Roleplay / Weaverdice Tongju

The poison runs deep through the veins of Tongju. Over the last few years, the city's weathered crisis after crisis. From shelling out millions in order to attract corporate hero teams to the contemplation of putting the city under martial law, nothing has slowed the boom in the city's crime rate that's been ongoing since the 90s. It seems like every day there's some new corruption, a reporter killed, a candidate in the pocket of the jopok, a public project quietly abandoned because the funds vanished somewhere or other. Across the river, the richer parts of the city get richer and richer while everywhere else gets poorer. Less than a dying town, it's a town on life support, a city that's been kept alive for far longer than it should have as each and everyone one of its organs fails.

But instead of becoming one of the carrion feeders, after a few solo costumed (mis)adventures, three vigilantes have been noticed and given an opportunity. The capes Chosinseong (Supernova), Daiamondieu, and Geobukseon (Turtle ship), invited to an abandoned ferry by an anonymous benefactor, are soon going to be thrust in the midst of a power struggle that even Tongju hasn't seen yet, but may yet leave their own mark on this poison city.

Weaverdice Tongju is a tabletop roleplaying group based on the Worm, or Parahumans, universe, by John McCrae, a.k.a. Wildbow. It officially began in November 2018 and ended in January 2021.

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This TTRPG includes the tropes:

• Abusive Parents: As part of the Wormverse, a high amount of capes have to deal with this; Waidan and Seung-Woo Seo are plot-important examples though by no means the end of just DOWNFALL's problems.
• Adaptive Ability: In a general sense, all capes have powers that respond in some way to their trigger event. Brutes result from physical damage, thinkers from mental strain, strangers from unwanted attention, and so on. Of course, the power usually 'solves the problem' at hand in a roundabout way at best, or the trigger would have solved the problem but now it's too late. Also describes some Trump and Changer powers.
• All Up to You: Due to all variety of terrible circumstances, from personal relationships in the team to just being disbelieved by other gangs, DOWNFALL tends to take point on Tongju's escalating problems that should effect everyone. However, starting from the fight on the ferry, DOWNFALL ends up working with all of Tongju's villains and heroes to defeat threats of a much greater scale.
• Always a Bigger Fish: From small-time drug dealers to the SYKD, to the local branch of the Fangshi, to the Maenglyeolhan, to the massive invading force of the CUI, to the one who orchestrated it all...
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Dogsuli (eagle), Pungsan (hunting dog), Dragonfire, and Daltokki (moon rabbit) are all examples. The Sambaempa also has several reptilian capes, notably Kobeula Wanja (cobra prince), a changer who turns into a massive snake.
• Anti-Hero: All of DOWNFALL.
• Anyone Can Die: As a TTRPG, even the players are capable of dying at any point, let alone important NPCs (like former chessmaster Jiral). Many named characters end up dying in the final fight against Devourer, but no players, thankfully.
• Asshole Victim: Most of them, since DOWNFALL's modus operandi is killing killers. Nan Jun-ho definitely applies.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: The Thinker subclass, including Jiral, Janggi, and Samjogo.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: The reason for DOWNFALL to exist; villains were considered better-equipped to straightforwardly fight corruption and get rid of the real monsters than the PJS.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: At the Devourer fight, Senoeja mind-controls Kobeula Wangja into killing him just before Devourer can do it, just to prevent Devourer from stealing his power.
• Beware the Superman: Despite a cast full of capes, single people can still provide outsized threats, such as individual members of the Maenglyeolhan or Devourer.
• Big Blackout: Happens during the Maenglyeolhan arc, and provides the backdrop for several triggers, notably Amugeosdo's.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Chain of Harm overwhelmingly describes Daia's family, which features six different capes (his parents, three siblings, and Daia himself).
• Bilingual Bonus: As the game is set in Korea, the vast majority of the cape names are in Korean. Gratuitous English is in play for the minority of capes with English names, like Ultraviolent and the majority of Paladin Nova.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Even the people trying to be as good as they can still execute their goals in terrible ways, and the heroes tend to be ineffective if not outright malicious. Also Morality Kitchen Sink, as there are good, evil, and mixed people on either side of the cape divide.
• Black-Tie Infiltration: The Bright Future announcement, with some DOWNFALL members dressing up as caterers.
• Blessed with Suck: Most capes had to deal with terrible life circumstances to gain their powers.
• Broken Faceplate: Invoked by Jogabi and Second Thought when faking Daia's death.
• Body Horror: Gyosalja, Cordyceps, Baesim, Jogabi, Dongmaek... and that's just those whose powers are inherently body-horrory, not any horrific deaths.
• Caper Crew: House of Cards.
• Cardboard Prison: Gungsul of the SYKD is broken out of a prison truck while being transported because the heroes wanted to focus on higher-profile targets.
• Cassandra Truth: It takes a surprising amount of work to convince anyone that potentially-S-class-threat Devourer is still alive.
• Character-Magnetic Team: Invoked on purpose by the players, who at one point absorb the Gwisin-pa, the House of Cards, and several former enemies. (Overkill's recruitment especially is referred to as 'adopting' her.)
• Chekhov's Gun: Nan Jun-ho is revealed to have orchestrated the Maenglyeolhan coming to town mainly to hijack Drone's technology, which enables her to take control of Devourer, an exponentially powerful threat.
• Chekhov's News: News stories about the Mirae Group or an upcoming Very Simple Secrets concert which heralds the arrival of the Japanese warlord Suisei. Nan Jun-ho's evolving policy changes in response to Tongju's disasters also foreshadows her Big Bad status.
• Child Soldiers: On all sides of the conflict, with at the very least Downfall, the Fangshi Clique, the SYKD, and the GSB youth service sending minors to lethal battles. The KWJ is mainly minors, though at the very least their younger teens are kept out of the line of fire. By the time of the Devourer fight, all hands are on deck and even more teens die.
• Clark Kenting: Almost everyone has a secret identity to deal with, with the exception of outwardly monstrous capes like Bulldozer and some rare outliers. Some capes like Jogabi create a 'Clark Kent' persona on purpose (despite being a shapeshifter and assumed dead).
• Cop/Criminal Family: Daia's family, the Sims. Gets much more complicated when his sister, an independent hero, accidentally discovers his secret identity.
• Continuity Nod: Former Weaverdice game Mizumiya takes place in the same universe, in 2008 Japan rather than 2010 Korea. Several characters reappear in Tongju, from shout-outs like Promise, who never appeared in person in Mizumiya, to main characters like Zeroday and Suisei.
• Crapsack World: Didn't you read the first paragraph? And Tongju isn't even the worst place in the world by a long shot.
• Create Your Own Villain: Often, but perhaps most notable in the case of Baesim, who triggered in one of Baegilmong's riots and killed him with his new powers not long after.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: It'd be harder to list who doesn't apply, honestly.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Surprisingly, at the end of it all, the fight against the Yuhaehanpa on the ferry, who only got the casualties they did because of a cheap preemptive strike. If one gang (two, at best) attempts to kill every other supervillain in town, it won't go well, who knew? (Makes sense, because the Fangshi didn't care about the Yuhaehanpa and mainly started the fight to provide cover for kidnapping Munsin.)
• Dark Is Not Evil: The villains can be pretty upstanding people, aesthetics aside. By the end, many of Downfall's old crew and allies become heroes. Goes along with Light Is Not Good.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Like Worm before it, deconstructs a lot of superhero-based tropes.
• Differently Powered Individual: Known as 'capes' (for those who go out in costume) or 'parahumans' (for all people with powers) in-universe.
• The Dreaded: Pretty much everyone DOWNFALL has gone up against so far, culminating in a pseudo-Endbringer fight in the multi-powered Devourer.
• Dwindling Party: After Chosin left the team to return the de-Droned capes to their homes, and Geobu was sent to rehab after killing an unpowered gang member on accident, Daia is the only original DOWNFALL member left. (The overall membership has grown exponentially, though.)
  • By the end of the game, due to Jogabi's plot to murder Taewo, Downfall has collapsed back to nearly its original membership, with Amugeosdo leading the splinter group House of Cards, Nun-esgasi joining the heroes, and Daia faking his own death.
• Dysfunction Junction: Pretty much every cape is a traumatized mess, but DOWNFALL also has some interpersonal kinks to work out, most notably coming to a head when the Nune-Amugeosdo multitrigger enters the picture and memories are on the line.
• Elemental Motifs: In this game, arcs are themed after poison, which ties into the main plot-inciting NPC Neidan, the philosophy of Nan Jun-ho, and the deteriorating city itself. This echoes Worm (bug-themed arc titles) and Ward (light and darkness), as well as previous Weaverdice game Mizumiya (fire).
• Enemy Mine: When it becomes apparent the Fangshi and the Yuhaehanpa have completely crossed the line, and the CUI invades the city, Tongju's villains (and even all three hero teams in the end) come together to deal with the threat.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even gangs who were staying out of the Fangshi-DOWNFALL conflict before think that bringing in the Maenglyeolhan was a bridge too far, and it only gets worse from there.
• Final Speech: The players even have a spreadsheet tracking the last words of named characters, thanks to all the homicide. While many never spoke at all, there are a fair few fun examples, from Jiral's "Feint" (noted on his death bingo as "my last words are calling bullshit") to Yudok Han's hilarious "Oh, you motherfucker."
• From Bad to Worse: DOWNFALL go from taking out a gang of killers to taking on an entire army invasion, and finally a single cape that requires all their manpower to fight directly.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Shockingly common, considering most people need to be traumatized into powers.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The whole Tinker subclass, including Chosin (power armor), Zeroday (surveillance and sabotage), Lithobrake (airdrops, hilariously), and Waidan (elixirs that can give normal people powers).
• Gaining the Will to Kill: A few characters go through this, while a few go in guns blazing.
• Genius Loci: During the Maenglyeolhan arc, the entire area of Haeanga became this under the influence of Cordyceps' power. If not nipped in the bud early, it could have grown exponentially larger.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Downfall assembles an army of heroes, villains, and out-of-towners for the Devourer fight, which includes almost every cape NPC that is still alive at this point.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Every group or gang that thinks it'll be easy to recapture Neidan ends up regretting it.
• Gone Horribly Right: Nan Jun-ho's assembled team of killers (meant to destroy the "rot and poison" of Tongju) realizes her plan and turns on her.
• Good Is Not Nice: Could apply to both DOWNFALL, who take out killers and protect their own but also perform tons of other crimes, or the city's heroes, who tend to be ineffective egotists, namely Yuseongu. (At the end of the story this seems to balance out more, with many Downfall mainstays becoming heroes and Yuseongu joining the Sambaempa.)
• Greater-Scope Villain: The entire Mirae Group, the Fangshi as a facet of the CUI, or maybe even their mysterious benefactor? (It turns out to be the last one, PJS Director Nan Jun-ho who orchestrated all the other disasters.)
• Healing Factor: Several capes have a version of this, like the Amu and Nune cluster trigger, or Dongmaek (though it doesn't save him from Chosin's plasma blade crits).
• Heel–Face Turn: The young Fangshi capes that defect and join Xinya's crew, or Overkill, formerly a member of the SYKD, who joins DOWNFALL.
• Hell Is That Noise: Shriek's shriek, which actually kills Daia by exploding his bones—he's only saved by Jisei's power.
• Helping Would Be Killstealing: The Maenglyeolhan's original modus operandi, which involves each of the three taking individual areas of the city as their own personal playground. Averted when Drone actually attempts to send reinforcements when Cordyceps is about to be killed, but is sabotaged by Chosin's group.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The escalating violence in Tongju asks for escalating violence from the players in return. May also apply to Nan Jun-ho, who in a twisted way was trying to prevent Tongju from being like the condemned city she barely escaped.
• Honor Before Reason: When DOWNFALL throws their hat in the ring for Neidan rather than giving her back to Waidan, inspiring most of the events in the story.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Mainly Nun-esgasi, who is able to copy powers with his flowers, usually with a learning curve.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: Chosin, and later Dragonfire, a self-modification tinker/breaker.
• Interface Screw: During the Paima Feima fight, the text becomes scrambled and players have to roll without knowing why.
• In the Blood: A prominent theme running through Tongju, with many characters afraid that they'll turn out like their terrible parents. Especially notable with Neidan's family and Daia's, where the parents' powers are remixed in their children. However, it's a hopeful example, with Waidan dead and both Daia and Second Thought resolving to break away from them and focus on their own wants.
• I Work Alone: Very rarely, some powerful capes who can hold territory by themselves, like Jigol. Later this also includes Mireuk and Siegebreaker. Devourer is also powerful enough, with his huge array of stolen powers, to qualify (except for the part where he's being secretly puppetted by Nan Jun-ho).
• Kill on Sight: The Maenglyeolhan and Devourer, though this is easier said than done.
• Kinda Busy Here: Happened repeatedly in the Maenglyeolhan arc, when phone calls interrupted hero ambushes, car chases, and several people being assimilated by mushrooms.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Daia and LCD after an encounter with Paima Feima's power; Daia loses the ability to recognize people except through his power, and LCD loses her ability to speak Korean.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Ultraviolent could be described as this; her power doesn't actually make her more deadly, but it makes everyone around her think she is. Omen is described as a 'chain reaction thinker' who is able to do things like collapse buildings with only an initial coin flip. Also includes Daia's instrumental role in killing Cordyceps by severing his connections from his minions, which would otherwise let him regenerate.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Becomes more common as problems get worse and the gang gets bigger, most notable from the Maenglyeolhan arc onward. Usually results in Two Lines, No Waiting as it's rare for all four players to be doing their own thing.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Sure, people that can hit you really hard are scary, but the real things to fear in Tongju are the thinkers, masters, tinkers and trumps that make problems exponentially worse (such as Drone's massive group of mind-controlled capes, Waidan's ability to mass-produce short-lived cape henchmen, or Devourer's potentially exponential and infinite capturing of new powers).
• Magic Cauldron: The alchemy-themed Waidan, who creates serums that temporarily give non-capes powers. As this is nominally technology-based, the 'magic cauldron' takes the form of massive mixing vats.
• Meaningful Name: Everybody, to some degree, as cape names almost always describe their power. Invoked in Neidan's case to draw a connection between her and Waidan.
• Mood Whiplash: Often; there's going to be some silliness in a tabletop even when the city is under attack.
• Mook Horror Show: During the strike on Fangshi forces intimidating Xinya, Geobu does a huge amount of damage to the unpowered gang members (killing one) and Baesim leaves the only adult cape a sobbing wreck. A lot of negative rep was tagged as "told the Fangshi to leave Xinya alone...aggressively."
• Mugged for Disguise: At one point the team intervenes in a Fangshi delivery to steal their truck (and, in Jogabi's case, their appearance) to get into a restricted area.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The gang tries to enlist Munsin's help in the fight on the ferry, which leads to her getting kidnapped and kickstarting the CUI invasion.
• No Body Left Behind: Nan Jun-ho is killed by sending her through one of Munsin's doors into an empty white landscape. What the fuck is it? Who knows.
• Not So Invincible After All: Chosin manages to turn the regenerating flesh tinker Dongmaek into ash, while a combination of powers takes out Cordyceps, who could theoretically regenerate infinitely from his mushroomed minions. Devourer was hiding behind several forcefields and brute powers, but finally falls to Overkill's matter-annihilator gun.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: The CUI invasion arc, which finally brings together nearly every faction in the city for a common goal.
• One-Steve Limit: Very averted; it's Korea, so there are several unrelated Kims, Lees, and Parks.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Generally only in the case of Brutes; gunshots and the like can be fatal to pretty much anyone, as Strychnine can attest.
• Only Flesh Is Safe: The Manton limit, which tends to mean that powers that work on inanimate objects don't work on people, and vice-versa. Sometimes capes don't have Manton limits, like Shriek, in which case the flesh is very not safe.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Lots of horrific murderers are horrifically murdered. Nan Jun-ho, the orchestrator of it all, gets a taste of her own philosophy at the end as well.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Known in-universe as Class-S threats. In the worst possible future, Devourer could be one.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Surprisingly, the Posthumous Character Baemui Wang, the original leader of the Sambaempa, whose murder led to a tremendous shake-up in Tongju's gang scene.
• Police Are Useless: The unpowered police forces of Tongju are either corrupt, ineffective, or suspiciously absent. This extends to the government hero team as well. This is part of Director Nan's plan, to cause enough unavoidable havoc to garner support for a government hero system similar to the CUI's.
• Post-Victory Collapse: At pretty much every victory thus far, the characters are pretty maimed and have to spend a while recovering. Broken limbs, collapsed lungs, bullet wounds, and neurological backlash from Daia's power are common occurrences here. The player characters aren't actually hurt in the aftermath of the Devourer fight (everything he hits, he erases), but the psychological toll feels like this anyway.
• Power Born of Madness: Or psychological trauma, anyway! In addition, capes who triggered early tend to be more powerful but also a little off, like powerful precog Daltokki.
• Power Misidentification: Comes up with Daia, whose power is hard to pinpoint even when he uses it, and Ultraviolent, who messes with people's perceptions/emotions but isn't actually more dangerous than a normal person. Many thinkers use ambiguity to their advantage.
• Power Trio: The initial DOWNFALL team, and the Manglyeolhan.
• Preserve Your Gays: There are so many gay characters it is basically impossible to bury them all. In the end, all player characters and their significant others survive, as well as several fan-favorite NPC couples.
• Puberty Superpower: Most capes trigger as teens or younger.
• Pyrrhic Victory: DOWNFALL wins the fight on the ferry against the Yuhaehanpa, but at the cost of losing Munsin and kickstarting a CUI invasion, as well as Jiral's death. Later, they recover Munsin, distract Devourer, and kill Waidan in a targeted group effort by every gang in the city, but they lose a team member for the first time, Baesim. The Devourer fight also means massive casualties, including poor LCD.
• Put on a Bus: Chosin and Geobu, which resulted in new characters Amugeosdo and Nun-esgasi and their cluster. Unexpectedly, Chosin returns for the Devourer fight in her finally complete mech suit!
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: DOWNFALL, naturally.
• Relationship Upgrade: Min-joo/Chosin, Jogabi/Neidan, Daiamondieu/Samjogo, Nune/Taewo, Amu/Siegebreaker, Jeul/Overkill, Jinx/Munsin, Babo/Moonshine. Hot damn.
• Required Secondary Powers: A common feature in the Wormverse. Pyrokinetics are nearly always some degree of fireproof themselves, etc.
• The Reveal: Their mysterious benefactor is actually two: Jiral, an NPC met very early on, and the PJS Director, who is also a parahuman formerly known as Janggi. The second reveal is that Director Nan orchestrated all of the main disasters of the campaign for her own ends.
• Revenge Before Reason
• Roof Hopping: Some of the team escapes this way from the Bright Future announcement, by stealing Byeolbit's power.
• Scry vs. Scry: Invoked when crashing the Bright Future announcement; Daltokki's precog powers can't be completely trusted, both because of Byeolbit's interference and the presence of another precog on the hero's team. Devourer takes advantage of this when he eats Byeolbit, becoming a blind spot to Daltokki's power.
• Serial Escalation: See From Bad to Worse.
• Shoot the Mage First: Thinkers and masters tend to be the highest-priority targets in a confrontation.
• The Sleepless: Known as 'noctis' capes, some people just stop sleeping after their trigger event, including Daltokki and Samjogo.
• Spy Speak: Used with Trust Passwords during the Maenglyeolhan arc, to help subsets of DOWNFALL identify whether allies had fallen victim to Master powers. Digital roots based on the current time were used, among other things.
• Start of Darkness: The Weaverdice character creation system starts with a character's trigger event, and powers and everything else about them evolves from there. The Maenglyeolhan arc and all the disasters it caused was the start of darkness for many new capes, including new additions to the team Amu and Nune.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Averted and only true in a vast minority of cases, though some people actually can pull off the cape. Costumes might be power armor, mystical robes, combat gear, a total lack thereof, or something else.
• Superpowerful Genetics: People from cape families are more likely to trigger themselves, as in the case of Neidan, Bianhua, and Daia.
• Supervillain Lair: DOWNFALL has two; their bar in the day-to-day, and a more secure furnished bunker built in a subway station that was supposed to be demolished.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: No one gets much in the way of quips or last words at the Devourer fight; there's just not enough time to react.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Pretty common in Tongju because it's a TTRPG and it's important that fights and other encounters are actually interesting to play. Daia's strings evolve over the course of the story into a trump power and he gains a precog aspect, for instance, while other player characters Amu and Nune have about four discrete powers to work with each, as part of a multitrigger.
• There Are No Therapists: Cape therapists exist in the Wormverse (the concept makes up a huge chunk of Ward), but not for mass-murdering Tongju villains. (Daia seemingly remarks on how much they all need therapy once a session.) They have better luck with cape substance abuse resources.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Despite being absorbed into DOWNFALL, the Gwisin-pa and House of Cards are both considerably more squeamish about this, with Jinx being especially jumpy when Geobu kills an unpowered gang member.
• Together in Death: By the end of the story, LCD and Jiral.
• Trauma Conga Line: Almost all capes start out with a massively traumatic event, and it only gets worse from there.
• Truce Zone: The ferry where the city's villains would gather to hold their meetings. Until the Fangshi and the Yuhaehanpa break that truce, the latter getting completely annihilated for it. Jogabi also plans to break a truce to kill Taewo, and even though it doesn't come to pass, the gang falls apart for it.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Massive disasters lead to ongoing messes, having a bunch of traumatized superpowered people running around doesn't make for a stable world, being shot sucks whether you have powers or not, and having a normally disproportionate amount of LGBT characters makes sense when powers are based on trauma.
• Villain Protagonist: DOWNFALL as a whole.
• Villain with Good Publicity: DOWNFALL takes down a lot of evil people and garners a surprisingly positive reputation over the course of the game.
• Villains Out Shopping: A lot of threads outside of the regular weekly sessions amount to this.
• War Arc: When the CUI invades Tongju.
• We Have Reserves: Waidan's elixirs turn several gangsters into suicide bombers.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Averted. Capes, including the players, commonly get shot in-universe, but there's a Wormverse justification for why caps overwhelmingly use their powers to the exclusion of other weapons. Mainly if you're willing to go no-holds-barred on your enemies, everyone else will go no-holds-barred on you. Capes like Cordyceps and Devourer also have brute powers that mean they have to be killed in specific ways.
• World of Action Girls: Like Worm before it, girls actually comprise a higher percentage of capes in-universe and they obviously kick lots of ass.
• Wretched Hive: Tongju from the beginning, but especially from the Maenglyeolhan attack onward.