31 Character Challenge Part 24: TMNT&OS

My first exposure to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was an issue of the Eastman & Laird comic that found its way into my hot little hands in 6th grade.  How can an 11 year old in the 80s not immediately love something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  I thought it was freaking great- and we hadn't quite gotten to critical Turtlemania yet.  The cartoon had not debuted, no action figures, but there was this roleplaying game from the company that had brought me two early favorites- Robotech and The Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game.  My original copy of Palladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness looked typewritten, which I have come to realize is a hallmark of the first edition, before it was revised.  It had lots of artwork in it from the comics, and featured the Turtles on the cover in their all-red masks, as was originally intended.  The panel of Donatello smashing the burglar in the mouth with a thrown bo staff set the tone of the game for me- it wasn't sanitized cartoon ninja fights, oh no.

Once the cartoon and action figures launched when I was in 7th grade, all my gamer friends wanted to jump on the Turtle Wagon.  And thus we played.  The game uses the standard Palladium system, which is rumored to be Kevin Siembieda's own revamp of AD&D.  Roll a d20 for combat rolls and saves, but skills are d100.  There are both Hit Points and SDC (Structural Damage Capacity) but no Mega-Damage, that came out in Robotech and persisted to ridiculous levels in RIFTS.  There are OCCs, or Occupational Character Classes, but these are mostly absent from TMNT&OS in favor of an implied "mutant animal" class that is the default and only option in this game.  Of course, you can combine it with Heroes Unlimited or Ninjas & Superspies for some real gonzo wall-to-wall action.  Which I heartily recommend.

Back in the Star Frontiers review, I mentioned that there are games with tiny, almost throw-away details that make my imagination run wild.  In Star Frontiers these were the Explorer, the sword-and-shock-glove fighting style, and the class names for NPCs who specialized in various weapons, to name a few.  In Turtles, the detail that jumped out at me as freaking great was the Ninja Emergency Kit.  It cost you $120, and included a Kyoketsu-Shogi, some Shuriken and Caltrops, a towel, a pot, paper, pencil, matches, medical kit, lockpicks, clothes, and a blinding eggshell grenade with rice, tofu and tea.  This was sort of a ninjitsu bug-out bag meant to be hidden in secret boltholes where the character might flee at need.  And this whole concept grabbed my imagination by the shoulders and kneed it in the jimmy.  Holy crap, what an idea!  Maybe start the characters off with just these items, fleeting from their creators, or the miltiary, or whatever.  

There was also a really neat rule for character creation- Team Characters. If you create a group of characters who are all the same type of mutant animal, who all chose their powers and mutations the same way, the characters will receive an extra level of skill (not character level) for every character past the first. A group of four, say, turtles, all with identical mutations, would start with 4th-level equivalent skills.  In addition, if any one of the team rolls an exceptionally high attribute, the entire team will get a bonus to that attribute.  It's a cool deal, and it encourages players to build a team like the TMNT.

Let's spill some mutagen, and see what happens.

Character Creation

Step 1: The Eight Attributes / Attribute Bonuses

In Palladium's house system, there are eight attributes. I.Q.- intelligence. M.E. - mental endurance. M.A. - mental affinity, like charisma. P.S. physical strength. P.P. - physical prowess, like dexterity/agility. P.E. - physical endurance. P.B.- physical beauty. and Spd. - speed.

Roll 3d6 for each, and if the roll is 16  or more, an additional 1d6 is rolled and added to the attribute.

• I.Q. - 15
  
• M.E. - 13
  
• M.A. - 16 + 2 = 18 (Bonus: 50% Charm/Impress)
  
• P.S. - 11
  
• P.P. - 9
  
• P.E. -  10
  
• P.B. - 11
  
• Spd. - 16 + 1 = 17 (+1 to dodge)
  

Hit Points: 14 (P.E. 10+4 on 1d6)

Step 2: Animal Type

Now, we'll roll randomly to see what kind of animal our character mutated from.

50 - Rural animal.

99 - Bat.

Step 3: Cause of Mutation

05 - Random mutation.

Wild Animal Education Table
51 - Adopted by a mentor.  We get 3 military/espionage skills, 10 secondary skills with a 5% bonus, as well as Hand-To-Hand Ninjitsu. 3 choices of ancient weapon proficiency, and 3d6x$100 in cash or equipment, which comes to $1,000.-

Step 4: Bio-E Points, Special Abilities, Psionics, Growth Levels (Steps), Human Features

This is where character creation becomes point-buy.  Creatures have a certain amount of Bio-Energy.  This energy is used to mutate the animal into the end character.  There's usually just enough Bio-E to adjust the creature to human size, and take on all the human attributes like hands, standing erect, human looks, and human voice.  But at that point, you're just playing a human with an interesting background.  Instead of doing this, you can spend Bio-E on animal-specific abilities, psionic powers, all sorts of stuff.

As a Bat, we get 70 Bio-E, but we're only Size Level 1, or under 1lb.  The Turtles are Size Level 8ish at 4'6 and 150lbs.  We get some attribute bonuses, which is nice, and can possibly fly or glide, have sonar, or teeth that are useful in combat. But each option will take precious Bio-E.

After playing with the numbers a bit, we go with the following:

10 Bio-E for full hands at the end of the wings.
10 Bio-E for full human speech.
0 Bio-E for looks, our character looks. Like. A. Bat.
20 Bio-E for flight.
5 Bio-E for sonar.
25 Bio-E to add 5 Size Levels, ending up SL 6.

Step 5: Equipment and Money

The title of this section doesn't cover everything here, like Alignment and Skills & Education.  For alignment, we go with Unprincipled.  This is a sort of neutral, but would more accurately be called Selfish, which is what Palladium Books calls it.

Skills, as mentioned above, are pretty sparse, since we've got no formal education.

 

Automatic skills are Math Basic, Read/Write English, Speak English.

 

We'll take Detect Ambush, Tracking and Wilderness Survival.  We get HTH Ninjitsu, three ancient WPs... so, Sword, Target (for throwing weapons), and Paired.  Oh, and 10 secondary skills.  Those will be Computer Operation, Cook, Land Navigation, First Aid, Althetics, Prowl, Pilot Automobile, Basic Electronics, Basic Mechanic, Auto Mechanics.

What to spend our $1,000 on.

2 "regular quality" Wakizashi
2 Ninja Emergency Kits
Load-bearing harness?
6 Shuriken
$100 in cash.

The Character

Nobody knows why Bram became the creature he is today.  All I know, is that he appeared near my home, scavenging what food he could from my refuse.  I watched him for day, attempting to ascertain who and what he was.  When I became convinced he was no threat, I began to leave food out for him, and endeavored to gain his trust.  I found him to be a curious, inquisitive, and able to take to the air at need.  He was slow to trust, but I found he spoke some English, and began to teach him more.  He slowly spent more and more time at my home, a small apartment over my auto shop.

Eventually, Bram "moved in" to the rafters above the garage.  He watched me conduct my business, watched me fix cars, deal with customers.  He began to learn more about the world- first through me, then through Sesame Street and The Electric Company.  I bought him books and materials so he could have some sort of education, as I trained him to be aware of his surroundings, and avoid contact with other humans, as they might not be as accepting of his differences.

One night Bram was flying and saw a man beating another man and stealing his wallet.  Foolishly, Bram dove down to help.  His small size and lack of skill nearly got him killed, especially when the assailant panicked to be attacked by a "giant bat."  Fortunately, it was near our home and I was able to respond, dispatching the assailant and asking the young victim to speak of this to no one.  I took Bram home, and helped him heal.

Bram asked me how I had managed to deal with the man so easily, and I explained that at home I had been trained to do questionable things, and I had fled here to escape the need to do them.  I was hiding from the people who had intended to use my skills for nefarious gain, putting my constructive skills to work instead of those that bring harm.  Bram said he wanted to help people the way I helped him, and after some thought, I began to train him in the martial arts.  But I tempered this training with a knowledge of mechanics, and electronics, so that he would know it is always better to create, to repair, than to destroy.

I hope I have done the right thing.  Stories have begun to circulate despite my best efforts that our neighborhood has a mysterious protector.  A dark figure in the night who brings justice to those who cannot defend themselves.  It is all going to Bram's head.  He believes he is meant to be a hero.  Perhaps he is.  But if he should be hurt, I may never forgive myself.

My Thoughts:

Palladium's RPGs are a soft spot for me. The first game I purchased with my own money was Robotech.  When an older friend of mine introduced me to the glorious black-covered Palladium Fantasy RPG with the red dragon and the Witch character class, damn I loved that game.  It had so much going for it.  The system that powers TMNT is actually not as terrible as many say.  It could use a cleanup, but it works great for the kind of melee combat action you'd expect in a TMNT game.  Strikes, parries, dodges, kicks, punches, jump kicks.  Woo-hoo!

So, it was fun for me to return to this system and make this character- and then I realized that this character was so easy because he was so ill-educated.  Looking up the skills and their percentages, and the physical skills with all their bonuses and sub-skills, is the most time-consuming and frankly annoying part of making a Palladium character.  More modern books have the percentages at least on the summary page with the skill lists, but all these old games made you look them up.  It takes a while for characters with tons of skills.

Given my druthers, I would streamline the whole process.  Have three starting numbers for skills, easy, moderate, and hard.  All skills would improve by 5% per level.  Period.  Percentages over 100 would be allowed, but a 99-00 would be a failure.  That would allow ratings over 98 to help compensate for penalties.  The game would have an explicit baseline for all combat abilities, rather than forcing a player to glean those baselines from the text where they are often buried.  There's a lot of cleanup that could be done to improve or just plain clarify the Palladium system.

So... would I run/play TMNT?  Absolutely.  I really love making mutant animals in this game.  I enjoy the game for all the mechanical quirks- especially when you add in Ninjas & Superspies for more martial arts styles.  It has warts, it could be better, but dammit, it's a fun game for all that.