Feature Funnies #11

"Off the Record" often makes me chuckle, more than other gag filler does.

A surprisingly progressive page of Hawks of the Seas from Will Eisner. Racism was optional in the Golden Age all along!

Now, where was I?  Oh yes -- stuff you can use in your Hideouts & Hoodlums games!  In this month's installment of The Clock, a trap is rigged so if the Hero crosses a tripwire set in a dark doorway, a gun goes off and blasts him.

Yes, that's so clever, Clock, hiding the wall safe behind a curtain. You only had a 2 in 6 chance of finding that concealed safe, or automatically if your player specifically mentions looking behind the curtain.

I love how the Gallant Knight has a sword in his hand, but leads his attack by throwing a bottle in some guy's face. This actually illustrates two things for H&H - one, if all weapons do the same abstract amount of damage, then players can be more free to be creative with what they attack with. And, two, it demonstrates how important it is for the Editor to stock rooms with items the Heroes can use or interact with.

This panel from a filler page called "Exciting Adventures" brings up an interesting point. By the H&H rules for falling damage, the man who fell out of the plane should have taken at least 10 points of damage on impact and -- unless he happened to have a larger than average number of hit points -- would surely have been unconscious on impact.

This blog has previously addressed similar issues related to falling damage, like falling into water. Perhaps a simpler ruling would be, if any circumstances exist that might prevent the falling damage -- something to cushion the impact, the Hero jumped so the fall may be controlled, the surface landed on is moving at a relative speed -- then the Hero may save vs. plot to take no damage.

From a second page of Off the Record.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)