Popular Comics #44

Today's lead feature is Gangbusters!  Here, we're reminded that electric drills might make a good mundane trophy item, slot machines are worth $80, and might have $60-$80 in them on a good night (that's pretty impressive, considering these were apparently nickel slots). We also know police cars can hit 70 MPH...

This is a reminder to myself that I haven't statted look-outs yet. This mobster type would have a better chance of surprise and a lower chance of being surprised.

I have no intention of getting rid of the hit point mechanic. But, if I was, I might consider damage categories, as evidenced here in this first panel. The police officer is shot and receives a "bad wound". A bad wound apparently leaves him able to attack, but not move. But then he bleeds out some more and the bad wound becomes a "critical wound", leaving him unconscious and dying.

The dearth of specific makes and models of guns in early comics made me rethink how specific the 1st ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums equipment list was, but the true crime genre might prove I was right the first time. Here we get a .38 Colt revolver, a 7.65 German Mauser, and a 12 gauge shotgun.

The Masked Pilot is in another dogfight. Second edition is going to allow Heroes to wing their own stunts, which gives them greater flexibility, but it doesn't allow for a list of stunts with set game mechanics. Aviator dogfights need mechanics. Here we have the popular Power Dive stunt and, although it goes unnamed, the Masked Pilot countered with Find Blind Spot.

Here we see two more aviator stunts -- Improved Take-Off/Landing and Repair Plane Damage. There's probably another one here I hadn't thought of before -- Blind Flying.

Plane crashes have, pretty obviously, a high chance of death involved (save vs. plot or die?). Because of that, Heroes' planes don't run out of hit points and crash -- they accumulate complications instead, like the blinding oil spray on the previous page.

Note how the enemy pilot rolled so low to hit that the Masked Pilot's gunner didn't even need to duck or anything to get missed...

There seems to be a "Big Two" kinds of gems that are highly sought in the early comic books, diamonds and -- as here and on another recent post -- star sapphires. Making a gem "priceless" -- as happens here in Mr. Wong -- may be useful for a plot hook, but it's not good news for if your Heroes ever manage to lay claim to it (unless you rule that priceless, technically, means no XP or $ values).

Ha -- "As senior officer of this ship and a government mail pilot, I am, by virtue, an officer of the law!" I wonder if there's any truth to that or if Tommy is totally bluffing with these folks...

Tex Thorne's hunch about the "trick" could be explained by the result of opposed surprise rolls coming up in Tex's favor, but it also could have been a smart player asking for a head count of the outlaws in front, realizing there must have been more, and guessing correctly where they might have gone. Players making the right calls should be able to trump game mechanics sometimes (as I've talked about in the past about searching in the right places).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Popular Comics #43 - pt. 1

This page of Tex Thorne got me to thinking...could game play switch one type of mobster into another? These outlaws, for example, become drunken hoodlums because Tex gets them drunk to make it easier to overpower them.

My first thought on reading this was -- how bad are these bad guys, to throw their dead into a cabin and turn it into a funeral pyre instead of taking the time to bury them? And then I remembered -- the players in my various campaigns have almost never taken the time to bury their dead allies, let alone their enemies.

Moose-like creature? That's pretty clearly drawn as a moose.

It does remind me of this session of D&D I once played, though, where we spent this time chasing a "fox-like creature" through the dungeon, curious to find out what it was. The trick was that it really was just a fox.

Triceratops are such a common dinosaur that I was tempted to put them in the new "basic" book -- but decided against it. The basic book will be for levels 1-6 and triceratops would be too tough to fight for even 6th level Heroes.

This page illustrates the problem with including more dinosaurs in H&H. What is that potbellied carnosaur supposed to be? I mean, the obvious guess is a Tyrannosaurus Rex because that was one of the five or six types of dinosaurs that everyone knew back then, but that drawing...ugh.

Yes, this grisly scene was brought to you by the same company that was producing wholesome Disney comics at the same time!

Bat-birds? Really? You can call a triceratops what it is, but you have to be coy about pterodactyls?

This is The Masked Pilot's strip, though that is his supporting cast member, Jenkins, having all the trouble. Engines conking out and planes catching on fire are just some of the complications that can happen during a dogfight. The plane busting into pieces is what happens when a light cannon takes out the last of a plane's hit points.

Power dive is shown here giving some combat benefit, either to hit or to damage, or both.

A rare instance of first aid being shown applied to a Hero.

There have been several versions of how first aid works in H&H over the years. Right now, I'm leaning towards it giving an immediate 1 hp back.

Doctors were statted for Supplement V as a Lawful mobster type, but here we see an example of a chaotic doctor, giving other mobsters bonuses on their disguise chances.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #42 - pt. 1

People have died from falling off horses in real life, but you don't expect to see that in a comic book and you don't expect that in most RPGs, where falling damage is assigned to specific distance thresholds (like 10' = 1-6 damage). Here, then, is an unusual example for two reasons -- a rare example of taking falling damage for falling less than 10', and a rare complication from an injury. Granted, this is a minor character and not a Hero, but I might still compile these injuries into a table that will be rolled on for non-Heroes.

Speaking of unusual -- here is a rare example of someone attempting to recruit a non-Hero character to, if not his supporting cast, at least to his cause, and failing; probably because of a failed initial encounter reaction roll.

The mobster type "cowardly hoodlum" comes from Bruce Wayne's famous remark "criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot." I had wanted there to be both cowardly hoodlums and superstitious hoodlums from the start, but I was stymied by how to make the superstitious hoodlum a unique set of stats. And I'm still not satisfied with how I did it.

Which brings us around, finally, to this page of Shark Egan. These are sailors, or sailor-hoodlums, but they are definitely superstitious. And I see now that the difference between a cowardly hoodlum and a superstitious hoodlum is that the superstitious hoodlum actually has good morale, until you spook him.

And then there's also a shark!

As of now, I have no plans to include any game mechanic about being blinded by your own blood to Hideouts & Hoodlums. Notice how the kid seems almost excited about it. Forget Batman -- I'd be scared to meet The Hurricane Kids in a dark alley!

And this vine climbing is a good example of why H&H has to move to a separate skill system instead of folding it into the saving throw mechanic. The kid isn't reactively avoiding anything, he's actively climbing. And I definitely wouldn't just hand wave the mechanics here, since there's a good chance of him falling and taking serious damage.

Now this is great example of concealing the entrance to a hideout. The only way in is to climb straight down a sheer vertical cliff face about 20' (with the risk of a drop much further) to a pterodactyl nest, with a crevice concealed behind it. Also note the small size of the tunnel -- not all hideouts need to be built on a 10' scale.

Mini-hideout map!

This is complicatedly named Mr. Wong, Detective, Featuring Boris Karloff. Sorry for the mystery spoilers, but the idea of glass balls filled with poison gas shattered by a remote siren seems like a good idea for a trap to me.

Funny! The page is called Hold Everything.

Really? An hour to extricate someone from a tree? That's six exploration turns. Either the Editor was making The Masked Pilot's player keep rolling skill checks and the player was really unlucky, or it's harder to extricate a person from a tree than I would have thought.

And what's this with The Masked Pilot's credentials? Is this the prototype for Dr. Who's psychic paper? Maybe credentials should be a trophy item that serves as a "gets the police to do whatever you want" card.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)