Cole Williams - Level Design and System Design
Can You Cartoon?
Can you Cartoon? is a one-shot tabletop role-playing game I created that drops players into a cartoon world where they must figure out how to escape using the rules and logic of the universe they have been placed into. The game requires a GM and can be played with multiple players. A 1d8, 1d10, and 1d20 are required.
Project Info:
Course: Role-playing Game Design
School: DigiPen Institute of Technology
My Roles:
Solo Project
Click for Rulebook
Core Mechanics
The core mechanics for Can You Cartoon are very similar to other TTRPG games where there are skills, skill checks, health, movement, and damage. These aspects of the game can take place both inside and outside of combat. A unique mechanic in the game is the Wild Card Effect. The wild card effect is the wildness of the cartoon world’s impact on the players’ decisions. When a player rolls a die, the wild card effect makes an impact on the roll.
The Wild Card Effect
When the player needs to roll their dice, the outcome from the d20 will be the number the player is using against the challenge. The second number using the d10 will be the number used for the wild card effect. The final number will determine if the wild card effect aids or burdens the player by adding a positive or negative value to the wild card effect. If a player rolls 1-4 on the d8, their wild card effect number becomes negative. If the player rolls 5-8 on the d8, their wild card effect will have a positive value.
Example:
Player rolls a 12 on the d20, a 5 on the d10, and a 2 on the d8. The player will take their 12 and reduce it by 5 since their final roll was within the negative number range. Therefore, due to the wild card effect, they rolled a 7 instead of a 12. Had they rolled a number within the positive range they would have added the 5 instead and gotten a 17.
Character Creation
Player have stats with the categories of Fight, Flight, Smarts, and Presence. Experience is gained through combat and social encounters which lead to players leveling up. When leveling up, players gain stat points which they can allocate into different stats.
Fight
Fight is used for attempting actions such as lifting or carrying heavy objects, dealing unarmed damage, forcing open locked doors, and other similar feats.
Smarts
Smarts handles knowing relevant information, problem solving, identifying a trap, and other forms of perception or knowledge.
Flight
Flight is the skill that determines the success of agility or dexterous actions such as performing jumps, climbing, dodging, and the like.
Presence
Presence handles persuasion, intimidation, and bargaining. This could mean the difference between an NPC liking or hating a player based on their words or actions.
Wacky Wonders
Along with stats, players may allocate their stat points gained through experience into Wacky Wonders. Wacky Wonders are special actions players can obtain that are very powerful and are limited per encounter. These abilities are strong but costly as they require a sacrifice of potential stat boosts.
Impairments and Hindrances
Impairments are effects that can come from combat which include include burning, freezing, bleeding, confusion, charmed, and more. These effects last for three turns and impact the performance of characters.
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If a player’s health reaches zero however, they will have a worse or longer lasting impairment called a hindrance. Examples of a hindrance could be a player exploding and are now an ash pile for 3 turns, getting hit really hard and shattering like glass for 5 turns, or being knocked out for 2 turns. It could also be something like permanent slowness or blindness that will persist throughout the rest of an encounter or possibly the entire
adventure.
Items
Weapons used are generalized mechanically for simplicity. For example, having a flamethrower vs a fireball would not act any different within the game world when it comes to doing damage to an enemy or functionality. Both weapons would deal fire damage of the same amount. Damage is determined more based off the player character’s stats and the wild card effect as well as the player character’s impact on the wild card modifier. ​​
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Other types of combat gear that might be used could include healing items, buffing items, debuffing items, and more. As far as non-combat gear, players would be able to collect items along the way and use them whenever they wish. Non-combat gear would include items such as tape, a magazine, an instrument, and anything else that might be interesting or funny that would not aid a player in combat.
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Items are kept in a bottomless inventory called the Hammerspace. To retrieve stored items, players simply stick their hand behind their back and pull out their item of choice from their inventory.
Story
The story of the game has the players take on the role of real people who get trapped in a cartoon world called Channeland by an evil entity called Lifeswitch. Lifeswitch wants to assimilate people of the real world into that of a cartoon while making the cartoon feel natural. When people get out of line or start questioning their role, his henchmen known as the Static intervene.
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Others NPCs include the Townsfolk which are cartoon characters located within Channeland. These are ordinary people that might be found in an ordinary town going about their daily lives. These could include construction workers, bank tellers, policemen, and more.
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The last group of characters are the Realizers who are NPCs that resemble other real world people trapped within Channeland. The Realizers are previous victims of Lifeswitch and their main goal is to take him down and escape back to the real world.
