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Dear Kevin,

Recently you asked about interest in a new hardback printing of Heroes Unlimited because of it's anniversary this year.
While I am a huge fan of the game, I would much rather see TMNT and it's source books collected in one hard cover volume.
I don't even care if it's updated or re-edited.
You could even donate some of the proceeds to Erick's family.

I think it would be well by the RPG community as a tribute to a great man.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Paul Schaefer

Palladium no longer owns the rights to publish anything having to do with the ninja turtles. To do a TMNT hardcover, they would basically have to take those books and edit out any reference to the ninja turtles and their likenesses. I did hear about someone working to try to do an updated version of those sourcebooks with the licensed material taken out, but who knows when and if that might actually see publication.

Would be cool....if only they could legally do it. Unfortunately they don't have permission anymore.

The only way theoretically to do it would be to edit out all references to the ninja turtles and publish the material as a new volume without any mention of them. Not sure if even that would be strictly legal.

That's what I'm saying. Do it legally.
Do it for Erick.

I have heard that someone may be working on something, but it is really questionable whether it will see print. I would not count on it, given all the other books that have not been done yet and are supposedly in the works.

It would be cool if Palladium could get the rights to do a TMNT game again.
The property is still around. Comics, toys, TV show, clothes and a new movie coming out.
However, now that Nickelodeon owns the TMNT, I'm guessing that getting a license to make the RPG would be cost prohibitive.

Without the license they can't do anything with it. There is a reason they didn't reacquire the license and TMNT 2nd ed fell through in turn giving us an actual AtB RPG when it was only a TMNT splat book previously.

They have better things that need money thrown at it that will get them a better return.

If there was some way for them to get the rights to the IP back, I would totally buy this.

tundro wrote:If there was some way for them to get the rights to the IP back, I would totally buy this.

It would cost them way too much to do so. When they paid for the rights before, it was when the ninja turtles were pretty much unknown. Now they are a very hot commodity.

There is a reason we ended up with AtB The RPG and not TMNT 2nd ed. The Licensing fee was out of their reach. They will never sell enough copies to justify the expenditure.

If you want a commemorative book how about a 2nd edition N&SS hardcover?

It's not as if there's another TMNT-inspired RPG in the works. Instead of fishing for a lump sum for the fee do you think they might take a percentage of sales instead? That deals with the whole sales number dilemma right?

I think if they would have done so, we'd have gotten the 2nd ed RPG that had been in the works.

With the current TMNT movie in the works by Michael Bay? I am sure the fees would be a bit high.

Are any companies even going to want to make an RPG based on that movie? Unless WoTC or GURPS is shopping for it, they don't really stand to lose anything by giving Palladium the license and taking 5-10% of profits or something, do they?

Tor wrote:Are any companies even going to want to make an RPG based on that movie? Unless WoTC or GURPS is shopping for it, they don't really stand to lose anything by giving Palladium the license and taking 5-10% of profits or something, do they?

Doesn't matter if anyone is looking to do a RPG based on the movie. It is whether or not someone is looking to do a RPG on the "license/characters".

"giving Palladium the license" - no one just "gives" licenses away. The fact that someone [Michael Bay and the studios] have shown interest in making a movie based on the Turtles, automatically ups that particular licenses value. Not to mention, because the movie would help drive sales of the RPG, Michael Bay/Studios are going to want a cut out of anything gained [unless written otherwise into any contract between TMNT and the Michael Bay people.

I am not saying that I dont want to see an RPG based on the Turtles but, well we already have the TMNT RPG. Someone suggested stripping out anything TMNT related and printing that - well we have that already too with After the Bomb 2nd ed.

NMI wrote:

Tor wrote:Are any companies even going to want to make an RPG based on that movie? Unless WoTC or GURPS is shopping for it, they don't really stand to lose anything by giving Palladium the license and taking 5-10% of profits or something, do they?

Doesn't matter if anyone is looking to do a RPG based on the movie. It is whether or not someone is looking to do a RPG on the "license/characters".

"giving Palladium the license" - no one just "gives" licenses away. The fact that someone [Michael Bay and the studios] have shown interest in making a movie based on the Turtles, automatically ups that particular licenses value. Not to mention, because the movie would help drive sales of the RPG, Michael Bay/Studios are going to want a cut out of anything gained [unless written otherwise into any contract between TMNT and the Michael Bay people.

I am not saying that I dont want to see an RPG based on the Turtles but, well we already have the TMNT RPG. Someone suggested stripping out anything TMNT related and printing that - well we have that already too with After the Bomb 2nd ed.

Bang on NMI.

Licensing fee's aside, if you think about it, it wouldn't be that difficult to strip out references to TMNT (like NMI said, that's what they did with ATB2). As far as releasing the supplemental material under the ATB2 license..There isn't that much turtles reference in the main source books (other than TDTMNT) that would need weeding out. The adventure guides are rife with turtles though, so they may take some editing.

As far as the movie inspiring people to play the RPG.. I don't think that's going to happen. The movie isn't close to being released yet and it has already garnered a ton (in my estimation) of negative press from Fans. From what I read the Michael Bay TMNT movie will be so craptastic that the license holders may Pay palladium to take the rights off their hands.

As for the current TMNT cartoon, while well animated and written/acted, (gotta love the distinct personalities for the 4 turtles) it is geared more toward preteens/tweens. While I think that's a good age set to start kids out RP'ing, kids don't have any money and my impression is unless the game is created in APP form, no one under 30 is going to buy it. (no I don't have much faith in the younger generations, what gave me away?)

While I would also be quick to jump on the bandwagon to buy a collected, hardcover, anniversary edition of TMNT; i don't think the requirements will ever be met for such a thing to happen.

Would be nice to get a source book about something at any rate.

The current TMNT cartoon is very enjoyable for adults, in fact I'd say it's the more mature and serious of all the TV series so far. In general pretty much any fictional universe of extreme fantasticness will not get live TV series, so it's unavoidable that there's a western bias to associate animated mediums with kids. Japan suffers less from that though, and we're benefitting a lot from importing their mature media and learning from it, and it'd be nice if more existing series besides Robotech became part of the Megaverse.

How about an Asura Cryin' RPG, for example?

I don't think it would be feasible even if PB reacquired the license just due to the massive changes that the TMNT line has undergone to make it more "kid friendly". The original TMNT wasn't what you see today, sure it was a comic book, but had some slightly more mature themes to it.

NMI wrote: Someone suggested stripping out anything TMNT related and printing that - well we have that already too with After the Bomb 2nd ed.

ATB2 does not include stuff related to time travel and such that were in some of the sourcebooks.

Stone Gargoyle wrote:

NMI wrote: Someone suggested stripping out anything TMNT related and printing that - well we have that already too with After the Bomb 2nd ed.

ATB2 does not include stuff related to time travel and such that were in some of the sourcebooks.

Most of the time travel stuff though is, as I understand it, based off of the Time Lords in the comics...which makes it off limits.

Stone Gargoyle wrote:

NMI wrote: Someone suggested stripping out anything TMNT related and printing that - well we have that already too with After the Bomb 2nd ed.

ATB2 does not include stuff related to time travel and such that were in some of the sourcebooks.

and it doesnt talk about the yucatan, australia, etc...

I was obviously referring to the TMNT Corebook and AtB when comparing to AtB2.

As far as the mainbook for TMNT is concerned, AtB2 solves that issue. AtB2 is what was originally going to be TMNT 2.

eliakon wrote:

Stone Gargoyle wrote:

NMI wrote: Someone suggested stripping out anything TMNT related and printing that - well we have that already too with After the Bomb 2nd ed.

ATB2 does not include stuff related to time travel and such that were in some of the sourcebooks.

Most of the time travel stuff though is, as I understand it, based off of the Time Lords in the comics...which makes it off limits.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner! - Purebred Chicken.

Until we get second editions of the other AtB sourcebooks, Mutants in Avalon still contains a reference to the Time Lord magic in Transdimensional, so it's part of it.

It's not as if that's the only way to go back in time anyway. You can always go into the Void of the Astral Plane and wish for it.

Tor wrote:Until we get second editions of the other AtB sourcebooks, Mutants in Avalon still contains a reference to the Time Lord magic in Transdimensional, so it's part of it.

It's not as if that's the only way to go back in time anyway. You can always go into the Void of the Astral Plane and wish for it.

"Time travel appears to be possible, although it seems the people involved are shunted to parallel worlds rather than Earth's actual past, so their meddling never seems to have an effect on their own timeline."
If I want to go to the actual past, in canon, I need to either use TDTMNT, or the Time Portals in the Balagor Wasteland.