/wg/ - Weaver Dice/Worm General #2: Cauldron Did Nothing Wrong Edition

Blind spot? How exactly were they going to find that one hepitits infested bum in London anyway? What would have led them there?
So, post Jack-manipulation they know it's possible, when it's already basically too late and they're in panic mode. Great.

Plus, how can they be sure that Jack did mundane manipulation and not some super-powered shenanigans?

The exact specifics of how much Scion relied on the other to function aren't really something that Cauldron knows (or can know) it's something we know on a meta-level, but not something they had any means of figuring out.

Also it takes the whole bullying theme full circle. Wildbow used sci-fi writer scaling for endbringers and Scion; WoG says that Parian could have legit taken down an endbringer iirc, and maybe Flechette could have done something against Scion, but that's about it.

Parian could have stalled Behemoth, specifically Behemoth, but not killed him.

From what I've seen, it's fun as fuck, pure beautiful chaos in combat, not a big clusterfuck of math either, and coming up with ingenious ways to use your power is one of the best parts.

Have a Trigger:
10, you were Ten years old today, your parents were even throwing a party this time, it should be great! But Nobody came. You invited your whole 4th grade class, and no one came. It hurt a little, but what confused you was the fact that when someone DID show up, over an hour late, you didn't even know her. She was probably a little older than you, long curly blond hair, with a pretty white dress. She smiled, and greeted your parents behind you. You turned around and saw shock and horror, you didn't understand, what was wrong with this girl?
She had friends, and you didn't like them one bit, hulking men that seemed to be half-rotting came through the door, gently pushing you aside.
The next thing you knew, there were screams from your parents, and something red wet and sticky was all over you, it looked a bit like ketchup, but it wasn't, you looked up and saw the girl, still smiling, looking down at you.
"Hi, I'm bonesaw, wanna be my friend?"
Trigger.

>Also, the entities literally are pandimensional, per WoG.
and Wildbow gets some concepts very wrong, and I choose to ignore them.
As someone who actually knows statistics, it's the only way to get through the Dinah chapters without screaming.

Wildbow can't grok numbers.
He has literal dyscalculia

that explains a lot about Weaver Dice

ehh Master/Trump elements, but i'm drawing a blank for anything interesting.

Also, this seems like a pointless trigger since you're basically 100% guaranteed not to survive it, no matter what.

Plus, why, exactly, would Bonesaw do that? It's a bit outside her MO - party crashing is not something a Good Girl would do.

>Trigger.
Hmm. Either a bud from Bonesaw, in which case a Bio-Tinker power of some sort, or a Master/Stranger/Breaker variant due to the combination of unwelcome lack-of-attention from classmates and unwelcome attention from Bonesaw.

If the former, then I'd go for something more focused on manipulating dead bodies than live ones - more Dr Frankenstein than anything, with practical applications in zombie-making and the like.

If the latter then... there's lots of possibilities, but maybe a Master effect similar to Nice Guy's, given the focus on friends? Limited in range by your ability to perceive them, so that you can target a specific person you can see and they become your friend, but only so long as you can see them. Maybe limited in number, but perhaps not - the limitation of having to keep your eye on them is a big limitation anyway, especially as they just become your friend, not a fanatic follower. Effectively a much weaker version of Nice Guy's power, but more flexible in some ways.

>As someone who actually knows statistics, it's the only way to get through the Dinah chapters without screaming.
Out of interest, what do you find so wrong about Dinah's probabilities? The only thing I can think of that would be annoying is absolute certainty values, but I can't remember any of those being mentioned.

>Master/Stranger/Breaker variant
Meant Master/Stranger/Trum, given Bonesaw's a cape. Still not sure how Breaker's get triggered anyway...

Breakers are supposed to be by "hard to define" stress.
If you find yourself going "hmm, this could be a mover or a brute, or a shaker, or a blaster..." it's probably actually a breaker.

I'd say Emma in the Alley could very well be a breaker-trigger.

Ah, I see. I always took the "hard to define" line to mean that there was a specific commonality between breaker triggers that was hard to describe, not that breakers are made by hard-to-determine trigger events.

In which case most trigger events can probably be classified as breaker triggers, depending on your tolerance levels. I've always thought Taylor's trigger could have been a shaker (due to the locker) or stranger (due to the bullies' attention) power rather than the canonical master power - could have made a breaker variant also.

Here's a trigger.

You are 20 years old. Your life is nice and college is going great, up until you fall down a flight of stairs rushing to psychology class and land on your head. You wake up a week later to discover your little fuck up caused moderate to severe damage over your entire frontal lobe. Your personality is destroyed. Before you were calm and calculated in every move you're now restless, constantly on edge, and cannot resist indulgences of the flesh. Your academic career quickly shatters and the group of close friends you've had throughout college abandon the new you. Unable to perform in any decent way towards your dream job you are forced to take up a shitty job at a butcher. From then onward you cannot look to family or former friends without feeling the crushing depression of how quickly your life took a nose dive into the shitter. One night while walking home you get mugged, stabbed, and left to bleed out leaning against a dumpster. The crushing realization of what you've become and that you're about to die causes you to trigger.
Excuse the shit writing.

There's always a lot of overlap between Master and Stranger - that's deliberate, and why it's called "Master/Strange isolation" a lot of "stranger" abilities work in a "master" fashion (Imp, Nice Guy) for example.
Taylor gets a Master power instead of a stranger one because what really hurts isn't the bullying, it's the betrayal, it's who's doing the bullying.
The reason she isn't a shaker is because the environmental hazard of the locker, while present, is incidental to the stress, it doesn't really factor into her psyche.

Similarly, she has aspects of Thinker (and she does get a thinker sub-power) since it's a long running issue culminating in a crisis point, and it's also got elements of Tinker (long running problem with no solution)
But she doesn't trigger as a Tinker because she isn't trying to solve her problem - she just suffers through it.

I wonder how would superhero teams of other settings (Avengers, Justice League) fare in the Worm universe.

Pretty fucking well considering that usually those guys have 0 mental trauma associated with their power and nearly 0 drawbacks.

>0 mental trauma associated with their power

most other settings have far higher powerlevels than worm.
Powers in worm include:

Being able to shoot a gout of fire out of your mouth - but not being even slightly resistant to fire.
Being able to throw blasts that hit with the force of softballs and occasionally being able to make people cry
Excreting super LSD, constantly.
And a guy who gets stronger the fatter he is, but not really that strong, like, not even SpiderMan levels. Oh, and just strength.

He doesn't have a power.

They also include a dude that destroyed the British Isles in an instant, can travel through dimensions and if pressed can hit an "I win" button.

But he was the BBEG!

That's like comparing Spiderman to Master Order

Thinker tinker stranger base, literally everything with prep time.

Siberian would be literally the only Worm hero who could plausibly threaten the classic JL lineup, and even then they'd probably figure out the gimmick pretty quick. Maybe Grey Boy too, I guess.

You're kinda cherrypicking there. Yeah, there are some really weak parahumans, but there's weak superhumans in Marvel and DC as well. If you're going to compare the top-hitter of DC or Marvel to anyone in Worm, it should be to the top-tier capes - the Triumvirate, Glaistig Uaine, the best of the Protectorate and the Guild and so on.

I think they would do pretty well for themselves - they're mentally stable as says, and they have some impressive hitters. The problem, as always, is when/where you take your power sample from - are we talking the Superman who can punch reality so hard it shatters, or a more reasonable variant? Is the Hulk literally unstoppable by any means, or is he a top-tier brute without much else going? Without defining the powers (and limits thereof) of the comics characters, there's no way to provide a reasonable answer.

Grey Boy is too slow and short ranged to really get any of them, maybe one of the chumps like aqua man or green arrow.
Any of the Tri could threaten some of the members of the JL individually, none could touch soops, unless Eidolon can replicate kryptonite radiation, though I guess Sibby could probably hurt him, OFC, he'd probably hear manton's heartbeat from space or some similar bullshit.

Panacea, with plagues and surprise mindrape? Meet Supes, shake his hand, suddenly he's fanatically loyal to her.

Longstanding mental trauma and a immediate threat of bleeding out/mugging. Is that a breaker/stranger class or something?

I actually don't know if it would work on Supes, her power takes a while to work, on the scale of 10s of seconds to minutes depending on what she's doing. Supes is a guy who can react so quickly as to dodge lasers.

That is, if Supes doesn't somehow detect what she's doing and immediately blasts her.
Mind-controlling Superman has been done before and he developed countermeasures. Bio-controlling him, however, is new if I recall.

And apparently the mindrape can be fought against. Glory Girl could.

I'd do a brute power - since the timing of the trigger is post traumatic injury with deep tissue damage, which, by WoG, is how you get a regeneration type power - a regeneration power that can't heal his own brain.

Speaking of characters irrationally hated, I really hope Panacea unfucks Glory Girl in Worm II. Victoria did not deserve that ending. Probably the most horrifying thing in Worm.

>a regeneration power that can't heal his own brain.
It would heal his brain, but it would also end up erasing the memories in that section of his brain. Which is worse; staying a wreck of a person or going through ANOTHER personality-shattering experience?

>Most horrifying thing in worm
What about when gray boy traps people in infinite time loops when they're experiencing an agonizing pain or listening to a loved one scream on re-wind for the rest of eternity?

That's also up there. 2

So has anyone been able to run even a single session of weaver dice, even if it's a 1 on 1?

except that if Panacea wanted to kill the world she could do it easily

like STUPID easily...

a hemorrhagic fever with a 6 month virulence and incubation period, communicable to all vertebrates.

6 months after releasing that in a major city airport and the human race....DIES, blood everywhere.

shortly after that all the non-biologic entities die, or kill eachother and people like the slaughterhouse 9 find themselves outdone forever never able to one-up Panacea.

and the fleshy ones eventually die of starvation despite Bonesaws best efforts.

Yeah, but she didn't do that, so it wasn't the most horrifying thing in Worm.

Panacea absolutely should not be allowed to walk free, though I suppose Riley can counterweight her now if the worst occurs.

This, they make the Imperium look like a paragon of logic.

What did they do that was illogical?

no but she has the potential to do it.

she could play Plague Inc. with the whole world, with infinite DNA points...

>>Now, how no one, especially Cauldron, figured that shit out, is a good question.
Powers have blindspots around Scion, and Scion isn't actually trackable with technology, so...

It's a terrible trigger.

The reason I hate Cauldron is that they essentially justify their disregard for common ethical constraints with "Trust us, we know what we are doing, even if it goes against conventional morality." They plan to manufacture ammunition for humanity's war against Scion, but every round they make is a blank due to the fact that Scion is immune to powers. When you claim your evil action is necessary for the Greater Good and it later turns out to have been unnecessary the wheels of your argument come off.

>Scion is immune to powers
They didn't know that and had no way to know until Scion became an active hostile.

They don't justify shit though. They did their best to stay hidden while providing powers.

>Scion is immune to powers
He wasn't though.

>and it later turns out to have been unnecessary

Doormaker and Clairvoyant were both unambiguously vital, Oliver arguably waa as well, and a very strong argument can be made that without Coil, Taylor would never have become Khepri and saved the world.

Cauldron's plan to cause as many natural and artificial triggers as possible actually did work, because it produced Taylor and the unique combination of supporting capes necessary for her to vanquish Scion.

>Why the FUCK does Cauldron tattoo their symbol on case 53s before releasing them. Why the FUCK does Contessa let people see her when she grabs pretender instead of, I dunno, fucking doormakering him at any point any time.
>Why don't they just doormaker a bomb on Jack Slash. Herp derp 14 years humanity will be weaker.
>Ok, if humanity REALLY IS getting weaker over time thanks to the endbringers, why not start a fight immediately? But, if they can't even pull one over on the endbringers, how the fuck do they expect to PTV on Scion?
>Wait wait wait it gets better.
>Cauldron is interdimensional. Hell, pretty sure Contessa didn't even come to Earth Bet.
>WHY ARE THEY FOCUSING ALL THEIR RESOURCES ON EARTH BET.
>Oh capes are getting ganked left and right by Endbringers? WHY NOT DROP THEM OFF ON ONE OF THE PLANETS WITHOUT ENDBRINGERS. Why not teleport all the capes off Earth Bet. Like, why even give a shit about saving any of Earth Bet from the Endbringers? Earth Bet is one world and Cauldron hemorrhages resources preserving it... for what? Why? We're never told.
>Why is there any visible Cauldron activity AT ALL on Earth Bet? Why is Cauldron experimenting with social models and the protectorate and all that on Earth Bet? Surely they could do that on ANY OTHER FUCKING PLANET! The random Blue Woman cape empress person conquered her planet and she's not even interdimensional godtier hacks mode!
>Like, for real, doesn't it seem a bit fucking odd that Cauldron is doing any activity on the ONE PLANET IN THE ENTIRE SPECTRUM OF DIMENSIONS where Scion is active and there are Endbringers? Like, what if he noticed their shenanigans? Wouldn't that be, you know, bad? >Why are they dumping the case-53s (GREAT JOB WIPING THEIR MEMORIES - DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUCKING SYMBOL YOU TATTOOED ON THEM THO, SURE NOBODY WILL NOTICE) on Earth Bet instead of elsewhere.

>Cont.

>Out of interest, what do you find so wrong about Dinah's probabilities? The only thing I can think of that would be annoying is absolute certainty values, but I can't remember any of those being mentioned.
It's what those numbers mean.
See, there are various interpretations of statistical numbers, which one correctly applies differs from case to case.

Dinah seems to be giving a 'population statistic', because she sees all possible universes and gives the percentage of that population that fit the question.

The problem is that population statistics aren't "chances of x happening". The closest when you do something like "if the population of the classroom is 50% female, then if you pick a person AT RANDOM you have a 50% chance of it being female".

But they lay out that the different possible futures aren't random. When she say there is a "30% chance that we survive", she can look in and see what's different about those universes than the ones where they die.

So a population statistic cannot be used as a proxy for a likelyhood statistic.
When you mix those two types improperly you get nonsense.

>that Scion is immune to powers.

He's literally not. He just has PtV and a huge amount of body mass to absorb damage with.

>every round they make is a blank due to the fact that Scion is immune to powers.
But this is pure, unmitigated bullshit. He isn't immune to powers (Hello, Foil) He can simply quickly adapt his defenses, borg shield style - so, as it turns out you need a ton of different ways to attack him, good thing Cauldron maximized the number of capes, and thereby offensive powers. Plus some of the powers they created that weren't offensive were vital to the fight, they couldn't have known which ahead of time, because they couldn't see that future.

>like STUPID easily...
it's worse than that, it's hard for her to not do it.
When she mindfucked Glory Girl it was because she slipped up for a second.
She knew doing that was wrong, but part of her wanted it, so she avoided doing things that would tempt her. That's a big part of why she never worked on brains.

She needs to not design microbes, because if she does and gets angry and slips, that's all it takes for a horrible disease to spill out.

>ignorance, the post

>Why is Cauldron fucking bothering to make legal contracts with dudes that they sell powers to? >Why? What possible purpose could that serve? >So they don't get sued? So they can go to the court of ultradimensional appeals if someone tries to renege?!
>Listen, the idiot ball cauldron is holding is so massive it could outweigh the black hole at the center of our galaxy and that's before you consider that they're supposed to be literally infallible with their plans due to Path to Victory.
>Supposedly Cauldron has all these fucking plans and contingencies but they all seem to suck and then Skitter has to step up and save the fucking day. So either those sucky plans really were exactly what they seemed like: terrible ideas, or they were some Xanatos level bullshit to enable Weaver to save the day but again that can't be true because of Contessa's interlude.
>Like holy shit take Mantellum. He no-sells Contessa.
>He's a case 53.
>So that means, that at some point, Cauldron made a cape that could no-sell their ONE BIG ASSET, and maybe even Scion's precog, and what did they do? They tattooed him, mindwiped him (HOW, DOESN'T HE CANCEL POWERS NEAR HIM? HOW DID THEIR MINDWIPE GUY TOUCH HIM WHILE STILL HAVING POWERS), and just LET HIM GO?! Also, they let him go on Earth Bet instead of anywhere else because HA HA why not. They don't think to, I dunno, fucking, recruit him? Kill him? KEEP ANY TABS ON HIM?!
>Like, what was the conversation there?
>"Oh hey Contessa what's your power say about the abilities of this freaky crab dude we made."
>"Nothing, can't see him."
>"What, really? Like, at all?"
>"Yep."
>"So, like, this crab dude is either an existential threat to cauldron or the solution we've been waiting for all this time?"
>"Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, mind wipe him and dump him in Connecticut."
>"Wait - what?"
>"Did I fucking stutter?"
>Worm's plotting is generally not that terrible by the standards of the superhero genre, but everything Cauldron did was just dumb.

Weaver Dice isn't even a playable RPG. It's some homebrew (mostly on chargen) you stack onto another system.

Play Wild Talents or Mutants and Masterminds

>Hell, pretty sure Contessa didn't even come to Earth Bet.

Do you mean "from"?

I can't address all of these right now (on mobile) but they focus on Earth Bet because that's where Scion is, as well as just about every natural trigger.

>ignorance 2, electric boogaloo

>ignorance, the post

This general is mostly about the setting.

He has semi-valid points at least about Mantellum and the tattoos, but the rest is nonsense.

Most likely Contessa just wasn't around for Mantellum, anyways. She can't be there for every single trigger. She's a very busy woman.

>This general is mostly about the setting

Great way to get it deleted.

Also, even if we take Dinah's power to be a likelihood statistic (which still has several complex interpretations), Coil repeatedly displays typical human biases to correctly interpreting small but not negligible chances.

If some tells use that there is a 10% chance of something failing, people typically dismiss it unless the outcome of failure is too high in which case we'll treat it as if they said 100% chance.
But you need to consider more than just how bad the outcome might be when dealing with how to interpret small but non-negligible chances. Including frequency, causal structure, and statistical form.

I don't care what the author says. Do you have an epub/PDF version of Worm?

The tatoos had dots on them that functioned like bar codes. Also, they wanted to distinguish their case 53s from ones made from stolen vials and naturally monstrous capes.

wow, someone's salty...

*sigh*
You either can't read, didn't read, or can't think.
Oh well, enjoy using up that oxygen.

>>>lit

>>Why is Cauldron fucking bothering to make legal contracts with dudes that they sell powers to? >Why? What possible purpose could that serve? >So they don't get sued? So they can go to the court of ultradimensional appeals if someone tries to renege?!
Well, I'll handle this one if nothing else. The contract is there as a threat. It's proof that said individual did buy their powers. It's there so that, in the event that cauldron is dragged into the light, cauldron has leverage over their customers. As if they don't play ball, cauldron can leak the details. And given how shady the idea of buying powers was, even without the human experimentation, this is the sort of thing that would severely damage a capes reputation and credibility.
They cheated. They went the easy route. They don't understand what triggers are like. They didn't earn their powers. What favours have they performed for cauldron? Etc etc

Also internal records. They have many irons in many fires, like all the fires, all of them, and they need ways to keep track.

I love Worm, user. I'm simply observing that having a thread dedicated to discussing the book, not the game, will end up with the thread getting deleted.

It's a shame that the mods delete these threads on /co/, as it's very difficult to get one off the ground on Veeky Forums.

yeah, but here, we can discuss settings.

it's in the rules
we can do this here.

that just means the salt in you is from tears of a different flavor
tears of physical pain taste best!

On the topic of the game, if one focuses on the power they want, then try and make a trigger for it, they're doing it wrong, right?

>I can't actually respond to the criticism and will just call them dumb.

Probably
But since that trigger gets discussed by all the other players they will probably wind up with something different from what they wanted.

Correct.
Plus, it won't work. No matter how "perfectly" you craft a trigger, you never get to come up with your own powers, as such, the powers that arise will stem from other's interpretations, which will never line up exactly with your own. Any trigger that's interpreted exactly the same way by everyone is a boring trigger.
Really, you should probably play by everyone writing down a trigger, then throwing it in a hat and drawing them out one at a time.

>I'll respond to this post instead of the ones blowing me out

Wildbow's intent is that you basically don't get to pick your power.

Which, honestly, always struck me as a bit daft - he seemed to prize iron adherence to the themes of Worm over creating a game that's actually fun for the players.

well people did want him to make a mage like the one Weaver does in the story.
But that game was clearly intended to illustrate the nature of the world to children, not to be a fun game to play.

So it's not daft, it's what people asked for.

Exploring the ways to use a power you didn't choose and how it affects the character can be incredibly interesting.

It just isn't comfortable.

Actually, I find that getting the group to help you with a randomly selected trigger, and generating your powers to be pretty cool. Also, a good group bonding experience, and really lets you get into your characters head.

>Dad, why are you hurting me?
>ENDBRINGER FUCKING SHITS

Eidolon had a hard life.

It's badwrongfun if you choose.

Oh, it is loads of fun.

I guess I'll bite...

>>Why the FUCK does Cauldron tattoo their symbol on case 53s before releasing them.
Probably to better keep track of them, and identify them when they popped up. Seems smart to keep a tab on the people whose memories you stole. Remember, no one knows what the symbol means - it's not like it's gonna tell anyone that Cauldron's behind it all.

>>Why the FUCK does Contessa let people see her when she grabs pretender instead of, I dunno, fucking doormakering him at any point any time.
What was the downside of doing it as she did? I mean, I don't remember it leading to anything that Contessa wouldn't want, and her power literally lets her determine how best to do stuff - presumably there were no bad side-effects of letting herself be seen, and possibly some good ones.

>>Ok, if humanity REALLY IS getting weaker over time thanks to the endbringers, why not start a fight immediately? But, if they can't even pull one over on the endbringers, how the fuck do they expect to PTV on Scion?
My understanding is that humanity was getting stronger prior to the story beginning, and would get weaker sometime in the next 10 years. We don't know that the decline has been going on for long, or even that it's started yet, and there's a lot to be said for an opponent that handily unites all capes on Earth against him. Starting a fight unilaterally can be a worse outcome than letting the enemy do so - what do you think would happen if the Triumvirate attacks Scion without him being a clear threat to Earth? Would the rest of the capes unite behind them? I think not. Better to let the fight start in a way that instantly unites all capes against the enemy. And this is the plan that Number Man and Contessa approve of - I don't really see them making simplistic mistakes like you seem to suggest. Have you considered that maybe you aren't omniscient?

cont.

, >>WHY ARE THEY FOCUSING ALL THEIR RESOURCES ON EARTH BET.
Because that's where Scion is, and where almost all the natural Parahumans are. It's the best place to encourage natural triggers, and thus the most important place to shape socially - hence the PRT and Protectorate being established there, rather than on Aleph.

>>Oh capes are getting ganked left and right by Endbringers? WHY NOT DROP THEM OFF ON ONE OF THE PLANETS WITHOUT ENDBRINGERS. Why not teleport all the capes off Earth Bet. Like, why even give a shit about saving any of Earth Bet from the Endbringers? Earth Bet is one world and Cauldron hemorrhages resources preserving it... for what? Why? We're never told.
Earth Bet is important, because it's the world where Scion is running around and where (almost) all the parahumans are. Abducting all parahumans from Bet is stupendously likely to gain Scions attention, which they don't want. That's the real big reason. Also, we already know that Cauldron goes to significant effort to keep potentially valuable capes alive, going so far as to protect specific members of the S9 despite the deaths they cause. It seems likely that they attempt to preserve capes who might be useful in the final battle, and ignore capes whose powers are useless against Scion.

cont.

>>Why is there any visible Cauldron activity AT ALL on Earth Bet? Why is Cauldron experimenting with social models and the protectorate and all that on Earth Bet? Surely they could do that on ANY OTHER FUCKING PLANET! The random Blue Woman cape empress person conquered her planet and she's not even interdimensional godtier hacks mode!
Again, Bet is the one with the fuckton of capes - it's the one that they want to turn into a pressure cooker to produce the greatest number of capes. They could try it somewhere else, like Aleph, but that'll just bring them from 10 capes to 20 - on Bet they can be sure that their investment into, say, the Protectorate and PRT system will see a great many new capes that wouldn't trigger otherwise.

>Why are they dumping the case-53s (GREAT JOB WIPING THEIR MEMORIES - DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUCKING SYMBOL YOU TATTOOED ON THEM THO, SURE NOBODY WILL NOTICE) on Earth Bet instead of elsewhere.
This is a valid question. It's probably to continue their "make Bet a parahuman pressure cooker" plan, so it's not exactly meaningless, but still... Though the only real threat from that is Scion noticing - Cauldron is a hidden conspiracy, effectively controls the government and other organisations on Bet, and has precog able to tell if they're about to be uncovered. Echidna was a bit of a wild card, and even so it took 2 years and Golden Morning before the case-53's were able to be an actual issue to Cauldron.

cont.

Curious, anyone got some trigger events they want to share? Real or fake?

,>>Why is Cauldron fucking bothering to make legal contracts with dudes that they sell powers to?
So their customers know that Cauldron isn't fucking around. I mean, obviously Cauldron isn't going to actually care about the contracts, but the customers will, and making sure that their customers stick to the deal is probably worth printing out a few contracts and scribbling their signature on them. Again, it seems dumb to suggest that it was completely pointless, given the powers that Cauldron has - it must have been useful, otherwise PtV wouldn't have called for it. You might not see the use, but maybe that's because you don't know everything?

>>Supposedly Cauldron has all these fucking plans and contingencies but they all seem to suck and then Skitter has to step up and save the fucking day.
Cauldron's plans were as follows: Create a silver bullet cape to defeat Scion. Create a bunch of capes that might possibly be silver bullets to defeat Scion. Create a bunch of capes that might take Scion down by weight of numbers if we can't find a silver bullet.

That's it. That was their plan. They don't have a good plan, because they can't predict Scion, and they can't predict triggers, so they don't know what they need to beat or how to beat it or how to get the tools that might beat it. That their plan failed is predictable - their best result at the end was Eidolon, and he got taken out with 4 words. But you ought to show that it was a stupid plan in the first place, and you haven't. That they didn't have lots of good options is obvious - what options do you think they should have taken instead?

>>Mantellum.
Yeah, I'll grant you that - it was foolish to release him into the wild, given they didn't have any way to find him again easily. Still, that's a pretty small thing, and I don't think it's enough to prove that Cauldron is stupid. Makes mistakes, sure, but that's something very different.