RPG Review - Forbidden Lands
This review comes from a GM perspective after running 6 sessions in a West Marches campaign. The campaign is still ongoing so my opinion of Forbidden Lands is subject to change.
Quick overview for those unfamiliar with the setting of Forbidden Lands
Forbidden Lands is a dark fantasy RPG with a focus on exploration. The rules are based on Free League's Mutant Year Zero. For the past 300 years the Ravenland has suffered from a blood mist that would kill anyone caught in it. People would lock themselves in their homes and never travel more than half a day away from town. As the blood mist would come out at night killing anyone instantly. Suddenly, the blood mist stopped appearing and folks are able to travel away from their homes. It has been 5 years since the disappearance of the blood mist and the lands are there to rediscover its secrets.
I find the the setting interesting and it leaves the door wide open to allow personal interpretation or injection. There is an emphasis on how untamed the land is after 300 years. Which is perfect for how I've been pushing to my players that exploration should be a focus. Which does carry over to some of the rules of the game. The players are mechanically rewarded more if they explore hex's that they have not explored yet.
Thoughts on the rules and character creation
The core of the ruleset is based off Free League's Mutant Year Zero. Using these rules, Forbidden Lands is Free League's answer to the OSR movement. Forbidden Lands uses a dice pool system built off the stats of your character sheet. Hit a 6 or above on any of the die and you succeed at your task. Difficulty comes more from a lack of levels in a skill or a low attribute score. There are ways that the GM could say the dice pool is modified as well. In VTT I would ask my players to add a negative or positive number to the 'Modifier' when making a roll.
There is the usual setup that you may expect from a fantasy setting. Dwarves, Elves, Half-elf, Humans and Halflings. These are called Kin in Forbidden Lands. There are also the option for playing as Orcs, Goblins, and Wolfkin. Each with their own bonuses called Kin Talents. Each Kin Talent is thematic to the Kin. Like Goblin being the only Kin to see well in the dark. Speaking of, how is it making a character? The player's handbook does a good job of holding the Player's hand in creating a character. I didn't have any issue with hand hold the book provides. The step by step process was methodic and went well. There is an option for a more random approach as well which none of my player's opted for.
For our session 0 we went over character creation and expectation. I have noticed that there was *not* a lot of discussion on roles or builds. Which was refreshing compared to the more popular RPGs out there. But also, I think this was where things turned a little poorly from the lack of communication. Many of my players opted for more specialized roles. Mainly filling in combat roles. I do remember trying to emphasis that exploration is the goal here, and taking skills during character creation that led to better chances of successfully navigating the wilds will be a stronger approach. Or at least be more general in the character creation so it would be easier to fill roles if a party formed that was all combat oriented.
I struggle with knowing how to word understanding the rules of a game. Even GMing this game, it mostly boiled down to knowing the nuances of combat maneuvers and travelling. General skill rolls are fine. Reminds me of playing more popular games. The combat is a bit more tactical and many of the things players are able to do or not do is up to the current fiction. I find players are not using half of their toolkit. Either due to a lack of understanding, or a failure on my part. This is also, in my opinion, the ruleset slows the game down the most. When damage is taken to an attribute, it lowers the dice pool that uses that attribute. So when a players takes one or two hits to their strength, all of a sudden they are either not standing or struggling to land any hits. A big criticism would be that this games death spirals really fast. Thankfully this is only temporary as all attributes heal fully after a night's rest. But, as a GM, I can tell my players are having a rough time with this.
Other bits
If you only purchase the core box set, you are pretty much set. The Players handbook has everything that the players may want. The GM book has a lot of setting information and lore, if utilized, is a very powerful tome.
I think if the GM or party feels that things are getting a little stale, I would highly recommend Book of Beasts. It adds a new bestiary and new encounter tables that I think any group would enjoy. I haven't used this much but I'm keeping it around to try out the solo rules some day.
I can safely say that nothing felt rushed, I haven't noticed any errors, I have one of the later printings so it has gone through a few rounds of errata. If you care for reading lore, there is plenty in the GM book, that would be the biggest lull is getting sessions ready.
Layout is abysmal. I strongly feel that these books need to be reformatted to neatly fit tables and important information that can be easily accessible. Trying to find clarification on hunting rules can slow down exploration, and feels unnecessarily wordy for what it is you're trying to do. I do struggle with feeling like the bestiary is incomplete. This feeling is due to how the GM book formats NPC stats in the middle of a lore dump. A simple table to include all the NPC adversaries would make quickly looking up what stats the Roka Orcs have would be much more convenient. Another situation where the VTT does a good amount of heavy lifting.
Quality wise, I think these are the best books I have on my shelf in terms of production quality. The paper is thick with a pleasant texture. Very well done stitch binding so you could put these books through the ringer if you wanted to. The faux leather should hold up for a long time and the hard cover is solid with no warping. The cover foiling though, is already starting to degrade. Personally I'm ok with this, books are meant to be used and if that means fancy letter foiling needs to fall off then I'm OK with that.
Personal thoughts
If any of my players are reading this, please know that I am not intending to stop running the campaign. There are certain aspects that I feel I need to homebrew to make it work with our table.
Okay but for my thoughts. I think its a good system for those coming from 5e or are familiar with other Free League games. This game is supposed to invoke OSR style of play, which in my opinion fails to do so. Exploration has too many rolls that players need to worry about. Combat leads to death spirals that make it hard for players to get out of. I find that there is a heavy reliance on the VTT to quickly look up information. Books could be better formatted. At table play would be quite slow as the amount of nuance to understand slows the pacing down.
Even though I have been critical, I do have positives that I want to take away. Encounters in the GM book are interesting and can lead to their own adventures. The search for artifacts can be treated as their own special quests or small adventures. I do really like that gear has its own modifier that can go down over time. It gives me similar vibes to Mausritter where gear breaks down and needs to be replaced or repaired. I think the stronghold management is well done. It helps keep Player Characters broke and they send out hirelings to gather resources. I haven't gone over the Stronghold mechanics much as we have yet to explore that aspect of Forbidden Lands. It leaves a really nice meta progression shared between all the players that can reflect their progress. I do think this has been under utilized so I'll try to push my players to build it out more. I did say that this game does death spiral, it does capture that feeling of combat really must be a fail state. Even being critically injured can have permanent effects that can change the choices your character will make.
TLDR; I think Forbidden Lands has its issues but its okay.
I do hope you enjoy reading my little review of Forbidden Lands. Blogging is new to me so I hope I wasn't rambling too much. I'll try to post at most bi-weekly. And if I can help it, weekly with a review or some other thoughts that I have bouncing around.