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.)

Silver Streak Comics #3 - pt. 1

With this issue, Silver Streak Comics finally gets its own feature called Silver Streak! Doubly important, this serves as a long origin story for the superhero Silver Streak, so long that we never see him in costume yet in this installment -- making this the longest origin story for a superhero published so far.

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Okay, Hideouts & Hoodlums hat on...it's hard to take this giant fly seriously. Besides looking seriously cartoony, I prefer to cap my giant animals at 8x normal size, which would put a giant fly at less than 1 hit point. Further weirdness comes in this fly's special features, like a ...breakaway proboscis that can impale people...?

What the swami does is the equivalent of a D&D campaign where a powerful wizard puts a Geas spell on the entire party and makes them go on his quest for him. Nobody likes that. Still, in this instance, it also explains how Silver Streak gets his powers.

Speaking of weird features on this giant fly...tentacles? Where? Aren't those just legs?

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Oh dear...swamis are Hindus, not Muslims, so it seems unlikely this one would be invoking Allah by name. It's also pretty unclear how being hypnotized kept our Hero from dying in the car crash.

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Back to gaming talk; can a target hurl away two men trying to grapple him at the same time? Here we have to consider the impact of this on the combat. If combat is being affected, then we should be careful not to invoke "flavor text" on this, and it does appear that, since the two men are knocked prone, this allows Silver Streak to leave the area without them getting free back attacks on him as he flees.

On the other hand, this could be appropriate flavor text if SS is buffed with the Untackleable power.

It's hard to imagine the police are baffled without a clue, when a fly the size of a car must keep flying away from the scene of each crime. How hard can that be to follow?

This may be the earliest example in a comic of the main villain not even being mentioned until the second half of the story. Of course, because this is a golden age comic, the villain is a mad scientist, but a mad zoologist is a new twist.

$20 million dollars is one of the steeper ransoms we've found in these early comics.

Silver Streak has not really demonstrated any traditional superpowers yet (though Feign Death appears to be one of them earlier), but here he clearly uses the Leap I power to reach the giant fly and grapple it.

I'm going to include giant flies now in the Mobster Manual...but am going to cap them at 3 Hit Dice.

No, he's not Bruce Wayne or even John Wayne, but Bill Wayne, and this is one of the earliest cowboys to have a vigilante name not itself a blatant rip-off of The Lone Ranger.

Mesa Bluff seems like there should be a real Mesa Bluff out there somewhere, but while I could find examples of streets and neighborhoods called that, I couldn't find that there is any real town called Mesa Bluff anywhere. 

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Bill is clearly getting two attacks in the same turn with his guns here. I've previously ruled out getting a bonus attack by carrying a second weapon, which means Bill must be at least a level 3 cowboy/fighter to get that many shots with single-shot firearms. Since Bill Wayne is debuting in this story and should not be third level yet, this could be our first confirmed instance of a fighter class getting (two) brevet ranks.

Lastly, let's revisit the curious intersection of physics and game mechanics. If you throw yourself down a flight of stairs at a group of people all bunched up together, can you defy the "one attack per turn" guideline for H&H combat? I would still be inclined to say no...and yet...I have previously encouraged Editors to go easy on their players in solo play and make more allowances than the rulebooks suggest. And, in this case, the Editor could offset the bonus with some serious repercussions. For example, the player might get only one chance to hit the whole group, and a miss means taking 1 point of damage on the stairs, plus lying prone for that turn, plus losing initiative on the following turn. A player would have to think about how lucky he was feeling before making that call...

Or, this could just be an example of a third-level fighter getting to use the combat machine special ability, giving him three attacks in combat against non-classed opponents.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Wonder Comics - pt. 2

Shorty Shortcake is probably of the fighter class, but outsmarts his opponents instead of fighting them as much as possible. In Supplement II, I talked about awarding a big XP bonus for finishing a scenario without resorting to violence.

This is Shorty's...girlfriend? Suzy wants help finding Shorty, but instead of going to the police, she seeks out a wealthy philanthropist. Are you really looking to find Shorty, Suzy, or are you just looking to move up while Shorty is out of the picture?

There's nothing wrong with heroes asking for help from non-hero characters -- so long as it makes sense to do so -- and it provides opportunity to recruit supporting cast members.

Also, does kleptomaniac need to be a new mobster type? A Lawful thief with a pick pockets skill?

This is Patty O'Day. Her scenario is to get on a boat, take pictures, and get off the boat. I don't think her player needed to roll a single die for this scenario and the only reason I mention it at all is...that fellow on the boat looks suspiciously like Quality Comics' Black X. Could this be an unofficial crossover?

Dan Barrister is the fighter and Dr. Fung, although a "master sleuth", seems more like his scientist partner.

The locale is interesting -- a rock cliff surrounding a lost oasis in the Gobi Desert, the oasis filled with a petrified forest, and a crumbling fortress/monastery.

And then there's the dart rifle - a silent weapon with the range of a rifle (but probably reduced damage, maybe 1d6-1?).

More hideout. I like the dry moat, drawbridge, the really high wall walk (20'? More?), the "misshapen flagstones of the foliage-covered court", the narrow, barred windows, and the audience chamber with its 10' high throne dais and gong -- just sumptuous detail for a hideout crawl.

It's time to discuss -- no, not how tall Dan's head is in that third panel, but what the "half humans"/"monster men" are.  They talk, they only look like ugly people, but on the previous page Li Wang explained that he they had no minds of their own. I suspect these would be statted as zombies (hi-tech zombies).

Dr. Fung seems to have a new ability for the scientist class, though one I maybe should have thought of sooner myself -- the ability to wreck labs.

Li Wang creates an explosive twice as powerful as anything else...because mad scientists love having super-volatile stuff around them for kicks.

"Spark" Stevens of the Navy is another pre-Batman feature by Bob Kane. That a U.S. destroyer is captured by mobsters makes the heinous hideouts feature in The Trophy Case v. 2 #9 that much more believable.

I've tackled the subject of throwing a man into a group of other men to hurt them all before. I believe, last time, I said H&H would not support such unfair tactics. But did I remember the "combat machine" ability of fighters?  Maybe Chuck is really fifth level and attacking all five less-than-one-hit-die opponents all at once?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

New Adventure Comics #28 - part 1

We're still a bit ahead from this title headlining with the Sandman, so this issue begins with "Anchors Aweigh", a brand new Don Winslow clone (the lead character's name is even Don Kerry!).

Like I observed recently, aviator stunts seem to be something every comic book character masters as soon as they sit in a plane. Here, we see the stunt Power Dive, as described in The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 7. 

Although Hideouts & Hoodlums is the Golden Age Comic Book Roleplaying Game, Editors need not limit themselves to American comic books, or even comic books for inspiration. The "Anchors Aweigh" story seems inspired by the Tintin comic strip adventure "The Crab with the Golden Claws", combined with the Raymond Chandler story "Nevada Gas".

Tom Brent is also a new character debuting this issue. He's a sailor; I have not felt sailors need their own character class yet. The ones I've read so far are either Fighters or (in Popeye's case) Superheroes. Tom Brent is definitely of the Fighter persuasion. The mood of the story is dark, with heroin smugglers being the villains, and a stash of morphine being used to frame Tom. It is also unusual for taking place in Marseilles, France, rather than the U.S. Note that France won't be conquered for almost another two years.

It's only 1938 and it's already been too long since Steve Carson of Federal Men has had a cool adventure. This serial, vs. The Cobra, might change that. We've already got a hideout set-up here, with a concealed trapdoor in the back room of a flower shop leading into a deep shaft with ladder rungs in the wall. At the bottom is a trapped metal door -- touch it and you're shocked unconscious (or forced to save vs. science to avoid being stunned).

A death trap awaits Steve in the lair of the master criminal -- a fight with a large cobra that is not only a poisonous snake but, curiously, a constrictor snake as well (maybe it's a mutant!).  How do we know it's a death trap instead of a normal combat? Because of its placement in the storyline (after Steve is powerless in The Cobra's clutches).

Nadir, Master of Magic continues to go around not using magic.  Sure, he claims he's giving a lady he rescued a potion to dispel the hypnotism placed on her, but I can't help but think that "potion" is really just a bit of brandy, or maybe even just a strong coffee. He does, however, seem to have a magic Ring of Evil Detection and he uses the Crystal Ball again he used in his first appearance.

Captain Desmo continues to vex me; the man fights way beyond the abilities of someone who should, at this stage, only be a first level Fighter. He exhibits the special ability of "combat machine" (multiple attacks vs. weak foes) as a Fighter of at least third level, and I can't easily guess how big a penalty to the die roll to assign to not only a disarming shot, but one that shatters a dagger with the bullet.

In this story, Desmo picks up his first supporting cast sidekick, Brooklyn-born Gabby McGuire, who is probably a first-level Fighter. Desmo also happens to know a Hindu mystic named Seyah Ashear, but Seyah is more of a Detective than a Magic-User, using clues to induce information for Desmo, rather than divination spells. Knowing a Detective as a Supporting Cast Member is very handy for players who aren't good at picking up on clues on their own.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)