Popular Comics #45 - pt. 2

So, this is the "father of all sharks" we saw yesterday, but a few shots with a repeating rifle and -- pfft! No more father of all sharks. Way to snuff out such a unique and amazing example of Nature's wonder, Hurricane Kids!

A repeating rifle would be treated as just a hunting rifle.

G-Men stay connected with current news thanks to teletype machines in their branch offices (at least according to this strip!).

A FBI teletype machine would be a pretty useful trophy item -- instant plot hooks!

"Battered but powerful" cars could be handy trophy items. Sure, it's more fun to drive a cool-looking car, but way more conspicuous.

Deserted farmhouses are natural hideouts -- this guy says so!

Tex Ritter discovers that creating a barbed wire barrier and herding opponents toward it is a sound tactic. Tex could take a turn cutting his way through the wire, but it would leave him vulnerable to a full turn of back attacks.

Compiling more things we know about spooks (weak ghosts), spooks can remain invisible after attacking and can fly at pretty fast speed.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #43 - pt. 1

This page of Tex Thorne got me to thinking...could game play switch one type of mobster into another? These outlaws, for example, become drunken hoodlums because Tex gets them drunk to make it easier to overpower them.

My first thought on reading this was -- how bad are these bad guys, to throw their dead into a cabin and turn it into a funeral pyre instead of taking the time to bury them? And then I remembered -- the players in my various campaigns have almost never taken the time to bury their dead allies, let alone their enemies.

Moose-like creature? That's pretty clearly drawn as a moose.

It does remind me of this session of D&D I once played, though, where we spent this time chasing a "fox-like creature" through the dungeon, curious to find out what it was. The trick was that it really was just a fox.

Triceratops are such a common dinosaur that I was tempted to put them in the new "basic" book -- but decided against it. The basic book will be for levels 1-6 and triceratops would be too tough to fight for even 6th level Heroes.

This page illustrates the problem with including more dinosaurs in H&H. What is that potbellied carnosaur supposed to be? I mean, the obvious guess is a Tyrannosaurus Rex because that was one of the five or six types of dinosaurs that everyone knew back then, but that drawing...ugh.

Yes, this grisly scene was brought to you by the same company that was producing wholesome Disney comics at the same time!

Bat-birds? Really? You can call a triceratops what it is, but you have to be coy about pterodactyls?

This is The Masked Pilot's strip, though that is his supporting cast member, Jenkins, having all the trouble. Engines conking out and planes catching on fire are just some of the complications that can happen during a dogfight. The plane busting into pieces is what happens when a light cannon takes out the last of a plane's hit points.

Power dive is shown here giving some combat benefit, either to hit or to damage, or both.

A rare instance of first aid being shown applied to a Hero.

There have been several versions of how first aid works in H&H over the years. Right now, I'm leaning towards it giving an immediate 1 hp back.

Doctors were statted for Supplement V as a Lawful mobster type, but here we see an example of a chaotic doctor, giving other mobsters bonuses on their disguise chances.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #42 - pt. 2

From The Masked Pilot, this is a rare sighting of a motorcycle and sidecar. Initially, I treated these as trophy items, but, really, it shouldn't be that hard for anyone to go out and buy one in a 1930s-40s campaign.

But this is why most forms of transportation better than cars are treated as trophy items. I mean, do you want this bomber plane, with its light cannon and machine guns, available to your players? Or the better question is, are you ready for it yet?

I've seen some complicated deathtraps before, but this is an overly complicated escape from a deathtrap. Our G-Man hero and this poor beat cop go to an awful lot of trouble relaying the explosive to each other. One missed attack roll to catch it and that bomb could hit the ground and go off! Or --our G-Man hero could have simply stepped on the fuse and snuffed it out...

Here is a good example of a hero's reputation, as I recently discussed here. This is also a great example of a neutral villain, one who might have attacked if he hadn't recognized Jack Randall, but is just as happy not to get into a fight with the Hero.

It seems like a smart plan; Bronc has let a prisoner go free so he can follow him back to the hideout, left a horse out for the prisoner to steal, and made sure a horseshoe was missing so he'd be easy to track. But what if the prisoner had skipped the horse and gone on foot instead? The save vs. plot can be used for when the player needs for his plan to work.

I like the verticality of this abandoned mine hideout already. I imagine there would be a lot of little rooms separated by ladders instead of corridors.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #41

Pretty funny.

We return to Shark Egan to consider biting -- should a person biting do points of damage? Normally, an improvised weapon does 1-3 points of damage, but can a person's bite realistically do even that much? I think I would, charitably, allow a bite to do 0-1 points of damage.

Biting is a real theme in this story. Can a person's teeth realistically chew through rope? I'd probably give the rope a saving throw vs. wrecking things of a 2 or 3.

And look, conger eels again! I'm definitely keeping those in 2nd edition.

The Hurricane Kids (or at least one of them) has to deal with baby pteranodons. Given their small size and light weight, I'd probably give them 1-4 hit points. Considering Alan is a 1st-level fighter fighting with a club, the baby pteranodons are actually a pretty tough encounter. That he has to climb away from the nest with a 200' drop if he fails a climb check is really making the scenario challenging.

This page illustrates how Heroes can improvise working weapons (that would do normal 1-6 points of damage), but what I really want to talk about here are the strange berries that give him back his energy. Hit points? It is not that uncommon for adventure modules to feature something like this -- a quick pick-me-up that Heroes can find in the middle of the scenario. Video games have, of course, made this ubiquitous.

Maybe I should have kept track of how many "escaping from jail" jokes I've read in these comics so far. Probably not as many as the goat jokes.

At first I thought this "slow bomb" might be something cool, but it's just a stick of dynamite with a long fuse on it. An actual slow bomb -- that halves movement and number of attacks to everyone caught in the area of effect -- would have made a neat trophy item for Hideouts & Hoodlums.

We've talked about this ghost before. I'm pointing out the gorilla because, frankly, I'm surprised at how few gorillas we've seen in comics so far.

I'm sharing this page for two reasons. One, I'm amused that the time bomb appears to be hidden among some lacy lingerie. Two, it seems the Editor set a target Armor Class for that open porthole (remember that planes this long ago didn't need to be pressurized), the player rolled really close to that number, and the Editor used that to play up the suspense of whether the bomb would go through the porthole or not.  Had the roll been really high, like a 20, the Editor could have described how easily the shot was made (over the shoulder, or with one eye closed, or the like).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Popular Comics #40

The Hurricane Kids are lost on a hidden land/lost world island. You can tell that it is by the over-sized fauna and, of course, the presence of dinosaurs. But what kind of dinosaurs? Some variety of carnosaur, it seems. I wonder if I should keep dinosaurs equally generic in Hideouts & Hoodlums, so one carnosaur entry could represent a variety of species.

Although also unnamed, this is likely a pteranodon (or simply pterosaurs if I want to keep labels more generic). Pteranodons are strong fliers and need some special ability for snatching and flying away with people.

Toby might be a surprising source for a consideration of the undead -- but what exactly is that thing Oomog is fighting, and what can it do? It is called both a spook and a ghost in the text. If it is a ghost, then ghosts can be hit by normal attacks (or perhaps only by powerful opponents, of 4+ HD, using normal attacks). Or perhaps spooks are something else, a weaker version of a ghost. Spooks can fly, spook people, and turn invisible, but nothing else (no other special defenses in particular).

I think the mobsters are onto something here. Horned toads may not be dangerous, but I always thought they were creepy. If nothing else, they're good hideout dressing.

From Shark Egan, a rare appearance of a huge eel (not a giant eel, and not an electric eel either). I gave giant conger eels 3 Hit Dice in Supplement II, so a huge eel should have 1+1 Hit Dice.

The Masked Pilot must be using the Aviator stunt Wing Walking to climb out safely onto the tail assembly. He then offers a good suggestion for investigators with bombs -- or any hi-tech item -- to search for clues. Every component has a chance of containing the manufacturer's name or mark on it. Find out who bought the pieces, and you may find the maker.

Here's an early precedent for rubber masks being able to fool people in comic books.

From filler called George Clark's Carnival, I thought this was a pretty good joke.

(Scans from Comic Book Plus)

Popular Comics #37

This is the first issue from February 1939 to be looked at, and it's from Dell. By now, Dell's best features had moved to Crackajack Funnies and Super Comics, but this issue still has material worth discussing.

I just like that there's a trapdoor hatch on the roof; it seems like a good detail for a mobster hideout. It's also a smart tactic for villains to hold hostages like this -- forces the players to think instead of just rushing into combat.

Don Dixon must be a pretty high level Fighter by now, as he encounters large crocodiles here and takes one out with just a dagger.

Large crocodiles (if they are "large", maybe they have 4-5 Hit Dice) have both a bite and a tail attack; the tail attack can be used to tip over a small boat.

Now Don is making short work of natives, but the one thing Don can't do is sneak up on them. I'm thinking of giving natives only a 1 in 6 chance of being surprised.

Daisybelle is a pretty slight joke strip, but I am intrigued by the notion of giving out a literally indestructible fountain pen as a trophy item-gag gift, but then seeing how creatively the players can come up with uses for it.

The lesson for Editors here is to give the players a chance to spot a clue about a planned ambush before springing it on them, particularly if it's going to be a particularly brutal encounter if the Heroes are surprised.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #31

Reckon I best mosey on back to Dell's Popular Comics and look at this page from another Western adventure.  The whips I've seen in comics so far have either been used for torture or, like this, disarming people. Still, I think I've seen more disarming shots from guns so far, so I don't think I'm going to give whips any special bonus.

A feature of Golden Age comics is that they often don't take themselves too seriously. El Voltago, the Vulture of Chihuahua, isn't going to terrify anyone. But he might give your players some laughs!

Don Dixon looks like he's at the end of the whole campaign in this installment. For a campaign with Lawful Heroes ignoring opportunities to take loot along the way, this is the moment when the big XP rush comes with the reward. The longer the Heroes have delayed collecting, the bigger the reward should be. Here, that requires dropping them down a secret elevator into a king's treasure chamber and hearing, "Take whatever you want!"  Of course, if the players don't want the campaign to end, the reward they ask for might be a new quest...

Right now, there are no complications, in Hideouts & Hoodlums, for recovering from zero hit points; you just let time pass.  I'm currently 50/50 on whether or not H&H needs complications -- like having a concussion and needing several days of bed rest -- at least for Heroes. For non-Heroes controlled by the Editor, the Editor can assign all the complications he wants/needs for the story.

If you're planning on having an adventure on a boat, like this Shark Egan adventure, then you should choose a type of ship and research it, working from a map if you're able. This scenario doesn't skimp on describing the layout, from Shark searching the aft master's cabin to the reinforcements coming from the fo'c'sle.

Toby seems to have picked up where Patsy left off (since the Adventures of Patsy are no longer in a magical fantasy land). Here we see a strange land inhabited by at least four giants, at least one of whom looks to have two pet lions. A dangerous place for exploring!

One way to make fantasy creatures -- ones you would expect to find in a swords & sorcery scenario -- "fit in" better is to dress them up in modern clothes.

One trick to allow low-level Heroes to survive encounters with powerful foes is to split the powerful foes into rival factions, so the Heroes only have to side with one and fight alongside them.

Note that Toby's magic couch predates the magic bed in The Magic Bed-Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (the basis for the movie Bedknobs and Broom Sticks) by five years.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)