Lacking Natural Simplicity (Posts about buggin')https://tkurtbond.github.io/categories/buggin.atom2024-01-23T18:49:34ZT. Kurt BondNikolaBuggin': Protect the VIP's daughterhttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/10/11/buggin-protect-the-vips-daughter/2008-10-11T00:00:00-05:002008-10-11T00:00:00-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I ran a short game of <em>Buggin'</em> with L.B., T.A., E.A., and M.A. Their
bugs were at an opera premier (in a suitably rustic setting: the opera
house was made of thick grass stalks covered with leaves, with doors
of bark fragments) when some thugs tried to abduct a young lady VIP
bug. They, of course, prevented it. M.A. kept getting knocked onto
the stage, and every time he'd try to sing. Eventually he sang so
badly that things started breaking and falling down around the
characters.</p>
<p>There's more to the story, but we didn't have time to take it any
further. We'll pick it up again later.</p>Actual Play: Buggin'https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/06/28/buggin-2008-06-28/2008-06-28T17:45:00-05:002008-06-28T17:45:00-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>Another of the roleplaying games I played over the July 4th holiday
was <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pigames.net/store/product_info.php?cPath=43_50_53&products_id=127">Buggin'</a>, . This game had T.B. as a scorpion named Scorp;
T.A. as Dragon the dragonfly; M.A. as a pillbug, Bill the Pill; my
brother A.B. and his youngest O.B. teamed up to run Bob the cyborg
grasshopper <a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/06/28/buggin-2008-06-28/#original-buggin" id="footnote-reference-1" role="doc-noteref"><span class="fn-bracket">[</span>2<span class="fn-bracket">]</span></a>; E.A. as an Aunty the Ant; and
L.B. as Maria the bee. Several of these characters had been played in
earlier games of <em>Buggin'</em>.</p>
<p>The characters, having done some troubleshooting for the local ant
colony in the past, were assigned to find out why communication with a
neighboring ant colony had stopped. They escaped an Ant Lion trap,
lots of fun was had with the ant lion throwing sand at the PCs and the
flying PCs trying to rescue the non-flying ones who'd fallen in the
trap. They made a new trail around the trap and moved on. They found
the neighboring ant colony deserted, passed through the strangely
rectangular rooms and corridors of the lowest levels, found the huge
cubic room and black floating rectangular monolith, climbed up the
ledges and across the bridge and passed oddly through the black
monolith, to find themselves huge jellyfish-like creatures floating in
the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, where they set about building cities
for new homes, along with lots of other jellyfish-like creatures.</p>
<p>And then they woke up, and found themselves back to normal and
remembering the Ant Lion trap as the only problem with other colony.
And then they woke up, and they were Jellyfish Colonists on Jupiter
again. And so forth.</p>
<p>Some of the <a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/categories/cat_gaming/actual-play/the-kids/">kids</a> thought this was funny, and others thought it was
just strange. M.A. thought it was really neat.</p>
<p>L.B. was very worried that those characters would be constantly
flipping back and forth between being Jellyfish Colonists on Jupiter
whenever they went to sleep, so I assured her that it was just for
this one game.</p>
<section id="remarks">
<h2>Remarks</h2>
<p>I find that <em>Buggin'</em> is less work for me to run than <em>Toon</em>. The
system is simpler, a character sheet and the character creation rules
all fit on one page of paper <a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/06/28/buggin-2008-06-28/#pg" id="footnote-reference-2" role="doc-noteref"><span class="fn-bracket">[</span>1<span class="fn-bracket">]</span></a>, and I don't have to worry about
making things funny, since the genre doesn't <strong>require</strong> humor
(although the players usually add plenty of it themselves). It's
usually pretty easy to come up with adventure ideas on the fly, since
the genre is ubiquitous in TV and movies; I'd still find an adventure
generator useful for inspiration, though.</p>
<aside class="admonition note">
<p class="admonition-title">Note</p>
<p>This is a <a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/07/07/new-blog-first-post/">timewarp</a> post.</p>
</aside>
<aside class="footnote-list brackets">
<aside class="footnote brackets" id="pg" role="doc-footnote">
<span class="label"><span class="fn-bracket">[</span><a role="doc-backlink" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/06/28/buggin-2008-06-28/#footnote-reference-2">1</a><span class="fn-bracket">]</span></span>
<p>... which is a goal of the <em>1 Page Game</em> system used in
<em>Buggin'</em> and the other <a class="reference external" href="http://deep7.com/?cat=4">1PGs</a> from <a class="reference external" href="http://www.deep7.com">Deep7</a> and its partners.</p>
</aside>
</aside>
<aside class="footnote-list brackets">
<aside class="footnote brackets" id="original-buggin" role="doc-footnote">
<span class="label"><span class="fn-bracket">[</span><a role="doc-backlink" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/06/28/buggin-2008-06-28/#footnote-reference-1">2</a><span class="fn-bracket">]</span></span>
<p>In the very first <em>Buggin'</em> game I ran
N.A.B. created a grasshopper, Bob. During the course of the game
he lost his arm. At the end of game the ant colony “repaired” him,
and he ended up with a cyborg arm. He also ended up with a pair of
Frankenstein bolts on his head.</p>
</aside>
</aside>
</section>