Machinations of Doom

My brother Dave and his friend Scott headed out to Tayler, Michigan this past weekend to attend the Palladium Books "Open House", which is a yearly weekend of role-playing and other events hosted by Palladium Books.

At the show Palladium was offering for sale the forthcoming "Machinations of Doom" sourcebook for RIFTS that not only collects the very cool comic strip that Ramon Perez developed (this guys artwork is simply outstanding if you haven't seen his stuff) along with a whole bunch of interesting source and adventure material that is based on the comic. My brother managed to snag me a copy and got it personalized by Ramon Perez, so all in all I am pretty pleased.

Some quick notes about the book itself:
1. It comes in at some 100+ pages in the typical perfect square bound format that all Palladium books come in. Colour cover with black & white interior on the typical heavy stock paper.
2. The comic to source/adventure material is roughly a 50/50 split. While the comic itself is well worth the price of the book, the source/adventure material is also really well done and provides a wealth of great information, campaign ideas, NPCs and other quick notes that can make both GM and player incredibly happy.
3. I think this is the first book that goes away from the traditional Palladium format of two collums. Instead the book goes to a three collum format along with a nice and clean stylized border which works outstandinly well for a black and white book. TSR and other D20 companies should take note of what it takes to make a clean and professional looking black and white book.
4. $20 USD for a book like this is a god dammed steal of a deal!