It's been a non-stop first few months, hasn't it? We've been away for a bit working on a number of things, among them the pledge manager. We're not quite ready to launch the PM just yet, but we do have some revised dates to share:
Pledge Manager (PM) Opens: Between March 30th and April 3rd
PM Orders Lock: May 1
Late Pledges Close: May 1
PM Cards Charged: May 11
PM Addresses Lock: TBD (Closer to fulfillment)
Fulfillment Begins: TBD (Estimated: December 2026)
As always, a small number of backers will be randomly selected to be among the first backers invited. Once we confirm everything is good to go, we will fully open the pledge manager. Be on the lookout for a future campaign update and the invite email.
Toon @ GAMA
Quite a few of us made it out to Louisville, KY, this year for GAMA. While we were waiting for our very delayed flight to Atlanta, Irene was happy to share a quick report on the Toon games at GAMA.
Games at GAMA were fun! Steve and I were running an adventure by Doc Cross and it was sufficiently wacky. Players very entertainingly built something that may resemble a house if you squint very, very hard.
Others came up for a chat about the game rather than to sit down and play. Several folks expressed adoration for the original Toon, and a few who approached us had backed our crowdfund.
Here's a photo of Steve and our table from the first game night:
Sounds like everyone had a great time, and we were happy to see excitement about the games we brought along, including Toonand a full production copies ofMunchkin Second Edition and Brigand's Bluff, our new pirate deduction game.
Toon Tales and Toon Ace Catalog Updates
We're happy to report that both Toon Tales and Toon Ace Catalog will be available in the BackerKit in PDF format! Both of these files posed an exceptional amount of resistance to meeting our quality requirements for these types of projects. Scanning doesn't always go well, but this time it went well enough for us to go just a bit further.
Toon Tales and Toon Ace Catalog will also have softcover options available during the pledge manager!
Don't miss the return of these first edition enhancements.
If you have any questions please make sure to leave a comment below, or visit our help page for additional assistance.
Thank you all so very much for coming out to support the return of Toon after more than 40 years! 'Overtime Mode' was enabled for this campaign, and we're happy to see that the pledges continued to roll in – the campaign stayed open for an additional 55-minutes! With nearly 3,200 backers, we're excited to see so many new faces, and tons of returning animators.
The team responsible for editing, layout, and getting all the internal bits together are still working hard, and we expect that to be the case for a bit longer. We will keep you up-to-date on the various major milestones we pass as we get closer to sending everything to print.
While the editorial and production teams are plugging away at the book, the pledge manager will also receive its build-out. What follows are the first set of important pledge manager dates to be mindful of:
Pledge Manager (PM) Opens: Between February 23-27
PM Orders Lock: April 30
PM Cards Charged: May 11
PM Addresses Lock: TBD (Closer to fulfillment)
Fulfillment Begins: TBD (Estimated: December 2026)
These dates may shift as needed due to delays or unexpected progress. We will continue to provide regular updates throughout the next phases of the process, and you're welcome to leave a comment or contact us via our help page.
Thank you again for your support and for helping us fund our 100th campaign! We're looking forward to sharing some more great news about progress in the future.
- Darryll
(PS: Did you miss the campaign but still want to get in on the fun? Late Pledges are open until we lock orders April 30th!)
We realized this just recently, after one of our Ogre fans (who diligently keeps a robust tracking dataset) informed us of this achievement. After a bit of back and forth – and counting through my own spreadsheets – we confirmed it: Toon Second Edition is indeed our 100th funded campaign!
Our very first crowdfunding campaign was all the way back in 2012, with Ogre Designers Edition. Ogre Designer's Edition made a pretty big splash, and since that day we've run campaigns for The Fantasy Trip, Car Wars, Munchkin, Ogre, various Mystery Boxes, dice games, t-shirts, and so much more. All told, more than 120,000 backers have joined in to support our new ideas and to help bring them to life. We're so very thankful for all of the support that we've received over the last 99 campaigns, and we are more than thrilled with the response to the Second Edition of Toon as our 100th.
There are less than 24 hours remaining to get your pledge in while Toon Second Edition is active on BackerKit. Hurry and reserve your copy before 2 pm Thursday!
You all know Margaret Weis. With co-author Tracy Hickman, she created and wrote the Dragonlance books – and the story is continuing. You will be seeing more Dragonlance!
Well, it turns out that she played a lot of Toon, back in the day, and she was kind enough to send us this for the back cover of the new edition . . .
Every Saturday my TSR friends, my kids, and I would get together to play games. Having worked with D&D all week, the last RPG we wanted to play was D&D. Our favorite game was Toon, from Steve Jackson Games. We created such epic characters as Quackqueline Onassis – a psychotic duck in a pillbox hat. Other party members included the Road Runner, Carmen Miranda, Dr. Who and Darth Vader. One game was titled “Bring Me the Head of Uni the Unicorn.” Fun times! Thanks, Steve Jackson!
Thank you, Margaret! All I can say is that I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that game . . .
We're very happy with the response, and with less than 72-hours remaining we are excited to see where we end up. Thank you for joining us on this silly adventure!
We hope you had a splendid holiday filled with memorable moments with family and friends – and maybe some gaming thrown in! Our team is also back "in the office" after the holidays, and we've been finalizing a few details that we are now in a better position to share with you.
Toon Character Sheet Preview
There is a lot to unpack for a single sheet! For those with a deep understanding of the first edition, you will notice some distinct changes throughout the sheet. We've been through a few iterations and designs, but this is nearly ready to go once it passes final polish. Big thanks to Irene for the initial design and all of the hard work on getting this new character sheet ready!
Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Toon Tales, Toon AceCatalog PDFs scheduled to return!
Over the past few weeks, we've seen a lot of chatter about some of the classic Toon files from the first edition. Many of these files are available on our webstore, Warehouse 23, but as several people pointed out, neither Toon Tales nor the Toon Ace Catalog was among the first-edition PDFs. Steven Marsh will soon begin the time-consuming steps to prepare these.
What exactly does this mean? We don't have these two entries in digital format, so we'll scan them. We can get started immediately because Steven has personal, unread archival copies that he'll be sacrificing to make these scans. (I just learned minutes ago that he's finished the first half of the raw scan of Toon Tales!) He'll receive additional copies from the Warehouse 23 vaults, either to replace his own editions or as backups in case his scans contain any imperfections. (He's quite persnickety when it comes to making the best scans possible.)
The team is excited to begin the process of making Toon Tales and Toon Ace Catalog available again. If the timing works, we will include them in the upcoming pledge manager; otherwise, we will point you to Warehouse 23 when they are ready.
Amazing Support!
We've received amazing support so far. Nearly 2,500 Toon fans and future Animators have joined in so far, and we still have more than a week left! We're also thrilled about the various tabletop news-aligned sites and discussion forums sharing the news about Toon Second Edition.
We want to highlight the 1Shot Adventures YouTube video. Check it out if you are interested in a good watch regarding the history of the Toon RPG.
Thank you again for all of your support. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below or visit our help site to send us a message.
