Weaverdice, sometimes spelled Weaver Dice, is a role-playing game based on the setting of Worm. The game was created by Wildbow, with help from fans and playtesters. It's currently a work in progress, with regular revisions.[1] Initially Weaverdice was meant to be a (rpg)system-agnostic guideline for character/power creation within the Worm setting, but eventually evolved into a game on its own.
Description
Weaverdice is akin to Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games: A game master (GM) handles setting, story and non-player characters, while a single player or group of players navigate the roles of heroes or villains, all taking place in the setting of Worm.[2]
Weaverdice is distinctive in how player characters are created.[3] Players do not control the process in full, but the player group collaborates and works within the setting's logic to devise a superpower or set of superpowers for the character.[4][5] Some groups opt to let players decide their trigger event themselves and pitch a power suggestion to the GM, who then creates something in the direction of the wish.
An IRC channel to find and run games exists on the parahumans IRC,[6] and the IRC channel have a bot for rolling trigger-events, powers and Flaws/Perk; in general helping playing the game. More info on the IRC channel and Weaverdice resources can be found here. There also exists some Discord bots that functions similary to the IRC bot.
The online tabletop platform Roll20 has a character sheet for Weaverdice. [7] It does not yet contain the automated rolls the IRC have, but you can roll stat rolls easily.
Campaigns by Wildbow
Wildbow has hosted four different Weaverdice campaigns, with one completed in full and another currently active. Independent Campaigns are also available.[8]
WD Oakland
Takes places in the city of Oakland, where the powerful Guild member Poe is absent, and assumed to be close to dying as the result of illness. Different groups assume now is the proper time to move into the city.[9] Currently inactive.[8]
WD Helena
Takes place in the town of Helena, located in Minnesota. Nearby a convoy of PRT containment vans on the way to the Birdcage was destroyed, with the prisoners freed and traveling into Helena.[10] Vigilantes and villains are hunting the escapees to receive the bounty of a kill order, with the PRT running damage control.[11] Currently inactive.[8]
WD Lausanne
Takes place during the first appearance of the Simurgh, in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland.[12][13] The campaign starts a bit earlier, where the Suits are branching out into city, answering a growing crisis, with minor villains flocking into the city, drawn by a group of Tinkers who are offering powersuits that also boost powers. Currently inactive.[8]
WD Lincoln
Takes place during The Timeskip with a new corporate team called Loadstar, just getting set up int the eponymous city of Lincoln, Nebraska. It's top members are targeted and it falls to Junior members to deal with it.[14] The campaign was a one shot that was completed over two sessions.[8]
Variations
There exists a few variations of Weaverdice, among them are Khepridice, Skitterdice[15] and Weaverdice d20[16].
Trivia
- Weaverdice is based on the system created by Taylor Hebert to illustrate the virtues of being a hero as opposed to a villain.[17]
- Weaverdice was mentioned as a game in Pact by Blake Thorburn when he was being interrogated by the police about the murder of a boy whose ghost he helped.[18]
Relevant Links
- Guide for Newcomers
- Game Rules, Character Creations, Character Sheet Template (Mk.1.5)
- #Weaverdice IRC channel , #Weaverdice Guide
- List of former or current WD Campaigns
- /r/Weaverdice (Reddit)
See Also
References
- ↑ Both game and story were created by Wildbow, the former created with some help from fans and playtesters. It is very much a fluid work in progress (WIP), with revisions being made on the regular. - reddit thread by Wildbow.
- ↑ Akin to D&D or other pen and paper roleplaying games, Weaverdice has a game master ('GM') handle setting, story, and non-player characters while a solo player or group of players navigate the role of a hero or villain. All of this takes place in what is commonly known as the Wormverse, known to inhabitants of that 'verse as 'Earth Bet'. Starting in 1982, when a golden man was found floating over a spot on the ocean, superheroes started appearing with increasing frequency, and society changed to adapt to them. - reddit thread by Wildbow.
- ↑ Got tagged, responding.
Weaver Dice has had a basic resolution mechanic for a long time, and if Samdamandias is the person I'm remembering discussing the subject with, I remember pointing it out and getting an 'oh, duh' response, and I remember stressing that Weaver Dice was never meant to be a standalone roleplaying game system in the first place! It was meant to be a cape generation system that fit with the tone and nature of the Wormverse. I stated this explicitly at several points in the doc and when referring to the doc.
That said, with the basic system in place we have no less than nine ongoing games going at once with no input from me. I don't have the time to run RPs, much as I'd love to get more into it. - Comment by Wildbow on Sufficent Velocity - ↑ Unlike D&D and many other roleplaying games, Weaverdice doesn't have players decide their character. Where a player of D&D might decide to play an elf pyromancer and write up their sheet before presenting it to the person running the game and to the other players, Weaverdice is a system where the player does not have control over the powers they get nor the circumstances in which they get them. The group collaborates and works with the setting's logic to devise a superpower or set of superpowers for the character, and the player of that character then works with what they have. This is not a fair setting, and the system of perks and flaws can be similarly unfair. Once they roll a trigger, the group decides on a power, and they've rolled their perks and flaws, the player can fill in the remainder of the blanks and decide the particulars of the character. Players are thus challenged to make the best of what they're given. - reddit thread by Wildbow.
- ↑ It’s a neat way to get variation in powers, and I think it suits the setting if you basically don’t get to choose which power you wind up with. - Comment by Wildbow on Venom 29.3
- ↑ The easiest and most common place to find an opportunity to play Weaverdice is in the Weaverdice chatroom. A proper link will find its way to the sidebar at some point, but for now, the astute can find it via. IRC:
- Server: irc.parahumans.net
- Channel: #Weaverdice - reddit thread by Wildbow.
- ↑ A basic html/css sheet was made partly on request for the Roll20 platform, when some people expressed interest in playing Weaverdice through more interactive platforms than the IRC Link to theGitHub sourcecode Improvements to the sheet are welcome. Implementation of the irc rolls to Roll20 would be welcome.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Weaver Dice: Campaigns, document updated by Weaverdice players.
- ↑ Poe has quietly, discreetly, dropped off the radar. It’s not public knowledge yet, but the local capes know, and it doesn’t suit any of them to let the details slip to any outsiders. Rumor is the man is dead or dying, but recent incidents have occurred, innocents getting hurt, and Poe really should and would have stepped in to do something, suggesting he wasn’t able.
There’s big money to be had for anyone willing and able to take a portion of the city for themselves. Unspoken agreements that defeated or lesser groups might be willing to fold into the bigger and more successful ones. - WD Oakland, document by Wildbow. - ↑ It was the word on the street before it even hit the news. PRT containment vans traveling down back roads to the Birdcage were interrupted before they could reach their destination. Not the most unusual thing in the world on its own, but this was something special. Four containment vans, eight capes, and four additional vans with foam sprayers were assaulted. This was a convoy of a sort that happen once every one or two years, bringing in the really dangerous birdcage-bound, where extra security is mandated.
The convoy and guards were disabled, the occupants of the vans freed. The rescuers, breakout specialists, were summarily killed or taken hostage, and the four occupants of the vans have apparently banded together. They’ve headed into a town of about thirty thousand people: Helena, MN.
The Kill Order was signed in record time. - WD Helena, document by Wildbow. - ↑ Some of the people taking on the kill order are vigilantes, some are villains relishing the chance to hurt people and get paid for it, and some fit into other categories. The PRT is also in town, more to run damage control than anything else. There are little to no rules, and nothing that the hunters do here will get them prosecuted. It’s a situation that screams ‘opportunity’. - WD Helena, document by Wildbow.
- ↑ Bogotá, August 20th, 2002. Behemoth.
Lausanne, December 30th, 2002. Simurgh.
Seattle, April 1st, 2003. Leviathan. - Excerpt from Interlude 24.x - ↑ By Christmas of 2002, one way or another, things will reach a crescendo. - WD Lausanne, document by Wildbow.
- ↑ The 72nd largest city in the US, not due to receive a PRT office until 2016, Lincoln Nebraska hosts a total of two hundred and seventy-seven thousand people.
With the PRT having undergone a massive schism, members leaving established departments en masse, and early whispers in Anchorage suggesting that the newest departments are not doing as well as they could, some of the corporate teams have merged to form Lodestar, establishing themselves as an entity in Lincoln, with the purpose of serving as a stopgap or alternate PRT department. If Lodestar is a success, the PRT will not need to set up shop in Lincoln.
It’s a divisive decision. One that some call dangerous. Even if they’re undeniably heroes, their top brass being independents and corporate capes with a good track record, the fact that they’re operating as a corporate entity without government oversight makes some uneasy.
The founding event took place in Lincoln, a series of messages crop up on various parahuman related message boards. News media mentions the story until it is quashed by authorities.
There’s a bounty. Take down the top members of Lodestar.
This takes place in the summer of 2012 (timeskip), after five attempts were made and failed. Now, things seem quiet enough for Lodestar to go to work. Their gathered heroes are being dispatched across the city and to neighboring regions. Their guard is as lowered as it’s been since the bounty was offered. - WD Lincoln, document by Wildbow. - ↑ Hive Wiki - Skitterdice, Short article on Skitterdice.
- ↑ Hive Wiki - WD20, Short article on Weaverdice20(AKA. WD20).
- ↑ “Each of you write down the most horrible thing you can think of, that you can reasonably expect to happen to you in the next few years. No need to get too complicated. Think of something horrible that would give you a trigger event. Write it down.”
I waited while each of the kids wrote something down. Other kids were gathering now, but they’d be bystanders. It was the stragglers who were the focus now.
“Hand your sheet to the person to your left. Boston Wards, help me on this score. We’re going to make up powers that sort of fit the trigger events, in a vague way. No need to be specific.”
[...]
The kids rolled, one by one.
Three dead.
“You rigged the system,” Ned said, a little petulant.
“I’m being a little harsh,” I said, “But this is it. It sounds dumb, but being a cape means beating the odds, again and again. If you’re a villain? The reward is pretty damn good, but the risk is bigger. You saw how few villains actually survived intact. Even then, a lot of them lost their money, or got hurt.” - Excerpt from Drone 23.4 - ↑ Fuck you, I thought. I couldn’t let him control the flow of this discussion. I continued, heated, “The family said something about being involved in board games or something like that. Maybe it was a Dungeons and Dragons or Weaver Dice thing, maybe it was an Ouija Board thing. I don’t really know. But you could probably stretch the definition. Yes, if you have to ask.” - Excerpt from Pact, Conviction 5.2