TMNT retro- clone

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Gringnr

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Saw this elsewhere and thought it might generate some interest.


Pre-order the print copy HERE:
 
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Beautiful. Apparently it has some refinements
 
Just picked up a copy and it's really good. It's got enough differences that I think "refinements" would be understating it though; it feels like a new edition.
 
I see the DriveThruRPG blurb indicates you can “make human allies.” Are they just sidekicks, or can you play a Casey Jones or April O’Neil-style PC?
 
As someone whos first experience with TTRPGs was Rifts, this has my interest. I am very curious if this is a Palladium Retroclone or using a different system. I'm kind of hoping it is a Palladium retroclone. Kevin Sembedia must have blown a gasket when he found out that 1. another publisher is doing this and 2. there's buck all he can do about it.
 
Is this an actual Palladium-esque retro-clone or a different system for playing Adolescent Force-Evolutionized Secret-Warrior Animals?
They may not have noticed spending all their time releasing hardcover editions of their latest books.
Then again he could very well try to take them to court.

Remember they took Trion to city because their main argument was that their fan base would have confused Trion Rifts game with their Rifts rpg.

Luckily Trion was not vindictive as they won and PB lost
 
This has been a long time coming. Not specifically this game, but the idea of someone retrocloning Palladium.

Skimming the preview, this is nailing the feel with that janky mimeographed font and art that evokes the feel of the old products.

They've renamed all the things that Siembieda® says he owns. So no "I.Q.®" or "S.D.C.®".

From my perspective, if this had happened 15 years ago, had someone who gave a shit about their product retrocloned Palladium and provided a sort of unofficial 3e system, then I would have been very interested. I hope they can reach an audience who hasn't had all their affection for Palladium beat out of them.

Let me know if they ever do a sequel clone where you play pilots of tranforming jets in a war with cybernetic aliens with parental issues.
 
Siembieda thinks he owns "I.Q."?

Yes. He claims he owns all the abbreviations in the game, particularly those used for attributes. He claims that the specific implementation of "I.Q." is his.

In the early 00s, I was talking with someone who was working on a Visual Basic character utility. He got a cease and desist nastygram because the program was making unauthorized use of things like "I.Q." and "P.E." The statement was made that the only way Palladium wouldn't sue, would be if the program required the end user to manually fill in all labels and skill progression percentages manually, mostly defeating the entire purpose of the program.

Yes, Siembieda once claimed exclusive ownership of the percentile progression of the skills, like 30% base + 5% per level.

But, as the Rift MMO thing proved, he's full of shit and even some of the stuff he claims are registered trademarks are not.
 
This has been a long time coming. Not specifically this game, but the idea of someone retrocloning Palladium.

Skimming the preview, this is nailing the feel with that janky mimeographed font and art that evokes the feel of the old products.

They've renamed all the things that Siembieda® says he owns. So no "I.Q.®" or "S.D.C.®".

From my perspective, if this had happened 15 years ago, had someone who gave a shit about their product retrocloned Palladium and provided a sort of unofficial 3e system, then I would have been very interested. I hope they can reach an audience who hasn't had all their affection for Palladium beat out of them.

Let me know if they ever do a sequel clone where you play pilots of tranforming jets in a war with cybernetic aliens with parental issues.

Having gone into it a bit more now, I'd say that it's a better system that Palladium. It's obviously based on that and has some of its idiosyncrasies (especially wonky editing and important terms not in the glossary) but it smooths out a lot of the clunkiest parts. I think it would actually be playable from the book. (Which, tbf, TMNT pretty much was if not that which came after it).

I'll do it a character for the challenge over the next few hours so people can see the system in some kind of action.
 
Interesting, but I don't usually do pre-orders of physical books until I know I'd want to own it enough to deal with the shipping nightmare* that our posts provide me with on all orders...
Which means I'll be waiting for that A Fiery Flying Roll Black Leaf character:thumbsup:.


*As an example, the Denis Kang DVD set I ordered still hasn't arrived...it's about time I notify the publishers.
 
Having gone into it a bit more now, I'd say that it's a better system that Palladium. It's obviously based on that and has some of its idiosyncrasies (especially wonky editing and important terms not in the glossary) but it smooths out a lot of the clunkiest parts. I think it would actually be playable from the book. (Which, tbf, TMNT pretty much was if not that which came after it).

I'll do it a character for the challenge over the next few hours so people can see the system in some kind of action.

Many years ago, I read an article about a newspaper which redid a special advertising section they ran. This advertising section had a sort of "garage sale" presentation to it. It was disorganized and messy. A new group was brought in to clean it up and make it more professional. They did their job and delivered a slick new look to the whole section.

The newspaper got tons of complaints. Readers and advertising space purchasers HATED the new section. Customers quit buying ad space. The company started doing some research to see what was wrong.

It seemed people liked that messy and cluttered look. It gave them the feel of bargain hunting. They felt like they were discovering treasure in those disorganized ads.

The people responsible for the layout went back to the drawing board. They redesigned the section to preserve that random "garage sale" look while being more organized. Purchasers of ad space came back, and customers were happy. It was a huge success.

I have no idea if that story is actually true or if it was just something made up to prove a point in the original place I read it. But the message is that some people like the hunt. They like to feel like they've puzzled a mystery out. They've cracked the code after wading through the chaos.

I think maybe that Palladium players might be like that. I know I used to like poring over the books and finding oddball things shoved in some random section. I liked the hunt and to tinker. But I got tired of it because it seems that the authors didn't really intend that. It was just that they were writing random shit and assembling it randomly.

I think someone can preserve that feel of the hunt with rules that are thought out and consistent, then that's the audience.
 
Many years ago, I read an article about a newspaper which redid a special advertising section they ran. This advertising section had a sort of "garage sale" presentation to it. It was disorganized and messy. A new group was brought in to clean it up and make it more professional. They did their job and delivered a slick new look to the whole section.

The newspaper got tons of complaints. Readers and advertising space purchasers HATED the new section. Customers quit buying ad space. The company started doing some research to see what was wrong.

It seemed people liked that messy and cluttered look. It gave them the feel of bargain hunting. They felt like they were discovering treasure in those disorganized ads.

The people responsible for the layout went back to the drawing board. They redesigned the section to preserve that random "garage sale" look while being more organized. Purchasers of ad space came back, and customers were happy. It was a huge success.

I have no idea if that story is actually true or if it was just something made up to prove a point in the original place I read it. But the message is that some people like the hunt. They like to feel like they've puzzled a mystery out. They've cracked the code after wading through the chaos.

I think maybe that Palladium players might be like that. I know I used to like poring over the books and finding oddball things shoved in some random section. I liked the hunt and to tinker. But I got tired of it because it seems that the authors didn't really intend that. It was just that they were writing random shit and assembling it randomly.

I think someone can preserve that feel of the hunt with rules that are thought out and consistent, then that's the audience.
Palladium is the ancestors to 3+E, then:grin:?
 
Kinda like DCC tried to recapture that "weird and mysterious" feel to strange Polyhedral dice back in the 70s/80s
 
Having just run through character gen, some initial observations:

It's somewhat more forgiving in terms of randomness than the original. (You get three "takebacks" that can be used to reroll, reverse percentages etc.) If you prefer it old school that would be easy enough to ignore.

In general, starting PCs are likely to be a bit stronger. Firstly, attributes are rolled on 4d6 not 3d6 and roll another dice if you get a 16. Secondly, all skill packages (not individual skills) give stat bonuses, not just physical.

It's fixed the "starting skills with stupidly low chances of success" problem.

The one thing that's really missing from it is a conversion chart. I can understand the reluctance there (high chance of Kev behaving like a prick if Palladium mechanics are so much as mentioned), but failing that it could do with a guide to making your own animals. Especially for those of us not from the US who don't have the same wildlife. I'd like to be able to scrap out sparrows or robins for grizzly bears in the wild chart.

Overall it's very solid though.
 
Let's hope the analogy holds when you compare for the mechanics as well...:shade:

I don't think you'll find me rushing out to play DCC or Palladium anytime soon, so I'll leave that comparison to greater men than I
 
I bought this, but I'm generally more about BoL Mutanimals. Have it open on my desktop, though-- I remember losing interest when it was initially going to be a zine game.
 
I don't think you'll find me rushing out to play DCC or Palladium anytime soon, so I'll leave that comparison to greater men than I
DCC makes the TSR-D&D system actually bearable, dare I say "fun"... at least at lower levels, which is what I've tried.
So let's hope it's just as much of an improvement on Palladium's system, is what I wanted to say:thumbsup:.
 
I hope someone here puts up a mini review as I want to buy though look at a review first.

Kevin has been living pretty much on the company past success it was a matter of time before someone did a retro clone.
 
In general, starting PCs are likely to be a bit stronger. Firstly, attributes are rolled on 4d6 not 3d6 and roll another dice if you get a 16.

One edition/printing of TMNT had it worded that if you kept rolling a 6 you kept going until you got less than a 6.. Two of my friends had that edition, and that’s how I had a bobcat with a Speed of 44.
 
I am not much of a TMNT&OS fan but anyone brave enough to take a hammer to the Palladium engine has my curiosity and my attention.

Ironically, since Palladium has been doing more or less the same thing for some 40 years, the chief audience of any Palladium “retro-clone” will be those hoping for a revision of the ruleset, rather than loyalist players of older editions.

And we can all agree that Siembieda is abysmally unadvised or plain misled regarding IP law.
 
One edition/printing of TMNT had it worded that if you kept rolling a 6 you kept going until you got less than a 6.. Two of my friends had that edition, and that’s how I had a bobcat with a Speed of 44.
I seem to recall a similar rule in my 1st printing of Rifts, but TBH a Spd of 44 is no big deal if you get the right physical skills. I remember Speed was the attribute that regularly clocked in way higher than the others.
 
One edition/printing of TMNT had it worded that if you kept rolling a 6 you kept going until you got less than a 6.. Two of my friends had that edition, and that’s how I had a bobcat with a Speed of 44.

I hauled out TMNT Unrevised to check if it had been a rule there. I couldn't find any reference to rolling again if the bonus die came up 6.

I know getting really high Spd stats was very easy. You could pick running and that alone could get you up really high in that stat. Then there were Team characters in TMNT, where if anyone got the bonus die on their attribute, then everyone got the highest bonus die anyone had rolled.

But my recollection is that early on you only got one bonus d6 roll on an attribute of 16, 17, or 18. That's definitely how it was all through the late 80s products and even in the early days of Rifts.

Somewhere along the line, probably in the late 90s, the books started having an altered version of the rule where if you rolled a 6 on the bonus die, you just kept rolling as long as it kept coming up a 6. This change is in place by Palladium Fantasy 2e. It was probably introduced in the 2e books, because I know Rifts Ultimate has the reroll on 6s stuff, as does Robotech; Shadow Chronicles. The After the Bomb standalone book almost certainly uses the reroll 6 rule considering its original release timeframe.
 
Having just run through character gen, some initial observations:

It's somewhat more forgiving in terms of randomness than the original. (You get three "takebacks" that can be used to reroll, reverse percentages etc.) If you prefer it old school that would be easy enough to ignore.

In general, starting PCs are likely to be a bit stronger. Firstly, attributes are rolled on 4d6 not 3d6 and roll another dice if you get a 16. Secondly, all skill packages (not individual skills) give stat bonuses, not just physical.

It's fixed the "starting skills with stupidly low chances of success" problem.

The one thing that's really missing from it is a conversion chart. I can understand the reluctance there (high chance of Kev behaving like a prick if Palladium mechanics are so much as mentioned), but failing that it could do with a guide to making your own animals. Especially for those of us not from the US who don't have the same wildlife. I'd like to be able to scrap out sparrows or robins for grizzly bears in the wild chart.

Overall it's very solid though.

Randomness = We always always played choose what you want. Although when we did do rolls, we often used mulligans or best out of 2 or 3 rolls.

Attributes = Nearly everyone I ever played with did 4d6 drop low die arrange to preference. Although sometimes I'd see 4d6 drop low in order.

Skill percentages = Good. I always thought it was really bad that Palladium gave you "high" percentages in the 30 percent range and then even the simplest tasks were -10 or -20 to the roll. Skill percentages in Palladium were always below 40 or above 90. There was no in-between.

We let skill percentages go above 98 rather than capping them. There was pretty much always something that would be a -35 or -50 to the roll by the rules anyway.

Is combat phased? Or do they do the modern 2e version of combat that effectively trashes the whole combat system? Or something else entirely?
 
I hauled out TMNT Unrevised to check if it had been a rule there. I couldn't find any reference to rolling again if the bonus die came up 6.

I know getting really high Spd stats was very easy. You could pick running and that alone could get you up really high in that stat. Then there were Team characters in TMNT, where if anyone got the bonus die on their attribute, then everyone got the highest bonus die anyone had rolled.

But my recollection is that early on you only got one bonus d6 roll on an attribute of 16, 17, or 18. That's definitely how it was all through the late 80s products and even in the early days of Rifts.

Somewhere along the line, probably in the late 90s, the books started having an altered version of the rule where if you rolled a 6 on the bonus die, you just kept rolling as long as it kept coming up a 6. This change is in place by Palladium Fantasy 2e. It was probably introduced in the 2e books, because I know Rifts Ultimate has the reroll on 6s stuff, as does Robotech; Shadow Chronicles. The After the Bomb standalone book almost certainly uses the reroll 6 rule considering its original release timeframe.
So what I’m hearing here is that if one of my friends has a Fourth of July party next year I must Oceans 11 myself into his locked storage room and uncover his copy of TMNT to see if my memory is failing or if his edition has the unlimited roll 6 rule?

That’d be better than hearing his dad mocking gamers even as he tries to convince me to play the latest boardgame he’s designed.
 
So what I’m hearing here is that if one of my friends has a Fourth of July party next year I must Oceans 11 myself into his locked storage room and uncover his copy of TMNT to see if my memory is failing or if his edition has the unlimited roll 6 rule?
Yes. I think this is uniquely your duty now. :hehe:

Welcome to the world of Palladium archaeology.
 
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