In the ruins outside Storm, Stella sought the item Don Warren sent her to find in exchange for Del’s life. Again, she had put Del in danger. It started to rain, true to the location’s namesake. As the ground moistened, so did the dung of whatever small animals lived here, making the whole place reak […]
Stella blended through the market, seeking something valuable to sate Don Warren. The memory of the Don’s knife to Del’s throat still burned vividly in her mind– she had barely a few hours left to pay for his life. Maybe this would finally be the lesson Stella needed to stop gambling for information with the […]
Most of these are one to two syllables, although there are a couple of homages here as well. I was inspired by arthropod terms, plants and herbs, the sounds I think bugs make, and my strange brand of OCD/echolalia (diagnosed), which gets random sounds and words stuck in my head. Of course, you can name […]
I've been blending my day job with game design, finding success. Recently, I applied service and systems design techniques to understand Bug & Claw's systems better. It's an adaptable and effective approach I recommend. System maps Who is this for? Why is this helpful? This type of technique helps quickly, visually understand how different systems […]
If you read the little introduction to Bug & Claw that I re-wrote a while back you may have noticed something hidden away in there– I grazed over some of the communication concepts. What I don't like about language options in some games is how similar they all are in application. There is more, I think, that […]
The following poems are potential lore-builders and prompts for Bug & Claw. A dance at dusk In the shadows where creatures crawl,Silent whispers of the Iron Claw.A dance at dusk, a moonlit brawl,Mysteries unfold, unheard and raw. Unheard and raw, mysteries unfold,A moonlit brawl, a dance at dusk.The Iron Claw, in shadows bold,Whispers silent, broken […]
As I continue to nail down the gameplay loop of Bug & Claw, I've been exploring point crawls (pun intended). Goals: Influences so far: What I'm exploring: What I'm not interested in including/exploring: What do you love or hate about that various phases of TTRPGs? Point crawls? The time in between dungeons? Reach out on social media, […]
I've been using the free time I have to work on writing, mechanics, layout of things like character sheets. While I know I will eventually make art for Bug & Claw, I needed help to envision some of the world. I'm happy to announce that I hired Hodag to help do some of the art for Bug […]
After the iterations from the last post about enemy statblocks it helped catalyze even more updates to the character sheets. I was debating leaving some of the defences and injuries a bit more vague, but I realized the "crunchiness" of attaching numbers would aid the usability. Balancing crunch and usability is one of the big […]
Over the last little while I've been diving into what encounters will be like in Bug & Claw. Naturally, a part of that is taking a look at the opposition. Enemies, whether other Bug-kin, animals, or other things. There are particular things that I like about the D20 system encounters, as well as OSR and OSE encounters, […]
