TMNT and Other Strangeness

Every table top gamer has an origin story. Like comic book villains. Some catalyst pulled us into this strange world of structured, collective imagination. It sets its hook in you and you are forever haunted by a string of cathartic moments.

It is like baseball in that way. There is a romance to it. An ill defined feeling that carries weight well beyond what you expect from the outside.

My personal origin, my romantic beginnings began with TMNT and Other Strangeness. Not that hoary old goat, D&D, which seems to be the common narrative I have heard from friends. No, this beautifully illustrated, poorly laid out, short tome of creativity.

This was my first game purely by happenstance. When I talk about AD&D 2E and Basic D&D you will understand why. For now, know that this was my very first foray into table top gaming, all thanks to my friend Kevin who happened to own it and pull it out one day when we were hanging out.

I can safely say that I was hooked from jump, but not because of anything magical that happened when we eventually got to playing… cause we didn’t play the damn thing the first time he pulled it out.

No, we spent hours creating characters.

Which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has picked this game up. The character creation exercise is compelling as hell. It has a delightful hook that is hard to deny.

What child born in 70’s America doesn’t love ninjas? Only they are animal martial artists? AND YOU CAN CUSTOMIZE THEM?!?!?

Seriously, it saddens me that this game doesn’t have the same cultural weight as D&D.

For those unaware, the character creation I speak of is deceptively simple, but draws deep from your imagination. You have a random roll to determine your origin. Things like, you were born in a cage in a lab and all the horror that brings to mind.

You then pick through dozens of animals to mutate, each with their own starting point and cost for characteristics, meaning you have to read every entry. The mixing and matching is a delightful experience, and I can safely say that Kevin and I likely made hundreds of characters for TMNT over the years.

This may be common with folks, I don’t know, but my first experience with gaming involved no role playing whatsoever. It did have all the fun of a shared imaginative moment fueled by wonderful art and clever character creation techniques.

We played our first game not long afterwards, and TMNT, along with Heroes Unlimited and Ninja and Superspies, became a core part of our gaming rotation.

We built custom, Mad Max style cars with Roadhogs. We took to the skies with flying ships with Mutants Down Under. We made horrifying snake people with Mutants of the Yucatan. We warred with humans in power armor in After the Bomb.

And then, one day, we stopped playing it.

I don’t know why, but it fell out of the rotation of our weekly game night. But its influence on me never fell out of my head. It sits up there with Robert E. Howard and Grant Morrison urging me to be terse but weird.

Every game I have designed, I have tried to recapture what it felt like to make your mutant koala. Every bit of setting or fiction I write I try to avoid being verbose, much like those slim tones.

The game had an impact, both because it was first, but also because of what it was.

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