Famous Funnies #67 - pt. 1

We rejoin Roy Powers, Eagle Scout today after a long time separated. Here, we see how easy traps are in the modern age of Hideouts & Hoodlums. A simple oil flask hanging from a string in D&D would be of little threat to anyone, but substitute it with nitroglycerine and suddenly you've got a trap that can be deadly for even mid-level Heroes.

We also see some nice tactics from Roy, using role-playing to his advantage against the mad scientist.

Just a couple pages later, Roy is already jumping into his next scenario.

Editors may be tempted to roll randomly for mobsters to see which target they choose; I've done this many times, and it does present an element of fairness that keeps players from feeling picked on. And yet, if there are common sense reasons to attack one target over another, the Editor should follow his common sense.

I'll be honest; Skyroads is such a generic aviator feature that I have no idea who this guy is!

Whoever he is, he comes up with a good rationale for getting a +1 modifier to his wrecking things roll. He probably asked if there was a hoisting tackle lying around and the Editor, unprepared for that tactic, had him make a save vs. plot to determine if there was or not.

Hairbreadth Harry leaps back and forth between being a credible source for H&H inspiration and outlandishness too zany to emulate with any seriousness game mechanics. Here, Harry swings towards the latter, as he claims to have used the pushing mechanic to push his melee combat with Rudolph 3,000 miles, or the equivalent of 15,840,000 points of damage, by H&H's current rules.

When I see panels of villains trying to bribe heroes, and I remember that taking money is a huge motivation in H&H, I wonder if we need to have different mechanics, even if only optional. Or would a saving throw vs. plot cover this? Yes, I think it might, at least for Lawful Heroes to take a bribe. But would that just deter players from playing Lawful Heroes...?

Sergeant Stoney Craig, even without his U.S. Marines, really (ahem) mops up with an improvised weapon in this combat. The spears are uncommonly short, and are maybe harpoons instead of spears. A harpoon would not count as an improvised weapon.

The knife is thrown by an assassin. There's a considerable amount of racism here, with the half-Asian man being called a "breed," but this actually plays well in the story, with the locals' racism explaining how quickly they accept this scapegoating.

Near Island is a real place, in Alaska. It seems strange that anyone in Alaska would hear "They had Jeremy Blade at near" and not think of Near Island...but this would make sense at a game session; players never get clues.

Dickie Dare is relegated to cheerleader in this month's installment, as these pages focus on the gorilla-lion battle. I'll have to add a note to the lion entry that, even when grappling, lions still get raking attacks.

I'm not even sure what's going on here, so it's even harder to figure out how this might apply to game mechanics. I guess...hearing Miss Karson's voice reminds Tiny that someone loves him, and gives him the will to keep fighting, even as his body tells him to quit...?

Yeah, that's really hard to quantify into crunchy rules. I suppose you could include a rule that supporting cast can rally you once per day to give you a +1 bonus to something -- and that would give players more impetus to bring supporting cast along besides the meager XP award.

Or, this is all flavor text and Miss Karson's rallying cries didn't influence Tiny's dice rolls at all.



(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Famous Funnies #66 - pt. 1

That the skeleton is apparently afraid of the dog is yet more evidence for morale applying to the undead. But $1-2 million in gold seems a bit excessive for treasure.

One thing to keep in mind in the kids' adventure genre, if you ever run it using Hideouts & Hoodlums, is that combat is almost never an option. Had the man in green goggles been the villain in an adult protagonist's story, he would have been punched out before now! Half-pint Heroes should always have to save vs. plot before resorting to violence.

More evidence that you should always check your cell for secret doors.

An interesting scenario where, instead of combat, the hero and villain engage in a lying contest against each other. This could be resolved by a simple encounter reaction roll for each contestant, perhaps modified by how good a whopper the player can come up with.

The book is only $1.

This seems clever to me, hiding out in the rhino cage because the rhino is too valuable to shoot at. I'm not sure I would take my chances on the encounter reaction roll from the rhino, though!

Intriguingly, the Editor seems to be rolling for surprise individually here, since Joe is surprised, but Dickie isn't.

The bullets seem to have been responsible for wrecking things on that cage, something that I would not normally encourage (this development is more likely Editor's fiat).

If the Aviator class is going to get resurrected for 2nd edition (and it seems to me it should be), it is going to need special stunts not accessible to other classes. Break Formation could be one of those stunts.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Famous Funnies #65 - pt. 1

Spunky gets an unusual layout to his page here. The mine is guarded by bats and a skeleton. As fake undead, the skeleton has a chance of scaring people. There's an awful lot of gold strewn around the mine, which means easy XP for anyone who gets past being scared by the skeleton.

Also, having a goat and a turtle for Supporting Cast is pretty novel.

There's some unusual pricing information here, for rare scenarios where Heroes would have their babies photographed. More likely would be Heroes being paid to parachute somewhere (probably somewhere dangerous, which could lead into a scenario...).

Hidden in this page of Goofy Gags is the price for a cobbler to stretch your shoes. And to think I kept buying new shoes for my son all those years when he was growing up.

There's two features I like from this page of Roy Powers. One thing I like -- and an old trick many game referees has mastered, is to make sure the player characters don't get to see the monster they're facing right away. Hearing it, or catching shadowy glimpses of it, allows the player to imagine something there that might be much worse than the encounter will actually wind up being.

And then, "Witch's Acre" is just a great name for a hideout area.

Although we never see the alchemist (other creators might have given us a nice flashback scene here), and most likely the alchemist will turn out to not be real since (since this is a realistic strip), the rumor of the alchemist is a great story and sounds like it could be part of a really fun scenario.

Here's more atmosphere-building from Roy Powers. Old ruins are always fun for characters to explore. Mysterious noises are always good for luring characters in certain directions. And darkness can be a handy tool for making encounters more challenging. But I really have to take issue with how the eagle scouts see the spooky man in the shadows and just let him go. My players would be talking to him, trying to grab or tackle him, or -- heck -- some players would just shoot first and ask questions later!

I haven't included Skyroads in a long time, but I'm including this one because ordinary hoodlums with cool codenames like Scorpion is such a rarity. Plus, the definition of "service ceiling" could be handy in an aviator-themed scenario.

This page illustrates the importance of facing during aerial combat, but more importantly I think, the sidebar gives us a figure for the blast radius of a bomb. If planes need to stay more than 50' from the ground to avoid bomb blasts, then bombs must have a 50' blast radius.

From Hairbreadth Harry we learn that pirate maps are worth $10,000. Also, villains sometimes carry up to $10,000 in cash on their persons.

Harry is accosted by a hired thug. Thugs have been a statted mobster type since Day 1 of Hideouts & Hoodlums, though I don't think I ever gave them a chance to be armed with sub-machine guns, as this one appears to be.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Famous Funnies #64

Okay, so this month's Hairbreadth Harry is pretty awful racist -- but it does contain two standout features. One is a pretty awful (but delightfully awful) trap -- our damsel in distress is tied to a giant candle that is going to set her on fire when it burns down. I can just imagine the Adam West Batman being tied to something like this by a villain called the Crime Candle.

And then there's an unusual trophy/treasure item to collect -- a solid gold bell clapper.

This is from Life's Like That. I find it particularly amusing because this seems like just the sort of thing that would happen to me.

Again, yes, racist -- but if we look past that, we see that encounters with wild animals tend to end in violent attacks more often than they would in real life. This fits, of course, with That Other Game where encounters are usually resolved with violence.

Detecting poison - is this a skill Heroes could have, or just their dogs?

Dickie's guardian, Dan, is in a tight fix and seems to have no other choice but to bribe the crew to mutiny. That he's bribing them with money he hasn't stolen yet could mean a penalty to his encounter reaction roll. On the other hand, the high amount and the promise of going free afterwards could cancel that modifier out.

We also learn that you can fit two machine guns and belts into the same crate.

Mike is willing to betray Dan because a) he's a mobster, and b) his reaction roll must have been positive or less (friendly or higher would have secured his loyalty for the mutiny).

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Famous Funnies #63

Roy Powers and his eagle scout troop might be onto something here. If you have a wild animal to capture and you don't want to fight it, try penning it in with lots of chicken wire. But how to handle this with an in-game mechanic? I would probably make an encounter reaction roll for the lion. If it was positive, he would stay put while being hemmed in. If it was negative, he'd jump the fence as it was being erected. And, of course, if it was hostile, he would maul the eagle scouts.

Here's an interesting trap -- the stairs fall away into a slide. Harry slides down the slide, head-first, into the stocks with a guillotine set up above them. I guess, had he gone down feet first, there would have been a chance of his leg going into the stocks and getting cut off, which is still pretty bad.

Maybe I'd roll randomly for what direction he was facing when he hit the bottom of the slide, then make him save vs. plot to avoid whatever part was at the bottom going through the hole and getting stuck. The long delay on the guillotine blade drop seems like it makes it too easy to escape, but a quick drop would make this a nasty encounter.

I'm torn on whether this qualifies as a trap or a deathtrap. On one hand, Harry falls into the trap and isn't placed directly into it. On the other hand, his nemesis is present and clearly expects Harry to die. If it's a trap, I would have the blade only do 1-10 points of damage. If it was a deathtrap, I would make it potentially lethal, or at least limb-cut-off-able.

From the gag filler Life's Like That, here's a corner panel that made me chuckle out loud.

This is Jack Kirby's Lightnin' and the Lone Rider, one of the only cowboy features to give title billing to the horse. Which is extra appropriate today because, in this installment, the Lone Rider would be dead if it wasn't for Lightnin' sensing his trouble, kicking a door in, and coming inside to get mixed up in the fight. Hideouts & Hoodlums has rules for Supporting Cast Members, and even accommodates animal SCMs -- but how do you summon a SCM when you need one?

Right now, in H&H, the Editor always decided when and if a SCM shows up, unless the Hero has a means of directly contacting him/her/it. I was reading the Cortex game system recently for the Smallville RPG. In that game, a player can spend a plot point to make a featured character (SCM) show up. It merits consideration.

I had to look up what a yawl is. Apparently it's like a schooner. One or the other will likely be a trophy transport item.  But freighters? We'll see on that one, as I might stop smaller on sea-going trophy vessels.

This is why Heroes seldom take food or drink offered by suspicious people.

We haven't visited Scorchy Smith in awhile!

I'm working on the treasure section of the H&H basic book right now and here are three examples of treasures -- $200 in cash, a ring (we can assume it's worth roughly $200; if it was a lot more, the stolen cash wouldn't be as relevant), and the deed to a gold mine.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Famous Funnies #55

Goat joke #19, courtesy of Skyroads!

I don't agree with Hairbreadth Harry that pulling a snake off of someone would spin them like a top, that spinning like a top would necessarily hold a tiger spellbound (though I suppose you never really know with cats, maybe every turn spent around a cat should result in a random encounter reaction check?), or that a tiger wouldn't notice its own tail being tied. That all said -- it does seem like a sound strategy to pick up an animal and throw it at your main opponent. The animal, enraged, is likely to attack whoever it lands closest to.

Dickie Dare doesn't fail to provide -- we get a partial map of a hideout, ideas for treasure to place in a hideout, and the idea of having the hideout unoccupied, giving the Heroes a limited time to loot before the mobsters show up.

Never miss a chance to split up the party!  If asked which way they jump, during a cave-in, players may be tempted to use player knowledge and make sure they all jump the same way. A better way to handle this might be to ask the players to write down on slips of paper which direction they jump.

An unusually effective page of Oaky Doaks. This would be a good set-up for a haunted castle...

This is from the Life's Like That gag filler, but I found it quite amusing.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Famous Funnies #52

One is not likely to encounter wandering mobsters as frequently as seen here in Hairbreadth Harry, but combining different mobster types is fair game so long as the combinations make sense in the context of the encounter, or the nonsense of fitting "wa-hoo birds", giant porcupine fish, alligators, and wildcats together matches the tone of the campaign.

This is from gag filler called Life's Like That, and -- like the page above -- I appreciate the absurdity of this.

This month's installment of War on Crime includes this tip: bent license plates are suspicious!

Dickie Dare returns home after a long adventure and immediately seeks out his family and friends. It seems a natural response, but it makes good game sense too. When touching home base after wide-ranging adventures, every Hero would do well to meet up with all their Supporting Cast, check to see if any of them have fresh plot hooks, or just collect the Experience Points from including their SCMs in the game session.

Also note that Dickie, like so many superheroes to follow, is from New York City.

This is from The Adventures of Patsy, and "Can I tell which direction the shot came from?" is a surprisingly tricky question to consider. There is a hear noise mechanic, but gun shots are notoriously echo-y and could well come with a penalty. Plus, there is forensic evidence on the scene to consider -- which side of the cat is the gunshot wound on? At worst, I would probably assign this a flat 50-50 chance for Patsy's friend to answer correctly, and at best I would just hand-wave it and say they can just tell.

Goat joke #18!

Oaky Doaks is going up against a giant! It's hard to say just how tall this stooped-over giant is. Twelve feet tall? That would make him too large for a hill giant. I wonder if I'll keep the distinction between sub-groups of giants...

This is from gag filler called Punky, but I could see a whole boys' adventure scenario built around them getting lost in the woods.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)