Let's Make A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Character

Making a totally tubular mutant animal from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness (1985) from Palladium Books.
Correction: the boxing skill gives 1 additional attack per melee. so it should start at 3 and go up to 5 at level 2.
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[@lordmalal]

I like creating the mutant animals, but you have to extensively house rule any Palladium game if you want to preserve your sanity while playing it.

[@derrickhaggard]

Correct.

[@meatguyf1375]

I love Rifts the setting but I still bump into ride or die types who defend the rules trying to claim you just need to use common sense when trying to figure out what the rules mean. 1) You shouldn't have to. 2) When has common sense ever been a part of a Palladium game?

[@yuin3320]

A buddy of mine found his old stash of Rifts books and was waxing so nostalgic over them coming up with so many ideas saying he wanted to run a madmax fallout style campaign for us, and after months of his free time spent going through all the insane rules and noting just how many gaps were still there and how much makes no damn sense he finally just said "Fuck it. It's easier to fix Starfinder than this shit." And we had a house ruled SF campaign set in his version of Rifts Earth, before he soon retconned it to be some alien planet in a custom 40k-esque universe. The less rifts was involved, the more fun it was for all of us.

[@bloodrunsclear]

It wouldn’t last, but playing as a super smart but otherwise indistinguishable frog would be kind of hilarious

[@zerobyte802]

With psionics, you could have hypnotoad.

[@wiibrockster]

This game is actually really fun to play despite how outdated the game is. Last time I played I ended playing as a mutant Rabbit and it was a blast

[@EHH246]

Calling skills "tricky" is an understatement. So many bonuses to remember!

[@cygil1]

It took me years to realise I could just make all skills be, say, 50% plus 5% per level. They are on a completely arbitrary scale anyway, there's no modifiers for easy vs difficult etc.

[@seanredmond1366]

The stats apply as a stand-in for unskilled checks. So even if you are below 16 they do have a purpose. Even characters without the prowl skill can make attempts with a prowess check, or attempt to climb using strength etc. This is stated in the rifts rules but appears nowhere in any of the tmnt or after the bomb stuff. There's basically nothing about skill checks at all actually.

[@bria243]

This game and books certainly have a soft spot for me; when I saw Mutants in Avalon, I was surprised. What is also frustrating is many Palladium books of this time, sometimes skills are listed to choose, but there is no entry on how they are calculated, etc.

[@zigmenthotep]

Psh, "of the time?" After the Bomb is just as bad, if not worse, and it came out in 2001. I have no idea what's going on over there.

[@juliagoodwin9510]

Thank you so much for this! I was confused by some of the technical aspects of character creation...

[@zigmenthotep]

That's okay, it's unnecessarily confusing.

[@danamccarthy5514]

Until the Rifts Ultimate Edition version update, low attributes do not have penalties in Palladium across any of their systems.

[@Ike_of_pyke]

Coming back after finding out about the new kickstarter....well this is interesting to see and curious how they'll change and fold the stuff in.

[@alexsgamingshow2474]

This frog here makes machines~! ❤️.

[@nodansland303]

I have such a love/hate relationship with the Palladium Megaversal system. I enjoyed playing the game back in the day, but there are so many parts of it that feel like an 80s game. I can't hate it, but there are a lot of quality of life improvements from newer games tht i appreciate.

[@Ilarra]

I'm honestly surprised that it came out before the show and the turtles were popular

[@zigmenthotep]

Well they were mildly popular as a comic, which is probably why Palladium was able to get the license.

[@names_are_useless]

If I remember the story correctly: Palladium wanted the rights to make a Robotech Pen-and-Paper RPG after publishing TMNT & Other Strangeness. The Japanese RoboTech IP Holders were so impressed with TMNT & Other Strangeness that they wanted to have a TMNT cartoon made ... and I believe the rest is history. So without TMNT & Other Strangeness, the TMNT Cartoon may have never happened.

[@Stuurminator]

Palladium got *really* lucky nabbing this and the Robotech RPG license at affordable prices.

[@DanielMcVicker]

Skills max out at 98%. Other than that, looks like how I played it when I was 12.

[@zigmenthotep]

Well it would't be in the spirit of Palladium without a few errors.

[@DanielMcVicker]

@@zigmenthotep 20+ years after my last Palladium game, I just found out that rolling with a punch/fall/impact costs a melee attack. I was looking at rules and errata to try to run a one-shot of this glorious mess of a game.

[@zigmenthotep]

@@DanielMcVicker Great, thanks for reminding me that I can't assume anything from TMNT is actually going to be the same in After the Bomb. Or rather that I obviously failed to understand the rules in TMNT because that's the way they were always supposed to be.

[@AXSLA3]

In palladium books, as this is, except for something very specific as the Hardware special skills from Heroes Unlimited, everyone else has a maximum skill level of 98% (I'm possitive in that).

[@johnstuartkeller5244]

Making a TMNT&OS character ... 11 minutes? No way!

[@user-sp8jf7iz4n]

I played this game as a kid I had a mutant owl that had silent flight, he was a trained assassin he was based on the GI joe character snake eyes so he had an uzi silencer and a katana for weapons. It was such a fun time gliding across rooftops at night and slaying my enemies.

[@user-pt9mk9hq1l]

i remember the days of ignoring the rolling and making super powered mutant animals then arguing passionately about their hypothetical abilities and strengths

[@angelg9070]

I really enjoy the Let’s Make a Character videos. Since you made D&D (ALL of them!) and Pathfinder, and chance of making a Palladium Fantasy one?

[@zigmenthotep]

I may, but I do want to keep some space between having to deal with Palladium.

[@AXSLA3]

This is probably the most mess up rulebook of all Palladium books, no wonder why you have to figure out some things by yourself.

[@paladro]

blast from the past

[@insertjokehere212]

Good thing I found this video. Was gonna try to run it, but on second thought I don't need that headache.

[@zigmenthotep]

Glad I could save someone from attempting to play a Palladium game.

[@theveira]

A TMNT game sounds rad, but is there a better system I can just port this to? I wanna play a little freak ass frog dude doing cool ninja shit.

[@jesternario]

Palladium has a habit of assuming you have purchased either RIFTS or Palladium Fantasy RPG, because all of the answers you have for the game is most likely in one of those, and if it isn't, the GM is supposed to just make up the answer. Not a good way to make a game, if you ask me.

[@StrayCatMatt]

I got this book and a bunch of the expansion books. It's part of the Palladium rpg iirc which has fantasy, superheroes, etc. I got a few of them too. I think they're all compatible, so you could totally have a marvel/tmnt mashup if you wanted to lol.

[@derrickhaggard]

You can crossover different campaign settings. As two of the sourcebooks for TMNT and other Strangeness Transdimensional Mutant Ninja Turtles and TMNT Guide to the universe adds rules for going to different planets, high-tech vehicles, time-travel, and travel to alternate dimensions/parallel worlds.

[@StrayCatMatt]

@@derrickhaggard Yeah, since that comment I made a video on palladium fantasy and bought a lot more books, including down under and the guide to the universe. As a playtest, with the way that Heroes Unlimited is set up we homebrewed a tmnt/sailor moon crossover just for giggles. But not in the way you think! The sailor scouts became turtles. It was a ton of dumb fun.

[@derrickhaggard]

@@StrayCatMatt Awesome. I remember when I played me and the group I did had a crossover campaign between TMNT and Robotech with part of the campaign being Donnie being interested in the tech the Robotech Defense Force was using especially the Veritech mech/jet-space fighter planes, along with being interested in the Zentradi tech, and having to explain to the RDF that we're not enemy aliens but mutants from an alternate earth.

[@StrayCatMatt]

@@derrickhaggard Robotech is one of the books I still don't own, and idk why because I have the complete robotech dvd set haha. I would love to do a series on just tmnt crossover possibilities.

[@derrickhaggard]

@@StrayCatMatt That would be a cool series. As once Transdimensional Mutant Ninja Turtles, and TMNT: Guide to the Universe came out and introduced rules for time-travel, travel to parallel worlds/alternate universes, space travel, interactions with cosmic beings, alien races, and high-tech vehicles then yeah it's possible to crossover TMNT and other Strangeness with other Palladium/Megaversal titles with the right rules combinations.

[@metrosaurusrex7012]

Does this method also applies to Palladium Rifts character making?

[@zigmenthotep]

I believe the basics are the same, but the minutiae is different.

[@Okamooki]

Any idea if you'd do shadowrun as a series or separated out? I really want to see someone else's feelings on the system at some point, especially the trainwreck that is post 3e.

[@zigmenthotep]

Oddly enough, Shadowrun was actually scheduled to be this week's video but I couldn't figure out which edition would be the best to use.

[@Okamooki]

@@zigmenthotep depends on how much you want to hate yourself, 1e is old but simple-ish, 2e is just 1e with a few bugfixes, 3e is the one i hear about being actually good, 4e is open ended (for better and worse), 5e is one of the worst formatted major publications i've ever read, and 6e is 5e but somehow even worse.

[@Okamooki]

If you do 4 or 5e, i challenge you to do it without chummer just to see how bad it is.

[@gregwing7355]

Is this game any good? I'd love to run this

[@sipio555]

Ok, I tried to create the character with the character sheet in a pdf I found but your sheet looks better, where do I find it?

[@zigmenthotep]

It is custom made for the video.

[@drjohnwooberg]

9:40 My thoughts on Palladium Games in general. I had a blast playing Rifts back in the day, but the book is a bloated, disorganized mess with no index.

[@jeramykelton5304]

Punk Frog. Cool.

[@CommissarMitch]

This feels like a cash grab considering the iffy rules and very didferent dice used.

[@AXSLA3]

By the way, your character is missing an alignment, which should be either a good one like: Principled or Scrupulous, or a selfish alignment like Unprincipled or Anarchist, and most probably not an evil one like Aberrant, Miscreant or Diabolic. (as these three are reserved for the bad guys).

[@conradhauser17]

Palladium books were going to release the 2nd edition of TMNt, but it wouldn't work because the TMNt became kiddified

[@Ike_of_pyke]

If you read IDW Comics verison of that you'd see that's not true for the comics at all...and there's going to be a Kickstarter revised verison in full colors with new original art by Kevin and Peter .

[@craftsmenMC]

There was a tmnt ttrpg? Huh

[@zigmenthotep]

Well, technically at least.

[@craftsmenMC]

@@zigmenthotep yeah the whole system sounds confusing

[@zigmenthotep]

Boy howdy is it, I go deeper into it in my review of After the Bomb (they're basically the same game)

[@craftsmenMC]

@@zigmenthotep a shame. The stuff from animal choosing and background seem cool

[@TheDrewjameson]

Oh man, everything you made fun of here is 10x worse in Rifts

[@ericheckenkamp6091]

This is some modern outlooks on a retro game. You don't really understand what gaming was like back then. What well known publishers outside of TSR were putting out books of the quality TSR was...which, you probably have some VERY rose colored shades for, if you have experience with them at all. It's a good review, and no arguing Palladium games were wonky, but you don't seem to realize they were the "affordable" option back then, and not meant for high quality production. They're whole gimmick was that the rules were applicable across their "multiverse." The animals aren't balanced either, and neither are the classes in Rifts. It seems crazy to modern gamers but it can work. But as far as rules hiccups like you're talking about, well RPGs...and gaming in general...was a lot more DIY back then. No two RPGs ran the same. Take off the rose colored shades. 1985 was a completely different gaming scene than today. This was a very playable game, but probably not for normies.

[@Zenas521]

Popular franchise, vagueness, complicated, and no quality assurance. This is known as a money grab.