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Capes, Cowls and Villains Foul is a pen & paper roleplaying game about comic book style superheroes and their adventures, developed and published by Parsons, Kansas-based Spectrum Games. It officially debuted in the form of an illustrated 13-page PDF document released for free, called the ''Quickstart Preview'' in 2010. A full rulebook was released in 2012. It was written by Barak Blackburn, and uses a significantly modified version of a rules system that was first introduced in Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2 in late 2008. ''Capes, Cowls and Villains Foul'', abbreviated as ''CC&VF'' or ''CCVF'', adapts the narrative and open-ended trait system of ''Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2'' to the genre of superhero comics, and aims to make each roleplaying game session feel as much as possible like writing and editing a comicbook. Conceptually, it operates on the edge of the narrative school of game design, aiming to make characters and their abilities as flexible as possible while still maintaining its own system and dice roll mechanics. It is arguably among the most versatile superhero games that do not completely forgo the elements of dice, tables, or numbers. Tim Kirk's ''Hearts & Souls'' and Chad Underkoffler's ''Truth & Justice'', both written for the same genre, share similar goals and design features, but are unrelated publications that came out about five years before ''CC&VF''. While Cartoon Action Hour and ''CC&VF'' are closely related systems, both are de facto independent rules frameworks, and the texts in either are written from scratch to reflect the chosen genre, and the “parent medium” emulated (animated cartoon shows for CAH, printed comicbooks for CC&VF). For ''CC&VF'', the popular references to cartoon series, action figures and pop culture of the 1980s were cut in favor of terms and references taken only from the printed comic book medium. Unlike other games by Spectrum Games, ''CC&VF'' does not use a default time period, location, or style of superhero stories, but the majority of its illustrations and a few hints and allusions in the flavor text suggest a tribute to superhero comics of the early to late Silver Age, and maybe the Bronze Age. The author himself has mentioned on forums and blog entries that he is a big fan of Marvel comicbooks of the 1970s. == History of the Game == In late 2009, Cynthia Celeste Miller, who founded and runs Spectrum Games, was approached by Barak Blackburn, a long-time friend and fellow gamer, with the idea of publishing a superhero-themed version of the Cartoon Action Hour game. Blackburn had played and studied most of the earlier and contemporary roleplaying game systems published for the superhero genre, and found them either too restrictive or too rules-heavy, especially in character creation. Since the second edition of Cartoon Action Hour, published a little over a year earlier, was seen as too intimately tied to the 1980s toy-driven cartoon series like Masters of the Universe, Transformers, and G.I. Joe to match the concept, Miller and Blackburn quickly decided that their superhero book would be developed from the ground up as a new core system book rather than a supplement. Blackburn also wanted to mostly streamline and unify the crunchier aspects of character design from CAH: Season 2, such as the representation of companions, vehicles, gear, or magic spells. Cartoon Action Hour had always had the potential to accommodate lower- to mid-powered superhero characters or superhero parodies, and was already being used by some GMs for that purpose, but Spectrum Games made clear that the new project would be geared towards emulating the printed comicbooks, not animation or live-action television. This in fact took Miller's design back to its roots, because an early version of what would become the Cartoon Action Hour “first edition” rules appeared in 2001, in a free rules booklet in PDF form, under the name of “Four Colors,” or “4C” for short. ''4C'' was always meant to be a short beginner-friendly rulebook for superhero adventuring set in the world of the 1930s and 40s, a.k.a. the Golden Age of superhero stories. ''4C'' had introduced the d12 roll+modifier mechanic against a difficulty level (rolling high is good), as well as the concept of average human traits being given a value of zero, and no need to list or describe a trait that a character was average in. Just as in all editions of Cartoon Action Hour, as well as the related games ''Midway City'' and ''Tomorrow Knights'', a rating of zero in a trait did not cost any points in character creation. A rating of 4 was defined as “world-class” and marked the maximum possible for non-superpowered, mortal humans. While the superpowers creation system in ''4C'' was not completely freestyle or open-ended, it already waived the idea of a list or chapter specifically for powers and abilities, and instead was built on the idea that as a player, “you define every aspect of the power yourself” (''4C Player Guide'', pg. 4). Secondly, it introduced the concept of Oomph and Stunt Points, a currency of hero points that could significantly modify die rolls to give player-characters an edge. Those points became unified as “Oomph” in ''CAH: Season 2'', and appear in ''CC&VF'', re-christened “Editorial Control” or simply “EC.” Thirdly, the traditional distinction between raw attributes and skills was dropped. Lastly, ''4Cs legacy can be seen in the fact that the game uses the 12-sided die as its only die type, and rolling 1 is always a failure, while rolling 12 is always seen as a special, spectacular result (though never an automatic success). The name “Capes, Cowls and Villains Foul” also came with its share of history: According to the Designer's Notes section in Cartoon Action Hour's first book edition (2003), the title had been used half-jokingly by Cynthia Celeste Miller for a small superhero system that she had written as a project for Zan's Super Home website. That was a very condensed, non-illustrated game in blog or column format. Nothing was ever said about any plans to publish this as a commercial product, but it formed the prototype of what became the “Four Colors” rulebook (''CAH'', 2003 edition, pg. 107). Most of the rules developed under the name ''CC&VF'' soon resurfaced in CAH proper in 2002 and 2003, so that name is almost as old as the “Cartoon Action Hour” brand-name. When it was conveyed to the new project in 2010, the name was effectively re-activated rather than devised anew. Spectrum Games released the full rulebook for the game on the night of 4 August 2012, as a PDF, with the softcover printed book available a few weeks after. The book so far is a print on demand product, outside of mainstream book distribution. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Capes, Cowls & Villains Foul」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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