Stat her, Veeky Forums

Why is Worm so popular on Veeky Forums? I don't think I've ever seen something so generally obscure yet so widely referenced in certain communities.

>I don't think I've ever seen something so generally obscure

But Is it though?

Pretty solid stat block, except that "Unaligned" is reserved for creatures with 3 Int or less.

Would it be alright to tall about trigger events? Posting trigger events, real or fiction, and coming up with powers? Or powers already made from fiction and figuring out the trigger event behind them?

To start off, if Bruce Banner and the Hulk were two separate entities. What would be Bruce Banner's trigger event create from being exposed to gamma radiation? And what would the Hulk's trigger event be like since he's so strong and green?

*holds up sign*: "Stat me, Veeky Forums"

>she's also a shitposter on the parahuman forum apparently,

That's fanon. Funny fanon, but fanon.

Worm is a huge cult hit practically tailor-made to penetrate into the Veeky Forums cape nerd demographic. It has virtually no mainstream profile, but a surprising amount of word of mouth below the radar.

Even if you look at the Goodreads page alone, Worm has more readers than quite a few traditionally published novels.

The guy could be a lot more eldritch than implied. Think about it, he cut away the unnecessary bits insofar as counting as Alan Gramme enough to remain a Tinker. He doesn't feel. He doesn't see in any way we understand but can dodge Skitter's bugs perfectly.

And calling him Alan is like slapping him in the face.

Wait isn't this a senmurv?
You mean they're not some sort of wolf eagle hippies see when high?

Internet is weird.
Media with over a million consumers can be "obscure" those days

So what makes Taylor so divisive, in regards to liking her or not? She didn't seem inflammatory to me while I read Worm but an outside opinion is appreciated.

Can we fuck her, thought ?

She is fucking vicious, bro.

She kinda stops being her own character part way through and just starts doing things because Dinah implies the future requires it. Walking an incoherent path of future inputs for no reason other than an educated guess removes a lot of her personal investment into the story, she stops being a person and becomes a vehicle for the future to enact itself.
In the end my opinion of her ends up positive, but the whole Weaver section bored me to tears as neither I the reader nor her the character had any idea of what she was doing or why.

Size/Type: Large Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 5d10+25 (52 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 15 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +5 natural), touch 10, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +5/+14
Attack: Claw +9 melee (1d6+5)
Full Attack: 2 claws +9 melee (1d6+5) and bite +4 melee (1d8+2)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Improved grab
Special Qualities: Scent
Saves: Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +2
Abilities: Str 21, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 10
Skills: Listen +8, Spot +8
Feats: Alertness, Track
Environment: Temperate forests
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pack (3-8)
Challenge Rating: 4
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 6-8 HD (Large); 9-15 HD (Huge)
Level Adjustment: —
Not just Veeky Forums, all Internet Nerd Culture. Taylor is basically Ender Wiggan, but as an awkward teenage girl instead of an 8 year old boy.

I feel the same way, though I found Theo and Riley novel enough to keep me going. I look forward to the rewrite as Twig is proving fantastic so far.

She was always a vehicle for wildbow/the audience's morality play, so the Weaver bits were not much of a change tbdesu.

You'll be waiting a looooong time, my dude.

No idea.

I've recently read it. Except a vague fetish for body control, I have not really gained anything from it. It wasn't really well written, wasn't so interesting, had not an ounce of real genius.

Pact is better written, and though its narrative has numerous problem, is actually a better novel overall.

How would you even GM an Endbringer attack?
It seems like a giant pain in the ass to GM, having to keep track of all the other people that are also fighting.

Not to forget that it doesn't seem like a fun experience for the players either, the enemy isn't just a damage sponge but until enough damage is done the PCs have to endure a fight with an average survival rate of only 3/4 (or something like that it's been a long time since I read the story).

They were some nice and tense fights in the story but I don't see how they translate into experiencing them in an RPG.

I can only read someone attempt to justify their bad, emotionally-driven decisions so many times before I become annoyed. I think Taylor is a good protagonist, but listening to her defenders frustrates me and makes me lose faith in humanity.

Everybody has a percentile chance of dying, based on their toughness.

Make the roll before battle. Make another for when they approximately die, if they does. Change your plans as the combat unfold.

Name better capeshit.

Nextwave.

Nothing further needs to be said.

That's not the question. The question is: is Worm a good novel? An interesting novel? Well written? Well developed?

If it's a decent example of capeshit, it doesn't mean that it is a good novel. Only that all the other capeshit novels are shittier than it is, which can be true, but it is hardly inspiring.

I have no examples of written capeshit novels that are good. One probably exists, somewhere, but I haven't read it.

To literally everyone who isn't Taylor or her inner circle, she was an insanely brutal warlord who ruledt hrough fear. She's always watching for any hint of disent with her bugs, and shows no outwards remorse for acts such as torture and mutilation. The girl is batshit insane as a warlord, she and her best friends are completely broken people. As the story goes on she gets more pragmatic and introverted.

Tl:dr, She weighs moral and pragmatic options in a realistic way. stupid comic villeins stab people in the back and kick puppies because lol-evil. Stupid comic heroes by contrast, would have refused to off Coil.

However, the reason I place her asahero and not a villain is that her goal over the whole story is to do what she feels is moral. She steps down from her position as warlord because of it and heads off to fight all sorts of nasties instead.

That may have been what Wildbow claimed to do, but it was a fucking stupid idea then, and it's a hundred times worse in tabletop.

>a hero and not a villain is that her goal over the whole story is to do what she feels is moral.

So, about the KKK...

An endbringer attack isn't just a regular fight, it's a large-scale battle, more comparable to two armies clashing than anything else. Only that here, one of the armies is a single entity. If I DM a battle between armies, I don't keep track of every single participant. just the importent NPCs and the ones the PCs know personally. Also, Endbringer fights are fucking deadly, and should be treated as such. The PCs should be trying just to survive firstly. Secondly, they should try to come up with a way to hurt the endbringer. You don't defeat an endbringer in a slapfast, that's plain suicidal. Every decisive blow that was dealt against one of them was a result of clever plan (Armsmaster duelling Leviathan, cutting up Behemetoth with wires, etc.) Fights in p&p in general don't have to be just series of rolls, use your imagination, use tricks, come up with something. Always worked well enough for Skitter, didn't it?[Spoiler]

The Weaver section is very unfortunate because she abandons the characters and setting we've become attached to in order to do nothing for a few arcs until the apocalypse starts. Literally, nothing she does as Weaver actually impacts the finale at all. She completely fails to stop the apocalypse from starting, which was the whole point of leaving all her friends.

The timeskip was a mess in general. Worm was always at its best at street level.

Fucking up while not being able to stop the apocalypse and in the process alienating all her former friends and peers gave her the state of mind she needed to make the sacrifice to become Khepri.
If she had stayed with her friends she wouldn't nearly be as much of a fucked up person and might not even think of the possibility of fucking herself over like that for an advantage in the last battle.

It definitely was the lowest point of the story by far but it did have purpose.

>Worm was always at its best at street level.

Thiiis. The entities were a mistake, should've been Taylor vs. the System the whole time.

Is the only way to play Weaver Dice (or any system but set in the Wormverse) the IRC chat or did anyone here have luck finding groups/GMs for it in other places?

Not unless you're Tattletale.

No.

That was never a divisive point. Not once the fanbase was divided on this issue.

That is the divisive issue. The whole weaver arc was handed poorly. By instance, I really liked the scenes with Alexandria and the jails, but then you have this little gem:

>You just killed the most well known and the second most well loved by the public hero of the world.
>She was also our boss.
>Fine then. Cool. Here's your medal, your slap in the wrist, now kiss.

It goes downhill from here.

Well, I would say that Worm is a good, interesting novel. As for whether it's well written or developed, that depends on what precisely you're asking. Is Worm high art? No, I can't say it is, but that doesn't make it bad.

I don't understand how you can hold Worm in such contempt but like the mess that is Pact. Is it a problem of prose? Worm has better worldbuilding, better concepts, better characters, a better story, and a more well-developed theme/set of themes. Pact maybe has the upper hand in prose and atmosphere, but even those are debatable.

Don't forget that Alexandria was revealed as a Cauldron Cape BEFORE that. At least among the heroes, she wasn't exactly popular anymore, so most of them weren't all that upset that Taylor offed her. The only ones that really took offense were the PRT directors, and those do hate Taylor.

Didn't she get into really deep shit after killing Alexandria and the PRT director?

>No

>That was never a divisive point. Not once the fanbase was divided in this issue.

No

That has always been a divisive point. You have consequentialists who will defend pretty much anything Taylor did (even though we know that her motivations were tainted) arguing with people who actually know what morals are constantly.

Ok, that's biased phrasing, but that is definitely a huge issue. I don't know what rock you've been hiding under.

No. She killed Alexandria and Tagg then went and made a speech and no one really cared. She was in prison for committing various other crimes, but not those two murders.

The only opportunities for playing Weaver Dice that I've ever seen came from the IRC channel.

Anyone here who has experience on there, like how is the average quality of players and gms?
I'm getting desperate for games and would probably try my luck there if it was at least average.

That seems too slow while in water.

Yes this is how Sasanians depicted the Simurgh. In most medieval and modern persian depictions it's just a cute bird.

>leviathan is a ugly lizard
>behemoth is an ugly rock monster
>simurgh is a hot naked angel
What did Eidolon mean by this

He's a goddamn featherfag that's what

>I don't understand how you can hold Worm in such contempt but like the mess that is Pact.

I have no contempt for Worm. It is simply a young adult novel with characters that aren't that well fleshed out, a story that is decent, and a setting that is okay. There is dozen of other young adult novels that do everything Worm do, and some do it better. Worm isn't genius. The characters of Worm often lacks any sort of depth, the writing is stilted, the pacing can be weird at time, and a lot of ideas are not correctly explored. Worm is okay.

I stop you at Pact though. Pact is a mess of a story. That is entirely too true. But Pact is better written, in both prose and atmosphere, which helps it keep going. The magic system of Pact is really, really innovating and stay interesting until the end. The characters often have several layers of depth and multiple agendas, from the MC to Rose, and Mags to Blake's friends. You are always kept on your toes because those characters often betray each others in a very logical way, or have profound and interesting thoughts on a given situation.

They feel alive.

In Worm, Legend, Regent, Grue, even Armsmaster or Dragon are plot mouthpieces rather than true characters. There is very few characters in Worm that can't be brought back to a small pitch. Regent is the creepy sociopath who tries to do good. Grue is the tall, dark ex-boyfriend. Dragon is the enslaved AI who's good anyway. The list continues.

The only characters with the smallest amount of depth in Worm are Skitter, Lisa (debatable), and... Well, there certainly must be others, but I can't really think of any right now. Probably Dinah, too.

A lot of that comes from the fact that Worm is simply not as well written as Pact. Wildbow is maturing as a writer, it shows. Pact is still a mess of a plot, with pacing that goes nowhere at ends, but it is objectively a better novel than Worm, from a purely literary standpoint.

>They feel alive.

If I really wanted to, I could probably reduce most of the characters in Pact to similar descriptions. Pretty much all of the inhabitants of Jacob's Bell are just there to oppose Blake and be annoying. I don't even know if I would argue that the characters of Worm are super complex (I still find them to be "good," though), but I will argue that the characters of Pact aren't really better.

Also, I don't think that a work is YA just because it has young characters, but if it is, then YA is just a meaningless distinction. Pact and Worm read the same in this regard, it's just that Blake is supposedly 20-something.

Has an ubsurdly high armour class, agility, trap making and grappling modifiers in addition to 110% busted tier stealth rolls and a shitload of minor abilities that range from 'immune to fire', "casts poison gas spell" to 'doesn't need sleep'

Is Weaver Dice still an unfinished mess?

I still don't understand what Jack's whole deal was

It's unfinished, but people say that it plays well, so hey.

Jack was pretty much your standard "do stuff just to do it/to get a reaction" psychopath. That's why Theo tells him he's pathetic. For all his charm and reputation, he's just a shallow human being.

>The faraway king of all the birds, the Simurgh, lets fall a magnificent feather in the center of China: tired of their age-old anarchy, the birds resolve to go in search of him. They know that their king’s name means thirty birds; they know his palace is located on the Kaf, the circular mountain that surrounds the earth.

>They embark upon the nearly infinite adventure. They pass through seven valleys or seas; the name of the penultimate is Vertigo; the last, Annihilation. Many pilgrims give up; others perish. Thirty, purified by their efforts, set foot on the mountain of the Simurgh. At last they gaze upon it: they perceive that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each one of them and all of them. In the Simurgh are the thirty birds and in each bird is the Simurgh.

Worm is definitely YA mang, age of protagonist/characters isn't the only marker. Don't take this as a criticism, it's just a descriptor.

What are the characteristics of YA?

Teenage Mary Sues who fight the evil oppressive governments.

Taylor fits 2/3 of the qualifiers. If worm was a true young adult novel Taylor would have taken control of leviathan with her powers and have prevented jack from turning scion into an engine of destruction.

"Characteristics of young adult literature include: characters and issues young readers identify with; issues and characters that are treated in a way that does not invalidate, minimize, or devalue them; is framed in language that young readers understand; emphasizes plot.

Subject matter should be one young people can relate to, dealing with such things as relations with parents and adults, illness and death, peer pressure with regards to drugs, and sex, and with addiction and pregnancy.
The content should consider global concerns, such as cultural, social, and gender diversity, as well as environmental and political issues as they relates to adolescents."

Like it or not this fits. Similar to Homestuck in that regard.

Well, it was a plot point that the government wasn't nearly as evil or oppressive as Taylor thought, so it's a subversion at worst. If Taylor and the Undersiders were 20 or oIder, I don't think this discussion would be happening.

I always felt like Taylor and the Undersiders weren't acting their age at all, they were way too competent at what they are doing and there never was any petty infighting or other teenage bullshit like you'd expect from a group where the average age is 16-17.

They could all have been college students in their early 20s or even older than that and it wouldn't have felt out of place.

>there never was any petty infighting

Uh...

I mean there was the time they found out why Taylor actually joined them but even then instead of just acting like little bitches they learned to deal with it and eventually forgave her, with actual teenagers there would've been a whole lot of more drama and whining.

To be fair, bitch was less than pleased for a long long time about it. Guess that's what happens when she sacrifices her doggos to Levi.

>I have not really gained anything from it. It wasn't really well written, wasn't so interesting, had not an ounce of real genius.
And yet you've read it all.

Not the person you were responding to but this is just a shit thing to say and you know it.

why

Which is why he can have an informed opinion. Some people like to finish what they start.

10/10 would dedicate a cult towards

I'm honestly surprised that the fallen never tried to run an underground railroad for the quarantine zones. Get all those Ziz bombs out the city, and goodwill from everyone else trapped there, prime recruitment material

Worm's wordcount is fucking huge. Nobody is going to read it all if they don't enjoy it. Bashing it after the fact is kind of self-delusionary.

This is incorrect.

Which part is incorrect? It can't be the first claim, that's just objectively true.

So you'd read the equivalent of 10 large books, back to back, just to talk shit about them with complete strangers on anonymous forums?

Point. some people like to finish books they start, and having an opinion, especially after readignt he whole thing, is perfectly in tune with someone finishing the whole book and pointing out flaws and not liking parts and even most of it. Criticsm about things you have listened to and read fully cannot be attributed to the work in question being genius - for examples, look at 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight Saga and Harry Potter. Reading them through does not indicate that they're works of genius or incredibly good. but it does mean you can have an informed opinion as opposed to memetic hearsay.

Why? only literacy masochists would read through something that they find unintresting that is a million+ words long.

I don't disagree that they often conducted themselves more maturely than one might expect, but considering how much shit they'd all been through, it's not that surprising.

Are stat me threads about Worm characters always just a thinly veiled excuse to talk about the story or is there ever actual discussion about running Worm games (for which the characters are presumably being statted)

>Are stat me threads about ____ characters always just a thinly veiled excuse to talk about ____
Yes.

Veeky Forums and /co/ play host to impromptu Worm threads since Veeky Forums will hardly do.

Just wait for it to go mainstream so we can get a comic or TV show and become another 24/7 blight on the face of /co/.

>Just wait for it to go mainstream so we can get a comic or TV show
I for one wouldn't mind.

I honestly believe Worm to be destined to blow up if Wildbow can get a properly edited version into honest-to-goodness publication. The story already enjoys a tremendous amount of word-of-mouth despite being inarguably in very rough shape. Polish it up, fix the glaring issues, and it might well prove to be the next big thing.

>TV show
Small chance for that, the author said that there were negotiations to buy the license to the story that had a chance of about 1/20 to go through.

And even if it manages to do that it will only mean that Worm will become one out of thousands of intellectual properties that the network will keep in their vault, sometimes picking out one of them to actually work on if market research shows that it could bring a profit.

It kind of feels like the cape movie and tv series bubble is about to burst anyway, there are only so many formulaic Marvel movies and shitty DC Movies that the public can endure before they will get sick of it all and reject anything of that kind out of principle.

Though we can always hope for a wonder like Though it's good to hear that Wildbow said that if such thing as a TV show ever happens he will fight to keep stuff in like Taylor actually being an unattractive person instead of making her "Hollywood ugly".

Hah, he can try, but Taylor will be a QT if a show ever gets made. No fighting that. I don't anticipate an adaptation prior to success in actual publication, of course.

That said, I doubt people will truly tire of capeshit any more than they tire of cop procedurals or techno-thrillers. The fever pitch will fade, of course, but the market will remain. Worm is a work uniquely suited to exploit the widespread network of rabid online fan communities. Wildbow just needs to stir in some more romance potential for Worm to have allure approaching that of Harry Potter's for internet superfans.

>love triangle between Brian who inexplicably is into Taylor even before he gets fucked up, and Regent whose icy heart can be melted through the power of love
>potential Rachel and Lisa romance available too if the ships are popular on the internet and the writers decide to cater to them
I personally can't wait for another Olicity.

Though jokes aside I can totally see the normies eating the first Endbringer battle up. "It's Game of Thrones with Superheroes!"

Also all the pedo threads on /tv/ dedicated to Vistas feet

What's Veeky Forums's deal anyway?

They're pretentious cunts

>Implying Regent wouldn't just want to get his beak wet

Twig is better
A couple people bring it up in cape threads, others look it up. The author is pretty pro-rpg, and is running several forum-participation games using his own homebrew system. Also, it's free, and long.

who's that?

A victim of identity theft.

The only ship popular enough to cater to is Taylor x Amy, which also happens to be the most pleb ship imaginable.

>Spoiler
Indeed it is. Not to trash Worm but Sy is a much much much more likable person, I find.

But Bitches antagonism isn't teenage drama, she is simply an aggressive character. Again, she wouldn't have behaved different if she was 20+

The group doesn't have much teenage drama due to a combination of their history and powers. Given the way triggers function, any natural trigger first-gen cape teen will have had their safety bubble irrevocably shattered.

If you look at the group on a case-by-case basis, Brian is too focused on his goal of saving Aisha to be dragged down into petty crap, Rachel and Alec have abnormal mental patterns thanks to their power and upbringing, and Lisa's power thrives at controlling social situations. Taylor is really the only one who falls prey to teen drama nonsense, and even she sheds much of her naivete after the crucible of Leviathan.

Generally speaking, the Undersiders face far more of a gauntlet than a comparable hero tam from mainstream capeshit, so less bickering isn't that surprising.

>you will never get to hang out with Gregor the snail after a long hard day of torturing Cauldron proxy agents after you invaded their homes
>you will never snuggle up his fat body as you watch TV and listen to the banter of the rest of the crew
>you will never fall asleep as he holds you against his big translucent belly
god I wish I was Shamrock