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 #25

This one is woefully out of order. I had skipped over it because the summary I'd read seemed so uninteresting. Now that I've read it myself, though, I found plenty worthy of comment.

Nailing down where the early Heroes are from isn't easy most of the time, but here Speed Saunders tells us he's from New York. He also tells us some useful tips for checking corpses: check the wrists to see if they had show signs of having been tied up, and -- of course -- check the ground to see if there's enough blood, or if the body was moved. And, of course, play every hunch. Even though the body seems to have been killed by a hammer blow to the head, Speed still asks for the stomach to be pumped -- just for, you know, whatev's -- and then by amazing coincidence finds the true source of death. It makes me curious about how a skill in Hideouts & Hoodlums shouldn't be "get sudden hunch" -- which would let the Editor feed clues to his players...

In Spy, Bart and Sally are the first Heroes to be given a plot hook by FDR himself! Speaking of amazing coincidences, Sally reaches into a spy's desk drawer, pulls out random papers, and they just happen to be detailed invasion plans. Now, maybe the Editor assigned something like a 1 in 6 (or even a 1 in 8!) chance of stumbling on just the right papers and Sally's player got lucky, or the Editor fudged events to ratchet up the stakes in the scenario.

In The Mysterious Doctor Fu Manchu, slime-covered walls prevent climbing from a trap. It's your standard flooding room trap with one extra twist -- there are beams just high enough for the Heroes to grab and try to pull themselves up, but concealed on the top of the beams are sword-blades. Although the characters believe they could sever fingers, we deal with more abstract injury in H&H; they probably do only 1-6 damage.

The Crimson Avenger carries two trophy items: a lineman's phone that he can plug into someone's else's phone jack and use, and the first gas gun used by a Hero in comics!

Bruce Nelson is said to have a curious ability: he can shoot "accurately while on the dead run".  Now, normally, one can make two moves in combat in H&H, or one move and an attack. This seems to be implying that Bruce can make a full move and still get an attack. So what's going on there? Should this be a skill everyone has, like a 1 in 6 chance to shoot while on a dead run? But skills don't affect combat, class and level (and to a limited extent, ability scores) affect combat. For running combats consistently, I'm inclined to ignore what Bruce just did, but I'll watch for more evidence...

Crooks often do dumb things in comic books that make them easy to find. Bruce homes in on a gang of robbers because all of their robberies are roughly equidistant from the same town the bad guys use as their base. Heroes should always remember to check maps and look for patterns -- though it should not fall to the Editor to spell out what the patterns are.

Slam Bradley & Shorty Morgan (really, Shorty) are attacked by a rattlesnake when they try attending college to better themselves. That Slam can't spell, but in another issue is revealed to be a self-taught magic-user, either shows that the strip had no sense of continuity, or that an education-related stat would be unnecessary in H&H.

Slam is good at division of labor; when a rock is thrown through their dorm window with a note tied to it, Slam leaves Shorty to read the notes, while Slam crashes through the window to chase the thrower. Smart players will make quick decisions like this, so that all the Heroes aren't trying to accomplish the same thing.

(Read at ReadComics.net)

Detective Comics #24

In Spy, preserving the U.S. neutrality is crucial to the mission.   Bart and Sally get caught and wind up treading water in the middle of the ocean. How long they can tread water is not clear by the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules. Luckily it didn't come up, because a U.S. submarine just happens by and picks them up. But how? Is the submarine just a wandering encounter, a planned encounter, or did the Editor fudge and make it happen to save them?

Crime Never Pays is filler material. It talks about how dental work is nearly as reliable at identifying bodies as fingerprints by 1939.  There's a good tip about how hoodlums often keep the same nicknames even when they're using aliases. There's also a claim that the FBI convicts 98% of everyone they bring to trial.

In The Mysterious Doctor Fu Manchu, I learn that Fu Manchu-types have a paralyzing gaze!

Bruce Nelson gets in a shootout with a thug.

The only installment I plan to talk about from this issue is Slam Bradley, which still takes place in 2 billion AD. Jerry Siegel makes some remarkable predictions here. One is uplifted animals that can walk and talk like humans, a common science fiction staple today, and two is communicators sewn into shirts that you just press to activate, such as seen decades later in Star Trek: the Next Generation. Jerry also wisely predicts that our modern languages would be unintelligible that far into the future, but luckily people wear thought translators (I guess so they don't have to wear out their lips with talking?).

Another curious feature in the future, which could be a good trick to feature in a mad scientist's hideout, is a room that has to be entered from above. If you fall through the room, you fall slowly, as if through a "jelly-like substance". It isn't clear if there's really a column of jelly there, or if the anti-gravity effect just feels like moving through jelly, but it's an interesting detail regardless.

Slam fights a monster that seems to be ogre-sized, with metal claws. His opponent also seems to have the Super-Tough Skin power activated!

In the far distant future, death is reversible and Shorty is brought back to life as a routine matter. Heroes with access to a time machine could essentially be immortal, going into the far future whenever they need to be resurrected.

One of Siegel's misfires on future tech is motorized propeller shoes that let people walk on air. But - ow! -- what if one of your legs brushed against the other? Sounds like 1-6 points of damage to me, followed by falling damage.

(Issue read here)

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 #18 - part 1

As always (so far), this issue begins with Speed Saunders, this time investigating a murder -- and that's all we know. We don't know how Speed knows the dead man's son helping with the investigation, and we're given very little to go on why Speed suspects it's murder and not suicide.

If you only have time for a short scenario of Hideouts & Hoodlums, it might be best to jump into a story, in media res, like this -- cutting out the plot hooks and setting up the scene and just lay out what the challenge is in the scenario right at the start. And place any supporting cast your players will need nearby.

As evidence of how combat needs to stay abstract in a comic book RPG, Speed is shot at point blank range, but recovers when a doctor performs first aid on him, and doesn't even have blood on his clothes.

Later, "Speed learns the truth from the glint of fear in the fence's eyes."  There's not a game mechanic tied directly to lie detection or eye reading, but if the Editor really wants to give the Hero a chance to pick up on a clue, then a "notice things" roll should be allowed, just as if the Hero were searching for secret doors.

Later still, Speed wants to go back to the murder scene "to make a more thorough search."  What his player means is he wants more "notice things" rolls because he doesn't think he has enough clues yet.

This installment of Cosmo, The Phantom of Disguise, is suggestive that Cosmo might be based out of Chicago, since he leaves from Chicago to start a vacation.  Cosmo's vacation takes place in the Mythic West, where everyone gets around on horseback, the only way to not draw suspicion to yourself is to dress like a cowpoke, and the town is remote enough that its only tavern is the only place to eat in 20 miles.

It is unclear how Cosmo solves his mystery. It seems he overhears the Mexican in the tavern say something incriminating, but all we're told is that Cosmo overhears the Mexican "babble" to himself. The implication seems to be that the Mexican's "babble" is him talking in Spanish, and indeed the only reason Cosmo seems to find the Mexican suspicious-looking is because he's a Mexican (or, to be fair, the only Mexican in the tavern). Further racism is found in the sheriff's "Negress" servant.

In the Larry Steele installment, Larry and his pal are in a deathtrap -- a dark pit that is being filled with a lethal gas. The way out is to search the floor and find the floor boards are loose enough to be pried up. Below the pit trap is an underground stream with a strong current, leading to a waterfall outside, near the house they were in. Although waterfalls are never lethal in comic books, there are still overhanging branches to grab in case the Heroes don't want to chance it.

Larry's big fight scene breaks down like this:  Larry gets a surprise turn and, because everyone is unarmed, he gets two attacks. He uses them both to swing from the chandelier and kick the two hoodlums, doing enough damage to one of them to knock him unconscious. In the first turn of regular combat, the boss bad guy wins initiative, but the Editor rolls so poorly on his attack roll that he says the boss is still drawing his gun. Larry makes a disarming attack on the boss and wins possession of the gun. Because a weapon is now in play, we switch to one melee attack per turn. On turn 2, Larry wins initiative and clocks the bad guy, doing enough damage to only lightly injure him. The hoodlum who wasn't knocked out, though, fires into the melee. Because firing into a melee is dangerous, there is a chance to hit either combatant, and the Editor rolls that the bullet hits the boss instead of Larry. The remaining hoodlum gets shot on turn 3 by Larry. It's not clear if the second hoodlum and the boss are unconscious yet, or if they've failed morale saves and stopped fighting.

Bosses should maybe be a new mobster type, between hoodlums and master criminals.

If the Fu Manchu adaptation here was a H&H scenario, the Editor would be in for a tricky situation. There is a scene where one of the Heroes is approached by a mystery lady (a female practitioner of the Mysteryman class, no doubt). She gives him an important clue, and then needs to disappear (or she won't be mysterious). Now, the Editor could just make her high enough in level to give her a great roll at becoming effectively invisible through stealth, but that may later beg the question why she doesn't just tackle Fu Manchu herself if she's so high in level. Or, the Editor could fudge the die roll so she gets away, but fudging dice rolls just to railroad through a plot doesn't feel fair to most players.

Now, the trick used in the story to keep our Hero from following her is to have Wayland Smith show up with even more vital information our Hero needs. The problem with this is, Wayland is probably also a Hero in play in this scenario, so the two players will likely be confident they can share information at any other time. For a RPG scenario, Wayland would have to be swapped out for a character not under a player's control.

In Spy, Bart Regan is assigned to recover the Kahoon Ruby, not to keep, but to give back to the Maharaja who owned it. Still, because the ruby would clearly have a monetary value, it is easy to assign an XP award for finishing this scenario. Had the mission been to recover the Maharaja's missing child, the award would not be so clearly quantifiable.  A further wrinkle is that the Maharaja will sign a peace treaty with whatever country recovers the ruby, so there will be lots of rival factions vying to compete this scenario first.

This is also the issue that Bart proposes to his partner Sally. If these were both played Heroes, this is role-playing above and beyond the call of duty.

(You can read this issue at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #17 - part 1

What am I thankful for, on the day after Thanksgiving? More comic book reading!

Speed Saunders has always been a peculiar duck, both in terms of how irrelevant his river patrol job is to his adventures (but, really, how often does a hero's civilian profession come up in a scenario?) and how fluid his adventures have been so far in terms of genre. This month, we find out that Speed's abilities are also pretty fluid in terms of skills. Here, Speed steps off a low roof onto the top of a parked car and lays down on it -- and no one inside the car hears him doing this! This is a level of stealth more appropriate to the Mysteryman class than the Fighter class. Or...the Editor has simply fudged how the surprise rules work. Even if Speed has complete surprise, his free turn of action should only be 1 combat turn long before being discovered.

Now, the hideout Speed finds in this issue is rather interesting. The kidnapper is in a remote cabin, located on a mountain terrace inside a giant gorge. The only way to get down to the cabin is by climbing down, which seems to come with a high risk of falling. The kidnapper does have a rope tied to a tree overlooking the gorge that is used to lower supplies down to the cabin, and Speed uses that to descend safer (though a nastier game Editor would have made this a trap -- rigging the tree branch or the rope to snap).

Speed is saved from a deathtrap by the "fact" that snakes won't cross a rope made from hair. Now, call me overly suspicious, but if one of my players tried this, I would think he was trying to hoodwink me. It does seem like the sort of phony science you see in comic books, though, so if one of my players did come up with this "fact", I might feel charitable enough to give him a save vs. plot to determine if this turns out to be true -- particularly if every other attempt to thwart the deathtrap has failed.

Larry Steele isn't a very good detective sometimes. He's exploring an old castle in Maine this month and notes how dusty the floors are, but completely fails to notice any footprints from the three kidnappers in the castle in the dust. Now, this could be the result of bad dice rolls; Larry's Editor has been asking for keen senses/notice things checks periodically, but Larry's player just keeps rolling too high. Note that the players can ask for checks as often as they want to, but it is the Editor who decides how often they are eligible for new checks.

Larry later makes up for it by rappelling down the sheer side of a rain-soaked castle wall, which you would think would come with some serious penalizing modifiers. Since it's not clear yet in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules what the chance for a Fighter to climb should be, I can't comment yet on what those modifiers should look like.

One of the kidnappers is a drunken hoodlum!

Sometimes you might want to tone things down from the comic books, for the sake of game balance. This month's installment of Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise introduces an explosive gun, handheld, with a 125 mile range, that wrecks as if an 8th level Superhero. If this weapon isn't destroyed forever by the end of the scenario, I know it's bound to wind up in the hands of the Heroes and there goes any challenge ever for the rest of my campaign.

The Russian embassy serves as a sort-of hideout-in-plain-sight in this story. It would be interesting to run a scenario where the Heroes can't get in without wearing tuxedos, surrounded by foreign dignitaries and spies. On the other hand, the possibility for mass deaths that lead to war...maybe there are safer places to put your Heroes...

Cosmo also demonstrates lip reading in this scenario, a skill not covered by the H&H rules.  It should, I would think, be more difficult than hearing noises, and possibly relegated to a stunt.

This issue begins a serialized adaptation of Dr. Fu Manchu.  Fu Manchu's henchmen make use of poisoned arrows. There isn't much discussion of poisoned weapons in H&H, but it's definitely a practice best left in the hands of villains. I would either outright forbid Heroes to use poisoned weapons, or force a save vs. plot with a -1 or -2 penalty each time to use poison.

Well before Superman tackled the KKK on the radio, Bart Regan, Spy, tackles the "hooded horde".  Jerry Siegel directly labels them a "terrorist organization", which, sadly, remains quite prescient about today's politics.  However, the KKK isn't up to lynching blacks here, but inciting general unrest and wrecking businesses.

Bart Regan demonstrates ventriloquism in this story, even throwing his voice about 10' away!  I've talked about ventriloquism before and feel the same now; that, for Golden Age stories at least, ventriloquism needs to be a basic skill.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)