/wg/ - Weaver Dice/Worm General #4: Can't stop the Clock Edition

Last time on /wg/: Welcome to the Wormverse, specifically, Earth Bet, here on this version of earth, things are pretty messed up: People have superpowers, most of those people are villains, the government is corrupt in a thousand different ways (though that's nothing new) and to top it off you have at least three different Kaiju running around fucking shit up.
Yeah, things are bad here on Earth Bet.

If you want to read original story, Worm:
parahumans.wordpress.com/

If you're lazy and want to listen to the story, they've got an audiobook here:
audioworm.rein-online.org/

If you're looking for the game built by the author, Weaver Dice:
docs.google.com/document/d/1e-H--GkPrbJq4WRNYndBnjjLjE7-2kOZkjwltkP1Ong/edit

Enjoy your stay here...until a Cape ruins everything by making OP not a faggot.

Other urls found in this thread:

forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-annual-taylor-hebert-reunion-worm-meta-crossover.397696/
forums.spacebattles.com/threads/dominion-worm-s9-taylor.340669/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Better than the previous OP.

Should it be /wdg/?

What's the best way to set up a WD game?

What are bad powers for PCs to have?

should probably be /wdg/, now that I think about it

best way (assuming your the GM) is to set something up on Roll20 and ask for players, try not to drown in the wave that will pop up

bad as in "this power is shit" or "welp there goes my BBEG"

>bad as in "this power is shit" or "welp there goes my BBEG"
I'd assume the latter, as well as "that just trivialized the game". So high-end trumps and the like. Having a player use Hatchet Face for example, then give him a LMG and he'll ruin people.

Clock and taytay are worm's otp.

>What are bad powers for PCs to have?
Depends on the system. But generally, for all systems (and really all settings):

* Powers which are balanced around a critical, but disguised, weakness. For example, Shadow Stalker's; either the GM brings in the weakness and stupidly fuckpwns her, or she's virtually invulnerable. This is great for NPCs, because your players can feel clever for working out the weakness, but not so great for PCs because you already KNOW the weakness.

* Powers where strategy quickly collapses to a single repetitive technique. Again, Shadow Stalker's a good example. She can do some cool stuff, but much of it boils down to "desolidify, shoot people," which is not very interesting for a player. For NPCs, these kinds of powers are great, because it's easier for the GM to handle a bunch of them, but for PCs, nah.

* Passive powers. Auras would be a big example. These kinds of powers are fine, alongside another, more active, power, but as a sole power they're awful for the GM and player, because the player is doing nothing, basically. A similar issue shows up for PtV knockoffs; the GM tells the player what to do, and then they do it. Yawn.

* Powers the player can't really anticipate or use. For example, every time you blast somebody, the GM rolls 1d4 and picks between four different shot types with wildly different results. It makes it impossible to plan, and by extension, makes the player uninvolved in actual results of their plans.

* Powers where it's difficult to make it consistently clear to the player what options they have, in a prompt and brief manner. It's fine for the power to shift with each round or turn, for example, but it should do so in a way that the player can understand how it has changed with minimal muss or fuss.

* Powers which rely on circumstances or criterion outside the players' control to work properly.

Give me your fanfic pitches.

Taylor escapes into the real world and kills everyone on Spacebattles.

I would read it.

Taylor gets a Heartbreaker-esque Master power instead of her normal one.

10/10 would read

Taylor starts out as the bully.

Taylor permanently turns into a swarm of insects.

Taylor second-gens/pings off of Sophia and gets a shadow-based Master power. She puts two and two together, confronts Sophia, shadow fight.

Mirrorverse. It's smut as hell.

Like Nyktophobia's?

Damn, feel bad that it's not continuing.

An interdimensional get together of all the taylors in a yearly get together inside a pocket dimension.

Oh wait......somebody already did that....

More Regent.

Fund it.

What, all the fanfic Taylors?

>the Tinkers are off in a corner, building -something-
>the ones in relationships are arguing who is best girl/boy

>What are bad powers for PCs to have?
Over on the IRC, the general notion is that not all powers are created equal, so it doesn't matter TOO much if something is a little broken or a little weak.

It just needs to be interesting, and that really falls down to whatever horde of numbskulls you have generating the power.

Ideally, you match the trigger to the power type (If the player triggered by shitting himself in public, he'd get a Stranger/Sneaky power for example.), and you make sure it's not armor-face or knife-face as much as possible:

>He got punched in the face, so his power is that he has an armored face xD
>He got knifed in the face, so his power is stabbing people with his faces knife xD

Don't fucking do that. It should be related thematically to the trigger, but not a direct answer to the trigger, and "Lol, he replicates the conditions of his trigger when he fights other people now." is not the way to handle it either.

In my experience, you also don't go out of your way to balance the hardcore drawbacks (It hurts you to use!), you just let there be inherent limitations, like not being able to teleport a million times a second, for example.

Hardcore drawbacks and positives should be rolled in the luck phase.

I've seen some people here get pissy about rolling luck AFTER, but here's the straight dope: The reason for that is not being able to determine how good your powers are is the whole point. Rolling luck simulates this, and negates subconscious balancing.

Also, this Would have brought this up myself, but he had it covered so I got into guidelines instead of recommendations.

I'd say don't go out of your way to give the player a FLAW to their power, just let those drawbacks make natural sense. Also, stuff like the powers NOT just being a passive effect or functioning like an on/off switch of boring repetition should be kept in mind, but it's hard to negate entirely, don't worry too much, just try your best.

Has Wildbow ever talked about where he gets his inspiration? Because a lot of his more disgusting ideas feel a bit like the sort of gross fetish porn one has to wade through to find cute monstergirls on /d/.

Is Worm good? I have seen many fanfictions in Sufficient Velocity and SpaceBattles. Also, co you expect me to read a long webnovel in a monitor?

I feel the same way, Helen being a seductress that tears her prey limb from limb with her unstoppable grasp sounds like some /d/ shit. Except they don't allow guro on /d/. No way he doesn't have weird fetishes if he came up with that.

I know where he's coming from.

Worm is good, but it also appeals to an autistic kind of person. That's not really an insult, just a straight up fact. I read through it myself, but you have to be dedicated to go through over a million words of eye strain to really get into it.

As a consequence, I consider most of the fanfic to be Naruto-tier shit because the setting easily lends itself to autistic 14 year old's literally self-inserting themselves into the stories with, again, literal *teleports behind you*-tier shit.

For that reason I'd say the fanfic community is generally worse than most other communities you'll see.

I'm getting off on a tangent though, Worm is good. Why the fuck do you think this thread exists?

Just get HBO on the line and tell them that if they want a slice of the superhero craze pie they need to greenlight this right now, before the rest of Phase 3 rolls around and DC keeps burying itself.

>the ones in relationships are arguing who is best girl/boy
it's madison

forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-annual-taylor-hebert-reunion-worm-meta-crossover.397696/

>but you have to be dedicated to go through over a million words of eye strain to really get into it.
I have to agree here. The only reason I read it in the first place is because I managed to find a pdf version.

Post extraordinary human characters that would fit in/are too dangerous for other characters in Worm.

>that would fit in/are too dangerous
Which one is it?

Upupupupupupupupupup....

Defintely dangerous though.

Taylor starts at Khepri-level power.

That's already happened at least once, titled Fragmentation, has thirteen chapters published on spaec battels.

Blasto creates the Morrigan, which fights off Defiant and Bonesaw. Blasto is forced to continue upping his game and raising the stakes because now he has a kill order.

Can I ask, why does everyone feel the urge to keep writing fanfiction about Taylor? She's not a particularly compelling character.

An interesting fic would be about 'stories set in the world of Worm', the way all Weaver Dice campaigns are. For instance, a guy who's posted to Brockington Bay during the two-year timeskip, and has to deal with the Undersiders and the Red Hands as a member of the Wards.

>my opinions are objective fact
>I must share this as quickly as possible
kys tbqh my man

Already done.

forums.spacebattles.com/threads/dominion-worm-s9-taylor.340669/

thats probably more a fact about the history of spacebattles than it is anything to do with worm itself.

ZnT was the big thing there before worm. alternate power Taylor fics are a natural follow on to "Louise summons X" fics.

Those sound pretty terrible, especially the crossovers.

People that write fanfics are retarded and don't have creativity of their own beyond aping animu bullshit.

So, yeah, it's gonna suck.

Luckily they're also too autistic to get into a decent roleplaying game or GM anything.

On the one hand, you're wrong, Taylor is a compelling character.

On the other hand, that would be an interesting story.

On the same hand, I hate alt-Taylor fics with a passion, because so far, the characterization chops of Spacebattles are non-existent.

Terminally uncreative fanfiction authors and terminally retarded fanfiction readers who don't want to actually read anything new or interesting.

Then again, ZnT is shit. It makes sense that the fanfics it spawns are shit.

Hi, Nox.

Truebeast's Dragon Unchained was good and original.

JinglyJangles and Harbin write compelling stuff. Thinker6 too.

the link for the game in the OP is the same document as the "Oldversion" of the game?

Asked this in the last thread but what would people like to see or have if I ran a game ? Heroes,villains or rouges ? Would people be fine with weaversdice?

I want rouges, crimsons and scarlets of every shade all around.

What are your favourite claasifications of powers? I personally like breakers, just seeing what powers come out of them can be interesting and they are usually pretty cool.

Heroes.

Not him.

Knew it!

Any of y'all read Firefly? It features a genderbent Lung as the main change, with the personality obviously shifting a bit.

Wondering about other characters that would be radically different as the opposite gender.

If Taylor had been a boy, she would have banged the shit out of Lisa.

Lisa's power means she doesn't enjoy sex, though.

There's always Rachel.

Boy Taylor would've fucked Lisa so hard she'd get over her complex.

Girl Taylor is into muscular hunks like Grue and Legend. Boy Taylor would presumably not be into the mega-butch Bitch, but instead into the cute blonde Lisa.

>Worm General

How long has this been a thing?

Rogues, leaning towards Villainy
Weaver Dice is perfectly fine

It's got its good points and its bad points. The World-building is too notch with some honestly pretty amazing powers, mechanics and characters but the plot suffers from severe pacing issues.

Whichever. Usually villains are more interesting, but heroes like Vigilant (Glory hound, homophobe, OCD and xenophobe) in WDSingapore can be really fun to watch.

Three threads ago?

The one thing I want to know is how WildBow came up with the concept of multidimensional space whales that control vast shards of semi-organic matter that can attach to lesser beings and give them the ability to bend physical laws.

He stole it from Exalted.

I once assumed he was drunk when he came up with the pan-galactic gargle fucks that are the Entities, but apparently he doesn't drink

Exaltations aren't fundamentally different from shit like Shazam or Lantern Rings. The only difference is that they affect the soul. Even then, they're a far cry from how powers work in Worm.

About a month then?

about a week

Think it's been more like a week. The past few threads moved pretty fast, but they're burning out now.

I didn't realize Weaver Dice was so popular. Last I heard, the system was only partially finished.

I'm trying really hard to envision Taylor as a boy and how it'd affect her personality, her relationship with Emma and if the bullying would even happen at all.

If it did, it'd arguably be worse if Taylor had a crush on Emma.

setting has been discussed more than the game system, but the conversation is starting to shift that way now
which is good, I might finally be able to find a fucking game
oh
oh man that'd be FUCKED

>Taylor had a crush on Emma.
Or on Sophia.

So the endbringers were losing on purpose all along right?

They were causing enough damage that they couldn't be ignored, and only leaving after being hit with sufficient force. But yes, every time they "lost," it was because they wanted to.

Not exactly losing on purpose, as they did win some battles, but they were holding back.

>male!Skitter and Shadow Stalker fighting
>"Stop paying attention to Grue!"

They were basically showing up, wrecking things, and leaving after they got scratched. More throwing the match.

And that was because they were only doing anything at all in the first place to act as opponents to eldion right?

A Guts and Glory prequel fic set in Boston where they try to save the city from Accord and Blasto who are in the middle of tearing the city apart.

The alternate earths and stuff showed that endbringers are there to stir up conflict but because this cycle got fucked because Eden died, so the endbringers were broken and linked to eidolon somehow. I think there isn't really word of God on it but it alludes to him activating them somehow or having a part in the ones on earth bet.

How is WD Singapore coming along?

It wasn't so much that they were gimping themselves, they were just acted really unintelligently (on purpose). They made a big show out of stomping around and destroying things, as opposed to just obliterating everything at once.

I get a turn in a few weeks. So far there are sessions for 'Amos Yee with superpowers' and 'Glory-seeking eye guy'.

No doubt about that. Though Taylor probably would barely resemble herself as a boy.

Boys and girls are different mentally, as far as I remember.

Did siberian die by the end?

Here's a few powers I came up with for a fanfic but will probably never use:
>Tinker
Can conjure tinkertech out of thin air, but everything disappears when he loses concentration. Larger or more complex devices require more concentration to maintain, and attempting to split focus can dematerialize only PART of some devices, leading to potentially catastrophic failures. The user always as the right tool for the job, but ONLY that tool, and any distraction or surprise can render him temporarily helpless.

>Mover
Projects skeletal limbs made of lightning from his body with great force. The limbs only appear for short bursts, but can come out again immediately and move with tremendous speed and strength. Every projection results in a thunderclap and a bright flash, rendering the user a combination concussion grenade/strobelight that can move at speeds limited only by his body's ability to withstand acceleration and crumble cars into balls of molten metal.

>Striker/Blaster
Can greatly accelerate time for any inorganic object he touches, limited only by volume. The user uses this ability to massively increase the speed and momentum of projectiles, throwing rocks straight through solid steel a hundred yards away and shooting bullets that hit with the force of high explosive anti-tank rounds. In addition he can massively boost the speed of mechanized transportation, breaking the sound barrier on any common car for example. Objects he uses his power on become extremely cold, as if bathed in liquid nitrogen, and may fail or shatter after extended use.

(continued)

>Blaster/Thinker/Stranger
The user fires piercing sliver/green energy blasts that first damage, then reset people and objects to before they were shot. the user retains constant awareness of the location and trajectory of these shots, and at any time can replay them, reverting the target to it's damaged state and continuing on to hit other targets. i.e. he shoots a guard, wounding him severely, then the guard snaps back to before he was shot with no memory of the time passed. The guard then goes on break several hours later and enters a sealed room with a VIP, as he turns to face him, he falls to the ground wounded and the shot hits the VIP, killing him. The VIP then snaps back to perfect health, only to die several days later by what appears to be a new attack but is actually the old one finally being triggered.

>Master/Shaker
Objects within the range of the user gradually become alive and aware, subtly altering into bloodthirsty insectoid monstrosities that mimic the appearance and function of what they originally were. They respond to the will of the user, laying dormant until he wants them to move and then unfolding and attacking. The process takes several hours initially, and several days to reach maximum saturation, and gradually fades in the user's absence. Given sufficient time, entire buildings can become infested, ready to disintegrate into swarms of teeth and razors.

Striker/Brute
Any force the user exerts can be made permanent, and compounds with additional force used. The user can slowly lift a car until it floats away, punch a wall again and again until it explodes backwards, or push a person and have them slide backwards until they're pinned to a wall. With a little time, he can render anything weightless, or crush anything between his palms. He can also, with relatively little effort, toss objects into orbit.

(continued again)

>Brute/Thinker
The user possesses slow regeneration that repairs, reinforces, and adapts to any damage BEFORE it happens, inevitably finishing just as it's caused. Examples include, growing gills before getting into a fight with a hydrokinetic, gaining thick blade-resistant skin on his throat before being ambushed and garroted, and developing extreme 3d vision in one eye before the other is gouged out. Not only do the adaptations keep the user alive and combat effective, they also warn him of the nature, timing, and location of incoming attacks, allowing him to prepare and counter anything throw at him hours or days in advance.

Should be Mover/Brute, if it isn't obvious.

Yes, Armsmaster kills him offscreen.

>He can also, with relatively little effort, toss objects into orbit.
Wouldn't he have to keep heading upwards (by, say, climbing up convenient stairs) to stay in contact with any significantly heavy object long enough for it to do more than slowly and inexorably drift upwards? I mean, even if he manages to go lift and not give in to the temptation to make it easier with his powers, he can still only apply so much force per second of contact.
Notably light objects would still be easy send orbital, though, just so long as you don't mind probably fucking up a satellite because Wormverse is a setting where the one in a million bad thing happens nine times out of ten.
[/autism]

To be fair, that entire month where terrible things kept happening in Brockton Bay was because multiple precogs had set events into motion.

Weaverdice is too narrative a system for me. It's not a roleplaying game because there's no gamist parts.

Anything he can throw just keeps on going forever. He could just nudge something and it would eventually circumnavigate the Earth. Granted, anything too massive would take so long he'd die of old age before it happened, but I was talking more about small, light objects. Don't forget he can also corner things against a wall and pound on them until they build up enough force to break through it to launch stuff.

>Don't forget he can also corner things against a wall and pound on them until they build up enough force to break through it to launch stuff.
Works as long as the object to be launched is made of sterner stuff than the wall it's up against. Which is not hard in Murrica, because drywall.

Then again, it's likely to get launched through before there's all that much force built up, because drywall. Seriously, that stuff breaks so easily you wouldn't believe it unless you've worked with it.

Here's a shitty fanfic idea I might to get around to writing eventually:

After getting the two to the head at the end of the Golden Morning, Taylor's planeswalker spark ignites and she get's fixed up in Innistrad. Then powerless, massively traumatized and back to nominal sanity, she learns a small amount of magic, goes to seek direction, purpose and enlightenment on Tarkir, Ojutai specifically, and generally wanders around for a bit.

This all happens off screen, except for flashback interludes of the important bits.

The fic proper is her, a decade later, finally getting the guts to return whence she came and find who is left of her friends and family, knowing low-mid level blue white magic (mostly cantrips).


Yes/No?

Crossovers are invariably shit.

I have found this to generally be true, however, I think there are ways of lessening the shittiness and garnering genuine awesome from them, foremost of which would be to ditch all gameplay mechanics in favor of translating the concepts and themes behind them to the story. I doubt I will include any major characters from MtG, just the setting and magic itself.