New Adventure Comics #28 - part 2

Tod Hunter, Jungle Master, and his English gentleman sidekick Tommy, are exploring a temple hideout. In a room concealed behind a curtain is a lit and smoking incense brazier and a raised dais used, not for sacrifice, but for sleeping by the high priestess. While Zara the High Priestess wields a scimitar, her followers (there are at least eight of them) fight with primitive spears and hand axes (and half of them only wear loin clothes).

The sacrificial room is a huge chamber with a tall wooden idol carved to look like a sitting demon -- not too far different from the iconic cover of the 1978 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook!  The corridors are lit with torches held in sconces. A corridor leading from the sacrificial room runs to a circular arena that can be watched through barred gates. The entrance is trapped so that a steel shutter falls down over the entrance behind them, and then a lion can be released into the arena. Because the High Priestess is watching, this must be a deathtrap.

Dale Daring is in need of rescue in the mountain hideout of a bandit chieftain. Because the bandits are Asian, her boyfriend Don decides to disguise himself by staining his skin yellow and putting transparent tape around his eyes to make them almondine. And because this is a comic book, the disguise has a good chance of working.

We also see a torture chamber with a rack and a suspended cauldron for boiling oil.

Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad is a bit of a jerk. Instead of investigating their suspect's room himself, he sends his Supporting Cast Member,"Sleepy", to do it. Sleepy is actually fairly clever; when confronted by the suspect, Sleepy pretends to be a two-bit crook eager to make any kind of a deal to avoid a "fourth offense" and a lifetime sentence (it would be interesting, if I had the time, to investigate which states had four-strikes-and-you're-out laws for repeat offenders in the 1930s).

Carey is a bit of a risk-taker too. He suspects dope is being smuggled in a coffin, so to prove it, he throws pepper into the coffin and waits to hear a sneeze...which would have been awkward if any part of his theory had turned out to be wrong.

The Robin Hood serial continues to be surprisingly accurate. Friar Tuck fights with a broadsword and a buckler (small round shield), both of which would have been common fighting tools in the 1100s, when Robin Hood supposedly lived. It does suggest, in this installment, that hound dogs should have good Armor Classes, as the Friar's hound dogs are shown being able to dodge arrows.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #25

Dale Daring starts with a fall out a window, and it's interesting that the fall only lightly injures Dale and kills his opponent. In Hideouts & Hoodlums, all falling damage is nonlethal unless you fall during a deathtrap. At least that is true for Heroes; I think I will make all falling damage potentially lethal to non-Heroes.

When the police arrive, Dale's word isn't even questioned. This is just the sort of "soft mechanic" (no numbers involved) that I had envisioned for level titles having. Had Dale been of a lower title than the police arriving, then he would have needed to persuade them through roleplaying and the Editor would have needed to roll a positive encounter reaction roll.

This installment of Robin Hood brings up an interesting issue -- if all ranges for missile weapons are the same (and they are, as previously described in Book I, but now found in Book III), then how does one win an archery contest of distance? When a variable amount of distance is needed, I would add the results of a d20 roll to the ranges listed.

Make no mistake, this ape doesn't know Steve Conrad from Adam, yet he immediately leaps in to help. It should not be possible to automatically attract Supporting Cast Members without even trying, so this is clearly a freebie from the Editor, who realized too late that he'd made the scenario too challenging.

It would seem that a dagger between the eyes, killing a leopard, might be proof of a critical hit mechanic in place in H&H. I am still biased against the notion, though I'll try to keep an open mind. The situation could also be explained by the leopard just having unusually low hit points.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #23

The Adventures of Steve Conrad includes, if not the first, at least one of the first dives off a balcony to swing on a chandelier in comic books. As much as a staple as this is of the action genre in general, I almost hate to attach any game mechanics to it. A roll, perhaps a save vs. science, could tell you if the jump-and-swing was carried off with aplomb or not.

Nothing says "Run for your lives!" quite like having turtles chasing you. Granted, these "army-turtles" are large in size (and look more like tortoises, really). I might be generous and assign these 2+1 HD, a 9 Move, an AC 4, and have those beaks do 1-8 damage.

Bob (from Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers) here gives us a demonstration of what constitutes a concealed door vs. a secret door.  A trap door that is covered by something that can easily be moved is a concealed door. A door in the ceiling, made to look like a riveted metal plate, is a secret door. The fact that Bob has to search for a means of opening it clinches that it is a secret door.  Concealed doors should be easier to find than secret doors.

Here, from the serial Monastery of the Blue God, is a textbook example of Heroes beating up mobsters and then searching them for loot to keep as trophies. They are so clearly excited about a star sapphire on a gold chain because it is probably worth considerably more XP than the mobsters themselves were worth.

This is from Robin Hood.  Literary adaptations will rarely be the focus of this blog, but this page brings up the interesting question: can a single arrow that does 1d6 damage kill a stag? By combat rules, unlikely. A stag, as a combatant, would have about 3 HD, 10-11 hit points on average, and do about 2-8 points of damage in a charge -- stats that should give any archer pause. However, if the archer was firing from far enough away that the stag could not possibly reach the archer soon, or the stag immediately missed a morale save and would not be fighting, the Editor could rule the stag is a noncombatant, and so the killing can be described with flavor text.

Illumination can be tricky to referee as the Editor; when you're imagining the scene, you're trying to picture everything. Dim or no illumination at the scene then requires you to filter out detail from the scene as you're describing it to the players, creating an extra step for you to keep track of.

Another thing to keep track of is the number of things that shed light that can be seen at great distances away. Here, we're reminded that even cigarettes may give your opponents away at a half-mile range.

Sandor's player asks us, "Can I have Sandor pick up a guy, toss him into a group of other guys, and knock them all down?"

As a general rule of thumb, you should not allow Fighters to make any kind of special attacks that they would gripe about you using on them. Would they complain if one mobster could knock over all the Heroes with one well-placed attack?

Note that Superheroes could buff themselves with Multi-Attack or Flurry of Blows and pull off this stunt.

As common as leopards are becoming (this is the third time I've discussed them here), they really need an entry in the mobsters section of the next edition.

Lastly, we have Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad, who encounters an unusual trap. It's a tripwire trap that sets off explosives -- but it's not meant to harm the intruders; the explosives are set off further down the tunnel, destroying any evidence there before it can be found.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)