Improbable Tales Volume 1, Issue 4: Vampires of Red Square

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Obligatory Warning

If you are spoiler-wary, this entry and this series is full of spoilers for a six-year-old product. If you don't want to know what's in one of Fainting Goat's first eleven Improbable Tales adventures, well, don't read this. Okay?

Okay.

Today we'll talk about the fourth volume in the series, Vampires of Red Square, written by Mike Lafferty, Dan Houser, & Chris Groarty, with art by Adrian Smith, John Gibbons & Dan Houser.

I have not run this one.

Precis

A time-traveling Nazi commando unit arrives in Moscow, and the head Nazi decides to create four dozen vampires and take over.

Likes

Uh, what part of “time-traveling Nazi vampire commandos” did you not like?

I'm totally biased: vampires and werewolves are two of my favourite flavours. The military aspect of it initially put me off, but once I got the vibe I quite liked this.

It's goofy fun with an emphasis on fun: The bad guys are undeniably bad (there are no shades of gray in this one).

One of the optional endings has a big fakeout which I like; there's no explanation of how Mannheim knows the important detail, so you'd have to invent that, but it's a really nice fakeout, and it gives the whole thing a fine reason to actually be in Moscow.

These are pretty decent vampires, in mild and spicy flavours. Haven't tried the werewolves out.

Oh...there's another optional ending with a giant undead Lenin striding through Red Square. That's just cool.

And later you have Nazis who want presumably to get back to their home time and “fix” things.

Dislikes

None of these are big dislikes, but they did come to mind.

The bad guys have created a few dozen new vampires...that is, killed a few dozen people. If you're running a strictly G-rated campaign, then you need to think about this. Maybe it's a spell by Mannheim and the vampires get better if Mannheim is himself destroyed (hey, it worked in Batman comics when Doug Moench was writing it). Maybe the sudden appearance of light will shock them back to human because they're only pseudo-vampires at this point.

PATRIOT gets bigger and bigger: in this adventure, it operates in Russia. On a per-adventure basis, it exists to make things easier to set up, but it feels like as a whole, there's an organization that could do some harm.

Given the organization's name, I feel like it should be restricted to the USA, and it's a paragraph to introduce the Russian or the international agency. Not a big deal to fix in your game; they're actually working for MATRYOSHKA or IDES (International Directive for Espionage and Supers) or COINS (Cooperative Oversight for Investigation of Normals and Supers).

One of the villains, Dr. Night, has magic at a level of 7. The appearance of a wizard with magic 7, a vampire infestation, possible werewolves, and a couple of sorcerous totems has to get the Necromancer's attention, but he's not mentioned. I understand that the adventures are not really joined, but the existence of the PATRIOT name does indicate some kind of shared world, so it would be nice to include a line like, "Off fighting Dark Pharaoh."

Changes and Consequences

Well, you need to justify the absence of the Iron Hand and of Necromancer.

Dr. Night has Magic (well, originally Wizardry) 7. Necromancer, from last adventure, has the same power but at level 8. You'd think Necromancer would care about the appearance of Herr Doktor Nacht, but he does not show up. (In the real world, that is because John Post didn't write the adventure, and because adventures come in when they come in, but we are not concerned with such mundanities.)

Or I'd throw it all in: the Iron Hand brings a sub up the Moskva River, Necromancer appears and is immediately caught up with the Dark Pharaoh, giant ants appear...okay, strike that one. But I might consider complicating it even more, especially if it's early in the campaign. (Complicate early, prune later.)

The growth of PATRIOT is a seed you can cultivate for later: does every UN country have a version of PATRIOT? Is PATRIOT a loose association of organizations? Or is it a single “super-organization” that fights its own political battles? In these adventures, PATRIOT is used as a means to hand PCs stuff in a convenient way, but you could do a whole PATRIOT centered organization, or you could do a Captain America: Winter Soldier thing where you bring it down—“Patriot? But patriot to whom?”

Or I'd create some kind of excuse—that PATRIOT was helping unofficially—and I'd springboard the creation of some global spy/superhero agency from it. Then you could call them when you need to go to, say, Tokyo in an upcoming adventure.

Having said all of that, this is actually the last time that PATRIOT takes an active role in Improbable Tales, Volume 1. In adventure 5 (Dr. Warp) the army takes their place; they get name-checked in adventure 10 (Through the Looking Glass) but don't actually show up.

Assembled Updates

Part of the drill is that Invulnerability becomes Damage Resistance; Life Drain becomes Energy Drain; Wizardry becomes Magic (except when it becomes Gadgets).

Vampires in general

• Invulnerability becomes Damage Resistance, with the Limit: Not vs. silver or holy weapons.
• Immortality gets the Limit: Negated by sunlight or beheading.
• Life Drain becomes Energy Drain.

Vampire Troopers and SS Vampires

Replace their aspects with these three Qualities:

• Undead vampire
• Vampire weaknesses; a stake through the heart causes a Stun result that lasts until the stake is removed
• Must drink blood to survive (only Energy Drain recovers Stamina

Baron Mannheim

Replace his aspects with these three Qualities:

• Time-Traveling Nazi Vampire Commando
• Vampire weaknesses; a stake through the heart causes a Stun result that lasts until the stake is removed
• Must drink blood to survive (only Energy Drain recovers Stamina

In the normal case, Nazi and Vampire are his prime motivations.

Doctor Night

Replace Wizardry with Magic; replace Summon with Servant. Perhaps ignore the mental attributes of the demonic minions; I discussed this in the last adventure.

His aspects become thse Qualities:

• Undead Egyptian sorcerer
• “For the glory of Set”
• The true goal is ruling Egypt

Fafnir

To his Hellfire Thrower, add this Limit: Blows up for Amazing damage if ignited by called shot.

And his aspects become these Qualities:

• Occult Nazi Stormtrooper
• Grotesque physical appearance
• A melding of man and magic

Blutwolf

Change the Invulnerability to Damage Resistance (Limit: Not vs. silver); the Alter-Ego should be Transformation into an animal form with a limit that each Blutwolf becomes itself as a mundane wolf...or I'd drop the power, because it's really no different than Billy Batson saying "Shazam!".

Its aspects become these Qualities:

• Forest creature mutated by Mannheim
• Extra vulnerable to silver (+1 degree of damage)
• Bloodthirsty Feral Berserker

Night Hunter

I'd actually give him a level 5 in Vehicle because I'd beef up the cycle a bit. (See next section.)

His aspects become these Qualities:

• Agent of PATRIOT
• Brusque demeanor over a caring heart
• Finds and kills vampires

Vehicles

This adventure presents three vehicles that have to be updated to the Icons Assembled rules: a cargo truck, a helicopter, and a personal skybike, apparently part of PATRIOT issue for some agents.

However, the vehicles really are movement devices and should be represented as vehicles.

PATRIOT Air-Cycle

Handling	Great (6)
Speed	Fair (4)
Structure	Fair (4)
Armor	Weak (1)
Extras	No protection in combat Remote Control Hidden bolo-gun (Good (5) Binding)

Cargo Truck

Handling	Fair (4)
Speed	Fair (4)
Structure	Great (6)
Armor	Weak (1)

Helicopter

Handling	Great (6)
Speed	Good (5)
Structure	Average (3)
Armor	–
Extras	Door-mounted machine gun (Good (5) Blast)

Conclusion

A lot of moving parts to play with. I'd still say this is an A, but if you have used PATRIOT or vampires before, it may leave consequences for you to clean up.

Improbable Tales Volume 1: Aqua-zombies of the Kriegsmarine

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Apology

This one took a while, because there were a lot of characters to update to Icons Assembled and I made updating them part of this series. A couple of adventures in this series have a lot of NPC characters to change and think about (the third, fourth, and sixth, for instance). And I sometimes get hung up on things like, oh, the Servant power. The minions in the third, fourth, and sixth adventure should be called with the Servant power, but that power explicitly says that the summoned servants have no mental stats. I have chosen to interpret this as meaning that these are never characters who will decide not to fight, but it doesn't mean they have no mental stats. We could argue for a Minion power that does the exact same thing except the created characters have mental stats and aren't as loyal. Nertz to it.

Obligatory Warning

If you are spoiler-wary, this entry and this series is full of spoilers for a six-year-old product. If you don't want to know what's in one of Fainting Goat's first eleven Improbable Tales adventures, well, don't read this. Okay?

Okay.

Today we'll talk about the third adventure in the series, Aqua-Zombies of the Kriegsmarine, written by Mike Lafferty, John Post & Chris McGroarty, with art by Adrian Smith & Jon Gibbons.

I have run this one; I ran it on Roll20 a couple of years ago.

Another disclaimer

By the way, I just noticed something. I've re-read these adventures several times, but sometimes I need to find a specific reference and I use Adobe Acrobat's search feature. That doesn't always work: something about the early adventures means that the text isn't there to be searched. (I presume they were saved as images or something.) So I may make an assertion and be wrong because it didn't come up when I searched the PDF. Bear with me if that happens; I'll apologize and take your corrections.

Precis

A sunken Nazi U-boat from WW2 is being hauled out of the water for a museum, but it contained canisters of an alchemical serum. One of the things the serum does is raise the dead as zombies, and yes, a canister ruptured. And to make it better, a neo-Nazi group and mystics want the remaining serum.

This is the first appearance of the Dark Pharaoh (and the Necromancer), and the Dark Pharoah plays a bigger part in adventure 6, The Other Side.

It's probably worth noting that the Necromancer and Dark Pharaoh characters are specifically called out as being the property of John Post. That isn't noted elsewhere, but John Post is one of the people who provided the idea for adventure 6.

Likes

This adventure has something I don't see as often as I'd like: an optional scene at the end. Everything is complete at the end of Action Scene 2, but if you have time, you can go on to scene 3, storminng the base of the bad guys.

You get to stomp Nazi butt, which is certainly a comics thing to do, and it can be fun.

There's a robot squid. (The Improbable Tales adventures certainly bring the whacky without making it out of place, which I utterly admire...)

I haven't decided if this is a thing I like or not: Adventures 3 through 6 in this adventure all provide minions you can use lethal force on. Zombies, vampires, robots, and extradimensional monsters: great foes for the hero with a gun. They're a lesson in providing minions who are not human. But this adventure also provides minions who are human. You might not like the neo-Nazi members of the Iron Hand, but they are people, and the players are due for trouble if their characters fold, stab, spindle, or mutilate them.

And you get a map of a German U-boat and an island headquarters.

It's nice to see zombies buffed up for this adventure. Your typical superhero can just walk through a bunch of Icons Assembled zombies, and these are a bit tougher.

Dislikes

You have at least one powerful NPC floating around, so the adventure gives you advice on how to keep that character from stealing fun from the main characters. (But at least it gives you that advice, so put the fact of that in the Likes section.)

Minor historical note: this adventure calls out the German Thule society. I might be incorrect, but although a number of high-ranking German officers were mystics or inclined that way, I think that the practice of magic was banned by the Nazis before the war. However, (WW2 Nazi = Magic!) is so ingrained in comics that I doubt it's worth arguing about. Anyway, it's trivial to create a hidden magical society if one of your players talks about this.

There are a lot of NPCs in this. It's not too difficult to keep track of them, but you'd be forgiven for skipping the third scene just to keep the number of NPCs under control. (The third scene is fun, though.)

If you don't want to spread out to other countries and dimensions, well, it's possible to reign that in...but the next one explicitly takes place in Russia, and there's one in Tokyo, and one on Mars...so there will be some travel in these adventures.

Changes and Consequences

The big one in this is the explicit mention of Nyarlathotep. This gives you access to all sorts of Cthulhu cults, gods, and mischief. >The Dark Pharoah is used again in The Other Side in a much more explicitly Lovecraftian way.

Be nice if the "celebrities" table on the beach were a throwback to the All-American. I mean, he is a weatherman in the area, and there's a loose continuity. If you want to bring him in, you can.

The next Improbable Tales adventure is Vampires of Red Square and I would think that elements from this one could well appear in that one. Perhaps the Iron Hand tries to recruit the bad guy from that (the Iron Squid sub can go up the Moskva River). Or perhaps the Iron Hand is using materials that were created by the Nazi magical society here, and there's future conflicts as the Red Square bad guys try to get them. Or the Iron Hand succeeds in recruiting that bad guy, but they offend his Aryan ideals with Cthulhoid apocalypses. Several possibilities.

The Lazarus Serum is also a useful MacGuffin. You can use it (with suitable changes) to bring some character back from the dead (“I see! They misinterpreted this code phrase in the works of Nicolas Flamel as this other code phrase, so they used Egyptian mummy dust instead of bitumen! Of course!”) By definition some of the ingredients in Lazarus Serum are so rare that the Iron Hand had to steal them, so when it's gone, it's gone.

One of the nice things here is the extra scene: if you don't attack the island base, some other evil organization might well have an island base you can attack.

Assembled Updates

In general:

• Invulnerability becomes Damage Resistance
• Wizardry becomes Magic
• Fast Attack gets increased because it operates in a different way; upping it to the level of the most common attack attribute (Prowess, Coordination, or Willpower) seems the best way to go

The Dark Pharaoh

He has the power Minions, which was created by Fainting Goat Games. The best fit is the Servant power, with this caveat: the servants in the power are explicitly said to have no mental attributes, and these minions clearly do. So you have a couple of options:

• Ignore it. You're going to create the Minions using the "Avatar of Nyalathotep" quality anyway.
• Ignore the mental attributes of the minions listed. Some of them are other-worldly creations, and can't be expected to think like earthly creatures.
• Create the extra "Sapient" for Servant, which costs like all extras, but adds an additional four points per rank. You do have to buy mental attributes now, but you have extra points to do so. For some kinds of servants (a summoned demon, for instance) you might want to include the concept that it works against its master but obeys the letter of the command. I don't think that's worth an actual Limit, though I would throw the player a point of determination if it happened.

In practice, I'd probably just ignore it and use the Quality, but if you will be handing this power out to a PC, well, the extra is probably the way to go. I haven't tried it, so I don't know if it's overpowered.

Demonic Minions, Minions of Nyarlathotep, Elite Commandos

Just change Invulnerability to Damage Resistance.

Mystically Enhanced Zombies and Commandos

No changes needed.

Commander Draco

• Invulnerability becomes Damage Resistance.
• His Qualities might be: Criminal leader of fascist terrorist group Iron Hand; Prone to rage; “Iron Hand—attack!”

Iron Hand Giant Squid Sub

This gets altered a fair bit to meet the rules for vehicles in Icons Assembled, and even this version doesn't meet them; it's a 41-point vehicle, which according should be a Speed 10 vehicle. It ain't; it might be better to go back to the original design and just have it as a full character...in which case, you can use the writeup in the adventure. (I suppose you could grant an Extra that just doubles the number of points, in which case this is the Vehicles power with that extra twice or three times, depending on whether the extra is geometric if applied multiple times or just additive.) Vehicles 3, Extras: Double pool points, double pool points, double pool points

Handling	2	Speed	3
Structure	8	Armor	3
Extras	Prowess 5 Tentacles (Extra Body Parts: grants Strength 7) 7 Aquatic 3 (speed only 2 out of water) Fast Attack 5 Beak or tentacles (Slashing 5) Damage Resistance (included above) 3

Conclusion

This one is fun. There are some nice pieces you can use; it's reasonably self-contained. Grade: A.

Chortling

In a superhero story I am in the process of writing, who do you call when you need an infestation of vampires, werewolves, or zombies?

Do you call the Vatican? What if they're Jewish vampires? Do you call the FBI? What if they’re operating outside of the US?

Nah, you call the Center for Disease Control.

The CDC has a division dedicated to eliminating zombies, werewolves, and vampires. They’re just contagions of a different kind.

And mention is made of the “meme division” but apparently those boys are weird.

Flashing the CDC badge just makes me happy. And they’re chronically underfunded, so they have an excuse to ask random strangers to help. “Here, you hold her chest while I place the syringe…”

“Don’t you have to use an ash stake?”

“Not for a type 2b; an air embolism in the chest will do it. There you go. This fella here is a transformed super type, all scientific instead of mystical. Low chance of an outbreak with him.”

“And you killed him?”

“Nah. The embolism just puts him into an agitated state where his heart decays as fast as it regenerates. Keep him weak as a kitten until we get him to the Center.”

“RAAAAH!”

“Whoop. 7d instead of a 2b. Run!”