Monday Musings #140 🤬
Prepping on a Half Shell
Good Monday, Gamer!
“COWABONGA” — TMNT
There’s another wave of nostalgia gaming building.
I picked up the new hardcover editions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness and Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Apparently, there was a Kickstarter for it that I missed! The old softcovers lived on my shelf in the late ’80s. I remember having a great time with them. I don’t remember if we played rules-as-written or drifted into whatever worked. So that’s the question now. If I run it again, is it fun RAW? Or was the magic mostly youth, pizza, and a tolerance for Palladium crunch?
Imma find out!
I’m also prepping a four-session run of Lifted: Wild Talents. By request—more or less—I’ll be running Wild Talents in the Lifted setting. The hard part for me is creating the pregens and the situation—and without player input, that’s some rough GM lonely sad. For con games though, that’s where we GMs often find ourselves. having t create both the scenario and pregens for a table of folks we don’t often know.
So I’m leaning on archetypes and shared touchstones. The X-Men, specifically X-Force (comic books), IMHE, most folks have a sense of mutants and being the underdogs. That leaves me with the premise/situation... It’s gotta hit hard, and immediate, snatching up a player’s interest. As I write this, I got nothing, 🤷🏾♂️ but I am procrastinating by updating mad-dice.com to use Wild Talent dice!!
On the Table
I brought a tablet to the table this week. Most of my prep lives in Obsidian—markdown, linked notes, layered references. I’m done printing it all out. I used an 8” Lenovo tablet. Small enough to manage, easy to pass across the table when someone needs to read a move or reference. It came in pretty handy for a new move I’m testing for missed player sessions:
What Were You Up To?
When you miss a session and tell us what your Hunter was doing off-screen, say what you were up to and roll +the most relevant stat.
On a 10+, choose 2.
On a 7–9, choose 1.
On a 6-, you come back changed, and the Keeper makes a hard move. Mark experience.
Choose:
You come back with leverage.
You secured an ally.
Trouble doesn’t follow you.
It gives absence weight without turning it into punishment. And it generates hooks.
ICYMI
Sarah Doom released The Maiden and the Rake
Roll for Origin returns soon—Mutants & Masterminds coverage on deck. Catch up with Ep 06: Wild Talents & Godlike
10K Swords vs Heaven update: https://makapatag.itch.io/10000-swords-against-heaven/devlog/1379825/142-update-more-clarifications
Play Fearless: Greatest Crits — a curated RPG zine of table-tested GM insight shaped by actual play and lessons learned the hard way. Small print run. PDF available. 50% funded and five days left. Help this old underdog pull off an upset!!
