Bug Busters Ltd Interview + Sneak Peeks

+ 3 Games inspirng me, Greenhorns design diary, Incorporated progress, and more

Jan 11, 2024

Good morning from snowy Kansas!

I hope it’s a beautiful day for you all so far. I’m excited to be back at The Guac and be largely caught up with work that compounded while I was sick throughout December. The main Spicy Tuna news is that Greenhorns continues to evolve into it’s full form and is going live next Thursday, January 18th, Incorporated is filling out with layout and art. Outsourced PDFs were delivered to KS Backers and our printers have the files! More updates below, but I’m very happy with the start of the year.

THE GUAC 019 DOCKET:

Spicy Tuna Links including the first part of a Greenhorns AP with The Weekly Scroll and a Game Pitch episode with Garry Snow from Dieku Games.
Bug Busters Ltd. Interview with Garry Snow who will be crowdfunding his new alien bug infestation game in January.
3 Games inspiring me right now
Cool Links: Public Domain, Solo Games, APs
Greenhorns Sneak Peeks, Team Reveal, and Hacking Together We Go Part 1
Spicy Tuna Updates

Spicy Tuna Links:

New:

GAME PITCH with Dieku Games
TWS PLAYS GREENHORNS: Part 1

Ongoing:

Greenhorns Kickstarter Prelaunch Page

Free Greenhorns Quickstart on itch

Outsourced Pre-Order Store (has all of our current catalog!)

BUG BUSTERS LTD INTERVIEW with GARRY SNOW

Hi, Garry! Thank you for coming on for a quick interview. I’m stoked to talk about everything Bug Busters Ltd as you’re gearing up for the games release this month. Let’s get to the meat!

Question: Bug Busters Ltd is oozing in 90s monster bug flavor! Smashed and mashed inspirations and built out possibilities to explore throughout the setting. Can you tell us about some of the inspirations, the choice to focus on working class heroes, and what you want the game to deliver to players?

Answer: I have always loved sci-fi genre movies from the 80's and 90's - especially ones that have working class people being thrown into a supernatural situation where they end up saving the world from an alien threat. Some of the key influences are Ghostbusters, Critters, Tremors, Eight Legged Freaks, Men in Black and Starship Troopers. In particular the punk vibes of Repo Man has driven the aesthetic of the characters, who have a d66 table of pasts that the players can lean into, like video store clerk, Radio Shack salesperson, arcade manager, roadie, washed-up athlete, bouncer, parolee , and more! Each one has connections and items that provide a bit of texture they can use in the game.
There's also a whole lore of Doug the exterminator who started Bug Busters Ltd, and first learned of the secret alien invasion happening, battling them throughout the 80's in the Swarm Wars. Now he's entrusting this new generation of Bug Busters to start a franchise in a warehouse in the sketchy part of town, where they can drink beer, play poker, test experimental weapons and play their music at full volume!

Question: Another standout aspect of the game is the character sheet. You’ve made some incredible choices with it. Can you tell us a bit about the unique aspects of character creation and advancement you developed in the game?

Answer: I’ve always believed that character sheets are the key entry point into your game, and it's important that it hits the right tone between theme and functionality. I designed it to look like a punk poster, while showcasing key items for the character, like patches for advancement, doom tracking, a mixed tape featuring a fight song and chill song, and finally their call sign. I find that the players never remember a character's name unless it's a nickname that reflects their personality like in Top Gun - so I figured we should just skip to that.
The patches have also been a fun thing to develop the tone of the game. I came across Gareth Lyttle's art (@bazoobco on Instagram), and I knew immediately that I wanted his style to be applied to patches like Sting King, Hive Dive, Slug Hug, Web Head that improve your saving throws after encountering those threats in the game. There's also patches that are based upon gaining experience such as Pupa Patch, Larva Patch, Splatmaster, Queen Kill, and the Order of Doug that add flavor while also being functional.

Question: Mechanically, Bug Busters Ltd omits health for the Doom Stack which is accumulated voluntarily to increase a player’s dice pool or consequentially through failed dice rolls. Can you tell us about this decision and anything else you want to share about it?

Answer: The system is a new spin on Sandy Petersen’s classic Ghostbusters d6 system that many people often refer to as one of the easiest to learn. My only nit-pick was that I hated counting pips on the dice, and wanted something that could be a bit more immediate. My solution was to reduce it to only the top 2 dice being counted and placing the difficulty onto a scale of 12. This has provided a lot of new, yet simple ways to manipulate and change the number of action dice rolled, including luck dice to replace bad rolls, or doom dice which you can add to the initial action roll - but then immediately get placed on your Doom Stack, which is the abstraction of trauma you are experiencing in the game.
When you receive Doom through damage, failing a saving throw, or using Doom Dice (black dice) to increase your action rolls, you take the doom dice and start building a tower of black dice. When the stack falls, it's the equivalent of your player getting to zero hit points, and you are unconscious. The Doom Stack is admittedly a bit gimmicky, but is also in line with the fun and gun concept of the game. There's also the option of tracking Doom on your character sheet in case you don't like the tactile aspect, you’re playing in a tight space or on a wobbly table, or just don't have the physical ability to stack. It's just a fun add-on that you can use if you want to.

Question: Lastly, I want to hone in on what players can expect from adventures. You’re creating rich factions as part of the worldbuilding and you’re playtesting Connor’s Corn Maze currently. Without spoiling much, can you share some of your design touch stones or design processes for Bug Blasters Ltd adventures?

Answer: I plan on strongly supporting the Bug Busters game with "splat books" that will provide an ever-evolving world for the Bug Busters to inhabit. There's a number of factions that will be highlighted in the core book, that will then be sprinkled around into adventures and lore. There's everything from early Internet space cults, nihilist skateboard gangs, secret government agencies, rival exterminators, and more.
Once I started fleshing out the world, the adventures seemed to just build themselves in a very organic way. The first one that will be coming out is called Connor's Corn Maze. I feel it encapsulates everything that I want in a Bug Buster adventure - a sandbox location map that looks like a brochure for the corn maze, rumors of unusual happenings in the area like crop circles, and a lot of buttons to push and levers to pull that will make it a unique experience depending upon the players' approach.
One of the keys of Bug Busters to me is that it has an OSR play style where player skill is highlighted. There's no Attributes for Intelligence or Wisdom, and no perception checks to find clues. It's up to the players to bring their own cunning and curiosity to the game, and the adventure provides a lot of locations to explore including a Radio Tower, Old Mine, Farms, Community Hall, Lover's Lane, and of course.... a corn maze which happens to have a prehistoric monolith at the center of it - nothing at all suspicious about that!

Feel free to follow along with the game's progress on social media, and be notified when we launch on Kickstarter in the new year! www.BugBusters.Ltd

3 Games Inspiring Me Now

First a little bit about the creators and how all three of these games utilize public domain images in an incredible way.

Gontijo has been one of my graphic design super heroes for a long time now for his ingenuity and craftiness. So much so I’ve asked him to do some Spicy Tuna layout. He just doesn’t miss a mark when h Gontijo is doing the layout for Incorporated Vol.1: A Corporate Horror Anthology (Soon to have a new name) and I couldn’t be more excited to see how it comes out. We’re in the middle of wireframing now.

Direct links to Gonitjo’s publications at DriveThru and on Itch.io and follow him on Twitter and BlueSky.

Cezar Capacle is someone I’ve started to be inspired by from earlier this year. He has a keen ability to make straightforward solo and gm-less games with tons of tables and room for players to create the world of the game.

Andre Novoa is an fantastic game designer and publisher/owner of Games Omnivorous, which is a publishing company that sets an incredible bar for polished and beautiful books.

Of course the aesthetics aren’t the only inspiring parts of these games. The games read incredibly well, and although I haven’t gotten any of the table yet, all of them have me churning on ideas for Spicy Tuna’s next games.

Blurred Lines by Gontijo

I fell in love with the aesthetics of this game far before I really knew how interesting the premise or game mechanics were. Something Gontijo does here is have an incredible preface named “The Other King in Yellow” which gives a ton of insight into Giallo cinema. It is a great read, but also sets the player up with an incredible viewpoint to begin playing the game as intended. The other mechanism I love about the game is that it uses any real life map. As you travel through the map, back and forth in your investigation, you detail photographs you take - the evidence in order to catch the killer before the killer gets the best of you. I love this so much and as a fan of Andrew Kolb's map and artwork it is a tool I would love to place at the center of a game.
Blurred Lines also has it’s own deck of cards here. The PDF is discounted right now also.

Against the Wind by Cezar Capacle

Against the Wind was inspired by the artwork of Kay Nielsen, which is in the public domain and Cezar uses throughout the book. I enjoy how Cezar mentions how he leaned into the fairy tale aspects that the artwork has with classic expected fantasy. This book isn’t done yet. It just finished itch-funding and I know he’s added a ton since then. Preparing the map section is a huge highlight along with the incredible amount of random tables for the player(s) to shape their world while they play.

The Job by Games Omnivorous (Art + Layout by Gontijo)

This one again was a must buy just because of Gontijo’s work on it. It’s incredibly stunning visually. Beyond that, Andre Novoa made an amazing story game that emphasizes the preparation and execution of the heist. A game for one-shots is always up my ally! The Job is split into the Preparation Phase and the Action Phase, each taking about an hour and a half. Their are 8 awesome character archetypes, each with a set of 4 stunts that give a taste of greatness to even the archetype you might think of as the most mundane.

Get the physical book here.

Cool Links

Speaking of Public Domain

Gontijo has shared a ton of curated public domain images on his Twitter back in 2021

Exeunt Press has a recent public domain post in the Skeleton Code Machine Newsletter.

Yochai Gal has an ongoing list of public domain websites on his blog.

Solo Links

Solo But Not Alone 4 Bundle is live! A project of love and celebration of mental health. All proceeds benefit Take This - the oldest mental health nonprofit in the game industry. 100 Solo TTRPGs for $10.

The Soloist Gift Guide is useful after Christmas.

The Soloist Game 2024 Preview

Actual Play Links

The Panic Table has been a fun listen and they have some big upcoming plans for Mothership lovers beyond the AP.

TWS Plays Liliputian. The Weekly Scroll feat. Matthew Morris and Christian Sorrell. Liliputian is underrated.

TWS Plays Greenhorns. Linked above, but this was a ton of fun. Got to run the game with The Weekly Scroll bois and Adam Vass. Part 2 coming on the 23rd!!

Plus One Exp plays Tomb of a Thousand Doors. The Mausritter Megadungeon now on Kickstarter.

Plus One Exp plays Die, Graverobber, Die! I really enjoyed my read through of this Rooted in Trophy zine from Zine Club. I’ve also been very happy with my subscription to Zine Club!

Greenhorns Sneak Peeks

I am having a blast writing Greenhorns now that I get to focus on it nearly full time!! I knocked out the first drafts of the 4 new character classes, have a solid foundation for how Bounty Hunting missions will work including a few frameworks, and finished outlining all of the random tables and information that will be in the Kruxor and expanded class section.

Here are the next 4 Character Classes you’ll see in the full version, including the names of all of their Skills.

More importantly here is how the full color version of the layout is coming along.

And, most importantly, we have our full team lined up!! And it’s packed full of awesome people that I am grateful to continue working with.

Diego Acevedo has been with us since inception on illustration. Diego is so fucking talented and it’s been super smooth working together. He is currently working on full page illustration 10, about to do a full page spread of the 4 new classes battling a !!Boss!! And will have a few prompts left for the adventure Christian is writing. This book will be packed with beautiful art.

Christian Sorrell, or MeatCastle Gameware, is joining the writing team and will be writing the starter Bounty adventure in the book. Christian is the person I’ve hired most and for good reason.

Space Penguin Ink is our new fulfillment partner. I’m ecstatic to work with Jarrett and Debbie! I had a wonderful call with them a few days ago and we’re going to be able to do posters!!

Walton Wood is returning as editor for Greenhorns! Walton has edited Outsourced and part of Incorporated already for us and he’s been a blessing.

Hacking Together We Go Part 1

I’m still loving the Together We Go framework Markus Linderum created! It’s even more reinvigorated since I’ve done the additional character classes. The character sheet is just so fun to work with. Today I wanted to break down how we changed Combat to make Greenhorns more fast-paced and made the PCs more badass without sacrificing lethality.

After a few playtests I nixed the miss and infused a suggestion from Mothership’s Warden’s Operation Manual. Even with making failed hits change the situation I just didn’t like the anticlimactic zero Dmg with an attack roll for Greenhorns.

In the current version of Greenhorns PCs always Hit, but they still make the Attack Roll. A failed attack roll means the situation gets worse. And the severity of how worse it gets scales with how far away the roll is from a success. A minor failure may mean there is a small amount of collateral damage to the PC or others, or they may have their weapon shot out of their hand. A low roll, far from the enemies Dif score might result in a counter attack. Critical Failures, Nat 1, is the only roll where Dmg isn’t dealt.

Because normal attacks always hit, I’ve buffed Skills a bit to give them more benefit. Skills that deal Dmg deal more Dmg and Effects that cause a PC to gain an attack will auto-hit with that attack until the Effect wears off. Still, a major benefit of using a Skill is it auto-hits and PCs automatically avoid negative consequences to failed rolls.

The other major change I made was adding Knocked Out at Max Hits. Instead of instantly dying at Max Hits, you now die at Max Hits+2. A lot of !!Bosses!! can one-shot PCs starting with 3 Hits and hit multiple targets for 2 Hits (PCs start with 3-4 Hits, one Discipline starts with 5 Hits currently.) Crews can get wiped out faster than they can pile up 20+ Hits against the !!Boss!! especially if they ignore any Swarm Threats or Large Threats that accompany them.

This changes the dynamics a little bit from Down We Go or other Together We Go games, but keeps the feeling. In DWG it’s almost necessary to not engage directly in combat with the Boss, and even with many of the encounters. You really have to be clever to best a boss because it’s nearly impossible to rely on Dmg alone to take one out. In Greenhorns you can act a bit more like an action hero. Skills are buffed and LT Weapons have a base of 2 Dmg per shot. It lessens the risk enough for a higher reward of landed attacks and being able to quickly pile up Dmg, but a crewmember, or even a few, can be knocked out every round. Cleverness is still highly rewarded.

In the current Quickstart, Threats and !!Boss!! Hits work really well, but in the current reworking I’m going to be buffing enemy Hits a tad up. I’ve also only gotten playtesting at 3 crewmembers and am tossing around the idea of having optional rules for parties of 5 or 6 that buff up enemy Hits and the number of Swarm Threat Units that spawn. I’ll have to get more people to the table in a single session and workshop it a bit with some fellow game designers to see how it all feels first. Overall, I’m not a big balance guy, but proper lethality in Greenhorns is one thing I really care about.

Spicy Tuna Updates

The synopsis is at the top, but I am elated to have everything for Outsourced at the printers and to have finished my two zine contributions to the Outer Rim Uprising bundle, now in Preorder.

Outsourced is our best looking book yet! I’m so thankful to Evangeline, Christian, Alfred, and Walton for their contributions. I’m really proud of this book. It’s big and has a ton of game play and plug-n-play capabilities in it.

Outer Rim Uprising zines, Knuckles Co and Professional Rebels play so well together and had massive glow ups. I’m stoked with the content in here. So much so I’m highly considering creating a standalone game based on being rebel groups taking out major corporate and imperial threats.

Here is a sneak peek of Knuckles Co and Professional Rebels.

Incorporated illustrations/graphic design is finally picking up. Im very grateful for the patience from my collaborators here as I got slammed Q4 with missing about 4 weeks of work to illness. I now have the direction for all 4 major corps. These designs were done fairly quickly and the final ads and marketing from the corps will be even better. Plus since Gontijo is working in layout already it will be more dynamic than full page illustrations with text on the other page. We have a goal of making this a stunning piece of art on top of all the fantastic writing from Joel Hines, Reece Carter, Diogo Nogueira, Christian Sorrell, and Chris Airiau. All Writing is complete including the 2 adventures so we are sailing clearly until KS launch in April!

Here are the 4 design directions for the major corporations.