The Game
Helluva Town is an outraging tabletop role-playing game in which you play as a 1930s-style cartoon to live crazy adventures, using giant super-pimped weapons made by SCAM Ink., while you escape from the gangsters of the Ducko Family, dream (or fear) the return of the legendary Jimmy Rat, and above all MAKE EVERYTHING EXPLODE.
The game system is rules-light and narrative-driven, and is designed to be learned in FIVE MINUTES. Helluva Town is suitable for both hardcore players looking for a light and fun game, as well as for novices or even people without any previous gaming experience.
Think of an RPG that mixes Cuphead, the Looney Tunes, and Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network productions with Goodfellas-style gangster movies and smart Who Framed Roger Rabbit?-style comedies, and you’ve only got ten percent of the madness of Helluva Town.
That’s Mad, Folks!
Get lost on the roads to nowhere and everywhere.
Corebook
Helluva Town - Cartoon Gangster RPG
Helluva Town is one of the city’s secret neighborhoods, hidden somewhere between Little Italy and the Bowery. Its citizens? Actual, living cartoon characters. It’s an oasis of rubbery, hyper-saturated anarchy where you can be anyone you choose to be and do anything you choose to do.
THE GAME uses a super simple, quick to pick up card-based system (Helluva System), which can be learned in FIVE MINUTES. It was designed for both experienced players and complete newcomers to a roleplaying game – and to reward cartoon logic, physics, and folly.
THE WORLDBUILDING is crazy, and allows you to run, jump, fly and splat from the forbidden pleasures of Grin Gardens to the alienating machines of Shocktopia, from the dark alleys and docks of Jellyfish Junction to the rocky desert of Moonshine Mesa – where you never know when you might next plummet into a canyon, ending up in a cloud of smoke. But most of all, you can PIMP OUT THE SUPER WEIRD WEAPONS BUILT BY THE SCAM INK CORPORATION. Everything, of course, set to funky little psychotropic ditties.
JOIN US FOR AN INK-FUELED, NEVER-ENDING TRIP.
The Rules
HELLUVA TOWN is a super fast game to learn and play. It’s very simple.
You just need a poker card deck.
To overcome a Challenge, Players must draw 2 cards from their deck.
The Player then sums the value of the cards, and adds the numeric value of the relevant stat.
There’s four of them:
- Touchy: Physical actions (i.e. your Toon tail rotates so fast it becomes an helicopter);
- Feely: Speaking skills, charm, empathy (i.e. convincing a guitar Toon to sing something for you);
- Handy: Driving skills, finger dexterity, tool proficiency, technical knowledge more in general (i.e. be able to use SCAM Ink contraptions without them blowing in your face);
- Loony: whether it’s genious or madness, it’s the ability to solve any situation in the most creative, loony way (i.e. drawing a door on a wall to escape).
Also important is the use of INK, a rare and expensive commodity which however ensures automatic success for your draw and heals a Toon from all the Bonks (Hit) received (but it has its costs and withdrawals…)
THAT’S ALL THE BASIC RULES YOU NEED TO PLAY!
Artbook
Helluva Town - Art Attack!
This book serves as both an artbook, showcasing Shawn Dickinson’s wildly imaginative illustrations for Helluva Town, and an adventure guide, filled with over seventy-five ink-saturated, outrageous adventure hooks!
Every page is an explosion of creativity and pure cartoonish insanity, thanks to the illustrations by Shawn Dickinson.
The Setting
HELLUVA TOWN is kind of an open world. And it couldn’t be otherwise, since in this small, secret neighborhood squeezed between Little Italy and the Bowery, you can find almost any climate and setting, from the sea to the desert…
As in all the best cartoons, geography just depends on your personal point of view.
But it is in its metropolitan downtown that you can live the real Helluva Town experience. Feel free to explore the depraved Grin Gardens, the Fanciful Fiasco casino, the megaindustrial Shocktopia, the impossible Science Expo and its carousels, the lovecraftian Jellyfish Junction‘s docks and the underwater hood of Eldritch Bottom…
Animatore
Helluva Town - Lo Schermo dell'Animatore
L’Animatore è il principale narratore del gioco. Usa la sua creatività per tessere trame avvincenti, strampalate e memorabili, crea i personaggi secondari (TNG) e li interpreta, ed è sua responsabilità inanellare le avventure in campagne più lunghe e coinvolgenti.
Su questo schermo l’Animatore può consulare comode tabelle riassuntive per risolvere gli scontri dei Toon, modificare le armi, e creare i TNG rapidamente. Uno strumento indispensabile per proteggere note e appunti di gioco, velocizzare le sessioni e ridurre il tempo speso a consultare il manuale.
