Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Cartoon boyfriend when you gonna rub yourself out?

So I can't be arsed whingeing about the upcoming nuptuals or worrying about my Dads recovery from heart surgery so lets have a look at another game.


Toon is another classic game from Greg Costikyan who's other great comedy game Paranoia has already been mentioned. Based on all your favourite Warner Brothers cartoons it's rules are simple and easy to learn whilst offering an incredibly good simulation of their subject matter, frex none of the characters can die instead they get amusingly squashed/spiked or whatever and sit out the game for three minutes. Like Paranoia playing it can be either fun or frustrating depending on how much your willing to through yourself into the genre but, also like Paranoia, once you throw yourself into it the abandoning of normal roleplaying structure is liberating and incredibly good fun and fun is what the game's all about. So enough of that let's get on with the PC building malarkey...

Every Toon has four attributes, Muscle which is how strong and good in a fistfight he is, Zip which is how fast and dextrous he is, Smarts which is how umm smart he is and Chutzpah which is how much of a wideo he is and these are all decided on the roll of a single 6-sided die.

Our boy rolls 2 for Muscle, 3 for Zip, 3 for Smarts and 6 for Chutzpah. So he's not all that strong and only average when it comes to speed and brains but he can charm the birds out of the trees and get them to buy the pints all night.

The Toons also have Hit Points which weirdly enough are points that measure how much you can be hit. These are worked out by rolling a single 6-sided die and adding 6.

The wee man rolls a miserly 1 which when 6 is added leaves us with a rather poor 7. He's definitely a bit of a wimp but who cares when death only lasts long enough to nip out for half a fag.

Now the Toon needs to be described. You can choose or roll his species but the rest is up to you.

Our boy rolls a 33 so he's a rat. Ratski, as we'll call him, is normal rat sized though he walks on hind legs, he wears a bowler hat and bow tie with collar and carries a cane. Ratski's a wee chancer who's always on the lookout for an easy score of good food, easy living and the love of the laydeez.

We then have to choose a natural enemy.

As a rat Ratskis natural enemy is pest controllers of course.

We then choose the Toons Beliefs and Goals which are exactly what they seem to be.

Ratski's Belief is, Work is Bad - This character will go to any lengths to avoid working including using more energy and time than the actual work would have required. Ratski's Goal, Find and eat pie - The wee man is obsessed with pie and will go to any lengths to obtain and eat pie.

The Toon also carries 8 items 4 of which can be normal and 4 of which can be anything that the Animator (GM) allows.

Ratski's normal objects are, String Marbles Bottle of Glue Newspaper His other objects, Two-headed Coin President Nixon Mask Itching Powder Anvil

Toonboy then gets to sort out his skills of which there are 23 with a level of between 1 and 9 which has a starting value of the attribute it's based on frex Ratsko's Fight is based on his Muscle and thus starts at 2. There is then another 30 points to add to the skills to the maximum of 9. To use a skill you roll two 6-sided dice (2d6) and you are succesful if you roll under the value with a roll of 2 always being a success even if your skill is 1.

Let's not pedantically work our way through the skills except to say that whilst we'll give him a range we'll concentrate on his personality as a chancer who'll run rather than fight. You'll see them on the character sheet.

We can also spend some of the 30 points for skills on special powers called schticks which cost a varaibale amount of points each and are rolled against at a value of 5.

Ratski's a bit of a wide so let's give him Quick Change/Disguise which lets him disguise himself as nearly anything as long as he makes the roll.

The last thing you do is draw a picture of your Toon. I can't draw to save my life and since the old life isn't in danger I'm not going to try. If you want to try please send the pictures on a stamp-addressed postcard to the usual address.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aloha, crazy kiwi chick from NZ requesting an avenue of communication before upcoming wedding. Can you please send and email address for cheap telegram, or a ph number so i can get in touch with Rosa the Posa. Much appreciated, and if you dont check this before Saturday, i hope that you had an o for awesome day. xx