Crackajack Funnies #18

Freckles and His Friends deals with an unusual trophy item of questionable keep-ability -- seal pelts. There are $5,000 worth of seal pelts in this boat, though we don't know how much that comes to per pelt. We do know they bought a used boat for $75, but found it a good enough value to be suspicious.

Clyde Beatty, Daredevil Lion and Tiger Trainer encounters a very well-guarded trophy item -- gold chains, with a lion attached to them. In the story the lion is what they consider the trophy, though I imagine most players would prefer the gold chains.

Myra North, Special Nurse is not actively looking for Supporting Cast Members, but after healing Captain Weaver, it's only natural to make a recruitment roll for her. SCM recruitment can be initiated by the player or the Editor.

The lair of The Spider is a fortress-like villa in Mexico. We see a fence around the yard and a roof defended by three guards armed with an anti-aircraft gun.

Again, we see evidence of complications in vehicular combat (plane stalled) instead of hit point loss (or an equivalent mechanic). We also see the stunt Deadstick.

(Scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.)

Crackajack Funnies #15

Goat joke #24!

Mountain lion sighting.

A used runabout (small motorboat) could be had for $75, according to Freckles and His Friends.

I was just recently researching for the shark entry in 2nd edition, and noticed again how many varieties of sharks don't eat people. It's a twist on the cliche deathtrap to have the sharks turn out to be nonviolent.

Don Winslow of the Navy is in a sticky spot -- having been discovered spying on the bad guys, there's no reason for an encounter reaction roll, as the villains' reactions should naturally be hostile. But Don is somehow able to convince them otherwise through sheer moxie. What is going on there, game mechanics-wise? Can Don have triggered an encounter reaction roll with a successful save vs. plot?

(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)

Funnies #4 - pt. 1

Knock-out drops seem to be a surprisingly common trophy item, and surprisingly effective; in fact, they seem to get used so often that maybe they have a -1 penalty to save against?

But what to make of Easy's bait-and-switch stratagem?  Is this simply role-playing, bereft of game mechanics?  Compliance determined by an encounter reaction roll?  Or does resisting the trick require a save vs. plot?  Luckily, all three are valid solutions for a Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign.

Bandits continue to be a very common encounter in comic books.  So, the Captain Easy bandit eluder is a handy transport-trophy, at least on icy terrain.  Easy's claim that it can do 100 MPH is actually modest; on the next page it's clocked at going 120 MPH by the narrator!

Dan Dunn hasn't been on this blog for awhile, but here we have a hideout map -- not of the hideout itself, but of the terrain around one.

Hats cost $2 in the 1930s, or at least this guy's hat did.

Perhaps even more common than knock-out pills is chloroform.  New thought: perhaps instead of dealing with each of these individually in the trophies section, poisons and sedatives should be dealt with in their own section of one of the H&H rulebooks.

A note about concealed doors vs. secret doors. A concealed door is an ordinary door, concealed behind something else.  A secret door can be a door concealed to look like something else, like a stone.

I have considered before adding sleight of hand, as a skill, to the Magic-User class, but it only seems to be used for flavor text -- like here -- and never in adventure scenarios.  We'll see, though, if other trends develop...

Freckles' scientist friend is a little off his rocker, thinking he's going to be traveling at the speed of light in his moon rocket.  Or is he?  Should science just work the way comic book scientists think it does in a comic book campaign?  It boggles my mind to think how that would even work.

Mutt buys a used taxi cab for $20.



The Alley Oop featured creates are cave bears, moas, mastodons, and "Devonian fish", like holoptychius.  Cave bears are mentioned in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies as having more Hit Dice than regular bears. Actually, 7 HD for a brown bear might have been a bit high (5 HD would make more sense) and 7 HD should be reserved for the cave bears.  Moas would have been 10' tall 3 HD flightless birds.  Mastodons have not been statted for H&H, but woolly mammoths were and mastodons are basically less hairy and smaller mammoths -- still 10 HD, but of the d10 instead of d12 variety.  Holoptychius, a 3' long prehistoric fish, would barely have qualified for a hit point.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Funnies #1 - pt. 2

Freckles and His Friends reminds us that a hidden land can be placed anywhere so long as the entrance is inaccessible; here, you have to swim 10' deep and under a ledge to reach this mini-hidden land where cougars nuzzle with lambs (cougars being statted in Supplement III: Better Quality).

This also illustrates the importance of everyone in the party carrying a flashlight, like if you fall into deep, murky water and the others need to see how far down you sank.



Yeah, okay, Ben Webster.  It is left up to the Editor's discretion if Indians should ride around topless on horseback in the 20th century (and be statted as Natives, from Book II: Mobsters & Trophies). 

If nothing else, this page illustrates the importance of carrying binoculars -- it might give you a head start when someone is chasing you!

Don Dixon and company encounter a constrictor snake -- with a twist!  Considered sacred by the local natives, killing the snake brings their wrath.

Tad of the Tanbark illustrates the usefulness of having an elephant Supporting Cast Member.

This half page of This Curious World shows the water buffalo, an animal that was on every continent but North America and Antarctica by 1940. Water buffalo fighting (like bull fighting) is practiced in some Asian countries. I would stat them as 4+1 Hit Dice, using d12 dice.

Mutt and Jeff put the value of a fur coat at $60 or less (oops, I had made them far more valuable on the starting equipment list!).

Most every comic book for 45 years had a page like this in it. Pocket telescopes, microscopes, high-powered air pistols, luminous paint, whoopee cushions -- smart players should find ways to use all this stuff!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

 

Funnies #1 - pt. 1

A new title from Dell Comics joins our revue this time, and it was full of good stuff!

First up is Tailspin Tommy, which illustrates several useful points for us Hideouts & Hoodlums players.  One, Betty grabs hold of the passing plane with a "simple" roll to hit. I put simple in quotation marks because determining an Armor Class for a moving plane is not so simple. A good rule of thumb can be found, though, in the vehicular combat section of Book III: Underworld and Metropolis Adventures, which recommends penalties to hit based on the speed of your target.

But once Betty has grabbed on, what is the chance of her slipping? An Editor, looking to squeeze a little more drama out of the scene, could ask of her a saving throw vs. science to resist the wind resistance pulling her loose.

And lastly, this is the origin of the Wing Walking stunt for the Aviator class!

Myra North, Special Nurse gets her comic book debut here, with the dramatic introduction of being shot down by an anti-aircraft gun!  I would use the autocannon, statted in Supplement I: National for anti-aircraft guns. A ruthless Editor might use the wrecking things table to determine the effect on the plane, but a gentler alternative is to roll on the plane mishap table found in The Trophy Case v. 2 no. 8.

Captain Easy goes to war!  Given H&H's recommended time frame of 1935-1941, it's likely that Heroes in the game will eventually find themselves involved in a war somewhere.  Panel 4 here serves as a great reminder that the front lines are very dangerous for low-level Heroes!

Though it makes for a dramatic page to have Easy abscond a bomber plane so easily, I would be hesitant to allow this in a H&H game. More realistically, a captain -- in other words, a 5th level Fighter -- would have to go up the chain of command level by level, aiming for friendly encounter reactions until such a roll from a general (9+ level Fighter) grants him permission to take the plane.

The number of followers a Hero can have is currently tied to that Hero's Charisma score and not the fame coming from the Hero's exploits. As written, then, there is no accounting for how Easy here becomes the idol of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It's something that needs work...

A vamp and a drunken hoodlum?  You decide!



The Alley Oop dinosaurs of the day are Gorgosaurus and Polacanthus. Gorgosaurus would have been a giant 15 Hit Dice monster, using d12 for its Hit Dice. Polacanthus, a smaller armored herbivore, would have been only 5+1 HD, but also with d12 dice.

Ah, the old chestnut of the thorn in the paw. This makes me want to run a scenario with an evil bear who lures kids in close by pretending to have a thorn in its paw.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)