Fight Comics #3 - pt. 2

We're going to skip the introduction and jump right into this issue's Kinks Mason story. These mermen are too strange to stat as ordinary mermen. They are called nothing but amphibians all through the story, so I'll keep that name. They don't seem all that tough; I wouldn't give them more than 1+1 Hit Dice (Kinks kicks their butts bare-handed), plus a -1 to hit because of their monocular vision. As true amphibians, they suffer no penalties for fighting out of water. Maybe they get a +1 to grappling rolls too, since it seems to be the only thing they're good at? It looks like they can be encountered in groups up to 8.

I don't have much to say here, but I like the layout of this factory. There's enough detail that one could start to fashion a map based on it.

"Huge fish?" Is Kinks not aware that looks like a dolphin or porpoise?

Kinks is immune to the bends, or just making all of his saving throws?

It's unclear if Kinks has more than one crew member on his boat. It doesn't seem to be that big, so it's possible there is just this one guy.

Wait, didn't they want to test that ray on Kinks first? I guess Plan B was to invade the surface world without running any tests on the ray yet.

Kinks' strategy might work over time in a chase scene; if not everyone makes their skill checks to increase speed, then some pilots will fall behind and create these gaps between ships.

This is also an interesting example of rayguns having limited charges. 

Spoiler - Kinks wins. So let's jump ahead to Fletcher Hawks' favorite lumberjack, Big Red McLane. We've talked before about pacing golden age scenarios and sometimes they can require a lot of patience (this is baked into Hideouts & Hoodlums in various ways, from the low chance of wandering encounters to the slow rate of healing from hit point loss). Here, we see that Big Red has to wait out in the woods for two whole days before this encounter finally happens.

The six bad guy lumberjacks -- what do I stat them as? Brigands, maybe? -- they don't fare well against Big Red despite two of them having weapons vs an unarmed attacker, and using the tactic of surrounding him to make sure at least some of them are getting an attack-from-behind bonus to hit.

This is an unusual reward for a scenario, both the flapjacks and the percentage stake in the company rescued. The latter is actually a great idea, giving the Hero(es) incentive to keep protecting the company against future threats.

The lumberjacks were careful to use facing to their advantage in the above encounter, so I share this page of Oran of the Jungle to show how Oran deliberately tosses away any benefit he would have from it by jumping down into the middle of the group of natives. It seems like the smart thing to do would have been to jump down before they reached him, so he can block them from getting to the village, or jumping down after them, so he can attack them from behind. The only benefit I can see here is if he is expecting to get the "combat machine" advantage of fighters and multiple attacks against low Hit Die mobsters, so he places himself within reach of the maximum number of opponents.

Oran tracks them all night. Just think about how dark that second panel would really be, then, compared to how clearly we see the tracks in the dirt, and try to imagine what kind of penalty you would assign to Oran's tracking skill check. Then he successfully tracks them for hours. How many skill checks should that be? I would count this time in exploration turns, which means he has to succeed at six skill checks per hour. That is a lot of lucky rolls!

Oran is overwhelmed because the natives use "heavy weapons." H&H doesn't distinguish between normal weapons and heavy weapons. I would take this simply to mean that the weapons feel heavy as they are bludgeoning him for so many points of damage.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Popular Comics #47 - pt. 2

This is the end of Between Two Fires. Last time I was talking about how hard a scenario would be if the goal was not to get in a fight in a war zone, but here we see the secret is to carry a white flag around with you.

It also helps when the Editor throws you a bone and lets you come across an unguarded motorcyle and sidecar.

Here's a new look for The Masked Pilot, and I'm liking the black domino mask more than the white handkerchief that his nose is clearly visible through.

Here's a map! It looks like a pretty believable map of an airplane factory to me, though it would be nice to see it closer.

The Masked Pilot lands his plane on the road, but you'll note how he lands at an angle to the road, drastically shortening his runway. That's an expert-level skill check -- or a burned stunt -- for sure.

It's somewhat remarkable that we're only up to January 1940, and rayguns that can stop planes from working are already a worn-out cliche.

I'm more interested in Tom, so generic a sidekick that he doesn't even seem to have a last name, but seems to be really good in a fight. Or is he? Although it appears that he's kicking that guy right into the gunman so the gun will go off in his back, the more rules-focused explanation for this is that the gunman tried shooting into a melee, which gave him a chance of hitting a random target.

This is a sound use of tactics, baiting the bad guys out into the open. And, sounder yet, The Masked Pilot uses their own weapons on them. What usually doesn't happen -- and I suspect we'll see the same this time -- is the raygun ever turning up again in future installments. Maybe it had a set number of charges and (conveniently) runs out after this adventure.

This is from Gangbusters, and it's interesting evidence that grappling damage maybe cannot cause unconsciousness, but only stuns. I had not thought of this before, but I can't actually think of examples of grappling causing long-term unconsciousness in comics I've read, and if I continue to not see examples of this, this aspect of the grappling rules might need to be changed.

The more difficult issue is, do we need game mechanics to determine when and how cars can push each other off their trajectories? We sort of already do -- the 2nd edition Basic book includes lots of examples of ramming damage for various vehicles -- and if we apply the same rule for pushing to vehicular combat -- that points of damage can be transferred 1:1 into feet moved -- then a car can push another car pretty far off its path.

This page is troubling, in that the cliche about cover is that any old object between you and a shooter can stop a bullet. I mean, if even walls serve no protection from bullets, then you might as well throw Armor Class out the window when firearms are in play. I am not prepared to make guns even more attractive to my players, so I'm going to be ignoring the evidence on this page.


Also, this story supposedly takes place in Cleveland, Ohio. You'd think Superman would show up! ;)

It's interesting to see someone shot in the hand and be told that took "all the fight out of him." Essentially, Carlson had so few hit points that one hit took him out of the fight and it didn't matter where the shot hit him to do that.

Herky sure hasn't graced this blog in a long time! The toddler with the strength of Hercules tries to wreck through a brick wall and hurts himself trying. I have actually long toyed with the notion of having failed wrecking things attempts hurt the person trying them and, while it remains not an official rule, I have used this in my personal games on occasion when a Hero keeps trying and gets four or more failures in a row.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Mystery Men Comics #6 - pt. 1

I'm pretty sure this information was all made-up in this poor man's Believe It Or Not -- but I'll be darned if these wouldn't make good plot hooks anyway...

This is The Green Mask, and it shows that even cultists tended to be handled with a racist/bigoted air in comics; the cultists are called both cultists and Hindus. And then there's that obvious anagram of Taj Mahal -- ugh...

We do see The Green Mask using a fence as one-time Supporting Cast.

Mind you, the idea of a "skull crown which gives its holder control of a vast robber tribe" seems like a potent trophy item.

Are they cultists, Hindus, robbers, or thieves? Make up your mind, story!  The cult leader is a trickster. The current entry for cultist in the Mobster Manual states that cult leaders are high priests, but that might need updating.

One of the earliest assassins in comics, or is a thug?  Now we have the original meaning of the word thug being conflated with all these other words. The assassin is overcome quickly, so don't really see what he can do -- though surprise attacks seem to be an important part of it.

I wonder, if this was a RP scenario, if the chase scene back to Carmella's home would have to be acted out...

And, speaking of badly obvious anagrams, we have El Rakif, for the word fakir.

That looks more like a spike than a knife to me, but I suppose it hurts a lot either way, and is just as terrifying. Game mechanically, I suppose the victim would get a save vs. science each turn to take half-damage from falling on the knife/spike, and the torturers don't have to worry about rolling to attack.

It's unclear if the paralyzer gun works like the Hold Person spell and affects multiple targets at once, or if he's firing multiple times and burning five charges. I like to think it's a weapon with charges, which explains why he uses it so sparingly.

Um, no...for one thing, a meteorite could not strike the Earth at such an oblique angle that it would shave the planet smooth like that; it would always produce a messy impact crater. And, really, if that map is even remotely accurate about the size of the impact site, we're talking extinction-level event here. Rex Dexter of Mars must be taking place in a post-Gamma World campaign setting.

Wow. I haven't seen anything that racist in a comic book in a while. Thank goodness it came out of a character's mouth and not the narrator!

Statting these creatures shouldn't be too hard; we have lots of slimes, oozes, jellies, and puddings to base them off of.

50 million miles from Earth means that Rex and Cinde were almost to Mars, but had to turn around and come back.

It seems odd that spaceports would be on Earth instead of in orbit. I wonder when the first off-Earth spaceport was dreamed up; I was not able to research this one.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Star Comics #16

At least I still have some primary sources to work from!

This is a gag filler called Davy Jones, but it's also a passable adventure scenario. Davy doesn't do any fighting, but the deckhand does and he seems to be remarkably high-level -- he kills all three sharks between this last panel and the next one, with his bare hands.

I would not normally recommend a supporting cast character be able to overshadow the main character, but if we considered the roles reversed and Davy the useless sidekick, this makes more sense.

One of the nice things about campaigning with a light tone is that wandering encounters don't have to make a lot of sense. A tiger on a deserted island? Sure, why not?

This is new sports genre hero Brad Donovan, worth noting here only because I think it's great that the ringleader of this crime ring is an old lady with a pet duck. I can't wait to roleplay this character!

This is from Carl Burgos' The Last Pirate (like Bill Everett, Carl also worked at Centaur before Timely).  I'm not sure why firing the cannons would make them ruined, unless the crew just doesn't know how to reload them -- or, what if all gunpowder weapons were treated like wands with charges; once they run out of charges, they're no good any more and have to be discarded? It would be another way to restrict over-reliance on guns in Hideouts & Hoodlums...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Jumbo Comics #3

We've already seen a few dragons on this blog, but this is the first moon dragon. It looks like its only pair of legs are too weak for a claw attack, but it can bite and gore with its horn. It has a hot breath, possibly a steam breath weapon. It might also be particularly vulnerable to electrical damage -- or Peter's electric ray gun is particularly powerful.

There are several elements of this page to ponder. One is how far away the noise is that Peter hears through the first door; Editors will need to play it by ear (ahem) how far sound travels in their hideouts.


Two, what is the size of an anthropomorphic animal? The scale of the panels seems to suggest that Peter Pupp is short. Does that mean that a "giant" he encounters might just be 6' tall? Or is the scimitar-wielding guard more like an ogre?


Third, what should the chance be of a gun jamming? Or, because it's a raygun, does it have charges and has just run out?

 Two cents for a newspaper, according to Spenser Steel!

Inspector Dayton's player might be tempted by that check, especially if he thinks it equals 10,000 XP. However, a distinction needs to be made in the game between money earned as a trophy and money just given to them. Ripping it up in the villain's face should still be worth 100 XP for a good deed award, though.

This is ZX-5, who came up with a rather clever, if not dangerous, way of escaping from a plane's machine guns while parachuting to safety. Of course, how safe this is depends on if the Editor rules that tree tops are soft enough to cushion some of the falling damage. There are an awful lot of sharp branches in trees, after all, usually facing upwards. I might allow, if feeling generous, a save vs. plot to land "safely" in the treetops for half-damage, or else inflict full damage -- or possibly more for being impaled on branches!


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)