Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
Encyclopedia
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is a role-playing game
based on the comic book created by Kevin Eastman
and Peter Laird
. The core rulebook was first published by Palladium Books
in September 1985 – a couple years before the Turtles franchise achieved mass popularity – and featured original comic strips and illustrations by Eastman and Laird. The rules and gameplay are based on Palladium's Megaversal system
. Some of these rules, outlining the basics of character creation
and providing a short list of animal options, were later incorporated in the second edition of Heroes Unlimited
.
s and rat
s were not the only option for mutated
animal
s; a rather large list was made available of animals that could be mutated in a wide variety of ways (intelligence, human looks, functioning hands, bipedalism, etc.). Some animals allowed access to different varieties (most notably dog breeds), and rules allowed for the creation of new animals. Characters had access to psionic powers
and could come from a wide variety of sources (e.g., natural mutation or man-made experiments), as well as a variety of educational backgrounds.
The mutant animal player characters in the game lived in our modern world, functioning on the fringes of human society. One of the more innovative details of the game was the alignment system
which used qualitative terms like "principled" and "miscreant" along with a list of diagnostic behaviors such as "would kill an innocent bystander" or "would never accept stolen property". These hypothetical behaviors pegged a character as fitting one of the particular alignment terms.
for the Turtles, Shredder, and other characters from early in the series. However, the adventures included with the book were completely independent of the TMNT universe, and brand-new characters were also introduced.
According to Kevin Siembieda
, the 1987 television series
and live-action movies, which made considerable changes to the Turtles' universe, had a severe negative impact on the popularity of the role-playing game. In an interview, Siembieda claimed that depictions of the Turtles in other media made them seem so childish that "no self-respecting teenager, even if he thought the Turtles were cool, or thought the Ninja Turtle game was cool, was going to be caught dead playing it. So our sales plummeted from 50,000 copies in a year to 12,000, and the next year that dropped to 6,000."
In January 1986, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness spawned a game with an alternate setting, that of a post-apocalyptic
earth populated mainly with mutant animals and residual humans, called After the Bomb, which soon developed into a separate, though compatible game series.
Palladium announced that a second edition of the game would be released in the fall of 1997. However, due to the cost of maintaining the license as well as delayed production and low pre-orders for the proposed title, Palladium decided to end its license with Mirage Studios in January 2000. Years later, in a February 2007 interview, Siembieda hinted that Palladium might consider re-licensing the property depending on the performance of the CGI movie and other factors, but this prospect has not since been revisited.
. Players could either select a form of insanity as an optional step in character creation
or randomly assign one during the course of gameplay as a result of their characters undergoing some kind of trauma, such as demonic possession
, near-death experience, or torture
. This section also featured an extensive list of sexual deviations
which included pedophilia
and homosexuality
(in terms of the game, a traumatic event could potentially induce a character to convert from one sexual orientation
to another), despite the latter having been officially declassified as a mental illness more than a decade before. After parents of younger players objected to the list of sexual deviations – which had previously appeared in the Palladium Role-Playing Game
and Heroes Unlimited rulebooks – Palladium Books covered it with a plain white sticker. Subsequent printings removed the list of mental illnesses entirely, although occasional references to it remained elsewhere in the book. Copies of the first edition sell for a premium on auction web sites like eBay
.
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
based on the comic book created by Kevin Eastman
Kevin Eastman
Kevin Brooks Eastman is an American comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eastman is also the current owner, editor and publisher of the magazine Heavy Metal.-Early life:Eastman was born on May 30, 1962 in Springvale, Maine...
and Peter Laird
Peter Laird
Peter Alan Laird is an American comic book writer and artist. He is best known for co-creating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with writer and artist Kevin Eastman.-Early life and career:...
. The core rulebook was first published by Palladium Books
Palladium Books
Palladium Books is a publisher of role-playing games perhaps best known for its popular, expansive Rifts series . Palladium was founded April 1981 in Detroit, Michigan by current president and lead game designer Kevin Siembieda, and is presently based in Westland, Michigan...
in September 1985 – a couple years before the Turtles franchise achieved mass popularity – and featured original comic strips and illustrations by Eastman and Laird. The rules and gameplay are based on Palladium's Megaversal system
Megaversal system
The Megaversal system, sometimes known as the Palladium system, is a set of mechanics specifically employed in most role-playing games published by Palladium Books, the exception is Recon. It uses dice for roll-under percentile skill checks, roll-high combat checks and saving throws, and...
. Some of these rules, outlining the basics of character creation
Character creation
Character creation is the process of defining a game character or other character. Typically, a character's individual strengths and weaknesses are represented by a set of statistics. Games with a largely fictional setting may include traits such as race and class...
and providing a short list of animal options, were later incorporated in the second edition of Heroes Unlimited
Heroes Unlimited
Heroes Unlimited is a superhero role-playing game written by Kevin Siembieda and first published by Palladium Books in 1984. The game is based upon the Palladium Books Megaversal system and is compatible with any other game on the Palladium system, including Aliens Unlimited and Villains...
.
Characters
TurtleTurtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...
s and rat
Rat
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...
s were not the only option for mutated
Mutant (fictional)
The concept of a mutant is a common trope in comic books and science fiction. The new phenotypes that appear in fictional mutations generally go far beyond what is typically seen in biological mutants, and often result in the mutated life form exhibiting superhuman abilities or qualities.-Marvel...
animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
s; a rather large list was made available of animals that could be mutated in a wide variety of ways (intelligence, human looks, functioning hands, bipedalism, etc.). Some animals allowed access to different varieties (most notably dog breeds), and rules allowed for the creation of new animals. Characters had access to psionic powers
Psionics (role-playing games)
Psionics, in role-playing games, is a broad category of fantastic abilities originating from the mind, similar to the paranormal psionic abilities that some people claim in reality.- Common features :...
and could come from a wide variety of sources (e.g., natural mutation or man-made experiments), as well as a variety of educational backgrounds.
The mutant animal player characters in the game lived in our modern world, functioning on the fringes of human society. One of the more innovative details of the game was the alignment system
Alignment (role-playing games)
In some role-playing games, alignment is a categorisation of the moral and ethical perspective of the player characters, non-player characters, monsters, and societies in the game....
which used qualitative terms like "principled" and "miscreant" along with a list of diagnostic behaviors such as "would kill an innocent bystander" or "would never accept stolen property". These hypothetical behaviors pegged a character as fitting one of the particular alignment terms.
Campaign setting
The original TMNT game partially mirrored the universe of the TMNT comic books and provided statisticsStatistic (role-playing games)
A statistic in role-playing games is a piece of data which represents a particular aspect of a fictional character. That piece of data is usually a integer or, in some cases, a set of dice....
for the Turtles, Shredder, and other characters from early in the series. However, the adventures included with the book were completely independent of the TMNT universe, and brand-new characters were also introduced.
According to Kevin Siembieda
Kevin Siembieda
Kevin Siembieda is an American artist, writer, designer, and publisher of role-playing games, and the co-founder and president of Palladium Books....
, the 1987 television series
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 TV series)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an American animated television series produced by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson. The pilot was shown during the week of December 28, 1987 in syndication as a five part miniseries and began its official run on October 1, 1988...
and live-action movies, which made considerable changes to the Turtles' universe, had a severe negative impact on the popularity of the role-playing game. In an interview, Siembieda claimed that depictions of the Turtles in other media made them seem so childish that "no self-respecting teenager, even if he thought the Turtles were cool, or thought the Ninja Turtle game was cool, was going to be caught dead playing it. So our sales plummeted from 50,000 copies in a year to 12,000, and the next year that dropped to 6,000."
In January 1986, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness spawned a game with an alternate setting, that of a post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
earth populated mainly with mutant animals and residual humans, called After the Bomb, which soon developed into a separate, though compatible game series.
Palladium announced that a second edition of the game would be released in the fall of 1997. However, due to the cost of maintaining the license as well as delayed production and low pre-orders for the proposed title, Palladium decided to end its license with Mirage Studios in January 2000. Years later, in a February 2007 interview, Siembieda hinted that Palladium might consider re-licensing the property depending on the performance of the CGI movie and other factors, but this prospect has not since been revisited.
Editions
The original edition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was published with a section detailing a comprehensive list of mental illnesses ostensibly drawn from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
. Players could either select a form of insanity as an optional step in character creation
Character creation
Character creation is the process of defining a game character or other character. Typically, a character's individual strengths and weaknesses are represented by a set of statistics. Games with a largely fictional setting may include traits such as race and class...
or randomly assign one during the course of gameplay as a result of their characters undergoing some kind of trauma, such as demonic possession
Demonic possession
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...
, near-death experience, or torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. This section also featured an extensive list of sexual deviations
Paraphilia
Paraphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her...
which included pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
(in terms of the game, a traumatic event could potentially induce a character to convert from one sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
to another), despite the latter having been officially declassified as a mental illness more than a decade before. After parents of younger players objected to the list of sexual deviations – which had previously appeared in the Palladium Role-Playing Game
Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game
The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game is a game produced by Palladium Books. It is set in a unique world, called the Palladium World , with the primary setting being some 10,000 years after a great war between the elves and their dwarven allies...
and Heroes Unlimited rulebooks – Palladium Books covered it with a plain white sticker. Subsequent printings removed the list of mental illnesses entirely, although occasional references to it remained elsewhere in the book. Copies of the first edition sell for a premium on auction web sites like eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
.
Supplements
- After the Bomb (January 1986)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures! (June 1986)
- Road HogsRoad HogsRoad Hogs is the second supplement to the After the Bomb setting of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness role-playing game...
(October 1986) - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Guide to the UniverseTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Guide to the UniverseTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Guide to the Universe is the second supplement for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness role-playing game...
(May 1987) - Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesTransdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesTransdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a supplement for the role-playing game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness which covered setting and rules information for both time travel and transdimensional travel.- Principles :...
(April 1989) - Truckin' TurtlesTruckin' TurtlesTruckin' Turtles is a supplement for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness role-playing game. It was published by Palladium Books in 1989 and uses the Palladium Megaversal system. It is largely a collection of adventure concepts that take the players across the United States with...
(November 1989) - Turtles Go HollywoodTurtles Go HollywoodTurtles Go Hollywood is a supplement for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness role-playing game. It was published by Palladium Books in 1990 and uses the Palladium Megaversal system. It is a collection of five interrelated adventure concepts centered around drug lords, corrupt...
(March 1990)