Crackajack Funnies #7

That horrible Rico is using Jean as a living shield! Or is he? Jean is, interestingly, not in a direct line of fire between Rico and any of the shooters, yet they are hesitant to shoot at Rico. That's because of how dangerous it is to shoot into melee in Hideouts & Hoodlums; on a miss, there's always a chance of hitting a random other person.

If there's a ten to one shot of dropping from a fast-moving plane onto a fast-moving boat, then Hawks needs a 19 or 20 on his attack roll.

This is from Don Winslow. There's some implied violence here that's quite surprising -- the plane's propeller is being used to attack the sharks in the water. I guess this could be resolved as a simple attack, treating the plane as a weapon. The propeller might do...2-16 points of damage?

I don't think these are appropriate starting equipment items, but they could make for good low-powered trophies -- a flare gun and a collapsible rubber life raft (complete with bottle of pressured carbon dioxide).

I'm not sure how this torture device works. A light beam in the eyes apparently forces him to make a save vs. plot every 10-minute turn or tell a villain everything he wants to hear.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Crackajack Funnies #6

These panels are from Capt. Frank Hawks, Air Ace, and shows the old "shoot the lock off" trick. The game mechanics for wrecking things don't distinguish between what tool you're using, so shooting the lock has the same non-Superhero wrecking chance as going at it with a crowbar.

You can definitely move around in combat, as shone here. You only have to be within 10' of your opponent to stay in melee range with them, so a combatant could move up 10' to engage, then pass and stand 10' on the far side of their opponent, without ever leaving melee.

I've never understood how diving underwater protects fictional characters from bullets so well, but maybe water should serve as hard cover?

And, of course, an amphibious plane is a trophy transport item.  Collect 'em all!

Myra North, Special Nurse, is not normally prone to flights of fancy, so maybe this is a real thing, injecting a capsule into a chicken so that it gets passed through into an egg. It seems a crazy way to pass a secret message to me, but maybe it'll really catch your players off-guard someday.

There's not a really good long shot of this hideout, but it seems to be a cluster of cabins located in a remote mountain pass. You can approach it from either end, and be observed by scouts, or you can climb up over the sides and lower yourself down 70' cliffs by rope. I suppose you could also just drop flaming debris onto the cabins, to the scenario had best call for making sure everyone isn't killed. Indeed, in this story, Buck Jones is going into the hideout to rescue someone.

I liked this idea from Don Winslow -- bad guys drain a lake to reveal a sunken Mayan city. Now the Heroes get to explore the ruins with a nice mix of dry and aquatic encounter areas.

Don's plan to re-take the stolen naval cruiser is to use a tin pan full of flaming oil in the powder magazine to make the crew think there's an out-of-control fire in with the explosives. It's a desperate gamble; I would leave some chance, if I was running this scenario, for the fire to get out of control.  I would also make morale saves for the crew, and some unlucky rolls might mean some of the crew are willing to play hero and go down to fight the fire.

This is Tom Mix, and the hideout here appears to be a cave with a giant secret door blocking the entrance that can only be turned by a crank from the inside. However, since the door is really only canvas on a frame, made to look like stone, it would actually be easy to wreck through. However, because it's only canvas, it's real easy for the defenders to shoot through at anyone trying to wreck through...

And lastly, there is the sanitarium hideout of Doctor Sabin in Tom Traylor. No single page of the story gives you a very good sense of the layout of the place, but it a spacious, well-furnished, house built on the shore of a sound, with a dock and a boat out back. Besides the dining room, sanitarium office, and operating room, there is a radio room, a dungeon (complete with prison cells), and an underground passage that extends from the dungeon up to the dock.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Crackajack Funnies #5

The difference between role-playing and roll-playing is exemplified, to me, by this page of Dan Dunn.  Note how Dan's plan doesn't involve sneaking or fighting -- just talking. He's going to talk his way into the villain's hideout. The Editor could still add an element of randomness with encounter reaction rolls, but the players can just keep talking, come at it from a different angle, and try to change the dynamics.

This is Captain Frank Hawks, Air Ace.  Flying Blind should probably be a 1st or 2nd level Aviator stunt, allowing the Aviator to fly safely with zero visibility.

Still in the same adventure, Frank has locked himself into a ship's cabin and the mobsters after him try to break through with an axe. It seems a logical choice in real life, but there is currently no game mechanic bonus to wreck through a door. Maybe axes should have some kind of bonus, like a -1 penalty for the door to save vs. non-Superhero wrecking?

This is Myra North, Special Nurse, and she has a playing tip -- if you think someone has done something and you want to prove it, bribe them to stop and see how they react.

Canisters of anesthetic gas should be a trophy item. It only works in tandem with a grappling attack.

Clyde Beatty, Daredevil Lion Tamer reminds us that you should always keep poison antidotes handy. A lot of my players have all learned to stock up on anti-venom.

In Wash Tubbs, the circus manager (I don't think he was revealed to be an inventor until the story needed him to be) has a spray that makes claws too rubbery to do damage. I think a lot of players would want their Heroes to have this stuff.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Crackajack Funnies #4

Twenty officers for back-up, Dan? Thanks for ruining my adventure by sitting back and letting a small army of non-Heroes take all the hits!

At one time, this would not have penalized Dan at all, XP-wise, as the original rules for Hideouts & Hoodlums called for experience point awards for defeated mobsters to be awarded in full to all participants. This was handy in the message board-based playtesting, with its slower pace and level advancement, but I completely reversed this call in my recent "1.5 ed." changes after much more live session play. Making players think twice about how many people they bring into the hideout ("Hmm...I'll have to split XP 21 ways...?") actually helps better emulate most Golden Age comic book stories with lone heroes.

Unless you're a chicken like Dan Dunn.

To be fair, Dan's player might just be high-balling here, realizing that the Editor may not want to give him 20 officers for back-up and is looking for a high compromise number. Now, if he was looking for a number of back-up officers equal to his level, I probably would allow it right away, but for a higher number like that, I would make an encounter reaction roll, and it would have to be a very friendly result to get that many.

I have recently posted, and been giving a lot of thought, to game mechanics for car chases. Obstacles -- lamp posts, peddlers carts, trees -- should be getting in people's way all the time in car chases, each one requiring a save vs. plot from the driver to avoid crashing into.

And this I just find funny, how this page talks about a lottery like it's a terrible scam, and how far we've come in being permissive of gambling in this country. What's really interesting, though, is how Dan says booze is still illegal. That means this adventure took place no later than 1933!

This is from Capt. Frank Hawks, Air Ace, and it got me to thinking...could the wrecking things table be used in reverse? Could I use it to figure out what a robot or a car -- or a plane -- can wreck, when they go up against each other? It needs more thought, but I'm thinking yes.

This is Freckles and His Friends.  There's some pricing information here -- such as a "trick" horse fetching between $500-650.  The boys' errands show that they could earn a quarter for running a grocery errand, 75 cents for fixing a radio, and 35 cents sounds like an average laundry bill.

Dr. Centaur's tip for attacking a ship: take out the foremast first, to disable the ship's radio. That way they can't call for help.

I don't know if just anyone could "reverse look-up" a name and address by a phone number by calling the operator, but G-Men apparently could. Maybe any Hero who makes a positive encounter reaction check can too.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Crackajack Funnies #3

Let's see what Dell Comics has for me today. Captain Frank Hawks, Air Ace, is tied up and tossed down a well to die?  Seems like a standard day for a comic book hero. Granted, it's not much of a deathtrap, since the well is dry and not stocked with piranha fish or alligators. Though, since there is a long-term chance of starving to death, it is technically still a death trap.

If Heroes, or their Supporting Cast, should find themselves missing equipment, like rope, that they need to complete the scenario they are on, the Editor should feel free to introduce a mysterious stranger into the scene who shows up with just what they need. An explanation for the mysterious stranger can always be given later, when the Editor has had time to come up with one.

Following up on yesterday's discussion of organ grinder's monkeys, Myra North is dealing with two hoodlums with an ape trained to rob banks. But what kind of ape is this supposed to be? It's a bit small for a chimpanzee. A gibbon? As poorly drawn as it is, it might be either. A large chimpanzee could have up to 1 Hit Dice, while a gibbon would be hard-pressed to qualify for 1/2 HD.

I find it humorous that the doctor emerges from the secret room with a bottle of anesthetic -- and then uses it to bash the hoodlum over the head with it. Weirder is that the hoodlums are being made to drink it once they're subdued, since anesthetics are usually administered by inhalation or injection.

Our mystery ape -- which now is drawn more closely like a chimpanzee -- has more than one skill of a Mysteryman.

What an odd argument -- if it has human intelligence, it's better off dead!

"Human gland secretions" might serve as a hi-tech potion for increasing Intelligence in animals.

Giving your players more resources gives them more options. To keep things really simple, keep your Heroes poor. The pursuit of basic necessities is the most basic carrot you can dangle in front of your players. Want the Heroes to follow your plot hook? Or move on to the next town? Dangle the $2 they need to eat in front of them.

Of course, this is seldom going to work past the first or even second levels, so enjoy it while you can.

In the optional expanded weapon damage system for Hideouts & Hoodlums, punches do 1-3 points of damage, but wear brass knuckles and you do 1-6 points of damage. This is reflected in this page of Wash Tubbs, with boxing gloves containing plaster doing much more damage than ordinary punches.

Also note the salary of a boxer in a traveling carnival.

This is the first appearance of Don Winslow villain Dr. Centaur in the comic books. But Dr. Centaur has an older history with Hideouts & Hoodlums, going back to the original H&H campaign I ran on rpol.net and the third scenario I ran there (sometime in 2010-2011?).  So sad that rpol recently deleted that campaign!

Oh, and Dr. Centaur has an "ultra short sound wave generator" (ultrasonic soundwave raygun?) that can broadcast over a wide range and potentially stun large numbers of people (save vs. science to resist).

Note how different phone numbers worked back then. You didn't call a phone number, you called an exchange (or had your local exchange call a distant exchange, if long distance) and had the operator look up the person for you.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Crackajack Funnies #1

For months now, I've been reviewing pretty much the same cycle of comic books each month; now I've got two new ones in consecutive posts!  Though, to be honest, Crackajack Funnies has a lot of familiar content in it...

We've certainly seen Dan Dunn before! Sometimes I share particular pages for the history they teach us; this time, I share this page because of how accurately it predicts the future. Here, Dan and Irwin predict the prevalence of security cameras in modern society. Next stop, red light cameras!

Speaking of predicting the future -- this notion of mobsters using a naval destroyer seemed novel to me when I thought of it for The Trophy Case no. 9, and here Norman Marsh had already done the same thing 77 years earlier!

Here's an aviator we haven't seen before! So, what stunts is Captain Frank Hawks, Air Ace, using? Conjure Parachute? Deadstick? These both come from the Aviator-themed issues of The Trophy Case, vol 1. nos. 6-7, of course.  Broken oil line sounds like one of the plane mishaps identified in The Trophy Case no. 8.

Is Hawks a two-classed Hero, an Aviator/Scientist? Naw -- he's using the Repair Plane Damage stunt. With all the stunts Hawks has used so far, he must be at least 3rd level.

I've never been satisfied with the Scientist class, and it may be that I made inventing things too difficult. It turns out, any crackpot tinkerer working in a movie theater can invent a death ray!  The things special nurses have to deal with...

Hmm...a rubber finger tip sure seems handy for framing people (and I just saw how you can make your own in the Ant-Man movie!). I wonder if this should be a trophy item...?

Hunting for food is something that could come up when Heroes are on long expeditions, or simply run out of money. I don't think there needs to be a separate game mechanic for hunting, though one should dispense with the rule about only being unconscious at zero hit points.

Ventriloquism, largely forgotten now except by the occasional stand-up comedian, used to be a skill that seemed to fascinate comic book/strip writers. Not everyone could do it (given the confused and surprised reactions in The Nebbs), but you also didn't have to be a Hero (or even an adult) to use it. I'm thinking now that this needs to be more accessible than a stunt; perhaps a basic skill, like finding secret doors and hearing noises, that everyone has a flat chance to do?

We haven't touched on the Spanish Civil War in a while, but Don Winslow reminds us that neutrality poses its own challenges and a scenario can be built around "get in, get out, don't attack either side".


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)