The Bazaar #81: An Omnibus Post
- Francois DesRochers
- 23 hours ago
- 7 min read
GENERAL
Not truly committed to one topic, I thought I’d post up some thoughts on the recent Palladium Books announcement on the reforging of the Rifts: Promise of Power video game, and what this might mean for other product lines that adds multiple revenue streams and vectors for market penetration, all of which reinforce the baseline products.
A market like Table-Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs) is fairly diverse and occupied by a vast array of companies producing anything from small supplements with limited run product lines, to vast conglomerates that are responsible for a substantive quantity of the total market share in terms of game-play (time), products sold, to game/name recognition. One of the things that certainly marks the success of the latter is the market penetration of the brand or the game itself; household names that come to represent the whole of the market, or major corporate players. One needs only to mention D&D and most people understand the conversation is about role-playing. They might not understand what it’s about, but the generalities are there.
Several sources for the success of those major franchises has been their cross-platform promotion. Warhammer 40k is a tabletop miniature game that had a huge boost in no small part to a series of video games and Black Library series of novels that build on the game’s meta-plot. The same goes for Star Wars, which has a wide range of successful books, RPGs, Lego and a multitude of toys building on the movie franchise. The success of D&D is built upon numerous platforms of success: dozens of multi-platform video game releases (from Pool’s of Radiance to Baldur’s Gate 3), a plethora of novels and massive hit Adventure Modules, and others that pushed the IP into the zeitgeist of popular culture. Is Palladium building on its product lines in a way to drive market penetration and brand awareness? Let’s discuss.
RIFTS: PROMISE OF POWER
By now we’ve likely all seen or heard of the most recent announcement from Palladium Books (Link to Backerkit Announcement). The infamously badly-timed video game, developed by Backbone Entertainment for the N-Gage platform, shipped in October 2005. The game won the Gamespot E3 Editor’s Choice for best N-Gage Game, garnering comparison to Final Fantasy Tactics and the Fallout series of that era. Despite these accolades, it failed to really develop traction due to the N-Gage platform’s design issues and reception in the North American marketplace. The N-Gage was officially discontinued in February of 2006. So yeah, really bad timing. With a bit of Google-fu applied, one can find some period-specific message boards and original reviews and play-testing from back in the day.
Tactical Game Play. From the look of things, originally the game allowed players to choose one of three classes. Tactical skirmishes and missions then allowed characters to develop into more advanced classes (Juicer, Crazy, Cyber Knight); not sure how class-hopping looked like back then, but reviews are opaque on several details. Settings included Germany (the NGR), the Coalition States, Scotland, Old Bones (Free Quebec), China, and others. A tactical simulator with interaction options with NPCs and enemy alike, it boasted an apparent 30+ hours of game play; this has to opportunity to meet modern-day demands from gaming consumers. The recent release broadly confirms much of these details.
Game Rights. In a recent discussion I had with Sean, he relayed some of the information of this upcoming release. As described to me, and vastly over-simplifying a relatively complex issue of rights and ownership: the specific coding and back-end elements of the game may or may not still be retained by Nokia; but the game design elements, such as story, characters, text and such, apparently remained or reverted to Palladium Books. Any errors in this assessment are my own. Regardless, PB held on to the project, biding their time for an opportunity. And apparently Sean hunted one down. Huzzah!
TransPerfect Gaming. Boasting a global team of personnel, they offer “comprehensive video game support, from initial concept to post-launch and beyond.” I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I don’t know about the gaming sector, but I failed to see any direct language that spoke to ‘game development’ until I dug into the Services tree of their website. That’s fine, I’m not here to critique their website. I’m willing to plead ignorance on their track record, or what exactly their functional role is in this partnership. I’m assuming it involves spooling the original coding into a PC-compatible variant, and then upgrading the graphics and graphic user interface (GUI). If that’s the case, it’s enough to get my interest. And TransPerfect did produce the miniatures offered in the TMNT Redux Kickstarter.
The Kickstarter. The big announcement made on Palladium on 19 May 2025 (Link to announcement on Palladium Books Facebook page), the launch date is set for (Tuesday) 10 June 2025. At this time, I’m one of hundreds of folks awaiting the actual details to be revealed. Some questions remain: the price point; the minimum amount the project must raise to see development; what kind of graphic user interface (GUI) will be produced; overall quality of the game; among others. The original was very well received, but video games have gone through significant development cycles since then. It should be interesting, and I'm optimistic to see how this progresses.
PROJECTS AND BETA READERS
General. I make no secret of my projects for submission to Palladium Books for consideration. A fair number of these have already seen heaps of positive response. I want these submissions to succeed, but let’s call it for what it is, a single dude’s efforts that may or may not meet Kevin or Sean’s expectations. That’s fair. What I’d like to do is run some of these ideas by some Beta Readers to get a sense for what works and what needs some work before moving forward.
Core Rules Set. Still actively pursuing a project to normalize the various games’ core rules into a backwards Core Rules Set. Originally announced in The Bazaar #75: A Call for Beta Readers/Play Testers, it should be finished in the near future, with conversions and newly designed Character Sheets for each game’s Classes to match the new mechanics’ methodology. I firmly believe something like this is necessary for Palladium Books to succeed and grasp the attention of new audiences. There is a growing trend of gamers who experiencing faded interest with the d20 clone TTRPGs out there.
Rifts Novels/Novellas. I’ve long-since opined that this is a market Palladium Books needs to solidly promote and get behind. The books supporting Warhammer 40k, Star Wars and D&D are prominently sold in big-box books stores like Indigo/Chapters/Coles or Barnes & Nobles, as well as online marketplaces and the company’s own online stores. These all reinforce further sales of their core products. In this same regard, I firmly believe Rifts is the untapped goldmine for established authors to be given the chance to create and publish works; I’ve always wondered if PB ever reached out to established authors. Now I’m definitely no Stephen King, Dan Abnett, Timothy Zahn, or R.A. Salvatore. But I have been known to put a word or two together and thoroughly enjoy writing speculative fiction.
World Book 22: Free Quebec. My initial foray into the world of formally supporting Rifts. This was in the heyday, when Palladium Books released 3 to 4 books per year for Rifts alone! As a franco-Canadian that experienced the referendum that nearly saw Quebec declare independence from Canada, I felt I had an angle to the Rifts plot for this setting.
A Scout’s Honour. I’ve already submitted this series of chapters, which could be considered a novella. Chapter One of A Scout’s Honour shows up in Rifter 85, while Chapters Two to Eleven await further consideration. This is actually the origin-story for the main character, and bigger things are being worked on.
Short Story Anthology. I thoroughly enjoyed and reviewed both the Chi-Town Anthology (Scholar’s Review #38: Rifts Anthology: Tales of the Chi-Town 'Burbs) as well as Duty’s Edge (Scholar’s Review #35: Duty’s Edge). I’m developing several short stories that tie together similarly to Tales of the Chi-Town 'Burbs; I thought I’d develop and submit them. The first is an attempt to address one of the issues fans have with the Siege on Tolkeen, namely General Jericho Holmes and his traverse of the Xiticix territory. The short story ‘Apocryphal Battles’ attempts to set things straight in a way that I think all sides would buy into. This is the project I would like a few Beta Readers to review, starting with Apocryphal Battles.
CONCLUSION
So we finally see a possibility for PC gameplay in the Rifts universe. I am quite happy at the development. Do I expect a Baldur’s Gate 3 kind of reception? Honestly, no, but I never played Baldur’s Gate 3, and the last computer game I purchased was the first-person shooter (FPS) Bio-Shock (2007), which was a groundbreaking genre-game. If TransPerfect and Palladium Books are capable of providing a game that replicates the “look and feel” for the Rifts IP, I’ll be a happy camper. Of course I didn’t see an option for play on a MacBook, but I needed to upgrade my 2013 MBP anyways….
Rifts novels is really to one sector that, as a gaming company, I feel Palladium Books hasn’t properly developed. Is this a function of internal Palladium restrictions, on setting issues (let’s call it, a fascist human government in Midwestern USA that is actively killing mages and D-Bees is a ‘marketing challenge’), quality of submissions, licensing or contractual issues with big-box bookstores, I don’t have any visibility on it. What I can do though, is promote the idea, and put my effort where my mouth is. So that’s what I’ll do. Hopefully some of you will be willing to help out.
To say that supportive products for the Rifts TTRPG has been a major market demand would be putting things… lightly. Unlike the IP of Games Workshop’s 40k setting, Disney’s Star Wars universe, or the various realms of Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons, Palladium Books has only seen some limited success for non-TTRPG products. My fervent hope is that these ancillary games produce the market buzz that delivers a wider audience and streams of revenue they can then reinvest to build a bigger, stronger and more influential TTRPG company. All our collective eyes will be watching on 10 June 2025.
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