Adventure Comics #36 - pt. 2

Tom Brent runs into two bad guys in China who are interesting because of their titles. One is the Russian Count Roloff.  Counts turn up all the time in comic books as bad guys (as do barons). Maybe nobles need to be statted as a mobster-type?  The other is a bandit leader, specifically called General Chang. "General" is a level title for fighters of at least 8th level!  I was more conservative with my entry on bandits in Book II, topping off their leaders at 4th level.

The Golden Dragon serial concludes in this issue. The gold dragon is killed after it shows off some wrecking things skills. The gold dragon does not appear to be Lawful either, nor particularly intelligent. The dragon is dropped by a hail of bullets (JUST like what happened the first time I used a dragon in one of my H&H games).  The dragon guards a treasure room with enough treasure for ten camels (I often take shortcuts like that too, instead of giving the heroes a careful inventory of what all their treasure entails). The one trophy item they acquire is the Seal of Genghis Khan, that assures them safe passage anywhere in Mongolia.

And lastly, in Anchors Aweigh, Don Kerry uses the old trick of throwing sand in someone's face to blind them. This dirty fighting trick should require a successful attack roll, followed by a failed save vs. science, and then the victim is blinded and fights at a -2 penalty for the next 1-6 turns of combat.

(Summaries read at DC Wikia)

Adventure Comics #36 - pt. 1

We rejoin Barry O'Neill's supporting cast, Jean Le Grand, collapsing from exhaustion, heat, and dehydration in the desert. It has already been pointed out on this blog that Hideouts & Hoodlums has no game mechanic for exhaustion, and that environmental damage should be accounted for by hit point loss. Does this story make me want to revisit that? No, because unusual effects can be assigned to supporting cast always at the discretion of the Editor. If it was the hero, Barry, suffering -- or more examples to that effect -- then I might need to work harder at emulating those conditions.

Barry O'Neill goes in disguise and it's a merchant disguise he's apparently worn before. Maybe disguises could be treated like outfits that can just be bought -- merchant disguise, old lady disguise, hoodlum disguise, etc.

Cotton Carver is still on a lost world adventure. He enters the domain of the White Warriors -- some pretty wimpy warriors who still have some remarkable advanced technology for some reason. They have paralyzing ray guns (though maybe not all their soldiers do), and some of them ride around in something called a "Vicla" -- a red tornado (no, not the Red Tornado, she comes later!) -like ...thing that you float inside and control by thought. The Vicla goes fast, but not extremely fast (maybe a 24 Move?), and seems to offer little cover (soft cover?) to the occupant.

Cotton also encounters a dwarf that sounds like he's straight out of Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Tod Hunter moves through a trapped temple in his adventure. One of the traps is a heated floor ("Volcanically" heated -- so hot enough to do 1-10 damage? I recently used a similar trap in one of my home campaigns, where the floor magically burst into fire under people's feet if two or more people entered it).

Tod runs into a magic-user, but we have to wait until the next installment to find out what spells the magic-user can cast.

No game referee likes it when the players bring along too much help. A squad of cops or a couple of G-Men take some of the element of danger off of the heroes and makes the game less challenging for the players. Dale Daring and Don Brewster take that notion and crank it up a notch when they have trouble with a bunch of ivory smugglers -- and recruit an entire Naval regiment to aid them (Dale must have rolled 12 on her encounter reaction check!). The Editor can do two things at that point; he can either kiss his scenario good-bye, or he can up the threat level. In this story, the smugglers -- who had a hard enough time with Dale and Don in the past four installments of this story -- suddenly have mines they can use to try and sink the approaching naval vessels.

Don and Dale also use a cabin cruiser, which makes another transportation item that needs to be statted.

Captain Desmo flies into the Himalayas this time and encounters a new threat we haven't seen before in comics -- cold damage to planes. It's true, I have considered assigning hit points to vehicles for vehicular combat. I don't know how that would work yet. Hit points for living things is based on the mechanic of 1 hit point = 30 lbs of weight (roughly), but that would make for cars with 100 hp!  Maybe the weight allowance would double for each hp -- so 1 hp = 30 lbs, 2 hp = 60 lbs, 3 hp = 120 lbs, and so on.  That would put the average 1940 car around 8 hp, but a small passenger plane would be far more vulnerable with 4-5 hit points.

Regardless, another way to deal with this would be to simply tell Capt. Desmo's player that ice is forming on the wings, and ask him to save vs. plot or something bad might happen because of this.

Desmo hires guides and porters once his mountain trek starts. Obviously, porters are there to keep heroes from traveling encumbered, while guides give you extra rolls for noticing things along the way, like tracks, concealed cave mouths, and so on.

The footing is treacherous on the mountain, though. There is probably a 2 in 6 chance of someone falling into a snow-concealed crevice (like Irma Gladstone almost does in the story), so the more guides and porters you bring, the more likely you are that someone is going to fall, in that circumstance.

(Summaries read from DC Wikia)
  

Famous Funnies #56 - pt. 2

Treasure is often a useful lure for getting players to do something or go somewhere -- the carrot by which the Editor leads them. But eventually the players catch up to the carrot and then they wind up with all that treasure and all its worth (both in terms of $ amount and xp value).

What happened in The Adventures of Patsy, here, is that they thought they were going to get treasure out of this cabin raid, but it turned out the villain was crazy and just thought he was collecting gold all this time.  It's a clever idea you can "trick" your players with once. Of course, you can't do this to your players too often, or they'll balk at being cheated.

The first Transformer?  Allowing robots to fly is not something I've put into stats for H&H yet.

Unlike the fool's gold in the previous example, the billion dollar bill is unlikely to fool any H&H player older than a kindergartner.

I've heard of Dungeon Masters who draw, or otherwise provide, a picture of a Sword +1, or maybe a note card with a short history of the weapon on it. Details make the trophy item seem more real and of value to the player than just telling him, in a general sense, what it does.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Famous Funnies #56 - pt. 1

This is Eagle Scout Roy Powers, though a fellow scout seems to be the star from this page.  

Players will often have to actively search the scene to find clues, but sometimes the Editor will just throw a clue into your lap -- or under your butt -- if you really need to have it.

This page also gives you some perspective between a schooner and a dinghy. It might help to know the difference between the two for a nautical adventure -- which I've surprisingly never done yet in any of my Hideouts & Hoodlums campaigns, despite how prevalent they were in the Golden Age.

We also learn that a schooner only needs a crew of five (six counting the cook), so if you're going to do a mutiny story for a really weak team of heroes (like maybe two or three 1st-level heroes), then a schooner might be the way to go.

Of course, depending on which weapon damage mechanic you use for H&H, automatic firearms might be too much for 1st-level heroes to handle if you plan to use the expanded weapon damage tables (from Supplement I or The Trophy Case).

Speaking of low-level scenarios, I like how the villains aren't interested in killing the heroes here, but maroon them on a deserted island instead (capturing heroes happens a lot more in low-level scenarios).  And I love how happy Roy is to be plunged into a non-combat scenario involving finding fresh water and foraging for food. Now that's the kind of flexibility I like in a player!

This is from SkyRoads.  I can't always follow what's going on in SkyRoads, as it seemed to try to juggle too large an ensemble cast without a strong lead character, but here it follows a G-Man wrongly imprisoned in a Mexican jail. I share it here for the ethical dilemma of the lawful hero given the option to choose to bust out of jail, or trust in the system. I did something similar in one of my H&H games just last night when a hero was offered a huge bribe by a rich corrupt politician. It's a fun way to force the player to think in character.

According to War on Crime, even a simple cottage can serve as a hideout.

The first mention of Browning automatic rifles in comics. First edition H&H names specific brands of guns, including Browning, on the starting equipment list for historical context, but I will probably move away from that in 2nd ed.  These would be lumped into a broader category of military rifles (which is more consistent, since I don't never broken down by types of other weapons, like swords).

Random chance is an excellent way to explain how Dickie Dare managed to spot a man dressed in bright colors, on a white horse, and the others missed him.  I also like the metafiction of the bandit describing how his own story is going...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

Action Comics #10

Superman demonstrates wrecking things and the leaping power of the alien race (or the power Leap I -- more likely Leap II on the cover), despite being out of uniform, in this story. I have long felt a rule about superheroes needing to be in uniform to use their powers was important, to give players a game mechanic incentive to have their superheroes wear a uniform. But since there are examples this early of exceptions...maybe I need something else that offers the same incentive. Maybe the Superhero functions as if one level lower when out of uniform?

Chuck Dawson has pretty clever plan, where he captures a mobster, hands him an empty gun to hold, and then pretends to be the mobster's hostage, while secretly holding his own gun on him. I think I've seen that on TV.

Chuck is exploring a hideout with a peculiar trap; a section of floor that revolves and covers a pit. Which itself is not so unusual, but that the section of floor has a cot attached to it seems odd to me. What if the bad guys got tired and forgot which cot is trapped?

Scoop Scanlon, undercover and in disguise, tries to impress some hoodlums by shooting a clock without looking at it. The penalty would be the same as shooting in total darkness, -4.

After seeing so much racism in the early comics, it's nice to see at least the Persians are getting a fair and balanced showing in Marco Polo's feature.

Zatara gets a hot plot hook at an explorers club in Shanghai -- explorers clubs being a good 1930s-era place for upper class heroes to get their plot hooks at. He's handed a treasure map to the Tomb of Genghis Khan, in exchange for a portion of the profits. Which sounds like a great adventure, really.

Though it seems like Zatara could just teleport straight there, he mounts a normal expedition with hired guides, porters, and the like, offering to pay out 1% of the treasure to split among whoever comes along. Zatara's old foe, The Tigress is there in Shanghai, spots Zatara, and starts shadowing him, which he never notices.

The geography seems a little off to me, as Zatara passes through a jungle in Mongolia. I always try to do more research than that when running scenarios.  Zatara also, foolishly, likes to go to sleep outdoors without posting watches, even though he has a manservant with him who seems like he would serve exactly that purpose.

Zatara tries to get help from a witch he passes on the way, but she understandably doesn't want Zatara robbing her nation's national treasure and offers Zatara what seems like an impossible challenge in order to pass her. Zatara uses a Phantasmal Image (his favorite spell!) to make Khan speak and passes her test, but rightly feeling tricked, the witch runs off to get help stopping Zatara anyway.

Zatara casts a spell on a group of horsemen/nomads pursuing him that has me a little puzzled. As I understand it, he utters "a spell that sends their rides galloping in the wrong direction."  But is that a Mass Charm spell? A Confusion spell? A new spell that would be called Misdirect Steeds?

He also casts a spell that summons a typhoon that Zatara then rides.  I'm still having trouble wrapping my brain around that one -- but maybe what Zatara actually did was summon a water elemental that helped transport him?

Zatara casts a spell that turns the swords of the next group of horsemen against them. Even having seen the page it's hard to say what spell this is? Mass Telekinesis? That's got to be at least a 7th level spell!

A genie -- or djinni as we call them in Hideouts & Hoodlums -- waits in Khan's Tomb with three tests. The first test Zatara passes by fashioning a stone bridge for himself (Stone Shape?). The second test he passes is walking through fire by wearing a coat of ice -- but I think the coat of ice is just "flavor text" for a Resist Fire spell.  The third test is to kill the djinn.  I suppose it's a fair spoiler to say that Zatara's arch-foe/femme fatale The Tigress is responsible for shooting the djinn when Zatara doesn't feel it's the right thing to do (and it probably helped that the genie looked like a hot woman). This not only sets a precedent for djinn being susceptible to bullets (unless they were magic bullets), but also a precedent for heroes and villains to team up to loot a hideout. This way, villains can claim loot that the heroes can't touch because of alignment restrictions and then still split it with the heroes later (unless the villains betray the heroes, of course!).

Finally, Zatara casts a spell that polymorphs all the treasure into dried peas to make them easier to carry. He lets the Tigress get away with a whole handful, which is actually pretty smart. She broke no laws because it's not illegal to kill genies, and letting her get rich takes away her prime motive to commit any more crimes.

(Superman story read from Superman Action Comics Archives vol. 1, select pages read at the Babbling about DC Comics blog, the rest read in summary form here)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #3 - pt. 2

Some leftovers from yesterday...

Chic Farrel needs lockpicks to pick his locks. Should I require that for everyone to use that skill? What about characters who can do it with hairpins?

The story is "The Mysterious Poacher" -- a rather grisly story. The hunter who kills the bear in one lucky shot (that bear must be really short on hit points!) has a trick stick with a bow hidden in it, which could be an interesting trophy item.

From Skyrocket Steele is this clever idea of putting a door at the bottom of a pool of water. Well, semi-clever...where does the water go when the door opens...?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Amazing Mystery Funnies v. 2 #3 - pt. 1

This is from Carl Burgos' Air-Sub DX.  What can we learn here for "futuristic" Hideouts & Hoodlums scenarios?  Besides the fact that air force officers wear short shorts and have buns of steel in the future, we know that the availability of hi-tech makes life in the future very dangerous. Get on a ruler's bad side and he can sic tank planes on you!

Dissolving guns would likely use wrecking things as a mechanic.

60 knots is actually really fast for underwater travel; the fastest submarines today can go up to 44 knots per hour. That seems to be a good metric, though, for futuristic hi-tech. You improve performance by 30%, cross it with another similar invention (like an air-sub), and -- presto! -- instant future tech.

Or, combine something we have now, like bathyspheres, with features of an animal, and you get crab-subs!  I have to say, crab-subs look pretty cool. If I were to use them, I'd probably have a Captain Kwalish piloting one as an inside joke.

This is Bill Everett's Dirk the Demon, a half-pint fighter with the ability to pick pockets (another skill I plan to move into general applicability).

Dirk, the little scamp, trips one of the guards with a simple attack roll and a missed saving throw. Then, to knock him unconscious, he hits his head on the floor. How many hit points does the guard have?

The trip attack does no damage, but it set up Dirk for his next attack so he could use the floor as a club. That did 1-6 damage instead of the 1-4 Dirk would have done with his stolen dagger, or 1-3 from his bare fists. So the guard has 6 hit points or less.

That unassuming and, frankly, dorky-looking cowboy with the handkerchief on his face is Phantom o' the Hills, and he must be tougher than he looks because he's using the third level Cowboy stunt Raise Posse here. Though, in 2nd edition, I'll be using the term stunt differently, so if I ever get back to the cowboy class I might have to call these something different!

The detective here is Chic Farrel. Maybe brain transplants should be a skill all ultra-mad scientists should have?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)