Articles & Devlog

What follows is 100 pocket filler items for Bug & Claw. Pocket filler refers to small items or trinkets that characters can acquire and carry in their pockets, backpacks, or other storage areas. These items serve several purposes within the game, like world immersion, role-playing opportunities, fla...

Just hearing about Bug & Claw? Start here. You reach down and pull the crystal from the raider’s head. It will bring a decent bounty. Gazing out into the forest, you see eyes shining back at you. In one direction, the lack of a protective crystal tower means contending with mutant wildlife and...

Problem/s: XP in many TTRPGs gears the players toward certain types of actions. Eg: XP for killing drives you to kill more instead of exploring other options Eg: XP for gold recovered back to town in OSR games encourages reward-seeking behaviour The way some systems, like many OSR games...

I've been having fun with Rory's Story Cubes as a means of helping prompt or generate small bits of narrative. What follows is an example, originally posted to Twitter but edited for quality here, of a short story using this method. Phil and Fred are two of the main characters of Bug & Claw's worl...

In the last post, you may have noticed two curious blocks on the character sheet capturing "grit" and "flesh" and wondered what those are for. Let's talk about that. The problem with HP There's long been a problem many of us have had with HP in games. Your character is often supposed to be thi...

The first iterations for player character sheets started almost a year ago. Any time I was thinking about a problem players might encounter I thought about how they might resolve it. I asked myself a lot of questions during this process: What kind of interesting choices should they be able to ma...

In Bug & Claw, there are various organizations characters can join or encounter. One that's more common is the Breach. Get to know the Breach with a bit of the lore behind them in this devlog. The Breach Guild Goal The Breach is one of the oldest guilds, its members devoting themselves to pr...

Did you know arthropods shed their exoskeletons as they grow? It's a process called ecdysis, but most of us just call it moulting. What I find super cool about this process, though, is the chance for regeneration. With the world of Bug & Claw keeping up with OSR tenants and being a dangerous place...

Exciting announcement! 🎉 I'm launching Monkeyslunch (aka Monkey's Lunch, aka ML), my little escapism (games, fiction) company, which Bug & Claw is now a part of! What does this mean? Clearer content. No mixing of Bug & Claw items with other game items. A dedicated site just for Bug & C...

Finally, the exciting (and ominous?) conclusion to the Doll's Eye, short fiction from the Bug & Claw universe. The Doll's Eye is a mace-like weapon with a child's voice and a thirst for blood. Last we left off, small child had just discovered it in the muck of Stagbay. Read The Doll's Eye - Part ...

Patient Watch Guild town Medium danger Description Patient Watch is what’s known as a Breach Watch, a settlement devoted to breach craft, almost all of the population being members of the Breach. Patient Watch is built near the remnants of the old lighthouse at Stagbay. For years the populac...

Read part 1 of the Doll's Eye here. Long, silk roads that seem to go on forever, intertwining, and undulating. They're all at once brilliant white, colourful, and full of life. Each seems unique, on its own journey, with its own story to tell. We follow them for what feels like ages. Our atten...