Liminal Ark

I'm working on an adventure using Best Left Buried (Or hacking it?) based in the home setting my brother and I have played for years. The gist is an industrial fantasy setting based on the American West where a theocracy run by dragons has fallen into ruin and caused a schism in the country where disparate factions and city states want to remake it in their own image. You are Damned, people who are buried in debt meaning that they cannot enter heaven and their only way out is to plunder the riches of the golden age within the technomagical hellscape known as the Perdition. Inspired by STALKER, Hunt Showdown, and the Myth (And Death) of the American Dream. Also Late Stage Capitalism. I've decided to begin by creating Bounty Targets; special monsters the Damned will be hunting in the Perdition. So first up, the Burrowing Railbird. Burrowing Railbird A terrestrial bird of prey the size of a large bear who makes its lair out of abandoned saloons and casinos using the remains to dec...

 Best Left Buried Defensive Items Quick one. Currently running a Resident Evil inspired mega-dungeon for my brother and I. His Cryptdiggers have been having a real rough go of it and he was trying to find a way to spend Grip in order to save one of their lives' after a particularly vicious attack but to no avail. I feel bad for these poor souls but I also see an opportunity to try to introduce a cool mechanic I enjoy from the Resident Evil remakes; Defensive Items A defensive item is a special piece of equipment that provides a passive benefit when equipped but can be destroyed to provide a more powerful one for a short time. The take the same amount of slots as a normal item of their type. Shield. Provides +1 Defense when held in your hand. Can be expended to block an attack entirely. Lamellar Cuirass . Functions as Heavy Armor. Expend to deflect an Injury inflicted by a foe. Combat Knife : A Light Weapon that can also be Thrown. When Restrained or Grappled by a creature can be ex...

Best Left Buried: Zones, Props, and Hazards Inspired by Ava Islam's (@yungdumbitch) tweet talking about Monster Manuals and their lack of terrain / environmental pieces that can be dropped into combat encounters I've decided to do some of that work myself using Best Left Buried. However, the subject of the environment is huge with many layers intersecting with adventure design, worldbuilding, and tons of other stuff. What I'm interested in unpacking here will are the parts of the environment we interact with on a regular basis inside of a conflict. For that purpose we use...                                                           ZONES For our purposes Zones are pieces of an environment grouped together by a specific use or theme relative to the scale of the action. A city, a trench, that bookcase and the area ar...

This week instead of working on my dungeon like I was supposed to I've cobbled together something a little weird. Here are a bunch of strange, scary, and cute doggos statted as BLB monsters you can use however you like. Some are probably good guards while others will perform well as special retainers if your players can train them to be good. Adaptation's are taken from the Cryptdigger's Guide and the Hunter's Guide to Monsters unless stated otherwise. Thanks for reading.  Temple Dog Made of stone with a lions face. Though a living creature can hold its breathe for long periods of time while on watch allowing it to become indistinguishable from its surroundings. It's bite causes paralysis and eventually turns one to stone.  Brawn: 1 Wit: 1 Will: 0 Vigour: 15  Armour: 9 Disguise, Petrifying Fangs* Stone Fangs (Hand) Special Adaptation: Petrifying Fangs . As Petrifying Gaze but its range is reduced to Melee. If the Temple Dog inflicts an injury with Stone Fangs can c...

  Rather than another selection of bits and bobs for your Cryptdiggers this week I'd like to opine about the mess I just dragged myself into. That is of course  @pangalactic's  Random Adventure Jam over on Itch.io. The idea behind the jam is to use the Random Adventure Title Generator to get an evocative title and then make an adventure for your system of choice. At first, I had no plans to actually participate in the jam but I am such a sucker for online generators of all types I just had to see what it would give me.  One of the first rolls of the dice gave me the title "Hallowed Halls of the Reptile Gods" which seemed interesting enough until I was struck by a bolt of delightful nostalgia for an old adventure I ran for Pathfinder 2E that was my first experiment running a real dungeon of mostly my own making. "Mazebek's Tomb", as it is known in my hastily scrawled notes, was a large underground cistern that was the prison of an ancient crocodile river ...

Short one this week. Feel kind of tapped creatively due to some real life stressors but I wanted to put something down regardless.  NEW CONDITIONS First up are some conditions that often come up in my games which I just like to have written down since I use them so often. With the addition of cowboy guns and enemies that can wield them OK Corral style fire fights are inevitable so codifying the Cover move was done here as well.  Bleeding (Condition) The creature loses 1 Vigour at the start of their turn. If this damage brings them to 0 Vigour they die.  Paranoid (Condition) Observation checks have the Upper Hand. Grip checks are Against The Odds. Pinned (Condition) Must succeed at a Grip check or else can't move. NEW ACTION Take Cover (Move) Instead of moving to another Zone the Cryptdigger can move behind cover instead. Ranged attacks made against them while they are in cover are Against The Odds. NEW ADVANCEMENTS Hunker Down Advancement Martial / Technical While in Cove...

Behold! Here is a slew of Archetypes you can use to portray Weird West characters in Best Left Buried. Just like before most of this is untested but unlike before I'm fairly certain these are more powerful than the base archetypes so use your own best judgement if using them at your own table. I tried to take the Weird West tropes and modify them a bit to function in a dungeon crawl centric game rather than something more akin to Deadlands. I believe that they succeed for the most part but I'll keep tweaking as my game goes on.  Weird West Archetypes Gambler  Gamblers are hotshots, addicts, and thrill-seekers for whom the cards table was too tame to keep their interest. The only game worth playing now is down in the Crypt where the Monsters play for their lives. Bet The House  Gamblers know the odds always swing back around in their favor eventually. When making a check the Gambler can bet on the result of one of their dice before they roll, if they are correct add the nu...

It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have. - Clint Eastwood Finally got to play more BLB and decided to make a few more injuries related to the Cowboy Guns thing from last week. Though this set is less fantasy I'll be making another one that is full magic bullet sort of stuff later on. In addition, I've made a few Afflictions rolling with the same theme.  Injuries  (D6) Inflicted by the Gun  Lead Poisoning: With head sweltering like a furnace and stomach doing loops the Cryptdigger can hardly keep anything down. The Cryptdigger must succeed at a Brawn check every time they eat, drink, or take Medicine else they vomit it back up losing 1d3 Vigour. Full O' Holes: Their body has survived many wounds and every scar too delicate to hold closed for long. They are always bleeding leaving trails, smudges, and smears of blood everywhere they go. They must pass a Wits check to not leave their mark on anything they touch...

Every time I wade into the catacombs of old school dungeon crawling, regardless of system, inevitably I have to convert or add mechanical bits from my setting to the rules. Since I dabble in a very industrial-fantasy setting the first order of business is usually adding guns to the weapon list. That is, without at the same time invalidating every other weapon on that list. A tall order and to be honest, one I usually mess up. But, as I gear up to wade into Best Left Buried once more I figured it was high time to give it a shot so here's what I ended up with. COWBOY FIREARMS Though not the most creative name Cowboy Firearms are the closest archetypal analogue to the feeling I'm trying to replicate. The guns are very mechanical, heavy, loud, and smelly. Here, even your sniper rifles and shotguns are six-shooters in disguise. With that in mind I needed mechanics that help sell that vision. Something more Hunt; Showdown then Red Dead Redemption. (Those are video games. It's fin...

It's the hottest day of the year... While melting slowly into my chair today on what seems to be the start of a harsh heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest I was thinking about stories which involve the hottest day of the year trope. Everyone in these stories are exhausted, agitated, and slick with sweat making what ever ordeal they are already going through that much worse. The heat wave is a more sinister version of the more in your face disaster like a hurricane or tornado but eats away at you slowly instead of an explosion of escalating misery. So what's that got to do with RPGs? THE HEAT WAVE Beyond its aesthetic a heat wave can be used as a motivator, a hazard, or even a character all its own in your story. In addition to mechanical ways mentioned here keep in mind that the heat wave is just as powerful as just another layer on top of the current setting. Take care to describe the liminal haze of the crossroads. The odor of rancid sweat or herds of grazing animals. The ...