Friday, October 12, 2018

More Fun Comics #51 - pt. 3


Betty, who helps Flying Fox search for her father, uses field glasses (a starting equipment item).

Rather than shoot down her "father" in a dogfight, FF uses a stunt to force his opponent to land. Landing on the island, FF has to fight his way out of a jam. He punches a gunman and, in a rare instance, the punch neither disarms nor knocks out his opponent. FF has to grapple and throw him on the next turn. Betty, meanwhile, trips the mobster disguised as her father and that does succeed at disarming him.

The disguise, when it's knocked off, is a mask that doesn't look like it would have fooled anyone. Worse, the villain's name turns out to be Bayou Borg, one of the worst villain names I've ever seen.

Detective Sergeant Carey is asked by an auto racer to investigate a death threat against him, then watches from the sidelines (with the binoculars from his starting equipment) when the racer's car crashes and the man dies. Remember, in the Golden Age, it's okay to fail and let innocent people die! The killer conveniently leaves two clues behind where he'd sniped the racer's tire -- his rifle and a wrench. Carey's sidekick Sleepy makes an expert skill check and appraises the wrench, realizing it is of foreign make (or an automatic skill check if it has foreign writing on it). When the killer tries to drive away in his race car, Carey has no compunction against shooting out the tire, the same way the first racer was killed (though the killer survives -- must have made a save vs. science!).

Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol has an unusual problem -- he encounters a group of bandits -- seven in number -- that he determines is too large for him and his sidekick Black Hawk to handle. Forced to resort to tactics, he uses the old "roll boulders down on them" trick -- but not to hit them (which is what most players would have done). Instead, the boulders are to knock out the ledge in front of and behind the bandits. If I had to referee that scene, I might use wrecking things for the boulders (maybe at O'Malley's level, or with a slight bonus), or I might just allow it outright because it's such a clever and nonviolent solution.

Black Hawk shows us that you can lasso a person falling past you from a higher ledge, that the rope does not swing the falling person into the cliff with enough force to do any serious damage, and that the momentum of the faller does not pull the lassoer over the ledge.

Bulldog Martin is asked to investigate a supposedly haunted house that a cute lady friend has inherited. It's a perfect low-level haunted house adventure, as most of it is just spooky noises that can be explained away (an open bottle left "under the eaves" so wind will blow into it, and a loud speaker hidden in the fireplace that plays "oooooo" noises). Bulldog finds the amplifier only by searching the walls and finding a concealed wire leading towards the fireplace.

It's obvious that the fake undead is digging for buried treasure in the yard because of all the upturned earth. Bulldog pretends to find the treasure, putting $2,000 of his own money at risk, and then gets robbed when the fake undead uses a secret door to take him by surprise. Bulldog has to spend time searching for the method of opening the secret door, even though he knows where it is. When he fails his roll, he decides to bash the secret door in with a sledge hammer instead. He wrecks through the secret door with such a good roll that the Editor rules that he can hit the fake undead guy hiding on the other side.

(Read at fullcomic.pro)


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