The Funnies #18

The importance of communicating by telegram cannot be overstated. Telephones were not reliably private and depended on the operator, or a series of operators, being able to make the right connections. Important messages were still sent by telegram, which cost about 75 cents on average, according to this page of Dan Dunn.

Ten cents for a beer. Bear in mind that you could get a hot dog for only five cents.

A good playing tip from G-Men: dressing in a mail carrier's uniform is a good way to get close to a hideout, and also an excuse to check their mail. Also note the tropes of secret writing, and the secret marijuana trade.

The text here in Don Dixon doesn't specify what "Ogi" is, but given the name and his height, it seems a fair guess that Ogi is an ogre, possibly the first one in comic books.

Tad of the Tanbark is suddenly my source for new spells!  Smoke Image is like the spell Projected Image, except that it can only be projected through pre-existing smoke closest to where you want to project to. This has to be a 3rd or 4th level spell.

There are some good tips here from Captain Easy about always checking up on new people you meet, and what to look for in identifying a fake twin, but the real find here is what Spain was, allegedly, paying foreigners to come and man their air force during the Spanish Civil War. Any Heroes down on their luck might want to consider fighting in a war, even in a pre-WWII campaign.

Tailspin Tommy reminds us that pirates, even modern-day ones, can't resist acting out the tropes of their genre, and would have to save vs. plot to resist doing things like making their prisoners walk the plank.

The Four Aces remind us why some villains use deathtraps -- it's to hide the evidence of the murder from police. Of course, why they don't shoot them first and then burn the building down, isn't explained...

According to Scribbly (yay! I get to post Scribbly!), a newspaper's weekly payroll was only about $7,000.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #17

So, what does Dell Comics have for us today? Well, this issue starts with Alley Oop still fighting crocodiles...

I include this page because it's the most detailed instructions for safe-cracking I've ever seen, and it might help for describing it in a H&H scenario.

Tad of the Tanbark has never had supernatural elements before, so there's probably a rational explanation for this...but it appears that the witch doctor has cast a new spell, like Summon Snakes. It can apparently summon at least 12 black mambas. Unless this is a Mobster Summoning spell which just happened to summon snakes...?

This page of Captain Easy is about easy deathtraps -- tie someone to a chair with a bomb in his lap, toss someone out a window with a rope around his neck, or, worst of all, threaten to marry him!

Hubba hubba!  I mean...where was I?

Oh yeah, hideouts!  I was about to type, some mobsters you might not expect to find in a hideout are railroad presidents and bankers. There is already a "corrupt politician" mobster in H&H (Book II: Mobsters & Trophies), but maybe there need to be stats for corrupt businessmen. They would be easy to defeat, but worth more XP because of the monetary value they represent?


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #15

We've made it to December 1937!

Tad's player is taking a huge risk here, shooting at a snake, while his friend is standing directly on the other side of the snake. Given the circumstances shown here -- and provided Tad's player understands those circumstances, and still chooses to shoot -- I would give the bullet a good chance of hitting his friend if the shot missed the snake (maybe a +1 situational modifier to hit).

Captain Easy is like a comic strip tutorial for playing Hideouts & Hoodlums.  Here, Easy shows you how to create your own plot hook characters!

Scribbly's Mom shows us that, even when a mobster encounter begins hostile, you can still ask the Editor for another encounter reaction check (finally -- finally! -- I found an excuse to showcase a page of Sheldon Mayer's remarkable Scribbly!)

Goat joke!  I've lost track of how many goat jokes we've had so far...

And lastly -- I'm not sure if this was a real thing or not, because we typically haven't seen $100 fines for anything so far in the comics, but according to Daisybelle you could get a $100 fine for picking up a hitchhiker on a highway.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #7

Freight tunnels and sewers are good places to hide hideouts right under a metropolis.

Dan Dunn, because of his level, should be able to boss around lower level Fighters. But being able to talk one into authorizing a hundred-man search party? That's a bit much for Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Dropping seven stories, with burns, sounds like a lot of hit points' worth of damage, but that's definitely possible in H&H, for a higher-level Fighter.

Numbers tend to run a little high in the comics, but sometimes need scaling back because of the more incremental nature of H&H.  Eight hundred troops might seem like a nicely dramatic number for railroading your player's Hero in the direction you want him to go -- but then what if he decides to stay and fight?  Not a good idea to use numbers this high when you can't predict what your players are going to choose to do.

I also wanted to share this page because the idea of climbing up and down a tree to keep warm seemed novel.  And it's Captain Easy, so it's just darn amazing.

And the lesson here is that players can plan all they want, but they can't control the actions of characters other than their Heroes, even their own horses.

Bronc Peeler, which switched from a humor strip to an adventure strip, here demonstrates an early use of the whip as an entangling weapon. Whips may need some special mechanic for that, as I don't think it will work with the grappling rules, as I have them now...

Og and friends simply use thrown rocks as weapons.

We don't actually see any wolves here, but the great grey wolves are certainly talked up as being larger than normal. Maybe 1+2 HD?

Don Dixon now gets full pages!

It's hard to say what's going on with the whistle here. Were the blue dwarfs really that close-by, by coincidence, or is the whistle magical and summoned them?

Note this would be a good way to introduce decidedly non-Tolkien dwarfs into H&H.

Less deservedly, Tad of the Tanbark gets a whole page now too.

H&H Book III: Underworld & Metropolis Adventures has rules for vehicular combat, including ramming with cars, and how much damage the occupants take.

The Funnies #4 - pt. 2

While a stone age campaign based on Alley Oop would be more like modern-day living with a stone age backdrop, a campaign more like Og Son of Fire would deal with more realistic issues, like hunting to survive, and navigating threats like superstitious people and the constant threat of stoning.

Should "sinister stranger" be a mobster type? These two are obviously some type of hoodlum.  Perhaps sinister hoodlums would try to corrupt others into working with them.  Looks like they have a vamp in their "secret hideout" too.

Don Dixon falls into a trap; the bridge is rigged so that the ropes can be pulled taut enough to snap (mechanically, from a remote distance), dropping anyone on it into the water below (it looks to me like a 30' drop).  Not sure what the bad guys mean by "microscope" here, unless they meant "television"...

Look-outs are a mobster I should have added ages ago.  A look-out would not be much in a fight, so maybe 1-1 HD at best, but they were be hard to surprise -- 1 in 6 only.

Added to the bridge-drop trap is that the water Don was dropped into is a "raging torrent" that leads to a whirlpool. A whirlpool is a pretty serious deathtrap, maybe save or die every turn until rescued.  I can't be sure why the water is warmer around the whirlpool, but can guess that Don might have wet himself...

H&H does not have much for dangerous fungi, a niche that the honey death mushrooms introduced in The Trophy Case v. 2 no. 6 was meant to fill.

Elks have not yet been statted for H&H, but would likely have 5 HD.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Funnies #2 - pt. 2

That rascal, Tad of the Tanbark, encouraging kids to cut up their comic books with scissors!  And all for a picture of a hyena. Hyenas were first discussed for H&H here. 

That Tad is at it again already!  This time it's a leopard. Leopards have not been statted for H&H, but should be the equivalent of the cougar, statted in Supplement III: Better Quality.




And now hippos!  Have you no shame, Tad?  Hippos are tricky because their mass should give them a ridiculous amount of Hit Dice, far in excess to their danger in combat (though hippos can be very dangerous, but maybe not in T Rex company...?).  A solution might be to, like the eunotosaurus, give them 5 20-sided HD.

What's going on in Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire might not be so clear from the artwork, so let me recap the previous two pages: Don is a prisoner of the green men (they might as well be statted as ordinary humans, since they seem to differ only in pigmentation). The green men control the priesthood in the Hidden Empire, while the king and his separate-but-equal faction are pink-skinned.  The princess has given a ring to Don to protect him from the Light of Rav -- which appears to be a heat ray the green men use to kill prisoners in a faux religious ceremony. The ring is protecting Don -- which I guess makes it a Ring of Fire Resistance!

Compared to a eunotosaurus, a giant tortoise is nothing -- nothing but 1 12-sided Hit Die, maybe.

Mutt & Jeff here illustrate that it really is all in your head, as there is no game mechanic for weather causing cold damage in H&H!  Should there be?  Perhaps for the harshest of environments, like at the poles, or during a blizzard, but not on an ordinary winter's day.

Bronc Peeler and Coyote Pete demonstrate the Cowboy Stunts of Quick Draw, Lasso Expertise, and Trick Shooting, as well as firearms inducing morale saves, and the return of goats to our blog, last seen here!  Should I maybe bump them up to a solid 1 HD?



(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Funnies #1 - pt. 2

Freckles and His Friends reminds us that a hidden land can be placed anywhere so long as the entrance is inaccessible; here, you have to swim 10' deep and under a ledge to reach this mini-hidden land where cougars nuzzle with lambs (cougars being statted in Supplement III: Better Quality).

This also illustrates the importance of everyone in the party carrying a flashlight, like if you fall into deep, murky water and the others need to see how far down you sank.



Yeah, okay, Ben Webster.  It is left up to the Editor's discretion if Indians should ride around topless on horseback in the 20th century (and be statted as Natives, from Book II: Mobsters & Trophies). 

If nothing else, this page illustrates the importance of carrying binoculars -- it might give you a head start when someone is chasing you!

Don Dixon and company encounter a constrictor snake -- with a twist!  Considered sacred by the local natives, killing the snake brings their wrath.

Tad of the Tanbark illustrates the usefulness of having an elephant Supporting Cast Member.

This half page of This Curious World shows the water buffalo, an animal that was on every continent but North America and Antarctica by 1940. Water buffalo fighting (like bull fighting) is practiced in some Asian countries. I would stat them as 4+1 Hit Dice, using d12 dice.

Mutt and Jeff put the value of a fur coat at $60 or less (oops, I had made them far more valuable on the starting equipment list!).

Most every comic book for 45 years had a page like this in it. Pocket telescopes, microscopes, high-powered air pistols, luminous paint, whoopee cushions -- smart players should find ways to use all this stuff!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)