Detective Comics #37 - pt. 3

Speed Saunders starts out in odd territory; Speed has been busted down to a beat cop in the suburbs since we last saw him, after being framed as a drunk. This is extra odd because Speed was never a police officer before! He also has a new friend, Patsy Ross. Speed has sunk so low that he doesn't see a way out of this without Patsy's encouragement, becoming his partner as he takes down enough mobsters to get his old job back. It's a really big departure for the feature, practically a reboot. 

You can do that with your Hideouts & Hoodlums heroes too, if everyone agrees. You also have to agree if you want to restart from zero experience points or from some point higher. 

Steve Malone, District Attorney gets involved when a woman is kidnapped for $50,000 ransom. The kidnappers aren't very experienced at this; they write out the random letter by hand. One of the kidnappers uses the phrase "No dope" to mean, "no kidding." 

There is a huge plot hole in the story where Steve plans to find the kidnappers by searching the woods he thinks they might be hiding by plane at night, and parachutes down by the first light he sees in that area. It turns out to be the kidnappers' hideout on the first try, but there is no reason why that should be the case; there could be any number of people with cabins in the woods, and they would naturally have their lights on if it's night.

This story turns really dark; not only do the kidnappers plan to kill the woman once they get the money, but it seems like one of them plans to rape her first before Steve shows up. I've never seen that in a golden age story before, and I don't like it.

Steve conveniently lost his gun when he landed (Oh, I haven't even brought up how low his chances of landing safely in the woods at night should have been!), but that's okay because these are low-hit die hoodlums and guns aren't that effective in their hands. Oops, Steve almost loses anyway, and the kidnapped young lady has to save him by setting the building on fire (it distracts the hoodlums, naturally!). 

Cliff Crosby is a reporter who gets a scoop over the phone - a moll/vamp wants to rat out her partner for the kidnapping of a judge (lots of these anthologies would have theme issues where the stories are all similar). The moll jabs paper into the phone to keep the connection open -- because phones used to work like that. Cliff, instead of being worried for her safety when he hears her partner confront her, brags about what a scoop this is going to be for him. Smooth, Cliff...

Cliff hears the mobsters threaten his moll on the phone, and he's still just threatening her when he shows up after...driving across town? Finding a parking space in the city? 

The mobsters are slavers! Cliff tricks them by saying he needs to call his friend at the office and tell him there was no story here (makes sense), but then they don't notice him tapping out Morse code (harder to believe). 

We know the slave ship is off the Florida coast, but never get a clue where the story started. On board the slave ship, a slaver tries to whip Cliff, and he grabs the whip. I would allow that with a successful attack roll, but the weapon automatically does damage to the grabber. After escaping Cliff throws a knife at a slaver hard enough that his hand is pinned to a metal wall. Had it been a wooden wall, I could see this happening after rolling to attack both the slaver and the wall, or rolling a certain number over what he needs to hit the slaver, but to pierce a metal wall is going to require a wrecking things roll as well.

Amongst the slavers are thugs. The thugs are better armed, with handguns and rifles. One man on the ship has a machine gun, but it's not clear if he's a slaver or a thug.

This issue continues to be really dark. When the Coast Guard shows up, most of the slaves on the ship are dumped overboard, while still chained, and apparently drown. The gangster heading the slavers captured the Coast Guard when he recovers the machine gun, Cliff is taken prisoner, and thrown overboard to a waiting "giant" octopus (maybe a large octopus?). Because Cliff still has a knife on him, he's able to kill the octopus. In a really weird moment, Cliff puts the dead octopus on his head as a disguise so he can sneak on board the ship (warning: this is a racist moment; he scares the "colored lad" with his disguise). 

In the Slam Bradley story, Slam inherits a racehorse, and every cliche about horse racing stories ensues. I'm not going to take the time to cataloging them. The Slam stories have been so lame since Joe Shuster left that I can barely stand to read them.

(Read at readcomiconline.to)

 

 

Detective Comics #36 - pt. 2

Back in time for the tail end of the Batman's first encounter with Hugo Strange! Having escaped Strange's deathtrap/S&M session, the two of them grapple. Remember that Strange is about 6' tall and physically imposing, so it's not an unequal match-up (if Strange is an ultra-mad scientist, then they even have equal Hit Dice!). Strange has an early advantage, establishing a choke hold, but the Batman reverses it; both are perfectly emulated in Hideouts & Hoodlums' grappling rules.

After defeating Strange, the Batman does something that most players don't do in any RPG -- after defeating the main bad guy, he still methodically searches the hideout. In this way he finds a prisoner (that he claims to have always known about, though this is the readers' first time hearing about it), and learns how Strange was inducing fog around the robberies -- with a stolen lightning gun! Now, why he used the lightning gun to make fog and not turn it into a weapon...

No mention is made of what happens to the lightning gun (which looks like a planetarium projector, by the way). It doesn't seem to make it into the Batman's trophy room, and certainly doesn't become part of its arsenal. The Editor of that game session, perhaps just not feeling generous, made it a mad science trophy with very limited charges/uses.

Next up is Bart Regan, Spy. When Jerry Siegel was still drawing this it was my favorite feature, but now....Bart is up against more spies, now from the fictional nation of Tortania. I haven't a clue what country "Tortania" is meant to represent; it could just be a truly generic foreign power. Bart's big clue as to who the spy is, is overhearing him curse in Tortanian, which might be the first time cursing is demonstrated as a series of symbols in a DC comic.

The hunchbacked spy gets the drop on Bart, from behind, but Bart is somehow able to spin around and shoot first. H&H's simple initiative system allows for a lot of leeway like this, though circumstances almost cry out for a common sense adjudication and hand-waving the dice rolls. Perhaps the spy missed on his surprise roll so badly that the Editor said he hadn't even managed to get his shot off yet.

The hunchbacked spy turns out to be a pretty nifty threat; he's wearing a vest lined with dynamite under his coat, making him the first suicide bomber in comicbook history. It's a challenging threat, normally, but this adventure takes place on a boat, so Bart simply pushes the man into the water in time (though, if Bart had lost initiative...). The spy also has a poison pill on him that is confiscated.

Bart administers truth serum to the spy to learn where his hideout is. The hideout appears to be empty, but a secret door opens like a shutter sliding down.

Steve Malone, District Attorney, is hunting down a mobster on the lam, and figures out who the disguised mobster is by the clue of the hairs in his comb. In the ensuing fight, Steve uses a table for a club and the mobster's vamp girlfriend uses this really big candle holder, so vamps are sometimes armed with clubs. Steve doesn't start out the encounter with a gun, but he lifts one off a mobster. In a rare instance, both gunman run out of bullets in the same firefight.

I normally like Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator more than this installment. Speed is on the trail of a jewel thief who calls himself The Spider and leaves toy spiders behind as a calling card. There's even a nice spin where The Spider doesn't break into homes, he convinces rich people to rent from him, unaware of the secret doors he's built into his properties. But the story has some serious flaws. One, The Spider tries a drive-by shooting against Speed, but from his own car licensed in his own name. Two, Speed slaps the man's wife around while The Spider isn't home, and then she still obediently obeys him. Now, there's a nice twist on that, where the wife turns out to be The Spider, dressed as a man, the whole time, and there never was a husband...but I'm not sure Speed knew that when he slapped her...

(Batman story read in The Batman Archives vol. 1; the rest read at readcomiconline)

Detective Comics #35 - pt. 2

Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator is next. Speed calls himself a detective in this story, but by now he should have enough accumulated XP to be a 5th-level captain. He goes against a villain called the Snake Master in this Cuban-/voodoo-themed story. According to this story, Cuba is inhabited by natives who attack with darts. Speed is able to identify hemp rope as coming from Haiti just by looking at it (expert skill check?). Despite darts not having a great range, Speed has darts thrown at him three times before he is finally able to spot the thrower. By using a guide, Speed is able to avoid concealed snake pits on his way to the Snake Master. Not one of the Snake Master's followers has better than darts for weapons, so Speed just waltzes in with a gun and takes out the cult leader.

This month Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise seems to be all over the place. He starts out looking into the case of a man who escapes jail by appearing to be dead, then he's investigating the murder of a police captain who was looking into the case (weird, that a captain wouldn't have delegated that responsibility), then he's following a Hindu because the captain had mentioned a dragon before he died (even though India isn't known for its dragons), then he's in disguise as a bum, trying to get invited into the home the Hindu went into (why he thought a bum would be invited in, I don't get, but somehow it worked). The best part of the adventure is that the bad guys trap him in a room and talk to him through a bronze dragon statue, as the room slowly fills with poison gas. Cosmo survives by making his saving throw (with some likely modifiers for laying on the floor and covering his mouth with a wet handkerchief  -- wetting the handkerchief in a fish tank was particularly ingenious).

There's a second trap that's not as good -- he drops through a pit trap into a room the floods with water -- but the plot twist is rather clever that Cosmo is saved by city water works employees, investigating that the house was leaking water into the street. It turns out that the owner of the house is the man who escaped jail by using the "Oriental trick" of suspended animation. That doesn't sound like an Oriental trick -- that sounds like a psionic discipline.

Bruce Nelson is continuing an adventure in ...Africa? I forget. He and his native guide Mambu are canoeing along rapids, dodging whirlpools, probably requiring expert skill checks to avoid being in situations where they have to save vs. science to avoid drowning (I would be okay with affording them that double layer of protection because the penalty for failure is so steep). The "white goddess" they rescued last time wakes up after being splashed in the face, something I don't recommend for H&H play, so maybe it just coincidentally coincided with a duration ending.

Bruce learns the name of the "white goddess" and immediately recognizes who her father is. Should recognition be a skill check? The girl, Toni Hutton, was drugged by the natives with something that would knock her out for two days at a time (long duration!).

In Slam Bradley, Slam and Shorty are paid to bodyguard a group of swells on a "slumming tour" of dangerous dives. This should be an example of a situational modifier that increases chance of wandering encounters. Someone is murdered and Slam beats people up until a barkeep gives up the name of the murderers. Slam and Shorty deliver the suspects' names to the police and Shorty is ready to end the scenario, but Slam wants to pursue it further. This is one of the ways that traditional RPGs are so flexible, that the players can decide -- not just the referee -- when the scenario has been successfully completed. Luckily, Slam must have some supporting cast in the FBI, because he is able to just waltz into their HQ and request to see the files on the suspects.

On a crazy whim, Slam decides to sign them both up for the French Foreign Legion just because the suspects used to be Legionnaires (apparently it was for strictly enforced five-year stints too). Now, I'm not a very flexible Editor. When I'm running games, I have a story in mind and when Heroes go too far off the rails, I'm comfortable with just saying there are no leads in that direction. But Slam and Shorty have a very flexible Editor, because he rules that the killers are exactly where they get shipped off to, and even tosses in the wrinkle that one of the suspects is their sergeant!

To get rid of Slam, Sergeant Jensen sends them out into the desert and they are attacked by nomads. Slam, who can usually handle any fight, is overwhelmed by six-to-one odds. In fact, the scenario gets way out of hand and Slam is about to be executed by firing squad, so the Commandant of the Foreign Legion has to ride in at the last moment and save the day for him.

(Read at fullcomic.pro)  

Detective Comics #33 - pt. 2

Larry Steele, Private Eye is pulling nightwatchman duty for a week before he sees some action. A masked mobster catches him by surprise. Throwing the vase to distract Larry doesn't give the mobster a bonus to surprise, it explains how the mobster gained surprise. In a rare instance, the mobster misses on his surprise head blow attack, but knocks Larry out on his next attack, in the first turn of regular combat. Larry must have only had 6 hit points or less.

This month's Speed Saunders story is nothing to write home about, except for the unusual plot hook -- while out hunting, Speed kills a moose with a dead man tied to its back!

Speed and one other man he rescues are outnumbered by natives 11 to 2 -- though for some reason these modern-day Native Americans are attacking with spears or hatchets instead of guns. The natives are consistently referred to as "breeds."

Speed volunteers to be the one to sneak out of the cabin and try to get help. The other two men in the cabin apparently think nothing of Speed being the only one of the three of them in a bright red sweater. Apparently, bright colors do not modify surprise changes.

This is the first adventure where Speed is referred to as a private detective; you may recall that in his first adventure he was with the FBI's River Patrol Division and, since then, it hasn't been clear who he worked for.

...And I had to skip the rest of the issue because readcomics.net was spamming me so bad.

Detective Comics #32 - pt. 2

Skull-Face is also the first mad scientist to wear a bulletproof vest.

Speed Saunders is placed in a locked cell with a fairly ingenious way to escape -- the floor is clay instead of stone and a resourceful Hero can dig through it to water.

Speed comes back with just two supporting cast -- unnamed police officers -- for back-up. They swim into the lair, and Speed thinks to bring waterproof bags for their guns. The hideout entrance tunnel has water up to their knees. There are at least three levels to the place and on the second level is a dry office with a balcony overlooking the water.

It's Speed's best story yet -- marred only by the fact that Speed stumbles across everything by accident and doesn't actually learn anything through investigation.

In Cosmo, Phantom of Disguise, a state governor is murdered. But which one? It seemed like Cosmo's adventures took place in New York before, but this guy doesn't look like Herbert Lehman, A prominent newspaper in the story is the "Evening Record." New Jersey had a prominent newspaper called the Evening Record. Hmm...

Cosmo disguises himself as a judge targeted for death to lure out the killer. The killer plans to use the cliche of the gun-in-a-camera, with the extra twist that it fires ice bullets -- though the story isn't clear about how Cosmo recognizes the weapon as a fake camera.

Interestingly, Cosmo uses the phrase "tag after that wagon!" instead of the more familiar "follow that car!"

In Cosmo's fistfight, he takes advantage of the "semidarkness and confusion." Could this be evidence that I was right to give humans a penalty to be hit in dim light -- or maybe a morale modifier for fighting in the dark?

Bruce Nelson describes purse snatchers as "never dangerous. They're the sniveling rat type. Weak kneed and lame brained." Sounds like cowardly hoodlums!

To find a woman Bruce Nelson is looking for he simply looks in the phone book -- one of the first times a Hero takes such a simple action in the comics.

To find out about a murder, Bruce goes straight to the police captain, who promptly tells Bruce everything he knows. Bruce is either exploiting a supporting cast member we haven't seen before, or he's benefiting from a really good encounter reaction roll.

Slam Bradley starts his story with an interesting conundrum. He finds two men in an alley; one is accosting the other.  But which is the bad guy? Slam takes a guess and gets it wrong. How could he have gotten it right? I have toyed with the notion of allowing Heroes to identify mobsters with a skill check, but that could invalidate the Detect Evil power or spell. I guess he could have asked questions first and punched later.

Slam makes it up to the guy he punched by coming to work in his haunted hotel (he was a disguised plot hook character!). The hotel is sprinkled liberally with secret doors that "ghosts" use to pull pranks like stealing suitcases (when they have surprise, they can open the secret door, grab something nearby, and exit without being seen). Of course, it's not really the supernatural (even though Slam did have that one adventure when he could cast spells!). The creepy voice in the elevator is coming from a concealed speaker.

The "ghosts" appear to be a mad scientist and his lovely assistant (definitely not an Igor-like assistant!). Shorty is overcome by the assistant when she chloroforms him. Slam is gassed by the scientist, using a gas gun, that first blinds him, then knocks him unconscious. But then, in another twist, the mad scientist and his assistant turn out to be something else and -- ah, ah -- spoilers!

(Read at Readcomics.net.)

Detective Comics #32 - pt. 1

Batman returns in part 2 of his adventure vs. The Monk. He's in Hungary, or the Latin Hungaria, as it's called here. Batman uses another sleeping gas pellet, thinking that he's using it on The Monk. It's unclear if Batman suspected The Monk was a werewolf yet, though the reader certainly had plenty of clues.

It was actually a woman named Dala that Batman gassed and, not being at all suspicious that Dala was in The Monk's carriage, he brings her to his hotel and lets her bunk with Julie Madison, who is safe now and under Batman's protection. But no one is safe from Dala; she bonks Batman on the head with a statuette and stuns him "momentarily." This would be 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums' new rule about head blows doing more damage in a surprise attack, Batman being brought down to zero hit points (he is still a low-level Mysteryman at this point), but making his save vs. plot to avoid a longer spell of being unconscious.

It turns out that Dala is a vampire, from which Batman (correctly) infers that The Monk is one too. Dala tells Batman where to find The Monk -- Gardner Fox plays fast-and-loose with geography here, saying that The Monk's castle is by the Dess River, which isn't an actual thing in Hungary.

Batman's autogyro is referred to as a "Batplane" in this story, making it the first Batplane.

The Monk uses a magic silver net that can stretch into the sky, snag the Batplane, and pull it to the ground. Now, the autogyro is just over the tree tops, so maybe the net can only stretch 100-120'. And it stretches pretty fast, because it was probably going at least 30 MPH. And it's plenty strong too; if it can pull a plane out of the air, then non-superhero Heroes will likely be pulled down without so much as a saving throw.

Vampires (or at least The Monk) are shown to be able to hypnotize others and control their charm victims over many miles, but the vampire's control is measured in a broad range of turns (he can control Julie for days, but Batman only for hours). He can also change into a wolf (which is why The Monk still calls himself a werewolf, even though the cat's out of the bag now that he's also a vampire -- vampiric werewolf?). In wolf form, a vampire can summon at least 1-4 wolves. Like vampires, vampiric werewolves have to sleep in coffins during the daytime. Like werewolves, they can be killed by silver weapons.

Batman's gas pellets can affect up to four targets in a 10' radius. He can toss his silk rope upwards about 15' alone, or more like 30' with a Batarang attached to it (though it took him about 12 hours to figure that out).

In Spy, Bart Regan is trapped in the back seat of a car that can fill with sleeping gas (likely stolen from the Raymond Chandler story "Nevada Gas"). Then his death trap is being placed in a giant bell jar that can have the air vacuumed out of it. The spy who trapped him is stupid and let's Bart out when he promises to talk. Bart, in turn, uses the same trap but keeps the spy inside until after he's talked.

Later, when Bart is being shot at, he ducks behind a desk. Somehow, he is able to sneak around the desk without being seen, come up behind the two spies shooting at him, and get surprise on them. Without being able to turn invisible, I don't see that as being possible in H&H.

I don't have much to say about this month's Buck Marshall story, except that Buck makes a disparaging comment about some outlaws, calling them "mail-order bad men."  Which is actually a better story idea than the counterfeiting scheme he really stumbles into.  But the real mystery in this installment of Buck Marshall is the curious use of the word "jigger" to refer to someone Buck knocks out. I am having trouble finding any cowboy-related use of the term. It could refer to a certain type of fisherman, but that's not relevant to the story. It was also once a variation on a certain offensive term for blacks, but the man in the story is colored white, so...

Larry Steele, Private Detective, rescues a damsel in distress on the road and takes her to an old man's house in the country. When Larry goes to call the police, the man says he'll be lucky to catch the operator awake. Back in the days before switchboard automation, this could have been a legitimate concern. Maybe Heroes who need to connect a call quickly should have to make a save vs. plot to succeed when away from the major cities.

Once again, the villain does something stupid to make it easier for the Hero -- this time, a killer implicates himself by accidentally driving to the scene of the murder when he was asked to, without being told where to go.

Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator, starts on a mystery with a great hook -- young women are being found dead on seashores, always with an ivory skull lying somewhere near the body.  And Speed gets a pretty cool villain to battle too -- Skull-Face, who even has a caveman right-hand man. Skull-Face is a mad scientist with a potion that makes women prettier, but it also compels them to immerse themselves in water. The more of the potion they buy from him, the more they are compelled until they eventually drown themselves.

(Batman story read in The Batman Archives v. 1, the rest read at readcomics.net.)

Detective Comics #31

This month's Batman story starts with something remarkable. No, I don't mean that it's now "Batman" and not "Bat-Man" any longer. And I don't mean that Bruce Wayne now has a fiancee we've never met before. No, I mean we first see Batman at the top of a utility pole -- from which he hops down and lands safely. That's got to be a 20-25' jump? That's not something you can currently do, by the rules, in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Heck, I'm not sure I'd allow that as a stunt!

Batman still doesn't have a Batcave, but he does have a secret hangar located somewhere, containing a bat-themed autogyro. We also get the Batarang in this story. Luckily, I've already added boomerangs to the weapons list in 2nd edition.

We learn that Hungary is well known for its werewolves. I'll have to put that in the werewolf entry!

The Batgyro makes a transatlantic crossing, which is conceivably possible. The 1942 Sikorsky R-4 autogyro could go 9,000 miles, which is far more than the ocean voyage between New York and France.

When Batman encounters the Monk, Batman makes his save vs. spells to avoid being hypnotized, but is aware of what was being attempted on him.

The plot requires Batman to make some pretty bizarre decisions to get him all the way to France. He allows Julie to go to France in the first place, even though he's suspicious of the doctor who tells her to go. He leaves Julie alone on the cruise ship to France with the Monk. He follows the ship to the docks, but then somehow loses sight of Julie and has to search the city to find her again. There's a lot of room here for Batman's player to make a different decision and throw off the entire scenario. It would make more sense for most of this to be backstory and for the scenario to begin in Paris.

In Julie's room is a huge gorilla. No idea how Batman doesn't see it from the window, other than a good surprise roll by the Editor.

The Monk's deathtrap for Batman is a net that closes up around him, that the Monk can drop into a pit of snakes at his leisure.

In a separate trap, Batman encounters a "gigantic" gorilla, far larger than the huge gorilla we saw earlier. 15' tall? Easily escaping the gorilla with some leaping and climbing, Batman only has a single guard left to overcome before escaping.

Batman saves Julie from her abductors (more normal guys like the guard) with a sleeping gas pellet, like we've seen him use before.

Following the Batman feature, an educational filler page called "Crime Never Pays" talks about bloodhounds being able to follow a trail 135 miles. It would be nice to know if that was true.

Humor filler is drawn by Paul Gustavson -- of Centaur Comics fame -- in this issue.

Buck Marshall sneaks up on a cabin with some outlaws in it by deliberately missing some shots at game fowl to fool the outlaws into think he's no threat. I want to turn this idea around on my players some time -- have the bad guys pretend to be incompetent to fool the Heroes, then turn out to be really dangerous!

Bart Regan fights "cowardly thugs" in Spy. Now that could be an interesting combination of two stat types. Tough as a thug, but with a cowardly hoodlum's low morale?

The cowardly thugs have a bulletproof car. Trophy item!

Larry Steele solves a murder mystery with an unusual clue -- the murderer slips up and describes a man by the color of his clothes, then Larry learns that suspect is color blind.

Speed Saunders, now relegated to the middle of the magazine, has a murder with an unusual murder weapon -- a mammoth tusk! Speed mounts a methodical investigation at a circus, questioning the witnesses, searching their tents, and corroborating evidence off-site via telegram. I'm not sure about the stolen tusk though...would trying a stolen tusk to a real elephant's tusk really impale a man before it broke loose from its bonds? Path of least resistance seems like it would be the latter. And then, doing it to avoid blood on the elephant doesn't make much sense. If an elephant's real tusk is right next to the fake tusk doing the actual goring, I would still think it would get some blood on it. And how would the killer know the elephant would use that specific tusk and not the opposing tusk?

Speed gets whipped in the face with a real whip and has temporary scarring from it -- a rare complication for a Hero.

Bruce Nelson's scenario is a pretty interesting one too. The plot hooks he receives are all intentional bait to lure him away from home. The scenario is faked so a robber can get into Bruce's home while he's busy elsewhere and rob him of valuable evidence from another case. I could see myself using this in my current online H&H campaign, where there are major events going on in two locations -- but I would need to lay out clues in advance that there's something not kosher about one of the two sets of plot hooks.

Cosmo, Phantom of Disguise, is dealing with two trophy item/potions. One is a paralyzing drug. The other is "essence of intelligence" -- someone else's stolen intelligence, distilled into a potion you can drink, and then increases your own intelligence (+1-2 to INT for 1-4 weeks?).

Slam Bradley tries to rescue a photographer at the zoo who falls into a bear cage. Slam pushes the bear away, then grabs the photographer and runs. Shorty is menaced by a bear cub (1+1 HD?), judging from the size of it. Then they find a constrictor snake in their room and Slam has to shoot it. And lastly they have to fight a tiger in the zoo.

All of that is pretty cut and dry, as far as game mechanics go. But there's this weird scene where Slam is clubbed from behind, and he's not knocked out or even stunned senseless, but he's groggy enough that he can attack, seemingly at a penalty.

(Batman story read in Batman Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomics.net)

Detective Comics #30

The Batman comes back again this issue, and so does Dr. Death, for a rematch. The Batman still doesn't have a Batmobile per se, but drives a "high-powered auto". He is shown easily going over a "high" fence, but at 8', I think anyone more athletic than me could get over that and I wouldn't even ask a player to use up a stunt for that.

Batman uses a silk line for climbing, but without a grappling hook; he lassos a projection from the wall before scaling it. Using a rope to climb would be a situational modifier to a skill check (probably a +1).

The Batman carries a flashlight. He also has potions of sleep that, when their vials are shattered, release sleep gas in at least a 5' diameter. It doesn't last very long, though, as the Mikhail the Cossack wakes up after what seems like only 1 exploration turn.

He hears a "muffled footfall" and keeps from being surprised. I'll have to check to see if I gave mysterymen both a better chance to surprise and a lower chance to be surprised. He also hides in shadows as if using a skill (though thinking to use heavy drapes for cover should probably be a big situational modifier -- maybe +2?).

A flying tackle is really just a trip attack combined with movement, and isn't treated different mechanically (though Batman gets a +4 bonus for attacking with surprise from behind!).  The Batman then trades damage inflicted for distance to push Dr. Death's cossack out the window.

The Batman's kick to the neck that kills Mikhail isn't supported by the H&H game mechanics.

In Spy, Bart Regan jumps out of a car on a bridge and dives into the water. It looks like a suicidal plunge, but Bart lands safely, because it's water and this is a comic book. But bad guys wouldn't know about game mechanics, so they natural assume he died and drive off. Editors, always remember to be impartial when playing the bad guys and not to use knowledge they wouldn't have.

The mad scientist in this issue has built a mind control device he can use on politicians and secret service members. The device is small -- a box that can sit on a tabletop, with a delicate light bulb-like attachment on top -- but it must have a range of miles.

In a rare example of a Hero having a specific injury, Larry Steele is shot and needs his arm in a sling for the rest of his story.

There's a strange escalation of weaponry in Speed Saunder's mystery. The first murder is done with a 13th century antique crossbow, the second is done with an automatic, but then the killer produces a sub-machine gun when she attacks Speed.

Bruce Nelson's adventure starts with a subtler start than normal; a yellow peril hoodlum simply puts a gun in his back and warns him to scram (or "sclam") and there's no fight. Bruce knows this guy is probably in league with some criminals in the area (combining two cliches, this adventure takes place in both Chinatown and a waterfront). But Bruce isn't interested in going after small fish, so he leaves and pursues the lead he was already on. This is so refreshingly different from the play style I usually see in H&H.

It's also worth pointing out that only the Chinese bad guy talks in broken English; the Chinese good guys in the story (and there are two, not just a token one!) talk perfectly normal. Also, kudos to the author (Tom Hickey?) for being the first comic book writer ever to point out that tear gas isn't "very potent in the open air". I've already read so many stories where gas weapons work equally effective no matter where they're used.

The smugglers use speed boats to reach the waterfront from a freighter in this story.

Cosmo's adventure is the opposite of Speed's, in a way, as the threat level deescalates.  A man who looks like Cosmo is shot and killed by the bad guys, who early in the investigation are ready to murder him. But later on, when Cosmo actually knows who the main villain is, Cosmo is simply knocked out and left behind, an easy chance to kill him, or at least put him in a deathtrap, completely missed. It's a sign of an Editor going too easy on his player(s).

(Batman story read in Batman Archives vol. 1; most of the rest of this issue read at www.readcomics.net.)

Detective Comics #29

Bruce Wayne begins this month's adventure doing what every good Hero should do at the start of each day -- read the newspaper for plot hooks. You just never know when your next arch-nemesis is going to leave you a message in the classified section, inviting you to ask for a letter at the post office, that will defy you to stop him from murdering someone, which will actually be a trap.

Before going, Bruce checks over some of his gear. He's equipped himself well with trophy items already, including "gas pellets of choking gas" and suction gloves and knee pads to aid climbing.

And even on arriving at the scene of the trap, The Bat-Man takes further good precautions, leaving a hanging rope outside the penthouse for a quick getaway in case the encounter goes sour.

When The Batman is attacked, he hits two hoodlums at once with a pedestal. Now, that can't be the Fighter class' "combat machine" ability, unless we give The Batman some levels in Fighter. And it can't be the Multi-Attack power unless we give him some levels in Superhero. Right now, the Mysteryman class has no avenue for making multiple attacks in the same turn. So...bit of a mystery there right now.

We do know that The Batman isn't too high in level yet because when he's shot by Jabah, he's apparently low enough on hit points that he decides to retreat (maybe the Editor rolled a 6 for damage)! Or is this no ordinary wound? The Batman is still bleeding from his gun shot wound about two turns later. Now, so far, we have no game mechanic in place for bleeding wounds causing additional damage over turns. Do we need one for gunshot wounds? Or could Jabah have a special trophy item, a Gun of Wounding?

The next day, Bruce Wayne just plain gets lucky, spotting Jabbah on the street as he drives by. You would think that would be a one in a million chance, but it's not really that bad. More likely, the Editor added Jabah to a wandering encounter table with no more than 20 entries on it, giving Bruce a 1 in 20 chance of encountering Jabah there.

Bruce saves Jabbah's intended victim from poison gas by putting a handkerchief over both their faces (good thing Bruce carries two!). Any sensible precaution like that should give a situational modifier of +1 to a saving throw.

The Batman is shown to have more equipment: a glass-cutter for breaking and entering. He uses a lasso in his next fight with Jabah.

Dr. Death's lab is equipped with a pit trap with a mat underneath it, for Dr. Death's quick escape.

What is in the vial Dr. Death accidentally smashes on the floor? He seems to refer to it as "the fiery death", but he may be referring to what he has planned for The Batman. Whatever it is, it seems to work a lot like Greek fire, combusting on impact, spreading quickly, and burning hot.

And that's all just from the Batman story!

In Spy, Bart Regan seems to still be separated from his wife and partner Sally and is saddled with boring partner Jack Steele. Jack is still a 1st-level Fighter, wet behind the ears, and easily captured when he follows the bad guys solo. Now, the bad guys know Jack knows too much; there's really no good reason for them not to kill him. But a good Editor knows to keep the story going as long as possible, and give the Heroes every possible break. So a previously unknown even bigger boss calls in and asks to see Jack.

At least the spies Bart and Jack have to deal with are pretty smart. They have a back-up plan; if their robot plane full of bombs is stopped, they have another pilot in the air who will swoop down and machine gun all the government officials the spies want to murder. Bad guys should always have a back-up plan, because Heroes tend to wreck plans so often.

Interestingly, Bart doesn't seem remotely interested in capturing the spy leader, but mows him down with bullets at long range. I hate it when my players are like that...

The Crimson Avenger, in his story, is hunting down kidnappers, based on the testimony of the kidnap victim they freed. These kinds of clues -- "we were on a farm about fifty miles from here....the front gate was locked with a chain, the second porch step was loose, and a water pump out in back squeaked" -- would be a different kind of investigation than an urban adventure.

The Crimson is not opposed to doing his hero work while out of costume. When he finds the kidnappers, he immediately launches into attacking them, even though he has none of his crime-fighting gear with him. Luckily, his sidekick Wing saves him and brings his gear to him.

During a car chase, The Crimson jumps from car to car. I don't have that on my skill list, but it seems like it would be a hard skill, so there should only be a 1 in 6 chance of that working. Maybe if the cars were going slower it would be easier, but this seems to be a high-speed car chase.

Okay -- what the heck? Speed Saunders is investigating a murder scene, sees a tobacco stain on the ceiling, and correctly deduces from that the tobacco was used to blind the murder victim before he died? That's got to be a case of an Editor feeding clues to the players when they can't solve the scenario on their own.

In Bruce Nelson's adventure, he's chasing a hoodlum (he's literally in a hood -- I wonder if hoodlums should get bonuses if they're wearing hoods) and shoots into the air to try and force a morale save (one of my players just recently tried that).  When that fails, it becomes a chase. Editor and player each make skill checks for their characters. On a 2, they run slightly faster than normal. On a 1, they run much faster than normal. On a 3-6, they just run normal. That's basically how skills will work in 2nd edition.

Cosmo, in his adventure, is on the trail of a mad scientist. He's following a car that he thinks the mad scientist is in -- but rather than trail him back to his lair, Cosmo detours to the local license bureau and inquires who the car belongs to. Interesting technique there, Cosmo -- lucky you the car wasn't stolen!

But Cosmo's luck doesn't end there. He bluffs his way into the mad scientist's home posing as an electric meter inspector. Then the mad scientist simply invites him in and begins showing off his disintegrater raygun. It has a range of six miles and wrecks things as at least a 6th level superhero. When the mad scientist succeeds at disarming Cosmo, it looks like it's all over for that character. But the Editor allows the dropped gun to go off and shoot the raygun, blowing it up somehow. Really...lazy storytelling at its worst here. I can scarcely recommend anything from this as game tips.

And while Cosmo's audacity just seems lazy, Slam Bradley's is perfectly in-character for him. When he receives a threatening letter warning him to stay away from Hawaii, he not only goes there at once, but puts an ad in the newspaper right away saying "I'm here! So what?" (I laughed out loud at that).

But Slam is being suckered -- every note he receives warning him to stay away from somewhere is being used to lure him around (I wonder how many of my players that would work on...?).

Slam is stopped from catching the bad guys in a car chase by the simplest method -- a fork in the road. Unsure of which route to take, Slam gives up and tries something else.

And Slam's next plan is really interesting. Hoping to endear himself to his next suspect, Slam and Shorty endanger the man's life so Slam can rescue him.

The villains' hideout is a house on a leper colony island -- which, you've got to admit, is a pretty good way of keeping intruders away.

Sadly, the story is marred by horrible racism towards native Hawaiians, who are shown to be human-sacrificing primitives, easily tricked by Slam's ventriloquism into thinking Slam and Shorty are gods. Also, there's some bizarre politics, where the Japanese and Chinese seem to be working together to foment revolution in Hawaii.

(The Batman story was read in Batman Archives v. 1, the rest was read at ReadComics.net)

Detective Comics #25

This one is woefully out of order. I had skipped over it because the summary I'd read seemed so uninteresting. Now that I've read it myself, though, I found plenty worthy of comment.

Nailing down where the early Heroes are from isn't easy most of the time, but here Speed Saunders tells us he's from New York. He also tells us some useful tips for checking corpses: check the wrists to see if they had show signs of having been tied up, and -- of course -- check the ground to see if there's enough blood, or if the body was moved. And, of course, play every hunch. Even though the body seems to have been killed by a hammer blow to the head, Speed still asks for the stomach to be pumped -- just for, you know, whatev's -- and then by amazing coincidence finds the true source of death. It makes me curious about how a skill in Hideouts & Hoodlums shouldn't be "get sudden hunch" -- which would let the Editor feed clues to his players...

In Spy, Bart and Sally are the first Heroes to be given a plot hook by FDR himself! Speaking of amazing coincidences, Sally reaches into a spy's desk drawer, pulls out random papers, and they just happen to be detailed invasion plans. Now, maybe the Editor assigned something like a 1 in 6 (or even a 1 in 8!) chance of stumbling on just the right papers and Sally's player got lucky, or the Editor fudged events to ratchet up the stakes in the scenario.

In The Mysterious Doctor Fu Manchu, slime-covered walls prevent climbing from a trap. It's your standard flooding room trap with one extra twist -- there are beams just high enough for the Heroes to grab and try to pull themselves up, but concealed on the top of the beams are sword-blades. Although the characters believe they could sever fingers, we deal with more abstract injury in H&H; they probably do only 1-6 damage.

The Crimson Avenger carries two trophy items: a lineman's phone that he can plug into someone's else's phone jack and use, and the first gas gun used by a Hero in comics!

Bruce Nelson is said to have a curious ability: he can shoot "accurately while on the dead run".  Now, normally, one can make two moves in combat in H&H, or one move and an attack. This seems to be implying that Bruce can make a full move and still get an attack. So what's going on there? Should this be a skill everyone has, like a 1 in 6 chance to shoot while on a dead run? But skills don't affect combat, class and level (and to a limited extent, ability scores) affect combat. For running combats consistently, I'm inclined to ignore what Bruce just did, but I'll watch for more evidence...

Crooks often do dumb things in comic books that make them easy to find. Bruce homes in on a gang of robbers because all of their robberies are roughly equidistant from the same town the bad guys use as their base. Heroes should always remember to check maps and look for patterns -- though it should not fall to the Editor to spell out what the patterns are.

Slam Bradley & Shorty Morgan (really, Shorty) are attacked by a rattlesnake when they try attending college to better themselves. That Slam can't spell, but in another issue is revealed to be a self-taught magic-user, either shows that the strip had no sense of continuity, or that an education-related stat would be unnecessary in H&H.

Slam is good at division of labor; when a rock is thrown through their dorm window with a note tied to it, Slam leaves Shorty to read the notes, while Slam crashes through the window to chase the thrower. Smart players will make quick decisions like this, so that all the Heroes aren't trying to accomplish the same thing.

(Read at ReadComics.net)

Detective Comics #27 - pt. 2

There was a time when Speed Saunders was top billing in Detective Comics, but now he just gets to come second after The Bat-Man. A beat cop who must know Speed summons him to the scene of a corpse found on the riverfront, tied up and strangled. Speed sees an unusual design on the man's collar that he takes to be a clue. Smartly, he heads to the public library to research it. Weirdly, the library is open to him, even though it appears to be nighttime. Did Speed just break into the library, because he couldn't wait until morning to look for clues? That sounds exactly like some players I've had...

Speed finds a weird trap in a man's house; behind a secret wall panel is a mannequin arm holding a gun, so that one only has to pull a string at the back of the arm to make the gun shoot. It seems overly elaborate at first, but it would allow someone to murder within the house without getting any powder burns on the killer's own hand.

Buck Marshall, Range Detective, does a first class job of searching for clues -- checking for how much blood leaked from each wound, checking the local soil against the soil on the dead man's clothes, checking the nearby horseshoe prints, considering the effects of the weather on dating the tracks, considering the direction of the shots, checking for loose hair, and considering the length of the stride to estimate a man's height -- all things a Hideouts & Hoodlums player can look for while investigating.

In Spy, the Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee dies -- which is actually kind of a funny pun, because in 1939, the Chairman of the Commitee's name was Martin Dies.  Or is it the same Committee? Bart Regan says there were five members on the Committee, but there were actually seven members in 1939, a fact that should have been easily verifiable, and none of the actual member names are even close to the fake ones used in the story.

Here's another wrinkle -- though Bart Regan is often referred to as a spy, his actual credentials here show he works for the Secret Service. Or are those fake credentials? That could be a good trophy item...

Bart has an interesting encounter with a wandering encounter; when a gunman climbs through his hotel window, Bart is immediately incredulous. "How in heck could you have known so soon that I'm on your trail?" Bart wails at the unfairness of it. But the gunman turns out to be a hungry thief, unrelated to the case. I can just imagine an out-of-character exchange going on, between player and Editor, with the player complaining that the Editor was using knowledge of the player's actions unfairly, and the Editor backpedaling and changing the encounter.

Bart encounters an unusual murder weapon -- miniature "bombs" wrapped in cellulose and concealed in food. The cellulose dissolves and the bomb goes off on the inside, apparently for lethal damage (though it's hard to imagine a bomb that small doing much damage...). It's also hard to believe the enemy spymaster falls for the old "switch the bananas when you're not looking" trick - but I guess he missed his save vs. plot.

I learned a history lesson from The Crimson Avenger when he refers to a miniature camera as a "candid camera". And here I thought that phrase was invented for the TV show!

Again, The Crimson shows unusual abilities -- leaping a 6' fence, climbing the drainpipe of a building, and snapping rope bonds when tied up -- all too weak to be superpowers, but possibly Mysteryman stunts.

Bruce Nelson is investigating a Voodoo-related murder in New Orleans, and the author seems to have actually done some reading on the subject; the crosses and snakes at the murder scene seem like appropriate motifs. I wonder if the Creole words are authentic or just gibberish. Anyway, I always try to put some research into my scenarios like that.

Bruce encounters a harmless snake -- obviously not there to challenge him, but it did frighten him enough that he whipped out his gun and started shooting. He also finds the murder weapon -- devil smoke, a "green, gummy substance" that, if burned, produces a lethal cloud of smoke. Good for a deathtrap!

You don't have to learn languages in H&H, normally, but if the Editor did insist that your Hero had to learn a language, Cosmo the Phantom of Disguise learns Chinese in just 30 days. Cosmo, in disguise, gets a job in a Chinese shipping business. In the back of the shipping room, concealed behind boxes, is a secret door that opens onto a passage that leads below the wharf behind the building. Then a second secret door opens into the back of a fake coal barge.

And, lastly, Slam Bradley takes a trans-Atlantic clipper to Switzerland, which might have necessitated a save vs. plot to arrange. As I understand it, there were a lot of travel restrictions on traveling from the U.S. to Europe during the War.

(Issue read at ReadComics.net)

Detective Comics #23

Speed Saunders investigates a murder committed with a sharpened ski-stick that can be thrown like a javelin. Speed reveals that it has a range of 50', so a javelin would too.

Larry Steele, Private Detective, is hit with a blackjack and knocked out for 20 minutes, after which he wakes up.

The Crimson Avenger runs afoul of zombies in this issue; zombies made by science instead of magic. The science zombies are called "mechanical men" and "zombis", and are driven around by two hoodlums who work for a mad scientist. The scientist has a "giant" king cobra that the zombis are worship (though why they would worship the snake if they were mindless eludes me), but it's not really that giant -- large, maybe. It's also worth noting that they can be fooled by disguises, as The Crimson disguises himself as a zombie and successfully moves among them (definitely calls for a save vs. plot, that trick).

The Crimson also hides in shadows and the zombis are unable to spot him.

Bruce Nelson goes back to his alma mater of Princely University, clearly a stand-in for Princeton. He stops a murder from happening with a blowgun.

Speaking of stand-ins, Jerry Siegel likes to kill off stand-ins for famous people. In Spy, a senator is murdered (no indication as to which, but there's only 100 of them), and then a famous aviator who sure seems to be Charles Lindbergh is killed. The murderer is a mad scientist who has his hunchbacked assistant swap out buttons on the victims' clothes with buttons containing a radio receiver. The receiver buttons trigger heart attacks in the victims, apparently over long distances. the whole set-up is a pretty dangerous trophy item to put into the Heroes' hands.

The assistant, Rutsky, is quite capable. He climbs a tree with cat-like grace, sneaks up on a trained spy like Bart Regan, and almost throttles Bart to death with his bare hands. Maybe assistant should be a mobster type!

To find out where Dr. LaForge is, Bart just has to call the local newspaper office and talk to someone in the research department. The paper has on file what country Dr. LaForge is visiting from and where he's staying. Newspapers sure used to have generous budgets for research departments!

Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, has to shoot the head off a cobra to save someone. I'm as yet unsure if I need to distinguish between varieties of poisonous snakes, stat-wise, in 2nd edition, other than perhaps the large/huge/giant distinctions.

Slam Bradley and Shorty explore the distant future of 2 billion AD with the help of a scientist with a time machine (specifically a "time-flier" -- it looks like a plane, but it moves through time instead of space).  The time machine seems to work an awful lot like Wells' The Time Machine, down to history playing out at super-fast speed through a view screen.  Something else to point out is that time machines must be remarkably easy to make; in comic books, a single professor working alone is often responsible for creating them.

It's perhaps easier to send your time-traveling Heroes to the ridiculously distant future so it doesn't have to even resemble the present world anymore. But there's a danger of too powerful hi-tech trophies winding up in the Heroes' hands in any future scenario, as well as the temptation to find out knowledge of the future the Heroes can exploit to their advantage.

The future is sure different in some ways, with a metal sun in the sky shedding green light, and a mysterious body orbiting the artificial sun. Cities surrounded by a screen of death rays. There's still jungles in the future, and wild leopards in them, but if the time-flier hasn't moved through space, then the jungle is at the same latitude as New York City. Anticipating global warming...?

Shades of Gamma World, the future is ruled by humans, living with uplifted/mutant bird-men and uplifted/mutant plant-men!  They live on a monarchical society once again, answering to a prince. The weapons of the future consist of odder fare than Laser guns. They use pipes that can paralyze others with sound, or living missiles -- plants that can dodge in mid-air and spray poison gas.

(Issue read at Read Comics)

Detective Comics #21

Speed Saunders can walk onto a crime scene, observe the body, and tell from the visual symptoms alone what poisons might have been administered to kill the person. He also just happens to know where to find a mobster's hideout, even though there were no clues in the story about where to find it. Detect Poison and/or Detect Hideout might need to be an abilities added to the Detective class -- if the Detective class ever makes it officially into Hideouts & Hoodlums (it's currently an optional class from The Trophy Case).

Cigarettes tainted with prussic acid is both a murder weapon and a death trap in this story.

The Crime Never Pays filler page talks about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "Today, motor cars, fast patrol boats, airplanes, and motorcycles are used by the Mounties to aid the apprehending of criminals. There are more mounted police in automobiles than on horses." Funny, then, that whenever Mounties appear in the comic books, they usually are not using cars to get around...

Buck Marshall spends two days unconscious from going down to zero hit points.

In Spy, spies are shown to be better than average at picking locks.

In Crimson Avenger, grave robbing only warrants a $100 reward for information.

The Crimson's gas gun is shown affecting three beat cops at once.

In this story, Slam and Shorty burn quickly through $10,000 and find themselves needing to find fresh work. But that begs the question -- what did they spend it on? A dollar went a lot further in 1938, and 10,000 of them could buy quite a lot. If Slam was being played by a sensible player, he would be stocking up on healing pills with that money, but Slam seldom seems like he's being played by a smart player.

It reminds me of this one section of Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, "Special Interests".  It broke expenditures into seven categories: wine, women, song, wealth, fame, religion, and hobbies. In this system, experience points for treasure were only awarded after being spent on one or more of these categories.  Hideouts & Hoodlums doesn't have that rule, and maybe doesn't need that rule, but the categories themselves are worth thinking about.

Wine:  Likely only the recourse of hard-knuckle Fighters, making your Hero a raging alcoholic not only gives him some pathos, but an excuse to do nothing useful during downtime.

Women: This doesn't have to be anything sordid. It could be a Hero bribing people to keep tabs on a femme fatale adversary, or a Superhero who has to hire people to serve as his alibis to fool his girlfriend, who doesn't know about his dual identities yet.

Song: Or partying, is the best way to rub shoulders with other members of your social class. It can be a great way to bring plot hooks to you, instead of going out and pursuing plot hooks.

Wealth: Or the generation of wealth, by investing. If players were interested in tracking this, it could be an annual rate of return equal to the Hero's Wisdom score.

Fame: Heroes generally don't, but could pursue licensing deals, court the press, or even stage events to increase their popularity. Maybe for every $1,000 spent, the Hero gets one +1 bonus to use on a future encounter reaction roll?

Religion: I'm not sure how to put a game mechanic bonus to donating to one's own church, or if that would even be appropriate. Most comic book Heroes are a pretty irreligious bunch.

Hobbies: Again, maybe not so useful for game mechanics purposes, but could be handy for role-playing purposes.

I'm not sure which, if any of these ideas, merit adding into 2nd edition.

Also, there's a trap, where Slam is supposed to fall into a pit lined with spikes. I'd like to keep additional damage for falling simple. If there are not too many spikes, maybe an additional d6 of damage. For a moderate amount of spikes, it could be an additional 2d6, and for a large amount of spikes, it could be 3d6.

(Read at Read Comics)

Detective Comics #20

Speed Saunders is a prisoner of the Chinese Tong, has no weapons, and no resources other than the suit he's wearing and his wits, and he still escapes from his cell. How? By trying everything. The Editor should always have an "out" planned; in this case, it was a loose grill in the window.

Mandarin Hapsu has a rather devilish trap for Speed too. It requires Speed having a prisoner with him who takes him back to the scene of the crime to show him how the murder happened. The prisoner points out a hole in the wall and asks Speed to look through it. Behind the hole is a gun, set to go off when a concealed button is pressed on the wall nearby. If the Hero is foolish enough to look, I would have the gun shot as if by a 3 HD opponent, but ignoring any DEX bonuses to Armor Class.

In Larry Steele, Private Detective, Delores kills a man by hitting him over the back of the head with a wooden club, with one hit. This is impossible under normal Hideouts & Hoodlums rules, though Book III: Underworld & Metropolis Adventures does talk about campaign moods, and the ability to run a very dark campaign where everyone dies when they reach zero hit points.

Buck Marshall, Range Detective, takes advantage of the terrain around him. Rather than approach a cabin where a killer might lurk on foot, he climbs a tree and uses the branches to clear the distance from above. Smart players ask lots of questions about the terrain, and figure out ways to exploit it.

Buck encounters a similar version of the same trap used on Speed -- a shotgun rigged to go off when a door is opened. I have yet to see a Hero actually reset a trap, but Buck here makes it look like he's reset the trap, in order to catch the killer (the man unwilling to go back through the door).

In Spy, Bart and Sally are given an unusual challenge -- they have to protect a senator without letting him know he's being protected, since he refused security. When Bart and Sally find two gunmen waiting to ambush the senator, even Sally gets engaged in the ensuing fistfight (first female in physical combat in a comic book?).

When Bart is going 60 MPH in a car chase, that's about as fast as his car can go.

Drunk drivers need to be on every urban wandering encounter list. Jerry Siegel in particular seemed to consider this a huge problem.

In Doctor Fu Manchu, Wayland Smith is said to have a "pocket-lamp." I don't know if I've ever seen such a thing before, since flashlights are so much easier to hold. A pocket-lamp is similar, but boxier.

Fu Manchu's weapon, the Zayat Kiss, is revealed to be a giant centipede! First one in comics!

This issue marks the debut of The Crimson Avenger, though its main character is only called The Crimson in this first installment. One of the earliest Mysterymen in comics, the Crimson Avenger can climb walls (a skill the Mysteryman was given in Supplement I: National), and wields a gas gun (a trophy item from Book II: Mobsters & Trophies).

Definitely a Chaotic Hero, when the Crimson can't prove a lawyer's guilt, the Crimson tries to murder the District Attorney and then frames the lawyer for the attempted murder!

Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, has to take a running leap off the end of a pier to try and reach the speedboat being stolen. Because the boat is pretty far away, his Editor tells him he has a 1 in 6 chance to make the jump. He rolls a 2. Because he was close, the Editor decides to go easy on him and gives him an additional chance to reach out and grab the rail by making an attack roll.

The Slam Bradley story in this issue is crazy. Out of the blue, Slam is somehow an extremely powerful Magic-User, just from having practiced since last month. And he throws spells around like they were nothing. He casts some sort of Teleportation spell on Shorty, then a Telekinesis-like spell to pack his bags. At a meeting of Magic-Users, he casts two Phantasmal Force spells in a row. He uses Detect Thoughts to find out what the hoodlum at his door wants. He casts some kind of grappling spell that holds a man and moves him -- maybe that's just another Telekinesis spell.  Then he uses a spell that somehow allows himself to be at two places at the same time -- Project Image? He casts Invisibility, Charm Person, more Phantasmal Forces, some sort of Push spell (Telekinesis again?) -- and possibly all in the same day!

The only explanation I can think of is that Doctor Occult is pretending to be Slam for some reason.

Slam's rival, Professor Mysto, casts Dispel Magic, but can only cast it once. To then dispel Invisibility, he has to resort to making a brew from a container of spirit-powders. Potion of Dispel Magic? Slam interrupts the preparation of the potion, so we never get to see how it works.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #19 - part 1

This issue starts with another Speed Saunders investigation, and this investigation starts off well with Speed getting a good lead to follow. Speed finds the guy who's been passing around the counterfeit money, but when he needs to find the guy printing the money Speed does what many a player of mine in the past would have done -- just wander around aimlessly and wait for me to throw them bigger clues. Here, Speed just happens to walk past a random building where he hears a printing press inside.

Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard is after a missing invisibility formula -- my first thought was that this would be a potion, but the formula seems to be instructions for working an invisibility machine that works for just 30 minutes. This deviates from the Invisibility spell, but that's okay for mad science devices.

Kent notices that a car is trailing him (keen senses/notice things check?).  He is rescued by a mysterious woman who seems suspiciously eager to help Kent.  Supporting cast members are meant to be actively recruited by the player, but Kent just shrugs and says stuff like "Sure, why not?" when she wants to go everywhere with him. This type of freebie character should not be considered supporting cast for purposes of awarding xp (which Heroes get when their players actively involve their SCMs in the scenario).

Larry Steele's new adventure starts at on an uncharted island "2000 miles due East off the coast of Brazil", which is odd because by the time you're 2,000 miles East of Brazil you're practically to Africa.

Another peculiarity -- Larry sprains his ankle in a plane crash! I'm not being facetious; specific injuries, or complications after being unconscious, are fairly rare in comic book stories. I really wanted a table of complications linked to being reduced to zero hit points in 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums, but now I'm not so sure.

There's also a really creepy backstory here about the mobsters on the island who kill a 14-year old girl's parents and keep per prisoner for the next 4 years, hoping Stockholm syndrome kicks in so she'll marry the boss mobster. More proof that you can go really dark and still be Golden Age-like.

Bart Regan and Sally of Spy are about to have the first wedding in comic book history when the service is interrupted by a new mission, and this one is...pretty silly. The all-important mission is that a woman is in town who is suspected of being a spy and Bart and Sally are the only ones who can prove she is. But...where is the time crunch here? Is the Chief secretly jealous and doesn't want Bart to have Sally?

Anyway, the lady spy has a mirrored compact she uses to powder her nose that can project invisible beams of wrecking things force, capable of smashing a brick wall (or equal to a Superhero able to wreck up to cars). This is the kind of compact super-science I expect to see Iron Man carrying in 2016 and seems oddly out of place in a Golden Age story. Of course, the item does have a drawback -- if you accidentally aim it towards your face, your face explodes (so, at least 3-18 damage as a weapon).

The Bruce Nelson story starts with a combat turn that does not go the way I normally handle combat. If one side has the drop on the other -- like the bad guy with a gun at Bruce's back -- or some other distinct advantage, I may ignore rolling for initiative. Here, Bruce somehow wins initiative despite his opponent having every advantage.

Bruce would have been killed if that coconut had not fallen on his attacker's head and knocked him out. Now, the skeptical reader might interpret this as an overly lenient Editor, but perhaps not. Perhaps the Editor had merely planned the environment in advance, considered there might be, oh, a 1 in 10 chance of a coconut falling and hitting someone on the head for, oh, 1-3 points of damage if anyone stood underneath those trees -- a sort of natural trap. Bruce's player was lucky enough that his opponent wound up under the trees first.

Once Bruce is in his plane again, we see the stunts Evasive Maneuvers, Increase Speed, and Wing Walking, and possibly a new stunt. Bruce draws attacks to himself to keep his friend descending by parachute from being attacked. Maybe it would be called Draw Fire?

We also see another complication from an injury, as Bruce loses the use of his arm that he was shot in.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #18 - part 1

As always (so far), this issue begins with Speed Saunders, this time investigating a murder -- and that's all we know. We don't know how Speed knows the dead man's son helping with the investigation, and we're given very little to go on why Speed suspects it's murder and not suicide.

If you only have time for a short scenario of Hideouts & Hoodlums, it might be best to jump into a story, in media res, like this -- cutting out the plot hooks and setting up the scene and just lay out what the challenge is in the scenario right at the start. And place any supporting cast your players will need nearby.

As evidence of how combat needs to stay abstract in a comic book RPG, Speed is shot at point blank range, but recovers when a doctor performs first aid on him, and doesn't even have blood on his clothes.

Later, "Speed learns the truth from the glint of fear in the fence's eyes."  There's not a game mechanic tied directly to lie detection or eye reading, but if the Editor really wants to give the Hero a chance to pick up on a clue, then a "notice things" roll should be allowed, just as if the Hero were searching for secret doors.

Later still, Speed wants to go back to the murder scene "to make a more thorough search."  What his player means is he wants more "notice things" rolls because he doesn't think he has enough clues yet.

This installment of Cosmo, The Phantom of Disguise, is suggestive that Cosmo might be based out of Chicago, since he leaves from Chicago to start a vacation.  Cosmo's vacation takes place in the Mythic West, where everyone gets around on horseback, the only way to not draw suspicion to yourself is to dress like a cowpoke, and the town is remote enough that its only tavern is the only place to eat in 20 miles.

It is unclear how Cosmo solves his mystery. It seems he overhears the Mexican in the tavern say something incriminating, but all we're told is that Cosmo overhears the Mexican "babble" to himself. The implication seems to be that the Mexican's "babble" is him talking in Spanish, and indeed the only reason Cosmo seems to find the Mexican suspicious-looking is because he's a Mexican (or, to be fair, the only Mexican in the tavern). Further racism is found in the sheriff's "Negress" servant.

In the Larry Steele installment, Larry and his pal are in a deathtrap -- a dark pit that is being filled with a lethal gas. The way out is to search the floor and find the floor boards are loose enough to be pried up. Below the pit trap is an underground stream with a strong current, leading to a waterfall outside, near the house they were in. Although waterfalls are never lethal in comic books, there are still overhanging branches to grab in case the Heroes don't want to chance it.

Larry's big fight scene breaks down like this:  Larry gets a surprise turn and, because everyone is unarmed, he gets two attacks. He uses them both to swing from the chandelier and kick the two hoodlums, doing enough damage to one of them to knock him unconscious. In the first turn of regular combat, the boss bad guy wins initiative, but the Editor rolls so poorly on his attack roll that he says the boss is still drawing his gun. Larry makes a disarming attack on the boss and wins possession of the gun. Because a weapon is now in play, we switch to one melee attack per turn. On turn 2, Larry wins initiative and clocks the bad guy, doing enough damage to only lightly injure him. The hoodlum who wasn't knocked out, though, fires into the melee. Because firing into a melee is dangerous, there is a chance to hit either combatant, and the Editor rolls that the bullet hits the boss instead of Larry. The remaining hoodlum gets shot on turn 3 by Larry. It's not clear if the second hoodlum and the boss are unconscious yet, or if they've failed morale saves and stopped fighting.

Bosses should maybe be a new mobster type, between hoodlums and master criminals.

If the Fu Manchu adaptation here was a H&H scenario, the Editor would be in for a tricky situation. There is a scene where one of the Heroes is approached by a mystery lady (a female practitioner of the Mysteryman class, no doubt). She gives him an important clue, and then needs to disappear (or she won't be mysterious). Now, the Editor could just make her high enough in level to give her a great roll at becoming effectively invisible through stealth, but that may later beg the question why she doesn't just tackle Fu Manchu herself if she's so high in level. Or, the Editor could fudge the die roll so she gets away, but fudging dice rolls just to railroad through a plot doesn't feel fair to most players.

Now, the trick used in the story to keep our Hero from following her is to have Wayland Smith show up with even more vital information our Hero needs. The problem with this is, Wayland is probably also a Hero in play in this scenario, so the two players will likely be confident they can share information at any other time. For a RPG scenario, Wayland would have to be swapped out for a character not under a player's control.

In Spy, Bart Regan is assigned to recover the Kahoon Ruby, not to keep, but to give back to the Maharaja who owned it. Still, because the ruby would clearly have a monetary value, it is easy to assign an XP award for finishing this scenario. Had the mission been to recover the Maharaja's missing child, the award would not be so clearly quantifiable.  A further wrinkle is that the Maharaja will sign a peace treaty with whatever country recovers the ruby, so there will be lots of rival factions vying to compete this scenario first.

This is also the issue that Bart proposes to his partner Sally. If these were both played Heroes, this is role-playing above and beyond the call of duty.

(You can read this issue at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #17 - part 1

What am I thankful for, on the day after Thanksgiving? More comic book reading!

Speed Saunders has always been a peculiar duck, both in terms of how irrelevant his river patrol job is to his adventures (but, really, how often does a hero's civilian profession come up in a scenario?) and how fluid his adventures have been so far in terms of genre. This month, we find out that Speed's abilities are also pretty fluid in terms of skills. Here, Speed steps off a low roof onto the top of a parked car and lays down on it -- and no one inside the car hears him doing this! This is a level of stealth more appropriate to the Mysteryman class than the Fighter class. Or...the Editor has simply fudged how the surprise rules work. Even if Speed has complete surprise, his free turn of action should only be 1 combat turn long before being discovered.

Now, the hideout Speed finds in this issue is rather interesting. The kidnapper is in a remote cabin, located on a mountain terrace inside a giant gorge. The only way to get down to the cabin is by climbing down, which seems to come with a high risk of falling. The kidnapper does have a rope tied to a tree overlooking the gorge that is used to lower supplies down to the cabin, and Speed uses that to descend safer (though a nastier game Editor would have made this a trap -- rigging the tree branch or the rope to snap).

Speed is saved from a deathtrap by the "fact" that snakes won't cross a rope made from hair. Now, call me overly suspicious, but if one of my players tried this, I would think he was trying to hoodwink me. It does seem like the sort of phony science you see in comic books, though, so if one of my players did come up with this "fact", I might feel charitable enough to give him a save vs. plot to determine if this turns out to be true -- particularly if every other attempt to thwart the deathtrap has failed.

Larry Steele isn't a very good detective sometimes. He's exploring an old castle in Maine this month and notes how dusty the floors are, but completely fails to notice any footprints from the three kidnappers in the castle in the dust. Now, this could be the result of bad dice rolls; Larry's Editor has been asking for keen senses/notice things checks periodically, but Larry's player just keeps rolling too high. Note that the players can ask for checks as often as they want to, but it is the Editor who decides how often they are eligible for new checks.

Larry later makes up for it by rappelling down the sheer side of a rain-soaked castle wall, which you would think would come with some serious penalizing modifiers. Since it's not clear yet in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules what the chance for a Fighter to climb should be, I can't comment yet on what those modifiers should look like.

One of the kidnappers is a drunken hoodlum!

Sometimes you might want to tone things down from the comic books, for the sake of game balance. This month's installment of Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise introduces an explosive gun, handheld, with a 125 mile range, that wrecks as if an 8th level Superhero. If this weapon isn't destroyed forever by the end of the scenario, I know it's bound to wind up in the hands of the Heroes and there goes any challenge ever for the rest of my campaign.

The Russian embassy serves as a sort-of hideout-in-plain-sight in this story. It would be interesting to run a scenario where the Heroes can't get in without wearing tuxedos, surrounded by foreign dignitaries and spies. On the other hand, the possibility for mass deaths that lead to war...maybe there are safer places to put your Heroes...

Cosmo also demonstrates lip reading in this scenario, a skill not covered by the H&H rules.  It should, I would think, be more difficult than hearing noises, and possibly relegated to a stunt.

This issue begins a serialized adaptation of Dr. Fu Manchu.  Fu Manchu's henchmen make use of poisoned arrows. There isn't much discussion of poisoned weapons in H&H, but it's definitely a practice best left in the hands of villains. I would either outright forbid Heroes to use poisoned weapons, or force a save vs. plot with a -1 or -2 penalty each time to use poison.

Well before Superman tackled the KKK on the radio, Bart Regan, Spy, tackles the "hooded horde".  Jerry Siegel directly labels them a "terrorist organization", which, sadly, remains quite prescient about today's politics.  However, the KKK isn't up to lynching blacks here, but inciting general unrest and wrecking businesses.

Bart Regan demonstrates ventriloquism in this story, even throwing his voice about 10' away!  I've talked about ventriloquism before and feel the same now; that, for Golden Age stories at least, ventriloquism needs to be a basic skill.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #15

This is Speed Saunders ordering a Tom Collins, which brings up the issue of what is appropriate subject matter for a Golden Age comic book role-playing campaign. Heroes can drink. Heroes can kill, though it should not be their first choice. These are things we see in the comic books.

Heroes do not cuss. Heroes have girlfriends, or even fiances, but appear to have chaste relationships. Which is not to say these things don't happen in a comic book world -- non-Heroes occasionally let out the occasional "*&#@!", and sex is clearly happening behind the scenes, or there would be no children in the campaign world.

Drugs is another subject we can touch on here. Marijuana and opium are known dangers in the comic book world. Heroes may have to navigate their dens, but would never think of sampling the wares themselves.

Also from Speed Saunders, this is one of the earliest instances of the phrase "master criminal" in comic books. Master criminal is, of course, a statted mobster type in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies.

It's rare to see a Hero screw up this badly in comics, getting knocked out and needing some non-Hero who comes along to save the day in his stead -- but this can be a common occurrence in a RPG, particularly for lower level Heroes who are more vulnerable. The Editor should either keep a flexible timeline for these scenarios, or always have a Plan B for what happens if the Heroes fail.

Hideouts & Hoodlums treats weapons as abstractly as the rest of the game mechanics, and doesn't make a fine point about things like bullets -- are x bullets compatible with y gun?  The only time it would likely come up is as a clue, as Buck Marshall finds here.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)