Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

[Navrin]

Dinah triggered with a similar, but different, power... perhaps because she was a bigger fan of tabletop roleplaying games. She can extrapolate the capabilities of people, circumstance modifiers, and the difficulty of a task in order to figure out how likely an attempt would be to succeed. This is, in many ways, a MUCH weaker power than what she had in canon... but it's also less likely to draw Coil's attention, causes thinker headaches a LOT slower, doesn't have any compulsions attached to it... and it's still extremely strong.

For example, she might note that her small and weak frame, her complete lack of experience with firearms, the distance to her opponent, the lighting, and all other modifiers and note that the odds of her scoring a hit against said target would be extremely low, and the chance of negative side effects from trying high, for a really simple example.

This awareness of skills, circumstance modifiers, and overall difficulty also provide her with an extremely large amount of information about people which is, arguably, the more important aspect of her power considering the "calculate chances of success" ability can only be accurately used if she observes all of the known modifiers. If her opposition had backup, for example, it could completely throw off the odds of capturing said opposition.


So, potential story: Seeing her calling, she assembles a team of people (entirely mundane but with good skills) and leads them in a friendly rivalry with Uber and Leet, pushing each other to improve and making great videos without putting anyone into real danger. Off the clock, as it were, they might even strike up a mutual friendship with each other and team up against mutual enemies.

 

[Peanuckle]

So my whole lack of updating CCC has been getting to me, but I've also been thinking on another idea I had for a Worm quest.

You'd basically have Crawler's powerset, and would run around street-level trying to improve yourself without turning into a monster or getting killed. There'd be more stats and numbers involved than in CCC. The "Inhumanity" stat, for example, would run from 0 (perfectly normal human) to 100 (monstrously inhuman) and would be defined by various mutations. High-speed regeneration might get you a few points since all you have to do is not get badly hurt in public, but extra limbs would be in the 10s, while being big as a horse or having thick armor plating would be 20 or more. It'd be a balancing game between being able to go around in public safely, and having the power to stick around in a fight.

You could manage inhumanity by various means: When you develop a mutation, you'd have the choice of what grows, with some limitations. A long fall could give you armor plates or denser body tissues, but not wings (since it's the landing that hurt you). You'd also be able to rip off extra limbs and "replace" those mutations with thicker skin or easier-to-conceal tentacles. But you have to pick something from a list determined by the sort of damage you take.

It'd be primarily street-level, dealing with underworld activity and trying to find a niche to occupy as you steadily become more and more inhuman.

Would anyone be interested in seeing this?

 

[Guile]

Wrote a thing over on my omake thread in the NSFW section that's safe for work, by the name of Faerie King. It has Glaistis Uaine in it, natch.

Didn't really go anywhere, but it was kind of fun to write anyway.

http://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/guiles-omake-goes-with-everything.721/

 

[Snake/Eater]

what about a neverending story/worm crossover,in which a girl name Tayla(or something similar) who's mother passed away, has become her class's whipping girl after a falling out with her childhood and has become estranged from her Father, a successful lawyer turned local politician. she one day walks in to a bookstore...that all i got so far. basically she gets her hands on a dangerous book call Worm...oh yeah i'm going to post this on idea n the sv and sb idea treads to see if someone to writes this.

 

[Navrin]

Earth Bet was transformed into an RPG mechanics-verse. Everyone gets access to spacewhale superpowers, but they start really, really weak. However, they gain experience points from solving problems in interesting ways, with bonus points for efficiency and other positive traits, which can be used to upgrade their superpowers as well as their mundane capabilities.

People can be fairly safely disabled in combat without killing them. Deliberately inflicting lethal damage is a crime except for in circumstances where lethal force is considered acceptable.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

Earth Bet was transformed into an RPG mechanics-verse. Everyone gets access to spacewhale superpowers, but they start really, really weak. However, they gain experience points from solving problems in interesting ways, with bonus points for efficiency and other positive traits, which can be used to upgrade their superpowers as well as their mundane capabilities.

People can be fairly safely disabled in combat without killing them. Deliberately inflicting lethal damage is a crime except for in circumstances where lethal force is considered acceptable.

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Making it everyone would give you too many capes and power to keep track of in the story and you can't really work a superhero/villain dynamic when everyone is on the same playing field. Maybe most people are lvl 0 NPCs that follow the mechanics but can't gain xp untill they get a dramatic backstory (aka canon trigger event or epic heroism) and then level up to 1 with a new player class.

 

[doomlord9]

Due to a typo I had an amusing idea.

The story is Wyrm, where giant multidimensional space dragons shed their scales and gift them to mortals so that they may experiment with and improve the abilities associated with those scales. This also has the side effect of granting draconic features to those who trigger, like wings, breath weapons, armored scales, ect. Skitter's spider based breath weapon confuses and terrifies all who see or experience it, since it's literally spraying a mass of draconic spiders onto her target.

Lung isn't sure why but he feels so very offended by every other cape being dragon-like. Even though that's how it has always been he has this nagging feeling that everyone is copying him.

 

[evildice]

Lung isn't sure why but he feels so very offended by every other cape being dragon-like. Even though that's how it has always been he has this nagging feeling that everyone is copying him.

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Lung: "Buncha copy-cats."

Alexandragon: "Psh, like you were even the first."

Eidragon: "Yeah. What she said."

Legendragon: "Besides, you only have one breath weapon."

Dracontessa: "Settle down, o Queen of Chromatic drama."

 

[Navrin]

Making it everyone would give you too many capes and power to keep track of in the story and you can't really work a superhero/villain dynamic when everyone is on the same playing field. Maybe most people are lvl 0 NPCs that follow the mechanics but can't gain xp untill they get a dramatic backstory (aka canon trigger event or epic heroism) and then level up to 1 with a new player class.

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I'm really not sure what you mean. There's more to being a capable combatant than having raw power and you don't need the general populace to be weaker to have superheroes and supervillains. Still, one of the points of this is that it IS different from canon Worm. There isn't as huge of a power disparity involved and everyone around you COULD have a potent hidden power.

An easy change, if you really wanted, would be to make it so that everyone can improve their mundane abilities but only some can buy up superpowers, but I think that would make the story weaker, personally. One of the changes is that large scale conflict isn't the point for this. It's lots of low-scale conflict with high potential for creativity.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

I'm really not sure what you mean. There's more to being a capable combatant than having raw power and you don't need the general populace to be weaker to have superheroes and supervillains. Still, one of the points of this is that it IS different from canon Worm. There isn't as huge of a power disparity involved and everyone around you COULD have a potent hidden power.

An easy change, if you really wanted, would be to make it so that everyone can improve their mundane abilities but only some can buy up superpowers, but I think that would make the story weaker, personally. One of the changes is that large scale conflict isn't the point for this. It's lots of low-scale conflict with high potential for creativity.

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The problem is that if everyone can just get superpowers easily then the police and military will be able to deal with it just like they do in real life. It won't be a handful of random people with power it will be whoever has the time, resources and willingness to farm xp. That means that the government is going to be able to build up it's normal monopoly of force as they can afford to have professional grinders. Sure every random person won't be powerful but giving everyone the potential means you don't have special snowflakes you need to deal with.

Especially since people need to build up to high end power allows the government to take down criminal adventurers when they are lower level with their high level agents.

In order for the superhero/supervillain dynamic to work you need some people to be inherently stronger and distributed in a way the government can maintain control over. You could have classes be inherent to the person with most people having "NPC" classes with low stat/ability growth and a minority with "PC" classes with varying levels of brokenness.

 

[Navrin]

The problem is that if everyone can just get superpowers easily then the police and military will be able to deal with it just like they do in real life. It won't be a handful of random people with power it will be whoever has the time, resources and willingness to farm xp. That means that the government is going to be able to build up it's normal monopoly of force as they can afford to have professional grinders. Sure every random person won't be powerful but giving everyone the potential means you don't have special snowflakes you need to deal with.

Especially since people need to build up to high end power allows the government to take down criminal adventurers when they are lower level with their high level agents.

In order for the superhero/supervillain dynamic to work you need some people to be inherently stronger and distributed in a way the government can maintain control over. You could have classes be inherent to the person with most people having "NPC" classes with low stat/ability growth and a minority with "PC" classes with varying levels of brokenness.

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That, or the governments are losing more ground than ever because EVERYONE has the potential to defy their governments with their superpowers and they cannot possibly control all of them. Governments need a rather large power disparity in order to be able to bully everybody into submission. Revolutions could be sparked everywhere any time that the governments piss off the general populace, independence wars could become a lot more common, and all kinds of other chaos could be readily possible. This is especially the case if the RPG mechanics influence everyone into being more independent and less likely to follow the orders of others. After all, doing so will probably get whatever entity or entities are involved more data.

Besides, the story doesn't need to be Worm, but with RPG mechanics. It's Earth Bet with RPG mechanics and that might be really similar, or extremely different, from canon Worm.


Though I was thinking that everyone gets their superpower abilities "hardcoded", essentially, and they cannot be traded out.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

That, or the governments are losing more ground than ever because EVERYONE has the potential to defy their governments with their superpowers and they cannot possibly control all of them. Governments need a rather large power disparity in order to be able to bully everybody into submission. Revolutions could be sparked everywhere any time that the governments piss off the general populace, independence wars could become a lot more common, and all kinds of other chaos could be readily possible. This is especially the case if the RPG mechanics influence everyone into being more independent and less likely to follow the orders of others. After all, doing so will probably get whatever entity or entities are involved more data.

Besides, the story doesn't need to be Worm, but with RPG mechanics. It's Earth Bet with RPG mechanics and that might be really similar, or extremely different, from canon Worm.


Though I was thinking that everyone gets their superpower abilities "hardcoded", essentially, and they cannot be traded out.

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Actually how are you planning on people getting xp and how quickly does it build up into real levels of power? If getting xp is easy you will have literally everyone gaining superpowers which would be a mess to keep track of if everyone is capable of destroying city blocks cities won't last long and worm will have little resemblance with canon. If it is difficult then after they reach a level that leveling up starts requiring a lot of xp they will have to start doing attention grabbing activities to get enough xp to level in a relevant timescale. This would draw attention of people who are looking for that kind of thing leaving them vulnerable to being taken down by high level goverment agents.

Basically I'm suggesting that either leveling is easy enough to get powerful while remaining low key in which case a sufficient level of the population will be powerful that capes are more common than say... doctors. If it is harder then you'll need to do noticeable stunts that draw attention that allows them to be taken down while they are dangerous enough to draw attention but not enough to survive the smackdown from epic level capes.

Sort of like this.
1-10: Normal life.
10-50: Requires attention grabbing activities which draw government smackdown.
50-100: The only people who get this far are the ones that avoid being smacked down by the government by either having the protection of someone already this powerful or being backed by a government who feeds them xp worthy challenges.

A dynamic like this one would result in most people that try to game the system without powerful backing being killed/arrested during the 10-50 range where they are only moderately superhuman and people who make it to 50 are as rare as major capes in canon.

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

In order for the superhero/supervillain dynamic to work you need some people to be inherently stronger and distributed in a way the government can maintain control over. You could have classes be inherent to the person with most people having "NPC" classes with low stat/ability growth and a minority with "PC" classes with varying levels of brokenness.

Click to shrink...

Plan B: abandon the superhero/supervillain dynamic entirely. Follow the natural consequences from there. Instead of the Protectorate fighting superpowered gangs, you have inter-agency task forces - local PD, Staties, FBI, DEA, ATF, Marshals, Federales or RCMP or Interpol if necessary, all working together with a prosecuting attorney - every member of which has low to mid-level powers.

Without authorial fiat enforcing varying levels of corruption and incompetence in all law enforcement agencies, they can actually succeed.

 

[Navrin]

I'm thinking no character levels, because those are boring, arbitrary, and all around a mechanic I think that deserves to die. Instead you spend points upgrading various aspects of yourself. And yes, there are diminishing returns: the higher your rating in something is the harder it is to increase it. Anyway, you gain experience by overcoming challenges, of any sort, with the difficulty of the challenge (along with creativity and other modifiers) deciding how many you get. To discourage being a follower, it has to be a challenge that you personally care about for maximum points.

As for power level: I'm thinking "well below Canon Worm upper levels". More along the lines of Gallant than Vista for what can be pulled off with a lot of grinding. Purity can't level city blocks, but she could take down most opponents with a single glancing blow.

Still, this is a rather flexible setting change. You could readily go in a very large number of directions with this. If anyone decides to write it, thanks, and I hope it works out well.

 

[evildice]

"When everybody is special, then everybody is."

It'd work well as a one-shot, but as a story you're basically writing a whole new setting. That's cool, but at that point there's no reason to shackle it to Worm, so you might as well just write an original story.

 

[Guile]

Due to a typo I had an amusing idea.

The story is Wyrm, where giant multidimensional space dragons shed their scales and gift them to mortals so that they may experiment with and improve the abilities associated with those scales. This also has the side effect of granting draconic features to those who trigger, like wings, breath weapons, armored scales, ect. Skitter's spider based breath weapon confuses and terrifies all who see or experience it, since it's literally spraying a mass of draconic spiders onto her target.

Lung isn't sure why but he feels so very offended by every other cape being dragon-like. Even though that's how it has always been he has this nagging feeling that everyone is copying him.

Click to shrink...

The cosmic dragon scales are also dragons.

Suddenly Pern, basically. Everybody gets a dragonbuddy that's fun to be with. They have a bad habit of picking fights, though...

 

[Snake/Eater]

I have this idea for a Hulk crossover where Banner's suicide attempt was unfortunately successful.but the hulk lived on because of his rage was so incredible it was absorbed by Scion,so Taylor instead of getting the QA shard she gets the great Berserker shard.when she isn't the Hulk,she has Banner's intelligence added to her own and she can build Bannertech but when get mad or stressed she becomes the Incredible hulk. she manages to breakout of the locker but ends up on the run from the prt and supervillians.she's traveling across north america looking for cure or way to control her inner monster.i am posting this on the ideas treads of SF and SB.i have some ideas for story if anyone gets interested.

 

[StackedDeck]

I have this idea for a Hulk crossover where Banner's suicide attempt was unfortunately successful.but the hulk lived on because of his rage was so incredible it was absorbed by Scion,so Taylor instead of getting the QA shard she gets the great Berserker shard.when she isn't the Hulk,she has Banner's intelligence added to her own and she can build Bannertech but when get mad or stressed she becomes the Incredible hulk. she manages to breakout of the locker but ends up on the run from the prt and supervillians.she's traveling across north america looking for cure or way to control her inner monster.i am posting this on the ideas treads of SF and SB.i have some ideas for story if anyone gets interested.]

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Or, you could just chuck Banner into the Worm-verse. I think that would be more interesting. Especially his reactions to the way the Worm world works.

 

[Navrin]

Brockton Bay has an additional team, the composition of which I don't particularly care, that spits upon the "hero, villain, and rogue" dynamic. Instead, the dynamic they focus on is "aggressor, defender, and bystander" and will always side against the aggressor unless it is a person they aren't willing to defend at all. (Like, say, Bakuda during her rampage) People can also decide to have a battle way from all bystanders and thus only have aggressors present, which they will cheerfully ignore. They might also have a system where they'll stand aside from revenge hits if the defenders-to-be were aggressors and the guardians didn't manage to defend against them.

Naturally they have fought the heroes quite a bit, possibly including New Wave when they invaded Marquis's home. Net result? Aggression is, in general, not as common as attacking is made harder, there are probably more villains in BB in total with more groups, the unwritten rules might be more stringently followed, communication between the various factions would likely be easier, and BB would probably be a LOT better prepared for Endbringers and other outside threats.

May or may not be a cauldron experiment.

To be clear, they would react VERY differently to "raid a brothel and arrest everyone" and "go to a brothel and offer to escort anyone there home and conduct any rescue efforts needed to remove whatever hostages or whatever are keeping them there".


They might even have an alternative to the wards setup with WAY less commitment, invasions of privacy, and pressure. Also less safety, pay, firepower, career opportunities, etc.

 

[Prince Charon]

That's an interesting concept, Navrin. I'm not sure how long that team would last before too many groups teamed up against them, or they otherwise bit off more than they could chew (though if it is a Cauldron experiment, they'd plausibly have more advantages than otherwise - though you'd still need a reason for Cauldron to do that), but it's an interesting idea, that should be developed.

Perhaps the group replaces Coil, or has AU-Coil as a member?

 

[Navrin]

I'm thinking that enough groups would find them useful enough that they wouldn't want to team up against the guardian team, at least not enough to handle whatever allies they have. After all, any time they're getting attacked the guardians are right there at their side. Besides, gang wars are bad for business.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people tried, but I would be skeptical about its success. Especially since the Protectorate, PRT, and Wards won't officially team up with villains to take on other villains unless they're A or S-class, if I recall correctly.

As for why Cauldron would be doing this: If the experiment works out properly, they would have a model for increasing the stability of cities and hardening them against powerful villains and thus prevent the total collapse of society.

Do you think it's likely that the PRT would have them officially designated as villains? After all, they would be fighting the "Heroes" fairly often until/unless said "Heroes" decided to follow the rules set out so they aren't aggressors, even if they weren't committing other crimes.

 

[evildice]

Let's talk about Endbringer control as an alternate Taylor power in a serious (non-crack) story.

The background justification would be that Eden, the "strategic" one, designed the Endbringers for specific strategic roles.

However, it was the Warrior's job to handle "tactical" affairs, and that included using the Endbringers as tools in combat.

Eden was the "breadth" style of control: she could set "strategic" behavior, which is to say, she could give them broad general directions which they'd interpret to the best of their ability. Scion was the "depth" style of control: he could assume direct control of any of them, and use their senses and powers, but that required his attention and focus.

Unfortunately for Scion, he was told by Eden that he wouldn't need to use that control this Cycle since the target species was so inherently powerless. So he sent away the ability to control the Endbringers in everyone's favorite shard cluster, the Queen Administrator cluster.

Taylor triggers, the how is not important. Maybe Eidolon was flying nearby for whatever reason. Her power manifests as a 30 cm tall icosahedron (hereafter "d20").

Spoiler: Maybe it looks like this...

The d20 is inscribed with weird glyphs. It's made out of Endbringer material, but she doesn't know that yet. It floats around at her mental command. She can telekinetically move it around within 30 feet of herself. (30 ft. is the kill aura range, right?)
- If she moves more than 30 ft. away from it, or dismisses it, it immediately winks out of existence.
- If it doesn't exist, she can summon it into the palm of either hand.
- It's an immovable object while she's within range.
- It's also an unstoppable force, but it only moves around 20 miles per hour, and it can't move more than 30 ft. away from her.

While she touches one of the three "active" faces, she gains super senses:
- Knowledge about energy sources within 30 ft.
- Intuition about the location of water pipes, people and large animals within 30 ft., except when it's raining.
- Flashbacks about the emotionally important events in one nearby person's past, and insight into the work of any Tinker within 30 feet.

- - - - -

Brainstorming:
- I need 2 more 'major' Endbringers (on par with Behemoth / Leviathan / Simurgh / Khonsu).
- I need 11 more 'minor' Endbringers (on par with Tohu / Bohu).
- I need powers, limitations, and what kind of weird senses they use.

What kind of senses would Khonsu confer? Bohu? (I think Tohu would grant the ability to detect capes within range.)

 

[Nervaqus987]

What kind of senses would Khonsu confer? Bohu? (I think Tohu would grant the ability to detect capes within range.)

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Not sure about Khonsu, but according to WoG, Bohu is a macro scale space manipulator.

A sensory power based around that would likely be a sort of spatial awareness.

 

[Navrin]

evildice, you might look at Tales of Transmigration for ideas. There are quite a few Endbringers in it, though most information is revealed in non-story posts.

 

[doomlord9]

The d20 is inscribed with weird glyphs. It's made out of Endbringer material, but she doesn't know that yet. It floats around at her mental command. She can telekinetically move it around within 30 feet of herself. (30 ft. is the kill aura range, right?)

Click to shrink...

Do note that all of the EB's are faking retardedly HARD, as in if they were even slightly serious the chances of beating them is flat zero except for Scion. All of they would actually have an instant kill radius of their entire effective range of effect. Leviathan would make you pop from miles away, Behemoth burns from his full 2k+ radius, and Ziz just blenders your brain from however far away she can effect.

Her own nerfed power might follow that rule, but it doesn't have to.

 

[TanaNari]

- I need 2 more 'major' Endbringers (on par with Behemoth / Leviathan / Simurgh / Khonsu).
- I need 11 more 'minor' Endbringers (on par with Tohu / Bohu).
- I need powers, limitations, and what kind of weird senses they use.

Click to shrink...

You can use my Barghest. It sees in what are effectively angles and vectors. Pretty much physics-math-sight.

 

[evildice]

You can use my Barghest. It sees in what are effectively angles and vectors. Pretty much physics-math-sight.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! I think he's a really good Minor Endbringer, does that sound right to you?

In terms of senses, I think he'd also need the ability to detect capes, but unlike Tohu he wouldn't actually learn anything about their powers.

 

[Navrin]

Park Jihoo triggers right before Bakuda would have killed him. I'm thinking he picked up a Regent bud and triggered with the ability to link with a person, get an intuitive understanding of what and why they're going to be doing something, and then forbid any of those actions that he wants.

Immediate consequence: Bakuda is captured without further fatalities, the ABB probably collapses, and Team Hero likely gains a potent new recruit.

 

[Prince Charon]

Here's an idea that requires a few contrived coincidences, but given who's involved, blaming the Simugh is actually plausible:

Let us say that Taylor's locker is in a hall that's close to the street. Also, let us say that the Travelers arrived in Brockton Bay several months earlier than in canon. Some or all of them are driving past the school (if Noelle is there, then so is Oliver and the rest of the team, because poor Echidna doesn't travel well), and are within pinging range, at the moment Taylor triggers - whether her first trigger, second trigger, or both.

This may also involve the Travelers having a car accident a bit past the school, but there shouldn't be any fatalities that the Simurgh has a use for, later.

So, what powers would Taylor get from pinging off one, some, or all of the Travelers? Even a ping from Genesis alone could be pretty damn scary.

A simpler variant of this would be Taylor triggering in a dumpster, in an alley where Bitch is walking her dogs, and gaining the power to make meatsuits for any bugs in her range, or something.


Thinking of creating a thread for 'What powers might X have gotten if they pinged off Y and/or Z?' because it's an interesting thought experiment, and could produce some cool stories. Probably needs a better title, though.

 

[TanaNari]

Thinking of creating a thread for 'What powers might X have gotten if they pinged off Y and/or Z?' because it's an interesting thought experiment, and could produce some cool stories. Probably needs a better title, though.

Click to shrink...

Nothing. Pinging doesn't seem to contribute to powers in the slightest.

Taylor almost certainly pinged off Shadow Stalker. Clearly getting her bitchiness and need to be strong. And love of dark costumes and excessive force.

Then again, maybe the QA shard was too strong and not allowed to ping, since it got special attention.

But you also have Scrub. Who pinged off all the merchant capes, Taylor, Lisa, and likely most of Faultline's crew. Dunno what data it picked off of all that which results in "summon shitty death ball that I can't even control."

I think pings mostly just help the shards have a better understanding of what their hosts are going to want or need, not anything to do with their power loadout. But there are no examples of pinging granting powers resembling those near them at the time.

Now twin triggers- Like Brandish and Lady Photon... or Flechette and her unnamed, but mentioned, villain counterpart... THEY got the grab bag like powers.