Post by Adminenkainen on Jan 7, 2024 5:03:40 GMT
[Continuing where I left off on the Larcenous Lexicon blog.]
Read along at: digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=14562
We went on a long break again, but Fight Comics was still waiting for us to finish with it. Next up is Kayo Kirby, which has taken an interesting change in trajectory, with Kayo seemingly retiring from boxing and becoming a manager. Parowyn, because of the unusual spelling, must stand in for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM. More unusual is having a fake name for Hollywood, here called Movieland. Granted, the last panel does not specify which coast, so this could be an East Coast version of Hollywood (but I doubt it).
At many places in published Hideouts & Hoodlums material, you might see the term "improvised club," which does only 1-3 damage, while a normal club does 1-6 damage. "But," you might ask, "what is an improvised club and why is it so much less effective?" Good question. A chair is big and heavy, so I would normally consider that a normal club for damage. A prop chair is probably meant to break away and do no serious harm. At best, it's an improvised club and does half damage. Anything that is too light or too unwieldy, or too fragile is an improvised club.
Thugs are 2 HD and tough for 1st-level Heroes to defeat. Maybe that's why these thugs are bold enough to attack Kayo in broad daylight, in front of lots of witnesses.
There is not really a mechanic for snatching a weapon out of an opponent's hand, and I think I'd like to leave that difficult to do. I might allow a mysteryman to do this with a stunt, but only before melee is joined.
We're going to jump into the next feature now, which is Oran of the Jungle. This story made me a bit squeamish, about how the mobsters torture the animals to work them up into a killer frenzy. It's a sick detail, but opening the cages might not have led to any attacks otherwise.
What's really weird about this is a) the entire plan hinges on Oran coming into the zoo instead of just walking past (suppose he'd been in a hurry?) and b) there being a cage release switch that opens all the cages at once, which seems a really bad idea for a zoo to have. Leopards, lions, tigers, and gorillas are all already represented/statted in Hideouts & Hoodlums.
Granted, the scene is more dramatic because of Oran's delay, but waiting to use his soothing call is getting people nearly killed.
In Strut Warren in the Philippines, Strut is a marine serving in the U.S.-occupied Philippines. Strut encounters a shadowy figure (as in Supplement V's new mobster section, and will almost surely turn up in the Mobster Manual eventually) and gets tripped to fall down a flight of stairs. Rather than a trip attack, I would probably have rolled to attack as if a kick and converted all the damage into feet pushed. The fall down two flights of stairs seems to do about 1-6 points of damage, which is how much I would imagine it doing.
Strut falls into a wine cellar that has really big vats of wine in it instead of wine racks. One of the wine vats is being used as a prison cell, which is pretty weird, but also convenient that Strut just happened to get down here.
Foreign spies who want to kill Strut, instead of just shooting him, trip him (again!) so he falls in another vat, and then shoot into the vat. Of course, the vat is now serving as hard cover for Strut, helping to keep him alive instead. When Strut wants out, he wrecks his way out of the vat, which I would treat as a machine (should be harder to bust open than a door). Then, from a height (though it's unclear how Strut spills out of the vats on the same level with the spies and is still above them afterwards), Strut throws barrels down on them. Since the barrels are likely heavy, and have falling velocity on their side, I would probably give them a +1 bonus to damage (treating them as 2-7, not as an improvised weapon).
Lastly, one of the captured spies offers to bribe Strut with $1,000 if he lets them go. I wonder how many players I've had who would take the money, then still turn them in...
Read along at: digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=14562
We went on a long break again, but Fight Comics was still waiting for us to finish with it. Next up is Kayo Kirby, which has taken an interesting change in trajectory, with Kayo seemingly retiring from boxing and becoming a manager. Parowyn, because of the unusual spelling, must stand in for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM. More unusual is having a fake name for Hollywood, here called Movieland. Granted, the last panel does not specify which coast, so this could be an East Coast version of Hollywood (but I doubt it).
At many places in published Hideouts & Hoodlums material, you might see the term "improvised club," which does only 1-3 damage, while a normal club does 1-6 damage. "But," you might ask, "what is an improvised club and why is it so much less effective?" Good question. A chair is big and heavy, so I would normally consider that a normal club for damage. A prop chair is probably meant to break away and do no serious harm. At best, it's an improvised club and does half damage. Anything that is too light or too unwieldy, or too fragile is an improvised club.
Thugs are 2 HD and tough for 1st-level Heroes to defeat. Maybe that's why these thugs are bold enough to attack Kayo in broad daylight, in front of lots of witnesses.
There is not really a mechanic for snatching a weapon out of an opponent's hand, and I think I'd like to leave that difficult to do. I might allow a mysteryman to do this with a stunt, but only before melee is joined.
We're going to jump into the next feature now, which is Oran of the Jungle. This story made me a bit squeamish, about how the mobsters torture the animals to work them up into a killer frenzy. It's a sick detail, but opening the cages might not have led to any attacks otherwise.
What's really weird about this is a) the entire plan hinges on Oran coming into the zoo instead of just walking past (suppose he'd been in a hurry?) and b) there being a cage release switch that opens all the cages at once, which seems a really bad idea for a zoo to have. Leopards, lions, tigers, and gorillas are all already represented/statted in Hideouts & Hoodlums.
Granted, the scene is more dramatic because of Oran's delay, but waiting to use his soothing call is getting people nearly killed.
In Strut Warren in the Philippines, Strut is a marine serving in the U.S.-occupied Philippines. Strut encounters a shadowy figure (as in Supplement V's new mobster section, and will almost surely turn up in the Mobster Manual eventually) and gets tripped to fall down a flight of stairs. Rather than a trip attack, I would probably have rolled to attack as if a kick and converted all the damage into feet pushed. The fall down two flights of stairs seems to do about 1-6 points of damage, which is how much I would imagine it doing.
Strut falls into a wine cellar that has really big vats of wine in it instead of wine racks. One of the wine vats is being used as a prison cell, which is pretty weird, but also convenient that Strut just happened to get down here.
Foreign spies who want to kill Strut, instead of just shooting him, trip him (again!) so he falls in another vat, and then shoot into the vat. Of course, the vat is now serving as hard cover for Strut, helping to keep him alive instead. When Strut wants out, he wrecks his way out of the vat, which I would treat as a machine (should be harder to bust open than a door). Then, from a height (though it's unclear how Strut spills out of the vats on the same level with the spies and is still above them afterwards), Strut throws barrels down on them. Since the barrels are likely heavy, and have falling velocity on their side, I would probably give them a +1 bonus to damage (treating them as 2-7, not as an improvised weapon).
Lastly, one of the captured spies offers to bribe Strut with $1,000 if he lets them go. I wonder how many players I've had who would take the money, then still turn them in...
)...