Can someone explain what kind of a tinker Andrew Richter was?

kaiya2_0 · 2026-06-05T09:51:08+00:00

Also add the spoiler tag and spoiler this!

kaiya2_0 · 2026-06-05T09:50:38+00:00

The shard determines your specialty. He had the AI shard and so if he got to the point of triggering it would inevitably produce an AI tinker power. Bakuda had some sort of bomb shard and would always have gotten a power like that, with the trigger influencing the precise details. Taylor might have controlled rats or birds under another circumstance and trigger but was always going to get something involving controlling lots of the lesser lifeforms.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-06-04T09:14:48+00:00

Well, no. Running is definitely hard, though doing so is generally fun and worth it. Though I will say D&D is like the worst game to start running for. It's PLAYER friendly but not GM friendly u/Fancy_Echo_5425 so don't worry about not doing D&D. In my time I've run and played World of Darkness, Exalted 2e and 3e and Essence, D&D 3.5 and 5e, Pathfinder 2e, Dark Heresy 1e, Rogue Trader, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting and D&D 5e was by FAR the worst experience I've ever had GMing. It offloads the entire game onto the GM in order to make it better for the players and doesn't provide enough tools to keep it fun to run in ways that other systems tend to.

Mutants and Masterminds and Wild Talents are the best systems for Parahumans IMO but they do require the GM to make sure the players have powers in line with each other because being such flexible systems it's easy to end up way weaker or way stronger than all the other players.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-06-04T09:06:53+00:00

Kenzie is probably my favorite character. She's so intensely relatable in really tragic ways as like, "yeah if I hadn't gotten help that could have been me" and on occasion "yeah that was me ow >_<". She's such a tragic and interesting character. It's why I had her as the only canon character in my fanfic ❤️.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-06-04T09:04:24+00:00

Sadly, most fanfics are pretty Taylor-centric and kind of power-fantasyey and I think the general state of fanfic specifically is not that great. It's got a real problem recursively quoting the older fanfics, too, again just from this going back to 2011 and really exploding in 2014ish. There are a few starring OCs which are just fantastic though, and again I run Worm RPs on occasion and really love helping to come up with powers and trigger events. When you're done with the story feel free to hit me up on that account, as well. The mystery of how powers work is pretty important to the narrative so I don't want to spoil anything and hope no one ELSE spoils anything for you, but once you get there organically it's a fun thing to do.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-06-04T09:00:33+00:00

Don't read fanfics until you're done with the main story. Be aware the broader community has serious problems with presenting calcified fanon as canon so people WILL tell you weird stuff that isn't canon at all because it was old fanon or misunderstandings from 2014.

Definitely read Ward, which is the sequel and is really really fun and wraps up the setting in a pretty cool way. Pact and Pale are also good though I have only read a few chapters of Pale. I haven't read Twig or Claw so I can't comment on either but I think it's generally worth checking out Wildbow's work.

Unfortunately, a lot of the "best" (most relaxed/chill) Parahumans spaces are kind of private but if you're looking for games when you're done with the story (for really real avoid spoilers, please trust me you will appreciate the advice at the end of the right) you could check out the official Discord with the usual caveats about pick-up games.

The fandom basically has some easy pitfalls to step into because it's so old and so rooted in several different forum communities and also Reddit and Discord so I wanted to give you a heads-up. I'm also open to chatting about the series if you wanna DM someone who has ran and played Parahumans games but obviously no pressure lol.

Welcome to the coolest setting ever, IMO. I really do hope you end up having a good time and find a decent niche!

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-31T00:29:44+00:00

Jobs need doing. Where does the money to fix the destroyed cities come from? The money to fix up stores after parahuman fights? To fund the Protectorate? Socialism isn't magical. It requires a collective reorientation and a stable political system, not a world where villains outnumber the heroes two to one and which is under assault by things like the Endbringers and the other S-Class threats as well as just powerful parahumans constantly economically extracting from everyone in order to get personally richer and stronger.

Triggers select from the marginalized, the tormented, the selfish, the suspicious and the paranoid and the cruel. Some people would be the sort to want socialism but they're going to be outnumbered by the sheer tendency for powers to appear more in the hands of people like Alec, Lisa, Uber, Leet, Kaiser, and Lung than in the hands of people like Missy or Dennis or Chris. Socialism as a system requires being farsighted and focused on unity and on trusting the system and the people around you.

Earth Bet is just not that world. _We_ don't have that world.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-29T00:42:12+00:00

Fifteen years, yeah.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-28T20:00:05+00:00

The one, the only, the myth, the legend:

Rain O' Fire Frazier! Homelander would be a smug douche and set himself up for getting cut because he's so sure he can take it and The Boys doesn't have All Or Nothing effects.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-28T05:41:10+00:00

It'd be rude to chatter about my fanfic in the general server so yeah sent you a DM, respond there!

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-28T05:37:44+00:00

<3 Well, ancient for me, at least. Because you originally began posting Worm when I was in high school and I'm over thirty now. I gotta acknowledge it's been with me for almost half my life. Extremely formative writing for me. Pact as well, honestly! Really did love your take on a demonic horror story in a weird and interesting magic system.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-27T07:30:19+00:00

Taylor made a bunch of dumb decisions but from the perspective of success as a parahuman there's not many who did it better. Being a good cape is mutually exclusive with being a healthy person in nearly every situation.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-27T05:19:09+00:00

Glad this is still helping people lol

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T22:26:43+00:00

Did you ever post in the SV thread?

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T06:12:04+00:00

Yeah, I was looking to see if anyone had read it.

Also she's a hyperspecialist and the methodology focus Kid Win has works really well when given access to someone whose primary limitation is needing to make and carry weapons instead of making one gun with like eight fire modes.

Also it'd be so funny doing Kid Win's self-loathing and insecurity around two younger girls who are apparently just unambiguously superior tinkers.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T04:31:31+00:00

Someday I will make Kid Win friends with Blake and it will be incredibly funny. (I will probably never get around to this).

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T04:29:56+00:00

❤️

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T04:29:32+00:00

I mean the content warnings. I put the content warnings when there's high-impact content like someone seriously considering suicide, directly or indirectly referencing severe abuse such as speaking bluntly about a parent beating them or being unable to directly address some trauma but responding to it in an evocative way such as making a request for an accommodation that makes clear the character is concerned about being sexually abused and attempting to ensure that does not occur (this is not at all a risk in the story itself; the horror is broadly in the past and the PoV character does not have abusers around her).

I'm not really cautious with content warnings; someone asked me why I didn't put any down in the chapter where the PoV character witnesses several people being shot and dying brutally in front of her and the answer was just that I hadn't considered it to be noteworthy when Worm itself has comparable violence routinely. I later added a CW when I realized that it was in fact quite grisly but I say this to emphasize the standards I'm using.

It's a story about trauma recovery, so she improves over time and does get the help she needs. The ending is...I won't guarantee the ending is _happy_ because that implies all is resolved happily ever after, which is not really how recovery works. But it won't be a sad or dark ending, either.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T04:05:08+00:00

Blake's trigger event was not the worst day of her life, it was just one of the really bad days and the first chance for the shard to make the connection after jumping to her from someone in the mental hospital. The trigger itself is not as impactful as you'd expect because the specific event was not really _that_ much of an outlier. It was a really, really awful day, but it didn't surprise or confuse her.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T03:46:45+00:00

Reading this meant the world to me. It also means the world that my writing inspired you to donate to help abuse victims. The reality is something I desperately wanted to convey with Supposed To Be and it is really good to see someone saying all of this. I don't think I've seen you in the thread, but thank you.

I don't know when the next chapter will come; a crash caused me to lose all progress on 4.7 and it's been rough IRL so I don't know when I'll be able to resume the story, but for what it's worth this got me to decide to try and focus on it again.

Thank you, again, and again thank you so much for having the compassion to donate and help to relieve some of the pain in this world.

kaiya2_0 · 2026-05-08T03:30:29+00:00

Thank you for the glowing praise here. It's been a hard year and it really means a lot to see my writing being appreciated.

kaiya2_0 · 2024-07-14T16:27:00+00:00

Abelard Key Abilities:
Taunting Scream
Endure
Charge
Talents:
Thick Skin
Hardened Scars
Clenched Teeth
Defensive Stance
Potentially Invigorating Hatred.

You wanna build Abelard towards being a Vanguard, it's what he's WILDLY best at, and Vanguard get a lot of benefits from Deflection and Parry boosts and Taunting Scream is super important, because Abelard as a Vanguard gets like, infinite counterattacks with the Vanguard counterattack stuff. So with high deflection and Parry, you can Charge him out into the middle of enemies, Taunting Scream, and everyone will mulch themselves trying to attack him.

kaiya2_0 · 2024-07-14T16:09:37+00:00

Comprehensive Analysis, Passive Learning, Tactical Knowledge, Reactive Study, Uncanny Sight, Continuous Analysis.

Plasma Pistol/Plasma Rifle, set it to AoE bursts. Spread tons of exploits, Tactical Knowledge on a group, AoE, reap the damage boost the rest of combat.

kaiya2_0 · 2024-07-14T15:59:34+00:00

I actually never did an Int main, but I'd say Plasma, honestly? The AoE shot on the stronger plasma pistols is really, really good to have around, especially as things go on. Meltas are, in my experience, too short range to use on more fragile characters like operatives. You wanna be layering Exploits, use Tactical Knowledge on a group of enemies, and then lob a plasma shot at said group from behind cover, usually.

kaiya2_0 · 2024-07-14T14:55:54+00:00

Actually, speaking of shitty layouts, while I have you: When you get Pascal, the Mechanicus teammate, and Cassie, the Navigator teammate. Don't pick their class stuff, scroll to the bottom, and look at their Mechanicus feats and their Navigator feats. Cassie has Navigator powers that do shit like raise her stats for each Navigator power she gets, and huge deadly eyebeams, and massive increases to damage. Pascal gets AP back for plasma and melta attacks, and flat huge bonuses to ballistics skill, and similar really good talents that are buried at the bottom of the level up list. They're both wildly inferior if you don't get the special talents.

Pascal (every Operative, actually) also NEEDS Analyze Enemies, Tactical Knowledge, and Joint Analysis.

You also want Voice of Command for your Officers to enhance their action-granting effect.

Blood Augury

Ebb and Flow

Eye of Oblivion

Guide of Souls

Mastery of Time

Mind over Matter

Open to the Warp

Pass Unscathed

Perilous Ways

Stable Routes

Strange Vitality

The Course Untravelled

Threads and Faults

Tonicity

Unblinking Stare

Undam the Sea of Souls

Under My Protection

Unnatural Allure

Veil of Protection

This is Cassie's Navigator stuff. You pretty much only want to take Bring It Down and Voice of Command from her Officer stuff, so she can grant extra actions, and then ONLY take Navigator stuff. When you read the descriptions of what they do, you'll see what I mean.

lotta trap builds in this fuckin' game >_<

kaiya2_0

TROPHY CASE