The Troubleshooters: 60's Cartoon Themed RPG

With influences like Tintin, Scooby-Doo, and The Man from UNCLE, The Troubleshooters is a "new action-adventure tabletop roleplaying game in the style of Franco-Belgian comics" from Swedish designer Krister Sundelin. The first adventure is called The U-Boat Mystery (which gives an idea of the tone we're talking here). Oh, and your character sheet is a passport. Coming to Kickstarter on...

With influences like Tintin, Scooby-Doo, and The Man from UNCLE, The Troubleshooters is a "new action-adventure tabletop roleplaying game in the style of Franco-Belgian comics" from Swedish designer Krister Sundelin. The first adventure is called The U-Boat Mystery (which gives an idea of the tone we're talking here). Oh, and your character sheet is a passport.

linbana.png


Coming to Kickstarter on April 7th, with a release this summer in English and in French, it'll be published by Helmgast AB and Modiphius. Here's the full announcement:

"Helmgast AB proudly presents The Troubleshooters, a new action-adventure tabletop roleplaying game in the style of Franco-Belgian comics.

Imagine a world where you travel the world like Tintin, unmask heinous villains like Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Gang, unravel mysteries like Nancy Drew, do heists like Carmen Sandiego, stop evil masterminds like Spirou and Fantasio, solve crimes like The Saint, and even catch spies like The Man from UNCLE. That’s the world of The Troubleshooters.

In The Troubleshooters, the characters are drawn into other people’s problems and band together to solve them. Ranging from athletes and explorers to journalists and mad scientists, the characters will travel all over Europe and across the world. Explore exotic locations, glittering metropoles, lost temples, or valleys that time forgot, and face spies, wild beasts, mafia, villains, and the nefarious graf von Zadrith, the leader of the secret organisation the Octopus!

Written by Krister Sundelin, author of the acclaimed Swedish roleplaying games “Järn” and “Hjältarnas tid”, The Troubleshooters takes you back to the mid-1960s in a world of fast-paced adventure and fun!

The Troubleshooters Core Book will be the first in a line of products for the game together with the adventure The U-Boat Mystery, followed by adventures and background books. The text for the core book is already written and has been playtested for a year and a half, and the text for the first adventure is almost complete.

The Troubleshooters is planned for release in the summer of 2020 in English and French, with a crowdfunding campaign starting April 7th. Modiphius Entertainment will be handling the distribution of the English edition into retail stores from the Autumn 2020. Arkhane Asylum will translate The Troubleshooter to French."


According to the website, "The Troubleshooters will take the characters all over Europe and across the world. They will find themselves at exotic locations, glittering metropoles, deep in the wilderness, or even in cozy country villages, where they face horrible foes: spies, wild beast, mafia, mad scientists, villains, and relatives!"

It's a percentile dice system, with a passport for a character sheet -- "The system is based on d% task checks against a skill value. With skills, abilities, complications and a Story Point economy, the system is designed from the ground up to fit the genre. Skills, abilities and complications are recorded in the character’s passport."

Screen Shot 2020-03-11 at 4.08.26 PM.png
 

log in or register to remove this ad


log in or register to remove this ad


Ulfgeir

Hero
The latest update (nr 6) on the kickstarter includes a video about character creation for those that are interested. If I recall correctly, you can also create characters in a template-less way. Little bit more work, but not by much. That was the second video-interview that Andy from The Wee Gamers & The Bunker Club did the creator of the game.
 

Ulfgeir

Hero
Quoted from another thread...
Interested to hear a sentence or two about how you felt Troubleshooters went? Or maybe over on the Troubleshooters thread, which I am watching also...

I think it went relatively well. Especially since I hadn't prepped properly. I had to work during the day, but sent out the characters to the players early, and when I got home it was time to play. Since I was asked the same day to GM, that left no time for prepping...

Did I get every rule right? Probably not, but everyone had fun, which is the important part. I might have had an advantage here as I wrote the scenario, and I have GM'd it once before (the creator of the game was one of the player's at that time), I reread it relatively recently to play if it was needed, and since I worked with the creator of the game, we have been talking a lot about the game, and the adventure.

We played it with 5 characters (all of the example-characters except Frida). I might have taken it a bit easy on them in the combat on a certain Island.
 

Eyes of Nine

Everything's Fine
I might have had an advantage here as I wrote the scenario

Yeah, that might give you a bit of a leg up :) I'm hoping to get in on the kickstarter, as the source material is right up my alley (glances at bookshelf with Jo Zette and Jocko books next to entire run of Tintin...)
 

Ulfgeir

Hero
Yeah, that might give you a bit of a leg up :) I'm hoping to get in on the kickstarter, as the source material is right up my alley (glances at bookshelf with Jo Zette and Jocko books next to entire run of Tintin...)

One thing that is important in The Troubleshooters, is that the players accept the built in tropes in the genre. Like people get knocked out, seldom real injurirs, and little death. Weird Science, and that you have a passport, and will travel. :)
 

Eyes of Nine

Everything's Fine
One thing that is important in The Troubleshooters, is that the players accept the built in tropes in the genre. Like people get knocked out, seldom real injurirs, and little death. Weird Science, and that you have a passport, and will travel. :)

Good tip... And does the game address ways to handle the sometimes problematic content of the original source material?
 

Ulfgeir

Hero
I think it does. I tried looking for it now, but just skimmed through all the material and could not find it. I remember that in the guidelines for writing adventures was included that we should avoid stereotypes, and handle people and religions with respect.

I would suggest either asking on the kickstarter or the Facebook-page, and then the game's creator can give you an official answer. I will poke him about this as well, cause it is something that should be in the FAQ's imo.

Here is a question that was asked about diversity:
"Will there be some racial diversity in the core rule book for adventurers etc. E.g. African, Chinese etc.? "

The answer:
"The core book will focus mainly on Europe, France and Paris, but since it is a game of fantasy tourism, there is background information for among others Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong and Kyoto. Character creation is gender and ethnicity agnostic. "
 
Last edited:

Ulfgeir

Hero
Good tip... And does the game address ways to handle the sometimes problematic content of the original source material?

And here is another quote from the creator of the game addressing said issue:

"Just because we're inspired by comics with a past content which today is questionable doesn't mean that we have to faithfully reproduce that content. We're making this game in 2020, not 1930, and our 1960s has a flippin' Concorde in it – not exactly historically accurate." ;)
 

Fenris-77

Small God of the Dozens
Supporter
One of my boys was reading some Tintin yesterday and was really taken aback by the depiction of African people. He looked over at me and said Holy cow is this racist! I was never worried that this game would reproduce that element of the comics though.
 

Related Articles

Remove ads

Remove ads

Top