Gen Con 2026 is in the books, and you might be excited to learn that both Steve and Irene held their own Toon events this year, complete with pre-gen characters and all!
I'll let Steve tell you all about it!
I ran two Toon events at Gen Con. I'd love to tell you ALL about the games, but I don't want to spoil anything!
I was using the second edition rules, but the only way that affected the players (some were new, but some were experienced Tooners) was in the character sheets I handed out. There are a manageable 12 skills, and not 21 or whatever it was in the first edition. I don't pretend to have the rules memorized, but Toon is intuitive enough that I could easily be Animator without putting the book on the table. Instead of rolling on the occasional Silly Stuff table, I just said the first thing that came into my head, and that worked perfectly well . . .
At any rate, there sure were incidents that I can describe without giving away the plot! - A character summoned Cthulhu and sent the Great Old One downtown to eat his father. (And that was what happened, too.) - A baby was enclosed in a bubble (LONG story). A character whipped a magnifying glass out of her back pocket and tried to focus the sun to pop the bubble. Instead, it heated up the air in the bubble, and the baby floated up and away and out of the plot. - A loose rake was stepped on so often (WHAM) that it seemed prudent to draw it on the game map. (I could tell you why we were using a game map with Toon, but then I'd have to focus the sun's rays on you to make you forget.) Nevertheless, the players continued WHAM to forget that the rake WHAM was there WHAM. So their characters forgot too WHAM. - A character had the special power "Snerk," which benefits them any time the player makes the Animator laugh out loud. Well, this player found my funny bone, and I kept forgetting not to laugh. And did they abuse this mighty power? Of course. Repeatedly. WHAM. - A player (not even the same one) referred to a grumpy NPC badger as "president of the HOA". Somebody else said "Hole Owner's Association". All right – that goes into the adventure for real, when it's printed!
So I had a great time, and the players were smiling a bit, too. Win-win.
- Steve Jackson
A quick picture from Gen Con with pregen characters.
A Peek at Layout
Last update, we mentioned providing a glimpse of the current layout, and I was able to sneak a picture or two your way. Check out the in-progress layout below! Remember, this is all still very much in progress and still needs to go through reviews and approvals. Let us know what you think in the comments.
We're getting closer and closer each day to holding the pre-mortem final review and uploading the files to the printer. The ultimate goal here is to deliver some zany and wacky fun to your gaming table and we're almost there! You can expect to hear more about the pre-mortem review and printing in a future update.
As always, if you have any questions please leave a comment or visit our help page to leave us a message.
It’s so great to see you all again! It’s been a bit since you received an update, and we’re happy we have a few things to chat about - the most important being that we’re now ready to open the pledge manager and send out invites! We also have a few updates on the current status of Toon Second Edition and on convention attendance.
Pledge Manager Opening
It’s time to open the doors! Yesterday we sent out a small test batch of invites to 5% of backers. We want to thank those backers for working through the process and providing enough info to verify that everything is ready to go!
Just can't wait to receive your email invite? Click here!
Pledge Manager Timeline
Here is the current projected timeline for the remaining key dates:
Pledge Manager Opens: 6/18/26
Pledge Manager Orders Locked: 8/10/26-8/15/26
Pledge Manager Orders Charged: 8/10/26-8/15/26
Late Pledging and Pledge Upgrades End: 8/10/26
The above dates are only estimates and may be modified as needed.
Upgrading Your Pledge & Late Pledging
$1 Backers can still upgrade to another pledge through 8/10/26. If you’d like a quick refresher on how to upgrade your pledge, click here to read the BackerKit help page.
We’ll close up late pledging the same day we lock pledges, on August 10th. Get your late pledge in for Toon Second Edition!
Steve and Irene had a blast at GAMA this year, playtesting Second Edition rules, and they are gearing up for round 2 at Gen Con! Altogether, they will be hosting three playtest sessions that are sure to be full of absolute hijinks and jam-packed with nonsense. We’re looking forward to seeing many of you at this year's con, and we can’t wait to talk to you there.
As for the main show, the team responsible for getting Toon Second Edition to print is currently hard at work doing just that. Well . . . maybe not this week, since a few vacations aligned at the same time, but we are charging forward through the process toward internal review. I’ll check to see if we can smuggle out some “in-progress” layout shots for you in the next update.
We’ll be back soon with more. If you have a question, please leave a comment below or visit our help page for additional assistance.
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!
