Crackajack Funnies #21 - pt. 2

We're still looking at Wash Tubbs and, boy, there's an unsettling mix of realistic and cartoony violence in there -- which is actually pretty much my Editing style when running Hideouts & Hoodlums.

There are some interesting things going on here and on the previous page. From the previous page (I'll just summarize it for you), Frankie Slaughter beats up one of Wash's employees just to intimidate everyone present into not telling the police he was ever there.

Slaughter tries all the angles to get what he wants, as low as beating Wash half to death and threatening to do the same to his girlfriend. But he makes the mistake of trusting Wash is frightened enough to comply and doesn't send one of his boys with Wash to the bank.

Frankie Slaughter is a great villain name.

Wash, for his part, threatens Frankie with a gun (on the page I didn't share), but I was relieved to find out it wasn't loaded. Keeping the lease at the bank was very smart on his part.

Speaking of smart, Frankie again shows good tactics, trying to trick Wash into unloading the lease to a stranger, and then establishing an alibi (and having a secret exit from locations that aren't even his hideout!).

Red Ryder is knocked unconscious by the explosion. In D&D, when a PC wakes up, they can immediately get up and rejoin the battle with no ill effects (other than maybe still functioning at reduced hp). Here, Red is stunned for at least 1 turn after waking up; a more gradual transition to being fight-ready and something I'm considering adding as an optional rule now.

I'm normally far from a gun advocate, but if Red was looking to finish this fight most effectively, I think he would have gone with his gun rather than throwing sand in Carr's face. Apparently the sand gives him such an advantage that he easily wins the fight off-panel, so maybe I'm wrong? Let's review; how I would handle this is an attack roll, ignoring any armor but not DEX bonus or cover, then a saving throw vs science from the target. Failure means temporarily blinded and at a -4 to hit penalty for the next 1-4 turns. So, I guess that's a pretty good advantage, but not a sure win.

This has to be the most verbose feature I've reviewed yet for this blog, and I'm not even showing you the pages that are almost solid text. It's not really that complex a plot, but the author seems to think it is.

A monogrammed lace handkerchief and the smell of perfume are good clues, but the knife in the back is the best one of all and they don't even talk about it.

Noticing that someone else has the same initials is not a clue I would normally make someone roll for, expecting the players to catch it themselves. The smell of the perfume the players could not tell on their own, so for that I might allow an Intelligence check to recall it smelling the same; I don't see that being a skill, unless we treat perfume identification as a skill. There is generally a lower chance to make a skill check than an ability score check, so I guess it depends on how hard you think recognizing the perfume should be.

The Scarlet is an unusual name for a villain for two reasons: one, Scarlet isn't a noun, and two, you normally associate Scarlet with a female.

A fountain pen that shoots out stunning gas that can affect 1-2 people is a handy minor trophy item.

Smashing a window seems an unusual signal. What if The Scarlet had used bulletproof glass in his windows?

Complicating the story was the fact that Dorn's sister provided Ed with wrong information, and Dorn was purposely feeding people false stories to throw them off. Players need to be reminded sometimes that they can't trust all the information they receive in-character.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that "200 suspected cases of espionage a day" was just a guess and not a fact I could look

up and verify.

I never thought we'd be looking at Apple Mary again for adventure ideas, but a $5,000 reward to search for a missing item is a plot hook worthy of a fun treasure hunt.

From this page we learn that psychics charged $5, and a book can sell for as little as 50 cents (maybe from a used book store?).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Crackajack Funnies #20 - pt. 2

And we return with Freckles, which surprises me sometimes with its continued relevance to this blog. Here we see how easy it is to find treasure in the game -- particularly when the treasure is meant as a plot hook, and then you can literally snag it up anywhere.

An interesting code of colored lights for villains to use to communicate with each other.

I think I've mentioned elsewhere how natives need a better chance of hearing noise.

The cowboy genre has lots of reasons for bad guys to want to take someone's ranch by force, but this may be the first time the bad guys have wanted the ranch so they can turn around and sell it to the government. Won't the joke be on them if the government declares eminent domain on the ranch and builds the dam anyway!

Do natives also need a better chance of hiding in shadows, or should that apply to half-pints?

Sleight of hand is a skill you don't often see bad guys using, but this outlaw is an expert -- managing to move his hands over to an exposed axe right in front of Red and still goes unnoticed.

We haven't visited our old friend Myra North in awhile. Most male heroes solve problems with their fists; Myra solves this one with just her shoulder! I wrote recently about how a character should be able to sacrifice his chance at an attack to modify someone else's attack roll upwards, but here is an example of someone foregoing her attack to modify someone's attack roll downwards.

It's also interesting that this scene hinges on wind direction, an element often neglected in stories and RPG scenarios.

"Forcing away" needs to become a stunt in dog fights between aviators; basically a push attack, but without contact between the planes.

Power dive is already an aviation stunt, but I should probably write something about this tactic, of playing chicken with airplanes. It would apply equally to cars; the non-Hero/non-Heroes involved have to make morale saves or swerve out of the way. The Hero then has to make a save vs. science to pull out (or hit the brakes) in time to avoid the collision. Of course, the goal is to make your opponents swerve so hard that they crash, so they have to make saves vs. science if they fail their morale saves, crashing if they fail again (just not into you).

Blowguns are a surprisingly rare weapon in comic books.

According to Clyde Beatty, clowns have a soothing effect on crowds. Perhaps Heroes should bring clowns with them so their allies will all get a bonus to morale saves.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Crackajack Funnies #19 - pt. 1

Back to public domain stories I can show!

Here we rejoin Don Winslow of the Navy, explaining a bit of problem solving he did. We also are reminded of a definition of "dope" that we might often forget these days.

Someone's been pranking this poor ship captain, replacing his maps with fakes. The Balkans do not border the Mediterranean Sea; they border the Adriatic.

What a "paravane" is is explained here.

The idea that Indians were secretly hoarding gold has enticed white men since arriving in North America.

If I ever succeed in making the Cowboy class (debuted in Supplement III: Better Quality) viable in 2nd edition, it will surely keep the ability to summon mount.

This is Ed Tracer, G-Man X32.

Dapper Danz is very excited about narcotics.

The secret hideout is an old moonshiner's cave with a secret front door.

This page is a nice twist. When we met "Deacon" Slade a few pages earlier, he just seemed like a harmless wandering encounter, maybe a red herring. But it turns out he's a rival with a different agenda vs. Dapper Danz.

Man, that sure is a nice looking Donald Duck pocket watch. It's going to cost a lot more than $1 today!

Stratosphere Jim has an interesting alternative explanation for how VTOL planes would work. A pressurized cabin was also a rare novelty circa 1940.

It would be 1953 before any plane officially matched this airspeed record.  A simple system for keeping track of trophy items would be to say that a plane 13 years ahead of its time is a Plane +1, 26 years ahead of its time would be a Plane +2, 39 years ahead of its time would be a Plane +3, and so on.

The notion that secrets need to be kept, even from your own government, were a comic book staple before WWII, but would quickly seem unpatriotic. Yet, I wonder how many superheroes quietly shared their weapons' secrets with the War Department...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Crackajack Funnies #17

Today's adventure of Don Winslow of the Navy includes a naval battle between a battle cruiser and a submarine -- neither one of which is going to make it into the trophy section of the 2nd edition basic book. After much thought and research, I've decided to cap the section on water transport trophies to yachts.

Interestingly, it's a yacht that Don is on and not the two vessels actually fighting. The larger naval battle could be roll-played out, or just treated as background flavor text.

Trigger is "crazed" and staggers blindly from fatigue and thirst. Those are some harsh complications I don't expect any players will want to deal with. Trigger is a mobster, though, so the Editor can assign any complications to him he wants.

This is "Time Marches Back" with Looney Luke, Inventor of the "Time Machine."  It's a feature as bad as its title would suggest. Two things to note from it, though: a) Luke's time machine is his hat, which also lets him fly, and b) this is an actual ghost. Real ghosts are exceedingly rare in the early comics, as they're almost always fake undead. This ghost demonstrates its ability to pass through small holes here, as ectoplasm seems to be closer to a liquid than a solid state.

This is Clyde Beatty, Daredevil Lion & Tiger Trainer -- further proof of my new contention that the longer a title is the worse it is. At least Clyde is done messing around in the circus now and is exploring Africa.

Clyde doesn't bother with taming leopards, though -- he just wants to kill 'em!  I've spoken recently about Hit Dice intentionally not accurately reflecting the comics, and here this leopard would have to have 4 hit points for there to be any chance of that dagger killing it in one hit.

This is Buck Jones and the Canyon Rustler, and there's more going on here than you might think at a glance. Buck has defeated this outlaw (an evil cowboy) and now the outlaw is spilling the beans about the hideout Buck needs to head to next. Buck has already learned how the entrance to the hideout is concealed and the location of a lookout (another new mobster type) guarding the entrance.  But there's also a bandit lurking about and he's about to attack. Look out, Buck!

It's been awhile since we've checked in on Dann Dunn, Secret Operative 48. Here his poor dog Wolf is doing most of the work because Dan is low on hit points. At the end, when all the danger is past, Dan faints from low hp. Except, that's not a thing -- you can't somehow delay unconsciousness in the game through force of will. So, this must be the player's decision to make Dan faint -- self-imposed flavor text, if you will.

Also, an example of the usefulness of carrying handcuffs.

Wash Tubbs finds that the 1930s is a great time to buy things cheap, if you've got the money.

This reminds me of a recent issue I had in the 2nd edition trophy section -- how do you set $ values on hi-tech or magic trophy items so that Heroes don't become instantly rich? One answer is, if it's the pre-WWII years, not enough people are buying who have enough money to make you rich.

Speed Bolton Air Ace should be a lot more exciting than it usually is, but in this installment things really start to happen after a lot of issues of people standing around talking to each other.

I'm wondering, though, if a marksman's medal should be a trophy item. The wielder would get a +1 to hit with missiles?

This is Ed Tracer, G-Man X32. He's in an interesting hideout, and I call it interesting because there's plenty to explore here. Did he search all the cells in the dungeon? What's in that barrel and crate? What flows out of that long pipe sticking out of the wall -- water, or green slime?

The radio room is halfway between levels. It contains a safe - don't you want to know what's in it, Ed? Above that is, one could presume, the ground floor where the party is taking place.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Crackajack Funnies #16 - pt. 1

(The following post makes more sense if you think of this as having been posted on Thanksgiving, when I started writing it.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

What is Dan Dunn thankful for? That Hideouts & Hoodlums doesn't have "bleeding out" rules. Despite the fact that he's apparently been unconscious from a gunshot wound for hours, he wakes up just fine. And it really is the amount of time passing that made the difference, not the water that Irwin brought him -- unless Irwin happened to slip a dissolving healing pill into the water!

The mobsters are thankful for the new 2nd edition rule on cover fire, making the police afraid to move into the path of the bullets for they would be automatically hit. But Wolf is fine. Is that because cover fire doesn't work against smaller than man-sized targets, or is the grass really so tall that the mobsters don't have line of sight?

Here, the fact that Wolf hops over a wall and still isn't nailed by the cover fire seems to prove that it doesn't work against smaller than man-sized opponents. Or they switched off of the cover fire tactic for some reason (running out of bullets?).

Dan is awfully optimistic for a man who should be only back up to 1 hit point right now.

We've seen more elaborate trap triggers, like electric eyes, pressure plates, and even motion sensors (before that was even a thing you could buy), but here we get the simple trigger of a black thread setting off an alarm.

This page also suggests that carrying a lit flashlight could make it easier to target someone -- or at least would cancel out the dim light bonus in 1st edition.

Red Ryder is grateful for those hot coals, and being able to kick them in the air as high as a person's face. Now, I do plan on having a rule in 2nd edition for blinding attacks, but should hot material also do damage? I would be inclined to say no, since it gives a double advantage to the blinding attack. Of course, this might make sense for hot coals, but what if the hero was invulnerable and could kick up molten lava? An Editor will still have to play situations like that by ear.

Ed Tracer has less reason to be thankful; first he's tricked by The Piranha, who pretends to have stuck Ed with a poison dart (bluffing is much easier than actually carrying poisoned weapons!), then a mobster gets surprise on him and puts him in a double-arm lock. I have grappling rules for 2nd edition that will cover multiple holds, like this one.

1st ed. H&H had the giant piranha. 2nd ed. is going to stat normal schools of piranha. But this appears to be a tank of only four piranha? That's a pretty easy deathtrap. They're going to be able to do maybe 1 point of damage to him per turn?

This is Buck Jones, and I don't share this page because of the simple "I'll roll a boulder down the hill" trap -- because we've seen that already. No, it's for the peculiar incident of the horse stumbling. Over what? When do cowboy's horses ever trip?  There's no need for a game mechanic for this -- this is clearly a freebie from the Editor.

I'm equally skeptical of this. Should Heroes be able to outrun attacks? How slowly are those boulders rolling? In this case, I'm inclined to say Buck made a save vs. missiles to avoid the boulder trap, which was explained by the flavor text of him climbing a nearby tree to escape them.

Wash Tubbs is abused by his ex-girlfriend's bratty kids in this sequence that harkens back to the strip's pre-Captain Easy days. On the previous page was the ol' bucket of water balanced on the door trap -- avoided by a save vs. missiles and -- since it was only water -- doing no damage.

Itching powder also does no damage but could be a good distraction, maybe making someone save vs. science each turn or lose initiative until the powder is washed off.

Spitballs do no damage, but they sure are annoying (no game mechanic for annoying though).

Trip attacks will be covered under the grappling rules.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Crackajack Funnies #13

This is Red Ryder and...hmm...that's one impressive panel. I wonder if I shouldn't consider a cattle stampede a save or die situation...

Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy are lucky to defeat a single mobster and win a boat as a trophy item.

The "ghostly ruins of an old plantation" is an atmospheric location for a hideout. That there's only building on the island makes it easy to find the hideout.

The hideout is under the ruins -- a common place for hideouts. The entrance is a concealed trapdor and has to be found, though. Luckily, the Editor rolls a wandering encounter and gives them someone to question.

Also note that time of day affects what the mobsters are doing in the hideout; they aren't just static stat blocks, frozen in place until encountered.

The first thing Easy does in the hideout after knocking out the lone guard isn't to slit the throats of the sleeping bad guys, but to sneak around and take all their weapons. And this is the behavior of a Hero who can probably be defined as Neutral rather than Lawful.

Yes, leaving his prisoners alive does sometimes lead to complications. But how exactly did that mobster left on the beach get free? It seems editorial fiat created that complication. In game play, this would only discourage Heroes from leaving their prisoners alive.

It's interesting how Roy Crane, normally such an attentive artist to detail, just said "forget this!" and stopped drawing the background to panel 1 in mid-panel. This is sort of like what hideouts are like for your players when you stop adding dressing to the hideouts. Describing the brickwork, placing random barrels in hallways -- these are the things that remind players that their characters are in a physical place and helps them visualize it.

Extra guns under beds is another good dressing detail, and handy for the bad guys.

Yes, secret doors can have alarm systems hooked up to them now. No need for Magic Mouth spells!

This stage money brings up the topic of recognizing forgeries. I had written up more on the subject under the spy class (in The Trophy Case), but basically the only mechanic you need here is save vs. plot -- succeed, and you recognize the bills for what they are. Disguise works the same way, and what is a forgery but a disguised bill?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)