Hey Veeky Forums, you guys are good with worldbuilding for campaigns...

Hey Veeky Forums, you guys are good with worldbuilding for campaigns. Do any of you who've read worm have ideas about what the parahuman culture is in other "western" cultures besides america? Y'know, like England, Australia, etc. What about Europe?

What is Worm and why don't we just make our own culture for a given country/region?

Sort of related but mutants and masterminds has a world atlas sourcebook that could give you ideas at least

Never read it, but if OP could give us some insight into the setting I'm sure we could come up with something.

boring
shitty

Worm's a super edgy web serial about Superheroes. Basically at some point a few decades ago "Parahumans" started appearing with special powers, and because of American superhero comics, Parahumans in America are usually either Superheroes or Supervillains, and are known as Capes.

Once in every while every Parahuman on earth joins forces to defend against one of three endbringers, which are basically insanely powerful boss monsters that not even all the parahumans combined can defeat. They just buy time until Scion, the first cape, gets there and drives the endbringer off.

Now now user, no need to put yourself down.

It's some gay /co/ blog some fags are trying to shill here.
Just sage and report.

This sounds idiotic.

Just because /co/ cant worldbuild doesnt mean we'll do it for you.

Worm is bad. Its fans are worse.

Sorry, mate, you're either on during the wrong hours or you've caught a broadside from people who don't like what you like and need you to know it—even if it's on-topic.

Anyways, there's been some remarks from the author about other cultures handling of parahumans, both in the text and outside of it. You should search for that. Also his game about Lausanne during the Simurgh's emergence has some insight about the European scene.

Russia is supposedly in a metal gear-like situation where the parahumans are used as elite private soldiers for anyone who can pay for it.

I'm pretty sure western superhero culture wasn't shown more prominently because it probably all is the standard "there's heroes and there's villains, they fights" situation with maybe some slight from country to country.

The other cultures were more interesting that that:
Russia is pic related, basically Metal Gear.

China hunts down their superhumans (or kidnaps other countries capes if they can get away with it) and forces them into their army to serve their god emperor, brainwashing them during the process.

Japan wasn't really shown that much but they did have a prominent team that emulated Super Sentai.

South American villains pay off the government for sponsorships while also vilifying the vigilantes that work against them, turning the heroes into wanted men but champions of the people.

The civilized parts of Africa are more of the old "hero/villain" affair while the wild parts are completely fucked up by warlords fighting for territory.

India has the "hot" and "cold" capes, the hot ones are public celebrities (both heroes and villains) and everything they do are flashy publicity stunts to get sponsorship deals and sell merchandise, it's basically superpowered pro-wrestling that takes place in public.
The cold ones are all the capes hidden away from the public, actually monstrous villains that make money through the actually terrible stuff like human trafficking, government black ops teams of assassins, murderous vigilantes etc.
It's a social taboo to acknowledge the cold ones existance.

If you want to play a game set in Worm that actually has a more interesting background than the usualy hero and villain stuff, set it in a non western country.

The above examples are the only ones I could find that have been confirmed by the author but they already are some solid examples for what else there could be.

Please, get the fuck out.
Worm is garbage, and its largely off-topic discussion and shilling that goes on in these threads, and you just saying "Yeah, I'm totally going to run a game about this even though I have absolutely no friends" isn't really all that convincing and doesn't make it ontopic. Just stick to shitting up /co/.

It's funny, because superhero comics in Worm aren't a thing anymore since people started getting powers. It also isn't "super edgy", it's just a fucked up world.

Wow that sounds dumb.

Do you go into all the weapon and armor threads and tell them to go to /k/? Do you go into all the threads about fantasy books and tell them to go to Veeky Forums?

Worm isn't even /co/ material.

Is there anyone in the weapon and armor threads shilling a shitty blog?

>posting about any work of fiction is shilling
Ok. Nevermind that it's been finished for years and doesn't need to be shilled.

Report the thread and move on.

Would the world have been better off(before scion that is) if parahumans were declared enemies of humanity and executed on sight?

Lisa's whole 'cops and robbers' spiel? The PRT's own propaganda? They're there to make you ignore the one very big cost. That the little people get flattened in their 'games'.

This is Magneto's vision writ whole cloth. Parahuman feudalism, and humans reduced to chattel. There to serve as ego boosters, background and sacrifices for an alien experiment run wild.
What good did capes do for the world? Gangs ripping up neighborhoods and destroying lives. A cape police force that's largely ineffectual and only staunches the bleeding somewhat. A life where the only law that mattered was the one set down by a warlord, and you'd best hope they were one of the nice ones.

Capes are NOT a fix. They're damaged, overgrown children with fire from the gods and little compunction against squashing mortals beneath them. Heroes? They're just there to indulge in their egos to have a clear 'enemy' to fight against. Without the looming threat of Scion? If capes all dropped dead, the world would be indeed better off.

As for many of the villain threats, how much good did the 'heroes' do in reining them in hmmm?

Nilbog had his kingdom. Moord Nag walked untouched. Heartbreaker had his fill until someone decided enough was enough, damn the time bombs. Ashbeast remained unmolested. The Endbringers? Capes did nothing but die in droves as the city died with them.

Against such threats, the heroes are useless.

I imagine it would be similar to America. There would probably be a smaller Protectorate equivalent organization, like the Guild is for Canada. Basically less official teams and more solo heroes and independent teams like New Wave. For the larger and more stable countries anyway.

>Would the world have been better off(before scion that is) if parahumans were declared enemies of humanity and executed on sight?
No, because then you would feed the parahumans' subconscious desire for conflict and they would fight. You think the few S class threats are bad, wait until you have hundreds, if not thousands, of weaker but still devastating threats. Purity is a natural trigger, and even she is still strong enough to decimate entire buildings in a matter of seconds, and parahumans in Worm don't really suffer from power fatigue like supers do in other settings. You even have ones like Lung (also a natural trigger) who ranks A class all on his own. And is a psycho.

So by declaring war on parahumans, a massive conflict would be created, and parahumans thrive in conflict. That same conflict would also just cause more triggers and since parahumans are directly involved and it would be large scale, there would be group triggers and triggers where the shards bud and mutate from the presence of other parahumans.

Remember that Endbringers tend to strike at areas rife with conflict as well, and without the parahumans to mitigate the damage, entire cities and larger areas would be destroyed. Leviathan has sunk island countries even with the parahumans coordinated against him, and he's arguably the least dangerous of the original trio.

>super edgy
Not really. It's just real world + super powers, for the most part.

It isn't really any edgier then reality.

Worm may be garbage.
It may not.

There is an rpg under production.
Don't know if its fanbased or if the worm guy has anything to do with it, but it's there.

We have to tolerate sharing thread space with other fagnut OPs less legitimate than this, so...

Let's reclaim that status as the nice board for once, huh?
Call op a fag, tell him his gamewaifu is shit and move on to posting variations on similar greentext in another magical realm thread.

Reality is the edgiest thing of all.

I'm not a huge fan. I liked it though.
I'd honestly call it a must read, if you like the superhero genre.

Wildbow is involved with Weaverdice, yes.

Shit, the fag went offsite and called his friends over. Now they're going to bump this thread with chatter just to shill their garbage obsession.

I liked it, but I wouldn't tell people to go in expecting a superhero story, because after Arc 9 they'll be massively disappointed.

Go to the catalog, hold Shift and click the thumbnail for this thread.

But I thought Worm fans have no friends?

Go to bottom of the page, click /co/ and then go talk about your offbrand capeshit there.

They don't want to ignore the thread. They want to shitpost.

Friends in the figurative sense.

Because you seem to want to keep making these misplaced threads. Here's a bit of education, for your own good.

Get out and stay out.

What are figurative friends? If he can go offsite and call them and they listen then they must be actual friends.

>Would the world have been better off(before scion that is) if parahumans were declared enemies of humanity and executed on sight?
If the world collectively decided to go that extreme with it I doubt it would have been much better.
That kind of threat management only would cause more trigger events, except now with people thinking that it's them against the world now so they start fighting back only causing more triggers in the long term.

I guess if the government decided that something definitely would have to be done (without Cauldron keeping up the status quo) they should probably heavily promote signing up with the Protectorate, maybe even making it mandatory, to get in as many capes on their side as possible.

Central to that recruiting would be them using their knowledge about trigger events.
They could reveal it to the public, as opposed to it being somewhat obscure knowledge like in the story, and explain that whatever terrible thing happened they are going to help.
They need some serious propaganda to seem like the saviours they need to seem like but it's definitely possible.

Not to forget that by promoting what a trigger event is (and also explaining that you can't get one if you actively try so don't do anything stupid) they could definitely prevent many from happening in the first place.

>something that has been around for years literally can't have enough people liking and discussing it without all of them just being samefag shills
Really makes you think, huh?

Can't remember which arc that one is.
Pretty much anything after Slaughterhouse 5, is a bit over the top irrc.

If you think they're so misplaced, report them.

You're not really going to be able to stop them from showing up. Imagine this scenario. Someone is at rock bottom and triggers with the classic Blaster Package. Energy beams that are charged through cold exposure and let's even go with a force-field on top of it. What will that person do? Either keep the powers in secret and do absolutely nothing or go do crimes and kil anyone who gets in the way. And there's the general superpowered megalomania that most capes have. Muggles can't do shit against them certain abilities So they are Unlikely to beat him. Chances are that person would go villain instead of go out and wreck havoc and do whatever the hell They want because no one would be able to stop them. Especially with a thinker package. Nothing would stop them from going into a bank and taking what They want. In the scenario of the story, if the government and law enforcement is going to look down on you and hunt you down no matter which way you go... the majority of capes will go villain. Some of them just out of spite, 'stick it to the man' kind of way.

This will create a much worse scenario than it was in Earth Bet. Heroes are outnumbered, but on top of that lack government support. But the point is, they can't really stop it. Capes will show up more and more if things go as they seem to be going. The PRT should no be repeated because that system is flawed and ineffective. But making the capes, at least the hero ones illegal? That's not going to help anyone.

Maybe. Killing metas might stop the endbringers, which is an improvement. It might fuck everything up though.

Arc 9 is the Sentinel Arc, the Wards Interlude one. Happens right before S9 dominate the story for the next 15 or so arcs.

Fug.
Was replying to

It wouldn't stop the Endbringers unless you managed to kill Eidolon, who gave Scion such a run for his money that he had to cheat and use PtV.

Yeah. I could see that as a good stopping point.
Still good book and a half, if it were in print iirc.

Also remember that Taylor saw entire planets ruled by parahumans.

Arc 9 was Leviathan, though S9 happened soon after.

The warlord arcs that started right then was my favourite part in the story honestly even if most people say that that was the point when it started declining in quality.

If I ever manage to convince my friends to try out a superhero game I'd definitely take most inspirations from those, model out an entire city block by block, assign gang control to each block and give the PCs options to gain control by directly attacking or making truces with other gangs (and of course eventual backstabbings) or weaking a gang collectively by stealing weapon shipments etc.

Arc 8 was Leviathan.

Arc 30 seemed like the worst to me, Felt like it jumped the shark too much.

Things started getting bad for me once it went dystopia and stayed dystopia for the majority of the story. Once the portal opened I was hoping we would get more city superhero/villain shenanigans since they said tons of villains were going to be coming to the city, but nope, we only get a taste of that, then things get horrible for Taylor and we leave Brockton Bay and the main cast for a city and a bunch of characters we don't care about, then timeskip, then shark jumping.

I was okay with her identity being outed, but the whole becoming a hero schtick was boring. The portal definitely should have been expanded upon. I would have minded if it brought more international villains, heroes, and governments to Brockton Bay either. Having to deal with upstarts and foreign governments trying to take you out sounds better what really went don't,

>Having to deal with upstarts and foreign governments trying to take you out sounds better what really went don't
What

* what really went don't
What really happened in the story
I don't know why but I keep making simple mistake that I would not have made a few years ago.

Is there any interesting way to translate Number Man's power into game mechanics without just making literally every roll easier because he does the math?

It's a pretty cool power fluff wise but painfully generic when it comes to statting him.

Not really...the number of applications for his magic math skills are far to all encompassing. Ultimate skill monkey is exactly what you are going to get with him.

I always wondered how he managed to pull off that shit with just super math.

Does he have side powers that help him physically?

It can only really get interesting with creative applications, consider that he didn't only use his power to be good at pretty much everything (from physical fights to social interactions) but also pulled some absolutely bullshit moves like wallrunning or being able to negate all fall damage by always being able to roll off any fall no matter how high.

I'd say his power is way too bullshit to even give a PC and he'd be better off as an NPC enemy, negates him being uninteresting to play since it's just the GM using him.
Reminds me how his Harbinger clones gave up the moment they stopped having a chance of winning a fight, would be funny if the PCs continuously tried to beat him for plot related reasons but always get their asses kicked and the moment they build up enough strenght and think they can beat him in one last fight he just surrenders without another word.

I don't even know, just going by his math power it implies it's physically possible to jump off a sky scraper and roll off without being hurt but I have a hard time believing that, we really didn't see that much of him so maybe he does have a secondary power that makes his bullshit possible.

>maybe he does have a secondary power that makes his bullshit possible
I mean, it seems like the kind of thing Wildbow would do. Sylvester processes things faster thanks to the Wyvern formula but he's not physically able to keep up with his brain.

Number Man has possibly the most bullshit feats in The whole story, bar a few outliers. Yes, he has better feats than Contessa.

Number Man shatters rock, holds down brutes, Can use his pen and hand to shatter a skull like glass, accurately predicted the speed of civilzation's collapse, and the existence of jack's thinker power.

Worm was good. But Wildbow needs an editor. There's a reason they exist. The timeskip was jarring, and of course there were other problems.

Weaverdice seems like it's actually good though.

ACTUAL SPOILERS HERE
The endbringers only exist because Eidolon's power gives him what it thinks he needs. He needed worthy opponents. That's why the endbringers exist, to give him something to fight.

Is Number Man a natural trigger? That sounds like an uncrippled Cauldron power.

He was picked up by King as part of the Slaughterhouse, so the logical conclusion is that he's natural. I think it's just that he was a young trigger, which seems to end up with some of the more powerful capes, whose power really likes him.

Him having the bodily control and reflexes to act on his mathematical predictions is probably due to a combination of a lifetime of honed instincts and reflexes and a secondary power including enhanced proprioception that have intertwined to the point they're effectively one and the same.

It's not like there aren't other powerful capes who are probably natural triggers, Dragon, Narwhal, most of the SH9, Armsmaster, Accord, Gavel, Lung, Imp to name a few.

Dragon is AI, Narwhal second-triggered to bypass the Manton limit, Bonesy is Jack's fault (breadth and depth), Siberian is Manton, Shatterbird is a Cauldron cape, I'lll give you the rest though.

This sounds like the most retarded shit.

The power you get is caused by parasites who have the ultimate goal of 'be Lavos' and the nature of the power is determined by your fucking traumatic experiences that drew the parasite to you in the first place.

It's edgy as fuck, and you're using the general lack of knowledge about Worm to pretend it isn't. You're sickening. Kill yourself.

>Dragon is AI
That doesn't preclude being parahuman. In their interlude Defiant goes through her code and finds evidence of a trigger event.

>Narwhal second-triggered
Still a natural one though. She would still be crazy powerful even if she couldnt SHING! your limbs off. Think about it for a second.

>Bonesaw
She budded but that's still a natural trigger.

Shards are symbiotes if anything, user. They aren't even really lifeforms at all. Either way this doesn't really begin to matter until you near the end of the story.

Getting powers from trauma isn't a wholly new concept either. It's also not presented as edgy, although I'm sure you could find some examples in the story and then misrepresent them to enhance their edginess.

Dragon being an AI is why she/it was such a powerful tinker, not that her tinker shard exists.

So, are you going to just keep up with this offtopic chatter or are you going to discuss traditional games at all?

>Not a new concept
>Not presented as edgy

You can present it any way you fucking want, getting powers from experiences so bad they break you in some way is edge meme, power extreme.

>It doesn't matter until later

This just in, NGE isn't edgy because it only got bad at the end! Just, fucking shut up with your ridiculous damage control. Edgy doesn't have to be bad (IE, NGE), but trying to claim Worm isn't edgy is absolutely absurd.

So, no.

And you have the gall to ask why people are telling you guys to stop spamming your shit here.

Edge to me is a form of wank. Worm is dark and full of bad shit, but it's also grounded. It doesn't wank all the darkness and misery and violence in the setting.

Sorry that we have different opinions.

So, have you reported the thread yet?

And gravity for me is candy.

Sorry that we have different opinions. That's how retarded your damage control sounds at this point. Since you aren't smart enough to understand hyperbole as indicated by the complete lack of anything resembling brains in your post, it is a play on how something has an established definition, and you're simply saying you have a 'different' definition so you can still win. It's pathetic, and you're a pedantic child sobbing about how people don't like your favorite edgy shit story.

But you've obviously won here.

>All anons I don't like are the same!

This post: was my first post in this threat, faggot. I'm sorry you can't handle the idea that more than one person wants to talk about things you don't. Maybe you'd be better off on tumblr or reddit, where everyone will agree with your special hugbox.

You two deserve each other.

eh

>make a thread
>could be a nice thread
>filled with shitters
Jesus if you don't like the topic get the fuck out. Not like your going to convince the people that actually like to think otherwise.

Any BBEG ideas? Endbringers an are easy choice, when you include people like Accord, Dragon, or The Number Man things can get a bit interesting. Perhaps someone like Echidna who didn't drink all of their potion and ended up a mini Endbringer

A powerful parahuman shadow organization running things from behind the scenes would be good for a BBEG. Like Cauldron, except they're actually the bad guys instead of unscrupulous world savers.

shit typo
>actually like to think otherwise.
*actually like it to think otherwise.

Depends on your players and where you want the game to go.

One of the things people often complained about in Worm was how it started street-level and ended cosmic, with a progression that wasn't quite steady, but also never looked back. So if you want to avert that, choose a playing field early on, and stick to it.

If you want to stay street level, choose a city, and have the BBEG be the big gangs or the Protectorate/PRT. Both have enough potential for escalation and a good narrative without needing to expand too far beyond the starting concept.

Or if you want to play a game with larger stakes, start out with a group like the Elite as the BBEG, known about right from the start, to frame the direction of the game. Like starting a game of D&D staring up at the elder wyrm the players are going to have to eventually take down.

Coil would have made a perfect street-level BBEG. He covers everything from political corruption to violent street crimes, and he employs interesting characters. He's also practically primed to start self-destructing once his schemes start crashing down around his ears, resulting in a tense and large scale final conflict.

I think a lot of the Brockton Bay crime lords would have been good BBEGs, honestly. Kaiser had a huge organization with tons of support and a very profitable legal front. Lots of places for players to start chipping away, while having to dance around things lest the entire organization come down on their heads. Lung was the leader of a small organization with some scary, powerful lieutenants. He's someone that can be fought, but never really beaten. The players would have to be very wary about going head-to-head with any of the main capes, and probably repeatedly run from Lung, all while trying to set up plans to finally take him down. Hell, even Skidmark would be interesting, in an annoying, cockroach kind of way. He'd keep popping up, surviving by the skin of his teeth, and the worse things got in the city the more he'd thrive, bringing like-minded people together. Plus you have Squealer, who most of the time is a joke but occasionally comes up with something that would give Lung pause, at least until it shakes itself apart.

Flip it around and you've got Armsmaster. A man driven by his desire to advance and be recognized, who is incredibly skilled in various arenas, but falls down on the interpersonal level. Every time he loses, he doubles down, all while his position in his organization becomes weaker, and he's driven to greater heights of recklessness.

Plenty of options.

You left out New Wave, and how half their members take black and white morality to an extreme. They could be real trouble for any player operating in more of a grey area, and unless they have a good powerset they would have to run, because Glory Girl and Brandish do not play games.

It really sucks that Wildbow moved away from all of this to focus on giant monsters and crazy serial killers and depressed homicidal entities. Oh well.

>It really sucks that Wildbow moved away from all of this to focus on giant monsters and crazy serial killers and depressed homicidal entities. Oh well.

This is a pretty common opinion, but I don't think Worm would have been half as interesting if he'd stayed small. Part of the reason for that is the amount of unexplored or partly explored territory that exists. Lots of factions got a bit of focus, and showed up now and again, but weren't really exhausted. Even the E88 came and went in the story, but there was never any kind of 'E88 arc' or anything.

That continued once the focus shifted, and to me at least it really helped sell the setting as something bigger than just one person, or one story.

Maybe a group like the Travelers could be the PC's? Except on a international scale, crossing countries and seeing the how each country handles capes. A run in with the Garama in the day only to have the Thanda come after them at night. Or dealing with a South American Cape Cartel.

>It isn't really any edgier then reality.

There's a squad of superpowered hobos that go around destroying cities, horribly torturing and murdering people.

The heroes and law enforcement are literally incapable of stopping them despite most of the hobos being vulnerable to conventional weaponry, and the omniscient character who can solve any problem without fail simply neglects to do anything about them, even when they make a thousand clones of themselves and hit every major city at the same time.

It's retardedly edgy.

I mean for a game though I think staying small works better, i feel like an end bringer fight or the like would actually be really frustrating to play

That's definitely a thing you could do. There'd have to be a reason to go gallivanting around the world like that, though. Easy enough to contrive one, but making it one that the players would accept might be slightly harder. Unless they just want to go globetrotting on their own. But players being players, they'd probably get distracted by something and focus in on one location.

I don't entirely disagree. I think you could definitely do a larger-scale game well, but a smaller scale one does feel more natural.

That said, I think an Endbringer fight could be good... punctuation, I guess. Find a place where the balance is teetering, and force the players to focus on the stuff they want to save, while upsetting the board.

I wouldn't have wanted him to have stayed strictly small, I just wish that he hadn't shifted focus so drastically. Part of this is his pacing issues and how he makes things drag out for way too long or has intense situations back to back to back. I would still be fine with Endbringers and S9 if they didn't take up so much focus. The end of the world shit though, that I despise with a passion. I still remember how quickly my insides went sour during that scene where Dinah announced it.

Hey. Hey. Not everything bleak is edgy kiddo. Most irl badguys aren't immune to bullets, but that doesn't magically wipe out all human traffickers, cartel bosses, corrupt politicians, or oligarchs.

Wasn't it stated that they really only go to places that were struck by disasters and how they were more "shock and awe" than "I own this city". Also Bonesaw pretty much made most of them very tough to put down. Sounds like your standard terrorism though. Move in and out fast and make people afraid of you. Lay low when the heat is really hot.

I think the focus of a Worm game should stay largely on one city, and maybe you could do one Endbringer fight just to shake things up if things start getting too "status quo". Just one, though.

To each their own, I suppose. Like I said, it's not an uncommon complaint. Personally though, I liked the end of the world stuff. I think some of the best parts of the story were around or after the Behemoth fight, or after the S9000. That just happened to be the least stable part of the story quality-wise, unfortunately. Plus... yeah, I'm a huge Worm fan, but even I'll admit the time-skip was a big misstep.

That said, the S9 stuff really only went on for a few arcs. Arcs 12-14 only, though their candidate interludes were at the end of arc 11. But out of 30 arcs, the S9 only took up three.

Now, the S9000 on the other hand... Well, they're another matter, and another misstep, I'd say.

>The heroes and law enforcement are literally incapable of stopping them despite most of the hobos being vulnerable to conventional weaponry
So untrue it's not even funny. The S9 has an incredibly high turnover rate, with Jack being the only remaining original member. The only ones that last are the crazy dangerous ones that actually AREN'T vulnerable to conventional weaponry. Bonesaw also enhances them physically with her tinker powers, making even the vulnerable ones like Jack more resilient.

Even in the story, lots of them get killed. Mannequin, Crawler, Cherish (after a fashion), Shatterbird, Siberian, and Burnscar. All killed.

Scion doesn't do anything about them because he wasn't told to. That is literally how he works. He isn't a hero. He's not human. He's a warrior entity in need of direction.

Have you even read it?

>That said, the S9 stuff really only went on for a few arcs
Did it really? It felt like so much longer.

A lot happened. And, admittedly, they were introduced earlier. Their intro-killings were in arc 9. Taylor learned about them in arc 10 or 11. The interludes where they chose candidates were at the tail-end of arc 11. But the actual S9 segment, where the story was about them, was just arcs 12-14. Everything from the meeting in the crater lake to the agnosia plague was in those arcs. From 15 onward they were gone, and it was back to warlording.

I don't think "should" is the right word. I think it'd be easiest that way, and most likely to be a good game. But there's tons of potential options.

Now, if we're talking about a group's first game in the setting, that's another matter. Starting small just makes sense then.

That's crazy. When does Echidna happen? Around Arc 20 or so, right? I know Taylor is unmasked around Arc 25.