More Fun Comics #30 - pt. 2

This debut page of Buzz Brown is particularly hard to read, but it's worth it to be told that a windjammer (a one-man crew sailboat) could be had for just $100, used.

This page from Pirate Gold is unclear on how the door is "sealed" that Captain Dennis bursts open simply by throwing his powerful shoulder into it. It could have been locked, or perhaps bolted from the other side. Perhaps it was literally sealed, with wax poured into the cracks. Regardless, even a non-Superhero has a mechanic for wrecking doors. Once found in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, at the back, this rule has gravitated to Book III: Underworld & Metropolis Adventures in 1.5 edition and will surely return in some form in 2nd edition.

There are some things done in comic books, for the expediency of the story, that should probably not happen in a RPG scenario -- like this move, to wrap up a fight scene faster.  Normally, it should not be possible to tip over a giant vase, roll it towards a cluster of five hoodlums, and knock them down like bowling pins. It's not really fair to the other players who are playing by the rules and getting their 1-2 attacks per turn.

That said, a Fighter using combat machine might be able to get five attacks per turn, as could a Superhero using the Flurry of Blows power. Describing all those attacks as one attack is within the Editor's purview for describing the scene in flavor text.

Also, in a campaign with a really light mood, the Editor would have more latitude for allowing attacks with comic effect that are a bit outside the rules.

According to this page from Radio Squad, radio broadcasting apparatus was portable enough to fit in the trunk of your car back in 1938. Good for parties, or fooling the police with false broadcasts!

At a cursory glance, it might look like Bob Merritt here has turned completely bonkers. Charging in broad daylight a transport plane surrounded by hoodlums with guns, enjoying cover? Well, depending on his distance to the plane, it maybe wasn't such a bad plan. If Bob could have sprinted to the plane in the first phase of movement, he could have kept the plane between him and maybe half the hoodlums and cut the number he had to fight in half. Because he didn't make it in the first phase -- perhaps having misjudged the distance -- his opponents were able to get off their missile fire before the next movement phase.

Of course, the Editor could still have ruled that, even if Bob could technically have made it in the first movement phase, that his opponents were set up and ready for him and that at least some of them could get off their shots early while he was still moving.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #29

This issue starts with a really short Doctor Occult story, vs. a "spectral killer". The spectral killer looks a lot like the undead mobster-type known as a shadow, but instead of draining strength with a touch, it strangles and kills.

This is the Pirate Gold serial, and we see firecrackers being used as a diversion for the first time (it also happened not that long ago in my Sunday Nights at Home Campaign). It looks like they are being used against yellow peril hoodlums too.

Ah, the Bradley Boys use the old "high and low" trick for tripping someone. I could see, if two people work together and don't want separate attack rolls, that the attacker should get some sort of situational modifier. Perhaps, in this case, the victim would have a -1 penalty to save vs. science or fall prone. If three people were working together on tripping someone, one person would attack and the victim would save at -2.

I'm thinking of statting slavers, like this one Wing Brady is dealing with. Slavers should be tough, maybe as much as 3 Hit Dice, but they only fight with whips for 1-3 damage.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #28

We'll start off discussing this issue with the Dr. Occult story, "Vampire Venom". Occult is the first man in comic books to deal with vampires (and this is his second outing against them!), so this strip should be seen as authoritative on the subject. We see that vampires can appear from out of nowhere (probably had been in gaseous form), and that they can have bat wings even when in human form. It turned within sight of their graves, they flee back to their graves rather than fleeing further.

In Pirate Gold, Dennis (there just aren't enough Heroes named Dennis) uses a whip to disarm. Given how common disarming is in comic books, I'm still inclined to say this is a combat maneuver that should be open to everyone and not a game mechanic specific to whips.

This page from Bob Merritt gives you a good idea of how large the scope of a war on crime could be in your H&H campaign. This isn't an enemy nation's air force in the sky -- this is a "gangster fleet". I'm counting at least 26 planes in that remarkable panel, each probably equipped with at least a machine gun. Looks like a battle for high-level Heroes...

This page of Johnnie Law supports an idea I've been having for an optional rule, where a head blow would have a chance of temporarily knocking out someone, This would have to be entirely different from the hit point mechanic, where being reduced to zero hp means a long recovery. Perhaps the attack roll would have to score 5 or more better than needed to hit, with the stated indication of going for a head blow, and the target would have to fail a save vs. science or be rendered unconscious for only 1-20 minutes?

This panel with "constant firing" is making me think of an optional rule for suppressive, or covering, fire. It would keep combatants from being able to move through an area, while not directly targeting any particular combatant.

A shot, like this one in Jack Woods, I would normally consider as evidence of the Trick Shot stunt for Cowboys.  However, it should be possible to make this shot even in a campaign without stunts or the Cowboy class. It might require a lucky hit roll vs. AC -1, however...

Brad Hardy's environment is a mix of the mundane and the fantastic. The intelligent races tend to be humans of a different color, like the grey people. Animals might be mundane, like pythons, or fantastic, like the bull-boar (which is itself just two animals combined). I would, at a guess, make the bull-board 3 HD, with a goring attack with that unicorn-like horn that would do 2-8 damage.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #27

Sandra of the Secret Service encounters one of the first gas guns in comics, well before the debut of the Sandman. Gas guns are a trophy item statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

This issue's Dr. Occult story is a tricky one. We have seen Dr. Occult (although he was called Dr. Mystic at the time) travel through other planes before, but here the implication seems to be that Dr. Occult can follow "trails" through the spirit world to places he doesn't know. This would seem to combine ethereal travel with a spell like Find the Path, which sounds like it would be powerful enough to at least be an 8th level Magic-User spell. Since I doubt even Dr. Occult should be high enough in level at this time to be casting spells of that level, there must be something else going on here.

I propose, then, a new spell called Improved Locate Object, or something like that, which not only tells you where something is, but allows you to get there twice as fast you can normally travel. The story doesn't actually support that Dr. Occult knows an object from the crime scene, but perhaps there is more going on there that is behind-the-panels. Also, travel through the spirit world could be a flavor text description of how you travel at x2 speed to your destination.  The range would have to be pretty good for this as well, at least twice the range of a normal Locate Object spell.

Dr. Occult battles a new mobster called the snake-god.  It appears to be a giant constrictor snake, but is intelligent and able to hypnotize with its gaze. I'd give it at least 5 HD, and possibly as high as 7 Hit Dice.  The death convulsions of a snake-god are particularly vicious, so that anyone in 10' would have to save vs. plot or take 1d6 damage from being smacked by a dying snake.

 Dr. Occult also casts Enlarge (or Enlargement) on himself, which definitely should increase strength and give a damage bonus in some way.

Moving on, we have this page from the Fang Gow serial, showing Barry O'Neill lassoing a rooftop and crossing that rope hand-over-hand. Lassoing has been talked about before here; what I wanted to bring up was when and when not to require saving throws.  At first, Barry is not threatened or under any pressure to hurry while crossing the rope. He has no encumbrance weighing him down. I would not make him roll any dice to determine if he makes it across safely.  Only once he is threatened -- in this case by the rope being cut -- would I consider requiring a saving throw vs. science to keep a hold on the rope.

This page of Pirate Gold, with its whipping scene and improvised weaponry, strikes me as a solid case against all weapons doing the same 1d6 damage.  If a whip could do 1d6 damage per lash, not many people would get past the first lash!  I also have trouble accepting that a thrown rock and an auto pistol do the same range of damage -- but maybe that is an example of comic book logic that I should not think about so much!

Brad Hardy has been facing a lot of weird underwater threats for awhile now, but this one is a giant barracuda! Curiously, the barracuda looks like a swordfish in the last panel. I would make a giant barracuda 12' long, weigh 800 lbs., and have 4+1 HD.

In The Yucca Terror, we see the Cowboy stunt Summon Posse at work.



(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

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 #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)

More Fun Comics #13

September 1936 brings us more of Sandra of the Secret Service, just now starting her second adventure after 12 2-3 page installments. To say Sandra is a master of disguise may seem a bit of a misnomer, and yet people in comic books seem to be frighteningly easy to fool by the simplest of disguises. But, only for Heroes; not just anyone is so good at disguise.

Sandra is likely a member of the Spy character class, introduced in The Trophy Case v. 2 no . 5, which has disguise as a class function right from the start. This will become tricky in the next edition, which I had not intended to include the Spy class in. Will that make Sandra a Mysteryman, then, using a Disguise Stunt?  Time will tell.

Medieval period pieces are not going to receive much coverage on this blog; there are LOTS of other RPGs that deal specifically with medieval re-enactment (or swords & sorcery-fantasy equivalents). This page of Ivanhoe does, however, address the mystery of the crossbow.

The mystery is -- where are they? Crossbows are not that rare in real life; they're still used in hunting to this day. But you'll be hard-pressed to find one in the comics. Why is that? Are they just somehow hard to draw? Note how the text describes the archers on the battlements as using crossbows, but those are obviously regular short bows in use in the artwork. Is it just because the act of pulling back a bow string looks more active than holding a stationary crossbow close to the shoulder? Until this mystery is resolved, I plan on taking the crossbow off the starting equipment list for Hideouts & Hoodlums.

The Crazy Meter still runs high on Don Drake on the Planet Saro, and that's good news for informing a campy sci-fi H&H campaign.  Here, we sort of learn about the contents of the Zetrurian queen's gold flagon. It doesn't spell out for us just how this potion "vanquishes" the monster, but it's clearly dead on the next page. Perhaps it's a powerful contact poison.

Poison, in H&H, does a lot of different things depending on the type, with most poisonous animals each having their own set of mechanics (and what goes wrong if a save vs. poison is missed).  Some poisons only weaken, some render a person comatose for a random length of time, while others are of the save or die variety (with onset time varying).

Now this is curious -- is the poisonous cloud an after-effect of the contact poison, or of killing the land monster? It seems like the queen would be crazy to intentionally give Don a weapon that would endanger her own people, so I have to say this is what happens to land monsters after they die. The poison vapor does not seem to be of the save or die variety, since everyone is just walking to shelter instead of running.



This issue's installment of Dr. Occult introduces the idea of a lycanthropy potion that can be injected into someone via a syringe.

This page of Pirate Gold shows a) pirates (statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies) and b) situational modifiers to hit, such as while backstabbing (which would be a +2 bonus to hit).  If the pirate was also a Mysteryman, this could be a Signature Move and do additional damage.

This page of Sandy Kean and the Radio-Squad features a gangster (treat as a bloodthirsty hoodlum, first introduced in The Trophy Case v. 2 no. 6, but then retroactively added to the next edition of Book II: Mobsters & Trophies), a sub-machine gun (treated as a trophy weapon), and a car and motorcycle (motorcycles were originally treated as transport trophies, but were retroactively added to the starting equipment list in Book I: Men & Supermen).

The death in the last panel is awfully hard to figure out, probably because of some slipshod artwork from future Superman creator, Joe Shuster. If the momentum of the car threw the hoodlum into the pole, then the hoodlum's body should be on the other side of the pole.

Regardless, this is an awfully tricky situation to duplicate with game mechanics. How do you give someone a chance of throwing someone off of the running board of your car hard enough to injure or kill them?  The vehicular combat rules in Book III: Underworld and Metropolis Adventures are for assigning damage based on speed if you hit someone with a car. Perhaps this attack would do half that damage, if the passenger on the running board failed a save vs. science?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)