More Fun Comics #42

I'm working from summaries again, so I'm just going to assume these details are right...

Wing Brady takes to Algiers for a new scenario. I was at first doubtful about globe-trotting scenarios in Hideouts & Hoodlums, as my online campaign crashed and burned after a long trip to China, but more recent scenarios run in France, England, Norway, Cuba, and Trinidad have gone much better.  And it's good to show players how big the "sandbox" can be in a H&H campaign.

Closer to home, Detective Sergeant Carey investigates an aquarium, which I suppose serves as a nice excuse to serve up some aquatic-themed encounters. The only one I know of that Carey has in this scenario is with a crocodile.

This scenario of Radio Squad deals with half-pints, how their alignment is initially Chaotic, and Heroes can do good deeds by converting them to a better alignment (a much bigger xp award than capturing half-pints!).

Gary Hawkes, meanwhile, is engaged in an exchange of heavy firepower with mobsters. He survives having multiple grenades lobbed at him -- which is possible. Even though grenades are area effecting weapons, there is always the chance of them bouncing or rolling out of range before going off. I would roll to hit for the mobsters and, if they missed by a lot (more than 5?), I would give Gary a save vs. science for no damage instead of just half damage.

Gary, in retaliation, takes to a plane and drops bombs on the mobsters. This is almost exactly like my last H&H session, where the Heroes discovered the "joys" of attacking mobsters safely from up above. To future Editors facing the same issue, I offer the following advice: 1) the higher up the Heroes are, the greater their chance of missing should be, 2) if there are opportunities for concealment around, mobsters will use it to hide, if not to try and help them escape, 3) let the mobsters give as good as they get -- instead of sitting on the ground and letting the bombs drop on their heads, let them move to a concealed plane and take to the air. Turn the encounter into an aerial dogfight! And 4) do not forget (like I did) to stock your hideouts with flying foes.

Summaries from the Comics Odyssey blog.

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 #23

You know you're dealing with 1st-level Heroes when the main villain, instead of putting you in a deathtrap, makes you cook in his kitchen -- and then the chef beats you up.

Remote-controlled armored cars. You know you want one. Ram it through the entrance to the well-defended hideout. Run down bank robbers in the street from the corner deli.

The trouble with the abstract nature of combat in H&H -- the arrows are clearly sticking out of the Black Knight's armor, so was he "hit" by the arrows or wasn't he? One could use a panel like this as evidence of armor absorbing damage, but on the other hand, it also shows that the Black Knight has taken no physical damage, so being "hit" is more about the ability to inflict damage than contact.

But, if that is true, then are to-hit rolls the best game mechanic for resolving grappling attacks, which are about contact more than inflicting damage? Food for thought...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

More Fun Comics #21 - pt. 2

I'm not sure what that is Brad Hardy and his buddy are running away from, but the narrator calls it a "land monster" and it looks an awful lot like a dragon. Maybe dragons don't like water? Kind of makes sense.

Here, Brad stumbles across a hidden land, underwater, surrounded by a coral reef that somehow makes the air breathable down here. This is a perfect idea for getting low-level Heroes into an exotic environment and keeping them safe there (although maybe not safe from deadly fish...).

Jack Woods' player might cry foul here, as a cave-in smacks of railroading the players ("railroading" being a technique where the Editor eliminates all other options from the players to move them in the direction he wants the story to go).

The concealed trap door entrance to a hidden hideout is a nice touch, though.

One could easily spend $3.65 on a taxi ride across town in 1937.


(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)