Are there any d20 game modules available for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
I know that Star Wars, Diablo and a million other franchises have received the d20 treatment, and I just thought it would be totally radical if there was also a game starring our favorite heroes in a half shell.
It would be awesome to stat up the Turtles, Master Splinter, April O'Neil, Casey Jones, Shredder, etc. and run an epic campaign.
Cowabunga, dudes!
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I could easily see making one the question is, do you go with classes, or ability suites based on weapon choice. Races obviously fall into either human, animal mutant, robot (remember the robot ninja turtle and the robot ninjas), alien (big brain). Interesting concept though and I bet it could be done. wonder how you would go about getting the liscence. or do you just create a generic teenage mutant ninja animal game.
Palladium had a TMNT game.
Just Googled it.
Apparently, the first edition "was published with a section detailing a comprehensive list of mental illnesses that players could adopt for their characters, including an extensive list of sexual deviations."
Lolz. Craziness!
Too bad it's so old. It would be neat to have something with a 3.5 rule set.
Oh well, I'm off to ebay to pick up a copy...
the new name for it is After the Bomb. But it doesnt ever mention the turtles, but has all the rules for mutant animals that tmnt did.
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the new name for it is After the Bomb. But it doesnt ever mention the turtles, but has all the rules for mutant animals that tmnt did.
Although there is a mysterious group known as "The Gang of Four" who helped keep the peace in the Gator Land after The Crash. There is also the ancient turtle sensai in Road Hogs that keeps mistakenly calling his students "Mikey."
the new name for it is After the Bomb. But it doesnt ever mention the turtles, but has all the rules for mutant animals that tmnt did.Although there is a mysterious group known as "The Gang of Four" who helped keep the peace in the Gator Land after The Crash. There is also the ancient turtle sensai in Road Hogs that keeps mistakenly calling his students "Mikey."
Well, Road Hogs was written while Palladium still had the license. =)
You could just as easily mod out 3.5E or Pathfinder into a "Turtles in Time" sort of campaign... and add D20 Modern Book for a modern setting.
3.5E Miniatures Handbook actually has a Turtle Monstrous Humanoid, the Crucian. Artwork of ugly turtle man aside... Give them(turtle players) FREE "Two-Weapon Fighting", slap them on the shell and send them on their totally, righteous way to defeat evil-doers!
You could use any number of other random monstrous humanoids right out of the various monster manuals to represent other mutants...
Lycanthropes(wolf,bear,boar,tiger,rat), Orc, Rhek(rhino), Gnoll/Flind & Jackal Lord(dog), Lizardfolk & Yuan-Ti(snake), Goatfolk[Ibixian] & Satyr, Minotaur(cow/bull) Yak folk, Loxo(elephant), Catfolk & Wemics, Kenku(raven), Girallon/Taer(ape/gorilla), Centaur(horse), Thri-Kreen(mantis), Formian(ant), Abeil(bee)... Mongrel Men(half-bred mutants), Myconid(odd mushroom people), Grell/Intellect devourer/Brain-in-a-Jar(brain creatures), Warforged & Clockworks(robots), etc.
Not sure there's a rabbit folk though, Usagi Yojimbo would have to be created from scratch I guess. :)
Contributor
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Ah, TMNT, the game that got me into roleplaying in the first place :) I loved those comics when I was little, and even loved the cartoons (although the 2003 series got the feel of the comics much better).
The Palladium TMNT game is alright... probably the best and most balanced of their line, honestly. I'd go with an older TMNT and Other Strangeness book rather than the new After the Bomb (not that AtB is bad, but it's a very different game than TMNT, asside from the mutant-making rules). It's a Pallaidum game, for what that's worth, which means not a lot of power balancing and you're left to fend for yourself for GMing materials, but I managed with it for years, and TMNT is one of their lighter books, giving you a lot of leeway for being creative and thankfully little power creep.
As for a d20 game, I'm afraid you're SOL. The Savage Species book for 3.0 had a VERY breif template in the back for humanoid animals ("Anthropomorphic Animal", but it basically assumes "monster" and makes them rather stupid and assigns a wonky Level Adjustment. A better bet is to just make a race for each kind of animal your players express interest in playing: Give them a +2/-2 to their stats based on race, then assign a handful of special abilities (like racial skills bonuses, lowlight vision, or natural weapons). Check out the PHB races for a basic guidelines, and the Monster Manual's chapter on augmenting monsters for a rough guide to applying special abilities.
Believe it or not, when d20 Modern first came out, I was so disappointed with Moreaus that I converted the palladium TMNT system over to d20, but I lost that file years ago in a computer crash.
If someone came up with an 3.5 update to the Mystaran Savage Coast's version of Tortles, that might be a consideration.
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Well, Road Hogs was written while Palladium still had the license. =)the new name for it is After the Bomb. But it doesnt ever mention the turtles, but has all the rules for mutant animals that tmnt did.Although there is a mysterious group known as "The Gang of Four" who helped keep the peace in the Gator Land after The Crash. There is also the ancient turtle sensai in Road Hogs that keeps mistakenly calling his students "Mikey."
But Road Hogs is still in print, so it's still a sly way to fit in a reference.
There are anthopomorphic animals in Savage Species. Add that to either d20 modern or pathfinder and you should be pretty much set. You might want to pick up something with more detailed martial arts if that is a concern. There are lots of third party options, many in PDF and pretty cheap.
If you want something more fine tunable, Mutants and Masterminds would work really well.
TMNT and Other Strangeness was awesome! We played not AS the turtles, but in the world of the turtles...we had a group of five militant ninja rats. Their base of operations was a farm house. I think we called it "Rat Race". Most of the time we made up our own mutants and characters in the world, but every once in a while we'd have a cameo from like Bebop, Rocksteady, Casey Jones, Scumbug, Panda Khan or somebody like that. We were like fourteen, it was great! Palladium games like this, Rifts, and Robotech got me started on roleplaying!
Scumbug and Panda Khan are awesome. Good memories.
Hahahaha, just remembered they weren't rats, they were 5 mice. We called it "Mouse Trap". We kept the whole "each one has his own unique weapon" thing, and they had cool bandana-masks (though they weren't color coded, they all wore black). I think the weapons they used were hook swords, kris blades, tonfa, kama knives, and a 3-sectioned staff.
Sorry, reminiscing... :D
Sorry, reminiscing... :D
Carry on - as I never got to play it, it is great fun to hear about! I got a copy of TMNT and Other Strangeness years ago, but it was too strange for my players. :(
Peace,
tfad
TMNT was awesome. I remember one of the adventures in the first book had a line in it stating that "This adventure requires ninja stealth and infiltration." or something like that. Unfortunately we utilized machineguns and hand grenades. That one was bloody...
Road Hogs was great fun too. If you like gaming that is not too serious this could be a cool diversion from D&D for a bit. I highly encourage using all of the random tables to keep things even more interesting.
matt
If someone came up with an 3.5 update to the Mystaran Savage Coast's version of Tortles, that might be a consideration.I could swear they were in a dragon magazine.
Dragon magazine 315, I think they might still have copies for sale here at Paizo.
More reminiscing? Ok...I'll see what else I can remember. I know they were escaped lab mice, who grew to beyond human level capabilities, and had human level intellect.
Their names were Jakey, Clint, Sparky, Damien and Ratso. The main bad guy was this huge tiger ninja who used these kinda deformed sai looking things, and was tough enough to fight all five at the same time! Of course, he had all manner of Foot Clan-esque ninja fodder for the mice to trounce...good times! You know, I may even revive it! We never "finished" it!
Thank you TC, I had forgotten all about this until you inadvertently brought these cool memories to the surface...
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In one campaign we had to kill the ninja turtles because they kept stealing the townspeople's pizza. My character was very happy with his new shiny Katana (From the first one I cut down- Leo). I eventually had that enchanted to be a +1 Keen Icy Burst Katana that was my character's trademark
Good times :)
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Yeah, seriously, once you get people over the corny-ness factor, TMNT is a really neat game. The character creation process allows for more customization than just about any other game I can think of. Of course, the downside is that it means that it takes 3-4 hours to make one, and that's if you know what you're doing! But it's really quite fun to do.
Once that's done of course, the quality of the game, just like any other rpg, depends a lot on the quality of the dm, the players, and the story. But it has potential definitely - in the right hands it can be solid gold.
I too have some very fond memories of late nights in college with my mutant platypus using the "Mutants down under" supplement.
TMNT was awesome. I remember one of the adventures in the first book had a line in it stating that "This adventure requires ninja stealth and infiltration." or something like that. Unfortunately we utilized machineguns and hand grenades. That one was bloody...
Same here! I got to play it years ago, as a Blue-Jay with insane Charisma, and a pair of Uzi machine guns. The mission was to sneak into an elementary school that a bunch of pig-mutants took over, and free the kids from pigs.
I basically spent all my starting wealth on a pair of machine guns and a duffel bag full of ammo, walked up and down the halls emptying clips into each pig-mutant. So much for subtlety lol!
Ah homebrew...
One thing I'm curious of, did you guys get to choose your mutant race? When I played, the GM made me roll for a random race, which is how I wound up with a Blue-Jay.
Yeah, seriously, once you get people over the corny-ness factor, TMNT is a really neat game. The character creation process allows for more customization than just about any other game I can think of. Of course, the downside is that it means that it takes 3-4 hours to make one, and that's if you know what you're doing! But it's really quite fun to do.
Once that's done of course, the quality of the game, just like any other rpg, depends a lot on the quality of the dm, the players, and the story. But it has potential definitely - in the right hands it can be solid gold.
I too have some very fond memories of late nights in college with my mutant platypus using the "Mutants down under" supplement.
What was so corney about the "Terror Bears"? Ok... Nevermind that i guess...
I think I still have quite a few of the books laying about somewhere. It started my old group's palladium phase, which quickly ended. Still was quite a bit of fun.
If you are looking for a d20 modern version of the old Palladium game you need to find
Mutant Animal Mayhem by Jeffery Moore
It can be downloaded for free at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2439593/Mutant-Animal-Mayhem-d20
I haven't looked at it extremely closely yet, but from what I can tell, this is good stuff.
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Dragon magazine 315, I think they might still have copies for sale here at Paizo.If someone came up with an 3.5 update to the Mystaran Savage Coast's version of Tortles, that might be a consideration.I could swear they were in a dragon magazine.
There's a write up of them here too
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7577493
Mutants and Masterminds could handle this.
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We had two rule books floating around in our game group back in the day with the intention of doing a TMNT campaign, they were
Heroes Unlimited and the Palladium TMNT book mentioned already. I could swear that Heroes Unlimited had much of the same stuff but on a bigger scale (it was by the same publisher).
Just thought I'd share, hope this is useful.
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Hahahaha, just remembered they weren't rats, they were 5 mice. We called it "Mouse Trap". We kept the whole "each one has his own unique weapon" thing, and they had cool bandana-masks (though they weren't color coded, they all wore black). I think the weapons they used were hook swords, kris blades, tonfa, kama knives, and a 3-sectioned staff.
Sorry, reminiscing... :D
We liked to Frankenstein together stuff from TMNT and Heroes Unlimited. I had a one-eyed mutant wolverine that was a cyborg and had a few minor superpowers.
Since the thread is about five years old, I'm pretty sure the OP has his answer by now... but I kind of liked using the hengeyokai out of Oriental Adventures + the (Paizo) Dragon Magazine update for some of the characters. They even had a hare type. (I would, however, argue for moving the -2 to wisdom to another stat depending on the animal in question.)
. . . But as you go through trying to figure out what classes everyone takes, the obvious question arises, what do you do about magic? Characters like April and others who might take classes that wield magic, like bard, do you allow her (who wasn't a magic user in any incarnation that I'm aware of) wield magic, or do you figure out a way to take the magic out of pathfinder. . . .
In the same vein of the OA conversions, rangers lost spells but gained a free feat when they would gain a spell level. It makes for an overall weaker character, but it could work for the partial casters. You could also swap spells out for martial maneuvers from Tome of Battle for some characters and just use the warblade or crusader recovery method. For bards... well magic is big part of what they do, unless you want to make them psionic and restrict the effects to not looking like some sort of magic. Then it would just "look" like a high level of skill or luck or both.