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kidnicky
2013-08-11, 10:42 PM
The TMNT game in particular,and Palladium in general,were my first introduction to the concept of RPGs without actually playing them,if that makes sense. In elementary school I guess I had heard of D&D,knew it was a game,but having really no interest in fantasy I never bothered to learn anything about it. (To this day I don't read fantasy novels or watch the movies,I like D&D because it's a fun game,not because of an affinity for the source material.) I became an avid reader of the TMNT comics around age 7,right when the cartoon came out. If any of you guys have ever read the comics,you're aware they probably weren't age appropriate,but oh well. Anyway,I'd always see ads in there for TMNT & Other Strangeness,Rifts,Robotech and whatever else. They seemed so cool,yet foreign,since I had no idea what an rpg even was,obviously in elementary school didn't know anyone who played,and I'm sure I wouldn't even be ableto play well.

That being said,did any of you play these games when they were out? Were they fun? Easy/hard? According to some reviews they were overly complex,is this exaggerated?

I'm not posting this to decide whether or not to purchase the books on eBay or anything,if I ever do find anyone with any interest in a TMNT campaign we'd probably either use Cartoon Action Hour or make a homebrew d20 Turtles. (unless multiple poster start insisting this is a must play game,then I guess I'd consider it)

I guess I'm just looking for stories of people's experiences with a game/group of games I've been curious about for over 20 years.

Lapak
2013-08-12, 10:00 AM
The TMNT game in particular,and Palladium in general,were my first introduction to the concept of RPGs without actually playing them,if that makes sense. In elementary school I guess I had heard of D&D,knew it was a game,but having really no interest in fantasy I never bothered to learn anything about it. (To this day I don't read fantasy novels or watch the movies,I like D&D because it's a fun game,not because of an affinity for the source material.) I became an avid reader of the TMNT comics around age 7,right when the cartoon came out. If any of you guys have ever read the comics,you're aware they probably weren't age appropriate,but oh well. Anyway,I'd always see ads in there for TMNT & Other Strangeness,Rifts,Robotech and whatever else. They seemed so cool,yet foreign,since I had no idea what an rpg even was,obviously in elementary school didn't know anyone who played,and I'm sure I wouldn't even be ableto play well.

That being said,did any of you play these games when they were out? Were they fun? Easy/hard? According to some reviews they were overly complex,is this exaggerated?

I'm not posting this to decide whether or not to purchase the books on eBay or anything,if I ever do find anyone with any interest in a TMNT campaign we'd probably either use Cartoon Action Hour or make a homebrew d20 Turtles. (unless multiple poster start insisting this is a must play game,then I guess I'd consider it)

I guess I'm just looking for stories of people's experiences with a game/group of games I've been curious about for over 20 years.It was a Palladium game, and used the basic engine that the rest of their games used. Which meant that there were an awful lot of modifiers and rolls involved in doing anything, it was clunky as all get-out, and 'balance' wasn't a concern.

Character creation was a prime example of this, with random rolls determining both base animal type and character background. Some animals had access to lots of BIO-E (mutation build points, basically) either initially or because they were big and could trade size for it. Other animal types had next to none. If your base animal was close to human size and didn't have any notable features (like a skunk's spray, or a bird's wings), well, you were pretty much going to grab hands and some level of upright stance and that was that. If you rolled the 'secret government experiment, highly trained assassin, lots of money background' you'd end up with a character who was strongly mechanically in every sense than the 'mutated in the wild, taught himself rudiments of human culture' background.

Combat was on the Palladium chassis, which meant that it both ahead of its time in some ways - SDC and Hit points are an early Wound/Vitality development, the way armor is handled is one of the most reasonable interpretations of the stuff ever to come out of tabletop RPGs - but that it could bog down something awful.

Despite the shortcomings, though - it was a fun game. They made an effort to sustain the spirit of the comic strips in the actual delivery of the material, and in the midst of play we tended to have a ball with it.

The After the Bomb supplements, which were set in a post-apocalyptic future with a bunch of mutant animal and human factions, were also fun stuff.

To sum up my opinion in two phrases: mechanically, kinda cumbersome. Fluff-wise, right on target.

Joe the Rat
2013-08-12, 10:50 AM
I actually got a lot of mileage out of it back in the day. And yes, as it was Palladium, it was cludgy, and fiddly, and horribly unbalanced between backgrounds. That's how Kevin liked it. Palladium was always good with the fluff, though.

The BIO-E was supposed to be balanced: They even gave rules for putting together unlisted animals. At base, every mutant should have the BIO-E to achieve Size Level 10 (middle of the chart), with full human speech and features. Then you subtract 5 BIO-E for every 5 points of stat modifiers, rounding up (so a +1 speed, or +3 speed, or +1 IQ +1 Physical Endurance mean your animal starts with 5 fewer "potiential" BIO-E.) Larger animals tended to start with less - often no BIO-E. They had to "sell down" (shrink) to mutate. Animal abilities didn't change this - you had to give up some aspect of "turning human" to keep your claws or flight wings or natural EM sense or suction cups or hyperactive metabolism or super-kidneys. In practice, the numbers didn't quite work out that way. Where it was off they give out too little for the math to work. I thought the mutation rules were one of the better ideas in this game.


Now then, if you're thinking about putting together a game, stop and ask what game you are putting together. Are you after the story and world behind the TMNT comics/shows? And if so, which one(s)? Or are you after more of the wider weird world of the old RPG? there are some differences in style and flavor between them which might favor different systems.

Lapak
2013-08-12, 11:55 AM
The BIO-E was supposed to be balanced: They even gave rules for putting together unlisted animals. At base, every mutant should have the BIO-E to achieve Size Level 10 (middle of the chart), with full human speech and features. Then you subtract 5 BIO-E for every 5 points of stat modifiers, rounding up (so a +1 speed, or +3 speed, or +1 IQ +1 Physical Endurance mean your animal starts with 5 fewer "potiential" BIO-E.) Larger animals tended to start with less - often no BIO-E. They had to "sell down" (shrink) to mutate. Animal abilities didn't change this - you had to give up some aspect of "turning human" to keep your claws or flight wings or natural EM sense or suction cups or hyperactive metabolism or super-kidneys. In practice, the numbers didn't quite work out that way. Where it was off they give out too little for the math to work. I thought the mutation rules were one of the better ideas in this game.Agreed that it was supposed to be balanced but wasn't, and agreed that the idea was a good one. (IIRC you were supposed to add some BIO-E for an animal that had the option for mutant powers, just not enough to that you could snag it and everything else.) The single biggest hole in the system was big animals; once the 'formula' had you at 0 BIO-E, which was only 4-ish size categories above human, being any bigger was a pure benefit in terms of mutation.

kidnicky
2013-08-12, 03:01 PM
Thanks for all the replies. It's a system I've always wondered about.

kidnicky
2013-08-12, 03:07 PM
Now then, if you're thinking about putting together a game, stop and ask what game you are putting together. Are you after the story and world behind the TMNT comics/shows? And if so, which one(s)? Or are you after more of the wider weird world of the old RPG? there are some differences in style and flavor between them which might favor different systems.

I'm really not looking to start any kind of a TMNT game in the near future,but if I did I'd probably use Cartoon Action Hour for a game based on the cartoon,or I don't know,M&M or something for a comic based one.

That being said,I was just curious about this game and the underlying system. I don't know any huge TMNT fans IRL,and I already have a backlog of games I'm sitting on. Of course,one of those backlogged games is CAH,so maybe I'll see some Turtle action after all.

Warlawk
2013-08-12, 05:09 PM
Thanks for all the replies. It's a system I've always wondered about.

Steer clear of palladium IMO.

I've had a few friends over the years who had a soft spot for some of the palladium games and as such, I've ended up being familiar with Robotech, TMNT, Rifts, Heroes Unlimited and the like. They have some great content and ideas, but the system is so terrible at this point I would likely choose to not play rather than play a game based in the palladium system.

I realize that every system has its quirks, but one of the ones that really bothers me is education, particularly for Heroes Unlimited. If you want to be a functional superhero, you dang sure better have X years of college (or specialized military training) or you're pretty much useless. If your character doesn't know martial arts you probably shouldn't bother playing. Want to shoot your gun more times in a round? Better take boxing! If you don't have college education or an IQ score through the roof, or better yet both, then your starting character likely has 25-45% chance of success at a routine skill check. So much for being a hero.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that if you want to do anything other than be an 'I hit things' type of character you're probably in for a world of disappointment. Psionics, magic and even blasting superpowers are so subpar to physical heroes that you're deliberately gimping yourself by making that choice and you had best not end up in a position where you have to defend yourself from a villain of those skills or you're going to be needing a new character in short order.

As an example a blast hero starts at something like 3d6 damage (one power allows for a whopping 4d6!) and it increases at a rate of 1d6 per character level. The XP curve for palladium means that most games are unlikely to pass the level 7-9 range at the upper end. 10d6 at level 7 isn't purely awful, figure it's going to average 35 points right. The problem is, there's no way to increase that. No attributes add to it, no tricks etc no anything. Compare that to strength. You can increase your strength easily. By choosing physical skills you can easily bump your strength by 12-15 points or so in addition to gaining other combat bonuses you will need from the same skills. Each point of strength beyond 15 gives a +1 to damage. There is no cap on this bonus damage. So even if you start with a purely average strength of 12, you can easily hit 25 with just skills giving you +10 damage to every melee or thrown attack. Then if you devote a minor power (same level power as the aforementioned blast) you can add another +15 or so strength easily taking you to +25 damage to each attack. Then you can get paired weapons to attack with two melee weapons for each action, which the blaster cannot do. It only gets worse from there the more you focus on a strength based character.

For instance supernatural strength is a major power, it takes your base strength and then adds 30+1 or 2d6 to it. It has a special damage table based on your strength score, mid 30s (pretty much absolute minimum) results in 6d6 per hit with fists, use swords for another 2 dice, then consider that you have a 35 strength which adds 20 points to each hit, paired weapons... suddenly you have a swordsman dealing 8d6+20 twice for each attack set. You could use throwing knives for ranged attacks adding 1d6, so you're looking at 14d6+40 if both hit compared to a blaster who can deal 4d6 with no way to add anything to that (other than the 1d6 per level). It's just retarded. I realize that palladium does not try to offer any sort of balance between classes/OCCs/races but when melee is the only viable archetype in a superhuman game, the problem is pretty huge.

kidnicky
2013-08-13, 05:46 PM
Could a Ninja Turtle pilot a veritech?

Asmodai
2013-08-14, 05:23 AM
It is the same system...

Joe the Rat
2013-08-14, 09:20 AM
One thing you have to remember is that Palladium is straight out of the Old School: Why build when you can roll randomly? Balance was not even hinted at as being a thing.


Could a Ninja Turtle pilot a veritech? How about a Mutant Cuscus? Biscuit Jones, Veritech Pilot. Always lamenting the lack of a prehensile tail in Guardian mode.

It's not hard to get off the rails of rational in Palladium, and that's even before Rifts.

I think it ended up more as a font of inspiration than being truly playable.

Mutazoia
2013-08-14, 10:36 AM
It's not hard to get off the rails of rational in Palladium, and that's even before Rifts.

I think it ended up more as a font of inspiration than being truly playable.

Palladium got into the habit very quickly of thinking that RPG's were all played PVP for some reason. Each new splat that came out had to trump what ever was in the previous one. I took to calling this "The Palladium Effect". (Wizkids fell victim to this with their "MageKnight" game. They quickly burned their own game to the ground with it by releasing a new set every month that made the previous set obsolete. As most of the players were tournament players they quickly got tired of the arms race and simply quit playing.) While Palladium is a good example of what can be done with an RPG, it is often a good example of "Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should." Sure you CAN make a Mutant Turtle Veritech pilot but you probably shouldn't. Pick ONE Palladium genera, and don't mix them or you could quickly end up with the Vampire Mutant Ninja Demi-God Veritech Pilot (In Glitterboy armor)...