More Fun Comics #22

This isn't so much a playing tip, but this page of Sandra of the Secret Service amused me, reminding me of my new players in a game of Hideouts & Hoodlums, and how tying people up and hiding them in closets was their go-to plan for a significant portion of our first session...

Hey, look! It's another villain, pushed backwards off a cliff and dies!  As often as I'm seeing this, I'm thinking that a "push back" or "bull rush" combat mechanic isn't the solution here. What this needs is an -

Official for H&H: The Falls off a Cliff and Dies Rule

Any time a Hero is about to get killed because of unlucky dice rolls, and you don't want it to happen (because it will spoil the narrative of the story, send a player home unhappy, etc.), you are free to have the Hero's opponent fall off a cliff and die. It is preferable, but not essential, that a cliff actually be present in the scene. 

The bad guy has the drop on our Hero, Wing Brady, his gun pointing right at him. The Hero's intention is to spin around, pick up a stool, and throw it at the gunman before he can pull the trigger. Our Hero is toast, right? Then you haven't read enough comic books. This is precisely why, instead of a realistic initiative system, we need the abstraction of 2 dice rolls, higher roll goes first.

I have no idea what giant vats of boiling oil were used for in 1930s laboratories, let alone futuristic ones. Regardless, they apparently make for good hideout decor.

Now, immersion in boiling oil could be handled in one of two ways by the Editor. One is random damage (1-6, or higher, depending on how hot the oil is) per turn until the immersed is rescued, and the other is a straight save vs. poison or death. The choice might say a lot about what kind of campaign mood the Editor is going for.

The ease with which a panther is killed by one of the Bradley Boys with just a knife is a good argument for going with same damage for everything, and not scaling to an expanded weapon damage system that penalizes the "lowly" knife.

As common as cannibals are in Golden Age comics, I've shied away from using them as a distinct mobster type. Instead, I've lumped them together with other racist portrayals under "Natives" in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

Here Brad Hardy encounters some kind of underwater dragon. The real lesson here is, as long as you can count on your players never to turn around and fight, you can throw encounters as big and spectacle-worthy as you like at them. Of course, then it's beholden on you, the Editor, to provide someone else to do the fighting for them.

Hence, mermen with underwater lightning guns.



In a page of Doctor Occult, not shown here, Jerry Siegel shows off his talent for cleverly playing with science fiction motifs again (as we have already seen him do in Federal Men). In the last issue, Dr. Occult was killed. In this issue, a scientist brings him back to life, ala Frankenstein's Monster, only here the mad scientist is more obviously the villain and the "monster" is more obviously the Hero.

The trophy item used to bring the Doctor back must be a mad science raise dead machine.

Proof that cowboys can climb walls. It's not just a Mysteryman skill anymore!

And lastly, a page of Johnnie Law, included here because it's actually an example of good detective work -- using a clue to narrow down a smaller list of suspects, and then meticulously tail each of them.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #21 - pt. 1

I wish we had more of an overhead visual of the layout of this island, because it sounds like an interesting locale for a remote hideout on, not just one, but spread out over a chain of small, uncharted islands. The building that looks like a covered bridge apparently conceals the entrance to the administrative building, which must be mostly underground.

And the hideout is extensively deep, with an elevator needing to go down to where The Brain keeps his lair.

Should punches stun temporarily? There are slim precedents in That Other Game, particularly an old Dragon magazine article I can recall, for setting a small percentage chance of punches stunning, in addition to causing damage.

For this particular instance we don't need it. In this combat, the captain goes first in turn 1, throwing his knife, and then Wing Brady punches at the end of the turn.

At the beginning of turn 2, Wing wins the initiative and attacks first. The captain misses -- but, the results of that miss can be explained away as anything by the Editor using flavor text. "Stunned temporarily" would be a good excuse for the Editor rolling a 1 to hit.

It does seem that H&H needs to have fatigue/exhaustion rules for scenes like this.

Barry O'Neill is going to learn his lesson from this scene -- always disable your enemy's transportation if you find it outside the hideout (or, if you have time, steal it first!).

I might give Mark Marson and his pal a +1 bonus to their saves vs. poison for having smashed the window first.

It seems very unlikely to me that kicking a bear would knock it off-balance. This seems like more flavor text to explain how the bear managed to miss a prone opponent (which the bear has a +2 bonus to hit!).


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #19

Sometimes, just entering the hideout is itself part of the challenge. In this case, Barry O'Neill has to fall down a pit to enter Fang Gow's concealed entrance. How everyone else got down there without having to jump and get hurt is not explained. Perhaps there was another secret entrance. Of course, if you do put a safer backdoor into the hideout, be prepared for your Heroes to find it!

Brad Hardy gives us a surprisingly detailed map of the lost world he explores. Less thought seems to have gone into the reptaboa, which just seems to be a funny-looking constrictor snake.

There were plenty of times that I "cheated" on mobster types for Hideouts & Hoodlums, making ones that I felt the game should have, but didn't actually have samples of from my readings. One was the anarchist, which I pictured as a crazy communists running around with round, lit bombs -- just like the guy in this gag picture!

Predicting the future is a curious game to play; you just never know when you're going to win and get it right. Here, we can only hope that the Interplanetary Police's clothes are not the fashions of the future.  But a telemirror? That looks a lot like a flatscreen TV to me.  And race change is possible today through plastic surgery.

Hideout rooms tend to be at a 10' scale, which tends to make for big rooms.  What I like about this page is that it shows spacious interiors, very appropriate for H&H. Giant bats are a threat for low-level Heroes, but a cavern full of ordinary bats is basically just flavor text, as it is here.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #17 - pt. 2

Mark Marson of the Inter-Planetary Police is new to me, but there are some familiar tropes here.  The "sun-ray cannon" sounds a lot like a Laser, but is probably meant to be a heatray (since Lasers hadn't been invented yet in the 1930s).  The electro-ray pistol is also already statted for H&H, as an electric raygun.  And pit traps!  Gotta have pit traps.

On this page you can see how the cliched tropes of the adventure genre can be used to make future scenarios feel retro.  The only thing different about this enclosing room trap is the "gripping ray" that acts like telekinesis on Gail.





I'm not sure what I'm reading about in Bob Merritt.  The snaky tentacles in the clouds -- are they going to have some natural explanation for that or not?  And the "bursting hand grenade" in the bottom panel -- I'm no expert on weapons, but I didn't think an exploding grenade normally made that much light.  If it was some sort of magnesium grenade that just gave off blinding light, that would be a pretty neat trophy for Heroes to have.

Speaking of trophies, Brad Hardy and his fellow escapees run into some new trophy weapons -- guns that shoot "poisonous shrapnel darts".  So, 1d6 damage + a save vs. poison.

There is a lot of flavor text in this page long struggle, but I think we can break it down into 3-4 turns of combat.  Turn 1:  grappling on both sides.  Turn 2:  Jack fails to grapple (described by the Editor as falling backwards), and Villa fails to hit with his knife.  Turn 3:  Unsuccessful grappling on both sides; Editor allows them both to get to their feet instead.  Turn 4:  Jack punches Villa, using a special maneuver to push him back.  The Editor may or may not choose to roll a saving throw for the window glass (since it's such a cinematic image, he might just choose to allow it to automatically break). 

Since the knife is ignored after turn 2, turns 3 and 4 could be compressed into 1 turn, since unarmed combat allows for two actions per turn.  They do not both have to be the same action.

Young Jeff is so good at hiding, sneaking, and attacking from behind, he might be a Mysteryman!

Sandy Kean runs afoul of a racketeer!  Should racketeers be their own mobster-type?  Perhaps ones with special connections to corrupt politicians?



(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)