Back in 2009 I last wrote about Captain Marvel's second adventure on my oldest blog.You can read it here, here, and here.
Back so soon? Now let's talk about that story in terms of playing it out using Hideouts & Hoodlums.
Rushing into combat with Sivana's army, Captain Marvel is buffed by Imperviousness, if not Invulnerability, to be safe from heavy ordinance. He then is able to pick up tanks over his head because he is buffed by a level 4 Raise power. The tanks weigh too much for the Extend Missile Range powers, so that doesn't explain how CM is throwing tanks at each other. Instead, I would say he is using the Wreck at Range power for this. All he really needs the Raise power for is tipping them over, which really is just as effective at taking them out of the fight.
Taking out the tanks forces a morale save from the army. I would not normally roll once for the entire army, nor roll for each soldier, but maybe roll for each sub-commander on the field, and have him pull back his men if he fails.
It's always a conceit of the Captain Marvel stories that CM can't sneak around, but as Billy Batson he can. It certainly has nothing to do with bright colors, since they largely wear the same colors, but with size. I have long been tempted to make half-pints a race option because it seems like it should have its own special abilities, like a bonus for stealth.
CM later chases after an airplane and jumps up to catch it, but it's impossible to say from those panels how fast the plane is taxiing and how high it gets before he jumps, so it's possible he's not using buffing powers at all in those panels. If he is, then Race the Train and Leap I would be sufficient.
CM is rendered unconscious by a gas trap. Given how difficult it is to render CM unconscious, this must be super-potent gas, probably with a big penalty to the saving throw vs. poison.
There must be something special about the chains that Sivana thinks they will hold CM for five whole minutes, given what he knows CM can do. Maybe they get wrecked as if the generator category. Had he stayed there longer, it's possible the explosion would have killed him, but it was probably an explosion with highly variable damage, like 1-100 points, since Sivana survives it.
Golden Arrow's second adventure ever starts more low-key, with him shooting and killing a gila monster with an arrow. It's just an ordinary-sized gila monster, something I wouldn't normally grant a full hit point, but it's apparently venomous enough that it's bite can cause humans damage (1-4 points?).
A rancher hires GA to help find his missing cattle. Interestingly, it's the rancher who does most of the tracking on the journey, demonstrating how important it is to keep a supporting cast member with you in order to give you a second skill check.
When a sniper tries to kill GA, GA shoots an arrow into the man's rifle barrel, "wrecking it." Now, if GA was a superhero, this would merely be an instance of the Wreck at Range power, but I have not seen enough evidence yet that GA should be of the superhero class. If the rifle wasn't wrecked, this would be a simple disarming attack, which you may recall is easier than normal to do against firearm-wielders in H&H. The damage to the rifle could be flavor text if the "wrecking" isn't serious and the rifle is still usable. We never find out because the sniper/assassin misses his morale save and flees on the next turn.
Soon, GA is roped by a lasso and dragged from horseback, but he starts up a contest of Strength and pulls the horseman from his saddle. This is one of those situations I've talked about before that my own H&H rules don't cover, where you have to bring in ability score checks and opposed rolls.
GA summons his horse, White Wind, by calling it to. The cowboy class, if it's going to come into 2nd edition ever, needs to have special skills still that other classes don't have, like Summon Mount.
GA's bow skills prove difficult to explain by the rules again when he shoots an arrow hard enough to break the wooden bar across a pair of doors. At this point, I think I have enough evidence that GA is of the superhero class, just like the earlier archer hero, Arrow. That makes it much easier to explain how he wrecked the bar with the Wreck at Range power.
Moving on to Scoop Smith... the reporter is sent on a mission to look for a missing person in Antarctica. It's amazing that, in 1940, newspapers had bottomless resources to fund months' long expeditions for wild goose chases after stories. They have a freighter, a "snowboat" (it looks like a truck), and a biplane. It seems like it's going to be a realistic story -- until the Antarctic is shown to have natives. And polar bears. Oops! The writer seems to have the South Pole confused with the North Pole! Among the natives are pseudo-giants -- people who the narrator calls giants, but don't really look that much bigger than ordinary people. The natives are supposed to be primitive, but they have elaborate ice palaces. Somehow the palaces are heated so people can wear normal clothes inside, which makes no sense at all.
The Antarctic has some realistic hazards, at least -- mile-deep chasms and snowstorms seem possible. We never see much of either, but I'm guessing they involve falling damage and cold damage respectively.
That natives' deathtrap is a giant block of ice held between the walls by two icy struts, one of which is slowly melted by a lit torch.The weight of the ice would probably make it do a lot of damage, but it would only render the victims unconscious if they were not trapped underneath it (what makes it a deathtrap instead of just a trap).
Scoop is in no hurry for deadlines; after spending months getting to the Antarctic, he spends a whole month just hanging out with the missing man and the natives before heading back home to report his story.
(Captain Marvel story read from Shazam Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomiconline.to)
An exploration of the Golden Age of Comics, through the lens of Hideouts & Hoodlums, the comic book roleplaying game.
Showing posts with label Scoop Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scoop Smith. Show all posts
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Whiz Comics #2(b) - pt. 1
Labels:
ability checks,
campaign time,
Captain Marvel,
Cowboy,
deathtraps,
disarming,
environments,
Golden Arrow,
morale,
new mobsters,
powers,
races,
SCMs,
Scoop Smith,
skills,
Superhero,
traps,
travel,
wrecking things
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Whiz Comics #2 - pt. 3
The debut of Spy Smasher's gyrosub, a combination airplane/autogyro/speedboat/submarine, which makes it a very handy and versatile trophy transport item.
This is a rare Virginia-based adventure.
In the Golden Age, it is not unusual for the Heroes to be more technologically advanced than the villains.
Explosions have much bigger blast radii than most D&D spells; in 2nd edition, I increased the blast radii of multiple trophy weapons to better reflect reality.
I've never been in a dirigible and any effort I would have made at mapping the interior of one would have been informed only by the Rocketeer movie. So it's handy to see a panel like this last one.
Spy Smasher fails his save vs. plot and wastes time on the underlings while the Mask gets away.
A smart villain has an escape vehicle attached to his main vehicle. A smart hero looks for that vehicle before confronting the villain.
It's also worth noting that, once the main villain escapes, the story just skips over the anticlimactic stuff about subduing the crew, and Editors can feel free to do the same.
This is Scoop Smith, of the journalist genre. Here he shows some decent investigator skills, checking the list of former employees to see if any of them might fit the M.O. of "Doctor Death."
Scoop and Blimp (sidekicks get terrible nicknames) rather easily fall for the ol' trap door under the chair trick. We also have another example of the term "dungeon" being used for a villain's hideout.
The fall stuns Scoop and Blimp because they were reduced to zero hit points, but made their saves vs. plot to only be stunned.
The life machine looks rather unimaginatively like a movie camera.
The cup of cyanide pills rigged to drop into the sulfuric acid is an excellent trap for science-based hideouts.
Note how Dr. Death can easily tell the hero from the sidekick and doesn't bother monologing in front of the sidekick (and how the sidekick saves the hero by just happening to find a wrench in his cell!).
The first example of Raise Dead being used in comics, and only on two unnamed henchmen at that!
And now Lance O'Casey debuts, representing the South Seas adventure sub-genre.
Lance is a fighter, but we see even fighters can perform first aid.
Lance is also really good at tracking, being able to recognize a specific person by a single footprint (expert skill check).
Barracudas do not get nearly as much ink as sharks and octopi in comic books, so it's nice that they get mentioned here.
A cutthroat native might be statted as a bloodthirsty hoodlum instead of a simple native.
Again, the sidekick saves the hero, this time because the monkey was able to spot the trap that Lance missed (kind of embarrassing when a monkey beats you at skill checks).
(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)
This is a rare Virginia-based adventure.
In the Golden Age, it is not unusual for the Heroes to be more technologically advanced than the villains.
Explosions have much bigger blast radii than most D&D spells; in 2nd edition, I increased the blast radii of multiple trophy weapons to better reflect reality.
I've never been in a dirigible and any effort I would have made at mapping the interior of one would have been informed only by the Rocketeer movie. So it's handy to see a panel like this last one.
Spy Smasher fails his save vs. plot and wastes time on the underlings while the Mask gets away.
A smart villain has an escape vehicle attached to his main vehicle. A smart hero looks for that vehicle before confronting the villain.
It's also worth noting that, once the main villain escapes, the story just skips over the anticlimactic stuff about subduing the crew, and Editors can feel free to do the same.
This is Scoop Smith, of the journalist genre. Here he shows some decent investigator skills, checking the list of former employees to see if any of them might fit the M.O. of "Doctor Death."
Scoop and Blimp (sidekicks get terrible nicknames) rather easily fall for the ol' trap door under the chair trick. We also have another example of the term "dungeon" being used for a villain's hideout.
The fall stuns Scoop and Blimp because they were reduced to zero hit points, but made their saves vs. plot to only be stunned.
The life machine looks rather unimaginatively like a movie camera.
The cup of cyanide pills rigged to drop into the sulfuric acid is an excellent trap for science-based hideouts.
Note how Dr. Death can easily tell the hero from the sidekick and doesn't bother monologing in front of the sidekick (and how the sidekick saves the hero by just happening to find a wrench in his cell!).
And now Lance O'Casey debuts, representing the South Seas adventure sub-genre.
Lance is a fighter, but we see even fighters can perform first aid.
Lance is also really good at tracking, being able to recognize a specific person by a single footprint (expert skill check).
Barracudas do not get nearly as much ink as sharks and octopi in comic books, so it's nice that they get mentioned here.
A cutthroat native might be statted as a bloodthirsty hoodlum instead of a simple native.
Again, the sidekick saves the hero, this time because the monkey was able to spot the trap that Lance missed (kind of embarrassing when a monkey beats you at skill checks).
(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)
Labels:
areas of effect,
clues,
deathtraps,
Fighter,
Lance O'Casey,
locations,
mad science trophies,
mobsters,
saving throws,
Scoop Smith,
sidekicks,
skills,
Spy Smasher,
stunning,
transport trophies,
traps,
villains
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