The Comics #11

This is from Man Hunt, and at issue here is women in Hideouts & Hoodlums.  I had suggested some time ago about statting women as a separate race in H&H -- not because women are a separate race, but because they are treated differently in comic books, in ways that could impact game mechanics. This ability to be constantly underestimated could be a real advantage for players needing to, say, sneak guns into a jail.

This is from Rod Rian of the Sky Police.  I share it because that temple shaped like a giant skull is just begging to be the entrance to a hideout.

Saber-tooth dogs -- because if they were saber-tooth cats this would seem to much like Earth!  They look tough; I would probably give them...oh, let's say 3+2 Hit Dice (one pip per saber).

This is a well-choreographed fight scene, but remember that feints and aiming for the solar plexus are all just flavor text -- this battle is being resolved by slow hit point loss.

Here's an example of a brigand (explained in Book II as Chaotic bandits).

When grappling, you can either maintain the pin automatically each turn until your opponent succeeds at a save vs. science to escape the hold or you can do damage (like by strangling), but then have to roll to hit again the following turn. As long the grappling hold remains unbroken (no made saves or no missed attack rolls), then I guess there's no reason the attacker could not switch back and forth between the two.

Of course, the head clubbing is done at +4 to hit because the brigand is prone. Attacking the prone brigand from behind does not stack additional pluses.

I think these two are pretty funny.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

The Comics #10

Not a strong offering from Dell anymore, The Comics still has some material of interest to us -- well, me, anyway -- in it.

For one thing, Dell was still paying for good gag filler...

...and this one.

And Rod Rian was still inventive (if not particularly good).  Here we get a giant, dinosaur-like monster just called a "huge beast".  It's unusual in that it has grasping hands, and appears like it could rake with its hind legs. I am toying with calling it a chasm beast, since it appears in a chasm, though I'd have to take just a wild stab at Hit Dice.  Maybe 9 HD?

And then we get a living skeleton. What completely random wandering encounter charts!

We have a precedent for undead needing to make morale saves.

We also get a huge snake -- which must mean it has half as much Hit Dice as a giant snake (given the large/huge/giant classification scheme).

But the greatest idea is a cursed watering hole where anyone who drinks it has to save vs. spells or be turned into a living skeleton! Actually, I felt a big gypped by the next page, where it is revealed the water only makes the non-skeletal parts of the body invisible temporarily.

The lesson here is that, when your trap is too good for the Heroes, you can always place some dumb guard nearby who can be easily tricked into freeing the Heroes.

This is from The Enchanted Stone and sabre-toothed cats were first statted for Hideouts & Hoodlums in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

Bulls have, weirdly, never been statted for H&H.  I would probably make them 4 HD, but with 8-sided Hit Dice?

It's also handy to have a dog companion so they can run back and get help if something happens to your Hero.

I don't know how accurate this Aztec Lore is, but it could prove helpful for anyone running the classic module C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan adapted to H&H -- or even a H&H-Empire of the Petal Throne crossover!

I like the thought of this as a trap, even though it was not intentionally placed in this installment of Cap'n Cloud.  The Heroes have to get across a body of water coated in oil, and have a limited time to do it before burning driftwood floats down into the oil and sets the room ablaze.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

The Comics #9

Ah, Dell. By August 1938, only some of its titles still contain great comic strip reprints, but as the line expanded pages had to be filled with lesser work. The Comics was a title filled with lesser work. Still, even lesser work can serve as inspiration for Hideouts & Hoodlums!

I have no idea where the trope of the organ grinder's monkey as pickpocket comes from, but it's an old one and we see it here. Monkeys were introduced, as a new animal-mobster type, in Supplement V: Big Bang, but I wonder if a more specific type called an organ grinder's monkey would not be more appropriate; one with a chance to pilfer equal to a low-level Mysteryman.

Half-pint Heroes don't have to be played dumb! Davey outwits a crew full of mutineers by luring them into the foc'c'sle with the promise of treasure, then locking them all inside.

When players come up with plans like this, Editors must remember that it is not their job to "win" by outwitting the players. Introducing complications into their plans is one thing, but if a player comes up with a good plan, it should be given a fairly good chance at succeeding.

Almost a year and a half before Hawkman debuts, Rod Rian takes to the sky with an "aero belt".  The belt must contain the controls for the flying device, because it seems that the cylinder on Rod's back must power the device, and the wings surely serve as stabilizers. It's clearly a hi-tech item version of magical Wings of Flying.

The gravity raygun is an example of an over-sized machine, as most of the rayguns described in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies are.  The ray has a long range (200-300'?) and can easily pull 400 lbs. of weight towards the raygun (We never see an upper limit, but it surely has one. Maybe 1,000 lbs.?).  We could speculate that the ray can be thrown in reverse too and repel objects.

I'm always keen to share useful maps on this blog and, while this is not technically a map of the Island of the Living Dead, there is an unusual amount of topographic detail here that could inspire an Editor.

We have seen many examples so far of prices in the 1930s, and some research and digging could turn up what prices were like in the late 1800s (or we could cheat and borrow a RPG from that period). But what about the Mythic West, that land comic book stories fall into that is part modern day and part Old West? What are appropriate amounts of money to throw around in those games?  Here, we see a rodeo with a $3,000 prize for the winner and a high stakes poker game with $500 stakes. The next page (not shown here) mentions a $1,000 reward for an outlaw.

In a prehistoric countryside that could never have existed, single examples of dinosaur species that lived millions of years apart happen to stroll past each other. The tyrannosaurus rex and the triceratops made it into H&H as early as Supplement I: National. The stegosaurus was discussed here on this blog.  Corythosaurus would have had 16 HD (with 12-sided HD). Euhippus would have been 1/2 HD, like giant rats (only horse-rats). Pteranodons were statted in Supplement II: All-American, but pterodactyls were much smaller and would have had only 1 hp.  A paleoscincus might have 14 HD (using 10-sided HD).  If I was one of those half-pints, I'd wish it was was the pterodactyl chasing me!

Hit points are part of the abstract nature of combat in H&H and do not, usually, represent actual physical wounds on a 1:1 ratio. However, if the tone of your stories is light enough, hit points could work that way, as they do here in Deadwood Gulch.

Also note the commonness of cigarettes.

This is Cap'n Cloud, finding out that modern technology can make it very difficult to just sneak into an enemy hideout. Hidden dictaphones can tell the bad guys what the Heroes are planning, where they're going, and what room they are in at all times -- unless the Heroes are magically masking their noises (Silence 15' Radius spell?).

Manhunt gives us a map!  It's not particularly creative, and the scenario you would use it for seems awful grisly, but I think we could come up with better ones. What sort of deal was made at Deal Lake to give it its name, and does that have anything to do with the missing child/ren from the nearby school...?


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Comics #8

Ted Strong, indirectly, made me think of an interesting question today. What do you call hoodlums in a Western campaign? This page makes me think "henchmen" would be a good substitute for hoodlums, in a Western or any non-urban setting.



Rod Rian introduced us to the devil-like aliens, the Mephisians, last issue. This time we meet their enemies and they are, refreshingly, not made to look like angels. Instead, we have the Unicor who, interestingly enough, are distinguishable from the Mephistians by virtue of having just one horn instead of two and hair (reminding me of Star Trek's "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield").

Projectile planes look like spaceships, but they don't appear to be able to enter orbit. They would more properly treated like jets.

The destructor-flame gun is an interesting weapon -- it seems to shoot a pencil-thin beam and only erupts into flames when it hits its target. In this sense, it's more like a heat ray than a flame thrower.

I would not normally turn to a humor strip like Salesman Sam for realism, but perhaps Sam makes a good case that not everyone should have a game mechanic available to them for climbing sheer walls. This will likely remain a Mysteryman skill, or a stunt that can be prepared.

This cowboy is Tex Ritter, and I include these panels for three quick points. One, those costumes, like poison-KKK mash-ups, are pretty impressive-looking designs. Second, "cracker box" was apparently slang for a jail cell. Third, poisoned whiskey bottles might make a good trap for your Heroes, depending on how likely they are to drink out of random bottles found in hideouts.

Tomorrow...Action Comics #1, at last!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)



 

The Comics #7 - pt. 2

More fearsome than the Mephistosians must be the Bat-Men of Mephis. Note that, despite their apparently pink coloring, the bat-men are mistaken at first for statues. Pink marble gargoyles...?

Phew, at least they kept Wash Tubbs for The Comics!  Here, we learn that Easy's plane cost him $16,000.

This new strip is clearly inspired by DC's "Magic Crystal of History" strip, only this time the kids are more active participants in the story. There might be an interesting wrinkle to the Enchanted Stone of Time.  Even though it was still a common misconception in the 1930s that prehistoric man and dinosaurs lived at the same time, the dialogue here seems to suggest that something else is going on -- when the stone is rubbed, it causes a random time period to overlap the one the wielder of the stone is currently in, allowing for a random encounter from any era ("Do you think the spirit sent him here?").

If the racism of the times is to be observed, then black people would have to make a save vs. plot to not be scared of anything remotely supernatural. In an unusual twist, though, this black man is revealed to have been a crack shot in the Army. This may also be one of the earliest shotguns in comics.

This page is from another new strip called Gordon Fife and the Boy King, and it's hard to say what's going on here. The fortune-teller definitely seems to have some divination magic at her disposal, like the ESP spell if not an actual Crystal Ball -- provided she did not just recognize the boy king's face. So whether or not she is casting a Sleep spell at the end, or just allowing smoke fumes to get to him, is unclear.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Comics #7 - pt. 1

Dell seems to have shaken up the line-up of The Comics so that it's not so many comic strip reprints anymore.

So, for this April 1938 issue, we start with cowboy nobody remembers, Ted Strong -- and Ted would sure be a goner already if not for his horse!  But what's the game mechanic here? Did Ted simply fail his saving throw vs. science, but the horse made its save? Or should there be some mechanic that is Hit Dice-based that would allow one to ignore certain effects (like x number of pounds of force)? I sense there should be some elegant way of creating that mechanic, but I'm just not seeing it yet...

Speaking of something that there's currently no game mechanic for -- how much damage should a boulder rolled off a cliff do to someone underneath it? Maybe we can wing that, from what we do have. Let's see...a 180 lb. opponent does a base 1d6 damage. Hit Dice and damage progress incrementally together on this model. So, let's be charitable and say that boulder is 1,000 lbs. That would be 5d6 damage. But it's also falling, oh, let's say 50'. So let's add 5d6 of falling damage to that, making it 10d6.

Or, the Editor would be within his rights to simply say save vs. missiles or die (unless the Hero is a Superhero with one of the "raise" powers ready to activate!).

If I were ever to create a cowboy-themed supplement for Hideouts & Hoodlums (and don't think I haven't considered that), I would compile a lot of the educational material from the comic books, like this piece. Maybe not so much for the Indian lore, but I found the saddle primer interesting, and would be useful for a cowboy player to know.

Similarly, this page of nautical-themed info on ships' bells and knot-tying could be conceivably improve someone's campaign flavor text.

Whoa!  I have no idea how to stat them yet, but Alien, Mephistosian needs to become a thing for H&H!  What a way to side-step the whole demons and devils controversy!

Rod Rian was, according to comics.org, a British strip that was purchased for U.S. distribution, much like Sheena of the Jungle will be by 1939.

I don't know what Carno is supposed to be -- a giant mutant ape?

Called shots to the eye, by the way, is a no-no for H&H -- unless the long-neglected optional hit location charts from Supplement II: All-American are in use.

Mephistosians fight with scimitars, and seem to show a surprising lack of technology for a sci fi feature.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)