/wg/ - Weaver Dice/Worm General #7: Hell Hath no Fury like an Armsmaster Scorned edition

>German capes would likely be ordinary people. Using their powers for mundane shit and stuff.
Don't forget about the whole nudging into conflict/choosing people that are prone to go nuclear the shards have.

That's what I addressed in the paragraphs after that.

You'd inevitably have conflict because of the massive amount of gangbangers and shit.

Thankfully, the clans would have themes going on for their powers, due to budding, which would help tremendously in defending against them.

Everyone would be ready for combat, which would inevitably happen. Especially during protests, political events, after football matches and stuff.

Can she ever find love?

What kind of costume a broke combat Thinker would manage to scrape by when all they have is a big hateboner for them gangs and pennies?

Stop posting horrible, horrible fanart. And no.

I only remember germany being mentioned because of the Tinker organization called Toybox, but that doesn't say much aside from maybe that the Tinker culture is thriving? Anyway thats a great write up, the bureaucracy and the shifting around of capes for maximum cape coverage seems very german.

Makes me wonder about the crime organizations, (assuming that Scion appearing didn't change the course of history too much) I can think of bike gangs like the Hells Angels and probably smaller turkish and slavic ethnic gangs in the poorer neighbourhoods if the guest worker stuff happened in the Wormverse too Thank god my parents actually made an effort to integrate.

Big time crime organizations are paying off the corrupt goverment to move the sleeper zones in their favour, making enemies lose their territory or regain important locations like a popular casino that still can bring revenue, all while people actually living in those places are getting annoyed about having to move all the time and are fighting a losing battle against corruption. Not to forget that the wrong relocation of the quarantine puts people at risk of actually coming near the madman Sleeper himself civilians can't know where the real quarantine zones start and the fake zones begin.
This sounds neat, endgame could be the party trying to lure the big time villains and corrupt g-men into Sleeper territory to make him take them out or something like that.

Depending on how much they care they could either go the Bitch route with just a cheap halloween mask over casual clothing or do it like Grue or pre-wards Shadow Stalker and modify ordinary stuff to fit their theme and power. Grue didn't need a skull on the motorcycle helmet or side vents to make his power appear in a cool way, neither did Shadow Stalker have to wear a long robe or spray paint a hockey mask, but still they did those things because it looked hella sweet.
Especially a broke combat thinker who has to rely on regual street weapons should try to get their hands on military style clothing which is designed for utility with all the pockets and stuff, doing something like youtu.be/DTjC7QBoby8 and having easily accessible weapons on every part of the body could also save their lifes in an unexpected situation.
In a pinch just throw on a ski mask plus hoodie and go ham, if you do it right no one will be alive to remember your costume anyway.

>nobody even mentions Gesselschaft

>Thank god my parents actually made an effort to integrate.
>tfw there have been rivaling clans stabbing each other in front of a fucking hospital in Lüneburg

Well, realistically the German government would just fuck it up and react too slowly and the entire country would devolve into isolated pockets of society. Basically like the kingdoms that we used to have.

But a bunch of Brockton Bays is very boring compared to bureaucracy.

I guess the gun clubs would also become much more popular and become very tightly-knit groups.

Russia could be interesting. Powers would greatly weaken the position of the oligarchs, which might cause a revival of the country.
Or, more likely, splinter it into a bunch of countries that are all a bit better off than they currently are, despite constant border skirmishes and even more violence between people.
Imagine the mileage the people in Siberia would get out of a habitat tinker.
I can totally imagine the Russians *actually* doing the whole "cobs and robbers" thing.
Sure, you beat each other up, send people to the hospital, cripple them and gang up on each other, but in the end you have a story to tell and will go your own way afterwards instead of hunting down the fuckers who dared to insult your honor by beating you up.
Slav vs Arab mindset.
>"Vladimir, why do you have a tinkertech arm?"
>"Well, there was this asshole who thought he could make room for his car by ramming mine..."
There's also the entire "we don't really care about living anymore" mentality that is there in current Russia.
Jumped off of a roof and almost died? Eh, your tinker buddy patched you up and now you can drink more vodka and have a story to tell!

They would, however, lynch any masters. I imagine that shit going way against their philosophy, what with the entire wrongthink thing in the Soviet Union and shit.

However, this entire stuff hinges on history being exactly the same for the past fourty or so years, which is not the case in Worm.

Some user mentioned in the very first /wg/ thread that Russia used to have a major problem with organized crime in the 80s with mafias running every big city and the government being completely in their pockets, when I asked my slav parents about it my mother said that Putin was responsible for stopping the mafias and that this was the only good thing he ever did for the country while my father thinks that Putin was in control of the mafias anyway and that the whole thing was basically what Coil was doing in Brockton Bay with supporting warlords and while fighting to regain the city under his civilian name.

Anyway I can totally imagine that all of this was happening just like that but because of superpowers the people managed to get a grip and regained their country for themselves again where your post comes in.

Remove Taylor
Remove Wildbow
Remove Worm

I don't think I understand.

Very few after Leviathan fucked up Japan.

She doesn't deserve it. Tattletale is a pretty awful person who just happens to be on Taylor's side.

While she definitely was a bad person I wouldn't say that she was that bad and Taylor was just lucky to be on her side, remember that Lisa went out of her way to help Taylor mostly because she felt bad for her and wanted her to be happy, sure she also wanted her to convert to villainy but the fact the she tried to do so even though the logical course of action would have been to expose the undercover thing to the team is another minor plus for her.
I could honestly imagine that Lisa triggering is the exact thing that made her redeemable, if she went to school with Taylor she would have probably bullied her too just because it was the socially expected thing of her to do but had her trigger event happened but she wouldn't have gotten powers out of it she still would probably have tried to befriend Taylor and help her out because she would have felt bad for her.

I don't even know why I feel like defending Tats that much

>I don't even know why I feel like defending Tats that much
Waifuism.

Common problem.

What is sex with Contessa like?

Very efficient and effective.

An orgasm so good that it will define your life into "pre-sex with fedora lady" and "post-sex with fedora lady".
Depending on her appoach your life will could change for the better and you will work harder on yourself than you have ever before since you, what you can only descibe it as, have "seen god". Or you will fall in depression as you realize that you have peaked and nothing will ever bring you such, or any, joy again, soon after you commit suicide in the most painful way possible in the hopes of at least feeling something again.

Either way it was probably part of Cauldrons plan and whatever happened to you lowers the chance of the world ending by about 0.00313%.

Is it okay to talk about Twig here?

Because damn it Sy; for a guy who's so good with people, you're kinda bad with people.

I want more bullying Lilian.

He's good with people, but lives too much in the moment. He can model Lillian very well, but can't model her future. The reason she broke down is because this wouldn't work long-term.

I'm still reeling from the gut punch that was Tuesday's chapter.

There's already canon statements from Wildbow on the various areas of the world and their statuses

USA: Obvious.

Canada: Similar to USA but less capes because less population density.

Mexico+South America: Cartel/Government vs. rebel insurgencies

Europe: More divided than OTL, Swiss Holocaust, usually one solid team a country (King's Men, Meisters)

Russia: Government vs. Mafiya vs. Everyone Else

Africa: lolwarlords

Japan: Gone. Had a whole lot of anime and sentai style heroes.

China: Brainwashed government cape army.

India: Celebrity capes Duke it out in staged spectacles, blackops capes do the REAL shit for governments and corporations

Middle East: Islamic extremism is messy but contained

I'm waiting for it to finish before delving into it full force. The first few chapters had me yawning quite a bit.

Well, post-Golden Morning, Contessa is in a state of exploring her own free will

She could fuck whoever she feels like (I suggest chevalier)

Somehow, I doubt she'll stop spamming PtV for purposes.

Swiss Holocaust?

There's a very clear theme running through Wildbow's protagonists; none of them are long-term thinkers and they tend to rely on mixing things up and hoping their opponents don't deal with the change as well as they do.

>Meisters
Welp.
Time to discard canon. He obviously put no thought into this.
Unless this is not meant to be a name from a German-speaking country.

The Simurghs first appearance was in the Swiss, she chilled above a city and did nothing for a week as people were confused what she was.
Thinking that maybe she was friendly people flocked into the country to see her first hand when she started singing, appearantly she managed to fuck up the entire country.

Apart from getting the grammer wrong (it's supposed to be "Meister", not "Meisters" for the non kraut speaker) I don't see the problem?

I mean as far as I remember my german lessons the country even has a history with giving skilled craftsmen the title "Meister" meaning Master.

It's both the grammar and the word.

What is the team supposed to be like? "Meister" is a legal title associated with a certificate on your wall and the legal ability to teach your own apprentices.

"Meister" as a name for a superhero group sounds pretentious as shit. It's like an American group calling itself "Super Dupers" or something in terms of how cringe-worthy it is.

A common problem with fiction about countries the author is unfamiliar with, the best thing they can do is translate some cool sounding words and hope for the best.

Yeah, but it often implies a lack of cultural understanding, which in turns means that their setting could be better if they had someone else go over the idea instead of building it on their own.

I'm waiting for it to finish before reading.

>"Meister" as a name for a superhero group sounds pretentious as shit.
Unlike The Elite, the Protectorate, the King's Men, the superhero named Legend, or the one called Hero, the Empire and its leader Kaiser...

>Meisters
We Mai Otome now?

>drag an impressionable young girl into a life of crime and violence
>it's ok because she feels bad for her and wants to help
Jack Slash should have aimed for the neck.

Is there any game that can really represent the powers of thinkers as they appear in worm? Like contessa is obviously sort of impossible but what about someone like tattletale. A character who can just figure out alot about a given subject with a little effort.

I know this might not be the place to discuss such things but I've been on Twig's tail end for a while after reading Worm and Pact. Sy's good but I crave more.

Any other good web serials out there? Wildbow rec'd Watchmirror.

It's GM heavy and will most likely warp the game, but it's certainly doable. Generally speaking, the power generation fags at the dedicated IRC channel prefer giving lower end powers to Thinkers though. And Tattletale is ridiculously powerful, even in universe. Accord as well.

I think something like that will always require lots of bullshitting on the GMs part though if the absolute madman actual tries to give every person and object attributes that the player *might* stumble upon if they care then that that GM deserves a medal. I guess sometimes it can just be shortcutted too by narrating it like "you find out stuff about his personal life" but that seems a little half hearted.

Tattletale could /maybe/ be represented by normal 'roll to know things' with a crazy bonus. Past that it depends on the system.

>if the absolute madman actual tries to give every person and object attributes that the player *might* stumble upon
It could certainly be made easier if you just write up a lot of simple and generic ways that a character could be Tattletale'd like "you find out about a dead romantic interest" or "seems like this person failed in something and is trying their hardest to hide it" and any time the player tries to use their power on an unimportant NPC you can just pick one off of the list.
As the player tries to find out more can start feeding them just a bit more info the closer they get like "that person didn't know that this person was in love with them" or "the failure was of academic nature". Add a few special ones for important NPCs and you're golden.
Past the simplified first piece of info you give out you can also probably just make up the rest of it on the spot, making it not only easier for you to make up a bunch of them but also allowing you to re use the more generic ones, one time it's a dead wife that they feel bad for having indirectly cause their death, another time a boyfriend that was dying of cancer and the person feels guilty for being relieved that their suffering is over.

For precog powers you could make the player roll and after they saw the results they can either automatically pass or give up knowing that it won't work.
Perhaps even give a bonus, like if just barely fail in overpowering someone they can re do it for real but with an easier roll because they can anticipate how the other person will move and react.

Carnage is a pretty good fic.

>STALKER in the Sleeper Quarantine Zone
Fund it

Is that the Butcher!Taylor one?

Holy shit, Sleeper being the source of shit like anomalies appearing all over the place seems very plausible. Throw in Nilbog for the mutants and perhaps even make them be at war with each other for domination of the russian wastelands and baby you got a stew going.

All it needs now is a reason for capes to venture into that god forsaken place, maybe they are there by accident? Or the birdcage was obstructed at that moment so criminals got send to "the zone" instead.

Indeed it is.

By the way, tinker-tech breaks down really fast. It needs maintenance approximately once a week. This is why being a cyborg is a bad idea, because now the Tinker has leverage over you, forever.

>being a cyborg is a bad idea
>unless you're the Tinker
also, I think we had the idea in thread 1-2: A tinker with a specialty in narcotics and guns goes full Breaking Bad and gets a lot of people in his city hooked on his super-meth that makes you work your ass off and be productive for 24 hours and then crash for 48 or whatever the fuck.

Looting shit?

Certain powers have a vested interest in the nuclear weapons in the quarantine not falling into the wrong hands.

Nukes fell out of favor in the Wormverse after Scion intervened in the Cold War.

>Taylor talks about Behemoth to Sophia

I got hard

Maybe he missed a spot?

How the fuck did she even get the Butcher? IIRC one of the Butchers had a Brute rating that gave them really hard skin. I don't think the spiders could get through.

Nukes fell out of favor? What happened during the Cold War?

Scion destroyed a test missile and the facility that launched it.

American culture is different from German culture and most of these titles are names for singular persons or descriptions of their functions.

The Protectorate protects, the King's Men work under the monarchy, Legend/Hero are fucking superheroes and Empire 88 is an attempt at translating the German word "Reich", with Kaiser being an American who uses a foreign term.

Really, if a German Nazi group called itself "Das Reich", it would be completely okay. "Männer des Königs" would work for a monarchical group, "Die IT-Dienstleister" would be completely okay for a tinker team with a sense of humor, but "Meister" or Beschützer" (Protectors) sounds really retarded.
As an side, "Held" and "Legende" would also sound retarded in German. American pop culture is much more resistant to names and titles that would sound completely retarded in other cultures.

Alexandria style?

I agree, but I can forgive Wildbow for not knowing. I don't think he's multilingual.

Now I'll like to run a worm AU campaign where Scion's action lead to a conventional ww3. Imagine it as something akin to Uber(comicbook) mixed with Red Dawn and World in Conflict with plenty of 80s NATO weapon and slavshit to satisfy my /k/boner.

It couldn't happen, Scion would stop it. Unless he was catatonic or something.

He tried to intervene but was killed by either the US or Soviet forces because 'MURICA FUCK YEAH/GLORIOUS SOVIET UNION COMRADE, CYKA BLYAT

But user, Tom Clancy's Worm. Think about it. And we're talking about him during his prime.

>He tried to intervene but was killed by either the US or Soviet forces
That's not Scion.

Hey, it could always happen on an alternate earth. You just wouldn't get as many capes.

>It's Edens plot to throw off people who time looped out of the original timeline after Golden Morning
>In this timeline, she's the one who survived, not Scion and thus framed his very public appearance and death

Earths are doomed.

Would Eden get as depressed as Scion did if he died?

>Would Eden get as depressed as Scion did if he died?
She's a woman, so no. :^)

Eden is low powered compared to Scion, but is kinda smart. She might try doing her cunning plan shtick, but fail because she's used to having more firepower at her disposal.

So yes, she'd get depressed.

FAGGOOOOOOOT

Mutants and Masterminds with no power limits or power limits established per character could work.

There is a shitton of sense based powers.

With exception of precognition of course. It's not so much that it is impossible to stat but more that it is really unwieldy in play. Especially if used to get information.

Also considering how precog powers mess with eachother in-universe I don't understand how they still work at all. Any powerful oracle should have screwed up whole world a ton of times for each attempt to get information about massive events and their details. His precog sense in such case would touch large percentages of world population rendering following attempts moot.

Because this kind of power is limited. In scope, in usage, in reliability, etc.

What exactly was the purpose of Madison? Emma and Sophia had a semi big and reoccuring role in Taylors personal arc but Madison just exists as a hanger on at the beginning before never getting mentioned again.
Did Wildbow have bigger plans for her but just never got to using her or was this on purpose?

W I T N E S S E D

She rounded out the Bitch Trio. She was the 'normal' one, so to speak. The one without powers, without trauma.

The third wheel ;)

Emma and Sophia were fucked up people and abusing Taylor was a facette of their past trauma but Madison hurt Taylor in the exact same way despite (seemingly) being a normal person. She was there to show that you don't have to be a particularly fucked up person to do fucked up stuff to other people, sometimes peer social pressure/acceptance can make you do bad things.

Where the food based capes at?
If Canary used her powers to hype people up at concerts then other rogues surely could use their powers to make some mean meals, for example a Bio-Tinker that creates cows with especially tender meat or a heat based cape than is guaranteed to grill a steak 100% evenly. The possibilities are endless.
I want to play a campaign based around this

>Team of Movers that try to deliver all food within 10 minutes, or it's your money back
>party has to weave through gang territories and other conflict against the clock
>as their delivery place rises in popularity, so does the scope they have to deliver in
>party tries saving up to open their own place but have to pay for the food themselves if it's past 10 minutes
I like this, a proper rogue game 100% focused on making a profit.

Skitter planned on using her bugs for food at one point

>implying merely being totally immune to her powers will stop Skitter

Makes me wonder how Atlas would have tasted, Panacea could have designed some nice flying protein bombs for the people.

Like Mannequin.

The theory is that the Butcher Taylor killed was Aisha, who herself didn't know shit other than "Big bro is in danger".

Wot? Where's the evidence of that?

Wild Talents. Basically just some hypermind, with an if/then clause "only applies when deductive abilities are a significant factor," plus a handful of hyperskills. Where the "deductive abilities" clause does or doesn't apply is a bit of GM fiat, to be fair. I've seen what looked like a decent write-up of Tattletale in HERO/Champions, but I'm not all that familiar with the system.

Accord would be a fun one in Wild Talents, since I think you can chain powers together. It'd basically be like
>Power 1: +1d in Hypermind
>Power 2: +2d in Hypermind (if/then: only when dealing with problems of mild complexity; subset of power 1)
>Power 3: +2d in Hypermind (if/then: only when dealing with problems of moderate complexity; subset of power 2)
>Power 4: +2d+1HD in Hypermind (if/then: only when dealing with problems of high complexity; subset of power 3)
>Power 5: +1WD in Hypermind (if/then: only when dealing with problems of extreme complexity; subset of power 4)
with the 'complexity' either being based on the number of penalties or just GM fiat.

One of her Butcher powers is making people forget about her, and Grue is so pissed at her he's willing to work Der Furher himself.