Silver Streak Comics #2 - pt. 5

There's not much to learn from this page of Mister Midnite, but I'll spoil for you that Midnite escapes his bonds on the very next page, which means he was biding his time so he could hear more women screaming. This guy is definitely of Chaotic Alignment.

The horde of little men sure looks like six of them to me. The convenient strange gas disintegrates only the little men and leaves everyone else unharmed. I might put a Strange Gas of Slaying on a future trophy item list.

This is Joe Simon's Solar Patrol, and these are the Tree Men of Uranius -- the extra i keeps me from making all kinds of off-color jokes here.

The thought transmitter is a near useless trophy item in a game system where everyone speaks English.

There's a lot of threatening with the disintegrator raygun in this story, but it never gets used so I can't say if it does damage, or requires a save vs. science to avoid disintegration.

 I've written before about hiding weapons from captors (save vs. plot to conceal) and picking locks (expert skill check), but am sharing this because it's another example of alien Amazons.

We see the heat ray in use, but only hear about the ice ray. The heat ray does not seem to have much of a range on it, on this model. Editors, of course, have the discretion to add or subtract to the range of trophy items as much as they like.

In John Carter fashion, Ken Kurage becomes an alien on certain other planets, with all the special abilities that come with that race.

This is The Wasp, and that is one exceptionally wide cape to cover three people sideways!  It's almost like a magical Cape of Entanglement -- which would actually be a pretty handy magic item. If we don't treat it as a magic item, then we have to treat it as a net and an entangling attack that can affect multiple targets.

The Wasp's move looks like a Sleeping Nerve Pinch, but he's more of a mysteryman than a superhero, so this is a choke hold result during grappling.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Silver Streak Comics #2 - pt. 4

We're still in Duke Kelly, Ace Inspector.  The narrator calls these thugs, but they sure seem like superstitious hoodlums, a mobstertype that was introduced in Supplement I: National.  Haunted houses are, of course, a wonderful set of tropes to exploit for hideout-building.

There is absolutely no game mechanic that would explain how Duke just happens to be on the same road as the kidnappers at this particular moment; it's just a handout from the Editor.

Shooting people inside a moving vehicle is possible during a chase scene in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but negative modifiers for cover and speed are need to be taken into account. Duke's player must have rolled really high.

Throwing your gun after you run out of bullets is what happens when the Editor just keeps rolling really high for morale saves.

Duke makes an unusual choice, letting the hoodlum/thugs get away so he can go after Hix. But...how does Duke know that neither of these guys is Hix?  Did he ever see a picture of the man, between panels? And he's so confident neither of them is Hix in disguise? I suspect Duke's player is meta-gaming here, and figures this isn't a likely place for a boss battle to take place.

The 6' hedge leading straight up to the house is convenient cover!

The falling beam, poised to fall and hit anyone coming in the entrance, was a trap.

It turns out Hix is a supervillain! Here he uses the power Extend Missile Range I, turning Duke into a missile.  It's possible he also used Spook Bad Guys on the thugs earlier, meaning Hix is at least 2nd level (shameful man).

There is a serious design flaw in this hideout -- if you're going to install steel doors to keep people out, it's not a good idea to leave open transoms above them.

It's an interesting tactic here; most villains rig their hideouts to explode, but Hix went with slowly burning it down and then making it explode. It definitely gives him more time to escape that way!

I'm calling shenanigans on those porch roof physics, though. If their weight was really too much for the roof, they would go right through, not make it "gradually sag" to the ground.

Mister Midnite is a curious feature. These bad guys are called "The Little Men." Some of them look really weird, and the one with the mohawk definitely has fangs, but it's still unclear if these are just ugly midgets with woman issues or if this is supposed to be some non-human race.

The brute they use called "Noman" (long before THUNDER Agents!) appears to be undead, but let's wait and see if that turns out to be true.

Noman is given several colorful descriptors, but brute is perhaps the most telling for H&H. My entry on thugs may say something about how brutes are thugs who specialize in unarmed combat.

Now, bear in mind that Carruthers here is a superhero, so his embarrassingly fast smackdown is telling. In first edition, this would be proof that superheroes cannot use their powers when out of costume. But in second edition I removed that restriction because there were so many exceptions to it. I still think we can explain this, though, as an example of how low level Mister Midnite is, and being low level means Heroes are vulnerable.  Particularly if he rolled poorly for starting hit points, it is not inconceivable for a first-level Hero to go down in one hit.

It's almost impossible to follow what is happening in the first half of this page. What is the nature of this trail that is so easy for Mister Midnite to follow, but the police haven't bothered to yet? Mister Midnite stops time...and then just appears at the hideout entrance?

It's possible that Mister Midnite has used the power Find Evidence -- as-written, it does not find trails, but I have had players ask for a more lax interpretation of the power so it can be used like this. 

And as for the time stop...perhaps the Editor has agreed to ignore how much time it would take to follow the trail, in keeping with the flavor of Midnite's power. There is no hard and fast mechanic to timekeeping when out of combat; mostly it is just the Editor making common sense decisions over how long something should take.

I'm amused by the narrator pretending that he meant to get captured. I think it's pretty clear that Mister Midnite is a bit of a wuss and did not wind up in chains on purpose...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Silver Streak Comics #1 - pt. 2

This is Mister Midnite and he's a strange duck. He looks like a Mysteryman, acts like a Mysteryman, but has a ridiculously powerful magic spell -- every night, during the final strokes of midnight, he can choose to stop time. In That Other Game, this would be the 9th level spell Time Stop, but with a very specific limitation. I, frankly, don't know how you would build this Hero with Hideouts & Hoodlums.  You would need a very flexible and accommodating Editor to let your Hero have such a potentially campaign-breaking ability, especially right away in the campaign.

Also note that, despite telling us through the story to this point that Chief Birey has it in for Mister Midnite, he's easily persuaded to cooperate with Mister Midnite on this case. Past encounter reaction failures do not weigh against you in present encounter reaction rolls.

Speaking of Heroes with campaign-unbalancing powers when just at first level -- Red Reeves is just a half-pint, an ordinary boy, until he finds a magic marble that releases a genie, or djinni, to serve him. That's a potent magic item -- unless the marble and the genie are all just flavor text, to explain Red's magic-user abilities.

As if having a genie serving you wasn't enough, the genie gives Red a "wand of power."  There's no wand of power in That Other Game, but there's a Staff of Power, and that's yet another potent magic item. Or, the wand is Red's normal magic wand for casting spells with, as a magic-user, and the genie is then more of a supporting cast member.

Red's first spell is Create Food & Water.

It seems that Red is casting Wish spells, but they can be explained other ways. He casts Enlarge on his dog and then Fly.

This is an odd one -- no spell really matches this one, but it does match the power Raise Building.

Plant Growth.

Teleport.  And then Fly again (unless the duration hadn't ended from the first casting).

Red has to be at least a 9th level magic-user, if he is the one casting all these spells.

A sloop is present in the transportation section of the 2nd ed. H&H rules. It's an expensive item, at $8,000, well beyond what most Heroes have for starting money. So, what is it? The exploding dice option for rolling starting money that I'm introducing makes it hypothetically possible for even a 1st level Hero to start with that much. Or, it could be a house rule where every Hero gets to start with a trophy item of some sort.

Captain Fearless has three sharks advancing on him when a seaplane comes down to save him. Is Lieutenant Dugan a Hero or a Supporting Cast Member? Is this a wandering encounter? And did Dugan roll to hit the shark with his plane? How much damage does hitting a shark with a plane do? I can come up with an easy mechanic for basing damage on speed, but it would get complex if it had to take the mass of the vehicle into account too.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)