Does anyone here remember/know what happened to BugWorld...

There's also archived threads

Shit you're right

Was it purely insectoid, or how did mollusks or (god forbid) arachnids fit in?

Also how was it decided which races got the four arms/two legs v two arms/four legs bonus? Or was it an optional thing, like DPS vs agility?

Look again- that's a moth cleric.

Honestly it never got into stats and what-not and focused mainly on world-building, which may have been a factor that killed it.

Arachnids and mollusks were in it, in the forms of spiders, scorpions, crabs, lobsters, and shrimp.

LETS DO THIS!

BUG REBIRTH FROM THE COCOON HATCHING EX INFINITY VER.

So all arthropods were sapient? Interesting.

WE NEED MORE ART. FIND PR. OR MAKE SOME ON YOUR OWN

Almost all. There was some creative liberty taken, with some creatures, such as aphids, worms, and ticks, being domesticated.

docs.google.com/document/d/1pAduIU7TDaKHvvaUfzRbgYj44TX_hApLeNeVu2d5bbM/edit#heading=h.1khtyf1faqa8

Here's the googledoc of BugWorld stuff in case anyone cares to look. Maybe we can bring it back from the dead.

As far as rules go, I think keeping it as simple as possible is best. What type of system? d20? d100? 3d6? Cards?

There was a playtest that was done on a system brewed up by a handful of the namefags that was dicepool based. I'll try to see if I can't find anything on it.

Holy shit, that's all awesome
GURPS would be pretty easy to run with this

That's actually where an initial split came in the threads. Some people wanted a system neutral setting, while others wanted to make a system to go along with the setting. The threads died out before a system could really be fleshed out.

There's no reason a setting has to be tied to one system. As for a game, taking an existing system and tweaking it is a HELL of a lot easier than building one from the ground up.

Exactly. Part of why I think GURPS would be great for this is because it's a system specifically built with the intention of being tweaked to fit the setting.

Eh. At that point someone just needs to be the hero this board needs and do it, without the threads. Coming up with ideas for a setting is easy. Actually turning that into something playable is actually quite difficult.

The setting would need to be finished first, as there are quite a few holes and underdeveloped parts.

I personally felt it would be more of Veeky Forums's own thing if a system was made to go with the setting, but I understand where you're coming from. Someone did convert it to 5E, which can be found somewhere near the end of the googledoc.

I TOO HAVE GOOGLE DOCS.

IT WAS A PROJECT NEAR AND DEAR TO MY HEART AND IT SHALL RISE AGAIN

Bug World Lore Dump: docs.google.com/document/d/1pAduIU7TDaKHvvaUfzRbgYj44TX_hApLeNeVu2d5bbM/edit#heading=h.1khtyf1faqa8

DnD 5e bug stats:
docs.google.com/document/d/1ifPJEhGw1EE3-2RPhxC-fct5sxrBrePJERB2VcwvyRw/edit

trilobite?

Locust

It may seem sacrilegious but do you think some kind of platform with more permanence might benefit projects like this

Like getting a 1d4chan page up or something

Ah ok. Trilo was the first one to pop into my head. I was Map. I no longer have the maps.

Alright. Bug World project revival checklist.

> Track down original devs
> consolidate all the information relevant to it in one place
> establish how much is done and what needs doing
>???
> Profit

We really should make a 1d4chan page or something.

I know for a fact that some of the races were severely underdeveloped, if only because they seemed to overlap with other races.

Ok namefag time

In my mind, we can get a fresh look at the whole project now that we've been away from it so long.

In my opinion, the things that really really stuck on to me were the really alien and bizarre, near-mythic levels of mysticism and by having cultures that weren't directly analaguous to human ideas of culture, and all of this mysticism and surrealness are juxtaposed against the fact they're bugs. Like, they're tiny little fuckin bugs. An entire setting could be encapsulated in an acre with some trees, a field and a pond.

In my opinion, we'd be doing ourselves a major disservice by lining out exactly who and what is where, and would be better served by establishing tropes and "building blocks" for settings using regional cliches and ideas, and not directly dictating how they are in relation to one another.

For example, we wouldn't say "this is where the Bee Empire is." We'd instead say "this is what Bee Empires are like, here's an in depth example or two of a Bee Empire, and here's how they jive with other major factions and regions."

Okay, now that's a good idea. Giving DMs room to construct their own setting from fleshed out components is almost always the best plan

Cont.

Not to step on map user's shoes but I personally think that mapping the entire setting is too ambitious for its own good. I am definitely in favour of mapping out many sub settings though, if that makes sense.

The races I think should generally be broken down into the following overall categories, names need DIY obviously but these are the cliches we are working with:

Flappy Bugs: Moths and Butterflies. Both were decently developed and I think fill a similar niche, with butterflies being the more regal and thespian of the two and moths more down to earth. Definitely priestly, magey, or finesse fightery in the case of butterflies.

Buzzing Bugs: Bees and flies both fulfill a similar niche of being bulky, stout, and numerous to the point of expendability.

Beetles: classical "big guys." If we use a system or make a system with size mods, these guys are definitely in my opinion larger than the average character size and that's part of their whole design.

War Bugs: Mantis, locusts, and wasps. All are angry killing machines that fulfill the same general niche, with some bad apples / colonies spooling the reputation of all of them.

The question is if we want more playable bugs or want to focus on what we've got and see how it goes moving forward.

We should also immediately start work on the system IMO. Our best bet is probably poaching another system, but in my opinion is rather stay the hell away from D20.

Atomic Highway's V6 system could work well, and I've liked it ever since I first read it, or we could play it safe and do a d100 adaptation, using something like Dark Heresy as a starting point. Seht's UESRPG has done nothing but prove to me the versatility and adaptability of FF's dank heresy as a system.

I guess the big question is if we want to go pulpy or go gritty?

No offence taken to the stepping of shoes, I was originally just trying to contribute something original/get discussion moving.

Based on what you're saying would you want to cut out the arachnid races altogether? I feel that after the scorpion fiasco it would be a shame to lose them.

I like the idea of piggybacking a d100 system like dark heresy, don't go too ambitious with a system.

We could do it taxonomically. Dipterans, Coleopterans, Lepidopterans, Arachnids, Crustaceans, et cetera

Bogleech would probably be a valuable source of intel on this one

Yeah he's a bit of a cuccboi but he's actually volunteered information before on some Mortasheen threads so we know he's willing to post here

OH I forgot about the arachnids, ants too. The difficulty with those are player races is that they can't fly, which sort of I think funks around with encounter design and stuff but you could compensate them in various ways. But I think that's one of the cool design things right now is since everyone can fly, you can really take advantage of 3D spaces and verticality and stuff, but compensating for that as a legged bug could be equally as challenging and enjoyable.

I don't know about anyone else but spiders seem like a monster race to me.

I didn't have a hand in the scorpion or spider stuff so I'm not as attached as some contributors are obviously but I don't wanna leave anyone out in the rain.

In my opinion, small spiders and scorpions could work, without infringing on the beetles' "big guy" niche, and without being too monstrous.

I actually just watched ANTZ the other day again and the fight against the termites was awesome, and I'm definitely in favour of having some races be NPC / monstrous NPC only unless we get a lot of steam going.

I don't even know what those words mean other than arachnid but I can dig it

Flies, Beetles, Butterflies, Crustaceans

We could limit it to just Insects as player races

As in within the Class Insecta

We should definitely have the attributes spell something out.

Like

Intelligence
Nimbleness
Strength
Endurance
Charisma
Tenacity

Or something equally comfy.

I don't know about you guys but I feel like the big draw is the juxtaposition of comfy and alien, in tandem with how universal and understandable the concepts of a bug world are. Any DM worth his salt could spend an afternoon making an appealing setting with it, especially if we give him the tools to do it by making a great collection of puzzle pieces so to speak so that one can build a setting like its IKEA furniture without being limited in any way.

I feel like we need to keep the scorpions around, given how much work went into them.

I do agree that spiders could possibly be a monster race, given that the lore we have for them currently shows that there was some problems when they tried to become a more civilized race.

>The question is if we want more playable bugs or want to focus on what we've got and see how it goes moving forward.
Definitely focus on what we have. Once we have a solid basis for building things then we can start tacking things on.

On another note, I'm & . I'm actually reconsidering my suggestion of GURPS.
One aspect of insects that pointed out is that they're mostly expendable. Part of me thinks that that should be a main thrust of the system, emphasizing how tiny and expendable they are, and only once they get more powerful do they become differentiated. If we decide to do this, GURPS definitely wouldn't be the way to go, because each actually requires some work. I've got to go, so I'll think about some mechanics.

PErsonally, I think arachnids (and possibly ants/termites) should be "monster races". They can be well developed sure, but I think there should be something kind of terrifying and alien about them, since (if I'm not mistaken), almost all of the current PC races are herbivores.

I remember back when it was just some anons spitballing the Mothfolk, and the one user pushing Farapidaan.

I enjoyed those threads, though I never got into the threads when we talked about the Hiruda and whatever the Flies were called.

I still look fondly on those times, and on my precious Farapidaan

ANENZU AKBAR!

I have no strong opinion either way. I was never part of the scorpion fiasco but IMO they should be "centaur style" monstrous NPCs, same with spiders. I don't think there's a good way to do them as "bipeds" without it being hammy and looking like Black Arachnia from Beast Wars

I'm at work right now but I'll start up a google doc when I get home tonight so we can start laying out the rules.

Bug World WILL rise again

I'm also leaning towards making some of the races more monstrous/NPC like. Looking back, there were waaaay too many races, and the problems with fluff came from having too much that overlapped. The races that got the most were the ones that were unique, like the butterflies, the flies, the beetles, and the mantis. Stuff like ants and termites ended up too much like the flies or the beetles or something, and didn't feel like their own group.

Careful about calling them centaurs, you'll start it all up again

Hahahah

So playable races are looking like:

Moths + Butterflies (subraces of same)

Beetles

Flies and Bees (subraces of same)

Edgy bugs: grasshoppers, wasps, mantis

Each category should be relatively similar with a few flavour or stat differences between them.

I'm starting work on a classical d100 system on Pen and paper right now at work. Will report back when I've made some progress.

Cockroaches were also a well fleshed out species for some reason. I think what we need to do is go through the doc and look at what has a lot of fluff, and the decide if they should be playable or not.

I say this because I feel like the wasps shouldn't be playable based on their lore, unless the game is "evil" so to speak.

I'm only including them because mechanically they will play very similarly to locust or mantis. Hence the edgy races disclaimer. I tried to lump together things that will be mechanically similar and therefore the least amount of up front work.

Do you think it would be a good idea to limit magic to certain races/have the magic how it was originally? I still like the idea of bees having fire magic, moths and butterflies get moon/light magic, etc.

Yes definitely. I think the schools should be relatively small but relatively exclusive. Maybe have a tree for "hedge magic," but I think most magicks should be race exclusive since it's so conductive to each cultures identity.

Based on how the cultures and races are so distinct, and given that we're talking about an actual system now, I think that we should do the whole "race is class" thing that certain systems do. Given that the races are so distinct, classes might just add too much bloat.

Hmm, well things like Bees could just as easily be fighters or mages

I think we should do the typical d100 thing and have the game break down into

Attributes: the big numbers, the character at a glance. Feed into skill tests
Skills: fixed list of skills, give a positive mod to tests
Talents: "special rules / class features" if you will.
Misc: movement speed, hp, etc.

Using XP to buy options. Since some races have distinct advantages, perhaps different race choice at the start will cost more starting XP

There was another setting from back in the day. I can't recall the name but the idea sprang from something like military schools like SeeD from FF8.

You had one group that was essentially Big Boss mixed with Native American Catchans, another group of ousted nobles who's military consisted of vat grown children of noble houses, a group of psychics on an island that researched paranormal shit, and a futuristic paramilitary group that formed teams based on experts.

Someone even got as far as making rules for Fate although one guy went nuts when going into detail with one of the groups and it all fell apart from there.

I really wish I would have saved a lot of the details from it.

Maybe do it like ACKS does it, where class determines race, but there's multiple races per class.
So you have Fighters and Mages, who are Humans, but instead of just having a "Dwarf" class, you can be a Dwarven Vaultguard or a Dwarven Craftpriest.

So if we want to go class-based, we could have 1-3 classes per race/race-group.
Stuff like "Bee Pyromancer" and "Bee Hiveguard" or "Butterfly Heliomancer" and "Butterfly Sunblade"

*multiple classes per race

I feel like the talents tree and "1-3 classes per race" could work very well, with an Edge of the Empire type skill tree for what you want to do as a race, spending experience to get into different trees

I personally would rather avoid hard and fast classes and would rather opt for DIY XP buy, but that's just me. Full class design is hard, and if we were to do full class design, we'd need to keep it very limited because making distinct, balanced, AND wholely unique classes would be very ambitious, and there's already any number of fixed class games out there that can be jimmied to work.

Nah man no talent tree. Just talents floating there loosy goosey. Character creation would be like

Here's a pool of starting XP to spend.

First step is spend XP on a bug race. This sets your stat baseline plus any immediate special features from the race. So a Beetle would have a larger size mod and a bee would have access to the pyroturgy school of magic.

Next you spend XP on boosting some attributes.

Then you spend XP on buying some skill bonuses, like +10 to Magic Casting, or +10 to Persuasion, etc.

Then you spend XP on some free floating talents. Some have pre requisites but most shouldn't.

Every session you get a trickle of XP to save or buy more stuff.

By all means we could develop "fast play" class packages, or pre built class packages that are cheaper than the sum of their parts to encourage certain play styles, but I think we should avoid hard and fast classes if we actually want to get this developed in a reasonable amount of time.

>Veeky Forums projects keep falling through!
>we need a new project to revive these old projects!
Uh...

I'm worried that if we do talents just floating about that we'll end up with something like Pathfinder. Too many talents and not enough reason to take them. I like the other ideas though. How would starting XP be determined?

Whoa, this is pretty cool. I am reading through the details of each of the bugs and it is really fun. Are you guys going to try and finish this project?

Honestly, that's a brilliant idea. Or having shared rooms like MoonEdit or IRC with which to not only quickly communicate, but also save logs thereof.

Posting from mobile

I agree with this. There should be a suite of generic abilities/featurees/maneuvers/whatever, and then some that are exclusive to each race.

I'm not so sure that d100 is the best way to go.
I spent some time thinking about this, so I'll go ahead and throw out the system I came up with. Let me know if you guys like it. If not, then that's cool too. I'll roll With whatever the majority likes

The basic method of accomplishing things is roll d20, and then add the appropriate modifier. There are six ability scores, three static, three variable.

Static ability scores range from 0 to +10. They are physicality, mentality, and size. Additionally, size can be a negative value, to - 10.

Variable modifiers start 0, then go to 1. After 1, you begin increasing for die size. The dice range up to a d12. The three variable ability scores are attack, flight, and perception.

Whenever you want to make a check, you roll 1d20+modifier. If it's a variable modifier for which you have a die, then you also roll the appropriate die alongside it.

Looks like we're going to try to make an actual system this time around. Last time we made it through 19(?) threads before they started to die before post limit.

Welcome aboard!

RE: non-flyers and 3D space
Ants can't fly, but they can crawl on most surfaces can they not?
It is more limited, but not completely debilitating.

Hence, if we go with the stats outlined here , flight would be replaced by climb for those bugs

Or maybe, seeing as Mantises can jump, maybe a generic movement/agility skill?

How would you increase the variable modifiers?

Id be fine with that. Call it maneuverability instead.

All ability scores would be increased using a point buy system. Increasing the die size for a variable ability scores would cost about the same as increasing a static score by 2. Haven't figured out exactly what that relationship will be yet, I'll see what I can work out once I'm home.

Also, the way that I would prefer to handle racial modifiers to ability scores would be by having different races be able to purchase certain skills more cheaply, rather than having a set bonus at character creation.
So for instance, since beetles are tough, they might be able to purchase physicality at half the price most races do.

I remember termites needing some work back in the day, I'll jump back on them if anyone cares

Definitely keep doing what you're doing. We can bounce ideas around until we all come to consensus.

What I've got right now for the d100 version is:

Rolling system: roll equal or under TN, the higher without going over the better, blackjack style. The tens are DoS. In combat, the ones are hit location.

TN (target number) is determined by Attribute + relevant Skill. If relevant skill is untrained, it's at -20. GM also has a chart of modifiers because most rolls will be modified in some way because the baseline TN basically represents a vacuum with time sensitivity and pressure to succeed but no other factors.

Attributes:

Intelligence: a bug's smarts and perceptiveness.
Nimbleness: a bug's agility and motor skills.
Strength: a bug's brute force and brawn.
Endeavour: a bug's spirit and intuition.
Charisma: a bug's people skills and identity.
Toughness: a bug's endurance and fortitude.

Average "above average" bug is 30 across the board, but various racial modifiers will change it. If playing a "heroic" campaign rather than gritty, stats average is 40 across the board and only -10 for untrained.

Skills:
Athletics (st/tg)
Alchemy (int)
Beast Mastery (cha/int)
Command (cha)
Commerce (cha/int)
Deception (cha)
Dodge (nm)
Fighting Style [field] (st/nm)
Investigate (int/cha)
Lore [field] (int)
Medicine (int/nm)
Mysticism (en)
Navigate (en)
Persuasion (cha)
Sneak (nm)
Subterfuge (nm/int)
Survival (en)
Trade [field] varies

Most rolls are a test of some sort, and attributes will feed into other characteristics like hp and movement and action points and stuff. Will keep posted.

I know it's vanilla and kind of boring but it's only the skeleton of the system before we get to add all the flashy stuff (talents and magic and combat)

For schools of mysticism we so far have as far as I remember:

The Moonlight Cult of the moths
The Heliomancers of the butterflies
Pyroturgy, which is bees
Necromancy which is cicadas and forbidden
Alchemy which was made by flies and is available to all to close the gap between the normies and the magical

I think there were venom wizards too?

This is good! How would you roll you stats? And how would DoS work with a blackjack style dice system? Do you have any idea for talents? Also would you have to be the certain race to buy into the magic trees?

Stats would probably be either point buy or just racial baseline + 1d10 for a starting character, or take 6.

Magic would be race locked except alchemy because it's for the normies and hedge magic type stuff which doesn't really have a school.

No idea for anything else yet but feel free to shoot some ideas. Starting character is probably like 1000xp with different things having wildly different costs but in general

Broad = expensive
Specific = cheaper

DoS would be the tens of a roll that passed. Thinking no degrees of failure because most systems that have them, DoF don't really tend to do anything meaningful except decide who lost WORSE, but in cases where both contestants fail and one of them NEEDS to win, the one with the higher TN will probably just default win.

So to clarify, no degrees of failure. DoS are the 10s

So if you rolled a 51 under 55, that's 5 DoS. It's mathematically identical to counting backwards since you have the same potential range for DoS maximums, but involves 0 math and the risk is le spicy

Why mantis and spiders are not playable races?

THIS THREAD NEEDS MORE INSECTS DRAWN AS FIERCE WARRIORS AND HEROES

THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PICTURES OF ADVENTURER BUGS IN THIS WORLD

Anyone have that writefaggotry about the mercenaries fighting the "dragon" that was a hawk or something?

That should be in the googledoc somewhere if I remember properly

Reading this I am reminded just how much crazy shit found its way into Arath

>psychotic warrior monk Peacock mantis shrimp driven mad by lovecraftian horrors only they can see

>Bird dragons

>Metamagic CHIM timey wimey nonsense

I think we should try to come to a consensus as soon as possible, before we have two incompatible systems going and everyone gets devoted to one.

Since it looks like we're the only two trying to work out mechanics, maybe we should exchange E-mails so we can exchange notes more easily? Or we can start a discord channel if you prefer that

Good or bad when you mean crazy shit

Mantis was a very fleshed out race, so I think it should be a playable race. From past threads spiders were canabalistic, so they could be playable, but could also make for good "evil race"

Discords are excellent "get shit done" tanks

I wouldn't mind a discord channel so that we can have a way to throw ideas back an forth. Plus that'll kinda force us to work on this if you use discord often

Good, in my opinion.

It's not there. Do you remember what thread it's in?

I believe spider wizards with sense of right and wrong(tm) is what started it. Then people started theoretizing about how they and other insects do magic and few days after first bug world thread was created.

I once had an idea of a society of spiders that were the hidden lore masters of the setting, weaving webs of different thickness to keep archives of all, sending out adventurers to bring back news to further increase thier history collection. They could play similar to bards, or sound magic. The link below i just found when looking for something else, but i feel would still be relevent if we wanted to make spider race a thing, possible making them not evil/ a non evil faction to play as. It even comes with three convenient branches for development

druidry.org/library/animals/spiders-spiritual-guides

Here we go. I made a server, so hopefully we can get some actual stuff done. I think there's three main areas we need to work on, of varying immediacy:

1. Character Role and Advancement- figuring out what a player's general goals, and abilities will look like. What kind of powers they'll have, and what kind of role they're generally expected to be filling (Scouts? Diplomats? Murderhobos?). Additionally, we should probably discuss what the tone of the system will be (Pathfinder with bugs? Or should it emphasize the horror of being a small bug in a big universe, where everything wants to eat you?). I think these are probably the most important areas that have yet to be discussed.

2. Mechanics for Play- figuring out how the system will actually work, what the base crunch of the system will look like. (As discussed , ,,,>>49923157,, , , , ,, ).

3. The Role of Racial Traits- What role racial characteristic will actually play, and to what extent they'll determine play style (As discussed , ,, )

I tried to quote all the discussion that we've had in this thread about mechanics, etc.

I think we should also look to the story hooks and literature that have been written already, to make sure that any system we create is geared towards the tone that we're going for.
Here's a discord server I made:
discord.gg/kWNBjHr

sounds neat, and explains some of the art I've seen floating around. be willing to pitch in how I can, just not super regular on here

setting first seems the best. worst case, can be run in just about anything by the sounds of it

join that discord, we're gonna make this happen for real this time

Which Discord is this?

it's in this post at the bottom

Nevermind, got it. Missed that post.