Detective Comics #19 - part 2

In the adventure of Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, the bad guys have a seaplane (called an amphibious plane in Supplement III: Better Quality) at their island base. Who knows what else they have for Cosmo to loot; Cosmo does the one thing guaranteed to ruin any game session -- he turns the problem over to the authorities (in this case, the U.S. Air Corps) and then sits back and watches non-Hero characters solve the scenario for him. How boring!

In the adventure of Steve Malone, District Attorney, Steve's opponents have a smokescreen ejector in their car (as found in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies).

Steve offers a bribe for tips to help him gather information faster, feeling $100 is a good deal for valuable information.

When Steve and his supporting cast member, Jim, are about to raid a hideout and split up, Steve says he has a whistle he can use to summon Jim if he needs help. This seems like a good idea for any Heroes to have.

When the boss mobster flees to his private airplane, Steve jumps up, grabs the underside of the plane, and then clambers up into the plane.  I'm not even sure how to handle that game mechanic-wise. Sure, I suppose you could break it down into smaller components -- roll to hit the plane, save vs. plot to reach the top of the plane -- or just assign what seems like a good random chance, like a 1 in 10 chance of success.

Jerry Siegel liked to start his Slam Bradley stories with a bang and this one has Shorty walking into their shared apartment to find an ape!  An Editor can keep things moving in the campaign with random encounters, even when the Heroes are being relatively stationary. This is especially good for when the Editor doesn't know what to do next; just toss a wandering encounter at them and, hopefully, by the time the encounter is resolved you may have thought of a good reason for it to have happened (or your players will come up with something even better while they're guessing!).

Disguise works both ways; not only does a little domino mask or a pair of glasses keep people from learning the good guy's true identity, but a bad guy can disguise himself with just a fake mustache and avoid detection by Slam and Shorty.

In Africa (man, this story sure went a long way from an ape in his living room!), Slam and Shorty find a hidden city behind a waterfall, and across a chasm spanned by (of course) a rickety bridge. The city is called the City of the Ape-Men, but it seems to be a city of apes and men instead of ape-men. The tribesmen keep and control the apes and have Slam fight them with whips. How the Man in the Tall Hat controls the tribesmen, how he found them, and what he was doing in the U.S. is never explained. That the Man in the Tall Hat resembles the Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George is purely coincidental; Curious George came out in 1941!

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #19 - part 1

This issue starts with another Speed Saunders investigation, and this investigation starts off well with Speed getting a good lead to follow. Speed finds the guy who's been passing around the counterfeit money, but when he needs to find the guy printing the money Speed does what many a player of mine in the past would have done -- just wander around aimlessly and wait for me to throw them bigger clues. Here, Speed just happens to walk past a random building where he hears a printing press inside.

Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard is after a missing invisibility formula -- my first thought was that this would be a potion, but the formula seems to be instructions for working an invisibility machine that works for just 30 minutes. This deviates from the Invisibility spell, but that's okay for mad science devices.

Kent notices that a car is trailing him (keen senses/notice things check?).  He is rescued by a mysterious woman who seems suspiciously eager to help Kent.  Supporting cast members are meant to be actively recruited by the player, but Kent just shrugs and says stuff like "Sure, why not?" when she wants to go everywhere with him. This type of freebie character should not be considered supporting cast for purposes of awarding xp (which Heroes get when their players actively involve their SCMs in the scenario).

Larry Steele's new adventure starts at on an uncharted island "2000 miles due East off the coast of Brazil", which is odd because by the time you're 2,000 miles East of Brazil you're practically to Africa.

Another peculiarity -- Larry sprains his ankle in a plane crash! I'm not being facetious; specific injuries, or complications after being unconscious, are fairly rare in comic book stories. I really wanted a table of complications linked to being reduced to zero hit points in 2nd ed. Hideouts & Hoodlums, but now I'm not so sure.

There's also a really creepy backstory here about the mobsters on the island who kill a 14-year old girl's parents and keep per prisoner for the next 4 years, hoping Stockholm syndrome kicks in so she'll marry the boss mobster. More proof that you can go really dark and still be Golden Age-like.

Bart Regan and Sally of Spy are about to have the first wedding in comic book history when the service is interrupted by a new mission, and this one is...pretty silly. The all-important mission is that a woman is in town who is suspected of being a spy and Bart and Sally are the only ones who can prove she is. But...where is the time crunch here? Is the Chief secretly jealous and doesn't want Bart to have Sally?

Anyway, the lady spy has a mirrored compact she uses to powder her nose that can project invisible beams of wrecking things force, capable of smashing a brick wall (or equal to a Superhero able to wreck up to cars). This is the kind of compact super-science I expect to see Iron Man carrying in 2016 and seems oddly out of place in a Golden Age story. Of course, the item does have a drawback -- if you accidentally aim it towards your face, your face explodes (so, at least 3-18 damage as a weapon).

The Bruce Nelson story starts with a combat turn that does not go the way I normally handle combat. If one side has the drop on the other -- like the bad guy with a gun at Bruce's back -- or some other distinct advantage, I may ignore rolling for initiative. Here, Bruce somehow wins initiative despite his opponent having every advantage.

Bruce would have been killed if that coconut had not fallen on his attacker's head and knocked him out. Now, the skeptical reader might interpret this as an overly lenient Editor, but perhaps not. Perhaps the Editor had merely planned the environment in advance, considered there might be, oh, a 1 in 10 chance of a coconut falling and hitting someone on the head for, oh, 1-3 points of damage if anyone stood underneath those trees -- a sort of natural trap. Bruce's player was lucky enough that his opponent wound up under the trees first.

Once Bruce is in his plane again, we see the stunts Evasive Maneuvers, Increase Speed, and Wing Walking, and possibly a new stunt. Bruce draws attacks to himself to keep his friend descending by parachute from being attacked. Maybe it would be called Draw Fire?

We also see another complication from an injury, as Bruce loses the use of his arm that he was shot in.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Famous Funnies #50

Hard to believe we're up to issue 50 of any title already. I'm thinking, of course, from today's perspective and how few titles reach 50 issues these days!

Let's start examining this issue with Hairbreadth Harry.  Now, Harry's adventures are usually pretty dubious, and this one is no exception -- but, there are two useful points to take away from this. One, it doesn't hurt to cut open the occasional dead animal to see if it swallowed anything useful. Two, hunting dogs can be particularly useful to bring along with your Hero -- not so much for attacking, but for spotting things for the Heroes. Of course, bringing hunting dogs into a hideout puts them at risk, so weigh the pros and cons accordingly.

I've prefaced things with "I never thought I'd need to" before, but I never thought I'd need to show Big Chief Wahoo in these pages until now. Big Chief Wahoo is the Indian version of Popeye, needing to swig some moonshine (or whatever that is) to get super-strong. As such, he's one of the prototypes for the Superhero class.


I've been grappling recently with the 1st ed. rule that Superheroes need to be in costume to earn XP as Superheroes, and whether or not this needs to exist in 2nd edition Hideouts & Hoodlums. In most cases (Superman, Captain Marvel, etc.), it makes a lot of sense, but then there are obvious exceptions like Popeye and Big Chief Wahoo. And if you had any doubts (like I did) that Big Chief Wahoo was a superhero -- in that last panel he's either using the 1st-level power Raise Car or No Encumbrance (which I might wind up merging into just one power).

Smashing through a locked door is a surprisingly complex game mechanic. If Tubby was a Superhero, he would make a wrecking things roll. Because Tubby is a Fighter, though, the door makes a special kind of saving throw vs. non-Superhero wrecking. At least that's where things stand now.


I'm wondering, though, if bashing open locked doors shouldn't just be a skill that all non-Superheroes get a 1 in 6 chance to do.

"Two shots ring out almost at once" is the most telling evidence so far that, when two parties roll the same number for initiative, it should be treated as simultaneous initiative instead of re-rolling.

This is Oaky Doaks. I'm not a fan, but it does seem to demonstrate that anyone, even people not very bright, should have a chance at tracking.  I may have to make that a general skill for all classes to use too.

Scorch Smith here demonstrates the Aviator stunt, Improved Take-Off/Landing.

As I move away, in 2nd ed., from one-use stunts to skills that always have a chance of success, it begs the question of what to do with the Cowboy- and Aviator-specific stunts. The solution I'm considering is to keep the Cowboy and Aviator as sub-classes that anyone can switch to when in those environments. For instance, when a 3rd-level Magic-User gets in the pilot's seat of a plane, he transfers his XP to the Aviator class temporarily and picks out his aviator stunts accordingly. There won't be room for this in the 2nd ed. Basic book, though.

Examples of the Aviator stunts Coast on Fumes and Deadstick (all Aviator stunts from The Trophy Case vol. 1 nos. 6-7).

Goat joke #16!

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Amazing Mystery Funnies #2

About a year before the publication of the Sub-Mariner, we have this first work by Bill Everett -- Skyrocket Steele. Steele is Everett's answer to Buck Rogers, a character well-represented in comic books up to this point in 1938, though we haven't been able to look at those adventures because of copyright issues.

Anyone wanting to use Hideouts & Hoodlums to run a Buck Rogers-like, or Skyrocket Steele-like, campaign could certainly do so. In many ways, the technology found in these future stories only mimics the technology of the times, but with some "flavor text" changes -- phones have built-in television screens, but still are not mobile, cars still transport you around, but they float above the ground and are called "skysters".  Even trips to other worlds is really just travel between locations with a bit more flavor text than usual to it.

Other equipment is just mundane things with new names -- a range-scope instead of a telescope, or G-2 camera instead of just a camera. Only the Kodacon seems different, with its crystal ball-like appearance, but what it shows is nothing more than a series of networked cameras could have broadcast.

We haven't seen Brailey of the Tropics in awhile (actually, this is a reprinted story from Funny Picture Stories #1), but here he demonstrates that just about anything should trigger a morale save, even a flaming broom...

...but, eventually, even a generous Editor must put his foot down. You want to ride an elephant into combat? Okay, maybe if you roll a successful save vs. plot, the elephant lets you ride it. What, you want it to attack for you now too? Come on, who's the Hero in this story, you or the elephant?

This is another reprint, an adventure of Speed Rush, Ace of the Private Sleuths, from Detective Picture Stories #2. He's a busy man on this page,

a) using his keen senses to spot the Morse code the window washer is using (2 in 6 chance to notice?),

b) dodging kerosene splashed at his eyes (I wouldn't let this do damage, but require a save vs. missiles to avoid being temporarily blinded -- plus the chance of being set on fire the following turn!),

c) performing a disarming attack, followed by a grappling attack (the later intended to do damage rather than establish a hold), and

d) an Editor might be justified in asking for an encounter reaction roll to convince the jeweler to take a $300,000 jewel out of his safe and run off with a private detective's that it's safe to do so.

Now, I don't know how Speed manages to snap his bonds here. A player with a Fighter is going to need some excuse to justify this, like a sharp object he could use to weaken his bonds with, or some such. I also would not allow, as a H&H character, for a thrown sack of cement to do damage to one opponent, and blind a second opponent in the same throw. There will just be times when we must choose not to emulate the comic books because it does not pass this fairness test: would the players be okay with this being used against them?

There's another one of those disarming shots.

And, incidentally, this J.M. Wilcox is really impressing me here with his dynamic panels and page layouts!

Well, it turns out that Speed's player came up with a rationale for being able to break his bonds after all!

Sometimes you might be tempted to offer a new type of lure to your players than financial reward. A possible cure for cancer -- who wouldn't go after that? Now, if your Heroes successfully retrieve it...you can play in an alternate timeline where cancer was cured in the 1930s, but other possibilities are that the possible cure winds up not working, or yields some results that will help create a cure decades from your campaign.

This is a reprinted story from Funny Picture Stories #4, and was one of Will Eisner's earliest stories in print. How exciting a comic book anthology featuring original stories by Will Everett, J.M. Wilcox, and Will Eisner would have been had Centaur only been able to afford it!

It's interesting, looking at reprints now, to find what stuff I missed the first time around that I read these for this blog.  For instance, how is Fatts shooting that machine gun without help?  Doesn't a machine gun need a second man to feed the ammo? I would actually rule that a 1st-level Fighter cannot run a machine gun alone, but a Superhero or a higher level Fighter can (this at least keeps machine guns out of the hands of most of your 1st level Heroes!).

When I last discussed this story in Western Picture Stories #1, I was convinced that H&H did not need parrying rules. Now I'm not so sure and would be open to more evidence from both sides.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

The Funnies #24

The continuing adventures of Alley Oop have him brawling with his ex-friend on the back of a flying pteranodon (the narrator refers to it as a pterodactyl, but it is way too large to be a pterodactyl). Any combat that takes place on a moving animal's back, moving vehicle, or some other terrain where balance comes into play should require a save vs. science from each participant per turn to keep from falling.

According to Alley Oop, pteranodons must have a low Armor Class from frontal attacks because their beaks are so hard (or Alley is just griping because his attack rolls have all been so bad).

If nothing else, maybe Reg'lar Fellers here makes the best case that anyone should have a chance to hypnotize others. But how good a chance? A 1 in 6 chance of triggering a save vs. plot?

Captain Easy has been struggling for the past few months, with its directionless plotting, but here Easy struggles with an issue Hideouts & Hoodlums players may struggle with someday -- how far can you move someone against their will that your character is grappling? I would have the grappler roll to hit and the victim roll a save vs. science and then look at those numbers. If the to hit roll was 5 or more higher than what was needed, the grappler can move the victim a half-Move away. If the save was 5 or less below what was needed, the grappler can move the victim another half-Move away.

The Editor must be careful to remain neutral, especially when the players are bluffing. Sure, the Editor knows that Easy's cannon has no gunpowder in it, but he has to realize that the guards in the truck would have no way of knowing that and should be given a morale save accordingly.

Machine guns have been a trophy weapon available in the game since Book II: Mobsters & Trophies, with canons and anti-aircraft guns being added in the more military-themed Supplement I: National. Note that Fighters do need tripod mounts for machine guns, as pictured correctly here, and anti-aircraft guns are not handheld weapons for anyone other than buffed Superheroes. 

As for that antique plane...even I wouldn't be mean enough to give my players transportation that antiquated...

Decades before The Godfather gave this a different context.  This gag filler is called Hold Everything.

This seems to be a clear-cut case, to me, of a stunt I gave the Cowboy class (in Supplement III: Better Quality) called Quick Draw.  Otherwise, I wouldn't even roll for initiative if one side has their guns out and the other doesn't.


(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

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 #4 - part 1

For the entire length of 2015, I tracked the build-up of the Golden Age, from as far back as 1935, to September 1938. I have taken what I've learned from reading these comic books and sharing them with you, what I've learned that can make the RPG Hideouts & Hoodlums emulate Golden Age comics even better.  Now, here we are, returning on New Year's Day, for Year 2 of this project and a return to Action Comics.

Superman uses the power Outrun Train to reach the stalled auto before the train hits it, but why is Superman concerned that the driver will "kill us both"? Why would an invulnerable superhero say that? Because Invulnerability is a buffing power that Superman has either not prepared for today, or is too low in level and doesn't have yet.  Then Superman leaps away. That could be the power Leap I, but since Superman leaped so much in the early days, I just gave aliens that as a free ability.

What's really weird is that Superman just happens to pop into the train in exactly the right passenger car to overhear a plot hook. As Editor, your job will be to create the plot hooks, but not to pre-plan where the Heroes encounter the plot hooks. It's best just to have them spring up wherever the Heroes happen to be.

Superman makes a rare use of the Change Self power (with the flavor text of grease paint make-up to explain it).  Superman also shows a willingness to drug and kidnap people he needs out of the way to make his plans work. Non-Lawful behavior? It shows that H&H needs a flexible Alignment system that does not punish for deviation.

When Superman is getting punched and doesn't feel it, that's because his opponent is actually "missing" to hit Superman's Armor Class. The rest is only flavor text.

But did I miss an opportunity to introduce a new power -- something like "Untackleable"?  When Superman has four football players hanging off of him and keeps running, was that just lucky dice rolls from the grappling attacks? Perhaps a creative use of the power No Encumbrance to carry the four men on him and keep moving?

The pocket knife, snapping on Superman's tough skin, was my inspiration for the Super-Tough Skin power.

"Chuck" Dawson, in his story, demonstrates the cowboy stunt Summon Horse, while his opponent demonstrates Jump into Saddle. I don't know what I'm going to do with the Cowboy stunts in 2nd edition. Somehow fold them in with how skills will work? Make them available to everyone when they go to the Mythic West?

Chuck uses rope to rappel down a cliff. Although this would be a tough thing for me to do, I imagine this would be pretty easy for a Hero-type, and I wouldn't require a roll for it. Now, without rope, or if the cliff was wet...

Pep Morgan, in his feature, does a lot of swimming (he seems to move from sport to sport, monthly). First he does a rescue stunt in calm water and then another one in rapids later. Now, like the rock climbing mentioned above, the rescue in calm water probably needed no dice rolls. But swimming in rapids, fighting the current -- should that be something level-based, like a saving throw vs. science, or an un-graduated skill that everyone would have a 1 in 6, or 2 in 6, chance to perform?  For 2nd ed., I'm leaning towards the latter.

I don't often mention Alger's funny squat-figure people strips, but I found Bad Bill: the Menace of the Hills particularly amusing.  When the old guy says "Ain't you sorta jumpin' t' conclusions?" and Bill says "I allus jump t' conclusions!" -- I can just imagine Yosemite Sam saying something like that. Incidentally, the old man's bulletproof vest shows that armor might be appropriate for even a Western setting.

In The Adventures of Marco Polo, Marco and Niku survive a sandstorm by finding shelter. but does the shelter shield them entirely from the storm, or only give them a bonus modifier to saving throws vs. science? At issue is, how important is shelter in avoiding environmental damage?

Later, Marco and his Uncle Mafflo engage in some holiday swimming racing. Since it's not important to the story, I'd just compare Strength scores, higher score wins. If it was more important -- like money or prestige was riding on it -- I might add a random element by comparing Strength +1d6.

Then the Polos see lions attacked by a python. It's a big python -- I don't know if I'd call it a giant constrictor snake, but it doesn't seem to be normal size. Huge? Lions were statted right away in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies. Regular constrictor snakes were statted in Book II, but I don't think I ever went the large/huge/giant routine with them.

(You can read this issue at the Comic Book Archives)