Cartoon Action Hour

Cartoon Action Hour
Cover of the Cartoon Action Hour Season 3 Core Rulebook.
Designers	Cynthia Celeste Miller, Eddy Webb
Publisher	Spectrum Games
Date	2002
Resolution method	Random resolution, d12 roll-over
Genre	Cartoon, action-adventure, generic

Cartoon Action Hour, subtitled The 1980's Action Cartoon RPG, is a generic role-playing game designed to emulate the classic action-adventure cartoons of the 1980s, such as ThunderCats, He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Visionaries, Inhumanoids, Centurions, Thundarr the Barbarian, M.A.S.K., and BraveStarr.

It was published by Spectrum Games as a PDF in early 2002, where it garnered a sizable cult following. This prompted Z-Man Games to offer to publish the game as a hardcopy edition. The material from the PDF was revised and expanded upon for the 2003 print version. A second edition, called Season Two, was released in 2008; a third edition, Season 3, was released in 2013.

Season 1

The straightforward core resolution mechanic of Cartoon Action Hour asks players to roll a d12, adding a modifier to it (usually based on their character's most relevant statistic), and comparing it to a Difficulty Number. If the result equals or exceeds that Difficulty Number, the character succeeds at the task at hand.

Traits

Characters in Cartoon Action Hour has a single generic set of statistics, which are called Traits. Each character will have their own distinct list of Traits, with ratings ranging from −4 (nearly non-existent) to +4 (maximum human capability), with 0 being average.

If a character should have a certain Trait above maximum human capability, that Trait is given a Super-Rating, represented as another number (between 2 and 5) in parentheses next to the standard Trait rating of 4. When testing a Trait with a super-rating, a player can roll more than one d12 and take the best result.

Special Abilities

Superpowers, magic spells, vehicles, weapons, armor, racial abilities, animal companions, psionic abilities, and magic artifacts—They can all be created using the Special Ability creation rules. Each Special Ability is designed by picking and choosing appropriate "components" that define it. For example, an energy blast would need the following components: Damage Rating and Range. This can easily be customized further by adding other components and modifiers, thus making the Special Ability truly unique.

Reflecting the Genre

Every facet of Cartoon Action Hour was created with an eye toward faithfully depicting the subject matter, using what the authors refer to as "cartoon logic". A few examples of this are as follows:

• Characters cannot be killed. Rather, they just go "Out of the Fight" (or OOF) for the remainder of the combat scene. Characters can die in a "Movie" episode, however, even there character deaths are not common.
• Huge weapons (such as bazookas and rocket launchers) deal more damage to vehicles than to characters. In cartoons, such weapons tend to blow vehicles to smithereens, but when it comes to characters, these weapons usually just hit near them and the impact from the explosion merely sends them flying into a wall. Again, cartoon logic.
• Characters receive experience for participating in After-Show Messages ("... And Knowing is half the battle!").
• The rules institute a quick and entertaining way for characters to fight those swarms of nameless henchmen (such as Cobra Vipers from GI Joe). These minion groups have a single score called Goon Factor, which acts as the Difficulty Number for fighting them. Success means that the character dispatches them (and the player gets to decide how—like pulling the carpet from under their feet, shooting the ceiling and thus trapping them beneath the resulting rubble, and so on). Failure means that the characters are overwhelmed and are captured.

Reception

Reviewer Matthew Pook noted that "the look of Cartoon Action Hour belies its origins as an amateur publication. Its layout is overly cluttered and fussy, with its desktop publishing style readily apparent" and "there should be something to please anyone who is a fan of the genre within the pages of this book. Plus the rules and mechanics are nicely simple, making it easy to get into and play up to the epic heroism of Cartoon Action Hour".

Season Two

Season Two of Cartoon Action Hour was released on Oct 31, 2008 as a PDF on RPG on RPGNow.com. On December 16, 2008, the print version of the book was placed on Lulu. The rulebook features three series (or settings): Warriors of Cosmos (a science fantasy game in the style of He-Man), Strikeforce Freedom (a series in the style of G.I. Joe with Cobra being replaced by a spider-themed terrorist group) and Transbots (a "Transforming Robots" series in which the robots are built and work for rival companies).

Changes between Season 1 and Season 2

• Character Points are replaced by Proof of Purchase Points.
• Players creates their character's Traits
• Hurt Points don't exist anymore. 'Setback Tokens' replaces these. Four 'Setback Tokens" and the character is defeated.
• Subplots are Season Two's Story Hooks, but with OOMPH instead of EXP.

Season 3

Season 3 of the game was released in November 2013. The rulebook was written by Cynthia Celeste Miller, Barak Blackburn, Norbert Franz, Stephen Shepherd, and Ellie Hillis, and featured art by Patrick Sullivan, Stephen Shepherd, Billy Gilson, Brent Sprecher, Cole Smith, Daniele Spezani, Darrel Miller, Jukka Issakainen, Patricia Lupien. It includes a single detailed setting and eight other setting seeds. The rulebook also contains a preface by Flint Dille, a screenwriter in several 1980s cartoons.

Several supplements have been released for Cartoon Action Hour: Season 3, including:

• The Complete Guide to Warriors of the Cosmos
• Crimestrikers by Mark Lungo
• Crusaders of Sarillon by Steve Long
• Dark Brigade by Eddy Webb
• FLAG Force by Rob Wieland
• Galactic Heroes by Cynthia Celeste Miller
• Hexslinger by Shane Hensley
• Iron Wolves by Eddy Webb
• Infinivaders by John Wick
• The Mighty Mirror Masters by Jason L Blair
• The Paranormal Entities of Holiday Present by Barak Blackburn
• Punk Rock Saves the World by Matt Forbeck
• Wasteland 2010 by Cynthia Celeste Miller

External links

• Cartoon Action Hour at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Cartoon Action Hour at Spectrum Games