Review: Cartoon Action Hour: Season 3

I just got my pdf of Cartoon Action Hour: Season 3 thanks to pledging in their Kickstarter.

This one was a no-brainer for me.  I loved CAH:S2 and have really enjoyed all of Spectrum Games products to date.

How does CAH:S3 stack up?  In an 80's word, Awesome!

CAH:S3 takes us back to the 80s Saturday morning (and week day afternoon) cartoons AND the toys that were so linked to them.   But I am getting ahead of myself.

And while I am still ahead of myself this game has the most awesome character sheet EVER!

Cartoon Action Hour: Season 3 (CAH:S3) is a game about cartoon and toy emulation. Specially 80s cartoons and toy emulation.  So there are some things that a given out of the box.  You won't see any deaths. Violence happens in terms of gun fire, explosions and maybe a fist fight, but you won't see people getting hurt.  There is a moral or message to every "episode"  and the bad guy is going to get away in the end only to be back next time like nothing happened.

The book, like Season 2, is divided into "Channels".  Channel 1 is the intro material, Channel 2 is the game system, Channel 3 is series creation (potentially more important than the characters themselves), Channel 4 is all about the Players, Channel 5 is the Game Master's section and finally we have an Appendix.

Channel 1 is the simple introductory material, but more over there is a great overview of how these cartoons (and this game) worked. There is a logic at work here in these and to get the most out of this game it is one you should follow.  The best feature of this Channel is of course the overview of the 80s cartoons.  It's not a laundry list of every toon, but a selective "bibliography" and must see TV.  

Channel 2 covers the game system itself.  In many games this is the Character creation chapter, but since character creation and series creation are so closely tied together we will discuss the system first.   The game is made up of a Series (the game), Seasons (a campaign), Episodes and Scenes.  Characters are PCs and GMC (Game Master Characters).  A Season for example is made up of 6 Episodes.  I might stick with my more familiar 12 and allow a mid-season break.  Why is this important? At season breaks is when you can improve your character or change it all together.

Characters are made up of Traits and Qualities.  Traits are something definitive about the character like "Strongest Man in World" or "Sneaky Thief" or "Leader of the Decipti-bots".  Stuff like that.  Qualities are more quantifiable and are measured based on how powerful your series is.  Characters can also be ranked in terms of their Star Power.  Stars (and PCs) have the highest at 3, your nameless, faceless goon has 1.  If there is only one star, then they are Star Power 4.

Oomph is the power-, hero- or drama point mechanic.  Collect "Proofs of Purchase" to get more Oomph!
It is equal to your Star Power but changes through out the game.

The basic mechanic of the game is the Check.
Traits and Qualities (and Oomph) add to the dice rolls on a Check.

Characters may not die, but they can loose an important scene.  For that there are Setback Tokens.  These Crucial Checks are usually the ones right before a commercial break or even worse, the ones at the end of an episode and continued next time (granted there were not a lot of those, but GI Joe first season comes to mind).  Gain more Setbacks than your Star Power and you are out of the scene.

Season 3 has something new in it, or at least something I don't recall from Season 2. Gestalts.  This allows you to combine powers, bodies or whatever into something greater.  Think Voltron or some Transformers.

I think one of the rules I like the most here is "The Movie" which allows you, within the game, to throw out some of conceits of the game.  So in this characters can die! Bad guys hit their targets!  Mechanically you get more Oomph and damage and Setback tokens are not removed as often (no commercials after all) the risks are higher but characters that make it out gain experience and can be changed.  Think "The Transformers Movie" from 1986.

Channel 3 covers Series Creation. Wait, where is Character creation you ask? Well it's here too.  Series and Characters are created together.  You can't have GI Joe without the Joes or Transformers without the Autobots.  First this is create a Series guideline.  First figure out what your series in named and it's tagline.  So the example I used last time was The Hex Girls with the tagline "We'll put a spell on you!".   Next up figure out the details of the series. Tech level, twists, genre.  What is your elevator pitch on this.  "Modern Earth, magic is real, but no one believes in it. Characters are supernaturals and try to lead normal lives." Something like that, only more detail.   The newest feature of the series creation is the Dial. Dials tell you the levels of the game.  How comedic is it? How realistic? What's the violence?

Now we get into character creation.
Characters are ranked as either human, superhuman or cosmic.  The GM will decide, based on the series, on what traits can't be used, or limits on the traits and other details before the characters are made.   So as an example a series about wizard kids must all have a trait "Wizard" at 3 or better, but no technology-based traits.
After that character creation is a breeze.
There are some special abilities and then we discuss GMC (Game Master Characters). They are created much the same way, only less details.  Some templates such as goons and Master Villains are presented.
Playsets are where the action takes place and they are created in a similar way.

How cool is this sheet?

Character advancement is handled next.  Among the obvious places for advancement you can also put in points to the playset to upgrade your base.  So something like in Season 2 getting a new super smart computer in the base or a new book of spells.

We end with 8 series ideas.

Channel 4 covers advice to the Players.  A game like CAH requires a lot of buy in from the players.  You can't go into it like you do other games.  This is not "Dungeons & Dragons" this is the "Dungeons & Dragons cartoon".  So the players have to go in with the right frame of mind.  You want your game to be like the first season of G.I. Joe where everyone worked together, not the seasons that featured (and were dominated by) Sgt. Slaughter.

Channel 5 has similar advice for the Game Master.  Again emphasis here is placed on cartoon logic, and creating a fun series and episode. Don't forget the "And Now You Know" messages at the end! That's not a bug, it's a feature of the game.

In the end what we have is a crazy fun game again.  If you were a kid in the 80s and watched any cartoons then there is something here for you.  It is also a great change of pace from all the other games I play. This game focuses on having fun as well as being fun.

There are no conversions for CAH:S2 here.  But the conversions look simple to be honest.  Enough that I feel fine moving characters from one to the next with little to no effort.

Character Creation is much improved in this edition and much more streamlined.  Series creation is about the same, but it was just right in the last version.

Looking forward to doing a lot more with this one!

Links

• Spectrum Games
• Spectrum Games on Facebook
• Cartoon Action Hour Fans Yahoo Group.  Tons of great material here.

Zatannurday: Cartoon Action Hour Season 3

With the release of Cartoon Action Hour Season 3 I thought it might be fun to do Zatanna's stats as if she were a guest star on the Super Friends show!

Of course Zatanna was never on the Super Friends, which is too bad.  I would have loved her even then.
Here she is!

http://superfriends.wikia.com/wiki/Zatanna

Magical Theorems and Dark Pacts (Print)

A while back I reviewed the PDF of Dyson Logos Magical Theorems and Dark Pacts.  Since I enjoyed it so much and can't get enough spells or spell casters I picked up a print copy from Lulu.

It is a great looking little book to be honest.

Excuse the upside down picture, but it does show that the text is crisp (it's the camera that is blurry) and the print is near offset. Lulu is getting better and this is really opening up a lot avenues for the small press publisher.

I wanted to add this to show the relative size.  I plan on using the books together anyway.

Actually it is more compatible with this book.  The wizards in MT&DP are powerful ones, so using them with any gritty game (like Spellcraft & Swordplay or Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea) isn't going to work out as nice.

I am happy I picked this up.

Non-Gaming: So Long Blockbuster

A non gaming post this morning (plus I still have a bad migraine that I can't shake).

Blockbuster has announced it is closing the last of it's 300 stores and it's mail-in Netflix-like service.

While I am sad at the passing of an era and I feel bad bad about those loosing their jobs, I do not mourn the passing of Blockbuster.

Once Blockbuster could be found in every strip mall in suburbia and a store in every town.  That was it's appeal to so many.  Not to me.  I disliked that Blockbuster came in and more or less destroyed the Mom and Pop video stores that had sprung up in the 80s.  I remember renting many old horror movies on Laser Disk (yeah I had one of those) and VHS.  When Blockbuster came to town with their far cheaper rental prices I wasn't a fan.  I had rented Hellraiser once to show a girlfriend at the time and noticed how much of it was cut out.  Yeah they had either edited it themselves (not likely, but that is what I thought at the time) or only stocked edited versions.  No thanks.

While I marked the passing of Borders with sadness of something I had lost, I have not been in a Blockbuster in I don't know how long.  Between Netflix, OnDemand and Amazon Prime streaming services I have unprecedented access to viewing options.

So goodnight Blockbuster. Be kind, please rewind.

Basic Library

Migraine today...can't really think.  Just looking through some of my PDFs.

The older I get the more I desire simpler games.  I don't think it has much to do with age as it does with experience.  I have been doing the rpg thing since the late 70s.  Scores of games and variations on the same rules.  I don't really need a lot of detailed rules; I am happy to wing it half the time.

That is one of the reasons I enjoy Basic D&D so much.
Everything I want is there, and nothing I don't want.  Though there are some things it is "missing" for me.
Thankfully I have the OSR.

Here is my Basic Library books.
These are the core of my current gaming.
Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set
Dungeons & Dragons: Expert Set

What ever is not covered above I can get from AS&SH. Plus it has a lot of great monsters and a good feel for my games.
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

Various add-ons presents as a "Book 3" or Companion rules.
B/X Companion
Companion Expansion
Basic Arcana

And some extra spells.
The Witch: A sourcebook for Basic Edition fantasy games

And some books to add bits here and there.
Adventurer Conqueror King System
Adventurer Conqueror King System Player's Companion
Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts
Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary
All sorts of classes from Barrel Rider Games

And of course a new adventure to take everyone through.
The Shrine of St. Aleena

Ok, so maybe not as simple as I thought.

Favorite Witch Contest!!

Well the contest ended last night while I was out with a migraine.
I have emailed the winners and waiting for confirmation.

But I hate waiting so here they are!

Grand Prize, winning a copy of both Eldritch Witchery and The Witch is:
Mark Craddock

Winning a copy of Eldritch Witchery is:
Justin Ryan Isaac

And a copy of The Witch is:
Chris Copeland

Thanks you everyone that participated!  I hope to some more fun things soon.

So who did you get in witches?
Willow was an early favorite, no surprise.
Medea, classic is always good.
The Sanderson Sisters
Glinda, Elphaba and other variations of them from Oz and Wicked
Helena Markos (Suspiria)
Howl (Howl's Moving Castle)
Tenkar's Sister! ;)
Baba Yaga (a fave of mine as well)
Gandalf's versions got a few nods
Julian Sand's Warlock from Warlock (which I will admit I enjoyed too)
Tara, of course!
We got a Harry Potter (but no Hermoine)
Thulsa Doom from the Conan movie.
A couple for Practical Magic (also a fave)
Krabat (have not heard of this guy)

THANK YOU everyone for participating!
I loved reading your choices.

For anyone that has already picked up Eldritch Witchery the file was updated last night to include some errata and the newer cover.

White Dwarf Wednesday #86

February 1987 gives us White Dwarf #86.  The cover looks like it is an older style than the others.  Closer look shows it is from 1978.  Mike Brunton gives us a long editorial on how WD is made.

Open Box hits us up with The Price of Freedom from West End Games.  In my mind this was the golden age of WEG, or just when they get the Star Wars game.  The Price of Freedom is one their big games, though I never cared for it.  For starters it has the same problem that the movie "Red Dawn" had, that the idea of Soviets invading America was crazy at best.  Ashley Shepherd likes the game, but hopes it is tongue-in-cheek.  Other items include Paranoia HIL SECTOR Blues and Hawkmoon.  I have talked about Paranoia before.  Hawkmoon the game suffers the same problems that Hawkmoon the novels has. Namely, the problem is "it is not Elric".   Hawkmoon is played as a game, but it can be played as a supplement to Stormbringer. Hawkmoon, like the books, deals with more tech than magic.
For D&D we have Adventures in Blackmoor adventure DA1 and for AD&D The Book of Lairs, the revised Player Character Record Sheets and Night of the Seven Swords for Oriental Adventures.   I can honestly say I still have a number of my original sheets left over.  I never owned DA1, but I have always wanted run it.  I picked it up just recently, but have not read through it all.

Critical Mass has an interesting book among all the others.  The Vampire Lestat is reviewed and enjoyed.  About this time I also read The Vampire Lestat and I thought it was brilliant. Right here folks is the start of the Vampire the Masquerade.  Some where around this time Mark Rein·Hagen would form his first company and the RPG market would soon change forever.  Interestingly I read "Lestat" before I knew about "Interview with a Vampire" so I always had a better opinion of Lestat than my friends that had read it.
People have complained that this was the start of the "pretty boy" vampire craze.
Well. They would be wrong.
Lestat is still a monster, he kills and he relishes in being a hunter.  Eight years prior we had Frank Langella on stage and in the movies as uber-sexed Dracula, so the evolution of vampire as monster to sex object had been going on a while. Arguably since Stoker and even Carmilla.  Saying otherwise is ignoring the facts.
Now Twilight...yeah that is garbage.  But that's not Anne Rice's fault.

Curse of the Bone is a modern Call of Cthulhu adventure for 2-5 investigators. It looks fun and I like the modern twist to it.  For some reason the "used car dealer/cultist" made me laugh.  But it is also a good adventure in showing that relatively "minor" monsters can make for a great story.  "Lovecraftian" does not always mean elder gods and tentacles.

Open Box is back for some more, this time talking about all 14 of the D&D Dragonlance Modules. Dragonlance gets a bad rap among the Grognards out there. Some of it earned, but most of it is typical "get off my lawn" crap.  Yes they were rail-roady, but the were, as this article points out, epic.  Gordan Taylor does mention that classical role-playing is limited in these modules and no character development outside of what the modules dictate.  But I don't recall Grognards being that interested in character developemnt in the first place.   The modules can be played as "Strict AD&D" as the author mentions, but they are deadly and don't expect things to end well.  Maybe that is what we need (and it must be due to my 6.5 hours of meetings yesterday and my migraine today that I am even suggesting this) is a Grimmdark Dragonlance.  Instead of the Heroes of the Lance, run your typical Murder Hobos through it.  Go all out and use Dungeon Crawl Classics.   I never played these modules back in the day, but my younger brother's group did and they had a great time.  Maybe that is the selling point of these to my generation (and the generation before me) "Dragonlance, it is great for your little brother".

Illuminations is a new feature. It features the art of a particular artist.  This month is Ian Miller.  I would have loved to have seen this in earlier issues to be honest.  But with my impression of WD's art budget I am not sure they could have done this before now.

In what seems like a contradiction on the order of "Grimdark Dragonlance" Phil Gallagher gives us Warhammer Fantasy player character stats for Gnomes in Out of the Garden.

There is a new team for Blood Bowl, the Skaven Scramblers. They are the mutant by-blows of giant rats. The background information on the Skaven is actually kind of cool.  Think of a society of giant rats, like Splinter from TMNT, only warped by religion and placed into strict castes. And plenty of random mutations. So more like the twisted child of Splinter and the Rat King from The Nutcracker.  They would be fun for AD&D/OSR.

It's a Kind of Magic tries to bring magic and tech closer together in your FRPGs. Interesting the article advises against bring magic into technological games and gives a number reasons why it is a bad idea.  It is as if the designers of ShadowRun read the article, laughed and then broke all the rules.  Though this article really concerns itself with tech in a magic world.

'Eavy Metal has a number of great looking minis.  I took a look at a much newer WD recently. I am not sure if the painting of minis has gotten better or the photography is better.  I am not saying that the ones here in issue 86 are bad; far from it.  But they don't look as polished as the ones from newer issues.  I am guessing there is some Photoshop involved too.

Dogs of War covers mercenaries for AD&D (or any FRPG). The article is an interesting one because it not only instructs how to use them, but how they were used. For example you won't see mercenaries randomly killing people; that's bad for business.  I think the trouble is that what most players think of as mercenaries is more defined by fantasy novels and comic books than history.   The authors suggested reading Fredderick Forsyth's "Dogs of War" for more insight.

We get an article on time travel in Judge Dredd.  The article is mostly fluff.

Letters. Followed by Gobbledigook and then ads.

Not an inspiring issue, but set off for me with the CoC adventure and the extended product review of the Dragonlance modules.   While I expected my interest in these later magazines to drop off after issue 80, I am still finding tidbits I like and can use.