Blast From The Past: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG

Heroes in a half shell, turtle power!

As a child of the 80's (yes, I just dated myself, deal with it), that phrase brings up fond childhood memories. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were huge back in the day. I recently rewatched the live action films, and I forgot how dark the first one was. That's because it was based on the original comics, much like this game.

This being a Palladium game, they don't waste a lot of time with setting and background. They start with the classic “What Is Roleplaying?” introduction, then there's the stats, and then the usual random tables. When it comes to creating your characters, you can roll on the random animal tables, then the table for cause of your character's mutation, and finally education. All of the skills and combat rules are the same as in every other Palladium game, so if you're familiar with one of their games, you know what this one is like. The next part is what makes this game unique, the BIO-E Point system. This allows you to make your mutant animal in whatever way you want. You can make a normal rat that's as smart as Einstein and has massive psionic powers. Or you can make a dog that's mutated to appear almost totally human. Or the kinds of creatures you see in the cartoon show, humanoid but still animalistic. Once you get your character mutated, know what education they have, and get the skills figured out, you're pretty much ready to go. There's no classes for you to pick, just education levels you start out with. These give you the skills you'll need, as well as your combat skills and the like.

The art is mostly taken from the original comics, and even includes a few pages from one of them. If the art isn't directly taken from the comics, it looks close. It's very dark, rough looking stuff that adds the to feeling of the game.

Since this is one of Palladium's older games, it's only 112 pages, like Robotech. However, unlike Robotech, there's a host of NPCs and some adventures. These are really cool. There's an adventure based around another popular cartoon show of the time, the Carebears. Except evil and dark. Because 80's? I don't know. There are some other enemies, some from the comic and show, but most are those they made. The do have the Ninja Turtles themselves. Somehow, they're only 5^th and 6^th level, while Splinter is 12^th. I suppose they made them low enough so you could play them if you wanted to. This is something different from the Robotech RPG, where they wanted you to play your own characters.

They did put out a few supplements, including Mutants Down Under. These books expanded the world and rules, but I don't have any of them. And they're not easy for me to find.

And that's about all there is in the book. There's some random tables to use for making your own villains and evil organizations for your players to go against. So, what else can you do with it?

The best use for this book is to use it as a supplement for Heroes Unlimited and Rifts for creating mutant animals. Since this book is long out of print, it's not easy to find. However, the rules were reprinted in After The Bomb, which itself started out as a setting for the game. But, now it's own game that you can find much easier. And I think that setting works better for the ideas.

If you really want to play with the “Ninja” angle, you can get a copy of Ninjas and Superspies and put the two together. You could have an entire order of mutant animals that use one form of martial arts.

If you want to have some real fun, you could take the concept of the Howard the Duck film (as of the time of this writing, Marvel hasn't made a version in the MCU yet) and use that. What if there was an alternate reality where other animals reached anthropomorphic forms and created a civilization? Now, what if they started experimenting with dimensional travel and somehow end up in the normal world? That could be an interesting take on the mutant animals in the normal world. Your villains could be people who want to experiment on the animals or learn the technology to travel between dimensions. You could really have fun with the “fish out of water” angle and play it up. It's up to you.

Another idea I had was what if some company created a bunch of mutant animals to work as cheap labor? And treat them like crap? Now, you can make your characters be freedom fighters, working to free their bothers and sisters from slavery. It's something that's in the book already, but you can make the whole game focus on it.

My last idea is humans or animals mutating into these TMNT type animals. There could be a virus or something unleashed on the world, causing these changes. Maybe it also makes some super powered people, too. You could turn it into a post apocalypse setting, a super hero setting, or a dystopia. Totally up to you.

And that's about all there is. There is a ton of supplements for the game, which do expand it, but I don't know what exactly they do. It's worth investigating, if you're interested, just keep in mind that the game diverges greatly from the movies and cartoons. This isn't a game for kids. Well, at least off the shelf.

I think it's sad that this is the only RPG we've gotten from the TMNT setting. I suppose you could use another system to create it, but I don't know. If you are interested in it, check it out, but you'll probably pay quite a bit for it. I found a copy, used and in only okay condition, but it was $40.