Cartoon Action Hour A Review by Eddy Webb

The Action is Back!

With those words, we are thrust into the world of Cartoon Action Hour, the recently released retro-toon RPG by Cynthia Celeste Miller of Spectrum Game Studios. What are "retro-toons"? In the context of CAH, they are the action-adventure cartoons of the 80's, such as Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Transformers and Thundercats. The Game Master creates the game world (or Series) to unleash on his players, who, armed with a few d12's and the fairly universal rules provided, create characters to play with the heroic flair of these cartoons.

Cartoon Action Hour is currently available from www.spectrumgamestudios.com for $10 as a massive 108 page PDF. A published version is scheduled to be released around July or August. A magazine called After These Messages... is scheduled for fall, and the website also promises freebies as well.

Channel Surfing

The book, to keep with the cartoon theme, is broken down by Channels (instead of chapters). On Channel 1: Introduction, we are introduced to one of the occasional narrators of the text, a down-on-his-luck cartoon archvillain named Kargorr. Kargorr's running attempts to insult the author and encourage the players to twist and manipulate the system are a funny way to expound on the rules, and also keeps you in the mindset of the retro-toons - a nice touch. On Channel 1 are also the usual introductions to the concept of roleplaying and a brief summary of the rest of the book.

On Channel 2: Character, we have the hefty character creation rules. At first, character creation seems relatively breezy and narrative - things like background, personality and appearance are all touched on before you see your first rule. You then receive a chunk of Character Points to spend. The core of the character is its Traits - a blend of the traditional concepts of "Attributes" and "Skills", Traits are a pretty straightforward ranking from -4 to 4, with 0 being average (rules for supernatural levels of ability are also added). You also go into Size, Hurt Points, and a neat little statistic called "Oomph", which determines how much you succeed when you roll a critical success.

The meat of the system, however, is Special Abilities. SA's are the most flexible (and thus, most complex) aspect of CAH, covering everything from super powers and magic spells to weapons and artifacts, even animal companions and vehicles. You build every aspect of your SA's with Character Points. Kargorr does his best to help the confused player abuse the system, and the end of the section has a few detailed examples. I will admit that this section took me a couple of tries to read, but once I made my own character, this section made complete sense to me. The author does a nice job of repeating relevant sections throughout the text to reduce page flipping, which is very helpful. However, players should definately work closely with their GM's on making SA's.

Channel 3: Rules is a sigh of relief from the weighty Channel 2. This 3 page section covers all of the major aspects of the rules, which revolves around the Action Check, a straightforward Trait Rating d12 roll against a GM-determined difficulty number. Super Ratings are listed from 4(2) to 4(5), and allow the player to roll a number of d12's equal to the rating in parenthesis, choosing the highest. A roll of 1 is always a failure, and a roll of 12 allows the player to add their Oomph to their roll. Although not the most innovative system, it is very easy to remember and adaptable to most gaming situations.

What would any RPG be without combat? Channel 4: Combat covers many standard concepts - initiative, turns, size, situational modifiers, dodging and parrying, and close and ranged combat. It also has rules for mental attacks and defense, and other more esoteric combat options. Characters in the action cartoons never die - they simply are "Out Of The Fight" when they reach zero Hurt Points (reminiscent of another popular cartoon RPG, Toon). The only moderately complex section is the vehicle combat rules, but the few charts it has are easy, and based off of concepts learned earlier in the book.

The GM channel, Channel 5: Game Master, is divided into four sub-channels. Sub-Channel One covers rules for episodes and seasons, experience (which are spent between seasons, not episodes), and other miscellaneous rules, including a neat system of boiling down hordes of goons to a single dice roll. Sub-Channel Two covers GM technique and details on bringing the genre of the retro-toons to the gaming table. Sub-Channel Three gives detailed help on how to make your own Series for the game and creating NPCs. Finally, Sub-Channel Four covers the structure of the game session, or Episode.

Channel 6: Line-Up offers over 20 pages of complete series ideas and series "seeds" to help you get started, and the Appendixes cover a glossary of terms, some recommended viewing, and the designer's notes.

The layout of the book is very crafted. The star in the background guides the right edge of the column down the page, resulting in a slanted column look similar to that in Call of Cthulhu D20, except only one column per page. It's a bit odd, but I found I got used to it after a while. There's some art scattered throughout the book which is actually better than much of the game's inspiration. There were a number of small typographical errors (sidebars repeated, sections mis-numbered, etc.), but since I had a low-res reviewer's preview copy, I expect they'll be caught before (or shortly after) the main release. Regardless, very few of them were in the main body of the rules.

Summary

Like most systems that attempt to cover a number of sources in a "generic" fashion, this game has a lot of meat that some groups will never use. SA's are the most intimidating aspect of the system for people who just want to jump in and play their favorite retro-toon stereotype. In making my own PC for one of the pre-offered Series, "Defenders of Aqua City", I spent more time on the SA's than any other element of the character. However, a clever GM can offer shortcuts for their Series (like pre-calculating or giving for free common SA's), and once the character is done, the gameplay itself is fairly minimalistic and quick.

Overall, Cartoon Action Hour is great for not only a retro-toon style campaign, but any cinematic, heroic background. The rules would be just as home with a late 80's style superhero game or even comperable live-action TV shows like Knight Rider. If you like two-fisted action and high adventure, this game is definitely worth a look.