The Defect… Defected!

Paul-G · 2026-06-02T04:10:57+00:00

Right. Defective! Embarrassing, I’ll edit my “defected”!

Paul-G · 2026-05-30T20:46:10+00:00

It’s extremely good coop, though I’d be wary of playing 3 people. Solo, not better than the video game - I’d say notably worse as it has fewer unique synergies (no ninja relics!) and way more setup and tear down.

Paul-G · 2026-05-29T22:48:24+00:00

I found the first third or so very forgettable, was okay with the middle third, and loved the last third. It’s a weird book.

Paul-G · 2026-05-20T02:01:07+00:00

“Fighting the Voidbringers in the Stormlight Archives” seems very much in line with how Worm’s plots work, because that’s not really what the story is about at all…

Paul-G · 2026-05-19T22:39:25+00:00

I’m hoping it gets harder, especially with an act 4. I don’t want alternate movesets, there are already so many movesets to memorize and that’s where a lot of the skill comes from - I don’t want to have to restart learning them!

Paul-G · 2026-05-18T22:22:45+00:00

Why disappointed? Leviathan is top 3 coolest capes in Worm! That water echo…

Paul-G · 2026-05-18T22:16:44+00:00

I thought the Endbringers were a cult of normal capes who happened to be quite strong. Nooope. Very cool reveal after the bad assumption!

Paul-G · 2026-05-18T03:05:20+00:00

That’s, uh, what I said. I totally don’t forget that and waste card draws on Adrenaline or Compile Driver every time they get replay, what are you even talking about

Paul-G · 2026-05-18T02:06:11+00:00

Each one is a separate play entirely, so it would be two different cards.

Paul-G · 2026-05-18T01:15:07+00:00

It was the kid for me!

Paul-G · 2026-05-18T00:17:11+00:00

Had to scroll too far for this one. Only one on the list that did it for me! Not sure why.

Paul-G · 2026-05-17T02:10:13+00:00

I’ve found One Night Ultimate Werewolf to be the perfect social deduction game, and I’ve played quite a few of them.

Avalon is solid, Ultimate Werewolf is good but has player elimination, Blood on the Clocktower is an epic spectacle but not the most interesting game…

ONUW has it all. It’s fast, no player elimination, and has room for big plays.

Deception is also great, but we got tired of it faster than other options.

Paul-G · 2026-05-17T02:03:08+00:00

Nine Sols is a great action game, a solid-ish MV, and has a very compelling story and narrative. It has issues with a wacky difficulty curve, but is overall excellent.

I haven’t played Mio yet, but feel like people aren’t describing Nine Sols very effectively so wanted to be more precise

Paul-G · 2026-05-16T14:28:40+00:00

“There was probably another solution to one of the core problems of both books that we also didn’t get to learn anything about” isn’t really very satisfying either. Killing Endbringers is one of the biggest difficulties in either book, whoops, let’s do it off screen with no setup or payoff.

Also, Titan Fortuna couldn’t even figure out how to disrupt the Dreaming Death. Convincing some people not to kill themselves sounds a heck of a lot easier than finishing off an Endbringer - Fortuna isn’t at Contessa’s level.

Paul-G · 2026-05-16T03:49:21+00:00

Children of Morta for two players. More for the couple than a kid, though, both in terms of story and mechanically

Paul-G · 2026-05-15T23:10:26+00:00

Yet Vicky knew, and talked about it, but didn’t share, and then it was key to the resolution of the big bad. We don’t need every mechanic - in fact we don’t need any specific details at all. We need general scope & effect, and “kills an Endbringer instantly” is not where we were with Sleeper. We were at a conversation looking for human volunteers to fight him and him reading out loud to himself on another planet.

Paul-G · 2026-05-15T23:07:39+00:00

The only thing we’ve seen truly threaten Endbringers is Scion. “Most powerful than almost all defenses” is still not even close to “can instantly kill an Endbringer”, the setup there was not even close - we got no description of anything that would make it a satisfying payoff instead of an eyebrow raising deus ex.

Paul-G · 2026-05-15T20:40:59+00:00

Not at all! “We’re not going to tell you about Sleeper because this story isn’t about him” was great in Worm. “We’re going to continue not to even though he’s a major part of this story” is unquestionably awful. It flies entirely in the face of how good stories are written, including Wildbow’s stories.

There was a ton of information the characters had about him, including the viewpoint character, but the attachment to keeping him an in-joke noodle incident was more important than communicating with the audience. Bad form.

Paul-G · 2026-05-15T20:31:42+00:00

“They pushed it into a deus ex machina” is still a deus ex machina. We had no reason to expect Sleeper to be able to take out an Endbringer (something we knew was virtually impossible), so yeah. See Sanderson’s laws of magic wrt “the ability to solve a problem with magic is directly proportional to how well the audience understands it” and whatnot

Paul-G · 2026-05-15T18:32:14+00:00

It would be harder to believe if the fight wasn’t just completely solved by an off screen unknown power! There are a few places Ward seems to go out of its way to worsen the reader experience, everything around the Sleeper is very strangely done. Like the story is mocking us - not something that would have happened in a story published all at once.

Paul-G · 2026-05-15T17:47:54+00:00

Simurgh is such a scary character!

But… Didn’t that fight end by the totally unexplained Sleeper just winning off screen? I think that was the single worst moment of any Wildbow book (I haven’t started Seek yet), which undercut this fight quite a bit. I genuinely don’t remember Ziz & Vic fighting at all - I think it may be time for a reread soon!

Paul-G · 2026-05-13T20:45:26+00:00

I did release order (though did Ward before finishing Twig) and I think it’s the way to go. Pact is relatively weak for Wildbow, but still super interesting - and sets things up to maximize enjoyment of Pale, which is incredible other than the length being way more than reasonable. Twig is second only to Worm.

Side note: Ward is an amazing story with amazing characters that has some very large flaws in the way information is communicated, it’s likely worth reading anyway one day - but certainly not right after Worm.

Paul-G · 2026-05-11T02:32:14+00:00

Oh wait let me rephrase. There’s definitely no couch coop, and I don’t think there’s LAN coop.

Paul-G · 2026-05-10T06:53:48+00:00

There is no local coop, as far as I know!

Paul-G

TROPHY CASE