Turtle Tuesday and Other Strangeness

TURTLE TUESDAY
As a child of the 80s, I was a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This statement wouldn’t be a terribly unique one if not for how much of an understatement it was. I watched all the cartoon episodes, I had all the action figures [1] including the turtle van, I played all the video games and the board game. I even had Ninja Turtle stuffed animals. I noted the irony of a furry Michelangelo, but that didn’t stop it from being AWESOME.

But for every “Turtle Power!” I chanted then, part of me shakes my head now. That’s not to say the cartoon isn’t still a lot of fun in its own goofy, toy-advertising way [2] — nostalgia makes us all fools with rosy spectacles — but it’s not why I’m still a big Turtles fan. At least not all of why.

That’s because before there was a cartoon, there was a comic. It was a darker, more serious tale, featuring four ninja turtles yes, but willing to deviate from pure mutagen antics the concept begot for tackling, dare I say, human issues. For comparison, the first movie is a rough retelling of one of the beginning comic arcs.

I was just getting to be a teenager myself, able to crave more than pizza monsters, when my brother introduced me to a four volume set of the original Eastman and Laird stories [3] Already addicted to everything Turtles as it was, I was captivated by it. I read them thoroughly, multiple times even, before I started collecting individual issues on my own.

And then there was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. It was a Palladium game, first published years before the cartoon/action figure boom, and as such was steeped in the world of Eastman and Laird, not Playmates Toys.

It was notable for several things. Not only was it a licensed game, it was a licensed game with the involvement of the creators. Sure, panels from the comics were littered throughout, but there was plenty of new art, too. It made it feel more special, more real. It was like an actual extension of the story, and not just a cash-in license.

The rules themselves are cluttered, broken, and incomprehensible in the wonderful way all Palladium games are. It’s playable, sure, but it’s way more complicated and inconsistent than it needs to be. It’s harder to forgive newer releases — cough Robotech: Shadow Chronicles cough — but back in the 80s, most RPGs were like this. And where the randomized character creation could really prove frustrating for a game like, say, Heroes Unlimited, it really felt right for TMNT. Mutation was happenstance, and discovering the crazy animal you were going to be was part of the fun. The game’s BIO-E point system did allow you some customization, letting you place your mutant between "sentient animal" and "full-blown anthropomorph." It gave control to an otherwise chaotic character creation, and it was great.

But then came the cartoon. To gamers, the Turtles were no longer this cool indie comic but a silly kids show. Sales of the RPG plummeted and Palladium let the license lapse. It was survived by the mutant animal spinoff After the Bomb for some years, but support for it would wane too, as is the way with many RPGs. I can’t say I was the biggest fan of the Palladium rules, but I was of this game. But to blame the cartoon for much is silly and unfair. After all, without the cartoon, I may never have been a fan of this RPG, or of turtles wielding ninja weapons at all.

Cowabunga.


[1] Well, not all. Do you remember how many there were? Do I even need to say Space Cadet Raph? Really, do I?
[2] Perhaps you'd prefer Crazy Clownin' Mike?
[3] Ironically, the comic actually gives Crazy Clownin' Mike precedent.

Thinking Inside the Box

The role-playing game has changed a lot in the past decades. It’s had its waxes and wanes in popularity, its trends in game design, and more than a few really funny looking dice along the way. But if you were to look at the industry from the outside — as someone who barely knew what an RPG was, much less concerned with the evolution of rules and design — one of the single most obvious changes is the abandonment of the boxed game.

That’s not to say there aren’t boxed games anymore. Wizards of the Coast’s new homage to the iconic Red Box can attest to that much. Nor am I saying that heavy hardbound tomes weren’t around ages ago, what with Gary Gygax’s approach for the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. But at the same time, game makers’ expectation of who their gamers are has drastically changed. A game's largest body of fans are the same grognards that have been buying RPGs for decades, a group that has little need for yet another set of dice.

It’s an expectation that makes sense. It doesn’t hurt that RPG fans host a disproportionately large gathering of bibliophiles that appreciate the beauty in a well-designed book. Abandoning the box allows a greater attention to creating such things and trims the fat out of a gaming collection.

Yet there just is something downright magical about a box. It’s more than a vessel for carrying contents; it’s a promise of the unknown. Beneath its cardboard exterior lay all the materials you need to embark on countless adventures — and probably a few things you don’t. But even if the back features a itemized list of every last punch-out token that hides inside, there’s still some glorious sense of surprise when you lift the lid off for the first time.

Boxes are inclusive. Modern rulebooks tend to be the domain of the Game Master, or a requisite purchase for all Players to invest in and make use of to create the awesomest hero. But when you whip out the box, there’s everything everyone needs. Hand over the introductory rulebook, pass out the character sheets! It makes trying a new RPG as easy as popping open Monopoly.

I think that feeling of open invitation is a grand factor in why board games are doing so well now. Even if there’s a high price sticker stuck to the front, there’s comfort in the idea you can just buy just that one thing and be ready to roll right out of the box. It doesn’t make the assumption you’ve played an RPG before, or that you have fellow geeks to explain it to you. It’s a gate all by itself, with a view of the world beyond and a set of keys hung neatly to its side, waiting for you and whoever else you want to bring along to unlock it.

And I think that’s a mistake much of the RPG industry is making. Despite being an entirely social activity, RPGs have become more and more a private place. The gate has been replaced with iron doors and the activities beyond like a clandestine secret society, their charter an endless collection of rules, addendum, and errata. There are players out there who don’t even know they love RPGs — the expansive realm of freeform message board role-plays are proof enough of that. I think our little niche of the world could be a slightly bigger one if we didn’t always wave around 10 pound books and instead proffered a little promise, sealed away in a box.