Adventure Comics #39

Barry O'Neill begins having post-Fang Gow adventures, though Count Guniff seems to be cut from the same mold. Indeed, when Guniff traps O'Neill and LeGrand in a water trap, Barry would have been within his rights to go "What, again?"

Two things worth pointing out from this story: one, it is one of the first time in comic books where the hero runs out of bullets; and, two, Guniff's second death trap for O'Neill and LeGrand is a much simpler affair -- he douses them with gasoline and is going to brings a match towards them. That's a pretty serious death trap -- serious enough that I'd probably have it do 1-10 points of damage per minute to heroes until they can somehow extinguish themselves (like a save vs. science to smother the flames by stop, drop, and rolling).

Cotton Carver continues exploring his Don Dixon-like lost world environment. One thing to notice is that the hideout/dungeon Cotton is exploring is taking him down quite a few levels, by stairs and slides, but his encounters are not getting significantly more challenging. He gets to a dead end where he cannot proceed without having a special stone with him that fits into an indentation in the wall -- a classic dungeon trick.

Cotton fights a half-cat, half-man called a Watcher. Watchers must be pretty tough; this thing takes multiple arrow hits without going down, and is probably at least 3 Hit Dice. They're also Lawful because, if you defeat one and leave it alive, it agrees to repay the life-debt by serving you (or maybe Cotton just had cat treats in his pocket).

The animated statue Cotton meets seems straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. I wonder if it's a living statue, a golem, or if I'm going to be disappointed next issue by it getting explained away as ventriloquism...

In Federal Men, we learn more about how reefer works in the comic book world. It's "the drug that causes the smoker to lose all moral restraint". So, if you smoke marijuana and fail a save vs. science, you become okay with killing others (just like most of my players) and don't have to save vs. plot before you can take a life.

Jack Woods (fresh over from More Fun Comics) faces a bandit and an unusual dilemma -- a victim who isn't glad he was saved. Soon he's confronted with another dilemma much like one I recently used in my Monday night campaign. The Hero is hired to deliver something under suspicious circumstances. Does the Hero do the job and go home, investigate the sender, or investigate the receiver? It's a nice scenario because the Hero is free to choose and shouldn't be railroaded into investigating one before the other.

Steve Malone finds a cuff link. This is important because a cuff link is never mentioned in a story unless it's a clue.  If your Editor so much as says "cuff", you'd better be ready to take notes.

Steve does a lot of searching. He finds the first cuff link searching by a gong (not where you'd normally expect to find one), but finds the second one searching a bedroom where you'd expect to find one (maybe at a +1 bonus then?). There is a secret compartment hidden in a model castle and, unless the Hero has reason to suspect it's there, the chance of finding it is the same as a secret door.

Tom Brent is sailing down a jungle river, seeing no natives, but they see him and track his boat's movement. Which might not bear mentioning, except that there seems to be a lot of natives and they evade being noticed for quite some time. Maybe natives need to have a better (3 in 6?) chance of surprise?

The Skip Schuyler story has him pitching for the Yankees during a special game for charity. Which might not bear mentioning, except that it's so rare for a real baseball team to be named, and real players (Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio) cameo. Of course, in your home campaigns, whether you go with real historical figures, characters obviously based on real historical figures (with similar names, like Jim DiMaggia?), or entirely fictional characters is entirely up to you.

In Anchors Aweigh, because the Editor clearly doesn't have a new plot for them lined up, Don and Red decide to go hunt up some experience points, literally, by hunting crocodiles off the Panama Canal. They meet a wandering encounter while hunting who turns out to be a mad engineer who makes bombs (I can't decide if that qualifies him to be a mad scientist (Book II), a madman (Supplement V), or even an anarchist (Supplement I). Once the encounter has been rolled up, the Editor has to think up an excuse for the engineer to be there, so he concocts a plot on the spot for foreign powers to have hired him to blow up the Canal.

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

 

Action Comics #4 - part 2

Tex Thompson has finished his first adventure in the Sealed City, but when your players aren't ready to move on to another location, that's okay -- just have the same location threatened by new bad guys!

There are even recurring non-Heroes in this installment, with the former henchmen Scharem and Hawntem changing sides to help Tex. In my first live session Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign, my players used to do this all the time; converting hoodlums to grow their ranks.

Bob gets shown some death traps. One is a spiked slab that can be dropped on someone lying prone on an altar (though to be a proper trap, the cord holding the slab should be slowly burned through by a candle, or something).  The other is a giant magnifying glass that can burn a person tied to a chair in front of it (slow amounts of heat damage over time?).  Despite having these to choose from, Bob winds up in a 10' deep pit.

Scoop Scanlon, Five-Star Reporter, needs information, so he spends the day visiting every "hole in town", buying "drinks for bums".  I'm not partial to using game mechanics to handle information gathering, though I would use encounter reaction rolls to determine how long it takes to get a favorable contact.

A hoodlum Scoop talks to refers to four other hoodlums as "small-time punks".  Maybe I should use that term instead of wimpy hoodlums?

Zatara, Master Magician, casts a spell that lets him Locate Person (4th level spell?).   He casts his "Spirit Projection" spell again, and an Invisibility spell again. He twice casts the spell that temporarily polymorphs an item, this time a gun into a water pistol and a gun into a snake, then handcuffs.  Apparently this spell polymorph the same item into a new form each turn during the spell duration.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Action Comics #3

Superman is only three stories old at this point and, so far, his power level is holding pretty steady. We are told Superman can run "at a pace that not even the fastest auto or airplane could duplicate" and, in 1938 this is pretty much true of anyone able to move "faster than a speeding bullet" (though planes in a dive could approach bullet speeds).  This is probably the third level power Race the Bullet. If Superman is just trying to get from point A to point B with no time crunch, though, his player doesn't even really need to use a power -- it's just flavor text how he gets there.

When Superman resists the poison gas, that is the first level power Different Physical Structure.

When Superman is carrying three people all under the same arm, that's the second level power No Encumbrance.

When Superman is clearing the rubble in the mine, that could be the first level power, Raise Car -- but, since the panel specifically says demolishing the barrier, one could make an argument this is his wrecking things ability in play.

Superman exhibits some sort of super-climbing power when he climbs an elevator cable, hand over hand, while holding an unconscious man balanced over his shoulder. I neglected to give Hideouts & Hoodlums a super-climbing power, though I admitted in Supplement IV: Captains, Magicians, & Incredible Men that the game needed one.

Given the powers he has available to him, Superman is probably 4th level by this story.

Superman demonstrates his super-leaping alien ability when he vaults the wall around the mansion.

I wanted Superheroes to have to wear a costume, so I came up with the rule that they only gain XP as Superheroes and can only use their powers when in costume. In doing so I, conveniently, neglected to consider the prominent instance of Superman wrecking the wooden tunnel supports right here in this issue.

Though one could make an argument that the Superman story in Action Comics #2 was the prototype for this type of story, this issue marks the first of the Superman morality plays. This subset of Superman mythos consists of stories where there is no antagonist, but only a character who needs to learn a valuable lesson.

The Tex Thompson serial continues with Tex and Bob in the Sealed City, dealing with the Gorrah of the Sealed City. It's clear in this story that "Gorrah" is a title, but the Gorrah is starting to also look like a mad scientist-type. He has three servants who seem to be invulnerable, even to bullets to the chest, but maybe they just have really, really good Armor Class. Once Tex discovers their weak spot later (the tops of their heads), he knocks them out with a wooden club.

The central theme of the story is containment. The city is contained in a volcano. The main building in the city is a fortress within a fortress (with a dry moat and drawbridge separating the inner keep from the fortress surrounding it).  The Gorrah tries to contain Tex and Bob in a pit trap (it dumps into an underground stream, but since the water is not deep, it's unclear how lethal this trap was supposed to be). They find the true Gorrah contained in his own deathtrap (buried in sand, surrounded by red ants).

The Tex feature doesn't take itself particularly seriously, with two of the Gorrah's servants named Scharem and Hawntem. The scenario is also...well, pretty impossible. As mentioned above, the previous issue seemed to indicate that the Sealed City was inside a giant volcano, but Tex and Bob fall into an underground stream and follow it for what "seems like days", only to still emerge in the Sealed City. Is the volcano, like a TARDIS, bigger on the inside?  Or, more likely, this type of H&H adventure is an example of a stream-of-consciousness storytelling, only accidentally making any kind of sense.

"Chuck" Dawson's story includes a rare instance of the Hero tripping his opponent. Though one would think tripping would be the easiest grappling maneuver, it's neither very heroic-looking nor as visually impressive as others, so it's often ignored in the comics. Because of this, I would not give it a better chance at success than other grappling results.

In the Mythic West "Chuck" Dawson inhabits, $500 is a fair reward for a murderer.

Does this installment of Zatara, Master Magician include a clue as to where it takes place? Zatara is staying at the Hotel Hilaire. Could that be a hotel in Mont-St-Hilaire, Quebec? Of course, if Zatara is a globetrotting magic-user, why not?

Zatara uses a new spell, Spirit Form Projection, in this story. It is similar to clairvoyance, but he is seeing from the eyes of his own invisible presence. The range is very good (maybe a mile?), but anyone above 1 HD has a chance of sensing the caster observing them.  This spell could be 3rd or 4th level.

The next spell is very difficult to explain, as Zatara creates a single-pilot fighter plane with just a glance, so Tong can learn how to fly it. I highly recommend that Magic-Users not be allowed to create extremely powerful/elaborate trophy items with spells (maybe minor ones, temporarily). My suggestion is that Zatara has just made a visual illusion of a plane for Tong to study before practicing with a real plane.

Interestingly, instead of conjuring a phantasmal date, Zatara visits a female escort company to hire a date to a party. Could escort services have been more innocent back in the '30s? We may never know, because Zatara hypnotizes (Charm Person?) his date and makes her go home with no memory of how she got there (should Charm Person be allowed to make people forget things?). He also might be using Charm Person to give Tong more confidence in his piloting skills. Zatara does cast Phantasmal Force to prevent a killing, and later to convince a hoodlum that he has a cannon pointed at the Tigress' hideout. He also casts Polymorph on Tong, to turn him into a bird, and Transmute Flesh to Stone on a hoodlum.

Zatara must be at least a 9th level Magic-User at this point. I'm okay with making Magic-Users advance through levels faster, but this seems a little too fast. Or Zatara has a LOT of untold tales.

(You can read this issue at Comic Book Archives)