Champion Comics #4 - pt. 3

This is from Blazing Scarab and...what's this? An immortal league of assassins? How can this not be where the idea for Batman nemesis Ra's al-Ghul came from?

The immortal city of Baracs, full of immortal assassins, is just begging for a Hideouts & Hoodlums adventure module. Who's going to volunteer to write it for me?

I'm also curious about this condition where, if they lose their heart or their brain, they live on, but lost their "identity" (all levels in their class/es lost?), and become only half-visible.

Here's an interesting description of how the magic portal to Baracs works, and why humans (and human-like races, I suppose) are the only ones who can cross through the portal.

This is Jungleman, who has a ridiculously large army of animals working for him, but what really gets me is that crazy spelling of orangutan. Orang-outang? Did someone not have a dictionary handy, or was the spelling that non-standardized by 1940?

A rare instance of a Hero using a blowgun as a weapon. The implication seems to be that the dart is poisoned, but we're never actually told that. Maybe he's just trying to distract the chief?

I'm amused that Louise immediately thanks Jungleman, but look how hard those monkeys have to work to take down the pygmies! And without knives, no less!

The death toll of animals in this feature is pretty staggering. Tigers, snakes -- they all bite it trying to protect Jungleman.

"Monkey-like people" seems to stink of racism a bit. I hope the gibbon men in H&H don't have the same odor...

This is Revenge of the Zombies. We're treated to a pretty standard pit trap (nice that there's a ladder at the bottom!), and an adventuring party that wisely puts their best fighters in the lead, the light source in the second rank, and keep to their marching order.

Giant death head moths are now definitely going into the AH&H Mobster Manual. I guess under D? They'll probably have only 1 hit point, and can only drain 1 hp, but when encountered by dozens or a hundred at a time, would be quite deadly.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #7 - pt. 2

Moving on, this is Archie O'Toole. Reducing machines that make you shrink is a very old joke, and one that should be in the trophy section of Hideouts & Hoodlums.

Also worth pointing out is the joke concept in this story that all kings belong to a union to which they have to pay dues. There's an unusual concept for a campaign in that, I think.

This is Clip Chance at Cliffside, a very boring member of the sports genre that I almost never cite here, but today I share this page to point out three things. 1) If you ever see red clay, it's a clue as to where it came from. 2) Abandoned mines are perfect hideouts for gamblers. 3) Clip suspects the gamblers are in that dark mine, so he heads straight there without so much as a flashlight...

Don't play like Clip.

If Smash Comics didn't already have Will Eisner work in it, Vernon Henkel's Wings Wendall would look much more impressive. Here, as with Eisner's Espionage, Vernon did not shy away from making very clear anti-Nazi messages.

But what I'm more interested in is that the bad guys have the "more powerful car," and what the best way is to have a game mechanic reflect that. Honestly, I've been struggling with this since the very beginning. Is a Car +1 going to move faster? Provide a better AC to the driver/passengers? If I ever decide to assign hit points to cars (a notion I've toyed with in the past), does it get more hp? There are just too many variables to a car, or should a "+1" reflect a slight increase to all of them...?

This sort of thing happens in my H&H campaigns all the time. Okay, maybe not an Army Air Forces bomber, but my players will show up with crazy-heavy armament to face bad guys I just gave a pistol to defend themselves with.

This is Philpot Veep, another feature we don't visit often. This is a goofy feature with some goofy perspective problems going on here, but I share it because fake babies may be a mobstertype we need to consider adding. Or would this just be a half-pint? He's even shorter than most children, but he seems unusually tough for his size, but would that still make him 1/2 HD...?

Unless I've forgotten something, I don't think we ever had a home town for Invisible Hood before, but now we have Glenport. I wish I could find a real Glenport so we could pin down what state this takes place in. Is Glenport our first fictional city for a superhero?

There wasn't much suspense to this mystery about the disappearing safes, but we do get to see a group of bad guys all wearing asbestos suits.

"One week later"? That's a long time for a stakeout, particularly in a superhero story.

What kind of drug is IH giving to that driver??

Also, instead of acetylene torches, the bad guys have "fire-pistols." Which I'd stat the same anyway.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Jungle Comics #1 - pt. 4

When Wambi's elephant can't solve all his problems for him, he has to recruit a whole army to help. But at least he gets a reward in the end for alerting them. He may have got little or none of the XP from the fights he avoids, but at least his reward XP is all his. There are surprisingly few examples of rewards being given in golden age comics so far, so it was good to see this one. And now Wambi has a silver sword he can fight werewolves with!

This whole comic book was pretty racist, but White Hunters of the African Safari takes it up to 11. If you can muscle through it, there's some things worth pointing out here.

First, a rare example of lighting conditions affecting missile fire (or at least Slim thinks it will have an effect).

The girl in the background is going to be offering running commentary on what she feels are each of the white hunters' best attributes. Here she comments on his Charisma. 

Here she comments on how brave Buck is. That's a hard thing to quantify for hero characters, because they aren't subject to morale saves like non-hero characters are. But what really interests me is how "Rex is so manly." There is no game mechanic for manliness -- and yet, it would make a lot of golden age sense if there was. Now I just need to give more thought to what a manliness attribute would be like and what it would give you a bonus for.

Also of interest here is a rare instance of camping for the night and setting up watches -- staples in fantasy games, but a rare sighting in comics.

The wandering encounter with crocodiles is surprisingly glossed over as nothing. What level are these guys?

This is Simba, King of the Beasts, which is funny because of the Lion King connection. It's not a bad story -- maybe even the best from this issue -- but I call your attention to this page because of how experience gives Simba the ability to avoid damage. I think that's one of the best explanations I've ever seen for how hit points work; they are not a quantification of toughness, but a measure of one's ability to avoid getting hurt.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

The Funnies #35

According to The Crime Busters, it's possible to take the hinges off a vault door with a pocket knife, though it will take you hours to do it.

Ew, John Carter -- did you have to cut off his whole head? Cutting off heads is not so easily done in Hideouts & Hoodlums. Perhaps John has his hands on a magic vorpal sword. Or it's something about how strong John is in this environment that lets him do that. But would that make it possible for superheroes to decapitate on Earth, then? I'm not comfortable with this precedent...

A Hero capable of super-leaping, like a superhero on Earth or a fighter on Barsoom, can apparently leap long distances in a downward direction. Should that mean he can fall long distances safely? I had such a precedent for awhile in my Sundays at Home campaign, but I don't care for it. There should be a difference between a controlled fall and an uncontrolled fall. Could a super-leaper take less damage from falling, though?  I'm still thinking about that one...

Atomic cartridges? They were just called radium rifles in the original books. I wonder why they changed it here. "Atomic cartridges" seems like there should be a mushroom cloud with every shot, which is definitely not the case here. Maybe they do 2-12 points of damage per shot, though...?

Cerebus the Aardvaark??

Yeah, I didn't have anything else to say about this one. I'm not statting mosquito swarms...

Lost Temple of the Swinks should become a H&H adventure module somewhere down the line. But it does bring up for me, the issue of illumination.

Wash isn't carrying so much as a lit match to see by, but he seems to be able to see these spacious chambers quite clearly. Is it a mix of the outside light coming in through that small hole, combined with his eyes adjusting to the dark? Should dim light not be an issue in H&H?

I'm okay with the diamond eyes on the statues, but when there's a Fibber McGee closet-full of pearls, I think the Editor is being way too generous with treasure.

Wash seems to just happen to notice tracks on this page, but tracking in H&H is an active skill, not a passive skill.

But, yeah, I'm mainly just sharing these pages because it's Captain Easy...

This is from The Wonderland of Oz and I'm wondering...am I going to have to break down and finally put gnomes in H&H?

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Smash Comics #2 - pt. 2

My first draft of Hideouts & Hoodlums' new grappling rules specified it was for one-on-one combat only, but I'll be adding a new paragraph on assigning modifiers if multiple grapplers all attempt against the same target, as they do on poor Abdul the Arab here.

The "Sultan" is not lucky with women. Interestingly, King Faisal II, the closest thing to a real world analog to this character, never married and had to call off two engagements.

Vernon Henkel had a good grasp on foreign politics. There was considerable unrest in Iraq over the king allowing British occupation.

First of all, that executioner's outfit would look great on a supervillain. Secondly -- unless Hassan is a superhero -- I seriously doubt he can chop through chains with a sword in one chop. "Hassan chop!" indeed!

Now, I'm about to back up and show you the first page of this story, because I had not shared it yesterday, and I want you to see what Abdul's mission was.

It was simple reconnaissance you were supposed to be doing, Abdul! But here you are, mowing down the king's men with a machine gun, until your tribal leader father shows up to take over. Now, in real life, the tribes were anti-British while the monarchy was pro-British, but Vernon has reversed allegiances in this story. So...this is a win, and all those deaths are justified, because the pro-British side won? This is from the same creator who had Gallant Knight hacking down saracens recently. Anything you want to tell us about your personal biases, Vernon...?

This is Hugh Hazzard and His Iron Man. Science, physics in particular, is only as important in a H&H story as you and your players need it to be for suspension of disbelief (and maybe to force some save vs. science rolls!). If you want a robot to be able to fly simply by having a beanie hat and propeller on its head -- then go for it!

I've written before about how there can be no hard and fast mechanic for reputation, but I've also written how it doesn't take much to qualify as a disguise in comic books/H&H. So, just saying you're someone else is a type of disguise, and a successful save vs. plot would see through that and mean that someone did recognize you -- I mean Hugh by reputation.

And as for shooting with two guns, I don't intend for that to give you any kind of game mechanic bonus. Hugh is getting the same number of attacks he would normally; carrying two guns is just flavor text.

How far Hugh has fallen, that he's already gone from fighting mad scientists with robots to hoodlums with an antique biplane.

We also get a sense here that Hugh's remote control over the robot has a pretty long range (a mile or more?).

Captain Cook of Scotland Yard reminds me about the penalty I had for hitting humans in dim light in 1st ed. It was a tough rule to enforce -- when was light dim enough?  So I ditched the rule. If you can see, you can attack at no penalty. If it's too dark to see, then you get -4 to hit. But this one panel makes me think the dim light rule had some merit. I mean -- the thief is clearly silhouetted by the light from the window, but Cook still misses because the room is dark.

It makes more sense to me -- and in fact would be a sign of a good player (and/or a Lawful Hero) in my book -- for Cook not to want a shoot out in a street with pedestrians around.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Adventure Comics #35

In this installment of Barry O'Neill, Barry dives underwater and the bad guys assume he's dead because he stayed under so long. Villains seem to be terrible at underestimating how long Heroes can stay underwater -- so much so that they should have to save vs. plot to avoid making this cliched mistake.

Doctors are treated as a Lawful mobster-type in Supplement V: Big Bang because they have special abilities in comics -- one found here is the ability to quickly concoct antidotes. Dr. Bonfil crafts an antidote for Fang Gow's hypnosis drug in less than a day.

Shades of the Savage Land!  Cotton Carver's adventures debut in this issue. When forced to land on Antarctica, Cotton is saved by a group of people from the lost world of Mayala, a tropical valley long ago found and settled by both the Mayans and Incas (who are rival tribes here now). Though the natives have seen gunpowder weapons before, they have none of their own and Cotton's six-shooters make him a fearsome foe for the natives (and awfully handy for a solo campaign!).

It is unclear how Mayala can only be entered by swimming underwater, if the valley is open to the sky -- unless it is assumed that Mayala is a "hollow world" setting like Pellucidar.

Sleeping gas takes out an entire bank-full of people in this installment of Federal Men. This will be neither the first nor the last instance of sleeping gas being shown to be much more effective in the comics than it is in real life. The amnesia-suffering Steve Carson seems to have no trouble acquiring this super-sleeping gas, as well as gas masks for his gang, despite the absence of such things from the starting equipment list. Though perhaps we are just not privy to the separate adventure Steve went on to find these trophy items.

In Dale Daring, Don and Dale seek shelter in a cave from an approaching storm. The weird thing about storms is that, in real life, everyone rushes out of them, but there is little in-game reason to do so. Is your Hero going to take damage from getting wet? Is the Editor going to pull out all the stops on that storm and start pummeling Heroes with lightning strikes? Probably neither -- and yet Heroes should have to save vs. plot to resist the urge to seek shelter.

Tod Hunter becomes the second Hero in comics to suffer amnesia (since the other is Steve Carson, they both happen in the same comic book!). Maybe there needs to be a 1% chance every time someone is reduced to zero hit points and recovers of suffering temporary amnesia.

Large gorillas are strong enough to wreck things, at least against doors.

Both the Dale Daring and Rusty and His Pals installments revolve around finding something in the back of a cave -- a pile of stolen ivory and a secret door to a hidden lair respectively. It makes me think Hideouts & Hoodlums needs a random table for random cave contents.

In Rusty and His Pals, the villains have a seaplane. The villains also benefit from the Heroes lighting a fire in the cave, serving as a reminder for the Editor that any light source the Heroes rely on can be seen by mobsters some distance away (and vice versa).

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

New Adventure Comics #23

The Adventures of Steve Conrad includes, if not the first, at least one of the first dives off a balcony to swing on a chandelier in comic books. As much as a staple as this is of the action genre in general, I almost hate to attach any game mechanics to it. A roll, perhaps a save vs. science, could tell you if the jump-and-swing was carried off with aplomb or not.

Nothing says "Run for your lives!" quite like having turtles chasing you. Granted, these "army-turtles" are large in size (and look more like tortoises, really). I might be generous and assign these 2+1 HD, a 9 Move, an AC 4, and have those beaks do 1-8 damage.

Bob (from Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers) here gives us a demonstration of what constitutes a concealed door vs. a secret door.  A trap door that is covered by something that can easily be moved is a concealed door. A door in the ceiling, made to look like a riveted metal plate, is a secret door. The fact that Bob has to search for a means of opening it clinches that it is a secret door.  Concealed doors should be easier to find than secret doors.

Here, from the serial Monastery of the Blue God, is a textbook example of Heroes beating up mobsters and then searching them for loot to keep as trophies. They are so clearly excited about a star sapphire on a gold chain because it is probably worth considerably more XP than the mobsters themselves were worth.

This is from Robin Hood.  Literary adaptations will rarely be the focus of this blog, but this page brings up the interesting question: can a single arrow that does 1d6 damage kill a stag? By combat rules, unlikely. A stag, as a combatant, would have about 3 HD, 10-11 hit points on average, and do about 2-8 points of damage in a charge -- stats that should give any archer pause. However, if the archer was firing from far enough away that the stag could not possibly reach the archer soon, or the stag immediately missed a morale save and would not be fighting, the Editor could rule the stag is a noncombatant, and so the killing can be described with flavor text.

Illumination can be tricky to referee as the Editor; when you're imagining the scene, you're trying to picture everything. Dim or no illumination at the scene then requires you to filter out detail from the scene as you're describing it to the players, creating an extra step for you to keep track of.

Another thing to keep track of is the number of things that shed light that can be seen at great distances away. Here, we're reminded that even cigarettes may give your opponents away at a half-mile range.

Sandor's player asks us, "Can I have Sandor pick up a guy, toss him into a group of other guys, and knock them all down?"

As a general rule of thumb, you should not allow Fighters to make any kind of special attacks that they would gripe about you using on them. Would they complain if one mobster could knock over all the Heroes with one well-placed attack?

Note that Superheroes could buff themselves with Multi-Attack or Flurry of Blows and pull off this stunt.

As common as leopards are becoming (this is the third time I've discussed them here), they really need an entry in the mobsters section of the next edition.

Lastly, we have Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad, who encounters an unusual trap. It's a tripwire trap that sets off explosives -- but it's not meant to harm the intruders; the explosives are set off further down the tunnel, destroying any evidence there before it can be found.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Funny Picture Stories #3

Sometimes just letting the Heroes find a treasure map is all you need to kickstart a new Hideouts & Hoodlums campaign.

The Editor could leave secret door detection to the luck of the dice, since everyone has a 1 in 6 chance of finding them by random searching. It is more rewarding for the players, though, if they can puzzle out the secret doors on their own, like how adding weight to this idol height causes a stone slab to pop open over a staircase.

Even in a pre-1941 campaign, there were plenty of places around the globe for Heroes to fight in a war setting.  This is how the Chinese were fighting the Japanese invaders -- or how popular American culture envisioned them fighting the Japanese invaders -- with antique wheeled canons, machine guns, and biplanes.

The oversight of tigers not being statted for H&H was covered here.  When a tiger does react poorly to attempts to train it, it could be useful to be surrounded by SCMs or even just other animals, as Joe Brailey discovers here. A pony vs. a tiger doesn't seem like a particularly fair fight, though; I would give a pony maybe 2 Hit Dice, of the d10 variety.

A hideout can be anything from a sprawling underground complex to a small rural shack, as pictured here.  The latter, of course, will likely prove to be a challenge only to 1st-level Heroes...

Sometimes even a small hideout full of just a few hoodlums can be well-equipped, like with tear gas, gas masks, and lots of rifles (tear gas and gas masks are detailed in H&H Book II: Mobsters & Trophies).

While a big hideout, even in a rural area, might have its own electrical generator, a small rural hideout may be relying on more 'medieval' forms of illumination, like lanterns.

Red Dolan also discovers the benefit of disguising himself as a hoodlum to sneak around within the hideout.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)