Funny Pages #6

This is the Sapphire Eye of Sehkmet. You can tell the silver-tongued characters by the size of their word balloons.  Should "silver-tongued" be a stunt?  Cash it in and you get an auto success on a encounter reaction roll or SCM recruitment roll?  It bears consideration.

Every Editor/Dungeon Master/Game Referee runs into this problem sooner or later.  You want a dying messenger to deliver a cryptic, suspenseful clue to the Heroes, but what to do the players do?  Instead of saying "You're wounded!  Speak to me!" they say "Don't speak, just rest.  Here, I've got a first aid kit..." or they just cast a cure spell and fix the problem even sooner!  Now there's no shortage of information they can get out of your dying messenger.

Hideouts & Hoodlums, at least, gives the Editor the out of the save vs. plot mechanic.  You want to violate the tropes of adventure fiction and save a guy clearly meant to die to service the plot?  Roll for it!

Reading the craziness that is The Stone Age usually hurts my brain, but at least this time we get a possible gaming tip out of it.  I've previously discussed what to do with skunks in the game, but here we see skunks being used to trigger morale saves.

Loony Louie the Fire Chief buys a magic trophy, a -- what should we call that?  A Flute of Rope Tricks?  Playing it allows him to control the movement of rope or something shaped like a rope, like a fire hose, within 5' of him.  H&H players should not normally expect to be able to buy magic trophies on the street, though.

Now, you and I both know that there is no reason Jimmy and Jean could not have simply sat in their car and waited for the storm to pass.  It is simply a trope of fiction that, when it is stormy outside, you must seek shelter in a strange building, no matter how creepy and suspicious it is.  So, Heroes should have to save vs. plot to resist seeking shelter when storms come.



(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)