Can I Play With Madness? TMNT, and the Biggest Fumble in TTRPG Sanity Mechanics

I recently took part in an interesting conversation on Reddit about ableism in TTRPG design. Specifically, the thread was about how to implement a “sanity mechanic” a-la Call of Cthulhu without trivialising or demonising the real life struggles of those with mental health problems. My personal take is that largely this comes down to language: A condition that prevents a player from moving and attacking can be flavoured as a phobia, paralysis, or catatonia. It could also, less charitably, be flavoured as a “crippling”, or being rendered “feeble” or some other ableist slur. The language we settle on as game designers goes a long way towards communicating our ideals and interests. 

Sometimes, however, you end up with an idea that is just fundamentally busted to its core. An idea that, rather than simulate some aspect of reality, perfectly communicates the absolute dog-brained takes of its development team. Sometimes, you end up with something that is so ableist it also manages to be homophobic and transphobic at the same time. 

Today, we’ll be looking at the time the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TTRPG implemented the messiest, ugliest sanity mechanic I have ever come across. 

A Primer on the TMNT RPG 

The year is 1985. Ronald Reagan is doing his damnedest to ignore the ongoing AIDs crisis. David Lee Roth has left Van Halen to start his own solo career in a move largely met with bemused shrugs. And a plucky little publishing house called Palladium Books has just released a TTRPG based on the indie parody comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

It’s worth noting that this is a very different property from the TMNT you might be used to. This is two years before the release of the animated TV show that would cement the turtle’s legendary love of pizza, and a full five years before the release of the live-action movies that would go on to traumatise a young LP Mills.¹ 

No no, this is a media property for grown ups. To quote an ad from a 1994 issue of Dragon Magazine, “Palladium’s TMNT game ain’t kid stuff and it ain’t just turtles! It never has been!” This is a game with grit, danger, and cussing. This is a game where anything can happen! 

And that’s where it went wrong. 

How They Messed Up 

TW: Homophobia, transphobia, ableism. 

Palladium’s TMNT RPG was an exercise in prime-time mid-80s edge, and as such it had several mechanics befitting an edgy game. There is a blood loss mechanic, a coma (and subsequent coma recovery) mechanic, and an RNG table to help you determine how traumatic your upbringing was. 

And then, there’s the insanity table. 

Supposedly “written by a psychologist”, this series of d100 tables were to be triggered whenever a player character witnessed, engaged in, or was victim of a “shocking grotesque atrocity”. The mechanic differentiated between Neurosis, Psychosis, Phobias, and Affective Disorders, with a 1d100 table for each of these facets of mental illness. Results varied from the innocuous (fear of the dark, sensory aversions) and the ill-informed (manic depression, hysterical blindness) to the downright weird (a hatred of musicians, a desire to become a psychiatrist). But none of these hold a candle to the most abhorrent table of all.

You see, nestled between the results for compulsive lying and acrophobia, is a table of sexual deviancy. 

Boy howdy where to start. 

Okay, so let’s start with the obvious. Homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973. Homosexuality is - and I cannot stress this enough - not a mental illness. And yet there it is, on the same page as schizophrenia and mindless homicidal rage. To make matters worse, the game’s mechanics for “curing” mental illness explicitly state that homosexuality, as an in-game “neurosis”, can be cured through a minimum of three months of therapy. In one fell swoop, this game not only states that homosexuality is a form of madness, but that it can be cured with the deeply abusive and totally debunked practice of conversion therapy. 

Great stuff. 

There's also something to be said for the fact that, if your character is already gay, they will become straight as a result of their trauma. The implication here is incredibly bizarre - that trauma, no matter the origin or recipient, has a chance at flipping the sexuality switch in a person's brain from one binary to the other. What about bisexuals, TMNT?! Do they stay bisexual, or do they just explode into LGTBQ+ pride buttons?!

Similarly, the game insists that transvestism is also a mental illness. Now of course, this game began life in the early 80s, long before the modern conversations around gender identity began. However, we can all agree that this is a weird thing to add to a game, yes? Even if you do believe that transvestism is a pathology², do you need to make that explicit in your game?³ 

For our next point, I would like you to join me in a little thought exercise. The year is 1985. You and your buddies have gotten together to play a game about funny reptile martial artists. You have ordered a pizza and are drinking Coca Cola (original, not the dreaded interloper of New Coke). 

Your character - a funky kung fu rabbit - is attacked by the forces of the Foot Clan, and is violently injured. As the trauma of this event washes over your PC, their life is irreparably changed. Your funky kung fu rabbit - the character you spent an inordinate amount of time developing - is now a pedophile. 

Cowabunga. 

Conclusion

It is worth noting that this mechanic is ported wholesale from earlier Palladium Books publications. However, it all begs the question of why? Did this game about ninja animals need a mechanic that could turn them into necrophiles? Did it need a mechanic that turned them into a voyeur? I really must remind you - while this game “ain’t kid stuff”, it is still predominately about these guys: 

Game mechanics are simulatory elements. Their purpose is to approximate something within the game world. HP simulates a character's approximate physical wellbeing. Stamina, AP, and spell slots represent a character's energy levels, and the portions of that energy that can be devoted to specific actions. We add mechanics to games in order to facilitate more complex and interesting interactions, and to improve the overall gameplay.

I struggle to think of a single gameplay scenario that would be improved by the risk of simulated necrophilia.

This particular relic is, thankfully, not an easy one to find these days. After the parents of some younger players complained to the publisher, Palladium took to covering the page with blank stickers before omitting it entirely from later printings. The PDF edition that circles online forums does not feature the insanity table at all, though there are occasional oblique references to an insanity mechanic. The game’s developers and editors have been very vocal about having seen the error of their ways. Blissfully, this mechanic has been allowed to disappear into the annals of history. 

But good grief, what a clanger. 

---

¹ I don’t like the fact that the turtles had human teeth.

² It isn’t.

³ You don’t.