Detective Comics #35 - pt. 1

This installment of The Batman infamously opens on Batman standing in a doorway with a smoking gun in his hands -- it has nothing to do with the story, but must have impressed Kane as being a really cool opening panel.

This is, I think, the only story that makes out Bruce to be an amateur writer.

The story is a confusing jumble of racism, as the Batman tangles with Indian natives, working for a Chinese Fu Manchu-like character, who is actually a white man in disguise.

The Batman pauses to announce his presence before springing on two robbers, making me think his initial signature move was making sure bad guys got a good look at his costume before attacking them (and it makes me wonder if I should have rules on changing signature moves over time).

The "Batmobile" (not yet called that) is still only a high-powered roadster the Batman happens to drive.

Sin Fang's henchmen use khopeshes (swords; at least they aren't hatchets). Sin lures the Batman into a trapped room where the door slams shut and it slowly fills with mustard gas. Anticipating the 1960's Batman, the Batman just happens to have an anti-mustard gas pellet in his utility belt (marking the first time something weirdly random is drawn from the utility belt). Utility belts have been a trophy item since Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

Despite the fact that Sin has lured the Batman into a mobster encounter and a trap already, the Batman still falls into another trap -- this time, a pit trap that is filled with water at the bottom, but there's a pipe in the wall partway down that he can grab at.

The Batman seems unconcerned when he knocks "Sin Fang" out a window to plunge to his death.

Fictional names for foreign countries often change from issue to issue, but this is the second issue in a series of Spy stories where Germany is "Luxor."  Being a spy is easy when you see the ambassador walking down the street and then just have to look through a door transom and you spot him colluding with a submarine commander in person.

Bart Regan uses a "sensitive microphone" to listen to a conversation through a brick wall. He wears a bulletproof vest in his installment.

Tangling with the commander, Bart is grappled, thrown prone, shot at, and knocked out with a blow to his head. The shot narrowly missed his ear -- though combat in Hideouts & Hoodlums is abstract enough that it could have been a "hit" and still caused hit point loss, without causing any physical wound.

Commanders are 7th-level fighters, so Bart is hard-pressed every time they fight. Bart is twice saved by convenient encounters -- the first time by a passing beat cop, and the second time by a rival spy who takes Bart out of the scenario and finishes it himself (poor refereeing!).

Buck Marshall, Range Detective starts off with an unusual premise, making it the best start to a Buck Marshall story yet -- Buck robs a stagecoach! It turns out, Buck is robbing it because he knows robbers are on their way that are too numerous for him to stop (6 to 1 odds), so he appears to rob the coach and tricks the robbers into chasing off after him. Finding their lair, Buck puts aniline powder in all the gloves he finds, so the dye will make their hands and they can be found later. Aniline powder is a real thing.

One of the robbers calls Buck a "gink" -- this is old slang that only means "guy." 

Next up is Steve Malone, District Attorney. This story establishes that Steve is based out of New York, and that his secretary's name is Nancy. Steve has three assistants who serve as supporting cast in this story, but none of them are named.

Ethnic restaurants are not treated with much respect circa 1940; an Italian restaurant is called a "spagetti house" (not my misspelling).

The hideout of the kidnappers Steve is after is only accessible by a bridge. The kidnappers watch the bridge and plan to shoot anyone crossing it, but Steve foils them by swinging hand-or-hand underneath the bridge (basic skill check?)

(Batman story read in The Batman Archives v. 1; the rest read at fullcomic.pro.)

Detective Comics #33 - pt. 1

This is the issue that gave us Batman's famous, two-page origin story. This story is also the origin of both the "cowardly" and "superstitious" hoodlums, from Bruce's famous speech about "criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot."

When the real adventure begins, Bruce Wayne observes scarlet rays. These rays have multiple effects -- they can blind people and wreck buildings (probably at least as well as a 6th level superhero). Since thousands are killed in a single attack, we can assume they have a large range and a wide area of effect.

Prof. Carl Kruger is at least our 2nd Napoleon mobster in comics -- though I'm still not seeing a lot of justification for statting it differently like I did before in 1st edition. Maybe Napoleons are just master criminals or master criminal/scientists.

Batman hurls his Baterang as a missile weapon for the first time here, but Kruger is protected by a glass wall he keeps in his office between his desk and the window (perhaps wary of snipers?). Batman is overcome with a surprise head blow from behind (already going in 2nd edition).

Kruger's death trap is to leave Batman tied up with rope on the floor with a bomb set to go off in five minutes. Why Kruger wants to blow up his own house isn't clear, other than that he's obviously crazy. Batman cuts his bonds with a blade concealed in his boot and escapes in time. Luckily, Kruger never checked his boots -- or even peeked under his mask! (Save vs. plot to make sure villains don't do anything that obvious to you when you're captured.)

Batman doesn't escape entirely, though. His bleeding lip seems to indicate he took some of the blast, just not enough to kill him. An explosion would normally require a save vs. science for half damage, but with a deathtrap maybe it should be a save vs. plot for half damage, with a failed save meaning death instead of twice the damage.

Batman's not a great fighter yet in these early stories, but he's smart. He doesn't know where Kruger fled to, but Kruger unwisely told him the names of his lieutenants and one, apparently, has a publicly known address. Batman confronts him, tells him to take a message to Kruger, and then follows him in his Batplane (still the auto-gyro).  Of course, Batman would have been sunk had the lieutenant simply called Kruger on the phone...

Batman has a glass vial that, when it breaks, surrounds the Batplane in a thick smokescreen that clings to the plane. How this doesn't blind Batman isn't clear.

Guards can be really stupid. They see a smokescreen hovering in the sky and mistake it for a raincloud. I think even Winnie-the-Pooh would have seen through this.

Smaller (I presume weaker) versions of the scarlet death-rayguns can be mounted on trucks. They're delicate though -- one shot and they all blow up. Kruger explains soon thereafter that the death ray is a combination of ozone and gamma rays.

This is the first story in which Batman's life is saved by a bulletproof vest. This time, the bullets still knock him out and make him bleed (superficially).  On later occasions, bullets will just bounce off him because of the vest (maybe he has a Vest +1 by then).

Then Bruce Wayne whips up -- and I'm not making this up -- an anti-death-ray chemical spray to coat his Batplane with. This was the story that made me decide Batman had to be dual-statted as a mysteryman/scientist for Supplement IV.

The first Batplane is destroyed when Batman crashes it into Kruger's blimp, from which the scarlet death-rays are being fired.

Kruger apparently had an army of 2,000 mercenaries, though we never saw more than him, his three lieutenants, and two guards. After Kruger dies, Batman seems to sit back and let the authorities round up the army.

The next installment of Spy has to do with the country of "Luxen" -- a very poorly disguised Luxembourg suffering a bloodless annexation from "Thoria" (Germany). The story is interestingly prophetic, as this was 1939 and Luxembourg wasn't invaded until the following year -- and it was largely bloodless! The government did flee the country, but to the UK, not the US.  Past that, details seem strangely altered; Luxen has a male president instead of a female duchess. Also, in real life, the duchess fled with her family, which makes more sense than what the president does -- leaving his family behind so they can be threatened as hostages.

Bart Regan seems more observant than normal; he spots a wire hanging down behind a painting and immediately recognizes that it's a dictaphone wire.

The Luxen president's speech is interrupted by what appear to be mountebanks -- or so I call them in a new stat block for 2nd edition. Mountebanks, or rabble rousers, are able to get a growing number of innocent bystanders to start fighting.

And I learned a vocabulary word in this story -- plebiscite. Though it is consistently misspelled "plebecite."

Buck Marshall, Range Detective plays for high stakes when he has a defend a played out mine suddenly valued at $500,000. I learned the term "salting a mine", a con where you add extra gold to the random samples to make the mine seem more valuable.

Buck slips into a shack through a window because the front door is padlocked. It's important to keep in mind that, in modern times, we have multiple ways of locking doors. A padlock is relatively easy for Heroes to foil -- they might be able to wreck it with bolt cutters (though at a -4 penalty, if a non-superhero), or it can be shot off with a bullet if the bullet hits AC 7. Buck didn't want to make that much noise...

Buck didn't bring his own light source, though, so the Editor was gracious and left a lamp sitting out in the dark interior.

(Batman stories read in Batman Archives vol. 1; the rest read at Readcomics.net

Detective Comics #32 - pt. 1

Batman returns in part 2 of his adventure vs. The Monk. He's in Hungary, or the Latin Hungaria, as it's called here. Batman uses another sleeping gas pellet, thinking that he's using it on The Monk. It's unclear if Batman suspected The Monk was a werewolf yet, though the reader certainly had plenty of clues.

It was actually a woman named Dala that Batman gassed and, not being at all suspicious that Dala was in The Monk's carriage, he brings her to his hotel and lets her bunk with Julie Madison, who is safe now and under Batman's protection. But no one is safe from Dala; she bonks Batman on the head with a statuette and stuns him "momentarily." This would be 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums' new rule about head blows doing more damage in a surprise attack, Batman being brought down to zero hit points (he is still a low-level Mysteryman at this point), but making his save vs. plot to avoid a longer spell of being unconscious.

It turns out that Dala is a vampire, from which Batman (correctly) infers that The Monk is one too. Dala tells Batman where to find The Monk -- Gardner Fox plays fast-and-loose with geography here, saying that The Monk's castle is by the Dess River, which isn't an actual thing in Hungary.

Batman's autogyro is referred to as a "Batplane" in this story, making it the first Batplane.

The Monk uses a magic silver net that can stretch into the sky, snag the Batplane, and pull it to the ground. Now, the autogyro is just over the tree tops, so maybe the net can only stretch 100-120'. And it stretches pretty fast, because it was probably going at least 30 MPH. And it's plenty strong too; if it can pull a plane out of the air, then non-superhero Heroes will likely be pulled down without so much as a saving throw.

Vampires (or at least The Monk) are shown to be able to hypnotize others and control their charm victims over many miles, but the vampire's control is measured in a broad range of turns (he can control Julie for days, but Batman only for hours). He can also change into a wolf (which is why The Monk still calls himself a werewolf, even though the cat's out of the bag now that he's also a vampire -- vampiric werewolf?). In wolf form, a vampire can summon at least 1-4 wolves. Like vampires, vampiric werewolves have to sleep in coffins during the daytime. Like werewolves, they can be killed by silver weapons.

Batman's gas pellets can affect up to four targets in a 10' radius. He can toss his silk rope upwards about 15' alone, or more like 30' with a Batarang attached to it (though it took him about 12 hours to figure that out).

In Spy, Bart Regan is trapped in the back seat of a car that can fill with sleeping gas (likely stolen from the Raymond Chandler story "Nevada Gas"). Then his death trap is being placed in a giant bell jar that can have the air vacuumed out of it. The spy who trapped him is stupid and let's Bart out when he promises to talk. Bart, in turn, uses the same trap but keeps the spy inside until after he's talked.

Later, when Bart is being shot at, he ducks behind a desk. Somehow, he is able to sneak around the desk without being seen, come up behind the two spies shooting at him, and get surprise on them. Without being able to turn invisible, I don't see that as being possible in H&H.

I don't have much to say about this month's Buck Marshall story, except that Buck makes a disparaging comment about some outlaws, calling them "mail-order bad men."  Which is actually a better story idea than the counterfeiting scheme he really stumbles into.  But the real mystery in this installment of Buck Marshall is the curious use of the word "jigger" to refer to someone Buck knocks out. I am having trouble finding any cowboy-related use of the term. It could refer to a certain type of fisherman, but that's not relevant to the story. It was also once a variation on a certain offensive term for blacks, but the man in the story is colored white, so...

Larry Steele, Private Detective, rescues a damsel in distress on the road and takes her to an old man's house in the country. When Larry goes to call the police, the man says he'll be lucky to catch the operator awake. Back in the days before switchboard automation, this could have been a legitimate concern. Maybe Heroes who need to connect a call quickly should have to make a save vs. plot to succeed when away from the major cities.

Once again, the villain does something stupid to make it easier for the Hero -- this time, a killer implicates himself by accidentally driving to the scene of the murder when he was asked to, without being told where to go.

Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator, starts on a mystery with a great hook -- young women are being found dead on seashores, always with an ivory skull lying somewhere near the body.  And Speed gets a pretty cool villain to battle too -- Skull-Face, who even has a caveman right-hand man. Skull-Face is a mad scientist with a potion that makes women prettier, but it also compels them to immerse themselves in water. The more of the potion they buy from him, the more they are compelled until they eventually drown themselves.

(Batman story read in The Batman Archives v. 1, the rest read at readcomics.net.)

Detective Comics #31

This month's Batman story starts with something remarkable. No, I don't mean that it's now "Batman" and not "Bat-Man" any longer. And I don't mean that Bruce Wayne now has a fiancee we've never met before. No, I mean we first see Batman at the top of a utility pole -- from which he hops down and lands safely. That's got to be a 20-25' jump? That's not something you can currently do, by the rules, in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Heck, I'm not sure I'd allow that as a stunt!

Batman still doesn't have a Batcave, but he does have a secret hangar located somewhere, containing a bat-themed autogyro. We also get the Batarang in this story. Luckily, I've already added boomerangs to the weapons list in 2nd edition.

We learn that Hungary is well known for its werewolves. I'll have to put that in the werewolf entry!

The Batgyro makes a transatlantic crossing, which is conceivably possible. The 1942 Sikorsky R-4 autogyro could go 9,000 miles, which is far more than the ocean voyage between New York and France.

When Batman encounters the Monk, Batman makes his save vs. spells to avoid being hypnotized, but is aware of what was being attempted on him.

The plot requires Batman to make some pretty bizarre decisions to get him all the way to France. He allows Julie to go to France in the first place, even though he's suspicious of the doctor who tells her to go. He leaves Julie alone on the cruise ship to France with the Monk. He follows the ship to the docks, but then somehow loses sight of Julie and has to search the city to find her again. There's a lot of room here for Batman's player to make a different decision and throw off the entire scenario. It would make more sense for most of this to be backstory and for the scenario to begin in Paris.

In Julie's room is a huge gorilla. No idea how Batman doesn't see it from the window, other than a good surprise roll by the Editor.

The Monk's deathtrap for Batman is a net that closes up around him, that the Monk can drop into a pit of snakes at his leisure.

In a separate trap, Batman encounters a "gigantic" gorilla, far larger than the huge gorilla we saw earlier. 15' tall? Easily escaping the gorilla with some leaping and climbing, Batman only has a single guard left to overcome before escaping.

Batman saves Julie from her abductors (more normal guys like the guard) with a sleeping gas pellet, like we've seen him use before.

Following the Batman feature, an educational filler page called "Crime Never Pays" talks about bloodhounds being able to follow a trail 135 miles. It would be nice to know if that was true.

Humor filler is drawn by Paul Gustavson -- of Centaur Comics fame -- in this issue.

Buck Marshall sneaks up on a cabin with some outlaws in it by deliberately missing some shots at game fowl to fool the outlaws into think he's no threat. I want to turn this idea around on my players some time -- have the bad guys pretend to be incompetent to fool the Heroes, then turn out to be really dangerous!

Bart Regan fights "cowardly thugs" in Spy. Now that could be an interesting combination of two stat types. Tough as a thug, but with a cowardly hoodlum's low morale?

The cowardly thugs have a bulletproof car. Trophy item!

Larry Steele solves a murder mystery with an unusual clue -- the murderer slips up and describes a man by the color of his clothes, then Larry learns that suspect is color blind.

Speed Saunders, now relegated to the middle of the magazine, has a murder with an unusual murder weapon -- a mammoth tusk! Speed mounts a methodical investigation at a circus, questioning the witnesses, searching their tents, and corroborating evidence off-site via telegram. I'm not sure about the stolen tusk though...would trying a stolen tusk to a real elephant's tusk really impale a man before it broke loose from its bonds? Path of least resistance seems like it would be the latter. And then, doing it to avoid blood on the elephant doesn't make much sense. If an elephant's real tusk is right next to the fake tusk doing the actual goring, I would still think it would get some blood on it. And how would the killer know the elephant would use that specific tusk and not the opposing tusk?

Speed gets whipped in the face with a real whip and has temporary scarring from it -- a rare complication for a Hero.

Bruce Nelson's scenario is a pretty interesting one too. The plot hooks he receives are all intentional bait to lure him away from home. The scenario is faked so a robber can get into Bruce's home while he's busy elsewhere and rob him of valuable evidence from another case. I could see myself using this in my current online H&H campaign, where there are major events going on in two locations -- but I would need to lay out clues in advance that there's something not kosher about one of the two sets of plot hooks.

Cosmo, Phantom of Disguise, is dealing with two trophy item/potions. One is a paralyzing drug. The other is "essence of intelligence" -- someone else's stolen intelligence, distilled into a potion you can drink, and then increases your own intelligence (+1-2 to INT for 1-4 weeks?).

Slam Bradley tries to rescue a photographer at the zoo who falls into a bear cage. Slam pushes the bear away, then grabs the photographer and runs. Shorty is menaced by a bear cub (1+1 HD?), judging from the size of it. Then they find a constrictor snake in their room and Slam has to shoot it. And lastly they have to fight a tiger in the zoo.

All of that is pretty cut and dry, as far as game mechanics go. But there's this weird scene where Slam is clubbed from behind, and he's not knocked out or even stunned senseless, but he's groggy enough that he can attack, seemingly at a penalty.

(Batman story read in Batman Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomics.net)

Detective Comics #28

We're back around to Detective Comics again already, with this being the second appearance of The Bat-Man.

The Bat-Man demonstrates voice mimicry in this story. That's not currently a skill in Hideouts & Hoodlums. I'll...consider how important/useful it would be.

When The Bat-Man kicks a thief off a roof (to the man's death, no less), he's using a throw attack. A flip/throw can make your opponent prone or move him 5', if you hit and he fails his save vs. science.

In the world of comic books, confessions signed under duress caused by vigilantes seem to be fully admissible in court. I wonder if H&H needs a short article on the law in a comic book world.

While most Buck Marshall, Range Detective (moved to here from Action Comics) stories followed the same pattern of following tracks to the killer, this one starts with the unusual premise of Buck being arrested, and then told he was arrested so he could talk to the prisoner in the cell next to him and try to get some kind of confession out of him. It's an interesting set-up for an adventure, though I could see players holding a grudge for the sheriff not telling them his plan first.

In the most ridiculous example of disarming a gunman to date, Buck does so by swinging a hat.

Someone else besides Joe Shuster is drawing Spy in this issue, and the story hurts for it. Bart's partner Sally is still missing from the strip, which also saps much of the uniqueness out of it.

I'm not sure what country "Baralia" is supposed to be, but unless it's Mexico or Canada I really don't see how they plan to get their tanks and infantry to the United States.

Bart demonstrates picking a lock (could be a spy class feature, but I plan to give it to everyone anyway).

Lee Travis, The Crimson Avenger, falls off the running board of a fast-moving car, fast enough that the damage makes him need to see a doctor afterwards. Maybe we need to fashion a game mechanic for horizontal falling? If speed was the only factor, then falling while going 20 MPH would do 1-6 points of damage, 40 MPH would do 2-12 damage, 80 MPH would do 3-18 points of damage, and so on.

The Crimson trades in his gas gun for itching powder in this story, though the itching powder is encountered off-panel and we never see how effective it's supposed to be. Speaking of effectiveness, The Crimson gets kidnapped, not once, but twice in this story by hoodlums.

Bruce Nelson is shown being able to read Spanish. The H&H rules talk about not bothering with making Heroes keep track of what languages they can speak; at least the common written languages need to be covered in that too.

A mastiff runs loose in Doctor Fu Manchu. Dogs were the pit bulls of their time, in terms of reputation for violence (and probably equally undeserved). While I had previously statted dogs as 1+1 Hit Dice, 2 Hit Dice might not be unreasonable for mastiffs.

(Batman story read from Batman Archives vol. 1. I managed to read most of the rest of the story at readcomics.net until malware on the site overcame my malware blockers. May have to stop using that site...)

Detective Comics #27 - pt. 2

There was a time when Speed Saunders was top billing in Detective Comics, but now he just gets to come second after The Bat-Man. A beat cop who must know Speed summons him to the scene of a corpse found on the riverfront, tied up and strangled. Speed sees an unusual design on the man's collar that he takes to be a clue. Smartly, he heads to the public library to research it. Weirdly, the library is open to him, even though it appears to be nighttime. Did Speed just break into the library, because he couldn't wait until morning to look for clues? That sounds exactly like some players I've had...

Speed finds a weird trap in a man's house; behind a secret wall panel is a mannequin arm holding a gun, so that one only has to pull a string at the back of the arm to make the gun shoot. It seems overly elaborate at first, but it would allow someone to murder within the house without getting any powder burns on the killer's own hand.

Buck Marshall, Range Detective, does a first class job of searching for clues -- checking for how much blood leaked from each wound, checking the local soil against the soil on the dead man's clothes, checking the nearby horseshoe prints, considering the effects of the weather on dating the tracks, considering the direction of the shots, checking for loose hair, and considering the length of the stride to estimate a man's height -- all things a Hideouts & Hoodlums player can look for while investigating.

In Spy, the Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee dies -- which is actually kind of a funny pun, because in 1939, the Chairman of the Commitee's name was Martin Dies.  Or is it the same Committee? Bart Regan says there were five members on the Committee, but there were actually seven members in 1939, a fact that should have been easily verifiable, and none of the actual member names are even close to the fake ones used in the story.

Here's another wrinkle -- though Bart Regan is often referred to as a spy, his actual credentials here show he works for the Secret Service. Or are those fake credentials? That could be a good trophy item...

Bart has an interesting encounter with a wandering encounter; when a gunman climbs through his hotel window, Bart is immediately incredulous. "How in heck could you have known so soon that I'm on your trail?" Bart wails at the unfairness of it. But the gunman turns out to be a hungry thief, unrelated to the case. I can just imagine an out-of-character exchange going on, between player and Editor, with the player complaining that the Editor was using knowledge of the player's actions unfairly, and the Editor backpedaling and changing the encounter.

Bart encounters an unusual murder weapon -- miniature "bombs" wrapped in cellulose and concealed in food. The cellulose dissolves and the bomb goes off on the inside, apparently for lethal damage (though it's hard to imagine a bomb that small doing much damage...). It's also hard to believe the enemy spymaster falls for the old "switch the bananas when you're not looking" trick - but I guess he missed his save vs. plot.

I learned a history lesson from The Crimson Avenger when he refers to a miniature camera as a "candid camera". And here I thought that phrase was invented for the TV show!

Again, The Crimson shows unusual abilities -- leaping a 6' fence, climbing the drainpipe of a building, and snapping rope bonds when tied up -- all too weak to be superpowers, but possibly Mysteryman stunts.

Bruce Nelson is investigating a Voodoo-related murder in New Orleans, and the author seems to have actually done some reading on the subject; the crosses and snakes at the murder scene seem like appropriate motifs. I wonder if the Creole words are authentic or just gibberish. Anyway, I always try to put some research into my scenarios like that.

Bruce encounters a harmless snake -- obviously not there to challenge him, but it did frighten him enough that he whipped out his gun and started shooting. He also finds the murder weapon -- devil smoke, a "green, gummy substance" that, if burned, produces a lethal cloud of smoke. Good for a deathtrap!

You don't have to learn languages in H&H, normally, but if the Editor did insist that your Hero had to learn a language, Cosmo the Phantom of Disguise learns Chinese in just 30 days. Cosmo, in disguise, gets a job in a Chinese shipping business. In the back of the shipping room, concealed behind boxes, is a secret door that opens onto a passage that leads below the wharf behind the building. Then a second secret door opens into the back of a fake coal barge.

And, lastly, Slam Bradley takes a trans-Atlantic clipper to Switzerland, which might have necessitated a save vs. plot to arrange. As I understand it, there were a lot of travel restrictions on traveling from the U.S. to Europe during the War.

(Issue read at ReadComics.net)

Detective Comics #21

Speed Saunders can walk onto a crime scene, observe the body, and tell from the visual symptoms alone what poisons might have been administered to kill the person. He also just happens to know where to find a mobster's hideout, even though there were no clues in the story about where to find it. Detect Poison and/or Detect Hideout might need to be an abilities added to the Detective class -- if the Detective class ever makes it officially into Hideouts & Hoodlums (it's currently an optional class from The Trophy Case).

Cigarettes tainted with prussic acid is both a murder weapon and a death trap in this story.

The Crime Never Pays filler page talks about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "Today, motor cars, fast patrol boats, airplanes, and motorcycles are used by the Mounties to aid the apprehending of criminals. There are more mounted police in automobiles than on horses." Funny, then, that whenever Mounties appear in the comic books, they usually are not using cars to get around...

Buck Marshall spends two days unconscious from going down to zero hit points.

In Spy, spies are shown to be better than average at picking locks.

In Crimson Avenger, grave robbing only warrants a $100 reward for information.

The Crimson's gas gun is shown affecting three beat cops at once.

In this story, Slam and Shorty burn quickly through $10,000 and find themselves needing to find fresh work. But that begs the question -- what did they spend it on? A dollar went a lot further in 1938, and 10,000 of them could buy quite a lot. If Slam was being played by a sensible player, he would be stocking up on healing pills with that money, but Slam seldom seems like he's being played by a smart player.

It reminds me of this one section of Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, "Special Interests".  It broke expenditures into seven categories: wine, women, song, wealth, fame, religion, and hobbies. In this system, experience points for treasure were only awarded after being spent on one or more of these categories.  Hideouts & Hoodlums doesn't have that rule, and maybe doesn't need that rule, but the categories themselves are worth thinking about.

Wine:  Likely only the recourse of hard-knuckle Fighters, making your Hero a raging alcoholic not only gives him some pathos, but an excuse to do nothing useful during downtime.

Women: This doesn't have to be anything sordid. It could be a Hero bribing people to keep tabs on a femme fatale adversary, or a Superhero who has to hire people to serve as his alibis to fool his girlfriend, who doesn't know about his dual identities yet.

Song: Or partying, is the best way to rub shoulders with other members of your social class. It can be a great way to bring plot hooks to you, instead of going out and pursuing plot hooks.

Wealth: Or the generation of wealth, by investing. If players were interested in tracking this, it could be an annual rate of return equal to the Hero's Wisdom score.

Fame: Heroes generally don't, but could pursue licensing deals, court the press, or even stage events to increase their popularity. Maybe for every $1,000 spent, the Hero gets one +1 bonus to use on a future encounter reaction roll?

Religion: I'm not sure how to put a game mechanic bonus to donating to one's own church, or if that would even be appropriate. Most comic book Heroes are a pretty irreligious bunch.

Hobbies: Again, maybe not so useful for game mechanics purposes, but could be handy for role-playing purposes.

I'm not sure which, if any of these ideas, merit adding into 2nd edition.

Also, there's a trap, where Slam is supposed to fall into a pit lined with spikes. I'd like to keep additional damage for falling simple. If there are not too many spikes, maybe an additional d6 of damage. For a moderate amount of spikes, it could be an additional 2d6, and for a large amount of spikes, it could be 3d6.

(Read at Read Comics)

Detective Comics #20

Speed Saunders is a prisoner of the Chinese Tong, has no weapons, and no resources other than the suit he's wearing and his wits, and he still escapes from his cell. How? By trying everything. The Editor should always have an "out" planned; in this case, it was a loose grill in the window.

Mandarin Hapsu has a rather devilish trap for Speed too. It requires Speed having a prisoner with him who takes him back to the scene of the crime to show him how the murder happened. The prisoner points out a hole in the wall and asks Speed to look through it. Behind the hole is a gun, set to go off when a concealed button is pressed on the wall nearby. If the Hero is foolish enough to look, I would have the gun shot as if by a 3 HD opponent, but ignoring any DEX bonuses to Armor Class.

In Larry Steele, Private Detective, Delores kills a man by hitting him over the back of the head with a wooden club, with one hit. This is impossible under normal Hideouts & Hoodlums rules, though Book III: Underworld & Metropolis Adventures does talk about campaign moods, and the ability to run a very dark campaign where everyone dies when they reach zero hit points.

Buck Marshall, Range Detective, takes advantage of the terrain around him. Rather than approach a cabin where a killer might lurk on foot, he climbs a tree and uses the branches to clear the distance from above. Smart players ask lots of questions about the terrain, and figure out ways to exploit it.

Buck encounters a similar version of the same trap used on Speed -- a shotgun rigged to go off when a door is opened. I have yet to see a Hero actually reset a trap, but Buck here makes it look like he's reset the trap, in order to catch the killer (the man unwilling to go back through the door).

In Spy, Bart and Sally are given an unusual challenge -- they have to protect a senator without letting him know he's being protected, since he refused security. When Bart and Sally find two gunmen waiting to ambush the senator, even Sally gets engaged in the ensuing fistfight (first female in physical combat in a comic book?).

When Bart is going 60 MPH in a car chase, that's about as fast as his car can go.

Drunk drivers need to be on every urban wandering encounter list. Jerry Siegel in particular seemed to consider this a huge problem.

In Doctor Fu Manchu, Wayland Smith is said to have a "pocket-lamp." I don't know if I've ever seen such a thing before, since flashlights are so much easier to hold. A pocket-lamp is similar, but boxier.

Fu Manchu's weapon, the Zayat Kiss, is revealed to be a giant centipede! First one in comics!

This issue marks the debut of The Crimson Avenger, though its main character is only called The Crimson in this first installment. One of the earliest Mysterymen in comics, the Crimson Avenger can climb walls (a skill the Mysteryman was given in Supplement I: National), and wields a gas gun (a trophy item from Book II: Mobsters & Trophies).

Definitely a Chaotic Hero, when the Crimson can't prove a lawyer's guilt, the Crimson tries to murder the District Attorney and then frames the lawyer for the attempted murder!

Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, has to take a running leap off the end of a pier to try and reach the speedboat being stolen. Because the boat is pretty far away, his Editor tells him he has a 1 in 6 chance to make the jump. He rolls a 2. Because he was close, the Editor decides to go easy on him and gives him an additional chance to reach out and grab the rail by making an attack roll.

The Slam Bradley story in this issue is crazy. Out of the blue, Slam is somehow an extremely powerful Magic-User, just from having practiced since last month. And he throws spells around like they were nothing. He casts some sort of Teleportation spell on Shorty, then a Telekinesis-like spell to pack his bags. At a meeting of Magic-Users, he casts two Phantasmal Force spells in a row. He uses Detect Thoughts to find out what the hoodlum at his door wants. He casts some kind of grappling spell that holds a man and moves him -- maybe that's just another Telekinesis spell.  Then he uses a spell that somehow allows himself to be at two places at the same time -- Project Image? He casts Invisibility, Charm Person, more Phantasmal Forces, some sort of Push spell (Telekinesis again?) -- and possibly all in the same day!

The only explanation I can think of is that Doctor Occult is pretending to be Slam for some reason.

Slam's rival, Professor Mysto, casts Dispel Magic, but can only cast it once. To then dispel Invisibility, he has to resort to making a brew from a container of spirit-powders. Potion of Dispel Magic? Slam interrupts the preparation of the potion, so we never get to see how it works.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #17 - part 2

Bruce Nelson seems to be an aviator in this month's installment. In fact, he seems to be demonstrating the Increase Speed stunt while flying (a more colorful name for this stunt would have been "Yank the Throttle Wide Open").  He also demonstrates Wing Walking.  I now wonder if my aviator rules shouldn't be a separate class, but stunts anyone can use, based on their level, when they hop in a plane...

The smuggler's plane is trapped, literally -- there's a trapdoor underneath the passenger seats.

From the telephone style in Buck Marshall, Range Detective, it appears this strip is meant to take place in the early 1900s.

Slam Bradley is revealed to have a great singing voice in this story; not surprising, since Golden Age Heroes often happen to have whatever skill they need for the scenario. Maybe this should be handled by a save vs. plot each time. Any inconsistency in skill is only more appropriate for the continuity-lite Golden Age.

For some reason, the radio station that hires Slam buys a $1,500 clock. It's unclear why the clock costs so much. A valuable antique? Slam and Shorty are also hired for a $5,000 reward, so this radio station really likes to toss its money around. The scenario is ridiculously easy to solve too. If microphones are exploding and killing performers, all they have to do is have an engineer take each microphone apart and check it before each program.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #16

We're just six months away from the debut of the Bat-Man at this point, so instead of him -- let's talk about Larry Steele, Private Detective!

This installment of Larry's adventures features a pretty exciting gunfight in a burning warehouse. Caught on a four-story roof ledge with fire behind him, Larry jumps and catches a fire escape on another section of the building to save himself. This is a big warehouse -- four stories tall, with what appears to be an alley running up the middle of it, nearly dividing the warehouse in two (and hence providing the gap that Larry has to jump over). Heroes could spend a whole game session just exploring this warehouse!

It does bring up the question, though -- how far can a Hero leap (without being an alien, or buffed by powers)? The world record for a running broad jump (and we'll assume in this case that the fire was not so close behind Larry that he couldn't back up and get a running start) is over 29 feet -- but I'm not suggesting that every Hero should be able to jump that distance. Indeed, I would say that any Hero trying to clear over 15 feet should have to save vs. science to clear the rest -- up to 29 feet maximum.

There's even an idea here for a nifty trap, when the floor gives way under the bad guy called "Snow", and then the ceiling collapses on top of him and pins him to the floor. Now, in an ordinary building, with 8-foot high ceilings, falling damage between floors would be negligible, because it's less than 10 feet. In a high-ceilinged warehouse, though, falls might be 1d6 or even 2d6 damage (per 10' fallen, of course), with the weight falling on top of them doing an extra 1d6 of damage, and necessitating a save vs. science to avoid being pinned and immobile.

Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, investigates a case of jewel theft from a museum perpetrated by (spoilers!) fake undead. Night watchmen are being temporarily driven mad or dying from fright when they see a mummy costume, painted in phosphorous, hanging from a pole so it appears to be floating. I'm interested, now, in introducing a new mobster type called undead imposter, who can Scare Good Guys (like the power, reversed) -- but Editors have to be careful with using this. If fake undead can do this, then what would happen in your game if people saw real undead?

Bruce Nelson encounters the world's worst secret door -- it's opened by turning the light switch in the room.

Bart Regan, Spy, demonstrates how easy it is to unlock a door with a hairpin. Very likely, picking locks will become a basic skill for all Heroes -- with the prerequisite of asking a woman for a hairpin.

Buck Marshall overhears the slang term ranny, which I've found out means "cowboy" or "ranch hand".

This month's Slam Bradley confirms that Slam is from Cleveland, same as Superman. Slam not only takes tap dancing lessons for $3 a lesson, but learns to tap dance in only five hours.  Hideouts & Hoodlums has no skill system, nor any game mechanic you could tie directly to tap dancing. You could use a save vs. plot to decide if the Hero tap dances well enough, offering a +1 bonus for every four hours (length of a downtime turn) spent practicing beforehand.

Despite taking place in New York, Chief Gage from Cleveland, Slam's nonviolent foil, returns. This police chief turns up just to laugh at Slam and Shorty and impede their investigation. These characters should not be treated as Supporting Cast, since they have no loyalty to the Hero. Likewise is a new rival character, PI Joan Carter. A rival is looking to complete the same scenario faster (though by the end of the story it appears that Slam has recruited Joan into his SCM roster).

(Available to read online via Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #15

This is Speed Saunders ordering a Tom Collins, which brings up the issue of what is appropriate subject matter for a Golden Age comic book role-playing campaign. Heroes can drink. Heroes can kill, though it should not be their first choice. These are things we see in the comic books.

Heroes do not cuss. Heroes have girlfriends, or even fiances, but appear to have chaste relationships. Which is not to say these things don't happen in a comic book world -- non-Heroes occasionally let out the occasional "*&#@!", and sex is clearly happening behind the scenes, or there would be no children in the campaign world.

Drugs is another subject we can touch on here. Marijuana and opium are known dangers in the comic book world. Heroes may have to navigate their dens, but would never think of sampling the wares themselves.

Also from Speed Saunders, this is one of the earliest instances of the phrase "master criminal" in comic books. Master criminal is, of course, a statted mobster type in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

It's rare to see a Hero screw up this badly in comics, getting knocked out and needing some non-Hero who comes along to save the day in his stead -- but this can be a common occurrence in a RPG, particularly for lower level Heroes who are more vulnerable. The Editor should either keep a flexible timeline for these scenarios, or always have a Plan B for what happens if the Heroes fail.

Hideouts & Hoodlums treats weapons as abstractly as the rest of the game mechanics, and doesn't make a fine point about things like bullets -- are x bullets compatible with y gun?  The only time it would likely come up is as a clue, as Buck Marshall finds here.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #10

Oops!  I had started to review this issue one day, got distracted from the project, and picked up on the next comic book in order. Now I'll have to go back and look again at #10 before doing #11...

How's this for starting with a bang?  Larry Steele is in a shootout, with some interesting things going on here. First, Larry manages to shoot a gun out of someone's hand, which is not supported by the game mechanics for "ordinary" Fighters. So what's going on there? The Editor might be:

A. Using stunts (Disarming Shot), but allowing Fighters to use them.
B. realizing that the gangster is at zero hp, but is using flavor text to shake things up; instead of saying the gangster drops, or something like that, the gangster has been removed from the fight by the loss of his gun (and, perhaps, will drop on the following turn).
C. remembering that The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 5 included optional rules for disarming during unarmed melee combat; the Editor is simply allowing those rules to stand in missile combat as well.
D. implementing a house rule of his own -- perhaps on a natural 20, the player can choose a special result from a hit in combat.

There are some other game mechanics possibly at play here. The obvious one is "misses his mark in the darkness", which could well be because of the hide in shadows ability for humans (the "-2 to be hit in dim light" rule), though it could also be just a situational modifier (since I am 95% sure I'm ditching the hide in shadows bonus in 2nd edition, for reasons shared elsewhere on this blog).

The other possible mechanic here is "driving Larry back," and this could be another example of covering fire, a new rule I just brought up yesterday. Only, then I was talking about covering fire making it too dangerous to move through an area, and this page suggests it would actually drive you back out of an area, which may be too powerful.

Also worth mentioning are the words associated with the bad guys. I've always treated "gangsters" as hoodlums, not knowing how I would stat gangsters differently. Any thoughts out there? "Thug", though, is an extra-tough hoodlum that was statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

Now, this page of Larry Steele brings up a good point about cars. Cars of the 1930s were things of beauty, and some of my favorite cars of all time, but one thing they were not was aerodynamic. That's why, when the mobsters' car is described as "streamlined", you know it's going to win this chase scene. So, "streamlined car" should be its own type of trophy item, which will always win in a race or chase (all other things being equal) against a regular 1930s/1940s-style car.

Cosmo is in India this issue, acting more like an explorer than a mystery man with a penchant for disguise. This is why Heroes need to travel -- because they aren't likely to find temples carved out of the tops of mountains in their home towns. The temple is a great idea for a hideout, but disappoints here, as the interior seems to be only two rooms big.

Note the wild dogs; I would use either the stats for watchdogs or wolves (both in Book II).

There's that disarming shot again! It's so cliche, maybe everyone should be able to do it?

This was probably Cosmo's most exciting adventure ever, so it's too bad it was wrapped up in just six rushed pages. It's hard to say what happens at the end that lets the villains all conveniently escape. Was that a flare bomb of some kind that blinded everyone long enough for the bad guys to pick up the mummy and flee to a secret door with it? Or maybe some sort of Dimension Door Grenade?

Bruce Nelson serials tend to be really talky, but here's an action page where Bruce grabs a knife thrown at him and throws it back. This should be possible in H&H, probably as a new stunt called Catch Missile Weapons, if Fighters are allowed to use stunts.

Bruce Nelson gives us evidence of two shots per turn, as allowed with automatic weapons in the core rules (and slower missile weapons at higher levels).

This month's installment of Spy shows us that anarchists are good at picking locks, and should get a really good bonus to morale saves, if they have to roll at all.

Buck Marshall, Range Detective, has some good advice on searching for secret things. Rolling a d6 and hoping for luck is one thing, but looking for specific things, like checking to see if the embers in a fire are still warm, will tell you information that requires no roll.

Now, Buck's advice about bolting the door behind you, so you're not disturbed while you're searching, may or may not appeal to players. Some players welcome the chance of wandering encounters while exploring as a ready source for more XP.

Slam Bradley, this month, teaches us that hi-tech weapons don't need to be found just with mad scientists. Here, a crooked boxing manager has an electric raygun, perfect for making murders look like accidental deaths (though taken from a murdered mad scientist, behind the scenes).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #8 - pt. 2

Bart Regan is reminded that it pays to have a day job as a spy, as routine assignments are often plot hooks for adventure!

The key to tracking, as I've discussed here before, is often just asking the right questions. Here, Buck Marshall's player asks his Editor, "What shape are the boot prints?" to ascertain there were two assailants. But if tracking is being used as a Cowboy stunt or Mysteryman special skill, then some information should always be withhold from "ordinary" Heroes searching for tracks. "You simply can't tell," is a fair answer, no matter how long the Heroes spent searching.

Not really germane to game mechanics, but...I wonder where Slam Bradley is from?  I would have assumed Slam was from Cleveland, Ohio, just like Siegel and Shuster's next creation, Superman, will be from originally. And yet, a road trip from Cleveland to the Kentucky mountains should only take 6-7 hours, not exactly a "long night".  New York to Kentucky would be 13-14 hours, more idea of a long night's drive.

Shorty often plays the fool, but in this story he wisely uses Supporting Cast Member recruitment in order to change the encounter reaction of the hillbilly girl holding a shotgun on him.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #9

Speed Saunders sees three hobos on a park bench and gets an unexplained hunch that only one of them is suspicious. What just happened?

Well, if this was a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, there are a few possible explanations. One, if the Editor wants to control the scenario, he could just tell Speed's player that one of the three hobos looks suspicious. If the Editor wants to let the player control the scenario, then Speed's player decided one of the three was suspicious-looking and the Editor just went along with it. There's also the possibility that all three of them were suspicious, and each served as a different plot hook. Leaving it to chance, the Editor rolled 1 die, with a 2 in 6 chance of Speed noticing the suspicious-ness of each hobo, and he only got lucky once.

It's also hard to determine how this scene would be handled in H&H. That incorrigible prankster, Speed Saunders, could probably have defeated this slick hoodlum, hobo, and corrupt politician from under the table any number of different ways, but elected to tie all their feet together instead. It's hard to imagine how an Editor would justify making his player roll to attack in order to tie each foot to the next one. More plausible is that the Editor rolled for surprise and let it work because of a lucky surprise roll. It's also justifiable for the Editor, in this scene, to make a saving throw vs. science for each mobster to see if he fell down, or managed to keep his balance.

This is Larry Steele, who's pal happens to have a gun on him still, missed by their captors. So what's happening there, if this is a game of H&H?  A freebie from the Editor? Or did the player suggest it and the Editor allowed him a save vs. plot to have an undiscovered weapon left on him?

This is Buck Marshall, and I'm half-tempted to add a "crease the skull" rule to the game, since it seems to occur so often. It does seem that weapons can sometimes leave victims unconscious for only short periods of time. Perhaps, when someone rolls maximum damage for a weapon attack, there should be a 1 in 10 chance of it temporarily rendering the opponent unconscious for 1-6 minutes?




I'm not going to show it this time, but I'm going to tell you about the Slam Bradley pages from this issue. One page shows Slam scaling down the side of a skyscraper at a dizzying height. Originally, climbing as a special skill was assigned to the Mysteryman class, but Slam is definitely a Fighter, not a Mysteryman -- strengthening the argument for making stunts available to other classes in the next edition.

Also, Shorty is caught in decent, if not overly original trap. A pressure plate in the floor in front of an obviously-placed safe causes a cage to be dropped over that spot from above (though how the cage was concealed in the ceiling isn't clear). The cage can also more of a delaying, or inconveniencing trap, since it can simply be tilted up/lifted off.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #1 - pt. 1

After 107 posts, we're finally getting into material that most comic book fans of today would recognize, at least by name. Detective Comics #1!  Of course, there was no sign of Batman -- or any characters remotely like him -- back in that first issue.

Though most of the adventures in Detective Comics fit the theme of urban crime, there was also Bret Lawton, "ace international detective", but he was really more of an explorer than a detective (see the Explorer class in The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 2).

Here, Bret stumbles across a ruined Incan temple in Peru and, while we only see the outside of it, you can already tell that it would be a pretty cool hideout.  There's a small entrance, like a back door, at ground level. From the front, the temple seems disguised as a really tall mound. Only when the Incan on top descends around the back on some concealed stairs does he come to what looks more like a main entrance. The mound/temple doesn't look that big, but there could easily be 3-5 rooms between the lower back entrance and the higher main entrance, and who knows how many rooms underground...

Nelson (no first name in this issue) discovers that even a Chinese restaurant can serve as a hideout.  This page gives you some sense of the layout, as well as the trappings of a sinister-looking lair.

Hideouts & Hoodlums Book II: Mobsters and Trophies makes no mention of yellow peril hoodlums being of unusual size, though these huge Orientals do certainly look like they have 2 Hit Dice or better.

I'm not sure how this periscope works -- mirrors positioned in every room? -- but I do like the idea of a single sentry being able to watch the whole hideout for intruders.

Buck Marshall, Range Detective reminds us that tracking does not mean the Editor needs to tell the players exactly where the bad guys went; the Editor can choose to have clues found instead and let the players try to piece them together.

And here's another view of yellow peril hoodlums, not as fearsome foes, but comical nincompoops.

Slam Bradley's signature move, hitting one mobster with another, is visually appealing, but a possible rules cheat that should be addressed here.  In H&H, unarmed combat goes faster, with two attacks per turn (which is supposed to encourage unarmed combat).  However, one of the hoodlums was clearly holding a knife (though he's just now dropped it).  If any one combatant uses a regular weapon, it slows down the whole combat to single attacks per turn (exception: missile attacks with some weapons, or melee attacks if buffed by certain powers, but otherwise this is always true in melee).  So, without the knife, Slam could have picked up one hoodlum and hit the other, as two different attacks, in the same turn.  With the knife, he had to grapple the first hoodlum in one turn and hit the other one in the second turn.  Even then, the Editor might choose to rule that only one of the hoodlums takes damage from the attack.

Slam is a brand new Hero, but he's already picked up two useful tips for hideout-crawling -- 1) in case of traps, make someone else go first, and 2) pick up anything that looks useful you find lying around a hideout.  You never know when that sword might be a +1 Sword!

(Scans by me!)