What This System Is
The Palladium Megaversal System brings the shared foundation of Palladium role-playing games into Craft as a reusable game engine.
Build Worlds for Rifts®, Palladium Fantasy RPG®, Heroes Unlimited™, Nightbane®, Beyond the Supernatural™, Ninjas & Superspies™, After the Bomb®, Dead Reign®, Splicers®, Chaos Earth®, Phase World®, and other Palladium-based settings without rebuilding the core mechanics every time.
The System provides the common framework for attributes, O.C.C.s, R.C.C.s, P.C.C.s, skills, Weapon Proficiencies, Hand-to-Hand combat, experience and advancement, saving throws, S.D.C./Hit Points, configurable damage systems, magic, psionics, special abilities, equipment, vehicles, augmentations, conditions, encounters, and other shared mechanics.
Each World supplies the rules, options, classes, powers, equipment, setting material, and exceptions unique to that particular Palladium RPG.
System first, World second
Think of the System as the engine and a World as one configured game built on that engine. The System knows how to represent a Character, an O.C.C., an R.C.C., a Species, a Skill, a Hand-to-Hand Style, a Weapon Proficiency, an Environment, a Rules Profile, an Attribute Rule Set, equipment, powers, and live resources. A World decides which of those concepts it uses and fills them with the rules and content for its own title and edition.
This separation matters because Palladium games share a family resemblance without being numerically identical. An attacks-per-melee rule, saving-throw target, attribute bonus table, character-generation method, damage assumption, or psychic procedure that is correct in one title can be different in another. The System therefore does not treat a familiar number as universal just because it appears in one book.
The authority rule
During play, the active World is authoritative. Its Rules Profile, Attribute Rule Set, Character Creation Profile, Environment, O.C.C./R.C.C., Species, Skills, combat definitions, powers, equipment, and World GM instructions determine what happens. If the World defines an explicit exception, that exception wins over a generic System behavior.
If a required mechanic is missing, the correct response is to identify the missing configuration. The GM should not silently borrow a rule from Rifts, Palladium Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, Nightbane, another Palladium title, D&D, or generic d20 habits. Missing data is a build problem, not permission to improvise a different game system.
What the shared Character can hold
The Character schema includes the eight familiar Palladium attribute fields: I.Q., M.E., M.A., P.S., P.P., P.E., P.B., and Spd. It can also represent class and racial-class references, species, alignment, skills, Hand-to-Hand training, Weapon Proficiencies, Hit Points, S.D.C., M.D.C., P.P.E., I.S.P., armor state, ammunition, advancement history, learned-at-level data, and other structured state. A World may use all of those fields, only some of them, or extend the Character with additional concepts that belong to that game.
What this book does not do
This Player's Handbook explains how to read and use the common engine. It does not replace the rules material supplied by a specific World. When a World gives you exact dice, tables, target numbers, progression, powers, or equipment, use those values. The whole point of the System is to let many Palladium Worlds share a reliable Craft foundation without flattening their differences.