Improbable Tales Reviews: Dr. Warp

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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 (after a long hiatus) we'll talk about the fifth adventure in the Improbable Tales series, Dr. Warp and his Golden Robots, written by Dan Houser, with art by Dan Houser.

I ran portions of this one on Roll20 a couple of years ago, incorporated into a different adventure. As usual, I kept parts of the body and changed the soul.

Precis

Dr. Warp comes from the groovy 1960s with his female-appearing robots (by accident, but that's backstory). He decides to threaten to launch a missile or two in the quest for world peace. He has a captive (Electric Dervish) and a pinnacle robotic achievement with her own agenda: threatening to end the world is not enough; she's like a Nike product and wants to just do it.

Comments

It's a nice self-contained adventure. There are pieces of a larger world right there to be picked up if you want to, or you can slot it into something bigger.

If you don't want to have time travel possible in your game, even by accident (I'm tempted to say, “What's wrong with you?” but everybody gets to choose), then Dr. Warp can be cryogenically frozen by accident: how he gets to the present is not as important as the idea that he gets here and for him, no time has passed.

As I said, I have swiped a number of things from this adventure. It probably counts as one of the most-stolen-from in my collection.

Likes

A grab-bag of items:

• Not that I don't like PATRIOT, but here the US military is involved, and it's quite reasonable, (it's their missile base, after all).
• Fully detailed missile base. You can use this again and again.
• An NPC hero who doesn't hog the spotlight.
• We have Dan Houser's unpatented Gluon technology to play with in the future.

I've gotten a lot of use out of this adventure. Even if you don't run it as written, there are a nice selection of parts to scavenge and re-purpose.

Dislikes

Editorially, the adventure feels like it goes on a bit about making this a groovy experience (with cake). In practice, that's only a paragraph or two and it's set aside so you could ignore the sidebar. That's a pretty small nitpick.

Changes and Consequences

One of the things I did was tie it into the Terrible Terror-Pin: Dr. Warp and he had been rivals for the same woman (the one the robots are modeled after, for the extra dose of creepiness). (It occurs to me the standard Dr. Warp robots can certainly be re-used elsewhere. If the plans became available on the Internet, no doubt every supervillain with buckets of money and even more megalomania would have them.) She married our professor instead of Dr. Warp, but Warp's reappearance and the looks of the robots push him over the edge and he dusts off the old unsafe tech to create a rival and destroy that Dr. Warp once and for all!

I should have done something with Platinum there (the ultimate villain of the piece), but I did throw in muck monsters (based on a cut-down of a writeup I did of Swamp Thing) to show that gluon technology had some disadvantages.

Assembled Updates

Part of the drill is that Invulnerability becomes Damage Resistance; Life Drain becomes Energy Drain; Wizardry becomes Magic or Gadgets.

Platinum Bombshell

Powers

Invulnerability becomes Damage Resistance; Wizardry becomes Gadgets; Blinding becomes Dazzle

Specialties

Computers, Electronics, and Mechanics all get folded into Technology Master.

Qualities

The seven challenges become three Qualities; my suggestions are:

• Clearly a robot (includes possibility of deactivation code)
• Eradicate humankind to bring about world peace!
• Weakness to EMP & electrical attacks shut down by EMP or a Major Success with electrical attacks.

Electric Dervish

Powers

Elemental Control (Electrical) becomes Electrical Control, with the base power of blast (the EMP pulse), and the extras Aura and Nullify (Limit: solid-state electronics only).

Specialties

The Computers and Electronics specialties become Technology.

Qualities

My suggestions are:

• “Electro-Magnificent!”
• Repair technician for the FBI
• Water! Why did it have to be water?

Dr. Warp

Specialties

Electronics, Computers, and Mechanics become Technology; the slightly higher mechanics we'll handle by invoking a Quality.

Qualities

My suggestions are:

• Mad Robotics Genius!
• Validate me and my creations!
• My beloved creations will help you

Golden Gyno-Droid

Specialties

Computers becomes Technology.

Qualities

My suggestions:

• Robot!
• Weakness to EMP & electrical attacks shut down by EMP or a Major Success with electrical attacks.
• Protect and obey Dr. Warp

General Franklin “Pitbull” Potter

Qualities

Only the Qualities need to be updated to Assembled. There are so many nice character bits, but we'll try these:

• General in US Army
• Hates superhumans of all kinds
• Gruff and Angry

Conclusion

I'd give this one an A. If you're not going to pick up the collection, you should certainly pick up this adventure.