New Adventure Comics #20

I didn't realize when I covered the October 1937 stories that I had access to New Adventure Comics #20, so I'm covering it just a tad out of order...

This page of Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers doesn't give us much of a sense of scale for that "gigantic" rattlesnake, but this could be the first giant poisonous snake in comics that isn't from a "tall tale"-like story.

This probably won't ever become an official Hideouts & Hoodlums rule, but if you ever miss a cowboy with an attack roll that's only 1 number off -- it should shoot off his hat.

There's a lot of grappling attacks going on here on this page. In some game systems, the player of Ian Murray would have to pick a different, specific grappling move each turn, each with different game mechanics attached to it. In H&H, the Editor has more latitude and is expected to describe the fight based on the dice rolls.  This seems to be a particularly vicious fight, so both sides must be rolling very well to hit and for damage...

There might be some exceptions I would make to my above statement, like in the case of a flip/throw attack, since this attack is unusual in that it leaves the opponent prone instead of held.

It's difficult to have a realistic rate of fire for missile weapons -- even for comic book realism -- and have any kind of game balance that would make Heroes reasonably choose melee over missile weapons. Here Ian cracks off 2-3 shots per combat turn with a single-shot rifle. Two shots would be possible if he was 4th level or higher in H&H.

This issue's installment of Federal Men is dedicated to the demonstrating the value of having half-pints as your Supporting Cast Members. Heroes like Steve Carson can recruit half-pints via ham radio! Half-pints loyal to Heroes are ever-vigilant for signs of crimes, and may be willing to put themselves in danger flattening tires and tripping robbers.

A history/technology lesson here from Monastery of the Blue God for anyone who had trouble picturing what a wireless radio looked like in the 1930s. This is not as portable as an iphone...

A patient Hero is just two lucky rolls away from finding the average secret door -- one roll to find the door and the second roll to find the way to open it. The impatient Hero, though (like Nadir, Master of Magic) finds the door, and then wrecks his way through it with a pick axe (using the non-Superhero wrecking rules, unless a Superhero obviously).

If there was a contest for best feature in this issue, The Adventures of Steve Conrad just won it. Behold the glory of natives riding trained alligators.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #8 - pt. 2

Bart Regan is reminded that it pays to have a day job as a spy, as routine assignments are often plot hooks for adventure!

The key to tracking, as I've discussed here before, is often just asking the right questions. Here, Buck Marshall's player asks his Editor, "What shape are the boot prints?" to ascertain there were two assailants. But if tracking is being used as a Cowboy stunt or Mysteryman special skill, then some information should always be withhold from "ordinary" Heroes searching for tracks. "You simply can't tell," is a fair answer, no matter how long the Heroes spent searching.

Not really germane to game mechanics, but...I wonder where Slam Bradley is from?  I would have assumed Slam was from Cleveland, Ohio, just like Siegel and Shuster's next creation, Superman, will be from originally. And yet, a road trip from Cleveland to the Kentucky mountains should only take 6-7 hours, not exactly a "long night".  New York to Kentucky would be 13-14 hours, more idea of a long night's drive.

Shorty often plays the fool, but in this story he wisely uses Supporting Cast Member recruitment in order to change the encounter reaction of the hillbilly girl holding a shotgun on him.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #9

Speed Saunders sees three hobos on a park bench and gets an unexplained hunch that only one of them is suspicious. What just happened?

Well, if this was a Hideouts & Hoodlums scenario, there are a few possible explanations. One, if the Editor wants to control the scenario, he could just tell Speed's player that one of the three hobos looks suspicious. If the Editor wants to let the player control the scenario, then Speed's player decided one of the three was suspicious-looking and the Editor just went along with it. There's also the possibility that all three of them were suspicious, and each served as a different plot hook. Leaving it to chance, the Editor rolled 1 die, with a 2 in 6 chance of Speed noticing the suspicious-ness of each hobo, and he only got lucky once.

It's also hard to determine how this scene would be handled in H&H. That incorrigible prankster, Speed Saunders, could probably have defeated this slick hoodlum, hobo, and corrupt politician from under the table any number of different ways, but elected to tie all their feet together instead. It's hard to imagine how an Editor would justify making his player roll to attack in order to tie each foot to the next one. More plausible is that the Editor rolled for surprise and let it work because of a lucky surprise roll. It's also justifiable for the Editor, in this scene, to make a saving throw vs. science for each mobster to see if he fell down, or managed to keep his balance.

This is Larry Steele, who's pal happens to have a gun on him still, missed by their captors. So what's happening there, if this is a game of H&H?  A freebie from the Editor? Or did the player suggest it and the Editor allowed him a save vs. plot to have an undiscovered weapon left on him?

This is Buck Marshall, and I'm half-tempted to add a "crease the skull" rule to the game, since it seems to occur so often. It does seem that weapons can sometimes leave victims unconscious for only short periods of time. Perhaps, when someone rolls maximum damage for a weapon attack, there should be a 1 in 10 chance of it temporarily rendering the opponent unconscious for 1-6 minutes?




I'm not going to show it this time, but I'm going to tell you about the Slam Bradley pages from this issue. One page shows Slam scaling down the side of a skyscraper at a dizzying height. Originally, climbing as a special skill was assigned to the Mysteryman class, but Slam is definitely a Fighter, not a Mysteryman -- strengthening the argument for making stunts available to other classes in the next edition.

Also, Shorty is caught in decent, if not overly original trap. A pressure plate in the floor in front of an obviously-placed safe causes a cage to be dropped over that spot from above (though how the cage was concealed in the ceiling isn't clear). The cage can also more of a delaying, or inconveniencing trap, since it can simply be tilted up/lifted off.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Archives)

Famous Funnies #40

Skyroads was an aviator strip that enjoyed genre mash-ups and, here, is tackling the spy genre. The plot hook SCM here is the woman with the refreshingly unfeminine name Dagmar Collingway. Either that's her code name, or her parents were really bitter about having a daughter. 

Speaking of spy stuff, I'm tempted by this to, if I ever revisit the Spy class again, to give them a chance to know passwords -- a small percentage chance that goes up each level.

Hidden all the way down in the last panel of this page of War on Crime is a great idea that I've never seen tried before in 33 years of gaming. We all think to look for footprints on dusty floors, but why don't we think about the dust on the walls? There's the chance to leave notes written in dust on the walls, as seen here, plus looking for fingerprints.

Continuing Hairbreadth Harry's outer space adventure, we here see the trope of regressive culture in a technologically advanced setting. This way, the author/Editor can have his cake and eat it too -- hi-tech trophies like floating elevators and pneumatic cars lying around, but the people around them backwards and superstitious, and less challenging to overcome.

It's important to remember that robots in the Golden Age are purely mechanical, not electronic. You can't overload its circuits with electricity, but you can thump it on the head and knock some cogs and gears out of whack.

This huge robot is actually pretty fearsome, and a slight upgrade on the two huge robots statted in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies (the bronze and silver robots). Note the impaling spikes for hands, and the way it sprays fire out of its nose!

The Phantom Magician's new spell should be called Cold Shower. It causes a liquid to become so cold that, if spilled on a single target (living or non-living), that target will have to save vs. magic or become frozen and rendered brittle. The liquid and any container holding it are not frozen. The liquid can be splashed up to 10 ft. away. I suspect this would have to be a 3rd level spell.

Well before Bozo the Robot would debut in the comic books, this huge robot turns out to be hollow, with space for a live pilot!  In The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 2 was the only time I allowed for a robot with a living pilot (the vampiric robots of Mercury), but I think I should allow for this possibility from Earth robots too in the next edition.

Magical growth berries, just sitting on a bush waiting to be eaten? Sure, Seaweed Sam!  Remember, if you're stuck for what should happen next, just insert something random and crazy into the game and watch what happens next. You can always go back in and try to rationalize it later (or better yet, let your players come up with rationales for you!).

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Funny Pages v.2 #3

The quality of the scans I have access to from this issue is low, so it's just as well I don't have much to show from it. I did, however, want to show this -

and talk about the dangers of using this particular trope.  What's behind this is the notion that all fantasy monsters could actually be explained by real-life prehistoric creatures. Hence, a dragon is actually just a fire-breathing sauropod. The danger of using this trope should be evident to anyone who's been paying attention to the stats for dinosaurs in various Hideouts & Hoodlums products (or suggested earlier on this blog) -- dinosaurs tended to be ridiculously gigantic, which translates into Hit Dice that only very high-level Heroes should be able to handle. A fantasy dragon on that scale (like in the recent Hobbit films) would be beyond what all but the most powerful Hero-characters could handle.

It's interesting to note, also, how bird-like the pteranodons pictured here are, something which scientists are increasingly embracing about dinosaurs, yet would have been unknown in 1937...

This is from a page called It's Really a Fact! -- but you never really know if that's true with these pages.  Here, though, it's tempting to believe that we have here the average height of a building in New York City in 1937, which would surely be useful for anyone running a campaign there.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Feature Funnies #2

I had skipped issue #1 and the debut of the publisher, Quality Comics, because I didn't have anything to say about that issue; luckily, #2 is a little meatier.

This from a page of As Strange as It Seems, and I include it here because those giant double doors, at the entrance to a train tunnel -- seems like it would be a great entrance to a mid- to high-level hideout.

I occasionally feature some funny filler material when it makes me laugh; plus, this first panel is a good test for your Heroes to know if they might be dealing with a corrupt cop...

I've included part of a page of Lala Palooza, not because this is riveting drama or hilarious comedy, but as a reminder of where rich mobsters could be hiding their wealth. That vase the Superhero broke and the folding screen the Magic-User just burnt down? That was 33,000 xp worth of treasure lost.

This is from a page of Jim Swift and His Adventures (not Tom Swift, but the resemblance is surely intentional).

I include this page because -- what Hero wouldn't want to have a sloop with two hidden 4-inch guns on it? (heavy artillery was statted in Supplement I: National)


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #14

Sneaky Dan Dunn imparts some good playing tips here on how to...be sneaky!  If your Heroes need to arrange a secret rendezvous, it's best to use a public payphone, meet via taxi at a random location, take a roundabout trip via taxi, and then walk the rest of the way, all to watch for tails.  Remember, the longer the trip, the more rolls you should get for spotting someone shadowing you (the same chance as finding secret doors).

In this age of miniaturization, it's important to keep in mind how BIG a mad science machine should be in Hideouts & Hoodlums.  Towering structures, operated by levers, huge pistons, gears, noisy, mechanical contrivances -- these are the hallmarks of comic book science.

If your Heroes stumbled into a vault filled with barrels of diamonds, what would they do?  The fastest way to level up in H&H is by finding valuable treasure, but if the Heroes keep trying to sell all their found treasure to the same merchants in the same area, they'll soon find they've caused significant inflation, turning their home base into a "boom town", perhaps as bad as back during the Gold Rush.

Superheroes can wreck their way out of binding ropes, but should other Heroes be able to wriggle themselves free?  Perhaps. As the Editor, I would have to rule on how expert the tyer was with rope use, if the job had been hasty enough to have allowed for some slack, etc. I would then decide if I would allow a single attempt at a save vs. plot to determine if the Hero can wriggle free.

Should hornet stings cause points of damage? Unless there was something unusual about the hornets (like giant hornets!), I would say no, let's not put half-pint Heroes in that much danger. Instead, I would require a save vs. science, per sting, or the victim is too miserable from the pain to do anything for a full turn.


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)