Showing posts with label Captain Quick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Captain Quick. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

New Adventure Comics #24

We're going to start off today staring into the face of 1930s racism again. Here, in this page from The Golden Dragon, we see that "yellow peril" can cover multiple ethnicities.



Hideouts & Hoodlums has always danced on that dangerous edge of recognizing, but not embracing, the racism of the early comic books. Hence, Book II: Mobsters and Trophies having an entry for savages. Now, if I really wanted to dance perilously over that edge, I could include giving savages an "unholy shriek" that prompts morale saves, as seen here in Captain Quick.



Although it may look like I'm sharing this page to talk about racial stereotyping again, I'm off that subject -- and much more interested in the ladder in the shaft, concealed inside a fake vase, that leads into hidden catacombs. A great hideout entrance!



How do you know when a leopard should only miss by an inch, like in this page of Sandor and the Lost Civilization?  It's not a H&H rule, but what I've long done is treat the number I missed by "to hit" on my d20, -1, to be the number of inches the attack missed by. So, if I rolled I needed a 10 to hit, but rolled a 7 or 8, my leopard only missed by 1 inch. If I'd rolled a 9, then the leopard did connect, but did no damage (maybe it tore his pants?).


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Thursday, June 11, 2015

New Adventure Comics #15

Rooster jokes are almost as common as goat humor in these old comic books. This is a particularly weird one -- we apparently have a bulletproof rooster here, who can eat bullets as well.



This is from a serial called "Jungle Fever", though you'd never know it since it seems to all take place on a boat.

Red is a crazy effective fighter, and apparently third level, since he's using the 'combat machine' skill of the Fighter class to attack multiple low-HD opponents at once.



This is from "A Tale of Two Cities". I probably won't be commenting on literary adaptations too often, but this is almost surely the first spiked club, or morning star, that I've seen in comic books.



Likewise, Captain Quick is a historical adventure, which I often ignore -- but there is an excellent play-by-play description of a duel here.  To adapt this to Hideouts & Hoodlums, you need: a) parrying rules, b) a chance of tripping during melee,...



 ...c) the ability to get back up on your feet as a free action, d) a mechanic for breaking weapons, and e) a mechanic for morale. H&H currently has a and e. B is right out, in ordinary circumstances, because it adds too much difficulty to combat. The H&H rules are not clear, yet, on c, though I generally treat rising from a prone position as a whole-combat turn action.  H&H might get d in the next edition.




Included here because the cryptic note written in a cylinder of silk is a great plot hook for an adventure.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)