Smash Comics #7 - pt. 3

And we're back with Invisible Justice, starring the Invisible Hood.

I get the creepy factor IH is going for, but being invisible inside a visible suit seems to take away any advantage that he has in combat.

Steele seems more than capable of mowing down the bad guys without IH's help. This is why it's important to have your supporting cast lower in level than the Heroes, so the Heroes are less likely to be upstaged (though bad dice rolls can still make it happen).

It's too bad that Steele is one of the good guys, because it would be a much more interesting tactic if IH had tricked one of the bad guys into thinking the two fire-eaters (stat as arsonists) who show up are more ghosts, and then get him to shoot them.

Lastly, it must have been super-awkward when Steele was feeling around in the air for IH's shoulders...

Wandering encounters are the potatoes that go with the meat of role-playing games, but sometimes an Editor may doubt himself and feel he's being too subtle with them. That's when you start having bad guys literally crash into the good guys out on the streets.

Tripping is a surprisingly rare fighting technique in comic books, but rarer still are examples like this that show how a trip attack can set up an opponent for a follow-up attack. So I'm wondering, should I add a game mechanic where you forego your own ability to do damage in the turn, in order to give the next attacker a bonus?

The enemy planes use a stunt (Fly out of the Sun).

Chic's readiness to use guns tells me he belongs to the fighter class.

I'm not sure how often pilots in dog fights would crash into each other, but if I ever write formalized dog fight rules for Hideouts & Hoodlums, it will likely include something about a low chance of crashing per turn.

I've posted plenty of times with examples like this, showing how you should not try too hard to hide clues from your players in your games. In fact, judging by this page, you shouldn't even hide them at all -- just leave them sitting out on a desk for anyone to see.

The 2nd edition rules for transportation includes ramming damage for just this type of scene!

The ramming damage for vehicles can be really high; perhaps it would be fair to split those dice between multiple opponents, like how Chic hits three guards at once here.

This is John Law, Scientective. The brightly-colored cellar is the result of the four-color process and the difficulty of printing gray tones back then.

A skill check to hear noise should also include a general sense of where it is coming from, even if only a basic skill check was successful.

A delightfully scientific trap! The strobing neon light keeps you from being able to see that the bar is actually moving back and forth very fast, when it appears to be still, and anyone walking through that door would take at least 1-6 points of damage. It's a good trap for hurting someone, but I'm not sure about it killing them...

In this rare instance, the villain loses a foot race to a woman in high heels. June can really move! Competing skill checks -- some combination of successful ones on her part and failed rolls on his part -- determined her close call.

The ol' pit trap filling with water trap! Making it a little easier, the Avenger left the hose accessible in the pit, giving John an improvised rope and grappling hook.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #5 - pt. 1

Black X/Ace doesn't have a clue where the saboteurs are, but he gets a "hunch" that seems to come out of nowhere. I actually wrote a game mechanic for the never-played Detective class that allows him to get a clue from the Editor.

The fight here with the saboteur is a mix of grappling and punching, and I've talked about unarmed combat on this blog plenty (and Black X/Ace doesn't dodge in panel 6; the saboteur just misses). What's worth noting here is that circumstances -- not anything in particular that Black X/Ace does -- forces the morale save (and that saboteur either rolled well or has a fanatical morale).

It's unclear what Batu is doing here, though it seems an awful lot like the spell Locate Object. The casting time seems unusually long, but if Batu is a Supporting Cast Member and not a Hero then the Editor has a little more latitude for changing how magic works for him. Now, the Editor doesn't have a lot of wiggle room for changing things like casting times -- once or twice to heighten tension and the players might overlook it, but used too often it will have the players rightly calling foul.

The crushed forearm is an unusual complication from an injury and, of course, one incompatible with the abstract hit point mechanic. I have talked on the blog before about adding complications for injuries for SCMs, tacked on to hit point loss, but this rule is unlikely to make it into the 2nd ed. basic rulebook now, mainly for space considerations (I'm already past page 110!). I would treat this, then, as just a knockdown/trip attack (and I do need to make sure there's room for that in my combat section) with some pretty brutal flavor text.

Those are some awfully convenient papers Batu finds on Taneo's body. Black X/Ace would be wise to say they were too convenient and might have been intended to falsely implicate another country. That seems a more convincing argument, to me, not to make the papers known.

This is some interesting alternate history, a dream scenario where just the threat of U.S. intervention ends wars. Future history will clearly show otherwise, that the U.S. can't ever seem to end a war in just one year.

The Chief's curious joke about what league the Dodgers were in is, according to Wikipedia, likely a reference to this: "In 1934, Giants player/manager Bill Terry was asked about the Dodgers’ chances in the coming pennant race and cracked infamously, 'Is Brooklyn still in the league?'"  The Brooklyn Dodgers had actually been in the National League since 1890.

Chic Carter is in "Moravia" -- what seems like a clear reference to the then-Soviet-controlled state of Moldova. But the "Arlbourg Pass" must be a reference to the Arlberg Tunnel in Austria. And Brennburg is a barely disguised Brennberg, Bavaria. But, if Chic's train is stopped less than 10 miles from Brennberg, where does that put him? Regensburg is the next largest city, but I believe that would be more than 10 minutes away by train. So that leaves Chic in some little way-stop village along the tracks. No wonder he thinks the place is dead!

The abduction of a Bavarian princess kind of makes sense. The Bavarian royal family, the House of Wittelsbach, was anti-Nazi, and the family's arrest after fleeing to Hungary earlier in the 1930s might have inspired this story.

Bavaria had no king, but a crown prince.

It's a bit of a stretch that the crown prince would want an American journalist's help...but, hey, if that's what it takes to give out a plot hook!

Some Heroes would investigate the duke carefully. Maybe search his home for clues. But our man Chic, he just marches right up to the duke in public and asks him to his face. It's a risky move that angers the duke into attacking Chic with a sword and implicating himself, but an encounter reaction check could have gone a lot of different ways than that.

I'm not sure electric eyes can do what John Law, Scientective, is saying they can, but it's plausible enough for comic books, and thus for Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Also, as a Hero, it pays to check under your hood every once in awhile to look for planted devices. You can never be too careful around villains!

Given how dangerous falling damage is in H&H, levitating someone 35' into the air is a pretty effective trap. Luckily the distance to the trees is shorter, though John's player must have rolled to hit to reach the trees.

(Read at Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #4 - pt. 2

On this page of Invisible Justice (starring the Invisible Hood), we get a) a reminder about an easy way to counter invisibility, b) a decent trap for hideouts (dynamite-lined walls and a timing device), and c) a reminder that hideouts need secret exits and entrances besides the more obvious main entrance. Of course, this means that Heroes who search the area thoroughly enough may find the secret entrances first!

We haven't seen much of anarchists in comic books, but in this story we get a whole secret society of hooded anarchists.

Note how this "disreputable-looking man" is simply disheveled, has a hole in his pants, and is missing a tie and some buttons on his shirt. And this was what a disreputable person looked like in 1939.

Also note that Hugh hangs out at home in a smoking jacket, waiting for plot hook characters to come calling on him ala Sherlock Holmes.

Bozo is likely using the power Extend Missile Range II in that last panel.

We haven't talked about this yet, but...if Bozo is a superhero, then his race must be android. It's a little strange thinking of Bozo as a Hero since he isn't even autonomous -- but it would be possible to play a Hero completely dependent on another Hero to make the decisions, and a unique role-playing challenge too.

Players in Hideouts & Hoodlums always have control of their Heroes (unless magic or other extraordinary circumstances intervene), so torture won't work on a Hero unless the player chooses for it to work.

Hoodlums are meant to be played fairly stupid in H&H, but failing to spot a remote control hidden under a jacket lapel has got to be the biggest boner I've ever seen a hoodlum pull in a comic book.

Chic Carter, Ace Reporter, is on a high-stakes adventure in Singapore where a half-million dollars in gold bullion has been stolen. I don't know why that much gold would have been in Singapore in 1939, but I suppose it's possible.

The pirates here are unusual in that they're using tugboats and are heavily armed with sub-machine guns. Weirdly, these are the same pirates who are already rich with gold, but they seem to be just killing time on one last job before they can fence the gold.

Flash Fulton, Ace Newsreel Cameraman has an assignment to go to Germany and get action shots of Hitler -- or "Rudolph" in "Cerania," since some publishers were still wary about ...offending Germans, I guess.

Professionally employed Heroes could ask for a cash advance before going on missions. It seems that $500 is the most any middle class income-earner should expect to get.

Okay...maybe in 1939 it was still forgivable for Americans to think Hitler's war machine was actually fighting on horseback. This is actually such a departure from reality that I'm glad the story doesn't really use the names Hitler and Germany.

This is John Law, Scientective. The passing reference to Sing Sing Prison shows that John is based out of New York.

(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)