Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 3

Welcome back to our blog, where we discuss the game Dungeons & Babes. Oops, that's not a thing?  Well, you'd think it was from this page of Golden Knight. Because, obviously, medieval maidens went around stabbing men while dressed in modern swimsuits. I'm familiar with the phrase, "never trust a dame," but who knew dames could backstab for double damage? Is Alice a femme fatale? A D&D thief? Or just a highly effective, perhaps mid-level fighter?

Does wrecking things get easier during confusion? I don't think so, but it allowed him to act undetected. 

Then there's the concept of "saving your strength." It actually is a Hideouts & Hoodlums rule that you get +1 to hit if you take a turn to aim. What if you took an extra turn to rest for each +1 you wanted to your wrecking things roll? 

"Stay away from this fight, Alice!"

"What, are you kidding me? I just killed two guys on my way here, while you were being tortured so long your hair grew out!

"Alice! Alice! Are you hurt?"

"Well of course I'm hurt, you moron! You took my sword and left me with this little knife, and now you're not even using the shield I laid down for you!"

It turns out to be a very awkward family reunion, that Alice mortally wounded the man who turned out to be her dad.

Isn't a flying torpedo a missile? 

I like those guard uniforms. Those will be very handy for any heroes looking to knock out a guard and disguise himself as a guard!

There are real Edgewood's in Florida and Washington, but a Meadowlark Village? A real counterpart for that is proving hard to find.

Waaiiit -- the torpedo has to be controlled by a two-man crew inside it? Willingly sitting inside an armed torpedo? I may have to lower the morale save number for guards -- these guys are fearless!

"Hurry - we'll tell the Professor!"

"You know, Ted...not only couldn't the Professor figure out a way to remote control the torpedo, but he didn't even give us a portable radio to contact him with. Do you suppose we weren't meant to come out of this alive...?"

Waaaiiiiit (again). The torpedo made no noise and there was no sign of a plane -- then how does Yank follow any trajectory back to that forest? Is he just flying randomly over hundreds of square miles until he spots something that looks like a hideout? 

And really, Professor? You're planning to blow up the country, but you can't even remember to lock the front door?

A sliding panel in the floor that catches your foot sounds like the most "1st-level" trap I've ever heard of. Would that even do a point of damage? At best, if you miss your save, you can't move during combat until a turn when you do make your save.

Waaiiiit (third time) -- what's with this strange plane that just happens to look like the torpedoes that just happens to land outside in panel 1? Did the artist put panels in the wrong order somehow? It seems like even the author couldn't make sense of what was going on there.

Gee, Yank, if punching them in their helmets doesn't work, maybe you should aim somewhere else? In game, Yank's player is either rolling terrible, or those uniforms are giving a much better Armor Class bonus than I would have thought.

They didn't check to see if Yank was still alive? Classic villain blunder there. Maybe a villain should have to save vs. plot before he can check.

If the "heart of the country" is the continental geographic center of the country, then we're in Kansas, near Lebanon (or Lebanon has been renamed Edgewood). If "heart of the country" means its governmental heart, than Edgewood means Washington, D.C. -- though that doesn't make much sense (but what in this story does?).

Waiiiiittt (gah!). Yank is hitting the percussion caps on the nose of the torpedoes with a length of chain? This means the crews aren't arming the torpedoes just before bailing out, but well in advance for some reason and -- what really bugs me -- Yank's plane is somehow always able to zoom out of range just before the torpedo blows. Why is there that long a delay? Whhyyyy?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Speed Comics #6 - pt. 2

Continuing on with the latest Shock Gibson adventure, we find Baron Von Kampf is finally using the tactic I had predicted last time, of using the truck's radio to lure Shock into a trap.

It's very unclear to me how a cave mouth wide enough to drive a truck through is a secret entrance, particularly to a well-explored cave complex.

And man, someone really smoothed out those tunnels to allow a truck to drive for miles through them!

When we do see bats in comic books, they tend to be just hideout dressing and not an actual encounter.

An electrical field on the other side of a doorway marked "enter" is fiendishly clever.

A deathtrap worthy of Houdini!

This is the second time electricity has drained Shock's electricity powers. I still don't get how that works, but I appreciate that his player wanted him to have a weakness. By Hideouts & Hoodlums rules, he doesn't need one unless he's statted as an alien, android, or merman superhero.

Shock is using wrecking things to escape this deathtrap -- and it really is a good deathtrap, because if he missed one or two wrecking rolls, he might actually have suffocated inside the concrete. But what category is Shock wrecking? A brick wall is in the cars category, but this concrete hasn't had time to harden yet. On the other hand, Shock has to move with zero room for leverage, so that penalty might negate any advantage he has from the softness of the concrete, so I would stick with cars.

Every villain's hideout needs a lever that opens trapdoors. The question is, does the trapdoor need to be placed in advance and the Hero's movement through the cave accurately mapped, or simply make him save vs. plot to avoid passing over the trapdoor by chance? The former has a certain amount of built-in suspense, as you put a map in front of the player and ask him to show his route, but it requires some prep work from the Editor in advance.

Pit traps that fall into water filled with alligators are a dime a dozen; what sets this trap apart is the waterfall in between. What purpose does the waterfall serve? Not much that I can imagine; it would not disorient the Hero and give him a penalty on his surprise roll any more than falling into the water initially would. If anything, the waterfall gives the Hero a little more time to save himself before winding up in the lower pool with the alligators.

It's usually sharks that are shown attacking each other when one is hurt (the myth of the feeding frenzy), but it's a real stretch to say that having its tail in its mouth makes it so helpless that the other gators go into a feeding frenzy. Couldn't the gator just spit his tail out anyway?

The result is the same anyway; Shock basically chickens out from the fight and exits the pool, using this so-conveniently forgotten ladder left in the pool.

Wrecking a stone wall is in the trucks category, and I would put support pillars in the same category. Now, did Shock make some kind of geology skill check first to determine those were load-bearing columns, or did he just start wrecking columns at random and get lucky?

The Villain class has a percent chance, higher per level, of being "lucky to escape" just like this.

And now we'll skip the beginning and jump further into the next story. Crash, Cork, and the Baron (now also referred to as the Three Aces) are in South America navigating what appears to be the Amazon River. Their riverboat has hard cover in the form of protective screens, but it's not enough to keep some "arrows" from getting in. And I use "arrows" because, if they're 5' long, we should really be calling them javelins.

Of course, from a modern perspective, it's difficult to side with the Three Aces here. That pipeline is going to spill crude oil into the river and pollute the environment; they are really on the wrong side of this conflict.

...Not that the natives seem interested in solving this diplomatically. The native on the far right in panel 1 seems to be drawn more like a monster than a human, betraying the racism of this story.

Hurled stones are improvised weapons and do 1-3 points of damage.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Zip Comics #1 - pt. 3

This is still Kalthar, and we've rejoined him just in time to find out where he hides his magic potions. Is invisible panther hair whiskers? I wonder why the grains even need to be tied to his ears, as weaving them into his hair (if it was longer) would have been much more sensible.

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Being normal size means Kalthar isn't buffed by any powers. In such a state, five guards are easily enough to take him down.

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Unlike many other strips, it is clear that not everyone is speaking English; Kalthar just happens to know all their languages. I honestly don't see much difference between that and having them all speak the same language, although we'll talk about this more on the next page...

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It's interesting that throwing spears at a Hero when he can move around is combat, but if he's tied up, it becomes a deathtrap, with the separate rules that apply to deathtraps (zero hit points means death instead of unconsciousness).

It seems like Kalthar is using some kind of power to summon apes, but if the apes are considered his SCMs, and he's just shouting for them, and they're near enough to hear it, isn't there a good chance they would just come anyway...?

Here's where requiring Heroes to know different languages might actually be useful in the game -- because knowing the language can form a connection with someone, and give you a bonus (+1?) to your encounter reaction roll.

Kalthar can clearly speak with animals as well. I do not want to give this ability all Heroes, and in fact brought up on this blog a long time ago that the Explorer class should get the speak with animals ability. Maybe Kalthar is multi-classed?

And last on this page is a rare example of an elephant being able to wreck through a stone wall. Elephants sure are strong!

Here, for the first time, we learn that Kalthar grows 15' tall when he's activating his powers, which seems to include Nigh-Invulnerable Skin and Multi-Attack.

This feature is War Eagles. Six am seems awful early to start playing Dawn Patrol (TSR joke there).

One of the nice things about this strip is that it includes the name of each plane at the bottom. I don't have to compare the drawings to photos and guess anymore!

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If I ever manage to write my own aerial combat rules, trying to gain control of the facing of your opponents will be a critical function in combat.

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Always make sure there is some downtime in your campaign for role-playing. Friendly rivalries are a good role-playing opportunity. Romances are a little more challenging for most roleplayers.

It seems almost too good to be coincidence that the twins like a Helen Carter, like Captain America would later like a Sharon Carter.

Again, we get the name of a plane to help with research, though that is awfully hard to read...

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A lot of the H&H rules still can apply to aerial combat, including using skills to move silently and gaining surprise before combat -- just occurring at much faster movement rates.

...and yet there still seems to be a need for specific aerial stunts that work more like they used to for the 1st edition Aviator class. Here we see the stunt Power Dive in use.

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This is also a prime example of the amount of carnage that can go on in a war-themed campaign. The goal seems to be accruing the highest possible death toll -- which is perfect for racking up XP in a campaign where finding treasure and trophies is not the goal.

Here we have a villain turn up. You can identify villains by their ability to make return appearances; so, basically, anyone who survives going up against the Heroes could be a villain. The problem here is, the twins haven't actually met or interacted with Anton Schultz, so there's no fun in making him a villain.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Speed Comics #4 - pt. 2

Oh, this is interesting, or at least I always find it interesting when a superhero has to dodge instead of just take the hit. How much damage would a stream of fiery steel do? And can we work out a guideline for assigning such damage in the future?

A 1st degree burn starts at around 111 degrees F; let's assume that is for 1 point of damage. If we double the max damage every time the temperate doubles, that gets us to 1-8 points of damage at 888 degrees, which is the damage assigned to crossing fire in the Basic rules. Since steel melts at around 2,700 degrees F, that puts us about halfway between 2-16 damage and 4-32 points of damage, which maybe we could put at 4-24 damage. Shock would still get a save vs. missiles for half damage.

Water mocassins aren't something you see in comic books every day. Hideouts & Hoodlums already has an entry for poisonous snakes. Does it need to distinguish between a water mocassin, versus a rattlesnake, or just use the same stats for both?

There's currently no power that makes someone immune to poison (though there could be!), but the 1st-level power Different Physical Structure gives a high saving throw bonus and could apply here.

Shock is buffing himself with a power that either would not have been effective against the molten steel (like Nigh-Invulnerable Skin), or simply did not have this power prepared that day (assuming this is a separate day; he did get all the way to Florida between scenes).

It's an interesting tactic to collect poisonous snakes and throw them at your opponents.  I'm not sure a Hero should be the one doing it, though. Using poison as a weapon seems to be decidedly un-heroic. Perhaps Shock made his save vs. plot to avoid genre conventions here, or maybe the Editor allowed it because he threw snakes at them to invoke a morale check, not as an attack.

The various "Race the (blank)" powers say the superhero can move at so and so speed, but it does not specify how the Hero moves at that speed. So super-fast rowing is definitely a thing that an Editor could allow.

I've never spent much time in Florida and I was totally unaware this is a thing, but apparently Florida has lots of islands around it.

This is 1940, so Shock's concern isn't that Germany might be planning an invasion; his concern is that their base being too close to the U.S. violates American neutrality.

When raiding a submarine base, your first tactic should always be to raid the torpedo dump first.

Remember, Von Kampf's  goal two pages ago was escape. He has no reason to attack the ocean liner other than just being evil and not being able to help himself. Maybe villains should have to roll for saves vs. plot as well!

I'm not sure how Shock knows there are women and children aboard the ocean liner; it seems like he's just guessing. Unless, maybe, the Editor gave him a skill check to see if he could spot passengers on deck from where he was?

This page is a little troubling, as a lot of turns have passed since Shock activated his "Race the" power (surely there were some combat turns there while raiding the base!). Unless Shock is higher in level than I think he is (and last post I discussed how Shock might have some brevet ranks), it's possible he prepared the same power twice and re-activated it.

Given how comic books work, I think Von Kampf is underestimating when he says he has a 1 in 1,000 chance of survival. If I was using the villain class from 1st edition (Supplement II: All-American), Von Kampf would be level 3, maybe even level 4 by now, with a 40-55% chance of survival under mysterious circumstances.

This is from the back-up feature Crash, Cork, and the Baron. It's a very rare instance of a water buffalo coming into play in a combat, apparently with devastating effectiveness.

What's surprisingly not effective? Panthers, as this one is taken down with a single thrown rock. Maybe it was starving and down to its last few hit points. Or, even more disturbingly, I may have to stat water buffaloes better than panthers.

Combining a mobster type with a trap -- like putting a panther at the bottom of a pit -- is a good idea, though the story is unclear if the panther was part of the trap or the trap was for the panther and he just happened to still be in it.

It's also unclear how they managed to get captured again. Maybe they could not think of a way to get out of the pit on their own.

I would like to think my players would be more suspicious of a prisoner who just happened to still have her mongoose in her pocket, and her captives either never noticed or forgot about it when they put the cobra in there. It seems like a set-up to get you to trust her, so she can turn on them later.

If you thought "mongoos" looks like a misspelling -- you're right.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)