Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Encyclopedia
Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a supplement for the role-playing game
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
which covered setting and rules information for both time travel
and transdimensional
travel.
that represents time as a "flowing tube" that spirals along in twists and the twists are themselves wrapped into coils. This model can be imagined by thinking of a telephone cord wrapped around a cylinder
. Time travel is possible by leaving your current point in the tube and travelling either to a neighboring twist or any coil. Coils allowed time travellers to travel into the past by great leaps, to predefined years. The farther in the past the coil, the greater the gap. The first few coils closest to present day are separated by thousands of years, coils farther in the past were separated by millions and then billions of years. Roughly detailed in a few paragraphs, the coils go as far back as the beginning of the universe.
Twists vary in size depending on which coil was considered its home coil. In the present-day coil (based on 1988, when the game was published) twists were 125 years apart. So from 1988, one could travel into the past year of 1863 or to the future year of 2113. From the new twist the time traveller could potentially travel another 125 years, either to return home or move farther away from their home time, to 1738 or 2238 respectively. There are rough details for past times with more detailed future times for the next millennia. These consist mostly of a variety of apocalyptic
settings, ranging from Palladium's After the Bomb to robot massacres inspired by stories of artificial intelligence
's run amok, and a scant few more utopia
n settings.
There were no guidelines for what would happen if one travelled so far down successive twists as to cross into another coil; however, twists were so comparatively small that it is mechanically discouraged to travel by such means. It is easier to simply jump directly to the desired coil.
However, time stream changes were intended to be played with loosely. The sample adventure includes an instance where a player, while reading a history book, re-reads a section of the book and notices that there has been a change.
s and Pleistocene
mammals. New size levels were added to allow for some of the massive sizes of dinosaurs. A new method of mutation
was introduced as well, allowing for the addition of BIO-E ("Biological Energy") for traveling into the future, making evolutionary
mutation towards sentience something of a temporal mandate. This meant dinosaurs and other ancient creatures taken into present day would automatically mutate given enough time.
This book also introduces the idea of mutant humans and features advanced psionic
rules. Humans travelling into the future from an earlier era might also mutate. Humans could also remove hands, legs, or other features (those animal mutants usually must add to become more human-like) and potentially become smooth-skinned creatures with vestigial legs and arms that some evolutionary science fiction mused. By sacrificing default human attributes, humans could attain more powerful psionic phenomena, ranging from ectoplasmic
arms and legs (to make up for a lack of them) and more powerful mental abilities not previously covered or available in the core rulebook
.
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is a role-playing game based on the comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The core rulebook was first published by Palladium Books in September 1985 – a couple years before the Turtles franchise achieved mass popularity – and featured...
which covered setting and rules information for both time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
and transdimensional
Parallel universe (fiction)
A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
travel.
Principles
The time travel system lays out a system of temporal physicsTime in physics
Time in physics is defined by its measurement: time is what a clock reads. It is a scalar quantity and, like length, mass, and charge, is usually described as a fundamental quantity. Time can be combined mathematically with other physical quantities to derive other concepts such as motion, kinetic...
that represents time as a "flowing tube" that spirals along in twists and the twists are themselves wrapped into coils. This model can be imagined by thinking of a telephone cord wrapped around a cylinder
Cylinder (geometry)
A cylinder is one of the most basic curvilinear geometric shapes, the surface formed by the points at a fixed distance from a given line segment, the axis of the cylinder. The solid enclosed by this surface and by two planes perpendicular to the axis is also called a cylinder...
. Time travel is possible by leaving your current point in the tube and travelling either to a neighboring twist or any coil. Coils allowed time travellers to travel into the past by great leaps, to predefined years. The farther in the past the coil, the greater the gap. The first few coils closest to present day are separated by thousands of years, coils farther in the past were separated by millions and then billions of years. Roughly detailed in a few paragraphs, the coils go as far back as the beginning of the universe.
Twists vary in size depending on which coil was considered its home coil. In the present-day coil (based on 1988, when the game was published) twists were 125 years apart. So from 1988, one could travel into the past year of 1863 or to the future year of 2113. From the new twist the time traveller could potentially travel another 125 years, either to return home or move farther away from their home time, to 1738 or 2238 respectively. There are rough details for past times with more detailed future times for the next millennia. These consist mostly of a variety of apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
settings, ranging from Palladium's After the Bomb to robot massacres inspired by stories of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
's run amok, and a scant few more utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n settings.
There were no guidelines for what would happen if one travelled so far down successive twists as to cross into another coil; however, twists were so comparatively small that it is mechanically discouraged to travel by such means. It is easier to simply jump directly to the desired coil.
Time stream alterations
Changes to the past (or future) are dealt with using alternate branching time streams (i.e., immutable timelines). Changes to a given timeline would automatically put travellers into an alternate branch with the changes in place. If the travellers somehow change the past and then travel back to the future to reach their home time, their home time will consequently appear different to them, according the changes that were put in place.However, time stream changes were intended to be played with loosely. The sample adventure includes an instance where a player, while reading a history book, re-reads a section of the book and notices that there has been a change.
Mutant animals
This book introduced extinct animal species, including a wide variety of dinosaurDinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
s and Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
mammals. New size levels were added to allow for some of the massive sizes of dinosaurs. A new method of mutation
Mutant (fictional)
The concept of a mutant is a common trope in comic books and science fiction. The new phenotypes that appear in fictional mutations generally go far beyond what is typically seen in biological mutants, and often result in the mutated life form exhibiting superhuman abilities or qualities.-Marvel...
was introduced as well, allowing for the addition of BIO-E ("Biological Energy") for traveling into the future, making evolutionary
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
mutation towards sentience something of a temporal mandate. This meant dinosaurs and other ancient creatures taken into present day would automatically mutate given enough time.
This book also introduces the idea of mutant humans and features advanced psionic
Psionics (role-playing games)
Psionics, in role-playing games, is a broad category of fantastic abilities originating from the mind, similar to the paranormal psionic abilities that some people claim in reality.- Common features :...
rules. Humans travelling into the future from an earlier era might also mutate. Humans could also remove hands, legs, or other features (those animal mutants usually must add to become more human-like) and potentially become smooth-skinned creatures with vestigial legs and arms that some evolutionary science fiction mused. By sacrificing default human attributes, humans could attain more powerful psionic phenomena, ranging from ectoplasmic
Ectoplasm (paranormal)
Ectoplasm is a term coined by Charles Richet to denote a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums...
arms and legs (to make up for a lack of them) and more powerful mental abilities not previously covered or available in the core rulebook
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is a role-playing game based on the comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The core rulebook was first published by Palladium Books in September 1985 – a couple years before the Turtles franchise achieved mass popularity – and featured...
.