Contents
Introduction
Wild Talents: Superhero Roleplaying in a World
Gone Mad is a fast, thrilling and flexible
superhero game based on the "One-Roll Engine"
game system originally developed for GODLIKE.
Action scenes in Wild Talents are quick
and exciting, with palpable stakes. Characters
put themselves at risk when they throw down with
superhumans, and not just the risk of getting
knocked out for a few minutes when the skyscraper-lifting
villain lands a lucky shot. The game is fully
customizable to any tone of play, but it's arguably
most fun when even a run-of-the-mill streetfight
with the bad guys makes all the players just a
little nervous.
Character generation in Wild Talents is
likewise fast and flexible. You have a handful
of stats to start with, an archetype system to
define the nature of your character's superhuman
abilities, and an intuitive power creation system
to let you create literally any superpower you
want—quickly—and start playing.
Stats, Skills and Superpowers
Characters in Wild Talents are defined
by three essential components: Stats (short for
statistics), Skills, and Superpowers (powers for
short). All three are measured in dice; the more
dice, the better.
Stats are the basic qualities common to all
(or nearly all) characters—how strong
they are, how quick they are, how smart they
are, and so on. The stats are Body (physical
strength and stamina), Coordination (manual
dexterity and agility), Sense (perceptiveness), Mind
(intelligence and ability to think quickly), Charm
(personal presence and ability to influence others),
and Command (level-headedness, leadership,
and ability to keep your wits about you). Stats
range from 1 (lousy) to 5 (human perfection),
with an average of 2.
Skills are specific learned applications of
stats. Brawling is the skill for hand-to-hand
fighting, so it's based on Body. Computer Use
is the skill for, well, using computers; it's
based on Mind. The skills Perception and Empathy
are based on Sense.
There are a few skills common to most characters,
but there's no limit to them; if you don't see
a pre-written skill that fits your character,
make it up. Skills range from 1 (basic training)
to 5 (the limits of human understanding), with
2 being average for an experienced or highly trained
character.
Powers are the impossible abilities that put
the "super" in "superhuman".
Some powers are extensions of natural abilities—you
might be impossibly strong, for instance, or really,
REALLY good at golf—and those are based
on your stats and skills. If you're impossibly
strong, take "hyperstat" dice in Body.
If your golf games leaves Tiger Woods shaking
his head in shame, take "hyperskill"
dice in Golf. Powers, including hyperstats and
hyperskills, range from 1 to 10. (Interestingly,
there are a couple of special options with powers—you
can get dice that are better than the dice that
represent ordinary human abilities. We'll get
to those in a minute.)
Dice and Dice Pools
When you want to do something hard, you generally
use a skill. Since every skill is based on a
stat, you add your stat and skill dice together
and roll that many dice as a "dice pool".
(Wild Talents uses ten-sided dice.) If
your Coordination is 2 and your Pistol skill
is 1, you roll 3 dice when you want to shoot
somebody.
Note that you usually don't roll at all unless
the outcome is seriously in doubt; if you're doing
something that you really ought to be able to
do without any trouble, don't bother to roll.
Superpowers that aren't hyperstats or hyperskills
work a little differently. If you have a "Turn
Ice to Frogs" power, it's not based on any
human ability, so you don't add a stat to it.
Just roll your power dice as a pool.
When you roll your dice pool, look for matching
numbers. They are called "sets". If
you get a set, the action succeeds. If you get
no matches, you fail at whatever you were trying
to do. If you get more than one, choose which
one to use.
If you get a "set," look at two things.
First, how high are the matching numbers? That's
how good your action was—it's called the
roll's "Height". A high (or "tall")
roll is good.
Next, how many matching dice were in your set?
That's how fast your action was; that's the roll's
"Width". A wide roll is also good, but
for different reasons. A wide roll goes first,
but a high roll is more effective. A roll that's
wide AND high is both fast and good.
Sets are written in shorthand for "Width
by Height". If you see "2x9," it
means a set with Width 2 and Height 9, or two
nines. Two by nine. Three sixes is "3x6".
And so on.
One thing to remember: You NEVER roll more than
10 dice! Period. That's it. The dial does not
go to 11. Even if you have enough hyperdice for
a Body of 8 and a Brawling skill of 9, you don't
roll 17 dice to attack—you roll 10 and lose
the rest.
I know what you're thinking. "I'm Super-Body
Brawling Guy! Why do I lose dice? What a ripoff!"
Well, that's where those special "superpower"
dice come in.
Hard Dice and Wiggle
Dice
There are three kinds of dice that you can get
with superpowers.
Normal dice do exactly what they ordinarily do.
You roll them and look for what comes up. They're
abbreviated "d," as in "6d"
for "six normal dice".
Then there are hard dice. These represent
a power that you can use really efficiently but
without much conscious control. If you have hard
dice in Body, for instance, you can punch really
hard but you're not so good at punching soft;
watch out for those "excessive force"
laws. Hard dice ALWAYS roll 10. In fact, you don't
even need to roll them. Just set them at "10".
They're abbreviated "hd," as in "2hd"
for "two hard dice".
Finally there are wiggle dice. With wiggle
dice your power is really efficient AND you
have great control over it. You set wiggle dice
to whatever you want, AFTER you roll. So even
if you have only two dice in your pool, if one
is a wiggle die you always get a match, so you
always succeed. They're abbreviated "wd," as
in "6wd" for "six wiggle dice".
As you might have noticed, 6wd in a power is
way better, INSANELY better, than 6d. You go from
"I usually get a match, but who knows what
it will be" at 6d to "I get a set of
six matching dice whenever I want and however
high I want—you ought to buy tickets just
to watch me work" at 6wd.
When you're making a character, you buy skills,
stats, and powers with points. Hard dice are twice
as expensive as normal dice, and wiggle dice are
twice as expensive as hard dice.
So instead of taking Body 8 and Brawling 9 for
Super-Body Brawling Guy, take, say, Body of 6d+1hd
and Brawling of 1d+2wd. That gives you a Body+Brawling
pool of 6d+1hd+2wd with which to whale on people,
which means you can get a 3x10 whenever you want
it or a pair of dice at whatever value you want,
even if none of the 6d come up matching. You will
kick ass. And you don't lose any dice at all to
that pesky 10-die limit.
Ordinary Actions
Outside combat, usually you just need any matching
set at all, even a 2x1, to accomplish something
difficult. If something is REALLY difficult, however,
the Game Moderator (GM) may assign a Difficulty
rating that your roll has to beat. Your roll must
be equal to or higher than the Difficulty. If
the action is Difficulty 6 and you roll a 2x5,
or even a 10x5, you blow it. But a 2x6 succeeds,
even if it's slower than the unsuccessful-but-damn-that-was-quick
10x5.
Combat Actions
Combat is important. And not just because, let's
face it, the first thing you want to do when you
get superpowers is use them to break things. Combat
can kill your character. In combat, things get
a lot more detailed.
The Height of your attack roll determines where
you hit the target. No, it doesn't determine damage,
because hit location is more important. A hit
that might just break your leg if it goes low
will kill you if it goes high.
The Width of your roll determines two things:
Initiative and Damage. That is, if you have a
really wide roll, your attack will go first AND
it will do more damage than usual. Why have Width
do both? Because it can.
So let's say Brawling Guy wants to clean some
thug's clock. He gets 1hd (automatic 10) and sets
his 2wd to 10s for a 3x10: width 3, height 10.
Height is hit location, and location 10 is the
head, so he punches the thug in the head. Width
is initiative and damage, so he goes on initiative
3 (probably before the thug) and does 3 damage.
Punch damage for someone with Body 6d+1hd is "width
in Killing damage" (Killing damage is the
bad kind—knives, bullets, and superhumanly
strong fists do Killing, while ordinary humans'
fists do Shock, or surface damage only). The thug
takes 3 killing damage to the head. That's enough
to fracture his skull and send him flying. Ouch.
The beauty of this system is that your one attack
roll does everything. No need to roll a die to
see who goes first, then another to see if you
hit, then another to see how much damage you do,
then another to see where you hit, then another
to see if it knocked out the target or just shook
him up a little, and so on.
In Wild Talents, everybody in the fight
rolls once. They compare their rolls. The losers
mark down damage. Time for the next round.
Power Qualities, Extras,
and Flaws
We won't get too far into the nuts and bolts
of Wild Talents characters here, but it's
useful to know how the game approaches superpowers.
In Wild Talents, you're encouraged to
design your powers from scratch. Sure, the book
includes a big fat chapter of pre-written powers
for you to use if you want, but the heart of the
game is what we call the "Gourmet" approach
to powers. We give you the ingredients; you mix
them up, add flavor, and start playing.
Every power has three qualities: Attacks,
Defends, and Useful.
A power that attacks can hurt people or things.
A power that defends can keep you from getting
hurt. A power that is useful does something
else, some impossible thing that's not an attack
or defense. Powers can have any number of power
qualities.
Since characters are built on points, each power
has a point cost expressed in cost per dice.
The base cost is 2 points per die per power
quality. Hard dice cost twice normal, and wiggle
dice cost four times normal.
If you want to fly and also be able
to hurt people with your Flight (by
being able to slam into targets or whack them
as you fly past), it costs 4 per
die: 2 points for the Attacks quality (the hurting
people) and 2 more for the Useful quality (the
flight). Two
normal dice cost 8 points, but with only two
normal dice you'll hardly ever be able to use Flight for
anything difficult. Two hard dice cost 16 points,
and you'll always succeed perfectly but never
have much control—lots
of fast flights in straight lines for you. Two
wiggle dice cost 32 points, but you'll always
be able to use it with as much finesse as you
want.
You can enhance power qualities by increasing
their cost. Each point you add to the Attacks
quality adds +1 to the power's damage. Each point
you add to Defends makes it better at defending;
adding to Useful makes the power more flexible
and effective.
Extras and flaws are things that
enhance or restrict your power by improving (or
reducing) the qualities. The basic Flight power
allows you to fly; if you want to be able to make
everybody within 10 yards fly, too, that takes
an extra because it expands the base power effect
significantly. If you want to only be able to
fly when you're wearing your grandfather's medal
from the war, that's a flaw because it makes the
power less robust. Extras make your power more
expensive; flaws make powers cheaper.
Willpower
Finally, there's Willpower. Willpower is a measure
of your character's self-confidence, drive and
inner strength. In GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying
in a World on Fire, 1936-1946—the prequel
to Wild Talents, you might say—Talents'
superpowers are fueled by Willpower, and they
use Willpower to resist the effects of other Talents'
powers.
In Wild Talents, the "Will vs. Will"
contest is gone—but powers are still fueled
by the self-confidence and strength of the characters.
If you run out of Willpower, your powers break
down. Willpower is also used in other ways in Wild
Talents. At the GM's option, you can use
Willpower to keep your character from getting
clobbered by a particularly nasty attack, or
to recover a little more quickly from getting
hurt, or to boost your performance of an action;
characters who can change the world with their
thoughts tend to be harder to nail down that
the rest of us. (Wild Talents includes
options to change or remove the Willpower component
if you want to.)
Wild Talents is a toolkit for exciting,
fast, intriguing superhero games. What you do
with it is up to you.
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the Wild
Talents Essential Edition in
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