Let's Read Best Left Buried, part 1

Best Left Buried is a short-ish ~17,000 word game by @jellymuppet, who blogs here http://soulmuppet.blogspot.com/

It's an OSR RPG very much focused on the dungeoncrawl, i.e. no wilderness or stronghold-building rules.



The full game is $6.50 on OBS. A free sample (Chapter 2: Making a Character) is here . The author is also working on an expanded edition that includes more Advancements for high-level PCs, and more GM-facing rules and random tables.

The mechanics are similar to Maze Rats, except with much heavier player-character customisation, thankfully without complicated talent trees. The sorts of numbers the engine spits out also look well-suited for kitbashing with PbtA games, and the Grip subsystem feels pretty storygamey.

Basically, the author, like me, is someone who fell into the OSR after starting with 5th edition. This game is an interesting example of cross-pollination, and it's worth looting for ideas, particularly if you want to run an OSR game but all your players expect character generation/level-up rules that are nonrandom, customisable, and have no "dead levels". It's certainly prompted me to rethink my Knave hack (see last post) that adjusts the system to be closer to 5e D&D.

(still working on that, btw. I have a list of cantrip-items I'm editing)

It's also entirely d6-based, though some rolls call for a d3.

Layout-wise, it's black-and-white, some nice evocative art, simple 2-column layout, the font size is large enough to print and fold into a booklet. The game is still a bit rough around the edges. There are some typos, unclear wordings, nothing too major.
So let's take a look!

Basic Mechanics

But first, I have to cover some of the basic mechanics. TBH this is one of the weaknesses of the book, it's not structured in a way that makes sense reading cover-to-cover, and I found myself having to jump ahead to contextualise what, say, a Heavy weapon critting on a 5 or 6 means. This also limits the utility of the free preview chapter.

There are three main Stats, Brawn, Wit and Will. Their starting range is +0 to +3.

Each character also has a pool of Vigour (i.e. HP) and Grip, a "coagulated mix of stamina, mana, and sanity". Vigour recovers with rest as you'd expect, but Grip is harder to recover. Downtime outside the dungeon recovers at *most* 1 Grip, in practice Grip will be recovered by *voluntarily* taking a Consequence (i.e. a Madness or Injury). You die/retire at 0 Grip. At 0 Vigour, you have equal odds of dying immediately or surviving with Consequences.

There is an optional rule that cuts out this "take Consequences to recover Grip" subsystem, if you happen to find it distasteful or just too storygamey for your liking. Under that rule, Grip just regenerates with a daily rest.

You can spend Grip to reroll dice, force enemies to reroll dice, to cast spells, or activate other character powers like a battle frenzy or an inspiring song. It can also be depleted by witnessing horrible monsters or events.

The most common roll is the Stat Check: roll 2d6 + Stat, trying to equal or beat a target score of 9. This target score never changes, instead difficulty is modeled by an advantage/disadvantage mechanic.

Observation Checks (corresponding to 5e D&D's Perception, Investigation, and Insight) are a bit of an exception. They have no associated Stat, so are just rolled on 2d6.

The other oddball is the Grip Check. This is just a type of Will Check, but some Archetype features specifically care about them, and they have special consequences for success (gain 1 XP) or failure (lose a point of Grip)

Initiative Rolls are d3 + Wit + modifiers from weapon or armour.

An Attack Roll uses three d6, and the armor score ranges from 7 to 11. The attacker chooses two dice to add together, along with the relevant Stat, and compare to the armor score. If it's a hit, the remaining die result is the damage dealt, which may be modified by weapon type. If the modified damage die is a 6, it's a Critical Hit and the target takes an Injury. If no pair of dice would result in a hit, the attack misses.

This does mean that on a roll of, say, 4, 5, 6, the attacker has leeway in deciding which dice to hit with, and how much damage to deal. This has some niche applications.

There's an advantage/disadvantage mechanic called The Upper Hand and Against the Odds. Unlike 5e D&D, multiple sources do stack, and they cancel each other out on a one-for-one basis. i.e. if there are three reasons why The Upper Hand applies to a roll, and one thing that's Against the Odds, it comes out to 2 instances of The Upper Hand. There's some complexities to the way they stack that I'll cover later.

Combat is structured pretty similarly to 5e D&D. Everyone rolls initiative at the start and gets ordered highest to lowest. There's no 5' grid, the terrain is broken up into zones much like The Black Hack or Fate Core. When your turn comes up you can move up to one zone and perform an action. Monsters have similar stats to PCs. A list of monster abilities is provided, but no actual monster writeups, as they're intended to be bespoke horrors unknown to the players.

There's a simple XP system to level up, though which tasks grant XP, and how much, is left to the GM to decide. Levelling up gives +1 Vigour, +1 Grip, and a new Advancement. Advancements are generally powerful, so characters *will* get more capable but not much more resilient, and they're always circling the Grip drain.

As the game says, "The Crypt will take you in, make you rich and powerful and then destroy you."

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1 is brief at two pages, first an opening crawl and then an introduction. The crawl's prose is a *little* purple, but together they set the theme of the game and the general design goals -- to be short, low in mechanical complexity but still have PC customisation, make decisions have costs that can't be trivially recovered from (i.e. no getting everything back with a long rest, and definitely no resurrection), model the inevitable physical and mental debilitation of anyone foolish enough to dungeoncrawl, and to have bespoke monsters the players don't already know how to fight.

Chapter 2: Making a Character

This is the longest chapter in the book, covering all aspects of character generation (Stats, Archetype, Equipment) other than the list of Advancements.

Despite old grognards being the likely audience for this game, the chapter opens with advice on how to come up with a memorable character who will be a proactive agent in the game world. It's good advice -- it's better to learn the easy way rather than the hard way that a moody loner with no connections to the world just isn't actually that fun to play.

Players assign +0, +1 and +2 in any order to their character's three Stats, Brawn, Wit and Will. If these modifiers seem small, remember a Stat Check is made on 2d6, not d20.

Brawn covers everything you'd expect Strength or Constitution to do. Wit includes social charms, stealth, thievery, and quick/lateral thinking. Will covers spellcasting, intuition and knowledge.

As mentioned above, Observation rolls have no associated stat. I like this decision, it allows everyone to try to scout, search for traps, dig through the corpse's clothes for clues.

Characters start with Vigour equal to 6 + Brawn, and Grip equal to 4 + Will.

They choose an Archetype from the 10 provided, which are like your background or race choice in 5e D&D (currently the game is humans-only).

They also start with one Advancement, which are this game's feats/talents/class features. The next chapter lists all 30 of them TBH calling them "Advancements" is counterintuitive when you start with one (though I guess you could start at 0th level), and the word *may* be similar enough to Archetype to cause player confusion. Playtesting would figure out this kind of stuff.

When you level up, you get another Advancement, and +1 Vigour and Grip. Your Brawn, Wit, and Will never improve, unless you take certain Advancements that increase them by 1.

That's right, unlike typical OSR games, this has entirely nonrandom character generation & level-up. Now I love random chargen, but it's not to everyone's taste, and if you worry about players cheating it means chargen has to be done at the table. It's not hard to *make* chargen random if so desired. And don't worry, there are random tables for determining what horrible things happen to characters during play.

Also unlike a typical OSR game, starting characters are more bulky and competent. On average they'll take 2 hits to reduce to 0 Vigour, and even then have a 50% chance of survival. Spending Grip to force enemies to reroll makes combat more surviveable, though not without long-term cost. Compare to a 1st-level Basic D&D or Maze Rats character, who really ought to avoid combat whenever possible. This is more of that 5e influence creeping in.

Archetypes

The 10 Archetypes are Believer, Cabalist, Cut-throat, Dastard, Everyman, Freeblade, Outcast, Protagonist, Scholar, and Veteran. Protagonist is your "Chosen One" sort of character, while Everyman is a loose catchall that requires some GM approval for their abilities.

Most of these grant two beneficial features, and one penalty. In a touch that I rather like, they only confer abilities at 1st level, and they don't restrict characters' Advancement choices. In fact, none of the archetypes have spellcasting -- all spells are handled via Advancement selection. There are also no weapon/armor proficiency rules, so a Scholar can don plate armour and a greatsword just fine.

Most Archetype abilities are either:
* a virtual point of Grip that refreshes daily but can only be used in thematically appropriate situations,
* having The Upper Hand (or Against the Odds) in similar niche situations
* starting with an Injury or Insanity.

Each Archetype has a shortlist of suggested Advancements, but again there's total freedom to pick "crossclass" Advancements, and the suggestions are more about reinforcing the archetype's theme than any mechanical synergy.

There are no rules for races, though the author is thinking about how to model them, and is leaning towards a custom Archetype. I'd go the other route and "lock" their starting Advancement to a custom one unavailable to other characters, and put a restriction on how they can order their stats. For example, a Goblin might have "Can eat anything organic" and "cannot start with Brawn higher than Wit".

Equipment

Each character starts with 2 weapons, basic armour, rations, torches, and 5 pieces of equipment picked from a list. This list includes typical adventuring gear, but also extra ammunition, shields, and plate armour.

There are no encumbrance rules here, a note in Chapter 4 basically leaves it to common sense.

There are also no prices -- this is a game about dungeoncrawling, not shopping.

Weapons are divided into 6 broad categories:

• Hand weapons are your typical one-handed swords and axes, use Brawn to attack, and can be wielded 2-handed for +1 damage.
• Heavy weapons *must* be wielded 2-handed (for the same +1 damage), impose an initiative modifier of -1, but critical-hit on a damage roll of 5 or 6.
• Light weapons cannot be wielded two-handed, but are finesse weapons, attacking with Wit instead of Brawn.
• Long weapons are your reach weapons, i.e. can attack into the next Zone, but have an initiative modifier of -1. Like hand weapons, they can be wielded in one or both hands, so spear-and-shield is thankfully supported by the rules.
• Throwing weapons can also attack from one Zone away, can use either Wit or Brawn, but have -1 damage when used in melee. Also don't worry, if one of your starting weapon choices is a throwing weapon you actually get three of them to throw.
• Ranged weapons use Wit, are always two-handed (with no damage bonus), can attack from up to 5 zones away, but attack Against the Odds when used in melee.

There are no rules for two-weapon fighting beyond the suggestion that a main-gauche be treated as a shield, but as there are no rules for encumbrance or cost, *attacking* with twin axes or something can just be treated as wielding the one axe in both hands.

Some guidance for modelling exotic weapons like whips, and optional rules for gunpowder weapons, then follow. The latter are more in the vein of Lamentations of the Flame Princess than, say, gunslingers from Pathfinder or 5e -- you won't be reloading matchlock muskets in the middle of combat.

Unarmored characters have an armour score of 7. Basic Armour, which everyone starts with, gives +1 armour. Plate gives +2 armour but -1 Initiative, and requires at least +2 Brawn to wear. A Shield gives +1 armour but occupies a hand.

One rules issue here: Basic Armour says it doesn't prevent characters from casting spells, while Plate Armour doesn't clarify either way. Since spells are no different from any other other Grip-fueled Advancement, and refluffing of Advancements is encouraged, I assume spellcasting in plate armour is OK, and the note under Basic Armour is intended for people coming from games where magic-users must be unarmoured.

Finally, there's the suggestion that you should roll up two backup characters so you're ready to go when your character inevitably dies. There's also some brief discussion about the assumed campaign trajectory and source of replacement PCs -- low-level characters are part of a large cryptdigging company camped near the dungeon entrance. They're the expendable scouts, but if they survive and level up they'll take on more leadership & logistics responsibilities, including recruiting new expendable scouts.



Next time, Chapters 3 and 4: Advancements and Playing the Game!