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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is Palladium's adaptation of the comics of the same name, produced in 1983, long before the TMNT craze. It includes the complete basic rules, rules for playing over 50 types of mutated animals, an 8 page comic featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, combat and equipment rules, and then sample adventures and characters.

This book is well written, with a familiar and fluent style, and excellent use of examples. Despite the title, this is not just a book for kids. Playing superhero mutated animals is as mature as playing any other superhero game. This offers enough information to do anything you want with them. The adventure material and sample characters are well written and can provoke many hours of adventure.

The following contains opinionated comments on the Palladium rules and system. While my email address is available, flames are not welcome. It's all IMHO and YMMV, anyway.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles uses one version of the Palladium rules. I don't like the Palladium rules; they are similar to the AD&D rules, but worse. High attributes (16 or above) give bonuses, but low attributes don't give minuses. Skills give attributes bonuses, and are big reason why, with stats rolled on 3d6, attribute bonuses exist. The system is almost entirely random. To its credit, TMNT offers a slightly cleaner version of the rules then RIFTS. Dropping MDC, O.C.C's, and R.C.C's is great. Instead of R.C.C's for the animals, Bio-E is used. Bio-E is a point system that the player can use to build his character. It doesn't supplant the random attributes and animal selection, though. One problem is that there is only a small psionics section, and that is specifically mentioned as not being compatiable with other Palladium books, making it harder to bring other material in.

Another complaint with the Palladium nature is that all the rules are placed in the book along with the background. Most of the book is concerned with the basic rules, leaving no room for background, extra races, or more detail on the adventure seeds. I have three copies of the Palladium rules I so dislike, which could have been used to add more background and material to their respective games. This is especially a problem for TMNT, as 112 pages does not give much room for rules and other material. Many people disagree with me here, though; see several GURPS reviews for the inverse of this complaint (not those by me or Bradford Walker, though.)

When I bought this book, this was the first not-AD&D game I ever read. I was extremely impressed. Since then, however, I've become a huge GURPS fan, and TMNT no longer looks so good. (If I ever were to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I would play using GURPS rules.) It's still very well written and created, but it lacks significant content in great part due to the space taken up by included rules.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, Revised Edition
Author: Erick Wujcik Category: game Company/Publisher: Palladium Books Cost: $11.95 Page count: 112 ISBN: 0-916211-14-2 Capsule Review by David Starner on 07/06/98. Genre tags: none	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is Palladium's adaptation of the comics of the same name, produced in 1983, long before the TMNT craze. It includes the complete basic rules, rules for playing over 50 types of mutated animals, an 8 page comic featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, combat and equipment rules, and then sample adventures and characters. This book is well written, with a familiar and fluent style, and excellent use of examples. Despite the title, this is not just a book for kids. Playing superhero mutated animals is as mature as playing any other superhero game. This offers enough information to do anything you want with them. The adventure material and sample characters are well written and can provoke many hours of adventure. The following contains opinionated comments on the Palladium rules and system. While my email address is available, flames are not welcome. It's all IMHO and YMMV, anyway. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles uses one version of the Palladium rules. I don't like the Palladium rules; they are similar to the AD&D rules, but worse. High attributes (16 or above) give bonuses, but low attributes don't give minuses. Skills give attributes bonuses, and are big reason why, with stats rolled on 3d6, attribute bonuses exist. The system is almost entirely random. To its credit, TMNT offers a slightly cleaner version of the rules then RIFTS. Dropping MDC, O.C.C's, and R.C.C's is great. Instead of R.C.C's for the animals, Bio-E is used. Bio-E is a point system that the player can use to build his character. It doesn't supplant the random attributes and animal selection, though. One problem is that there is only a small psionics section, and that is specifically mentioned as not being compatiable with other Palladium books, making it harder to bring other material in. Another complaint with the Palladium nature is that all the rules are placed in the book along with the background. Most of the book is concerned with the basic rules, leaving no room for background, extra races, or more detail on the adventure seeds. I have three copies of the Palladium rules I so dislike, which could have been used to add more background and material to their respective games. This is especially a problem for TMNT, as 112 pages does not give much room for rules and other material. Many people disagree with me here, though; see several GURPS reviews for the inverse of this complaint (not those by me or Bradford Walker, though.) When I bought this book, this was the first not-AD&D game I ever read. I was extremely impressed. Since then, however, I've become a huge GURPS fan, and TMNT no longer looks so good. (If I ever were to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I would play using GURPS rules.) It's still very well written and created, but it lacks significant content in great part due to the space taken up by included rules. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, Revised Edition