I want to play something like Kerrigan. An alien bug hive queen sort of character.
I don't necessarily need an army, that seems like more wargame territory, but a small entourage of creatures that do what I say would be just aces. The psychic powers and mutated superhuman body are necessary too.
Can any game model this? I heard the upcoming World of Darkness game might be what I want, but, well, that's not out yet.
Sure, you could model this in Pathfinder with some of the summoner archetypes, specifically the Synthesist. You could also build it pretty easily in something like Savage Worlds. It would depend on your fluff and what powers/abilities you intend for the character, so perhaps if you give a bit more detail. In any case, don't rely too heavily on your character sheet to bring the character to life. You could probably play her successfully with any number of systems/classes if you make the effort to think things through and roleplay it. Most reasonable GM's won't mind changing a class' fluff/descriptions to fit your concept.
It sounds like you're trying to emulate this character as seen through a lens of "class based rpg" like DND or Pathfinder.
You might expand your repertoire, look at gurps, hero, or risus. Something more adaptable, and capable of working with odd people and creatures
Swarmlord, or verminlord? I can't recall the name, but the class basically just has more and more numbers of vermin under control. We had a rat queen PC that was one.
In older editions of D&D Druid, Ranger and oddly Bard all had some sort of minion master class that could work.
Not sure for more modern stuff. Summoners and necromancers I guess.
thrallherd comes to mind for hivemind, but if not that then you definately want something psychic with leadership or animal companions/familiars involved. Summon monster might be worth it too depending on how little work you want to be personally doing.
Mutants & Masterminds
kerrigan seemed like kind of an uninspired character to me in the original Starcraft. It is like she is there solely so Raynor can go after her.
The real question is why? What did the Zerg gain by going after her? She was supposed to be a snowflake psyker or something I guess, but she was hardly the only one and the Zerg were already winning even without a snowflake psyker. I thought the idea of multiple Zerg hiveminds kind of bickering a bit actually more interesting than some turbo-edge half-alien lady who has no real reason or motivation for what she is doing.
I didn't play Starcraft 2 since it is like 180 dollars for the full game or some bullshit like that and I have no interest in the multiplayer, but it seemed from both the trailers and the cutscenes on youtube that she remained a rather thoughtless but also central character. Why? Does Blizzard have a thing for alien mutant women?
SC1 Kerrigan was created as an agent of the Overmind to do its will. In BW, her story was one of taking over the Swarm and becoming its new leader. Why she was chosen is twofold: first, she was convenient (being on a world the Zerg were already invading), and second, she actually was an extremely powerful psychic, due to having been experimented on by the Confederacy.
SC2 Kerrigan changes pretty drastically. Basically, she turns out to be the Chosen One and saves the universe from total annihilation. No, I'm not kidding.
>SC2 Kerrigan changes pretty drastically. Basically, she turns out to be the Chosen One and saves the universe from total annihilation. No, I'm not kidding.
ugh
seems like I didn't miss much by skipping SC2 then
SC2 is completely crap in terms of lore. They shat on everything that made the first one cool.
Honestly, you kinda did. Legacy of the Void is basically great up until the epilogue and the gameplay is better than ever before. The campaign is a ton of fun and the Protoss make great protags that you can actually care about with ease since they're competently written. Heart of the Swarm is pretty crap and shows it. Wings of Liberty is... ok. It's alright.
If you aren't really into the RTS genre or you don't care about the plot and you don't care about multiplayer, maybe skip it, but if you want to give the campaigns a shot (and they're all fun gameplay-wise), it's a good purchase.
It's been awhile, but if memory serves me it wasn't just that she was a special psychic - though she was pretty damn powerful when Mengsk freed her to work for him - the Overmind wanted a way to deal with the Protoss so it needed genetic material from a psionically gifted race. That's the only reason it was in the Koprulu sector.
For Raynor what was done to her was horrifying and a symbol of all the war, and Mengsk, had cost him. For Mengsk it was his own backstabbing act on that day basically creating something that would come back to haunt him. For the Zerg, several of the Cerebrates were practically pissing themselves at the creation of something with as much autonomy as they had. She fucked with their sense of order and their special place in the Overmind's, er, heart. I guess heart?
For Kerrigan though, yeah, I don't think her character was very well defined herself. Even Brood Wars was basically, "Yeah, I'm a total bitch now! Don't you love me!" I guess there is something about embracing the monster you'd become, which was part of her original Ghost backstory.
Honestly the real bullshit for SC2 for me was Kerrigan being mostly deinfested and then deciding to go full Zerg again. They didn't even take the time to redesign her, either, she becomes straight up the full Queen of Blades - again - only other characters are like, "Ohh, you're so cool and more super powerful now!" It's such a fucking wasted opportunity. Frankly she was more interesting with her humanity largely restored, more of a bridge between them. I seem to recall the original stated gameplay mechanic was that you could choose how to develop Kerrigan in the Zerg campaign and they'd let the player decide how monstrous she chooses to render herself. Which frankly is a lot more interesting than what we got, but I can understand why they abandoned it. Bliz loves its overdone cutscenes too much and needed to know exactly what she'd look like.
And now she's a xel'naga.
I personally didn't like what it did to the Protoss. It took some of their unique aspects, the nerve cords and Khala, and literally ripped it out of them. Even though this ability to subvert the Protoss was never seen in Zeratul's apocalyptic vision which had the Protoss as superfluous to Amon's goals and their only noted feat was surviving the longest out of everyone else. Now suddenly he decides to make as many of them as he can his bitches even though he already had his own faction just for this sole purpose. The fact that the Tal'darim switch sides was only weird and frankly Artanis never showed he understood how obviously bad it was trusting them when they are flat out cliche edgelord evil. Still worth it for getting John de Lancie as Alarak, though.
It felt like most of SC2 was an exercise in shitting on the lore and also their own consistency within the new "trilogy".
I know Blizzard pinky swears they aren't planning a World(s) of Starcraft, but SC2 feels a helluva lot like what they were doing with WC3 prior to going MMO, especially in terms of expanding factions. Humanity always had plenty but the Dominion feels like it is poised to fragment a bit especially with Son of Mengsk wanting to be less of an iron grip ruler. They've also been teasing the return of the UED pretty hard.
The Zerg. Honestly replacing Cerebrates with Queens wasn't a bad move. They aren't just immobile lumps, for one. Zagara doesn't feel like she'll tame the entire swarm anytime soon so there are plenty of different broods, including one Kerrigan whoopsied whose last instructions were to kill all Protoss...on a specific ship, but it feels like they won't stop there. More Zerg on Protoss potential. There's also Primal Zerg now and Abathur feels like he's five seconds away from augmenting himself into a new Overmind so he has unfettered ability to guide evolution. So many avenues for Zerg with personalities complete with Zerg hypervirus mutates as their own version of the Forsaken.
And Protoss. We have remnants of the Khala but also plenty of Protoss struggling to cope with the loss of their psi-dreds. The Nerazim are still around but now we have unrepentantly evil Protoss thanks to the Tal'darim and also new robot flavored Protoss lead by Not-Fenix.
M&M, GURPS, Fate, HERO, FUDGE, HeroQuest 2, Risus, WaRP, Wild Cards/ORE/Godlike/Reign, BRP, EABA v2
At least it's a useful bit of worldbuilding for potential tabletopping. Every faction has its own arguably good and evil groups as well as sources of internal conflict. Plenty of potential stories.
Seven-year WoD ST here.
You can do what you want in both the old and new WoD, and there's no lack of opportunities.
In fact, I have no idea where to start, because you can take a lot of different routes to full ph'nglui.
If you give me a WoD game you like the idea of, throw it at me and I'll write up something.
fwiw, Meltzer was on the verge of a burnout by the time he wrote it.
We did a campaign like this in 2009 (playing Heart of the Swarm was hilarious after that, although we didn't expect the awesomeness that is Abathur) and it was quite fun.
My friend Dee did awesome art of the resulting critters, and a 3.x writeup for the race happened. Keep in mind that this was BEFORE HotS.
Do y'all remember the NerfNow Starcraft comic with the cute zerg girls in it?
Basically that. Except they got properly statted for 3.x
You just don't understand his genius yet mindlessly simplistic love story!
Goddamn, those are some quality bug-girls. Cute, sexy, and alien all at once
Still got the stats?