Wonderworld Comics #5 - pt. 2

This is Patty O'Day. You missed the page before this, because I didn't share it, but mobsters shot at Patty and Ham's boat with a machine gun, and our Heroes were lucky enough to escape with only damage to their boat.

I've been thinking about what to do about damage to vehicles. My first thought was to give vehicles hit points, but now I'm not so sure about that. More so than with Heroes, vehicles are often stopped by complications -- like leaking, in this case -- long before they are destroyed.

What about...competing saves vs. plot? In a chase, the chasee could make a save vs. plot to try to trigger a complication, which the chaser would be able to fix or compensate for with a save vs. plot of his own.

We've already seen that Ham is no ordinary supporting cast; here he takes on a shark single-handed with a knife and seems to easily win. Though, we don't actually know that he killed the shark; maybe he it missed a morale save as soon as it was lightly injured.

I skipped a page again, but the missing information you don't have is that Patty and Ham were captured and thrown into the "lower dungeon". They have more than one?  The lower dungeon floods when the tide comes in. We've seen that trap before, but this one has a trapdoor above the dungeon they can reach pretty easily.

Since Ham and his opponents are all unarmed, they each get two attacks per turn -- which is one explanation for how Ham could punch both of them. He also gets two shots with the gun, but if it's an automatic he would get those as early as first level.

Patty, rather cleverly, turns the rickety pier into a trap. Under some circumstances, I would treat this as a skill check, but there's little other than physics at work here and all Patty did was leave a rope attached. I would probably make this automatically succeed, especially as a reward for smart playing.

A personal letter of thanks from the President is its own rewards -- but this one might come with some bonus XP too, as if it was a trophy item.

Meanwhile, Dr. Fung Master Sleuth of the Orient, and his companion Dan Barrister, are getting into trouble in Africa. Here they encounter ape-men, making this the third time I've seen ape-men in comic books so far this project. They don't seem to be particularly strong, but they can manage the "blow to the back of the head" cliche.

Note that Dr. Fung appears not to have put up a fight at all. I wonder if he's even a Hero, or just Dan's supporting cast, despite the title of this feature.

I have no intention of having cold water revive unconscious Heroes. Rather, Dan was just stunned for a number of turns that coincidentally ended when they hit the water.

Ape-Men, or at least their leaders, speak excellent English.

A lot of grappling goes on here. Grappling does damage -- sometimes considerable damage in 2nd edition -- so it's possible that the ape-man chief is just down to his last few hit points when that knockout punch comes. Or, there needs to be a percent chance of a stun per fist blow, which is something I've toyed with.

Losing a leader is definitely good cause for a morale save.

I can't tell what that animal next to the Sheena-like character is supposed to be. Some kind of dog...?

This is K-51 Spies at War.The King is named King "Arnold" in this story, but I can't help but wonder if he is meant to represent King George VI of Great Britain.

K-51 senses danger because the mobsters missed their surprise roll.

The terms "thug" and "assassin" seem to be used interchangeably here, unless one of them is a thug and the other the assassin.

K-51 seems content to let his supporting cast mow the mobsters down with sub-machine guns. No XP for you, K-51!

Mob Buster Robinson is the man running around in the swimsuit, and I call shenanigans here. One panel, mobsters are shooting at him from maybe ...20' behind him? After that, Robinson seems to somehow lose them and has time to search this yacht for hidden loot. This seems to suggest an awfully generous evasion mechanic, that the mobsters can't keep up with him and lose him so easily. I mean, how big a yacht can it be?

I'm amused by the TNT box that says "use no hooks". Maybe that's a real thing, but what I picture is fishermen, trying to keep their hooks away from TNT boxes...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)