Pep Comics #2 - pt. 3

We're still watching Sergeant Boyle's one-man war against the Nazis -- not fictional stand-ins either, mind you, but real deal Nazis. By 1940, more and more comic book creators are going to take a more direct position on the War in Europe.

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Game mechanics discussion: I'm less interested in how black eyes are achieved (flavor text) or how Boyle rips down that telephone line pole (wrecking things), but by the double agent's sudden recovery from failing a morale save. I never addressed this before, but should morale results have a random duration? Or did he just get a new morale save when the circumstances changed?

That's a fairly impressive rendering of a battle scene, but it's all flavor text if the Hero is not involved in it. Or is it? Hideouts & Hoodlums does not emulate this sort of large-scale battle well -- I can't think of any RPGs that do -- but what if the game was set aside at this point and the referee and player switched to wargaming to resolve the scenario?

Boyle has until June 14, 1940 to enjoy tranquility in Paris.

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Wowee, look at that Mort Meskin half-splash page! You know, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were still a year away from the iconic work they are best known for, so at this early stage it may be Mort who comes in second behind Eisner for most dynamic page layouts!

Although we aren't given an exact time frame, it seems clear that Press Guardian has been undercover with the bund for some time, possibly weeks.

"Moronia" is a great fictionalized name for Nazi Germany.

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Although this page superficially looks pretty good, the combat is confusing and hard to follow. Press Guardian was shot on the previous page but is fine now. Was he buffed with a defensive power? Wearing a bulletproof vest? Just took minimal damage and shrugged off the hit point loss?

When he's knocked down, is Press Guardian just playing possum until Von Leo turns around, or was PG really stunned?

PG's leap seems like something a normal person could attempt with a skill check.

Calling in the valet who also happens to be a pilot is an excellent use of Supporting Cast.

This is Manly Wade Wellman's Fu Chang. The art by Lin Streeter is amateurish and the story is not much better, though I am intrigued both by the summoning spell, which seems to require a magic potion...

...but more importantly, the tiger-devil. A tiger-devil has a gaze attack that paralyzes...

















...and I think we see here that it can also turn to gaseous form. I'm inclined to give tiger-devils 8 Hit Dice, making them on par with vampires.

Although this fight is said to take seconds in length, in H&H terms it is three turns long, or 90 seconds (in 2nd edition, 180 seconds in 1st edition).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Pep Comics #2 - pt. 2

Next up is Jack Cole's second installment of The Comet. The Comet is on the trail of a master criminal who appears to have magical powers -- he can make his face appear in the clouds at giant size, and he can make armored cars leap into the air and disappear. Spoiler -- all this is going to be explained by the end, as he's actually just another mad scientist.

The adventure takes place in the Everglades -- coincidentally where RT2 Adventures in Fun World, the third published Hideouts & Hoodlums adventure, takes place.

If the armored car companies are keeping the disappearances a secret, then how does The Comet know where each of the cars disappeared, accurately enough to put on a map...?

Usually, when you see 11 x's on a map, you can triangulate to some central point, or see some other pattern involved. In this case, The Comet still has to spend a whole two weeks flying around, just hoping to spot a clue from above.

A phone booth concealed in a tree is a pretty good clue. Wireless communication would have made it a lot harder to follow this clue. Also, had The Comet just kept flying instead of using the boat, he would have missed the hideout altogether. Maybe it's because the duration ran out on his fly power...?

It's unclear if The Comet was hurt and stunned by the whirlpool, or if the two thugs succeeded in winning the initiative and getting their grappling attacks in first.

Noiseless electronic motors might count as a mad science invention by 1940 standards.

Here we get the explanation for the giant face in the sky. I've written before about how much more convincing two-dimensional projections must be in a comic book universe (metaphysical commentary on the two-dimensional nature of their universe?). Projecting onto clouds would fool no one in the real world.

The Comet has a much different idea of what "success" is than I do; I would be much less cavalier about nearly smashing my own eye to a pulp. Just looking at that panel makes me a little woozy!

Oh, one last spoiler -- the armored cars are being lifted into the sky via magnets on cables that no one sees because it's dark.

So now we're moving on to the next feature, which is Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds. Rocket is a Flash Gordon clone, although one who never seems to think it's appropriate to put on a shirt or pants. Maybe he thinks that's okay because his bad guys wear midriffs, cutoffs, and starfish on their heads.

This was written by prolific author Manly Wade Wellman, who will go on to do better things.

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A few game mechanics points here: the guy with the baby rattle delivering a knockout headblow just by outflanking Rocket, which I am not comfortable with. I'm going to keep the headblow to just surprise attacks.

I can imagine there are some positions one could chain someone

up in that would limit their ability to use leverage; this doesn't look like one of them. Since Rocket can just push against the floor to break his bonds, I might even give him a bonus in this case.

I don't show you the page where the drugged Rocket attacks the queen because he doesn't know what he's doing, but the injected drug reminds me a lot of the Confusion spell.

Rocket rather cleverly creates a crowbar for himself using his wrecking things, and I could see rewarding that ingenuity with a +1 bonus to his wrecking things roll (and this time he'll need it to get through a stone wall).

Giant water bugs belong in the Mobster Manual, though they do pop apart awfully easy. They look pretty fierce, though...maybe 1+1 Hit Dice?  

I think panel 1 clearly shows giant water-bugs being encountered in a group of eight.

False walls are found the same as secret doors.

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This is supposedly by Charles Biro, but if he drew this, it had to be a rush job and far from his best work.

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Snipers are statted as assassins in the Mobster Manual.

Here and on the next page we get a rare example -- outside the cowboy genre, anyway -- of using fire to trigger a morale save.

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I can't say I ever sympathized with a Nazi guard in a comic book before, but this poor guy who doesn't know how he wound up this way, but just wants to pet a kitten, this guy I wish had at least gotten a fair fight against Boyle.

As per the rules for guards in all fiction, the stolen uniform has to be exactly the right size to fit.

That is a terrible secret code. However, if you want your players to feel like they're deciphering a code, without having to put any real work into it, this might be the code for you.

I like the compass! We almost never get a sense of direction in our comic book panels.

Boyle demonstrates the save vs. missiles and how that applies to guns here.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Pep Comics #1 - pt. 3

We return to Sergeant Boyle.  Charles Biro would soon go on to do great things in comics, but like Jack Cole he was still finding his bearings on this feature.

Boyle's ability to dodge bullets, normally not possible at human speed, demonstrates how all classes should get the save vs. missiles to dodge gunfire.

There are two unexpected occurrences on this page that could affect game mechanics. One is the notion that anti-personnel weapons could also create concealing smokescreens, making grenades extra desirable for Heroes.  The other is the notion that artillery weapons are so combustible that they can be shot and made to explode. I like that notion, and may cite this as an example the next time my players want to cart a machine gun around with them.

It's also worth noting how graphic the violence is on this page; even from the beginning Biro was pushing the envelope there.

Could deciphering code be as simple as an expert-level skill check? Yes, I think so...

And this is interesting -- I can't think of other examples of grenades being used as distractions before. I'm not sure if my players would ever toss away a grenade like that instead of just choosing to blow bad guys up.

Aha -- the reason he didn't blow them up was that he wanted to make them do his digging for him!

And no, I would not allow someone to make three grappling attacks at once. In fact, in my campaigns, you can only attack the same target with multiple melee attacks, though that is not an official H&H rule.

This feature is Queen of Diamonds. The author is, supposedly, novelist Manly Wade Wellman, who must have just been cashing in a paycheck here. Rocket is here in the Land of Diamonds to woo their queen, but immediately turns completely subservient to her, anticipating a sort of reverse Gor.

The lion is knocked out with two punches.  I made punches pretty weak in 2nd edition to go with realism, but I definitely erred in staying comic book-authentic.

In true RPG fashion, Rocket doesn't stick with his fists because it fits his character concept, but picks up new weapons and armor/cover from battle to battle.

In the end, he is rewarded with the queen as a Supporting Cast Member, and also a title. The SCM is already worth XP, because he can earn XP for including her in his future adventures. I would award a one-time XP award to go along with earning the title.

Apparently also written by Wellman, according to comics.org --  I would like to have had a conversation with Manly about how a Chinese magician managed to be a direct descendant of Aladdin. Sometimes, not a lot of thought went into these stories. In fact, to get a real Golden Age feel to your H&H scenarios, it might be better to plot them out as fast as possible and avoid overthinking anything.

So Fu Chang, through the aid of the ghost of an old wizard, is able to animated his magic chess set and send them out to spy on people. This could be elaborate flavor text for a Clairvoyance spell...but I think what we're actually seeing are the first Figurines of Wondrous Power in H&H.

This figurine grants the Find Evidence power to anyone holding it.

And such convenient evidence too, pinned to the wall behind a curtain (who pins envelopes to walls??).


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Pep Comics #1 - pt. 2

Jack Cole's first superhero, the Comet, shows little of the promise that would come to fruition later with his masterpiece, Plastic Man.  We're already off to some really shaky science here, plus a lot of brevet ranking on our brand new Hero.

Hydrogen is just about as light as matter can get. The closest thing that's "50 times lighter" than hydrogen is an electron.  So, Dickering is shooting electricity into his veins to get his powers -- which actually does sound at least a little more science-y than getting them from injecting gas.

Although we'll soon see the Comet flying, he's demonstrated leaping here because, well, that's what superheroes did this soon after Superman's debut. I'm estimating that yellow building in the background is at least 21 stories below him, which means he is using Leap II, which means he has two brevet ranks and is operating as an extraordinary man (level 3 Superhero) already.

His disintegrator eyebeams are flavor text for wrecking things, combined with the Wreck at Range power.

Hmm...glass is a poor conductor of electricity, so this seems to support my Comet theory further.

I told you that you'd see the Comet flying soon.

This outbreak of typhoid fever recalls the cholera epidemic of Chicago, 1885-1891.

Just like he created his eyebeams by combining the wrecking things mechanic with the Wreck at Range power, the Comet can manage this speed in flight by stacking two other powers together -- Fly (any version) with Race the Plane.  However, if it is unimportant to the scenario how the Hero gets from point A to point B, I usually hand-wave the requirement of burning off a power slot.

The guy at the door is a thug, perhaps the most common mobstertype in early comics!

I think we're getting some wacky science again with the smokescreen...but the game needs a new power for Smokescreen/Fog Cloud (a note for later and the Advanced Hideouts & Hoodlums Heroes Handbook).

I would treat a roof as the robot category for wrecking.

Since The Comet is in melee range, he does not need to use Wreck at Range to wreck the gangster's gun, even though he appears to still be using a missile attack.

The Comet finds the list of names immediately, suggesting he used the power Find Evidence.

Wrecking an entire house would be the same as wrecking a truck (the thought being that so much of the house is combustible, it will burn itself down even if your initial attack doesn't obliterate it).

It could be possible to wreck even more effectively by voluntarily choosing a more difficult wrecking rank.

"Will my eye blasts utterly destroy the whole house?"

"If you want to make it burn down, it wrecks as a truck."

"No, I want to really scare those gangsters; I want to obliterate the house."

"You can do that, but it leaves all the glass behind, if you can wreck at battleship level."

It seems like the Comet was just walking down the street in costume, hoping to run into wandering encounters.

There is no real Tri-State Building that I can tell.

It looks like The Comet is not opposed to murdering.

I'm not sure how you would go about lining the inside of the walls with glass. Wouldn't that require a massive and highly visible reconstruction process?

The Comet is only stunned instead of unconscious (a 2nd edition option). 

I'm not crazy about Heroes being able to wreck bullets in mid-flight...but that could be flavor text to go along with a successful save vs. missiles?

A Superhero can't kill this easily. A high-level Magic-User could with a Death spell. A Superhero could knock them all unconscious with a Blast II spell, then kill them with a second Blast II spell.

Falling damage also doesn't kill, except in a deathtrap. Lifting someone up in the air and dropping them doesn't seem like it's complex enough to count as a deathtrap, and I don't think Heroes should be able to set up deathtraps.

This is Sergeant Boyle. Here's an example of a mobster failing a morale save, really badly.

If Boyle's title here reflects his level title as a Fighter, then he is level 3.

I'm not immediately comfortable with the same bullet being able to shoot two people...but if a gun allows Sgt.  Boyle to have two or more attacks per turn, do bullets expended necessarily have to line up with that? I already have an optional rule where the Editor can secretly roll a die to determine when a gun runs out of ammo, so no 1:1 deal is necessary.

Boyle finds the TNT exactly like a trophy item.

So this page makes me think...the trench is no more than hard cover for the officers, and that's AC 7.  Boyle and the others are hiding out there for what seems like hours. How is it so hard to hit someone with an AC of 7?  I'm not sure if hard cover should be more effective, or if that could be combat imbalancing, or if something else is going on here. It requires more thought.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)