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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 9, 2024 5:09:05 GMT
I've read the Shield story before - twice in fact (once to research my Shield write-up for Supplement IV and then again when I bought the trade paperback collecting the early Shield adventures).
I have thought before about how the Shield's armor is able to enhance the wearer's strength and other physical abilities, long before anything like micro-circuitry was a thing, and wondered about how they ever thought this would work except through magic, but I've now read that the earliest prototype for a steam-powered exoskeleton (sounds dangerous - you sure wouldn't want it accidentally venting into the suit!) was built in 1917, and power armor has been a staple of science fiction ever since.
On sale in February 1940 (cover dated April), this Shield story imagines a very Pearl Harbor-like attack, but on New York City. We have already had more accurate Pearl Harbor predictions from MLJ; apparently these guys were really worried about our nation. For some reason the planes are dropping mines via parachutes instead of bombs. Just to be different? Instead of hearing about the attack later, our Hero, Joe Higgins, is on a boat that gets sunk by one of those mines. While he can't do anything about the planes without his armor, hopefully there was lots of good deeds performed that we skip over in the story but net Joe some much-needed XP...
It unclear why the Shield waits until nighttime to investigate the mines, when they would be harder to see. It is unclear if the high-powered motor boat the Shield is driving is his, requisitioned from the government, or something he borrowed from a friend - but whoever it belongs to won't be seeing that boat ever again. The Shield is immune to the explosion, which is a power that has to be consciously activated in H&H. Yet it's not unreasonable, when taking a spin in a boat in mine-infested waters, to take what protections you can, even if you're going to be burning through the duration on a temporary power. There are no common sense limitations on the Invulnerability power, so when the Shield hits a mine with a rock while his face is right next to the mine - he would still be safe if it exploded.
Unclear how the Shield is even able to see the mine; it's dark and he's underwater. Infravision power?
My first favorite thing about the Shield is that he's also a scientist and he acts like a scientist - because he doesn't understand how these new mines work he stays up all night studying them until he does. Game mechanically, he might have been attempting an INT check per hour until he succeeded.
Hearing an enemy plane outside must have come from a hear noise check. The Shield "hurls himself through the air" to the plane, which could be a high-level Leap power, though the way it's drawn it looks like he's flying, perhaps combined with the Race the Plane power. Instead of wrecking the plane, the Shield climbs inside, finds more mines, and instead of destroying them, acts like a scientist again and disables the mines with a handily-found wrench. Disabling the bombs must be an expert skill check.
When the U.S. scrambles planes to stop this bomber, unaware that the Shield is dangling from underneath it, the enemy plane turns tail and outraces the U.S. planes. The enemy plane is a jet plane; the U.S. won't have jet planes for over two years, but the idea of a jet plane is obviously already around. It's a jet plane that also doubles as a submarine - this is an amazing trophy item if the Shield can just get his hands on this intact.
The Shield admits to himself that he can't hold his breath forever, yet more evidence of powers having durations.
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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 12, 2024 21:48:37 GMT
The sub leads to an underwater city - ripe for hideout exploration - that is populated by an international crew of mercenaries. The leader down here is Count Zongarr, an exiled munitions magnate. But exiled from where? Zongarr isn't a surname in any culture, though "Dzungar" is a Mongolian word that is very close. "Count" suggests European origin, though it could be a title he bought in Europe since being exiled from Mongolia. It's hard to imagine a Mongolian munitions magnate, though - certainly not one with the resources to build all this. Indeed, it seems like all this would tax even John D. Rockefeller's wealth and is more likely a conspiracy by a group of wealthy patrons. Their goal is to goad the U.S. into the "war" - likely meant to be the War in Europe, given the attacks are hitting the East Coast. It seems like Zongarr should have saved his money and just talked to Japan!
When Zongarr thinks the Shield (there in disguise, in a stolen uniform) is acting suspicious he has two of his soldiers grapple him. The Shield is wearing a hat instead of his mask at the start of the fight, but is wearing his mask when the hat is knocked off. Quick Change power?
Zongarr has a gun that shoots poison gas - the poison initially renders the Shield unconscious, but then weakens him for hours afterwards - perfect for keeping superheroes from wrecking their way quickly out of deathtraps. Zongarr's deathtrap is to place the Shield in a mine - there's lots of hollow space inside and not just explosives - and place it in the path of an U.S. battleship. The Shield cleverly disconnects the exploding device from the charge by biting through the wires - but not so clever internal design by Zongarr, who should have at least taped the wires down to the inside walls rather than leave them dangling in front of the Shield's face.
The Shield knows who Zongarr's shore-side accomplice is because Zongarr couldn't help but blurt everything out when he thought the Shield was going to die soon. Now, the Shield could enjoy many sessions of returning to the undersea hideout and exploring it, fighting thousands of bad guys and reaping lots and lots of XP...but he decides to be clever and radios Zongarr from the accomplice's station. Since the mines are detonated by the sound of engines, the Shield plays a record of the sound of engines for Zongarr, and it sets off every mine in the city. Very clever! Now, again, not so clever of Zongarr that he has all the mines armed while in storage, and that he has no soundproof doors between him and the mines...but, I can understand, from an Editor's perspective, wanting to reward clever gameplay.
Now, does the Shield get xp for every mobster he destroyed? Ehhh...I wouldn't be that rewarding... Maybe something substantial, like a one-time award of 1,000 xp. The Shield does have a lot of brevet ranks, so it's not like he's going to level up from this.
While the Shield's story began a new scenario, the Comet picks up soon after where last issue left off, searching the wreckage of the blimps being used by air pirates in Florida. Not finding any, the Comet returns home. This story doesn't say where home is, but it's got to be five days of continuous driving away from Los Angeles, making New York City plausible (though slow by today's standards, where you could follow highways and tollways the whole way and make it in one and a half days).
Somehow, Satan (that's the name of the pirate leader) and some surviving mobsters who escaped managed to follow the Comet all the way to his home, and then capture him while he's asleep. They put him in a glass tube (an idea borrowed from the Human Torch's origin?) because the pirates already know his eye beam can't penetrate glass and take him to LA by truck. How the Comet survives without food and water for five days is unclear.
The plan is to hypnotize the Comet and make him steal for them. Their hypnotist isn't very good, but he has all the time in the world while the Comet is their prisoner and after three days, the hypnotist finally makes his skill check and the Comet fails his saving throw.
The first target is a textile factory; I guess this is a dry run before trying him on a bank job. The Comet uses his eye beam to wreck/burn his way through a roof access door (just how my players have been getting in and out of the hideout in our current scenario!). He encounters a night watchman, but because he has no morals while under hypnosis he pushes the man to his death off a high catwalk. This combat only takes one turn, so it must be breaking into the office safe that turns out to be time-consuming, because before he's done there are already five police officers outside the factory (he had tripped an alarm when he broke in). Because he's been hypnotized to hate police, he kills at least two of them with head shots from his disintegrator beam, and then blows up one of the police cars to try and take out the remaining three with area of effect damage. Now, bear in mind, hypnosis doesn't normally make people do things that are against their nature. Does that mean the Comet is of Chaotic Alignment? He did tell the police in Florida that he was too much of a free agent to come work for them...
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Post by order99 on Apr 13, 2024 6:32:17 GMT
"It's hard to imagine a Mongolian munitions magnate, though - certainly not one with the resources to build all this. Indeed, it seems like all this would tax even John D. Rockefeller's wealth and is more likely a conspiracy by a group of wealthy patrons. Their goal is to goad the U.S. into the "war" - likely meant to be the War in Europe, given the attacks are hitting the East Coast. It seems like Zongarr should have saved his money and just talked to Japan!" Art imitates Life? The Business Plot of 1933, part of actual US History:
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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 13, 2024 21:42:05 GMT
I think we know who was backing Zongarr now!
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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 16, 2024 5:37:35 GMT
The radio announcer says ten people were killed by the Comet, which is odd because I never saw ten people there. The hypnotism lasts for weeks, or the hypnotist keeps renewing the hypnotism and the Comet just keeps failing saving throw after saving throw.
The Comet plows through a wall of a bank and straight through a police car, both of which are within range of low-level Superheroes (though not with a high chance of success). In another panel he appears to be causing a building to collapse with his eye beam, which is much more challenging.
It seems like there would be no end to this rampage, except that the hypnotist, Zadar, figures out Satan is cheating him and tells the Comet to kill him. He does, gruesomely, but then "accidentally" - and very conveniently - kills Zadar too. Somehow this ends the hypnotism immediately. When the Comet sees what he's done (in the newspaper) he vows to clear his name, though I'm not sure how he'll do so since he really did all those things...
Haven't discussed the name Zadar yet; it's not a real name, either given or surname, but very convincingly could be a stage name.
Next up is The Press Guardian. He wisely doesn't think his enemy, Von Leo, is dead, since the only evidence he is was his coat found in the river. Von Leo, which is a terrible name that looks like something made up by someone who doesn't understand what "von" means, has the same goal as last time, to stop just this one newspaper. To his credit he does switch tactics, but you'd think he would realize there were other papers out there to attack. Instead of starting a rightwing propaganda campaign to discredit journalism in general, he kidnaps the daughter of the bank manager of the bank that holds the mortgage on the newspaper's building. Using a hostage is a subtle tactic, but here's where things get goofy - instead of sending the man a lock of his daughter's hair, or something like that, to show they mean business, Von Leo has the building across the street from the bank blown up. Couldn't he just have done this to the newspaper's building and saved a couple steps? Maybe he's afraid of making martyrs out of members of the press.
The Press Guardian has a shortwave radio in his car, and his valet is a supporting cast member. The valet, Baldwin, shows up later, and his reasons for being there are 1) to drive the girl away after being rescued, and 2) so PG gets the XP award for using his SCM in a scenario.
Press Guardian lassos the chimney on the roof of the Moroniabund embassy - on the hunch that Von Leo and the Moroniabunds are responsible and are using their own embassy to hold a kidnapping victim - climbs up to the roof. He is shot at by a guard on the ground, but instead of staying on the roof for cover, he still rappels down to the only open window to get in (the roof access door is locked and he failed his open locks skill check?). The window was left open as a trap and Von Leo and a henchman are just waiting inside by the window to ambush Press Guardian. Normally a bad guy is drawn holding something like a sap or a club to deliver a headblow with, but the henchman delivers a stunning headblow with his bare fist. But wait...the henchman looks exactly like the guard who fired from the ground! How did he get inside so fast? Or did PG take a longer time rappelling down than it appears?
Despite the fact that Von Leo has a gun in one hand, he would prefer to use a whip on Press Guardian for a while first (Von Leo might be ambidextrous?). This gives PG time to recover and grapple/strangle Von Leo into unconsciousness. To disguise himself, PG strips VL down to his underwear and changes into all his clothes. Predictably it fails, since PG has hair and VL is bald. PG is attacked by the speedy henchman/guard again, but PG picks the guy up and throws him into three of the five advancing Moroniabundians, reflecting that he has three levels in Fighter. Once he has the girl out of the building he goes back in and is shot at by a second guard from the top of a second floor landing. PG is able to run up the stairs and enter melee before the guard gets off a second shot. Then PG busts in on Von Leo talking with six other guys and beats them all up barehanded - which seems impressive until you realize the bad guys are all 0-level unarmed diplomats (all bald too, interestingly). PG calls the police to come get them all, forgetting about diplomatic immunity!
Fu Chang, International Detective starts out with Fu Chang and his fiancee, Tay Ming, reading the Chinatown National newspaper. How would that work? It has national distribution, but only to cities with "Chinatowns"? The headline reads "Chinatown's 13th Victim Dies from a Mysterious Drug," but Fu Chang calls them suicides, either from some previous knowledge or reading the body of the article that we can't make out. And whether these deaths are occuring in just one Chinatown, or across all Chinatowns nationally, is not made clear.
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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 17, 2024 17:39:04 GMT
Rather than wait for Fu Chang to begin investigating the matter, the matter literally jumps out in front of him as a madman attacks. But the madman mainly attacks himself - I'm going to add this to the madman entry in the Mobster Manual, that madmen have to roll randomly each turn to see who they attack and one of those targets has to be themselves.
It's pretty grating, trying to read the way the author thinks Chinese people talk, though I did like Chang referring to his "honorable fist" as he punched someone. That someone is Ghor - a good name for a Marvel Comics giant monster circa 1960, but not for a Chinese man in any era. Ghor escapes and, instead of trying to follow him, OR the madman, who both manage to get away, Chang goes to his shrine and has his idol to an unnamed Chinese god animate a figurine to serve him as an information gatherer in his stead.
Things get goofier quickly. The little winged spy comes back and tells Chang that Ghor is planning to have him killed and Chang not only knows exactly who Ghor is but knows his address. And yet Chang didn't recognize Ghor as he was punching him. Does he only know Ghor by reputation? Then Chang shows up, finds Ghor alone, overpowers Ghor easily, but then lets him go because...without him all his drug victims will go into withdrawal? And then Chang doesn't even keep Ghor's place under observation, or he would see when his fiancee, drugged by Ghor earlier when no one was looking, shows up for another hit (again, no one was aware he drugged her at the time, but somehow Tay knows as soon as she feels the need for another fix). Chang doesn't even seem to notice Tay is missing. He's busy hanging out in his shrine, sending more figurines out to solve this scenario for him, and the next one is a magician figurine that casts Hold Person on Ghor, then injects Ghor with the same drug he's been using on everyone else. When Chang finally shows up, Ghor promises him an antidote if Chang will administer it to him too (though paralyzed, Ghor can still speak, and I've talked before about allowing this as a variant of the spell. In the end the magician figurine saves the day again, following Ghor to his basement full of dynamite (!) and casting Hold Person on him a second time (is the figurine a 4th level m-u, or can just cast Hold Person 2/day?).
It's been a long time since I read the previous stories with Fu Chang, but I'm pretty sure I've asked "is it a spell or a magic item?" before in terms of Chang's figurines, but I think I have a new question: Are the figurines actually the Heroes? The magician figurine in particular is really responsible for solving this scenario, while Chang just hangs out in his shrine. It also is able to make its own decisions that go beyond Chang's orders for it. Lastly, I have discussed before that size is flavor text and is seldom game mechanics-related, and we have the precedent of androids for non-living Heroes, so a tiny figurine is definitely possible to play as a character.
Moving on to Sergeant Boyle, Boyle is a "patriotic" nationalist hero - that is, he's virtually superhuman by virtue of being an American. Despite having little Army experience, he's already a sergeant in the British Army, and the Germans can only defeat him by outnumbering him ten to one. In my experience, a well-balanced party can usually handle four times their own level in Hit Dice of fighter-only opponents. But in fighter-to-fighter combat, I would think the odds would be a lot closer to even. Generally - of course, where random dice rolls are concerned, anything can happen. I was ranting just recently in a different forum about running D&D, and having wasted hours prepping for huge combats than turned into easy wins for my party, versus the time I almost had a TPK from a wandering encounter with giant rats - and it all just depends on how all the dice are rolling.
So anyway, Boyle is captured by a German platoon that captures Boyle while attacking his squad. We don't know what happened to the rest of his squad; they are presumed to be dead, but Doyle doesn't seem overly concerned about it. Boyle is taken ...somewhere in German territory and held in a prison, in an upper-floor cell, above where firing squads execute other prisoners. The shooting has weakened Boyle's bars, or at least that's the excuse offered when he makes a really good wrecking things roll. It's a six-man firing squad; Boyle manages to distract them mid-execution by throwing his bars down at them. He's throwing them at a range of 25-30 feet - or medium range for a thrown weapon - and hits twice. This distracts the entire squad enough to allow the seven prisoners to rush their would-be executioners, which seems absurd on the face of it, but sometimes some members of a firing squad only have blanks to fire, and maybe Boyle got lucky and hit the only two with live rounds. Regardless, maybe the Germans will think twice before allowing the prisoners to outnumber the executioners again.
There is a big combat going on in the courtyard now and you might think Boyle would take charge of the situation and lead a jail break, but Boyle doesn't want to get outnumbered again and is willing to sacrifice the other prisoners as a diversion. Instead he climbs a drainpipe up to the roof, where he only has to contend with four soldiers. He beats one, possibly two in a surprise turn before regular combat begins, but the fight with the remaining two was so short that we don't even see it, despite Boyle only fighting with his fists against men armed with rifles or carbines. It's smart, though not very good guy-ish, to think about keeping his odds good. Though it's not clear to me how he climbed up to the roof without getting any shots taken at him, during which he would have been effectively prone too.
Planning to escape alone, Boyle changes into a guard's uniform after knocking out all four on the roof (and because of the fight in the courtyard, no one notices and comes up to reinforce the guards). The next part of his plan is to dive onto a cyclist as he drives by, two stories beneath him, on a motorcycle. Now, we have covered jumping off of roofs into parked cars, and onto the back of stationary horses, on the blog in the past, but this has got to be a first for motorcycles, and I really can't see a way this plays out without Boyle still taking some falling damage, even if the motorcycle rider cushions some of it (maybe 1d6 worth?) before they both hit the ground. Plus he has to hit first and, assuming the motorcycle isn't going too fast, means hitting at least AC 8 and not missing the motorcycle entirely.
Somehow, NO one noticed Boyle dive bomb the motorcyclist, and Boyle simply drives out of the prison without one shot being taken at him. If this was my scenario, he would have had to contend with 1-4 attacking him while climbing to the roof, the 4 on the roof, then 1-6 near the motorcyclist, and 1-8 shooting at him - including with machine guns from watchtowers - as he drives from the prison.
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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 30, 2024 3:13:53 GMT
The next part of Boyle's improvised plan is to commandeer a blimp. Capturing the blimp turns out to be really easy, as there is only one guard between him and the command room after he climbs a rope up into the blimp. Now, I've read that blimps could have crews as small as two people, so this works, and the seven additional "crew" the commander orders to bail out by parachute at Boyle's gunpoint might just be soldiers being transported as passengers. That the blimp is now high enough for parachutes to work suggests there is a block of time missing in the panels showing Boyle hiding for a while in the blimp before assaulting the command room. The parachuting troops just happen to land in a British-controlled prison camp - which was not a thing on French soil during WWII.
Impossibilities soon pile up when six Nazi fighter planes attack the blimp, even though by the story's own admission the blimp is already out of Vichy airspace. The first two planes just whiz past the blimp within throwing range of Boyle, who has five grenades he found in the blimp, and get blown up by him. With the third plane the planes start shooting at Boyle, but keep missing him - which is entirely possible with bad dice rolls, but fails to explain why they don't just shoot the blimp underneath him, or shoot at him from further away so the grenades can't reach them. Speaking of dice rolls, Boyle must be rolling natural 20s every time, because he's both at long range and getting massive penalties to hit for how fast the planes are going. In fact, he blows up five planes without missing once.
Out of grenades, he throws an apple into a plane, which the crew somehow mistakes for a grenade. Interestingly, using a dud grenade as a bluff weapon was just done in my current campaign not too long ago! And it certainly made more sense than the apple gag. If I had to assign game mechanics to this, I would allow each person in the plane an Intelligence check on 3d6 to decide if they are fooled or not, which would be charitably close to a 50/50 chance.
Lastly, Boyle shouts "How do you like them apples?" - a good punchline to the scene, and also a saying I still commonly use myself.
The next feature is The Midshipman, about Lee Sampson, a student in the Naval Academy. The scenario begins with him coming to the rear admiral's house to see his daughter, but what he sees are four spies who have tied up the admiral and are trying to get submarine "formulas" (not plans or blueprints, but formulas) from him. Lee saves the admiral when the spies miss their morale save following some grappling attacks. The admiral thinks it's a great idea to give top secret formulas to a midshipman to hide, because no one would ever think he would have them. And probably rightly so, if this was real life and not a comic book! Lee, incidentally, never checks on his date to make sure she wasn't harmed, or even asks about her.
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Post by order99 on Apr 30, 2024 17:43:56 GMT
The scenario begins with him coming to the rear admiral's house to see his daughter, but what he sees are four spies who have tied up the admiral and are trying to get submarine "formulas" (not plans or blueprints, but formulas) from him. Formulas, multiple, for submarines? Sounds like the Navy was looking into experimental fuel additives for cleaner burning and or more power, chemical catalysts to improve the Fuel Cells for more performance underwater, oxygen-releasing compounds for longer stays beneath the waves,celluloid coatings to reduce water friction...put them all together and you've got a Super Sub! No idea what's up with Boyle the Highly Improbable-a Dual-classed Fighter/M-U with a hidden wand, maybe? |
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Post by Adminenkainen on Apr 30, 2024 18:26:39 GMT
No idea what's up with Boyle the Highly Improbable-a Dual-classed Fighter/M-U with a hidden wand, maybe? Multiple castings of Teleport Item Into Plane? |
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