Saturday Morning Cartoons in Savage Worlds
Oct 19, 2012 12:33:04 GMT -8
Post by savagedaddy on Oct 19, 2012 12:33:04 GMT -8
One of my favorite things to do with Savage Worlds is take a popular kid's cartoon franchise and create an adventure -- like the Smurfs, My Little Pony, Care Bears, Scooby-Doo, etc.
The benefits to doing this in Savage Worlds are the easy to grok mechanics ( Cards for Initiative, Wild Die, Bennies, and 4 TN). The difficulty in doing this in Savage Worlds is adjusting the system to established tropes, especially 4th wall breaking physics, cartoon violence, and damage. When a character is so focused on a chase he continues to run in mid air until he realizes it and plummets to his death a la Wile E. Coyote, how do you adjudicate when and how he returns unscathed moments later?
I've run a Savage My Little Pony Friendship is Magic game at a convention using a savage fan setting book. The main complaint I got from players is a 'Non-Violence' setting rule that prohibited combat. That author's solution was to eliminate combat and wounds all together. It doesn't work. Players feel cheated, and I can't blame them. It's not faithful to the established tropes -- and therefore, just wrong. Cartoon violence needs to be... well, cartoonish.
Cartoon characters engage in violence all of the time. As one of my players argued, Apple Jack often mule-kicks monsters and opponents in the head in the TV Show. A player in a Savage Worlds cartoon setting SHOULD be able to do anything the animated characters do in the show.
Some people have suggested using the Toon RPG as a model, but haven't suggested a mechanic or cartoon setting rule to run it. So, I decided to get me a copy and break it down. I have to say Toon is difficult to convert to Savage Worlds, but I'm going to keep trying until I get it right!
For starters, Toon uses a mechanic called 'Falling Down' whereby once your character has zero hit points they 'die' and are immediate resurrected after 3 minutes in real time. That won't work in a Savage Worlds game!
UPDATED 12/02/12
Here's my mechanic...
Seeing Stars
This is identical to Shaken ; it’s just been renamed to fit a cartoon setting.
Bonk!
This is Identical to Wounds; it's just been renamed to fit a carton setting.
Splat!
When a character reaches Incapacitated (takes a 4th Bonk!), he "goes splat" and makes an immediate Vigor roll (minus his wound penalties as usual).
More toonish Savage Worlds mechanics to come...
Thoughts?
The benefits to doing this in Savage Worlds are the easy to grok mechanics ( Cards for Initiative, Wild Die, Bennies, and 4 TN). The difficulty in doing this in Savage Worlds is adjusting the system to established tropes, especially 4th wall breaking physics, cartoon violence, and damage. When a character is so focused on a chase he continues to run in mid air until he realizes it and plummets to his death a la Wile E. Coyote, how do you adjudicate when and how he returns unscathed moments later?
I've run a Savage My Little Pony Friendship is Magic game at a convention using a savage fan setting book. The main complaint I got from players is a 'Non-Violence' setting rule that prohibited combat. That author's solution was to eliminate combat and wounds all together. It doesn't work. Players feel cheated, and I can't blame them. It's not faithful to the established tropes -- and therefore, just wrong. Cartoon violence needs to be... well, cartoonish.
Cartoon characters engage in violence all of the time. As one of my players argued, Apple Jack often mule-kicks monsters and opponents in the head in the TV Show. A player in a Savage Worlds cartoon setting SHOULD be able to do anything the animated characters do in the show.
Some people have suggested using the Toon RPG as a model, but haven't suggested a mechanic or cartoon setting rule to run it. So, I decided to get me a copy and break it down. I have to say Toon is difficult to convert to Savage Worlds, but I'm going to keep trying until I get it right!
For starters, Toon uses a mechanic called 'Falling Down' whereby once your character has zero hit points they 'die' and are immediate resurrected after 3 minutes in real time. That won't work in a Savage Worlds game!
UPDATED 12/02/12
Here's my mechanic...
Seeing Stars
This is identical to Shaken ; it’s just been renamed to fit a cartoon setting.
Bonk!
This is Identical to Wounds; it's just been renamed to fit a carton setting.
Splat!
When a character reaches Incapacitated (takes a 4th Bonk!), he "goes splat" and makes an immediate Vigor roll (minus his wound penalties as usual).
Raise: He 'Snaps Back'; that is comes back in the exact location he 'went splat' with all bonks healed. However, he is still ‘Seeing Stars’ (Shaken) and uses the standard Shaken rules to recover
Success: He makes another Vigor roll at the beginning of the round, before any action cards are dealt.
Failure: The character must wait until the next scene, where he reappears fully healed of all Bonks.
Critical Failure: As failure, except he rolls on an Amusing Injury Table (like a leg cast, or head bandage that falls off the second he springs into action) and carries that penalty into the next scene for 1d4 -1 rounds
More toonish Savage Worlds mechanics to come...
Thoughts?