Cartoons. As a kid growing up in the 70's and 80's, I lived and breathed Cartoons for many years. First thing after school, making promises that I'd do my homework after GI Joe, or Thundercats, or Transformers was over. Waking up before the sun rose to catch the earliest Saturday Morning Cartoon, camped in front of the TV with a bowl of highly sugared cereal and a memorized TV Schedule so that I could watch just the shows I wanted. And then going outside and playing with my legions of GI Joes and my battalions of Transformers to reenact the cartoons I had just watched. For me, this was my childhood.
These days, I'm a Gamer. Instead of plastic toys mass produced by Hasbro, Kenner, and many others, I use dice, paper, and the dinner table exercise my imagination. And now, thanks to Cartoon Action Hour, I can bring all the excitement and wonder of those Cartoons of my childhood to the tabletop gaming of my second childhood! (Ok, ok, I still collect and play with GI Joes. That's not the point!)
Cartoon Action Hour is a new Roleplaying Game written by Cynthia Celeste Miller and produced by Spectrum Games Studios. It is currently available as a .PDF eBook through their website, and weighs in at a respectable 108 pages for only $10.00, which makes it a pretty good deal by today's standards, and a printed version is in the works and should be available within the next few months.
Cover
The cover of this product is the only full color piece of artwork in the book. It is a clean and simple image, and gives the impression of a listing for a Saturday Morning Line-Up. I can remember seeing similar images in comic books when I was younger for the new fall lineup for NBC or ABC's cartoons. It lists several Series and shows color pictures of characters from those series (All of which get a Series Seed write up in the later section of the book).
Channel 1: Introduction
Rather than Chapters, the book calls the different sections Channels, all of which help evoke that sense of Saturday morning cartoons. In Channel 1, we get to see that the layout of the book is a bit different than normal. Instead of the straight, ruled margins that most RPGs use, we instead have a large star pattern in the background of the page. The text is all left aligned, but the right margin follows the angle of one side of the star, giving the page a decidedly odd look to it. At first, this is slightly disconcerting, but it doesn’t detract at all from the reading of the book, and once you realize exactly what you're looking at, it gives the book a very unique and interesting look to it.
The star pattern leaves room on the page for the numerous sidebars that are presented throughout the book, and it is on Channel 1 that we get our first look at our hosts and commentators for the book: Cynthia and Kargorr. Cynthia is, of course, the author of the book As she explains in the very first sidebar, in an attempt to find someone from "Cartoon World" to help explain the game from a characters perspective she ended up with Kargorr, a down on his luck, and quite inept villain who is reminiscent of Mumm-Ra, Skeletor, and every other cheesy villain from those old 80's action toons. The "Cynthia Sez" sidebars attempt to give advice and help guide the reader in their reading and playing of the game, while the "Kargorr Sez" sidebars provide comic relief and attempts to urge the reader to abuse the rules, and the GM to favor the villains. Within a couple pages, I fell in love with Kargorr, and someday, maybe someday soon, I'll help him become a true supervillain! Muhahahahahahaha.!!!!!
Oh, excuse me. Where was I?
The book is scattered with various pictures, all in retro-toon art style. From pictures that are very reminiscent of Snarf and Ookla the Mok to some very cool and original designs, the art gives a strong sense of the genre the game draws from. Unfortunately my review copy was a Low-Res version, so the artwork looks a bit rough, but overall the art is very appropriate, but average in quality. I've seen lots better in games, but I've also seen a lot worse, so there's no complaints on that end.
Beyond the Sidebars and style, Channel 1 is your typical intro section. It explains what Roleplaying games are, gives an overview of what to expect from the book and the game, and generally does the standard set-up that all RPGs have.
Channel 2: Characters
This section is the real meat of the book, weighing in at 32 of the books 108 pages. This is also the heart of the book for most players, as it gives the character creation rules and guidelines. The first couple pages are standard stuff like "What is a character", and talking about personality and the fluff surrounding a character. It actually does a better job at this than most modern role-playing games these days, as it assumes the player does not know much about RPGs. While this makes for tedious reading for long time gamers (Indeed, the first time through, I simply skipped over all of this), it does a great job of explaining and walking a new player through creating a character. And considering how loose and open the system is, it's a good idea to have the player have a firm idea of what their character can do before they start crunching the numbers.
You start off with a number of Character Points with which to design your character. Your first stop to spending your CP are Traits, which are a combination of Skills and Attributes. Combining these two simplifies how they're used, yet there are a diverse enough listing of Traits that you don't feel like this is a "Skill-less" game system, and it is open to additional skills as a game needs. All traits start off at a default rating of Average (With a score of 0), and you can lower a trait to give you some additional CP to play with. Traits can go up to a rating of 4, and then you can also get into super ratings, which give you additional dice with which to make tests. The system also allows for concentrations and specializations.
From there, Size is covered (Allowing you to potentially create smaller or larger characters than the series standard), and then we move on to Oomph, a neat concept for the game that helps give your character a little something extra. Your Oomph score is a bonus whenever you score a critical success, and you can also purchase Stunt Points, which allow you to add your Oomph score to any test to give you an edge when you really need to succeed.
Finally, we have the bulk of this section: Special Abilities. Since the game is fairly generic, allowing for everything from GI Joe to Voltron, and everything in between, the system needed to be very flexible and cover a lot of ground. And while at first glance they look complex, a thorough read shows them to be well organized, well thought out, and fairly simple to work through. The Special Abilities cover 7 major areas: Defensive, Offensive, Movement, Transformation, Animal Companion, Vehicles, and Miscellaneous, which is a catchall for the stuff that doesn’t fit in the other categories.
The final thing in Channel 2 is Story Hooks. These are basically ideas that you put into your character that give the GM some plot hooks to run off of. Roleplaying these hooks can net extra XP during the game.
Channel 3: Rules & Channel 4: Combat
This section opens up with the obligatory, so-called "golden rule" for RPGs: that you don’t let the rules get in the way of a good game. Always a good thing to emphasize, especially in a game like Cartoon Action Hour, which will likely be highly story driven. Again, the writing seems intended for newer players, but that's also not a bad thing. It's better to have some material that long time players will skip over than to omit info that new players will need.
The game itself uses a simple action check system, using GM determined target numbers based on the difficulty of the task. The dice mechanic used, a D12 plus the appropriate Trait, is a uniform mechanic used throughout the game. Combat tests are opposed, in which the attacker and defender each roll, with the higher dice check succeeding, and there are a few combat options, such as dodging or parrying that can affect the check.
One interesting aspect to this section is the fact that characters who run out of Hurt Point (the equivalent of Hit Points) don't die, which is in keeping with the retro toons of old. Instead, characters are simply knocked out
Vehicle Combat gets a little more complicated than the basic combat rules, with a couple of damage charts involved, but a good read through of that section and keeping those charts handy makes Vehicle Combat more than manageable.
Overall, combat and the core rules are simple enough that you can give this section a quick read and should have the rules down. It's a very nice and simple system. While it probably won’t appeal to those who like a lot of combat options or a detailed damage and hit resolution system, the lighter rules will appeal to most players, and give the game a nice, fast pace that helps give the feel of action cartoons.
Channel 5: Game Master
This Channel is broken down into several Sub-Channels. Sub-Channel 1: Miscellaneous Rules defines things such as a Series (The specific game that your playing), the Episode (A single game session or storyline), and the Season (A campaign or an overall story arc). It also covers Experience point rewards, XP expenditure and improvements, Wealth & Money, Inventions, and other esoteric rules that the GM may need to cover the things his players will want to do.
One great section under Sub-Channel 1 is the section on Goons, which allows for hordes of nameless mooks to try and overwhelm the players, and helps make mass combats a lot quicker.
The second Sub-Channel (Also marked Sub-Channel 1 in my low-res reviewer copy) covers Game Mastering, and gives in depth descriptions and advice to prospective GMs. Once more, this section is really designed with new GMs in mind, but even veterans could find this section useful. I know in reading this, I had a few ideas sparked and was reminded of a few old tricks of the trade I'd long since forgotten. Kargorr's comments on the "Fudging" section are priceless.
There's also a section in here on Embracing the Game and the Genre, encouraging some of the more hokey things that made those old cartoons so much fun, yet are things that as "serious" gamers we'd never do. Morality, Optimism, a Rogues Gallery, all things that shaped and defined 70s and 80's retro toons, but things you won’t come across too often in a game of Shadowrun or Dungeons & Dragons.
There's also a section on what is one of my favorite bits from the entire game: The After-Show Message. A lot of shows had these, but the best remembered one is probably GI Joes "Knowing is Half the Battle" bits. Walk up to anyone who was a kid in the 80's and say "And now you know…" and chances are, they can and will finish that line. CAH encourage a brief segment at the end of each game session for an After-Show message like those, with the characters saving kids from doing something done, or explaining what the characters learned in that Episode, and rewards characters who participate with a few extra XP. I can say from experience that these After Show Messages can be hilarious and quite fun, as long as the players are willing to get into them and embrace them.
Sub-Channel 3 covers the Series Guide. This is basically a small write up about the Series you want to run, and gives guidelines for character creation. If you're running a GI Joe style game, obviously Special Abilities that grant magic or super powers are out of the question, and the Series Guide will cover what is and isn’t allowed in the game. This is a terrific thing for this game, as it lets the players and GM define the game system ahead of time.
Sub-Channel 4 covers specifics about running an episode, and is more GM advice regarding pacing and plotting.
Channel 6: The Line Up
Finally, the last Channel brings you 4 "Ready to Run" series, giving an in depth Series Guide to 4 original Series that GMs can run if they wish, as well as 15 "Series Seeds", shorter Series Guides giving ideas for different types of games. These game seeds and Ready-To-Run games give GMs a chance to jump in with a game of their own, and they also give some good guidelines for designing your own series'.
Overall, I like this game a lot. It's simple, it's very flexible, and it does what it sets out to do: emulate Action Cartoons. For anyone who grew up in the 70's and 80's on a steady diet of Action Cartoons, this game is a must. It's well written, very well thought out, and is an excellent play.
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