Cinemania! is supposed to be a fun, rules-light RPG simulating Hollywood and the world of movies. Players do not play characters; rather, they play actors who play roles in a movie. The game is supposed to play fairly quickly, and running different kinds of movies should provide for an exciting, constantly-changing gaming experience. Cinemania! is heavily based on Mark Hughes’ DUDE RPG, with some changes, the most significant of which are listed below:
Here is a rundown on the terms used in DUDE and the equivalent term
used in Cinemania!:
A mighty thanks is owed to Mark Hughes, creator of the extremely cool
DUDE role-playing game, who was very receptive to the idea for this
game when I discussed it with him via email. I also owe a good deal of
thanks to Gareth-Micheal Skarka, the creator of the original Hong Kong Action Theatre, for the idea of Roles and the bidding system,
and some other bits (there is ONLY ONE Gareth-Micheal Skarka, despite what any imposters claim on RPG.Net!).
Also thanks to Dan Pond (creator of Blur and Nameless) for the idea of Trump Suits. And thanks to
my lovely wife Fallon, for support and love.
Remember that in Cinemania!, you are playing an actor playing characters in movies. The type of Movies your Actor will be playing Roles in will change with every game, so keep that in mind and create an interesting Actor that you won’t get bored with too easily.
Steps in creating a character:
All Actors in Cinemania! have an attribute called Screen Presence. Screen Presence reflects your Actor’s on-camera style and presence; how well he plays his role and how strongly his personality shines through. It is not strictly acting ability – there are many people in Hollywood who can’t act well but who nonetheless have a strong on-screen presence.
All starting Actors have a Screen Presence of 3. Screen Presence basically determines the total number of cards that you hold in your hand.
All Actors also have an attribute called Star Power. Star Power shows your Actor’s off-screen influence in getting the Roles he wants, and changing the Script as the Movie unfolds.
All starting Actors have a Star Power of 6. Star Power determines the number of white chips you have to bid on Auditioning For A Role, and to change the outcome of the Script in various ways.
Advantages are things that give the Actor certain benefits in his on-screen performances or help his career. Flaws are things that penalize an Actor’s on-screen performance or hinder his career in some way. Beginning Actors get one Advantage for free. Flaws can be taken to get more Advantages, or to raise a starting Actor’s Screen Presence or Star Power.
Taking one Flaw will allow the player to choose one extra Advantage, to raise the Actor’s Screen Presence by 1, or raise Star Power by 2. Only beginning Actors can take Flaws.
Abilities are any skills, knowledge, talents, or supernatural powers that a Role possesses. This is important – Actors do NOT have Abilities, only Roles have Abilities. Abilities depend on the Role and the type of Movie the Director is running. Abilities are used when the Actor wants to attempt an Action.
Abilities will usually have a suit associated with them known as the Trump Suit. If an Actor plays a card from his hand that matches this suit, he can draw another card and add its value to the first card played. See Trump Suits for more information.
Some Abilities do not necessarily have to have a Trump Suit. For example, the Role of an android in a science-fiction movie may
have the Ability ‘Does not need to eat or breathe’. Sometimes Actors will want to try something that the Role does not have a specific
Ability for. If it is something that anyone could do, like drive a car in a high-speed chase or persuade someone, they can still play
cards, but they do not get a Trump Suit. This would also depend on the Movie – in a martial arts flick, for instance, everyone
would probably know kung fu or something similar. If it is something very difficult to do without skill or training, like nuclear physics,
then the Actor should suffer a penalty to the Action (-2 or more, depending on how the Director feels about it) as well as not getting the
Trump Suit. Of course, the Director can ignore this penalty if he feels like it – we are talking about Movies, so reality is
sometimes best left at the ticket counter.
A Role is the part that an Actor plays in a given Movie. The Director will prepare all Roles before the Movie starts, and the Actors will bid on the ones they want using white chips.
A Role consists of the character’s name, a brief description, the type of the Role (Leading Role or Supporting Role), and any Abilities the Role has. A Leading Role will have more Abilities than a Supporting Role; a suggested number is 4-5 for a Leading Role and 2-3 for a Supporting Role.
When creating Roles, the Director should come up with Roles and assign Abilities with the type of Movie he is directing in mind. Roles should also be distinct and interesting enough to where all the Actors can contribute to the Movie without overlapping each other too much or feeling left out. The Director should also keep in mind any Typecasting Flaws that the Actors have. Of course, depending on the type of Movie, a little creativity may be required – A swords-and-sorcery epic would not feature a wacky, eccentric scientist, but it could feature a wacky, eccentric sorcerer.
Once the players know what the Movie is about and see the available Roles, then they should audition for the Roles by bidding on which one they want their Actor to play.
All players write down which Role they wish their Actor to play and how many white chips they bid in secret, then give it to the director. The minimum bid must be 1 for a Supporting Role and 2 for a Leading Role. No player may bid more white chips than his Star Power. The number of white chips bid affects the Experience given at the end of the Movie.
The Director then reveals the player's Role choices and bids. If a given Role is not contested (that is, if only one player bid on it), then the player who bid on it gives the Director that many number of white chips and receives the Role for his Actor. If a Role is contested, then the Director should first offer the involved players the choice of another Role. If there is agreement, then the player(s) who backed off give the Director the appropriate number of white chips and get their new Role(s). The original bid can stand, or the player has the option of submitting a new bid. The only limits are the bid limits mentioned above.
If a Role is still contested, then the involved players keep their white chips, and they must now take place in an 'auction’. The player who bid the most initial white chips starts first; the Director should resolve who starts first in case of a tie. The first bid can be any amount, but must meet the minimum required bid (1 for a Supporting Role, and 2 for a Leading Role). Players bid in turns until there is a winner. The high bid gives the Director that number of white chips and receives the Role. The loser(s) then start over by choosing from any remaining Roles as before. If there is a tie, the Director will assign the Role as he sees fit. The process continues until all Actors are assigned a Role. The Director should keep track of the final number of white chips bid from each player, because it determines how much Experience the Actor receives at the end of the Movie.
Some Advantages and Flaws affect the bid – they only affect the bid itself; the base final bid
is used for assigning Experience. If an Advantage increases the bid, it means that the bid is worth that much more than the number of
white chips spent. If a Flaw reduces a bid, then this means that that number of extra white chips must be spent to attain a certain
bid – for example, if there is a –2 to bids, then three white chips count for a bid of one, and so on.
There are two kinds of chips (or other counters) used in Cinemania!; the colors mentioned here are the ones most common in poker chips, but any color substitutions are allowed as long as everyone knows which is which (for instance, you may have only red and green beads, and declare that green is white, and red is red).
At the start of a Movie, the Director gives each player a number of white chips equal to their character's Star Power. Actors usually do not start Movies with any red chips. At the end of each game session, each player must record how many of each kind of chip their characters have. At the start of each game session after the first in a Movie, the same number of chips recorded are taken back out.
At no point during a Movie may any player have more white chips than their Actor’s Star Power, nor more than twice as many red chips as their Actor’s Screen Presence. See White Chips and Red Chips for more information.
White chips are used for several things, each of which is given below:
Whenever a player succeeds in an Action check without using a white chip, they gain an additional white chip. Players will also earn additional white chips for completing Actions important to the Script, and for their Actor playing this Role well. See Actions and Experience.
As previously stated, at no point during a Movie may any player have more white chips than their Actor's Star Power. Each Actor starts a Movie with any white chips left over from Auditioning For A Role (if any). If the player has any extra white chips saved from previous Movies, he can replenish his Actor's supply of white chips up to his Star Power before the Movie starts. Any extra white chips must be set aside for the duration of the Movie, but they are still usable for improving the Actor through Experience and replenishing white chips for the next Movie.
Red chips represent wounds and damage an Actor has taken. When an Actor has as many red chips as their Screen Presence, they are knocked unconscious until after the fight is over, or the end of the current Scene, when they will discard one red chip if they survive. If a character ever receives more red chips than their Screen Presence, they are incapacitated and dying. Incapacitated Actors do not lose red chips unless they spend white chips or receive some sort of medical aid (if that’s in the Script). If an Actor ever has a total of twice their Screen Presence in red chips, they are dead for the duration of the Movie. Actors who die a heroic, tragic, or otherwise appropriate death have a chance to perform a Dying Soliloquy – the player must actually give the Actor’s dying speech, in character as the Role would demand. If the Director is pleased, then the player gets 3 white chips.
If this is an action Movie, then the Director can rule that Actors will discard one or more red chips automatically at the end
of the current Scene. This reflects the ‘reality’ of action movies, where the hero is beat up, shot, stabbed, and blown up, but
appears in the next scene with barely a scratch.
At the start of each game session, the Director shuffles the deck, and each player is dealt a number of cards equal to their Actor’s Screen Presence. Whenever a player's hand of cards reaches half their Screen Presence or less (rounding down), the player should refill their hand up to their Actor’s Screen Presence.
As previously explained, any Abilities that a Role has will have an associated suit, which allows the player to draw an extra
card if the first card played is of that suit. The Director should assign categories of actions to the suits based on the type of
Movie he is directing. However, the following chart can be used as a default in most situations.
| Suit | Action Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Diamonds | Physical | Anything involving strength, brute force, endurance, agility, aim, balance, movement, or precision - fighting, wrestling, firing a gun, picking a lock, performing Stunts, escaping from bonds, acrobatic moves, sleight of hand, running and climbing |
| Spades | Mental | Anything involving perception, reasoning, knowledge, memory, analysis, creativity, cleverness, or problem-solving skills – searching for clues, spotting hidden items, figuring out a riddle, programming a computer, deductive reasoning, writing a story, thinking quickly, using a scientific skill |
| Hearts | Emotional | Anything involving influence or persuasion, confidence and willpower - telling a convincing lie, getting someone to do something for you, seduction, intimidation, resisting temptation or fear, or just being ‘cool’ |
| Clubs | Spiritual | Using any magical, supernatural, or psychic powers; Karma, Fate or blind luck – it can be used in situations where there is no other way to succeed at an action |
An Action is anything you want your Actor to attempt during a Movie. When a player wishes to attempt an Action, the Director will tell him what Ability to use, if he has any that apply. There are five kinds of Actions:
Whenever a player is instructed to ”play a card”, the Actor's player picks a card from their hand (refilling their hand if they have fallen below half their hand), lays it out in front and calls out the value of the card. Ace through 10 have values of 1-10. On a face card, the player draws another card off the top of the deck (not out of the player's hand!); if that card is also a face card, the total value is 0; otherwise, the total value is equal to the second card's value (1-10), plus 1 if the first card was a Jack, 3 if the first card was a Queen, or 5 if the first card was a King. Playing a face card can be risky, but it's the only way to perform above and beyond the usual call of duty.
If the card played has the Trump Suit for the Ability being used, then the player draws another card and adds it to his final total. Face cards do not count for Trump Suit, and are used as detailed above. Note that white chips spent, Advantages, Flaws, and lack of an appropriate Ability can add or subtract from the final total.
“Actor vs. Movie” occurs whenever a player attempts to perform an Action where there is no living opposition. In such cases, the Director decides on the difficulty of the action, rated from 1 to 10 (or even higher), and the action succeeds if the player's final total has an equal or higher value than the difficulty, or fails if the final total has a lower value than the difficulty. If an “Actor vs. Movie” Action is crucial to the Script, then the Director can rightly refuse the player from spending a white chip for automatic success.
“Actor vs. Extra” occurs whenever a player attempts to perform an Action against an Extra, or the other way around. Extras never have cards of their own, so their attacks and actions are treated as difficulties for Actor defenses and actions. The difficulty is equal to the Extra's Screen Presence (though Extras often have a low Screen Presence, that is not always true - some have extraordinarily high Screen Presence, even though they're still just cannon fodder). If the player's final total has an equal or higher value than the Extra's Screen Presence, the player wins and/or the Extra's action fails; if lower, the player loses and/or the Extra's action succeeds.
“Actor vs. Actor” and “Actor vs. Feature Role” work the same way - two players, or a player and the Director, each play a card face down, then reveal them simultaneously. The one with the higher card wins, and ties may be replayed or may result in a deadlock, at the Director's option. Trump Suits works normally; whether or not a Feature Role gets to use Trump Suits is up to the Director.
“Extended Actions” are handled like one of the previous four types, but a single success is not enough; the Actor must try the task over and over, one try per turn, until the number of successes the Director requires have been accumulated. A failure in an extended task is usually just a delay; but if the next task check is also a failure, the task goes catastrophically wrong. Defusing a bomb is the stereotypical example.
Remember, whenever a player succeeds in an Action check without using a white chip, they gain an additional white chip.
Stunts are exciting and dangerous Actions that add color to a Movie. They can occur in any sort of Movie, but are most frequently found in action-adventure Movies. Stunts are basically “Actor vs. Movie” Actions, but the difficulty should be a little higher than the average Action. The main reason that an Actor would want to attempt a Stunt (besides the fact that it is in the Script) is because successfully doing so will net extra white chips. How many depends on the difficulty; a suggested number is one white chip for every 3 points of difficulty. This amount is instead of the usual white chip received, and spending a white chip to successfully complete a Stunt will not result in any bonus white chips.
An Actor can choose to call for a Stunt Double if he wishes. The difficulty of the Stunt is reduced by 2, but the player only gets
one white chip for success, regardless of the difficulty (if the difficulty is less than 4, he gets NO white chips).
A Scene is basically a series of related events and goals occurring in the same location that convey a unified element of a Movie’s story. The Director will set up each Scene and describe it to the Actors, including the setting and the general situation, and any scripted goals or obstacles if appropriate.
Combat, and all dramatic action, occurs in ”turns”, which can vary in length, depending on the pacing of a Scene, from 1 second to hours. During each turn, the following sequence of play happens:
If the Director feels like it, the direction of play (clockwise swapped for counterclockwise, left swapped for right) can be reversed after every turn, every combat, every Scene, or whenever it seems appropriate. To reflect the giant inflated ego that all Actors have, the Director can let players declare and act in order of their Screen Presence. Ties should be resolved using the usual method (if clockwise, player closest to the dealer clockwise goes first, and so forth).
As mentioned in Actions, Extras and the Movie do not get cards of their own. When an Extra attacks (or uses any other Ability on) an Actor or a Feature Role, the character with cards plays a card(s). If the Extra succeeds, the Actor or Feature Role takes the damage or other effect of the attack; if not, the attack fails.
Actors and Feature Roles who attack other Actors or Feature Roles both play a card(s); if the attacker wins, the defender is hit; if the defender wins, the attack misses.
When an attack hits, it only does 1 damage, unless it is an Ability, in which case it does 2 (or more, if the Director says so)
points of damage. If an Actor has an Ability that reduces damage, like body armor, subtract that now (but damage never goes below
1). Points of damage are given to the target as red chips. See Red
Chips for the effects of gaining red chips.
Actors have the power to edit or rewrite the Script, either at the beginning of a Scene or during the action. To do this, the player tells the Director what changes he wants to make, and spends a certain amount of white chips based on how extensive the Director thinks the change or request is. The number of white chips should generally range from 2 (for small changes) to 4 or more (for major Script rewrites). A small change would be something like adding additional Actions or dialogue that has no real effect on the Script, an unarmed Actor conveniently ‘finding’ a gun during a gunfight, or ‘editing out’ a failed Action and re-doing it. A medium change would be something like a small change to the setting of the Scene, adding additional Actions or dialogue that has a significant effect on the Script, slightly lowering the number of bad guy Extras attacking, or convincing the Director that you suddenly have an Ability appropriate to your Role that you did not have before. A major change would be something that would cause a major change in the plot of the Movie, like major changes to a Scene’s setting or even removing a particular Scene or a large portion of a Scene.
The Director can refuse the changes outright, or he can resolve it as an “Actor vs. Feature Role” Action. An Actor MUST have a Star Power of at least 7 to be able to do this. White chips can be spent as usual. If the Actor wins, the Script Rewrite takes effect; if he loses, the Movie goes on as planned.
The main reason to do Script Rewrites is to get extra white chips. If the Actor succeeds at the Script Rewrite, and the
Director and/or the other Actors like it, then the player earns one more white chip than it cost him to do the Script Rewrite.
At the end of a Movie, each Actor will receive a number of white chips based on his final bid in Auditioning For A Role and how
well he played his Role. The Director has the final word on this reward, but the other players should feel free to comment. Use the
following table:
| Actor played the Role… | White chips earned |
|---|---|
| Poorly | One-half amount bid |
| Adequately | Amount bid |
| Very Well | One and one-half amount bid |
| Outstanding | Twice amount bid |
If any of these amounts result in a fraction, then round up.
White chips can be spent at the end of each Movie to improve your Actor. You can increase
Screen Presence, Star
Power, or get
extra Advantages. You can even remove Flaws with the
Director's express permission. The following chart gives the cost of each:
| Improvement | Cost in white chips |
|---|---|
| +1 to Screen Presence | Current rating |
| +2 to Star Power | Current rating |
| New Advantage | 6 |
| Removing a Flaw | 12 and Director’s express permission |
Any extra white chips left over will be available for use during the next
movie, with the limitations given under White Chips.
The following optional rules can add excitement and spice to a game of Cinemania!
The Director can feel free to give a bonus to a player who does a particularly good job when narrating an Action, for an exciting description, a clever solution for a problem, or playing his Role well. The Director can give the Actor a +1 or more to his final total, or let him succeed automatically at an ”Actor vs. Movie” Action without spending a white chip. The Director can also feel free to throw in bonus white chips to Actors that perform particularly well during a Scene.
After the Movie ends, the players may vote for the ”best Actor/Actress” award, which doubles that player's white chips earned from Experience. Players vote in a secret ballot, and may vote for themselves (this is Hollywood - narcissism is their religion), and may attempt to bribe each other, with white chips or anything else.
Alternately, after the players have completed several Movies, you can hold a complete Academy Awards ‘ceremony’, with awards for different categories. Players vote as above, and the winner in each category can be awarded a certain amount of white chips.
After an Actor attains a Screen Presence of 10, or a Star Power of 20 (whichever comes first), they can be said to have attained Superstar status. A Superstar is eligible for the following benefits: