Prize Comics #2 - pt. 3

One last page of Jupiter to look at. It should surprise no one that microzoric isn't a real thing. The effect of the ray is impossibly fast, but consistent with how illogical comic book science works. 

Ganging up on the mad scientists, though, that seems like pretty sound psychology. I can also understand the mad scientist, overpowered by all that magic, committing suicide to regain some control.

We get a Mass Teleport spell again, suggesting Jupiter is actually 16th level. The spell he hints at in the end is a much simpler spell-version of Sense Friend in Need. 

That looks like it might actually be a map of the Congo, showing the lost city of Tsul in the southeast corner, in the Mitumba Mountains, which actually makes sense for hiding a city. 

But the real reason I took a close look at this page was the notion of a collapsible canoe. I wasn't sure that was a thing, but apparently it is, and that would be a handy thing to put on an expanded starting equipment list at some time.    

This is interesting to me, as it seems there was a good chance Laura would have drowned had Jaxon not saved her, as if Jaxon made a save vs. science to avoid drowning and Laura didn't, but him helping her convinced the Editor to give her another save?

"Who are those strange creatures?" "Whoa, Laura, that is uncalled for and horribly racist! Those are just black men, not strange creatures! Geez!" Laura might be racist, but the artist treats them pretty decently, with un-typically realistic depictions.

A jaguar is pretty cool for a boss monster's pet.

The start of this story was pretty solid, but it got downright weird by now. The story here is that she's leading them to the secret exit only she knows about to get of Laura, so her husband can't replace her with Laura...but killing Laura would do the same thing, and sending her to walk into fire would sure accomplish that. And yet, amazingly, there really is an exit behind the ever-burning cave mouth. There should be no save for this one, running through fire automatically does damage in Hideouts & Hoodlums.

It gets weirder to find the lost city's treasure is sitting in a cave halfway to the exit instead of, you know, somewhere in the lost city. 

And then there's the matter of how they're even seeing the treasure and the snakes...in a cave, in complete darkness. I think I count nine vipers in that last panel.

It keeps coming. The twist ending of the disguised professor comes out of nowhere and throws everyone off so much that they forget all about the fact that there is still another way into the city of Tsul, so dumping the dynamite into the hole and caving in the exit caves doesn't really hide anything. And that's not even bringing up the racist depiction marring the last panel, after blacks were treated fairly normal the rest of the story.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

  

 

 

 

Wonderworld Comics #11 - pt. 4

This will be our last visit with this particular issue, and we'll kick it off with about page of "Spark" Stevens.

Although this looks like a tough fight, the gobs should be approaching 4th level by now, these spies are likely 1 or 2 HD, and the guy with the gun has as good a chance of hitting his allies as the gobs by firing into a melee.

And what does "gob" mean here? According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, "There are two theories on this one. This term first showed up in regard to sailors around 1909 and may have come from the word gobble. Reportedly, some people thought that sailors gobbled their food. The term also may come from the word gob, which means to spit, something sailors also reportedly do often."

As for "photostat files," The Photostat machine, or Photostat, was an early projection photocopier invented in 1907.

I was really expecting a better trap when that spy reaches out for the secret pedal than -- a bed coming down and smacking them in the head. Now, while I can't imagine this doing more than 1-6 points of damage (in fact, I would probably treat it as an improvised weapon that does 1-3 damage), it's possible that our gobs were just so low on hp after that fistfight that this was enough to knock them both out. Or, as a surprise attack, maybe this is considered a head blow, which comes with a chance of knockout in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums.

This is the first death-by-normal-sized-spiders deathtrap I've ever seen in a comic book -- and I have to say, it looks plenty unsettling and would surely spook a lot of players! Of course, one ordinary spider isn't going to have enough venom to cause much harm to anyone, but this is a thousand of them, so I would treat a spider swarm as a mobster with a collective Hit Die total and a save or die situation if the swarm starts all biting you at once.

Fire is probably the surest way to get rid of them; I also would have allowed the players to throw rocks at them or even pee on them to drive them off.

As the Editor, never forget about how fire causes smoke, and be liberal with assigning smoke inhalation damage if an encounter seems to be going too easy.

You're in for an unusually educational installment of K-51: Spies at War. It is, in fact, a little prescient -- the Nazis didn't manage to sink their third ship with U-boats until May 28, 1940. The world was shocked that Germany had managed to make new U-boats in secret after WWI, but they didn't have very many, not until capturing the French and Norwegian naval fleets. Now, what else this news ticker fails to get right is the number killed. 22 is purely wishful thinking; the actual death toll from the first two sank ships was over 1,200 deaths (they didn't bother going after small boats!).

Q-boats were real. Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. The British and the Germans used them in WWI, and then the U.S. started using them too in WWII.

Panic parties were a real thing, just as described here. I'm guessing depth bombs, or depth charges, really work like that too, though I've never actually seen a picture of one being launched before.

This is yet another example of a random complication from vehicular damage, this time the electrical systems shorting out.

The weirdest thing about this story is that K-51 does nothing at all the entire story, except swim away at the end so the captain doesn't get in serious trouble. Nice of him, yes, but he gets zero experience points for this "session."

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Prize Comics #1 - pt. 4

We're back with Jaxon of the Jungle, just in time to see Jaxon go up against wild pigs! These boars look small enough to be juvenile boars, which makes it even more unseemly when he starts gutting one. There's got to be better ways to earn experience points, Jaxon!

Note how Tarpe doesn't, to her credit, draw blacks as caricatures, though we see plenty of stereotypical behavior, like being superstitious, cowardly, and on a later page, prone to alcoholism.

The constrictor snake is obviously a random encounter. But is the village? Editors who are not working from detailed maps sometimes randomly generate details as significant as village placement, or even just make it all up as they go. However, since this particular village figures into the plot, it seems more likely to have been premeditated.

This page, combined with the last, suggests that fatigue can be relieved by a short nap, or rest.

That poor native guard only wanted to come in and discuss the poems of Lewis Carroll with them, and look how they treat him!

I'm generally opposed to guns in both comic books and RPGs, even though I had to include them in Hideouts & Hoodlums to emulate their consistent usage, and the fact that my players love using them. Something I am okay with guns being used for in-game is holding your enemies at bay, by creating a line of fire that is dangerous for them to cross.

Any attack on a plane can cause a complication, even if it's a flaming spear.

"Scattering" isn't a game mechanic that guns can do, directly. Rather, they failed a morale save because they were being shot at by someone they could not attack back (not a situation covered in the rules, but a common sense reason to give a morale save).

Moving on, we'll join the debut of M-11. This page interests me for several reasons. One, "Empress of Auckland" feels like such a realistic name, I wondered if there really was a ship called this. Not that I found, but I did find a plane called The Empress of Auckland, a Douglas DC-6B, that would later fly, starting in 1961!

And that $200 million in gold is not that unrealistic either, as over 140 tons of gold were transported to the U.S. in the early days of WWII. The unlikely part is it all coming on just one ship.

A villain with no fingernails on one hand is a creepy detail to use in your games!

How do you pull off someone's glove, using game mechanics? I think it would be sleight of hand, practiced as a skill. If you're just forcefully yanking it off without any attempt to go unnoticed, I might call that a basic skill check with a -1 bonus modifier, but if you were trying to pull the glove off so that the wearer doesn't notice, that would be an expert skill check.

I've talked about extenuating circumstances to add saving throws for additional penalties in addition to taking damage (like if you're leaning over a railing), as well as rolling to hit to grab something, before, and won't go into detail about them again this time.

The H&H rules do talk about using fire to create boundaries that are damaging to cross, but this is a different scenario where the fire is being used to create a boundary a vehicle won't cross. And it does make sense, if crossing the line of fire triggers a complication check, which is the way I'm still leaning towards handling damage vs. vehicles.

And the last story we're going to look at today is K the Unknown, a mysteryman in uncommonly orange long underwear.

I share this page because a good tactic for the Editor is to have mobsters doing more than just attack the Heroes; it gives the players more to react to and make decisions about during encounters. Here, K has to stay and fight or head after Terry.

K uses a smart tactic to lure a mobster outside and question him alone, rather than beard them all in their lair and then try and get answers.

Judging by what's on the table on the last panel, we might be dealing with drunken hoodlums here.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fight Comics #2 - pt. 3

If you've been worried about poor Kinks Mason and how he's going to get out of this pickle since my last post, you can see that he still has his hands full. The seaweed men turn out to be quite the challenge, with fist attacks seemingly having little effect on them. Now, it's also possible that Kink's punch just "missed" and did no damage, but to make the seaweed men more challenging, I'd like to make blunt attacks do half-damage to them.

The Navy would be shocked to learn that submarines can be run with one-man crews. Who knew? Now, I'm not sure what the minimum number of crew members required to pilot a submarine actually is, but I'm pretty sure it's higher. High enough that even an expert skill check shouldn't make this possible...

Also, we see Kinks loading a vacuum cleaner into a firing tube. Oops -- I guess that's actually supposed to be a torpedo?

Only here at the very end do we get the cool name of binding weed for this environmental threat.

Chlorophyll is super-effective on binding weed and seaweed men; more of it makes the former grow super-fast and lack of it kills the latter almost instantly.

This is Fletcher Hanks' Big Red McLane, King of the Northwoods. I include it because fighting fires sometimes comes up in scenarios and it's good to know how wide you need to dig your trenches to keep a forest fire from spreading.

Red is quite the high-kicker! I'm not sure, though, if using his feet should really give him any advantage at disarming opponents.

Heavyweights might qualify for a mobster entry, but I already have one for boxers in the Mobster Manual (it's coming -- someday!). Perhaps a note about heavyweights in their entry would suffice, rather than their own entry. Heavyweights might have +1 hit point and do +1 damage punching.

The term "palooka" predates the character Joe Palooka by at least a decade.

This is Oran of the Jungle. Oran is still a bizarre character, combining the urban prize fighter with the jungle hero. What concerns me here is whether Oran should be able to drag two people at once. I've previously talked about how a drag attack would work, mechanically, like a push attack, but in reverse. It's also in the rules that, if your opponents are also unarmed, you can make two unarmed attacks per turn. So yes, it is feasible to drag two opponents at once...

However, given the distance involved here, and that Oran needs to drag them over obstacles (the ropes), I might rule that Oran has to also succeed at grappling checks first, to make sure he can hold them long enough to drag them that far.

This is Terry O'Brien, Gang Smasher, though you wouldn't know he was a gang smasher since he seems to be a fairly ordinary boxer here.

There's something interesting in here, about how the Killer gains the upper hand by "craftily clinching" with Terry. For the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules to reflect this, there would need to be a space rule, where weapons need a minimum amount of space to be effective, allowing opponents to close into that space. It does require more preciseness to combat than H&H normally requires (even facing is rarely considered, except for back attacks). If you close so tight that your opponent can't get in a cross, can you only jab (a punch with a shorter space, but does lower damage?).

If we did institute this rule, we'd have to consider how to counter it. Does your opponent have to use the rest of his turn taking a 5' step back? 

This is "Strut" Warren of the U.S. Marines. Klaus Nordling is the artist and I enjoy his cartoony style here.

Here he battles a sumo wrestler, who I may need to stat as a mobster type. It hurts to punch a sumo wrestler (1 point of damage to self?), but other forms of unarmed combat, like kicking, work fine. In fact, sumos might be extra vulnerable to kicking (+1 damage?).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Top-Notch Comics #3 - pt. 2

We'll continue today with  Dick Storm - and, yes, I still think that's funny.

Speaking of names...considering how important Kang the Conqueror is going to be for Marvel Comics in 24 years, it's interesting to see the first use of "K'ang" in a comic book.

Dick tries to trick/bluff K'ang, but K'ang isn't buying it; K'ang may have made a save vs. plot here, which I think is a more appropriate mechanic than a skill check to persuade someone. Of course, the Editor can always disregard mechanics and rule on persuasion based on role-playing skill.

Six-to-one odds is too great for Dick.

It's an unusual variant on the "get the guard to rush into your cell strategy," choking the woman in the cell with you, and there's a certain amount of extra danger here if the guard doesn't fall for it soon enough.

Dick is also really trusting of this woman who just happened to be in the same cell with him. If it was me, I would worry that she was a plant, put in there to pump me for information.

Moving on, this is Bob Phantom (another character who's name I often make fun of).

There's an unusual quality to this story where Bob doesn't seem to be an actual character in it, but is just turning up, Phantom Stranger-like, and warning the bad guys about the decisions they are making.

And he's clearly using the spell Poof! to do it.

It really looks like Bob is catching the bullet in his mouth, but the caption tells me he is blowing the bullet back. That seems too powerful for Gust of Wind. It's more likely the power Turn Gun on Bad Guy, but that's a 4th level spell, and we only need to use that if there was really a good chance of the mobster being hit by it. Or, this could just be flavor text explaining how the bullet missed Bob at such short range.

Walls of fire are very hard to get through. Just passing through fire is going to do damage, which should vary based on the size and intensity of the fire. At the low end is jumping through a campfire, which would do maybe 1 point of damage. At the high end is the magic-user spell Wall of Fire which does...well, I don't have my books handy, but I believe it's a lot of damage. Walking through a line of burning kerosene would likely do 1-8 points of damage. Walking through the inferno of a burning oil field, that seems like it would be more like the spell.

Bikini cut, Bob? Really?

Speaking of intensity, starting a cyclone is pretty intense. The weight of a shack is way beyond the lift capacity of a Telekinesis spell, so that's not what Bob is using. Maybe

Control Weather? Or we need a new power or spell for Create Cyclone.

Now we're moving on to our next feature, Stacey Knight, M. D. Here we see the benefit of keeping a sedative and syringe with you.

It seems a lot less risky a tactic than jumping out a third story window to grapple someone below you. For one thing, I wouldn't even allow the jumping and the grappling on the same turn; you can jump and try to land on the mobster to half your falling damage (and give him full damage) and then on the following turn begin grappling.

I would also not combine attacks with wrecking; you can hit the mobster with the gun or you can try to break the gun, but not both at the same time.

Now, the main reason I would not allow these things is that, in a group setting, you need to leave things for the other players to do. If this was solo play, I might be more lenient on combining effects.

I'm including this page of Wings Johnson of the Air Patrol because I want to remind players to always know where the exits are, and be prepared to use non-traditional exits. And, a note to Editors, include more things like laundry chutes in your game. Vertical transportation keeps your players thinking in three dimensions.

The 2nd edition basic book has suggestions for ramming damage with different vehicle types, and both editions of Hideouts & Hoodlums have rules for wrecking things. But what about when you want to ram a conning tower with your plane to wreck it? A good rule of thumb is that, for every 10 points of damage the vehicle ramming can do (not necessarily what you roll for damage), assign 1 level in superhero for wrecking.

It seems really implausible that your nemesis just happens to be on the first submarine you crash into in that entire theater of war, but if you want to get your story moving along sometimes...

I'm not going to bother talking about the "knock out the guard and steal his uniform" tactic again, but returning to the same building you just escaped from to hide is certainly an interesting tactic.

I have a feeling that, despite how poor Wings thinks his German is, that he would understand whatever the commandant tells him to do.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Tip Top Comics #12, 17

Racing hydroplanes are trophy items in Hideouts & Hoodlums, but this would have been a good illustration for one, had I seen it sooner.

This is the second time Bill's tactics involve fire. Are you a pyro, Bill? A ring of fire could force animals to make morale saves to go through it, which would still do damage to them.

Don't mess with Indian medicine men (shamen would be the more appropriate term). Control Weather is a 7th level spell, so that magic-user is at least 13th level! Unless it was just a coincidence, of course...

 Outdoor snow is treacherous terrain, full of (snow-)covered pit traps.

Now we're going to jump into issue #17 (Sept. 1937), and this is also the debut of Jim Hardy on this blog. Those hoodlums in the bottom right hand corner have two suggestions for good places to look for hidden treasure. The wall safe concealed behind the painting is so cliche, but buried in the shed is someplace to remember.

I continue to be surprised by how often cowboys climb, and it's what convinced me early on that cowboys should just be mysterymen.

Barrels of gunpowder can wreck an entire building; it looks like the truck category to me. And, yes, sometimes the Editor just has to wing which category to use for wrecking things, despite there being a fair amount of examples listed.

I included this strip because I wanted to highlight how, in a H&H campaign, treasure could be "buried" around you wherever you go. Not quite at Zelda-level, where you might get a gem for every blade of grass you cut, but still...it never hurts to search around.

I'm intrigued by these toy people as a sort of intelligent golem (or would living statues be closer?). Billy punches one out easily, so they can't be tough, right? Only, what level would Billy be as a magic-user? 2nd level? So maybe the toy people are 1+1 HD.

No strange monsters this time in Peter Pat, though we see our madman is so mad -- he has no clothes! We also see how treasure can be used as a lure to make Heroes move towards traps, and sometimes it pays to have a trigger -- even if it's a big obvious lever -- in the room so the trap can be activated manually. Often, it's best to let the players' curiosity get the better of them and have them activate the traps themselves!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Thrilling Comics #1 - pt. 1

Ouch, my eyes! I haven't had to look at a scan from fiche in a while.

Anyway, this is the first Dr. Strange in comics, and you'll notice he's more Superman than Master of the Mystic Arts.

Adventure begins quickly for Dr. Strange, as he's just walking along and hears a scream.

Here we have an example of a head blow not knocking out a Hero.

It's unclear what the villain is doing here. Turning invisible? Most players would want to continue trying to attack, but the Editor, perhaps insisting on a more realistic reaction, required a save vs. plot or be too shocked to act for 1 turn, which seems to have happened here.

The superhero power Leap I is in clear evidence here, but it gets sketchier once the shooting starts. It's unlikely that Strange can take a hail of bullets at 1st level, but if he's activated a second, buffing power like Nigh-Invulnerable Skin, then he probably has at least one brevet rank. And then again, the average gangster can't shoot that many times with even a tommy gun, so maybe Strange could take that damage and just be "sorely wounded."

Virginia performs first aid, restoring 1 hp to Dr. Strange. It's unclear if he can't perform first aid on himself, or if he accepts her offer just out of politeness.

The delta ray is an unusually powerful weapon because it kills and it wrecks things, as if at least a level 5 superhero. Of course, for now, it's only a MacGuffin; the danger is only if the Heroes get their hands on it.

I thought panel 4 was unusual enough to warrant sharing. "Carson Manor" isn't written on the card, but is printed as if it was a business card. Yet we'll find out on the next page that Carson Manor is a haunted house. So I wonder what the history is there; is Carson Manor such a well-known haunted house that it serves as a local tourist attraction?

On this page we finally learn what gives Dr. Strange his strength and leaping abilities, but we also learn that superheroes need a self-healing ability. I have toyed with the notion before and, while it didn't make it into the 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums Basic rulebook, it will surely be in the Heroes Handbook.

The manor's foyer looks suspiciously like a storeroom, or is being used as a storeroom. The mobsters inside smartly keep a pair of lookouts by the entrance (and, one could presume, by every entrance around the manor).

Another example of a superhero forgetting to take defensive buffs and going down quickly.

A possible problem with how the superhero class works: wrecking things is supposed to have no duration, so Strange shouldn't need a new dose of Alosun. Of course, it is also possible that Strange's player just keeps blowing his wrecking things rolls, and joked about needing an extra dose of Alosun to charge his dice. Sure enough, the player easily makes the very next roll (possibly getting double 6's, with those results).

Crashing upwards through a ceiling could be as easy as wrecking robots, if Strange also has a Leap power engaged.

Panel 2 is difficult; it looks like Strange is grappling four opponents at once and no power currently allows this. There might need to be a level 2 power called Step Right Up, Boys! that lets you grapple up to four times per turn.

Strange sure took his sweet time activating his Invulnerability power. This also tells us that Strange has at least five brevet ranks.

That leap would have done 3-18 points of damage without either his Leap or Invulnerability power still engaged.

It does not normally work this way that one's clothes catch on fire in 1 turn, and then the body takes damage in the following turn. More likely, Virginia did take fire damage, but only 1 point.

Shielding Virginia, or taking damage for another target, is something I struggle with. On one side, it's very super-heroic. On the other side, if meta-gamed it could really change how combat plays out ("How many hp do you have left? 3? I've got 7, I'll take that hit instead").  

There is precedent on this blog for using others to absorb falling damage (if you land on them), which is mechanically the same as absorbing car-rolling damage. 

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)