TMNT Profiles

These profiles, lifted directly from Palladium's role-playing game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other Strangeness, 1985 edition, are printed without permission of the publisher, Palladium Books, or the author, Erick Wujick. I've removed the stats from the profiles so all you get are personality profiles. Since you should be buying the book for its role-playing potential anyway, I figure this falls under fair use. Palladium and its lawyers are welcome to e-mail me if this is not the case.
I really like these profiles: though you can tell they weren't written by Shakespeare, they're about the best way for people to get a quick handle on the characters I've seen. I've put my own notes in italics at the bottom of each profile, so you can see what I as a writer see in each of them...
They were written back in '85, so they're kind of 'dated', and they still sound like RPG profiles, but you'll get the idea.
Presented in the order they appear in the book, with a few screamingly bad grammatical errors corrected:

Raphael

There's a hole where the wind blows through
And some curtains hung
But I can't hide a thing from you
You know where I come from...
 --John Hiatt, Something Wild

Disposition: Impulsive, hot tempered, quick to argue, but also quick to defend his friends.
Raphael has some kind of minor insanity that makes him the "crazy" man of the group. He has problems being controlled and cannot even control himself. When agitated, he has a 75% chance of going into a "berserker" rage. It takes several melee rounds for him to recover himself. He's fine most of the time, but when he gets into a berserker rage, watch out! This makes him an awesome fighter, but also a little hard to live with.
He doesn't like this side of himself, but he can't yet control it. It is like a demon inside him, barely kept in check. A large part of why Raphael hasn't yet killed himself, or any of the other turtles is due to his friendship with Michaelangelo. Michaelangelo is also Raphael's main sparring partner. It is Michaelangelo's great love of life and fun that acts as a balance for Raphael's anger and depressions.
Raphael wants to make himself a better warrior. He practices a lot, but he can't seem to keep himself from doing dangerous or foolhardy stunts...as a fighter, Raphael is neither the most skillful (Leonardo is better) or the most talented (Michaelangelo is phenomenal), but he is the most deadly Ninja Turtles because of his raw energy.
Phish's notes: On a purely intellectual basis, Raph would seem to have nothing going for him, psychotic, not the best of the fighters, not the smartest, not the easiest to love...but of course, that's part of his charm (charm being a relative term in this case...) Use whatever theory you'd like, but Raph's got the 'sex appeal', and a quick look through the fanfics on the ring proves it. Of course, the classic coming-of-age story, which TMNT is in its purest form, is all about the struggle for control, control over your own destiny, control over your own psyche and passions...and Raph is the struggle for control in its purest form. Least that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Leonardo

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech in Detroit, June 23, 1963

Disposition: Super straight, clever, fast thinker, excellent strategist and tactician, impatient and a perfectionist.
In the absence of Splinter, Leonardo is the leader of the turtles. He is a "take-charge" kind of guy who can size up a situation quickly. He excels at making plans that are complicated yet cleanly constructed, and almost always work.
He is also a perfectionist: a trait that gets him into trouble. Leonardo performs his tasks with an efficiency that any man or turtle would be proud of, but there are times that he sees it as a source of shame and a "loss of face." He is always trying to live up to the ideal of his mentor, Splinter. Unfortunately, he has never really absorbed one of Splinter's most important teachings: that it is honorable to strive for perfection, but all right to occasionally fail to reach that goal.
Leonardo also feels this loss of face when the other turtles do something wrong. He feels responsible for them and their actions. Of course, because of this, he goes nuts over Raphael's rages and craziness.
Leonardo is perhaps the smartest of the turtles, at least in all-around intelligence. He is a voracious reader, and has a very good memory.
Phish's notes: Leo has the hardest 'job' of all the turtles, really, and gets the least amount of respect...'cause sure it isn't easy being the best student and the leader, but it's still the job everybody wants. He's also a hard turtle to write, 'cause if you're not careful you make him either incredibly unsympathetic or boring as heck, sometimes both. The thing I've found that helps is to keep in mind that although Leo can be hard on his brothers, he's harder on himself than anyone else.

Donatello

We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure...understanding is joyous.
 Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain

Disposition: Agreeable, quiet and self contained.
Donatello is more interested in working out a troublesome computer program than fighting ninjas or robot mousers or whatever. Of all the turtles, he rebels the most strongly against killing. In a strange way, he is a pacifist ninja, and while his skills with the staff are highly honed, he would prefer not to use them with a living opponent.
Donatello gets off on gadgets and technology and many times he will sneak out at night and, using his ninja skills of silence and stealth, rummage through the dumpsters of electronics firms, gathering cast-off parts with which to construct his various devices. Although he lacks formal training, he is a natural inventive genius.
Donatello cares a great deal for his brother turtles, but is the least clannish of them. He lives most of the time within his own head, thinking and dreaming of new things to build.
Phish's notes: Don's fun. He gets into those snappy little arguments with Raphael and just intellectually lacerates him in the comics, and I just sit there goin' "Go, Don, Go!" The big question with Don (at least for writing him) is how much his brilliance intrudes into his conversation, his personal life, his everyday existence. I think at least in some ways it functions as a block between himself and his brothers, Mike and Raph especially...I think sometimes Don may see them as-- friendly aliens, almost, people who he loves dearly but who he's never sure really understand him.

Michaelangelo

Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy...
The Eagles, Take it Easy

Disposition: Fun-loving, carefree and friendly.
Michaelangelo is the fun-loving turtle. He lives to enjoy life. He tends to hang out with Raphael rather than Leonardo or Donatello because they're too serious for him. He has a gentle, though mischievous nature and is not above playing practical jokes. He reads comic books and science fiction and likes to sneak into movie theaters when they are playing double bills of "E.T." and "Robin Hood." Michaelangelo would also be the Ninja Turtle most likely to play in a role-playing game. In short, he enjoys practicing his ninja skills, but also enjoys just fooling around.
Michaelangelo also likes to cook and it is he who prepares most of the turtles' meals. In many ways he is a hedonist and a sensualist, appreciative of pleasures of the flesh.
Michaelangelo also likes rough and tumble stuff and gets into a good fight almost as much as Raphael. He enjoys sparring, and he and Raphael do a lot of this. He doesn't work as hard at the art of ninjitsu as any of the others (except perhaps Donatello), but his naturally high physical prowess more than makes up for his lack of discipline.
Phish's notes: Mike's always been my favorite, 'cause I always figured he's the one you'd want to hang around with in real life. Sweet-natured, easygoing, and he can cook, too... However, I like Mike a little too much, and have trouble making him three-dimensional at times. I also hate throwing the nasty stuff at him that I hurl with such joy at every other character. I do hope Mike's incredible empathy for his brothers makes up for that to a certain degree: despite what Donatello suspects, Mike knows his brothers possibly better than they know themselves, and he suffers when they suffer.

Splinter

Disposition: Quiet, contemplative, with a wry sense of humor.
Perhaps Splinter was never a very ordinary rat. It is even likely that he was a mutant long before the strange ooze from the broken T.C.R.I. canister began changing him. In any event, as a young rat he was very intelligent, smart enough to be able to mimic and memorize the ninja techniques of his master, Hamato Yoshi. Years later he remembered and passed on the ninjitsu techniques to his own disciples, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
How close Splinter is to the end of his life is not known. He is an old rat and his fighting faculties are getting a bit rusty. After the turtles avenged the death of Splinter's master, Yoshi, by defeating the Shredder, Splinter has been somewhat bereft of purpose. Up to that point, his reason for existing was to gain vengance. Now that vengance has been gained, something else must animate his life. For this reason, Splinter has been doing more meditation and thinking about philosophy. It is unsure whether or not he will leave the turtles to fend for themselves. He may go off alone to think his thoughts.
While Splinter may no longer be a great warrior, he is still a formidable teacher and is knowledgeable in all the fighting acts of the ninja.
Phish's notes: I've always had some problems with Splinter, despite my fondness for the ol' rat: like, how much guilt does he feel about raising those four turtles solely for his own vengance? And couldn't he have cut off that whole Raph vs. Leo thing before it ever started? Splinter usually seems so sweet and wise that it's easy to forget that he-- like everyone else-- has made some mistakes. I don't think Splinter forgets, though. I also sometimes nurse the crackpot literary theory that Splinter is a descendant of a rebel NIMH rat (see the children's classic "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH if you want to know more...)

April O'Neil

Disposition: Cheerful, friendly and concerned about people, hard working.
April is a very intelligent young woman. As a teenager she was a dedicated computer "hacker." The skills she gained then were later translated into her career as a computer programmer, specializing in robotics software. This is how she came to be associated with Dr. Baxter Stockman and his "Mouser" project.
April also has an interest in antiques and junk, with the emphasis on the junk. The brownstone that she lives in has a junk store called "Second Time Around" on the first floor. This is the one her father used to own before he had is stroke. Now April operates the store part-time. The Mutant Turtles are now living in the building with her.
Phish's Notes: Like I said, these were written back in the eighties, before Shredder came back from the dead, burned down her apartment, and beat the living crap out of Leo (NOT Raph like it is in the movie. The movie lies. Trust me on this one...), and all sorts of other stuff happens. April's always been a mite too passive for my taste, and possibly for that reason she's a more dynamic character in "Apocrypha" than anyone else; I get incredibly frustrated with passive characters...

Byron

I'm actually not 'profiling' Byron, or any of my other fanfic characters-- at least not at this point-- but I do have this little document...an oral history, which is like an interview only the interviewer does his/her best not to ask many questions...anyway, the following oral history might shed a little more light on Byron, for those of you who are interested.
Back to Phishtar's Page
Back to Huginn's Home Page 1