Recently I've been collecting some Palladium stuff from ebay. I never played the FRPG but used some of the background now and then. Now I just got the original (revised) edition. Any big differences from the 2nd edition to look for? I noticed that the HtH combat is a bit better (no mages who are as skilled as the warriors anymore) and of course it's pre-Rifts, so no Megadamage...

Quite idiosyncratic and a bit old-fashioned, but actually looks playable...

Quote from: SosthenesRecently I've been collecting some Palladium stuff from ebay. I never played the FRPG but used some of the background now and then. Now I just got the original (revised) edition. Any big differences from the 2nd edition to look for? I noticed that the HtH combat is a bit better (no mages who are as skilled as the warriors anymore) and of course it's pre-Rifts, so no Megadamage...

Quite idiosyncratic and a bit old-fashioned, but actually looks playable...

I think its quite a bit better than the 2nd ed. though coffins writing for the 2nd edition was good, the 1st ed had a better feel. we played it for years

Damn, I had a question along similar lines.  I got the revised PFRPG (black cover) off eBay a month or so back because of an earlier thread on this board.  The supplements are looking mighty enticing now...is it hard to convert 2nd edition stuff to work with 1st edition?

Quote from: KenHRDamn, I had a question along similar lines.  I got the revised PFRPG (black cover) off eBay a month or so back because of an earlier thread on this board.  The supplements are looking mighty enticing now...is it hard to convert 2nd edition stuff to work with 1st edition?

first edition had a set spell list that you fired from, second uses PPE (spell points) - IMO the only improvement on the system

first edition had seperate fighting styles for each man at arms, a tighter list of skills, less bonuses, lower power scale for characters, no SDC for characters.

converting between the two would be probematic

Just to note: 2nd Edition is post-Rifts.

I think they're nearly identical in most ways.

I've been told that the revised version of 1st edition is the best, but that's second-hand info.

Quote from: KnightskyI've been told that the revised version of 1st edition is the best, but that's second-hand info.

Cool, that's the one I picked up!  I was pleasantly surprised by how cool the game actually is.

I flipped through some PFRPG supplements at a local store this weekend.  Gotta say, I can understand why so many people who got their start with this company loved those products.  They're chock-full of ready-made adventure material: maps, dungeons, monsters, etc.  Especially with regard to the campaign world material, it's exactly the kind of stuff I wanted when I was a kid and had no idea how to put a setting together.  The TSR worlds, for example, didn't have the specificity of books like Old Ones, with its tons of town and fortress maps (though these days I prefer the approach taken by the old World of Greyhawk box).

Adventures in the Northern Wilderness, if you can find it, is worth the money; I have long adored "The Forest of Broken Wings", which comes out of that book, as one of Palladium's better adventure modules.

I got 2nd edition before I actually owned 1st though I vaguely remember it.

1E revised (the version I now have) is very good and compact. 2nd edition splits the content in 1st edition into 3+ books while at the same time adding little of value to it (and dropping the excellent killer adventure). 2nd also has some gaffs noted on the Palladium website.

The spell system isn't as bad as I thought at first, it's number of spells total per day, dependant on what the character knows, so not quite as inflexible as D&D.

Organization is a bit wonky, whole subsections under character class which can make things hard to find at first. The art isn't quite as good but has a better coherent feel mainly being KS comic book style art. Overall the book really does ooze with homebrew campaign goodness. There's at least a supplement/adventure online for free at the Palladium Site under the Cutting Floor section well worth picking up for either edition.

For 2nd edition pretty much anything Bill Coffin worked on is worth at least looking at. I like Western Empire a lot and there's one artist they use who reminds me a of pulp interior art (a lot of ink work).