Cartoon Action Hour
Cartoon Action Hour cover
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| Designer(s) | Cynthia Celeste Miller, Eddy Webb |
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| Publisher(s) | Spectrum Games |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Genre(s) | Super Heroes, Cartoon |
| System(s) | Custom |
Cartoon Action Hour is a role-playing game (RPG) designed to emulate classic action-adventure cartoons, such as ThunderCats, He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Visionaries, Inhumanoids, Centurions, Thundarr the Barbarian, M.A.S.K., and Bravestarr.
It was e-published by Spectrum Games as a PDF role-playing game 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.
Cartoon Action Hour implements a relatively simple ruleset. The core resolution system revolves around rolling a d12, adding a number to it, and comparing it to a Difficulty Number. If the result equals or exceeds that Difficulty Number, the character succeeds in the task at hand.
Whereas most RPGs give all characters an identical list of attributes (such as Strength, Agility, Intelligence, etc.) and a variable collection of skills, Cartoon Action Hour rolls them all into one type of statistic known as Traits. Each character will have a different list of Traits, with ratings ranging from −4 (nearly non-existent) to 4 (maximum human capability), with 0 being average.
To represent Traits with superhuman or supernatural levels of ability, the designers use super-ratings. Characters with a Trait rating of 4 may have another number in parenthesis, ranging from 2 to 5. This super-rating allows the player to roll more than one d12 when testing that Trait, taking the best result.
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