Wish there were more fantasy bug settings like Hollow Knight and such, I think is something very interesting to explore

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Is fascination towards socially undesired stuff like insects a straightforward sympton of autism?

sausage sensei

>Is fascination towards socially undesired stuff like insects a straightforward sympton of autism?
Probably.

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I heard a bug dude thread.

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>Thri-Kreen will never be a player race in 5e

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Full size image here

Let's start

How fantastical do you want the setting?
Should there be a variety of Bug species?

An ideal thing would be is have a certain bug species be on par with other races or fulfilling the roles of them if the setting is purely about bugs.

Some things come to mind like Mantis taking the places of Elves, Ants as Dwarves, and more like that.

Is too late for me to think about this but if anyone want to expact on this go ahead.

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My current setting has all vampires being a race of parasitic insects called Alucids. Their Queen is a ravenous sac of organs and psychic energy that attracts the weak-minded, then implants its young in them. The larva grow, slowly converting the host into an insect-humanoid hybrid with all the traditional vampire powers, though they do eventually develop exoskeletons, multiple arms, gossamer wings, and then change into a psychic tumor when they eventually become a Queen themselves.

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If it didn't have a gun, I'd be sold. Tech is too alien and the weather too damp for firearms.

You shouldn't worry too much about that stuff, just go all out and let it flow.

Maybe the adventure takes place in the Red(Wood), a massive tower that is said to hold some unknown riches. Maybe inside the Black Valley of the Deadwood, a hole in the ground no one has been able to fully map.

Go crazy with character ideas. A fast-talking Mantis Bard. An Ant looking for a chance to be someone worth remembering. A Moth fighting a past for a future. Just put out here.

Mosquito Vampires are fun.

It's from Darkest Dungeon if you want to look for something a bit more fitting.

What happened to that old tg bug setting?

Not disliking the source (which was evident), it just isn't the look I was going for. Good taste.

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A disturbing lack of quality moth pussy

Didn't tg create a system for bug rpg? I was never a part of it but im sure that they made one.

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Is that pic for ants or-
Hoooo, those spiders are getting clever at ambushes.

Pretty sure you don't understand literal autism

I would say termites might be better as Dwarves, since they're squatter than ants.
Although to be honest, I feel like it would be better to abandon the whole "bugs as fantasy race analogues" and make them unique.
Hercules and rhinoceros beetles are the powerhouses, the juggernauts. Butterflies and moths are the beautiful, arrogant aloof guys. Bees are a good empire, while wasps are their evil counterparts. Spiders and scorpions (maybe mantises) are powerful, cruel enemies, who can be taken down with numbers, but not without heavy losses. Birds and frogs are terrifying monsters, too big and strong to do anything against but try to hide or escape.
Molting and metamorphosis are extremely important to them culturally. It is not lost on them that the larval stage is incredibly similar for all races, that they are all one as children, and only when they pass the test of adulthood are they divided.

tell me more.

How would a race like this sound, do you think? Not just speech, assuming they speak at all, but general movement. Would their huge exoskeletons clatter like armor all the time?

I wouldn't say clatter, the parts are pretty well secured to their bodies and are more like very tough leather than steel. Maybe some scraping sound, some skittering as they run.

There'd definitely be a lot of clicking in their speech, but they probably use pheremones to help communicate emotion. A lot of hand motion too.

Don’t forget dancing

Best guy

>"As a matter of fact, I DO have better shit to do!"

>Insect races use frequent hand motions while speaking their own tongue, and this carries over to them using common speech
>as a result, people move their hands when using a mocking bug accent just like IRL italian stereotypes

We got pretty far, but it fizzled out.

Forgotten and dropped. Like most tg settings.

Deviant.

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In mine they're spiders. I mean they're pretty close. They suck out juices from biting down two sharp fangs into their victim, solitary but lives close to other insects, physically powerful and incredibly fast, Terrified of fragrant plants and are really weak against fire. I didn't really change anything cause the comparison was so great. I even made it so if you throw a buncha pebbles or anything small and many, they'll freeze for a second for their brains to calculate it, like real spiders.

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Don't they communicate like bee's? Silent chirps and squeeks as they rub their wings together?

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what the actual fuck is a silent chirp

Back in the old setting insects were held as one race with different archtypes, while two other races seeds and fungi, were their own.

Also paralels to generic fantasy is eh. Lets create something based on the bugs. For instance, ants, bees and termites would be the obvious empire people, colonies and slave kinda thing. Maybe unique for actually banding together into kingdoms while most bugs hobble around in small families and dont think about expanding?

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Should we address that most insect parenting technique amounts to "fire and forget"?
Maybe most races leave their eggs to hatch and survive on their own, only welcoming them once they rejoin the community, while civilized hive bugs like bees and wasps and ants are the only ones to actually nurture their offspring.

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Sure, could be a good level 0 plothook.

But then again, too dehumanized and it becomes hard to play as one.

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Not necessarily. It could be that the insects don't consider a life to really begin until they make it back to the community, while to adults, the larval stage is just a hazy recollection of hunger and fear. That's probably how an intelligent race that practices nonguarding R-strategic reproduction would see it.
Of course, hive insects would see it as barbaric, while nonhive insects would see larva-nurturing as pointless.

thread needs more termites

Good thread, OP.

Do insect settings feel better at human-scale? Or at bug-scale? Cause I imagine having spiracle breathing systems (as bugs do) would be drastically different at each scale. Human-scale being the equivalent of an organic steampunky exhaust system, or at bug-scale being weak to water surface tension and other physical whims

Sounds that are too low-frequency to be heard by humans thus appear as silence

I worked a lot on the old setting, lots of cool stuff was came up with.

Examples would include Trilobites being an ancient great powerful world spanning empire, a cult of woodlice that are trying to summon ancient great monstrous beings from the depths of the oceans (Giant Isopods), Bee hives which are basically religious empires, ran by their Queens who are seen as gods/demigods. Moths are a highly magical species, highly spiritual. They worship the Moon. Butterflies kinda a mirror to Moths, with Sun replacing moon. They're more vibrant and social than moths.

Ants are the most generic race. Weak alone, strong together. The different castes means that ants are highly varied. They are industrious and shit, they also have a telepathic connection to their queen, although it's possible to break that connection, which is usually where adventurers come from.

Grasshoppers/Crickets are a pretty happy-go-lucky race, they're jovial, musical, and independent. They live nomadic lifestyles, to experience the most out of life and shit. Pretty cool overall.

Locusts are similar to grasshoppers, but are much more physically imposing. They don't share the outward view on life. The more locusts that gather in one place, the more bestial and ravenous they become, due to an ancient curse, and so it's considered taboo for locusts to stick around each other for too long, or to gather in large numbers.

Cicadas are weird, they have this nutty death cult though which is cool.

Beetles are seperated into various different clans, based on beetle type. The larger ones like Stag Beetles are more warrior like, very Paladin, Knight, or Samurai-esque, honor and all that jazz, while say a Ladybug would be much more complacent. They have really thicc natural armor.

There's tons more stuff. You can check it here at:
docs.google.com/document/d/1pAduIU7TDaKHvvaUfzRbgYj44TX_hApLeNeVu2d5bbM/edit#heading=h.owncwaizyvhp

hit me up with questions or whatever.

Were you there on the discord for the latest attempt at getting the setting going? We got a few playtests going.

oh fuck no I wasn't.
link?

It's dead now, but you never know.

discord.gg/zG7mQJ

Too high pitched to hear?

Depends on which one is the most fun to play.
But I say tiny bugs, cause I want there to be a giant rusting car fortress filled with all kinds of dangers.

Yeah, that works.

Trilobite here. Here's a link to the main doc that had all of the bug world links
docs.google.com/document/d/1pbF8KETro8UPOSZ2V4Uw1xoWHDa8QI3mXqpHs93VwTM/edit?usp=drivesdk

A very short inaudible screech
youtube.com/watch?v=wREvdSG8lJk

>discord.gg/zG7mQJ
Dead game dead discord.

Oh this is not even the ORIGINAL bug setting.

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It's the links we had to everything that the Discord group worked on friendo

Man Veeky Forums has created a lot of bug settings.

I remember we mainly got caught up on issues with how to do character progression, among many other things. It kinda just fizzled out and died.

Felt like too many voices sometimes honestly. Even with it meant to be a collaborative effort between Veeky Forums, I wished there were less people so we could get more work done.

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Because bugs are the greatest and coolest and who doesn't want to play as a bug

So Redwall, but with bugs? I can dig it

didn't realize it when I was writing, but yeah, totally. Redwall was the shit

That's definitely the biggest problem with collabs. Best you can hope for is for a handful of diehards to clean it all up and finish it after the initial rush dies down.

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These are awesome.