special Kickstarter prices (saving $5-$10 per book), but only for a limited time. Spread the word to fellow TMNT fans!

We continue to be incredibly grateful for your support throughout this journey. The excitement is building as we move ever closer to getting these books into your hands!

FINAL DAY TO ADJUST YOUR ADD-ONS!

As we mentioned last week, the pledge adjustment feature in BackerKit was temporarily unlocked, but TODAY (April 10, 2025) is the LAST DAY to make any changes to your Add-Ons. After tonight, all Kickstarter Exclusive items will be permanently locked down as we must send FINAL numbers to our manufacturers.

Exclusive Add-Ons LAST CHANCE

IMPORTANT: For backers whose pledges have been locked, you can still adjust your Add-Ons today, even though pledge levels cannot be changed. This is your final opportunity to secure any of these campaign exclusives:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG Redux - Kevin Eastman variant color cover

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Transdimensional Adventures Redux - Sophie Campbell variant color cover

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Redux Miniature Sets: Heroes and Villains

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Redux Illustrated Poker Card Deck

• Mutagen Green Foil Variant Covers with new artwork by Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird (remember, you must have the Mutagen Mystic pledge level or higher to add these)

If you have NOT yet filled out your BackerKit Registration survey (shipping address, etc.) please do so now so to guarantee you get your rewards! Thank you.

Palladium’s ever-popular annual spring art sale is running today and keeps going for a few weeks. It’s time to redecorate your gaming space or add to your art print collection. Full color and black and white prints are half-price, so spruce up your gaming area with some of your favorite RPG artwork. Related art on sale: Bookmarks and Rifts poker decks. All of these items make fun birthday gifts and surprise Easter and Father’s Day presents (Mother’s Day too!).

- Nearly all of Palladium’s art prints– half price! Check ‘em out.

- Palladium Bookmarks Set One – Cat. No. 2554 – only $2.50 for a set of 4. Each one features different art (RUE, Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, & Dead Reign).

- Palladium Bookmarks Set Two – Cat. No. 2555 – only $2.50 for a set of 4. Each one features different art (Chaos Earth, Nightbane, Phase World & Beyond the Supernatural).

- Rifts Poker Deck #1 (full color) – Cat. No. 2575 – only $5.98

- Rifts Poker Deck #2 (black and white art) – Cat. No. 2576 – only $5.98

- Rifts Cyberworks Poker Deck (full color backs and face cards) – Cat. No. 2609 – only $7.50

The Official History of Palladium Books on YouTube

Please continue to enjoy and spread the word about the Official History of Palladium Books on the Palladium YouTube channel. Every YouTube episode is fun, candid, and offers insight and behind the scenes information from the publisher/creator of your favorite Palladium role-playing games, Kevin Siembieda. Hear fun stories, details and thought processes you probably never heard before. We are now getting into some of our most famous and beloved games: Palladium Fantasy RPG and Secrets of the Defilers have been a big hit. Behind the scenes of Heroes Unlimited RPG is the most recent episode, followed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG releasing today. Did you know that TMNT & Other Strangeness was Mirage Studio’s very first license, or that Kevin introduced Eastman and Laird to licensing agent Mark Freedman who helped take the Turtles mainstream? Get the behind the scenes story straight from the guy who was there.

New Episodes coming on the Official History of Palladium Books with Kevin Siembieda & J-M DeFoggi. Behind the scenes insight into the making of one Palladium blockbuster RPG of the 1980s and 1990s after another.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG – available now.

• Secrets of the Defilers, Part 4: Battle through Hades – April 10th.

• Robotech RPG series – April 24th.

• Ramon K. Perez interview – fan favorite comic book and game artist Ramon K. Perez – May 8th.

• Watch for a new episode every other week and enjoy.

Kevin Siembieda and Sean Owen Roberson on Legion of Myth.

Last Sunday’s chat went great and was a lot of fun. We spent an hour talking about the status of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Kickstarter (most everything has been approved and should be heading for the printer and manufacturing soon), so that topic may be broken out into a separate interview. Then we talked about using Palladium rules as a framework for any setting and kit-bashing two (or more) games/settings like Beyond the Supernatural and Rifts into a unique world/dimension of its own. That’s the beauty of Palladium’s Megaversal game system,  you can bring any character, monsters, weapon, magic, etc., from one world setting into another with ease. The spirited conversation was a blast. Check it out. Note: Our next chat with the Legion will be at the end of April.

Glitterbois Chats are back starting April

More Glitterbois Chats with Kevin Siembieda are starting up again in April. Keep your ears open for them.

Now Available!

NEW! Catalog of Palladium Books®, Spring/Summer 2025 – Folks are loving Palladium’s new, printed, color catalog. There’s just something about holding a physical catalog in your hand, especially one as fun and colorful as this one. Due to popular request, we’ve made it available for purchase. The price is what it cost Palladium to print them. Enjoy.

• Full color, 8½ x 11 inch (magazine size), glossy paper stock, beautiful color.

• The 48 page catalog describes and shows nearly the entire RPG library and features the TMNT & Other Strangeness RPG Redux Edition on the cover and the first few pages.

• $2.50 retail – 48 pages – Cat. No. C2025-1

BACK in Stock: Yin-Sloth Jungles, Updated and Expanded, 2nd Edition Rules – The epic jungle adventure book is back. 15 O.C.C.s (like the Beastmaster, Holy Crusader, Undead Hunter, and Witch Hunter), 18 jungle people and monsters, new and expanded Shamans and their magic, the Battle of the Gods, setting overview, and more. $24.99 retail – 160 pages – Cat. No. 459. Note: Yin-Sloth Expeditions with 30+ maps, notable locations and a lot of adventures and adventure hooks is coming soon.

BACK in Stock: Rifts Vampire Kingdoms – Everything you need to know about Rifts vampires, variant types, vampire abilities, combat notes and henchmen, plus the Hero Vampire, Deluded Vampire, Vampire Hunters, vampire slaying weapons, monsters, town creation rules, the cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and more. $26.99 retail – 224 pages – Cat. No. 802-E.

BACK in Stock: Nightbane® Dark Designs – This Nightbane focused book collects and expands upon Nightbane Morphus Tables (18 in all), plus offers 60 new Common Talents, 38 new Elite Talents, Talent creation and conversion rules, Ancient Nightbane, and more. $24.99 retail – 160 pages – Cat. No. 736.

300+ RPG products on DriveThru – a dozen unique world settings – one game system – endless possibilities. No other game company offers game worlds for so many different genres. Best of all, learn to play one Palladium RPG and you can play them all, because each uses the same basic core rules and combat. There are differences, but the fundamentals are the same. This also means you can bring characters, villains, monsters, powers, magic, weapons, gear, and adventure ideas from one setting into another or mash them together!

In addition to PDF titles for entire game lines like Rifts®, Palladium Fantasy®, Heroes Unlimited™, Ninjas & Superspies™, After the Bomb®, Beyond the Supernatural™, Dead Reign® (zombies), Nightbane® (Urban Fantasy), Rifts Chaos Earth®, Systems Failure™, Splicers®, RECON®, The Rifter® #1-85, and others, there are Game Master and player aids, character generators, paper minis, map packs, and FREE Previews of books like Creature Feature™, Dead Reign, Coalition Manhunters, Titan Robotics™, Rifts Bestiary Volume One, World Books, Dimension Books, and more to give you a glimpse of what’s in the book. Enjoy endless adventures across the Megaverse®.

Palladium Collectibles – at Kevin’s Online Toy & Collectibles eBay Store

I am adding new collectibles of all kinds to my Ebay store every few weeks. Some are Palladium negatives, rare and out of print books, original Palladium artwork, prints, posters, as well as other collectible toys, action figures, Nightmare Before Christmas items, one-of-a-kind proofreader copies, books, and other good stuff – including Erick Wujcik’s rare and sought after Amberzine #12-15. Check in every week or so to see what’s new. All items come from Kevin Siembieda’s personal collection.

One-of-a-kind Palladium Books negatives (special and rare collectibles). Negatives are always very popular items at the Palladium Open House, Gen Con, and conventions, and are catching on as rare collectibles, unique in and of themselves. Before digital printing, pages of a book were laid out by hand on a board, and each page was photographed.

• Each negative is truly unique, attractive, and fun to have.

• Own a piece of Palladium Books and RPG history you will treasure.

• Each was used to print the very book you may have in your collection (1981-2004).

• Each is signed in silver ink by Kevin Siembieda and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.

• Each negative is a one-of-a-kind work of art (on rare occasions, two-of-a-kind if a page or section of pages were replaced or a second edition was made).

• Looks great matted or framed! Fits an 8x10 inch matt opening. Each neg is roughly 8 ½ x 11 inches.

• Prices vary depending on the title, the art, and quality of the negative. Note: Many have scratches, or blemishes, and/or an opaque medium on the negative. Still, they look great and are a piece of RPG history. We recommend you carefully examine the photographs of each item to avoid disappointment. The negatives of many books are sold out or were never available.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Hints of things to come

We have mentioned there are many exciting things building behind the scenes at Palladium. That prompts the question: what can we reveal? Honestly, not much without angering Sean. We try not to announce books until they are heading to the printer. Nor do we announce events, crowdfunding, and reveals until they are coming soon. Still, I thought it might be fun to offer clues to what you can expect throughout the year. I hope you find this silliness to be fun. Remember, I’m a goofball and Palladium Books is a silly place.

- A jazzy new interface.

- More sounds of adventure.

- More chats and new faces.

- More monstrous fun.

- Explore the Verdant Green.

- To the rescue.

- A couple books get a facelift.

- The Palladium staff grows a tad.

- A potential new source for Rifts adventure.

- Turtles come out to play when it gets warm.

- A land of ice and unexpected magic and an ancient enemy of the Splugorth.

- Indianapolis summer gathering.

- September gathering near the birthplace of the Ninja Turtles.

- Humans have always been their prey. That hasn’t changed.

- The mystic arts are a subtle craft known to but a few.

- Santa comes to town.

The answers should become apparent with each event or product release. Until then, enjoy Palladium’s annual print sale (50% off) and refresh your gaming space with new art or add to your collection. Oh, and dust off your favorite RPG, purchase a few world books or sourcebooks for inspiration, and game away your troubles and worries.

– Kevin Siembieda, Publisher, Game Designer, Writer and Friend