Smash Comics #5 - pt. 3

Whew! I've been getting so much Hideouts & Hoodlums stuff done, I haven't had time for this blog!

When I last left off, I was looking at the Invisible Justice story from this issue. I've already talked plenty about how easy disguise and hypnotism skills are in comics, so this whole first row should come as no surprise. No, what I'm interested in here is that Invisible Hood has to still sneak silently into the room -- invisibility does not itself guarantee surprise conditions -- and the fact that Invisible Hood was willing to shoot Hyde in the back as he was running away.

When I talk to people about H&H and golden age comic books, more than once I've been asked about how the game handles the perceived notion that all the Heroes of the Golden Age were goody two-shoes. Invisible Hood just tried to shoot the bad guy in the back.

This is from Abdul the Arab, and game mechanics-wise this is more complicated than it may at first appear. Abdul encounters a lone man wandering the desert and rides out of his way to aid him; the man turns out to be an ex-member of the mobsters Abdul didn't even know he was after. So what did Abdul just encounter -- a random good deed that rewarded him with a plot hook character, or a random plot hook character Abdul mistook for a random good deed? Only the Editor knows what he rolled for...

Sand pits are a good desert trap -- but not when they conveniently lead to the exact room in the mobsters' hideout you need to reach.

The bad guy is consistently referred to as a brigand here, a mobster type present since the beginning in H&H.  There is no game mechanic reason for the brigand's horse to stumble; it seems like a creative explanation of a missed attack roll.

This is Captain Cook of Scotland Yard, and one clue that this is meant to be a short, one-night scenario is that it starts at the entrance to the hideout (a freighter in this case) and he's already been given his mission.

The fact that this is a low-level scenario is evident by the single guard, armed only with a throwing knife. The guard misses, despite having bonuses for attacking from behind and above.

Linen is a good random thing to find in a hideout.

What the heck kind of map of England is that?

A clipped newspaper article is a cliched clue; making the clue an obituary of the guy who's office you're in gives the clue a creepy twist.

I can easily accept that Cook found the warehouse's address while in the company's main office. He could have even looked up the address in a phone book. But the warehouse address is on the company stationery's letterhead?  Instead of the corporate office address?

Though I've been riding this story pretty hard, this last wrinkle -- about the secret gas solidified into powder and sprayed onto the linens that have been out in plain sight all this time -- is a pretty good wrinkle. It could also make a pretty good trap. "This room's full of nothing but worthless linen; I'm burning it." BOOM!

Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man would have me believe that large robots are worth $5 million. Nooo, I'm not putting something that valuable in my hideouts!

It's odd that Bozo is immune to the death ray, since it very easily wrecks the plane it strikes first. Bozo is clearly no ordinary robot, but one statted with levels in the superhero class. But no power of a superhero buffs you to be immune to rayguns (yet). Could this be as simple as a successful saving throw?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #3 - pt. 2

I first discovered John Law the Scientective while researching for Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, and Incredible Men.  He was not the first scientist hero in comics (Dean Denton might have been first), but he's a favorite of mine.

I'm not sure if the induction alarm was a real thing back in 1939. Of course, motion sensors are commonplace today, as are remote-controlled lights. One of the nice things about running a campaign set in the past is that you don't have to come up with super-science-y gizmos all the time, as modern day stuff would have been advanced science back then too.

John's nemesis, The Avenger, uses a pretty dastardly tactic here, forcing an innocent victim to bring a ball of poison gas to John. This way, no matter what John did, the ball would likely wind up getting broken. Lucky that John has a gas mask so handy, especially considering that I don't plan to make it a starting equipment item.

Antidotes, like gas masks, are trophy items. The scientist class from Supplement III: Better Quality -- which John probably would qualify for -- can make stuff like this, but the scientist won't be in the 2nd edition basic book.

Bombs are a natural trophy item, but the damage they can do is highly variable and even the triggers for a bomb can be just about anything -- like this one, that is triggered by air pressure. I'll probably have just one entry for bombs in the trophy section with a short list of suggestions.

Really, John? X-Rays? You couldn't just shine ultraviolet light on their hands? It does seem like the general public, in 1939, was pretty ignorant about the effects of radiation, but a scientist should have known.

The manager is shot by a sniper, also known as an assassin (and statted as such) in 2nd edition.

This is Wings Wendall of Military Intelligence. My players are rarely so subtle as to use distractions, but if they did, I would have the guard save vs. plot or fall for it. As Editor, you could decide to always let a clever idea for a distraction work automatically, the first time, and then use the save vs. plot mechanic always after that if they repeat it.

It's hard to believe that any bad guys were so dense to need a chart explaining that simple plan, but it made for an awful handy clue for Wings to find.

Lastly, having dim light make it difficult for people to recognize Heroes is a factor the game mechanics don't directly deal with. I guess, if the player was directly asking if the dim light could hide his identity, then you would treat it as a disguise attempt.

Editors don't need to go this easy on their players. How dumb is this bad guy, to already suspect Wings of being a spy, but putting him on a crucial work detail on the sub without a guard anyway?

That said, this is pretty cool, dressing up like the bad guy in order to fool all his underlings.

This is Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man and...this trophy item is a goofy one. Apparently, the super-seper-iconoscope can pick up a radio signal and convert it into a television signal, as if the scene heard was being filmed. The sheer impossibility of that working makes my head hurt. But that's the Golden Age!

Here's a familiar issue -- are the bullets bouncing off because Bozo's Armor Class is so low, or because the robot has a power like Imperviousness? The robot clearly has the wrecking things ability here. I would treat wrecking planes as if they were (perhaps ironically) robots.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Smash Comics #2 - pt. 2

My first draft of Hideouts & Hoodlums' new grappling rules specified it was for one-on-one combat only, but I'll be adding a new paragraph on assigning modifiers if multiple grapplers all attempt against the same target, as they do on poor Abdul the Arab here.

The "Sultan" is not lucky with women. Interestingly, King Faisal II, the closest thing to a real world analog to this character, never married and had to call off two engagements.

Vernon Henkel had a good grasp on foreign politics. There was considerable unrest in Iraq over the king allowing British occupation.

First of all, that executioner's outfit would look great on a supervillain. Secondly -- unless Hassan is a superhero -- I seriously doubt he can chop through chains with a sword in one chop. "Hassan chop!" indeed!

Now, I'm about to back up and show you the first page of this story, because I had not shared it yesterday, and I want you to see what Abdul's mission was.

It was simple reconnaissance you were supposed to be doing, Abdul! But here you are, mowing down the king's men with a machine gun, until your tribal leader father shows up to take over. Now, in real life, the tribes were anti-British while the monarchy was pro-British, but Vernon has reversed allegiances in this story. So...this is a win, and all those deaths are justified, because the pro-British side won? This is from the same creator who had Gallant Knight hacking down saracens recently. Anything you want to tell us about your personal biases, Vernon...?

This is Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man. Science, physics in particular, is only as important in a H&H story as you and your players need it to be for suspension of disbelief (and maybe to force some save vs. science rolls!). If you want a robot to be able to fly simply by having a beanie hat and propeller on its head -- then go for it!

I've written before about how there can be no hard and fast mechanic for reputation, but I've also written how it doesn't take much to qualify as a disguise in comic books/H&H. So, just saying you're someone else is a type of disguise, and a successful save vs. plot would see through that and mean that someone did recognize you -- I mean Hugh by reputation.

And as for shooting with two guns, I don't intend for that to give you any kind of game mechanic bonus. Hugh is getting the same number of attacks he would normally; carrying two guns is just flavor text.

How far Hugh has fallen, that he's already gone from fighting mad scientists with robots to hoodlums with an antique biplane.

We also get a sense here that Hugh's remote control over the robot has a pretty long range (a mile or more?).

Captain Cook of Scotland Yard reminds me about the penalty I had for hitting humans in dim light in 1st ed. It was a tough rule to enforce -- when was light dim enough?  So I ditched the rule. If you can see, you can attack at no penalty. If it's too dark to see, then you get -4 to hit. But this one panel makes me think the dim light rule had some merit. I mean -- the thief is clearly silhouetted by the light from the window, but Cook still misses because the room is dark.

It makes more sense to me -- and in fact would be a sign of a good player (and/or a Lawful Hero) in my book -- for Cook not to want a shoot out in a street with pedestrians around.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)