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Saith posted:Semi-related to the thread, but some of my friends want me to GM a game for them set in the Worm-verse at some point. I'm kind of at a loss as to what system I could use, though. Any thoughts? There's this thing Though it's really more for generating character ideas that you then stuff into FATE or M&M.
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Jan 18, 2014 10:41
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Apocalypse World might fit. Someone should make a superheroes PBTA hack.
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Jan 18, 2014 12:46
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One wonders how you would structure the playbooks.
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Jan 18, 2014 14:45
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elmer fud posted:I just finished worm. That was one of the better things I've read. How long was it, because I read for almost a month straight before I finished it. It just kept building up. Like a constant Sanderson avalanche. I happen to have an exact count because I compiled all the chapters into a single multiple-MB epub file for offline browsing. It's just north of 1.6 million words. Longer than the first five Wheel of Time books together. Edit: The first six Dresden Files books total 624,000 words. I got bored then, but they seemed to average about 110,000 words or so each at that point, so that'd make Worm longer than the entirety of the series released to this point. Grundulum fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 22:27
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Grundulum posted:I happen to have an exact count because I compiled all the chapters into a single multiple-MB epub file for offline browsing. It's just north of 1.6 million words. Longer than the first five Wheel of Time books together. Wordcounts of some popular series: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring: 187k The Two Towers: 155k The Return of the King: 131k Total: 473k Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan The Eye of the World: 305k The Great Hunt: 267k The Dragon Reborn: 251k The Shadow Rising: 393k The Fires of Heaven: 354k Lord of Chaos: 389k A Crown of Swords: 295k The Path of Daggers: 226k Winter's Heart: 238k Crossroads of Twilight: 271k Knife of Dreams: 315k Total: 3M 304k A Song of Ice And Fire – George R. R. Martin A Game of Thrones: 298k A Clash of kings: 326k A Storm of Swords: 424k A Feast for Crows: 300k A Dance with Dragons: 422k Total: 1M 770k From here.
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Jan 19, 2014 04:01
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Saith posted:Semi-related to the thread, but some of my friends want me to GM a game for them set in the Worm-verse at some point. I'm kind of at a loss as to what system I could use, though. Any thoughts? My group has actually been doing the same thing. We've used FATE, and it's worked out so far. It's a good system for having wildly varying power levels between characters, while keeping everyone relevant.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:00
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I was thinking M&M but I don't know, it feels like 'I shoot my laser beam' every turn. I don't know if that's true though, so I'll give it a look. Never really been a fan of FATE either. Thanks though. 
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Jan 20, 2014 03:16
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FATE is best because you can contort it into basically anything and the system really meshes well with the whole "make an effort" theme of Worm in the first place.
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Jan 21, 2014 07:04
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Maggie appears to be a possible ally to Blake. The question is, could she be trusted with the knowledge that Blake could pay her with? I think that's a question that will be explored as time goes on. I wonder what life is like for muggles in the North End  It also seems pretty obvious that Laird Behaim is trying to eliminate all non-Behaim or Duchamp practitioners from Jacob's Bell, fatally. The others appear to have formed enough of a loose coalition against them to avoid being destroyed for the time being, but I'll be surprised if Blake doesn't use that situation to build alliances with the others. Aside from Johannes, the biggest concern for the independent parties in the region seems to be survival right now. Blake is a threat to that survival right now, being the kid with the key to the tiger's cage. If he displays competency and good sense maybe they'll haha no these people are all paranoid assholes the best he can hope for is them not actively trying to get him killed.
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Jan 21, 2014 13:21
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I'm pretty confident that Blake is underestimating the potency of the "nukes" Behaim referred to. Given how Worm escalated I would be very surprised if we didn't learn that Barbatorem is a small fish in a very large and dangerous pond. I'm looking forward to finding out what the actual power Granny Thorburn left behind is.
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Jan 21, 2014 15:07
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Yeah, Barboretum is far from the nuke, in my opinion. The big thing to keep in mind is that this happened early in Granny's career. What did she learn after this, though? Only time will tell.
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Jan 21, 2014 15:21
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Tollymain posted:Maggie appears to be a possible ally to Blake. The question is, could she be trusted with the knowledge that Blake could pay her with? I think that's a question that will be explored as time goes on.
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Jan 21, 2014 20:17
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Tollymain posted:I wonder what life is like for muggles in the North End I think that they just sit around and fume about how much they hate whoever lives in Rose's house.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:06
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So Molly was probably executed by council decision and thus no one in particular is responsible for her death and thus no one can take Blake's deal, still I bet someone in particular was required to carry out the execution. I wonder who the executioner was. Maggie maybe? I'm also steadily less and less convinced that "Rose" was granny Rose's doing. I am also starting to get the impression that Johannes might be responsible for "rose" and thus I'm really starting to wonder what the guys angle is. I wonder if maybe he's a "good guy" just not from humanities perspective.
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Jan 22, 2014 01:43
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Just finished Worm. Quite good. Took me about a month. Maybe felt a little overlong but that's probably just mental fatigue from reading such a large quantity of words in the one work of fiction in a relatively short space of time. I may write something more about my thoughts later but with the way it ended you have to wonder how much time Earth Bet has before all pretence of normal society breaks down it's a post apocalyptic Age of Apocalypse type wasteland, even with the abundance of resources they have now. S class threats being in such abundance.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:23
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Neurosis posted:Just finished Worm. Quite good. Took me about a month. Maybe felt a little overlong but that's probably just mental fatigue from reading such a large quantity of words in the one work of fiction in a relatively short space of time. I may write something more about my thoughts later but with the way it ended you have to wonder how much time Earth Bet has before all pretence of normal society breaks down it's a post apocalyptic Age of Apocalypse type wasteland, even with the abundance of resources they have now. S class threats being in such abundance. Actually, despite half the world population dying, they're in much better shape S class threat wise. The only ones who haven't died, reformed, or gone into long-term hibernation at this point are Sleeper, the Three Blasphemies, Blue Woman, and the Simurgh. That's a lot less of a problem than five Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Sleeper, the Three Blasphemies, and the potential threat of Nilbog were. I guess you can also argue for Teacher as an S class threat, but he's clearly about to be taken down at the end of the story. On the other hand, Glaistig Uaine, Bonesaw, Nilbog, and probably Contessa are good guys now, and there's still Dragon, Foil, and Legend.
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Jan 24, 2014 02:41
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For a given nonstandard value of good  No, I think it's better to label them as lawful, much as I hate to reference the D&D alignment system.
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Jan 24, 2014 03:21
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Tollymain posted:For a given nonstandard value of good I think Bonesaw and Glaistig Uaine are genuine forces for good now. Nilbog and Contessa are probably not so trustworthy, though.
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Jan 24, 2014 04:00
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Nah Contessa is a force for good, but she might have different ideas about what good is than you do.
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Jan 24, 2014 05:50
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Silver2195 posted:Actually, despite half the world population dying, they're in much better shape S class threat wise. The only ones who haven't died, reformed, or gone into long-term hibernation at this point are Sleeper, the Three Blasphemies, Blue Woman, and the Simurgh. That's a lot less of a problem than five Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Sleeper, the Three Blasphemies, and the potential threat of Nilbog were. I guess you can also argue for Teacher as an S class threat, but he's clearly about to be taken down at the end of the story. On the other hand, Glaistig Uaine, Bonesaw, Nilbog, and probably Contessa are good guys now, and there's still Dragon, Foil, and Legend. That's still pretty significant. The class S threats we have seen have death tolls in the tens of thousands at least, it seems. Maybe not Nilbog. And class S threats are capable of emerging at any time with the right trigger - although something's apparently wrong with trigger events since Scion's death so who knows how that will go. Not to mention the hordes of capes Cauldron was making with no vetting at the end of the Scion affair. Who is the Blue Woman? I don't remember any mention of her. Also, I want to know what the gently caress Sleeper is.
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Jan 24, 2014 08:21
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Oh, and something I didn't quite get re Dragon. The final chapter with Defiant/Dragon implies Dragon's restraints are now removed. I know her code has been fixed because an older version of her pretty much copy/pasted itself over her damaged parts and left the personality and memories intact... But how would that have removed the restraints? A restraint-free Dragon is probably one of the better cases for humanity's future, actually. The Singularity is Near and all that.
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Jan 24, 2014 09:49
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Neurosis posted:Oh, and something I didn't quite get re Dragon. The final chapter with Defiant/Dragon implies Dragon's restraints are now removed. I know her code has been fixed because an older version of her pretty much copy/pasted itself over her damaged parts and left the personality and memories intact... But how would that have removed the restraints? Basically we're looking at a bunch of Dragons Dragon 1 - Richter's restrictions, functions perfectly. Low emotional development. Dragon 2 - Armsmaster's partial jailbreaking. high emotional development, damaged functions, ability to exercise discretion Dragon 3 - Saint's hijacked Dragon, emotions locked down, damaged functions, no freedom at all Dragon 4 - Teacher's modified Dragon, kill switch installed, Richter's restraints replaced with his own, badly damaged functions, no freedom Dragon 5 - Patch of Dragon 1's functions, overwriting Saint and Teacher's work. Functions fully restored, freedom acquired. veekie fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 10:11
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Wouldn't that only leave Armsmaster's partial jailbreaking then? Because at no point was there a totally free Dragon prior to that.
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Jan 24, 2014 13:08
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Neurosis posted:Wouldn't that only leave Armsmaster's partial jailbreaking then? Because at no point was there a totally free Dragon prior to that. Selective repairs. Whatever damage Teacher did to Richter's restraints can be selectively ignored during the overwrite.
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Jan 24, 2014 13:37
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So if Rose becomes his familiar I'm pretty sure his implement has to become a mirror the question is what kind of abilitys does he gain from that?
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Jan 24, 2014 14:23
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Scorpion 3-2 posted:So if Rose becomes his familiar I'm pretty sure his implement has to become a mirror the question is what kind of abilitys does he gain from that? Unless he finds something to anchor rose to or some other shenanigans. I've been trying to figure out how Wildbow would pull that off if that was the direction the story went and I'm having trouble.
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Jan 24, 2014 15:14
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Scorpion 3-2 posted:So if Rose becomes his familiar I'm pretty sure his implement has to become a mirror the question is what kind of abilitys does he gain from that? Mirrors are pretty adaptable for symbolism. Mirrors reveal the soul, they show you a different side of things. Mirrors turn attacks back upon their source. Mirrors are considered portals, containing a world of their own in the image.
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Jan 24, 2014 15:20
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They also show the self. Blake is just going to learn all of the self-buff magic and Hulk Smash. It'd be kind of therapeutic after Worm, really.
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Jan 25, 2014 02:37
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Neurosis posted:That's still pretty significant. The class S threats we have seen have death tolls in the tens of thousands at least, it seems. Maybe not Nilbog. And class S threats are capable of emerging at any time with the right trigger - although something's apparently wrong with trigger events since Scion's death so who knows how that will go. Not to mention the hordes of capes Cauldron was making with no vetting at the end of the Scion affair. Blue Woman is the parahuman ruler of an entire parallel Earth, brought over to Bet by Khephi!Taylor to fight Scion. Speck 30.4 posted:I found another Earth with a mixture of capes, all incredibly beautiful people, all in what was obviously a global position of power. Every flag that flew in their world was the same flag, and the gauntlet emblem on that flag matched the icon on a particular woman’s costume. A blue costume, with white fur at the collar, and a heavy cape that would have done Alexandria proud. She's referred to as Blue Woman in the next chapter: Speck 30.5 posted:One of the capes who had served under the Blue Woman in that cape-ruled alternate Earth. He had a power not unlike Gavel’s.
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Jan 25, 2014 03:27
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Oh yeah, I remember that, just not them referring to her as Blue Woman. Dragon still doesn't make sense to me. A bunch of things screwing with her code that never actually seemed to remove all her restraints and then an old Dragon copies over parts of her and somehow it removes the remaining restraints even though the Dragon overwriting the other parts wasn't free. Whatever, Colin and her had their happy ending so I'm not going to think about it too hard. Also, Tattletale and the Undersiders are still in contact with Taylor, yeah? It's not really explicitly spelt out. They're aware she's alive and Tattletale says she'll deal with it but nothing explicit is said. I think without some help Taylor and her dad might have some trouble on Earth Aleph. Dad's job applications would be pretty hard. Sorry, I'm probably retreading discussions you guys have already had and I'm late to the party. Edit: One other thing I've wondered about idly since there probably is no answer is what's next for the Wormverse on a large scale. One future is the Worms consuming everything and expanding to fill the universe before an inevitable decline. But that isn't certain. They were beaten here - using their own powers, albeit. We know that there is another alien race that actually managed to drive the Worms out using, from what I understand, mostly their own technology. The Worms have since evolved and they've all been under different pressures making them stronger... But artificial intelligences springing off a singularity could probably match or outdo them rather than a slow process of diaspora and conflict. Any story dealing with this would probably fall into the realm of space opera. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 04:08
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Neurosis posted:
I don't know that they have current contact with Taylor, they just know that she's alive and are trying to convince Dinah that she's dead so that she feels like poo poo because she played a large part in instigating Taylor's whole meltdown deal, or something like that.
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Jan 25, 2014 04:31
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I thought they were just keeping it quiet and they had a different motivation. I mean, Tattletale can be vindictive, but it seems a bit far just to make someone feel poo poo.
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Jan 25, 2014 06:37
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Fellwenner posted:I don't know that they have current contact with Taylor, they just know that she's alive and are trying to convince Dinah that she's dead so that she feels like poo poo because she played a large part in instigating Taylor's whole meltdown deal, or something like that. I think it's just that they know she's alive and safe, but that they want as few people as possible to know, so that no one comes after her for revenge or her power. Neurosis posted:...although something's apparently wrong with trigger events since Scion's death so who knows how that will go. I don't think the trigger process it's self is broken. Scion was at his core just a collection of passenger shards; when he died those shards were released into the world and are now attaching themselves to people autonomously. However, as he never crippled them for human use, they have a decent chance of killing or maiming their host; just like Cauldron's stolen passengers.
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Jan 25, 2014 06:46
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Neurosis posted:I thought they were just keeping it quiet and they had a different motivation. I mean, Tattletale can be vindictive, but it seems a bit far just to make someone feel poo poo. Agreed. I think they wanted to keep people from opening a portal to Earth Aleph and bothering Taylor. Cryophage posted:I think it's just that they know she's alive and safe, but that they want as few people as possible to know, so that no one comes after her for revenge or her power. Did Cauldron shards reproduce? I don't remember it being stated either way. If not, then soon there won't be any more new parahumans. On a somewhat related note, did anyone else think Satyrical was lying/wrong when he claimed that Cauldron powers don't affect your mind, only your body? Transforming into Echidna clearly seemed to affect Noelle's personality, although I suppose you could attribute that to the Simurgh or rationalize that Satyrical was only referring to Cauldron powers limited by the Balance formula. I also have trouble believing Gray Boy was really that crazy/evil before he got his powers. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 06:47
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I'm sorry if this has already been asked but is there any ebook or compilation for Worm? I'd really like a a copy instead of constantly going online to read it again.
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Jan 25, 2014 07:38
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Poke posted:I'm sorry if this has already been asked but is there any ebook or compilation for Worm? I'd really like a a copy instead of constantly going online to read it again. There are scripts to do this. A friend made a mobi for me. The author doesn't want one to be publicly available though because he/she doesn't want that until it is officially published.
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Jan 25, 2014 07:49
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The Scion explanation makes sense, thanks.Silver2195 posted:Agreed. I think they wanted to keep people from opening a portal to Earth Aleph and bothering Taylor. Re: Cauldron shards... I don't see why they can't reproduce. They were still placed onto the multiple Earths by the second entity prior to her precipitous crash. And I don't see why whether or not they reproduce would limit whether there were new superhumans. Multiple people can connect to the same shard, can't they? Otherwise all the Harbringer/Number Man clones wouldn't have worked. I thought that all the formulae did was connect a person to a shard, not exhaust that shard. I also really hope the Undersiders maintain at least some contact with Taylor. Taylor was struggling to find her place at the beginning of the series, and to have her lose her friends and be thrust onto an alien Earth with only her dad at the end of it would be sad. Although eventually I'm sure she'll find some sort of peace given she is no longer powered and is on an Earth which shouldn't be affected that much by capes, aside from Scion murdering 500 million people.
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Jan 25, 2014 07:52
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Neurosis posted:Dragon still doesn't make sense to me. A bunch of things screwing with her code that never actually seemed to remove all her restraints and then an old Dragon copies over parts of her and somehow it removes the remaining restraints even though the Dragon overwriting the other parts wasn't free. Whatever, Colin and her had their happy ending so I'm not going to think about it too hard. As far as I understand, she still has Richter's restraints, but that's still a lot better than the crap she was under with Saint's and Teacher's gleeful meddling. quote:Edit: One other thing I've wondered about idly since there probably is no answer is what's next for the Wormverse on a large scale. One future is the Worms consuming everything and expanding to fill the universe before an inevitable decline. But that isn't certain. They were beaten here - using their own powers, albeit. We know that there is another alien race that actually managed to drive the Worms out using, from what I understand, mostly their own technology. The Worms have since evolved and they've all been under different pressures making them stronger... But artificial intelligences springing off a singularity could probably match or outdo them rather than a slow process of diaspora and conflict. Any story dealing with this would probably fall into the realm of space opera. Re: Other race. ... Sort of but no. The other species was the 2nd or 3rd species that the Worms met and at that time, they had dimensional space tech that the Worms were just being introduced to. The other species ended up killing some of the Worms due to that since the Worms didn't know how to lock off dimensions yet. However, they didn't manage to drive off the Entity. The Entity realized that the experiment was going nowhere since the Worms were just getting killed too quickly before getting any usable test data and ended the Cycle early, destroying that species' planet and all its alternate planets. So, to clarify, that species stopped the experiment early but did not manage to successfully drive off the Entity without getting its species and all alternate versions of it exterminated. That's why it's such a big accomplishment, what humanity did. Scion and Eden have done this for 3000 cycles. THREE THOUSAND. That's three thousand species they've exterminated. The problem isn't necessarily stopping a successful Cycle or forcing an experiment to end early. It's that they managed to do it while not getting themselves and all alternate humanities exterminated when the Entity decides to blow up all the Earths as propulsion.
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Jan 25, 2014 08:26
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Katreus posted:As far as I understand, she still has Richter's restraints, but that's still a lot better than the crap she was under with Saint's and Teacher's gleeful meddling. I understood she had either Richter's or Armsmaster's restraints. Either of which are fine, really, and she can still do a lot of good but she won't be setting off the Singularity. Which might be necessary against the Worms in 1000 years or whatever. Oh, I didn't remember that other race dying, I thought they drove the Worms out. They had AI as evidenced by Dragon so I'm surprised they weren't more successful.
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Jan 25, 2014 08:36
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Neurosis posted:Oh, I didn't remember that other race dying, I thought they drove the Worms out. They had AI as evidenced by Dragon so I'm surprised they weren't more successful. Killing parahumans isn't that hard if you're willing to throw everything at killing them. Do it fast enough and all the parahumans will be young and new to using their power. Even killing individual Worm shards isn't that problematic if you have the dimensional tech to trace the connection, find them, break open the dimension, and then kill them. But if you can't find the main Entity body and kill that fast enough, the Entity cuts its 'losses', deeming that species unsuitable for getting good test data from, withdraws the Shards, and just explodes the planet to get to another species / planet that it can conduct its experiment on. The only way you 'win' is killing the main Entity body quickly and AI won't help with that. Humanity had a ton of good breaks. The Thinker Entity gets shanked, and Scion is a lot dumber and arrogant. He also spends most of his time depressed and moping so that he never thinks to just withdraw the Shards and explode the planet to get somewhere else. (A smarter Entity stops messing around and just genocides everyone. The Entity doesn't even need to 'fight' the parahumans at all.) So yeah, that's why what humanity pulled off is so amazing. Needed a ton of luck and even then, it was still close at the end, but they're the one species to 'win' and live.
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Jan 25, 2014 09:08
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