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 #24

We're going to start off today staring into the face of 1930s racism again. Here, in this page from The Golden Dragon, we see that "yellow peril" can cover multiple ethnicities.

Hideouts & Hoodlums has always danced on that dangerous edge of recognizing, but not embracing, the racism of the early comic books. Hence, Book II: Mobsters and Trophies having an entry for savages. Now, if I really wanted to dance perilously over that edge, I could include giving savages an "unholy shriek" that prompts morale saves, as seen here in Captain Quick.

Although it may look like I'm sharing this page to talk about racial stereotyping again, I'm off that subject -- and much more interested in the ladder in the shaft, concealed inside a fake vase, that leads into hidden catacombs. A great hideout entrance!

How do you know when a leopard should only miss by an inch, like in this page of Sandor and the Lost Civilization?  It's not a H&H rule, but what I've long done is treat the number I missed by "to hit" on my d20, -1, to be the number of inches the attack missed by. So, if I rolled I needed a 10 to hit, but rolled a 7 or 8, my leopard only missed by 1 inch. If I'd rolled a 9, then the leopard did connect, but did no damage (maybe it tore his pants?).


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #13

Not much to discuss in this issue of New Adventure Comics.

Sandor discovers the ol' 'opening the door causes a pit trap to open in front of it' trick!  I'm not going to bother showing you the next page, as the scene ends abruptly, but the pit opens into a dungeon where a jailer rushes to slap cuffs on you while you're lying there.

Quite dynamic art on this minor piece. Baslyn has to bribe the train crew with just $5 to let him ride in the baggage car, perhaps because of an effort in the '30s to clamp down on hobos? I daresay a ticket would have been cheaper.

A rare instance of bad guys desecrating a temple -- in the non-PC comics of the Golden Age, Heroes could justify desecrating another culture's holy sites for any excuse, like "Think of all the war bonds I could buy with these rubies!"  Of course, the relevance of this to your Hideouts & Hoodlums campaigns depends on your racism filters.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

New Adventure Comics #12

Nomads are an obscure mobster-type in Hideouts & Hoodlums Book II: Mobsters and Trophies and one I always debated over including; there just didn't seem to be much I had that set them apart from brigands. Now I can see that nomads should, instead, stand out as the only mobster type that specializes in horseback combat.


 
As the Gold Dragon serial shows, "gold pieces" can still turn up as a form of treasure in a modern-day adventure -- at least ones taking place outside the U.S.

Sometimes I just ignore silly creatures in the funny strips, but the tree cobra seems like an interesting idea, so -- why not? -- I'll talk about the elephog as well.  The elephog, an evolutionary dead-end that includes characteristics of elephants and giant hogs, would be a 9 HD monster.  A tree cobra, on the other hand, would likely be no more than 2 HD, with its poisonous bite being more dangerous than its combat abilities.

The Spy character class debuted in The Trophy Case v. 2 no. 5 and remains unplaytested, to my knowledge.  Spies, as Sandor demonstrates, make useful allies, even if just Supporting Cast Members.  Spies should also have a higher than normal chance to hear noises, as demonstrated here.

I normally ignore imaginary tales/dream sequences...but it seems this imaginary glimpse into the year 3000 was meant to be taken seriously.  Some standard equipment items we can expect our police to have by then include "thought vibrators" (not as dirty as it sounds) that detect evil thoughts over a long range, one-man space flyers, and ingestible transmitters that allow their superiors to hear everything around them (not unlike dashboard cams).

Also standard issue are invisibility bills and a hypodermic needle that injects some sort of sleeping poison.  Invisibility pills are the one thing already found in H&H (Book II, of course!).



(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

New Comics #5

We now rejoin my coverage of New Comics, energized by the discovery of this blog.

Sandor and the Lost Civilization presents us with two animal-mobster types: the tiger (that we have covered elsewhere to show that Hideouts & Hoodlums really needs tigers statted!) and the wild dog.  Personally, I would just use wolf stats for wild dogs.

This page of Sandor presents a poser and illustrates the difficulty of statting Heroes based on published adventures. Is "with superhuman strength, Sandor battles the huge brute" meant to be taken literally, so that Sandor is a Superhero?  Or is he an Explorer, and this flavor text is only, figuratively talking about how tough Sandor is to beat because he has so many hit points?

Here, Rattlesnake Pete demonstrates the Cowboy stunt of Improved Cover.

I include this page because Pandora's Box will become a recurring theme -- if not a literal item -- that comic book authors will come back to many times over the years, and this is its first appearance.

Also, H&H Supplement III: Better Quality included a section on mythic magic items, which Pandora's Box should have belonged to.

(Scans courtesy of the Days of Adventure blog at http://adventurecomicsblog.blogspot.com/2011_11_06_archive.html)