Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 3

I had a page of Boots I wanted to share, but for some reason I couldn't download it. Anyway, the joke at the end was that a cab fare was $25 and change, which was a surprisingly large amount to the character told that, but not out of the realm of the possible. I'll have to remember not to treat cab rides as freebies in my next campaign!

Here's a rare instance of Our Boarding House turning up here, and again it's to remind me of prices. $2 for moving men is reasonable, $5 seems a rip-off. Storage houses make house calls. You reading this, Public Storage? It's also worth remembering that, despite how cheap everything seems to us today in 1940 prices, they still expected quality from their merchandise.

 It should shock no one that the Iconi Indian tribe is made-up.

42' is really impressive for an anaconda, which usually top out at 30' long.

According to Wikipedia, "the large South American characins of the family Erythrinidae have also sometimes been called 'tigerfish'," but most tigerfish are found in Africa.

Poisonous reptiles has got to refer to snakes. There are pit vipers in the Amazon and...and...oh heck, there are plenty of sites you can look at yourself for this information, but I'm not looking at more pictures of real snakes to share them with you.

It's unclear if the crocodiles capsized the boat or simply took advantage of an accident.

One can't deny that swinging from vines, ropes, etc. into a battle is very cinematic. But is there any real advantage to it? He gains some momentum in the swing, but he also loses his ability to accurately target his kicks, while needing to maintain his balance and hold on the vine/rope/etc. at the same time.

If I had a precedent of using ability score checks in my campaign, I would ask for a STR and a DEX check, and only both are successful would I give a +1 to damage for the swing-kick.

From the outside of the fence, we can't tell if that is a professional hockey game, but 50 cents seems awful high for a non-professional game in 1940. The question then becomes, which hockey league is this? The Pro Hockey League was the earliest of its kind, started in Michigan in 1904. The National Hockey League, the one that's still around, began in Canada in 1917 but quickly spread to the United States. I suppose it depends on where Freckles takes place, but I don't think we've ever been given a clue. Heck, I don't even have a clue, after all these years, what that circle is in the middle of Freckle's face. A parrot beak?

But the real reason I shared this page is for the detector. I don't know if that's a real thing like the others, but it seems like it would be a really useful trophy item for mobsters to have, able to detect cars or planes approaching their hideout.

Dan Dunn gives us a detailed schematic of how to make your own buoy and use it to surreptitously drop off packages.

And here's a useful clue that you're dealing with a spy -- portable radios with inoperative tuning dials, so they can always pick up secret wave lengths.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Crackajack Funnies #17

Today's adventure of Don Winslow of the Navy includes a naval battle between a battle cruiser and a submarine -- neither one of which is going to make it into the trophy section of the 2nd edition basic book. After much thought and research, I've decided to cap the section on water transport trophies to yachts.

Interestingly, it's a yacht that Don is on and not the two vessels actually fighting. The larger naval battle could be roll-played out, or just treated as background flavor text.

Trigger is "crazed" and staggers blindly from fatigue and thirst. Those are some harsh complications I don't expect any players will want to deal with. Trigger is a mobster, though, so the Editor can assign any complications to him he wants.

This is "Time Marches Back" with Looney Luke, Inventor of the "Time Machine."  It's a feature as bad as its title would suggest. Two things to note from it, though: a) Luke's time machine is his hat, which also lets him fly, and b) this is an actual ghost. Real ghosts are exceedingly rare in the early comics, as they're almost always fake undead. This ghost demonstrates its ability to pass through small holes here, as ectoplasm seems to be closer to a liquid than a solid state.

This is Clyde Beatty, Daredevil Lion & Tiger Trainer -- further proof of my new contention that the longer a title is the worse it is. At least Clyde is done messing around in the circus now and is exploring Africa.

Clyde doesn't bother with taming leopards, though -- he just wants to kill 'em!  I've spoken recently about Hit Dice intentionally not accurately reflecting the comics, and here this leopard would have to have 4 hit points for there to be any chance of that dagger killing it in one hit.

This is Buck Jones and the Canyon Rustler, and there's more going on here than you might think at a glance. Buck has defeated this outlaw (an evil cowboy) and now the outlaw is spilling the beans about the hideout Buck needs to head to next. Buck has already learned how the entrance to the hideout is concealed and the location of a lookout (another new mobster type) guarding the entrance.  But there's also a bandit lurking about and he's about to attack. Look out, Buck!

It's been awhile since we've checked in on Dann Dunn, Secret Operative 48. Here his poor dog Wolf is doing most of the work because Dan is low on hit points. At the end, when all the danger is past, Dan faints from low hp. Except, that's not a thing -- you can't somehow delay unconsciousness in the game through force of will. So, this must be the player's decision to make Dan faint -- self-imposed flavor text, if you will.

Also, an example of the usefulness of carrying handcuffs.

Wash Tubbs finds that the 1930s is a great time to buy things cheap, if you've got the money.

This reminds me of a recent issue I had in the 2nd edition trophy section -- how do you set $ values on hi-tech or magic trophy items so that Heroes don't become instantly rich? One answer is, if it's the pre-WWII years, not enough people are buying who have enough money to make you rich.

Speed Bolton Air Ace should be a lot more exciting than it usually is, but in this installment things really start to happen after a lot of issues of people standing around talking to each other.

I'm wondering, though, if a marksman's medal should be a trophy item. The wielder would get a +1 to hit with missiles?

This is Ed Tracer, G-Man X32. He's in an interesting hideout, and I call it interesting because there's plenty to explore here. Did he search all the cells in the dungeon? What's in that barrel and crate? What flows out of that long pipe sticking out of the wall -- water, or green slime?

The radio room is halfway between levels. It contains a safe - don't you want to know what's in it, Ed? Above that is, one could presume, the ground floor where the party is taking place.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Crackajack Funnies #16 - pt. 1

(The following post makes more sense if you think of this as having been posted on Thanksgiving, when I started writing it.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

What is Dan Dunn thankful for? That Hideouts & Hoodlums doesn't have "bleeding out" rules. Despite the fact that he's apparently been unconscious from a gunshot wound for hours, he wakes up just fine. And it really is the amount of time passing that made the difference, not the water that Irwin brought him -- unless Irwin happened to slip a dissolving healing pill into the water!

The mobsters are thankful for the new 2nd edition rule on cover fire, making the police afraid to move into the path of the bullets for they would be automatically hit. But Wolf is fine. Is that because cover fire doesn't work against smaller than man-sized targets, or is the grass really so tall that the mobsters don't have line of sight?

Here, the fact that Wolf hops over a wall and still isn't nailed by the cover fire seems to prove that it doesn't work against smaller than man-sized opponents. Or they switched off of the cover fire tactic for some reason (running out of bullets?).

Dan is awfully optimistic for a man who should be only back up to 1 hit point right now.

We've seen more elaborate trap triggers, like electric eyes, pressure plates, and even motion sensors (before that was even a thing you could buy), but here we get the simple trigger of a black thread setting off an alarm.

This page also suggests that carrying a lit flashlight could make it easier to target someone -- or at least would cancel out the dim light bonus in 1st edition.

Red Ryder is grateful for those hot coals, and being able to kick them in the air as high as a person's face. Now, I do plan on having a rule in 2nd edition for blinding attacks, but should hot material also do damage? I would be inclined to say no, since it gives a double advantage to the blinding attack. Of course, this might make sense for hot coals, but what if the hero was invulnerable and could kick up molten lava? An Editor will still have to play situations like that by ear.

Ed Tracer has less reason to be thankful; first he's tricked by The Piranha, who pretends to have stuck Ed with a poison dart (bluffing is much easier than actually carrying poisoned weapons!), then a mobster gets surprise on him and puts him in a double-arm lock. I have grappling rules for 2nd edition that will cover multiple holds, like this one.

1st ed. H&H had the giant piranha. 2nd ed. is going to stat normal schools of piranha. But this appears to be a tank of only four piranha? That's a pretty easy deathtrap. They're going to be able to do maybe 1 point of damage to him per turn?

This is Buck Jones, and I don't share this page because of the simple "I'll roll a boulder down the hill" trap -- because we've seen that already. No, it's for the peculiar incident of the horse stumbling. Over what? When do cowboy's horses ever trip?  There's no need for a game mechanic for this -- this is clearly a freebie from the Editor.

I'm equally skeptical of this. Should Heroes be able to outrun attacks? How slowly are those boulders rolling? In this case, I'm inclined to say Buck made a save vs. missiles to avoid the boulder trap, which was explained by the flavor text of him climbing a nearby tree to escape them.

Wash Tubbs is abused by his ex-girlfriend's bratty kids in this sequence that harkens back to the strip's pre-Captain Easy days. On the previous page was the ol' bucket of water balanced on the door trap -- avoided by a save vs. missiles and -- since it was only water -- doing no damage.

Itching powder also does no damage but could be a good distraction, maybe making someone save vs. science each turn or lose initiative until the powder is washed off.

Spitballs do no damage, but they sure are annoying (no game mechanic for annoying though).

Trip attacks will be covered under the grappling rules.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Crackajack Funnies #14

We haven't checked in on Dan Dunn in awhile. Here, I'm interested in the double protection of having a secret room, behind a secret door, and a second concealed door behind a painting in the secret room. But can we distinguish between secret and concealed doors here? We don't actually see the first secret door behind the bookcase; it's just described to us. If the bookcase is only blocking a normal door, then I would call that a concealed door. But if it looked like blank wall behind the bookcase until you pulled a lever disguised to look like a book on the shelf, causing it to slide open, then you have a secret door.

Slade missed his save vs. plot to see through Dan's act, but Fallon made his. It's worth pointing out that a disguise doesn't have to be a fake mustache or stage make-up; it can be trying to pass yourself off as someone else.

This reminds me of the Cowboy stunt Jump into Saddle (from Supplement III), and also reminds me that Jump into Saddle could have explained how Abdul the Arab could have leaped down into a moving car in the post I did on Smash Comics #1 two days ago.

Only a hoodlum who's never read Treasure Island would skip searching a crutch.

But I'm more interested here in Peggy's Mother's concern about her jewelry being all fakes. Granted, this is a non-Hero character, but if it was a Hero, how would I handle this? A successful appraisal check tells her they're fake, but a failed roll only tells her she doesn't know for sure yet.

In Hideouts & Hoodlums I don't tell you who should make the dice rolls, leaving that up to each Editor to decide. Often, I like to let players make their own encounter reaction rolls. I normally do let them make their own skill checks -- but I can see situations, like appraisal, where a secret check by the Editor might make more sense. Then the players have to react to what the Editor tells them, instead of what they know from the dice roll.

The nice thing about this escape plan is that there's no time crunch involved. If the cistern had been filling up with water, that would be another thing, but because the three of them can try the human pyramid trick as many times as they want, there's no reason not to just wave game mechanics, say it works, and reward Easy's player for his good idea.

From Myra North, Special Nurse, we learn that artificial respiration was much different in the 1930s! It makes you wonder how first aid ever worked back then. No wonder it doesn't give you immediate hit points back in H&H!

I just had to share this because it's pretty cool. Myra North must have at least one level in Fighter. Here she takes on a spy armed with a gun, using only a pair of scissors, and still wins!

Sound-proof doors in hideouts is something to consider. It would waste a lot of players' hear noise rolls during a hideout-clearing expedition. On the other hand, it would also keep mobsters from being able to hear combat in their neighbors' rooms and lend aid.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comics Museum)

Crackajack Funnies #11

Take a look at this guy in the yellow suit. Would you guess he was a hoodlum? No, but Irwin somehow makes him right away? I'm more convinced than ever that Hideouts & Hoodlums needs a skill for identifying mobsters.

Car bombs are deadly in H&H -- maybe 5-30 points of damage, if there's a full tank of gas. It's deadly enough that I wouldn't even think of putting a 1st-level Hero in a scenario where he could encounter one.

Now this is a mistake I never make anymore, when running any RPG. No players act like Red Ryder here, and stay away from a rendezvous point until the time of the rendezvous. They always want to show up hours early to stake the place out. So this scenario would never work out in a real game.

The law always seems to crack down hardest on the Heroes in stories like this -- note the $1,000 reward for Red Ryder, an exorbitant amount for a Western setting.

This is Buck Jones, and this is clearly the 1st level Cowboy stunt, Summon Horse, on display here. There's really no other explanation I can think of for why his horse just happens to walk into the cabin.

This is also the only instance I can think of where I've ever read about keeping matchsticks in your hat band being a good thing.

I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this one, Buck. Okay, maybe you coaxed your horse into leaping off the cliff with a lot of spurring, but you'll have an even harder time convincing me you both just took a 90' plunge into the lake and took no damage. Minimal damage, I can believe, but here they just ride off as if they took a light rinse.

This is Don Winslow doing the rowing. The plot here is an especially intriguing one, looking back, as the Spanish Civil War is really the forgotten war that didn't figure into World War II. But that does beg the question -- is Red's theory really half-baked, or is the intervention of men like Don Winslow that ended the Spanish Civil War early before it could spill out into the larger War in Europe?

Giant piranha are statted for H&H right away in Book II, though, to be honest, I've yet to see a giant one in the comics. Maybe I should apply those stats to a piranha swarm instead.

I don't plan on using a precise encumbrance system anymore in 2nd ed., so I guess it won't really matter how much an automatic pistol weights. But I was still surprised that an automatic could fit in a handbag that small.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Crackajack Funnies #9 - part 1

We haven't checked in on Dan Dunn in awhile. Here he reminds us that you should always check for clues at a crime scene. The metal tag is probably something all factory workers had to wear.

This is Speed Bolton, Air Ace.  He keeps a machine gun in his plane and shoots out the window because a) planes weren't pressurized so windows could all be opened, and b) because not every plane can hold a gun mounted behind the propeller, and not just anyone would be able to sync up the gun for synchronized fire.

Speed is nervous at the end because he doesn't seem to have the Improvised Landing stunt prepared...

Even a cowboy like Buck Jones can learn clues from a letter, like if the letter was written by a man or woman.

Rattlesnakes need to be statted in 2nd ed.

In a cowboy setting, there should probably be rules about spooked hosses -- that is, horses. If a horse is spooked, it's going to make morale saves in every encounter at a -2 penalty until an animal trainer spends time with it (or maybe a Cowboy with a Calm Hoss stunt).

You'd think an outfit like this guy's would make him stand out too much for a mask to do him much good, but that's not what masks are like in a comic book world. Put a little black around your eyes and anyone would have to save vs. plot to recognize him -- even if they should recognize him from the bright green pants.

Occupations are good for plot hooks, but it's important for Heroes to keep the people they work for happy. A superhero in one of my home campaigns got fired from his job not that long ago because he was supposed to be a photojournalist and never took pictures on adventures. If you do care about keeping your job, you've got to work at keeping those encounter reaction results high.

This page of Wash Tubbs explains how a magnetic boxing ring would work. It would be difficult to put a Hero in a situation where he would need to put on special shoes with a metal plate in it before a fight (and I would give the Hero a chance of noticing), but the big issue is that there is no game mechanic effect that staying motionless in combat has. I guess, if attacking while prone confers a -4 penalty, then attacking while you can't move one foot should give a -1 or even a -2 penalty.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

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)