Stingers & Spores: The good, the bad, and the Bugly
The Good, the Bad, and the Bugly started as a joke in my Discord group. But it was a joke that sat with me. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of it.
Like a lot of other Savage Worlds players, I am a big fan of westerns. I devoured John Wayne movies as a little kid, and moved on to Clint Eastwood when my parents decided I was old enough for the blood and the swearing. And Deadlands Classic was actually the first TRPG game I ever played.
I threw together my first Bugly playtest group shortly after Stingers & Spores hit shelves. This setting takes S&S characters and puts them in the Wild West, complete with guns, steam engines, and scorpion steeds.
design challenges
Bugly faced design challenges from its inception. It is crucial that bugs of all shapes and sizes remain viable player characters, but the arrival of firearms could easily make some character types much less interesting. I decided that all sizes of bugs needed to be considered when adapting firearms to the bug world.
Basic firearms are available to bugs of average size. On the extreme ends, I made teeny guns, with smaller damage dice but a higher chance of exploding, and titan guns, including Gatwing carbines and the absurd-but-real punt guns. I also needed to balance firearms so that other styles of play remained viable. I’m confident that I have succeeded in this. Perhaps the scariest of my Bugly pregenerated characters, Violet “One Touch” Springsting, doesn’t use a gun at all.
the wild frontier
Another concern was making yet another western game with Savage Worlds, which already has several excellent ones. One of the major ways that Bugly differs is by being a game about outlaws.
You won’t play heroes bringing law and order to the West. You’ll play the Mesa Roja Marauders, a gang of ludicrously specialized insect bandidos trying to steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
The campaign was made from the very start with criminal characters in mind.
But that leads to another potential problem: tone.
It would be very easy to write an outlaw campaign that turns into an unsavory bloodbath. I know a lot of people wouldn’t want to play a grim campaign about violent bandits in the Wild West. I probably wouldn’t either, unless I had a very specific group of players who I knew could handle it properly.
But Bugly is not that premise.
The insect twist makes the setting fundamentally goofy, and that keeps the criminal element from getting too dark. When writing insect adventures, I aim to strike a balance between the silliness and the existential terror that comes from being a sentient bug half an inch tall.
The tippin' point
I also introduced a mechanic to reinforce this design philosophy: the Tippin’ Point rules.
People in the Old West were armed. And when criminals got too violent or slipped up at the wrong moment, they faced swift consequences from the townsfolk. There are plenty of examples of bank robberies and gunfights that ended with outlaws in shallow graves, with civilians fighting back and winning.
The Tippin’ Point rules make this tension more pointed. Get too violent in a heist or robbery, and the townsfolk may do the mental math and realize they have nothing to lose by fighting back.
campaign shape
The Good, the Bad, and the Bugly is an Episodic-Serialized Campaign. I’m trying to strike a balance between standalone adventures and Plot Point Campaigns.
The Episodic-Serialized Campaign centers primarily on each adventure, but with continuity between jobs. Allies and villains sometimes return, and decisions may spiral into unexpected consequences later. Think of each adventure as a different episode from a TV western. If you watch the whole series, you’ll see how all the plot threads weave together. If you turn on the TV and find a random episode playing, you might not recognize the old friend talking in the bar, but you’ll still have a great time seeing the plot unfold.
Another staple I took from TV is the Cold Open. Each adventure starts in the middle of the action. But in true RPG fashion, the PCs have some narrative ability to determine details and explain exactly how they got there.
The campaign has six core adventures. Most of them have plenty of room for downtime and other adventures in between. So a GM in a hurry can play the core six and experience a satisfying conclusion. But a GM with more time on their hands is free to meander around the Frontier, explore dangling plot threads, or pursue their own adventure hooks at their leisure.
