The Comics #9

Ah, Dell. By August 1938, only some of its titles still contain great comic strip reprints, but as the line expanded pages had to be filled with lesser work. The Comics was a title filled with lesser work. Still, even lesser work can serve as inspiration for Hideouts & Hoodlums!

I have no idea where the trope of the organ grinder's monkey as pickpocket comes from, but it's an old one and we see it here. Monkeys were introduced, as a new animal-mobster type, in Supplement V: Big Bang, but I wonder if a more specific type called an organ grinder's monkey would not be more appropriate; one with a chance to pilfer equal to a low-level Mysteryman.

Half-pint Heroes don't have to be played dumb! Davey outwits a crew full of mutineers by luring them into the foc'c'sle with the promise of treasure, then locking them all inside.

When players come up with plans like this, Editors must remember that it is not their job to "win" by outwitting the players. Introducing complications into their plans is one thing, but if a player comes up with a good plan, it should be given a fairly good chance at succeeding.

Almost a year and a half before Hawkman debuts, Rod Rian takes to the sky with an "aero belt".  The belt must contain the controls for the flying device, because it seems that the cylinder on Rod's back must power the device, and the wings surely serve as stabilizers. It's clearly a hi-tech item version of magical Wings of Flying.

The gravity raygun is an example of an over-sized machine, as most of the rayguns described in Book II: Mobsters & Trophies are.  The ray has a long range (200-300'?) and can easily pull 400 lbs. of weight towards the raygun (We never see an upper limit, but it surely has one. Maybe 1,000 lbs.?).  We could speculate that the ray can be thrown in reverse too and repel objects.

I'm always keen to share useful maps on this blog and, while this is not technically a map of the Island of the Living Dead, there is an unusual amount of topographic detail here that could inspire an Editor.

We have seen many examples so far of prices in the 1930s, and some research and digging could turn up what prices were like in the late 1800s (or we could cheat and borrow a RPG from that period). But what about the Mythic West, that land comic book stories fall into that is part modern day and part Old West? What are appropriate amounts of money to throw around in those games?  Here, we see a rodeo with a $3,000 prize for the winner and a high stakes poker game with $500 stakes. The next page (not shown here) mentions a $1,000 reward for an outlaw.

In a prehistoric countryside that could never have existed, single examples of dinosaur species that lived millions of years apart happen to stroll past each other. The tyrannosaurus rex and the triceratops made it into H&H as early as Supplement I: National. The stegosaurus was discussed here on this blog.  Corythosaurus would have had 16 HD (with 12-sided HD). Euhippus would have been 1/2 HD, like giant rats (only horse-rats). Pteranodons were statted in Supplement II: All-American, but pterodactyls were much smaller and would have had only 1 hp.  A paleoscincus might have 14 HD (using 10-sided HD).  If I was one of those half-pints, I'd wish it was was the pterodactyl chasing me!

Hit points are part of the abstract nature of combat in H&H and do not, usually, represent actual physical wounds on a 1:1 ratio. However, if the tone of your stories is light enough, hit points could work that way, as they do here in Deadwood Gulch.

Also note the commonness of cigarettes.

This is Cap'n Cloud, finding out that modern technology can make it very difficult to just sneak into an enemy hideout. Hidden dictaphones can tell the bad guys what the Heroes are planning, where they're going, and what room they are in at all times -- unless the Heroes are magically masking their noises (Silence 15' Radius spell?).

Manhunt gives us a map!  It's not particularly creative, and the scenario you would use it for seems awful grisly, but I think we could come up with better ones. What sort of deal was made at Deal Lake to give it its name, and does that have anything to do with the missing child/ren from the nearby school...?


(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)

Popular Comics #31

Reckon I best mosey on back to Dell's Popular Comics and look at this page from another Western adventure.  The whips I've seen in comics so far have either been used for torture or, like this, disarming people. Still, I think I've seen more disarming shots from guns so far, so I don't think I'm going to give whips any special bonus.

A feature of Golden Age comics is that they often don't take themselves too seriously. El Voltago, the Vulture of Chihuahua, isn't going to terrify anyone. But he might give your players some laughs!

Don Dixon looks like he's at the end of the whole campaign in this installment. For a campaign with Lawful Heroes ignoring opportunities to take loot along the way, this is the moment when the big XP rush comes with the reward. The longer the Heroes have delayed collecting, the bigger the reward should be. Here, that requires dropping them down a secret elevator into a king's treasure chamber and hearing, "Take whatever you want!"  Of course, if the players don't want the campaign to end, the reward they ask for might be a new quest...

Right now, there are no complications, in Hideouts & Hoodlums, for recovering from zero hit points; you just let time pass.  I'm currently 50/50 on whether or not H&H needs complications -- like having a concussion and needing several days of bed rest -- at least for Heroes. For non-Heroes controlled by the Editor, the Editor can assign all the complications he wants/needs for the story.

If you're planning on having an adventure on a boat, like this Shark Egan adventure, then you should choose a type of ship and research it, working from a map if you're able. This scenario doesn't skimp on describing the layout, from Shark searching the aft master's cabin to the reinforcements coming from the fo'c'sle.

Toby seems to have picked up where Patsy left off (since the Adventures of Patsy are no longer in a magical fantasy land). Here we see a strange land inhabited by at least four giants, at least one of whom looks to have two pet lions. A dangerous place for exploring!

One way to make fantasy creatures -- ones you would expect to find in a swords & sorcery scenario -- "fit in" better is to dress them up in modern clothes.

One trick to allow low-level Heroes to survive encounters with powerful foes is to split the powerful foes into rival factions, so the Heroes only have to side with one and fight alongside them.

Note that Toby's magic couch predates the magic bed in The Magic Bed-Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (the basis for the movie Bedknobs and Broom Sticks) by five years.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)

New Adventure Comics #28 - part 2

Tod Hunter, Jungle Master, and his English gentleman sidekick Tommy, are exploring a temple hideout. In a room concealed behind a curtain is a lit and smoking incense brazier and a raised dais used, not for sacrifice, but for sleeping by the high priestess. While Zara the High Priestess wields a scimitar, her followers (there are at least eight of them) fight with primitive spears and hand axes (and half of them only wear loin clothes).

The sacrificial room is a huge chamber with a tall wooden idol carved to look like a sitting demon -- not too far different from the iconic cover of the 1978 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook!  The corridors are lit with torches held in sconces. A corridor leading from the sacrificial room runs to a circular arena that can be watched through barred gates. The entrance is trapped so that a steel shutter falls down over the entrance behind them, and then a lion can be released into the arena. Because the High Priestess is watching, this must be a deathtrap.

Dale Daring is in need of rescue in the mountain hideout of a bandit chieftain. Because the bandits are Asian, her boyfriend Don decides to disguise himself by staining his skin yellow and putting transparent tape around his eyes to make them almondine. And because this is a comic book, the disguise has a good chance of working.

We also see a torture chamber with a rack and a suspended cauldron for boiling oil.

Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad is a bit of a jerk. Instead of investigating their suspect's room himself, he sends his Supporting Cast Member,"Sleepy", to do it. Sleepy is actually fairly clever; when confronted by the suspect, Sleepy pretends to be a two-bit crook eager to make any kind of a deal to avoid a "fourth offense" and a lifetime sentence (it would be interesting, if I had the time, to investigate which states had four-strikes-and-you're-out laws for repeat offenders in the 1930s).

Carey is a bit of a risk-taker too. He suspects dope is being smuggled in a coffin, so to prove it, he throws pepper into the coffin and waits to hear a sneeze...which would have been awkward if any part of his theory had turned out to be wrong.

The Robin Hood serial continues to be surprisingly accurate. Friar Tuck fights with a broadsword and a buckler (small round shield), both of which would have been common fighting tools in the 1100s, when Robin Hood supposedly lived. It does suggest, in this installment, that hound dogs should have good Armor Classes, as the Friar's hound dogs are shown being able to dodge arrows.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

New Adventure Comics #28 - part 1

We're still a bit ahead from this title headlining with the Sandman, so this issue begins with "Anchors Aweigh", a brand new Don Winslow clone (the lead character's name is even Don Kerry!).

Like I observed recently, aviator stunts seem to be something every comic book character masters as soon as they sit in a plane. Here, we see the stunt Power Dive, as described in The Trophy Case v. 1 no. 7. 

Although Hideouts & Hoodlums is the Golden Age Comic Book Roleplaying Game, Editors need not limit themselves to American comic books, or even comic books for inspiration. The "Anchors Aweigh" story seems inspired by the Tintin comic strip adventure "The Crab with the Golden Claws", combined with the Raymond Chandler story "Nevada Gas".

Tom Brent is also a new character debuting this issue. He's a sailor; I have not felt sailors need their own character class yet. The ones I've read so far are either Fighters or (in Popeye's case) Superheroes. Tom Brent is definitely of the Fighter persuasion. The mood of the story is dark, with heroin smugglers being the villains, and a stash of morphine being used to frame Tom. It is also unusual for taking place in Marseilles, France, rather than the U.S. Note that France won't be conquered for almost another two years.

It's only 1938 and it's already been too long since Steve Carson of Federal Men has had a cool adventure. This serial, vs. The Cobra, might change that. We've already got a hideout set-up here, with a concealed trapdoor in the back room of a flower shop leading into a deep shaft with ladder rungs in the wall. At the bottom is a trapped metal door -- touch it and you're shocked unconscious (or forced to save vs. science to avoid being stunned).

A death trap awaits Steve in the lair of the master criminal -- a fight with a large cobra that is not only a poisonous snake but, curiously, a constrictor snake as well (maybe it's a mutant!).  How do we know it's a death trap instead of a normal combat? Because of its placement in the storyline (after Steve is powerless in The Cobra's clutches).

Nadir, Master of Magic continues to go around not using magic.  Sure, he claims he's giving a lady he rescued a potion to dispel the hypnotism placed on her, but I can't help but think that "potion" is really just a bit of brandy, or maybe even just a strong coffee. He does, however, seem to have a magic Ring of Evil Detection and he uses the Crystal Ball again he used in his first appearance.

Captain Desmo continues to vex me; the man fights way beyond the abilities of someone who should, at this stage, only be a first level Fighter. He exhibits the special ability of "combat machine" (multiple attacks vs. weak foes) as a Fighter of at least third level, and I can't easily guess how big a penalty to the die roll to assign to not only a disarming shot, but one that shatters a dagger with the bullet.

In this story, Desmo picks up his first supporting cast sidekick, Brooklyn-born Gabby McGuire, who is probably a first-level Fighter. Desmo also happens to know a Hindu mystic named Seyah Ashear, but Seyah is more of a Detective than a Magic-User, using clues to induce information for Desmo, rather than divination spells. Knowing a Detective as a Supporting Cast Member is very handy for players who aren't good at picking up on clues on their own.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #17 - part 2

Bruce Nelson seems to be an aviator in this month's installment. In fact, he seems to be demonstrating the Increase Speed stunt while flying (a more colorful name for this stunt would have been "Yank the Throttle Wide Open").  He also demonstrates Wing Walking.  I now wonder if my aviator rules shouldn't be a separate class, but stunts anyone can use, based on their level, when they hop in a plane...

The smuggler's plane is trapped, literally -- there's a trapdoor underneath the passenger seats.

From the telephone style in Buck Marshall, Range Detective, it appears this strip is meant to take place in the early 1900s.

Slam Bradley is revealed to have a great singing voice in this story; not surprising, since Golden Age Heroes often happen to have whatever skill they need for the scenario. Maybe this should be handled by a save vs. plot each time. Any inconsistency in skill is only more appropriate for the continuity-lite Golden Age.

For some reason, the radio station that hires Slam buys a $1,500 clock. It's unclear why the clock costs so much. A valuable antique? Slam and Shorty are also hired for a $5,000 reward, so this radio station really likes to toss its money around. The scenario is ridiculously easy to solve too. If microphones are exploding and killing performers, all they have to do is have an engineer take each microphone apart and check it before each program.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Detective Comics #17 - part 1

What am I thankful for, on the day after Thanksgiving? More comic book reading!

Speed Saunders has always been a peculiar duck, both in terms of how irrelevant his river patrol job is to his adventures (but, really, how often does a hero's civilian profession come up in a scenario?) and how fluid his adventures have been so far in terms of genre. This month, we find out that Speed's abilities are also pretty fluid in terms of skills. Here, Speed steps off a low roof onto the top of a parked car and lays down on it -- and no one inside the car hears him doing this! This is a level of stealth more appropriate to the Mysteryman class than the Fighter class. Or...the Editor has simply fudged how the surprise rules work. Even if Speed has complete surprise, his free turn of action should only be 1 combat turn long before being discovered.

Now, the hideout Speed finds in this issue is rather interesting. The kidnapper is in a remote cabin, located on a mountain terrace inside a giant gorge. The only way to get down to the cabin is by climbing down, which seems to come with a high risk of falling. The kidnapper does have a rope tied to a tree overlooking the gorge that is used to lower supplies down to the cabin, and Speed uses that to descend safer (though a nastier game Editor would have made this a trap -- rigging the tree branch or the rope to snap).

Speed is saved from a deathtrap by the "fact" that snakes won't cross a rope made from hair. Now, call me overly suspicious, but if one of my players tried this, I would think he was trying to hoodwink me. It does seem like the sort of phony science you see in comic books, though, so if one of my players did come up with this "fact", I might feel charitable enough to give him a save vs. plot to determine if this turns out to be true -- particularly if every other attempt to thwart the deathtrap has failed.

Larry Steele isn't a very good detective sometimes. He's exploring an old castle in Maine this month and notes how dusty the floors are, but completely fails to notice any footprints from the three kidnappers in the castle in the dust. Now, this could be the result of bad dice rolls; Larry's Editor has been asking for keen senses/notice things checks periodically, but Larry's player just keeps rolling too high. Note that the players can ask for checks as often as they want to, but it is the Editor who decides how often they are eligible for new checks.

Larry later makes up for it by rappelling down the sheer side of a rain-soaked castle wall, which you would think would come with some serious penalizing modifiers. Since it's not clear yet in the Hideouts & Hoodlums rules what the chance for a Fighter to climb should be, I can't comment yet on what those modifiers should look like.

One of the kidnappers is a drunken hoodlum!

Sometimes you might want to tone things down from the comic books, for the sake of game balance. This month's installment of Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise introduces an explosive gun, handheld, with a 125 mile range, that wrecks as if an 8th level Superhero. If this weapon isn't destroyed forever by the end of the scenario, I know it's bound to wind up in the hands of the Heroes and there goes any challenge ever for the rest of my campaign.

The Russian embassy serves as a sort-of hideout-in-plain-sight in this story. It would be interesting to run a scenario where the Heroes can't get in without wearing tuxedos, surrounded by foreign dignitaries and spies. On the other hand, the possibility for mass deaths that lead to war...maybe there are safer places to put your Heroes...

Cosmo also demonstrates lip reading in this scenario, a skill not covered by the H&H rules.  It should, I would think, be more difficult than hearing noises, and possibly relegated to a stunt.

This issue begins a serialized adaptation of Dr. Fu Manchu.  Fu Manchu's henchmen make use of poisoned arrows. There isn't much discussion of poisoned weapons in H&H, but it's definitely a practice best left in the hands of villains. I would either outright forbid Heroes to use poisoned weapons, or force a save vs. plot with a -1 or -2 penalty each time to use poison.

Well before Superman tackled the KKK on the radio, Bart Regan, Spy, tackles the "hooded horde".  Jerry Siegel directly labels them a "terrorist organization", which, sadly, remains quite prescient about today's politics.  However, the KKK isn't up to lynching blacks here, but inciting general unrest and wrecking businesses.

Bart Regan demonstrates ventriloquism in this story, even throwing his voice about 10' away!  I've talked about ventriloquism before and feel the same now; that, for Golden Age stories at least, ventriloquism needs to be a basic skill.

(This issue can be read at Comic Book Archives)

Famous Funnies #48

Skyroads shares an unusual crime problem -- gas rustling!  It could never happen at an urban gas station, but a rural gas station could have enough room for a plane to land, the aviator steals gas for his plane, and flies away. Something for Heroes to solve?

The middle panel reads like a wandering encounter chart for desert environs -- jack rabbits, horned toads, and gila monsters.

This page of War on Crime brings up something that was suggested in my last game session -- can you wreck things with bullets? Possibly...there is a wrecking things mechanic for non-Superheroes and applying it to guns could just be flavor text (particularly since, as this page shows, shooting off a doorknob is something you'd want to do at point blank range, so you wouldn't be giving your Heroes the benefit of added range).  I hesitate to say it could be used for wrecking robots or better, though, as that would be handled better by normal combat rules.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum)