Saturday Morning Heroes
In Saturday Morning Heroes you play characters in a Saturday morning adventure cartoon like those from the 1980’s and 1990’s. This game supports two to five players and one GM.
This is a game about a group of heroes coming together, growing through adversity, and bonding into a team, not a game about becoming more powerful. 
Inspiration: Captain Planet, Gargoyles, Powderpuff Girls, Silverhawks, Talespin, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thundercats, Transformers, Sailor Moon, Jem and the Holograms, Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears, GI Joe, Voltron, Power Rangers, Dungeons & Dragons (TV series), and Pirates of Dark Water
World and Character Creation
During the first session the players and GM create the show premise, define important facts about in-game world, and create their characters. This should take about two hours. 
The death of PCs is not on the table. Everyone should agree on whether or not the death of NPCs and villains is on the table. Whatever you agree on, stick to it. 
This is a game of “yes, and”. If someone states a truth about the world do your best to accept it and build on it in interesting ways. This is intended to be rated for a general audience. If you think your group may veer into heavier topics, please consider introducing X-cards to your table.
World Creation
The GM should ask specific players the following questions:
	1.	Why is the world broken?  
	2.	Do your heroes have a theme or shared explanation for their powers? 
	3.	How did your heroes meet? 
The GM will be using this answer to plan the introductory episode, so the meeting may happen in that episode. 
	4.	What is the name of your show and what is the name of your team? 
	5.	Who does your character most fear? 
The GM may ask multiple players this question and use the answers to seed ideas on villains. 
	6.	Are there any special places your characters meet? 
Some players will need to answer multiple questions. 
Character Creation
Character sheet:
Character Name:
Player Name:
Show Name:
Aspects
	1.	 						 
	2.	 						 
	3.							 
	4.	 						 
	5.	 						 
Bonds
	<one line per other PC>			bond rating: <-- on each bond line>	

Fill in the Player Name and Show Name first. Fill in your Character Name at any time during character creation.
Aspects
Your character gets five aspects, some determined by your team’s theme. An aspect is a word or phrase that describes something about your character. They will be the most fun if they can be interpreted in both positive and negative ways. 
The character’s first aspect should be the team theme. If you are a team of ninja rabbits your first aspect would be “ninja rabbit”. The character’s second aspect should describe how their character is a variation on that theme. 
The character’s third aspect should be the role the character will play in the team. Players should agree on which roles they will take, with no two PCs taking the same role. Some roles may go unpicked, but someone should always choose the Leader role. 
Roles:
	1.	Leader 
The Leader is the person who the team turns to in uncertain times. Often they are the most devoted to fixing the world. They may have some personal stake in this goal. The Leader is not necessarily a great leader at the beginning of the season. They need to grow and bond with the other PCs to come into their full potential. 
	2.	The Ace 
The Ace is the second-in-command. They contrast to the leader in temperament and personality (their players should agree on how) but also have complementary strengths or abilities. The Ace often has a surfeit of belief in their skills and their ability to solve problems alone. They will likely butt heads with the Leader over decisions and will need to grow to trust the Leader’s judgment and the skills of the other members of the team.
	3.	The Brains 
The Brains is the smartest member of the group. They are the one who handles the bulk of the tech, gadgets, science, or magic. When they are placed in a tight spot they will usually be able to technobabble their way out of it, often using the skills of other members of the team to make McGyver-esque plans work. The Brains is often not very good with people. This will make their eventual connections to the rest of the team all the more precious. They are sometimes physically weak or shy as well.
	4.	The Brawn 
The Brawn is the most physically able character. They may be stronger, faster, or more agile than the other characters or in some other way physically exceptional. The Brawn is often portrayed as naive, lumbering, poor at understanding human society, and slow to grasp simple plans or concepts. The Brawn has the most potential to shine as a character with hidden depths who grows over the series. The Brawn does not need to be irredeemably stupid.
	5.	The Heart 
The Heart works best as the fifth member to a team, but if you have other characters who are somewhat anti-social, the Heart can fit into a smaller team. They are the quickest to understand the fears, dreams, and insecurities of others and often soothe conflicts. The Heart is sometimes better with animals and may have an animal companion. The Heart tends to have similar flaws to the Brawn and Brains, being naive, shy, or physically weak. They generally grow in confidence and competence over time.
You should select your character’s remaining two aspects based on how you want them to stand out from the rest of the group. These can encapsulate strengths and powers, like “laser vision” or a “wolf companion”, more neutral facets, like “mage” or “last unicorn in the world”, or classically negative traits, like “naive” or “very shy”. Discuss your choices with the other players and try not to overlap too much. 
Bonds
Players should go around the table writing bonds until each PC has one bond with each other PC. Starting bonds encapsulate the tension between your characters and hint at how the relationships may grow or change over time. 
Bonds should be in the form:
<Character> <something neutral or negative about the character> but <something neutral or positive about the character>. 
Each bond has a rating, which starts at zero.
Playing the Game
Series Layout
Once character creation is finished, the GM should lay out the ordering of the season. Each season is made up of self contained episodes. There is always an introductory episode at the beginning and a resolution episode at the end of the season. 
There are character focus episodes that focus more strongly on the growth of individual PCs. Usually there will be one character focus episode for each PC. If you have only two or three players you may choose to do two character focus episodes per PC. 
There are also bond focus episodes that develop the relationship between two of the PCs. There will be one bond focus episode per PC: each PC is part of the bond in two episodes. The easiest way to arrange this is make a circle around the table and do an episode for each space between players. If you have two players both bond episodes will focus on their PCs bond. 
PCs can bond and grow in episodes that are not focused on them. Focus episodes simply shine the spotlight on certain PCs.
There will be six to twelve episodes total. Each episode will be two hours long and you may play more than one in a sitting.
Writing Episodes
Episodes are relatively self contained. Some aspects of the world development may be dropped between the focus episodes. Most episodes revolve around something that is wrong and how fixing it forces the characters and their bonds to grow and change. 
Each episode revolves around one big problem and several small consequences of that problem. This includes but is not limited to: physical conflict, emotional or social conflict, searching for knowledge, searching for people or objects, and chasing after or running away from NPCs. 
Each episode is made up of five scenes that build up the problem and let the PCs discover what is wrong. The first scene introduces the problem or hints that there is a problem. Scenes two through four let the PCs explore the problem and learn it’s full scope. In the last scene of the episode the players should resolve the problem.
Each scene includes one challenge for the PCs to overcome. Whether or not the PCs overcome the challenge, there should always be some path to further reveal the problem and continue the story.
The GM will aggressively frame scenes to be the interesting parts of the story which would be shown on camera in a show. Connecting actions will be briefly described but not played as scenes. 
At any point between scenes the GM may narrate brief cut scenes of things happening away from the PCs. These are best used to build foreshadowing of the problem or the villain’s plans.
The GM should go into an episode knowing the big problem and what scenes are likely to take place to explore and resolve that problem. The players control how their characters tackle things, so the GM should be ready to bend the scenes around how PCs choose to attack it. The GM’s goal should be to make an interesting story that fits into the genre. 
If the GM doesn’t have ideas for episodes, they should ask the players leading questions to inspire the problem and villain or develop the world further.
The introductory episode should tell the story of how the characters came to be a team, how they got their exceptional qualities (any theme aspects), and what, if any, quests they have to change the world. The main villain for the season can also be introduced in this episode. You can instead introduce the main villain to the players via cut scenes and only hint at them to the PCs.
Character focus episodes should deal with problems that are particularly important or dangerous to the character the episode is focusing on. 
Bond focus episodes should involve aspects of the two characters in the bond that put them in conflict or show how they differ in their approaches.
The resolution episode should bring up the larger conflict that is driven by the main villain and give the PCs a chance to thwart them.
You only need all the PCs for the first and last episode. If you have players who are unable to attend every session, you can reorder the focus episodes around their absences. 
Playing Episodes
At the beginning of an episode the GM should mention what type of episode this is and if they episode is focusing on any specific PCs. The GM should also give the episode title. Then the GM will frame the first scene. Not all characters must be present in each scene, but never make a PC sit out more than one scene in a row. If the party splits up, alternate between scenes with each group.
Each scene has a central conflict. This conflict should be obvious to the players. The players only roll dice when the PCs try to resolve the central conflict. The GM should tell the PCs what the target number is to resolve the conflict and the players will only get one opportunity to resolve the conflict in this scene.
When players try to resolve the conflict they describe how they use their aspects in their solution. For each aspect a player uses, they get one six-sided die. If a PC is working alone to solve the problem they then double their number of dice (multiple PCs can try to resolve the conflict alone simultaneously). If PCs are working together to solve a problem they each add dice equal to their bond rating(s) for the other PC(s) they are working with. The players roll their dice and each count up their successes (a roll of 5 or 6 on a die = 1 success). 
If a player’s number of successes:
	•	>= the target number: they resolve the conflict as intended 
	•	>= half the target number: they improve the situation or learn something useful that can help the group; they may add one success to the player they are cooperating with who has the highest number of successes 
	•	< half the target number: they complicate the situation in some interesting way 
If the PCs fail to resolve the conflict in the final scene of an episode, this is a two part episode! The second half will make the problem worse and give the PCs another chance to fix it. 
Episodes should move quickly and be resolved in one to two hours. 
Changing Bonds
At the end of an episode each player may choose to rewrite one of their bonds to better reflect how their connection and opinion about another character has changed. When you rewrite a bond, add one to your bond rating for that character.