Today we want to talk about Forbidden Lands with this review. First of all we want to thank Free League for providing us with the PDFs of the core set to try it out. On the official store you can find the Forbidden Lands Core Boxed Set for 398 crowns, just over 39 euros. A wide range of accessories is available to further customize your sessions.
Forbidden Lands is a very special game. Look ahead to 2019: at the Ennie Awards it nabbed two golds (Best Production Values and Best Cartography) and two silvers (Best Rules and Product of the Year). Major achievements for a game that has been beloved since its debut on the shelves.
Review of the Handbooks of Forbidden Lands
What are we talking about? Forbidden Lands is a bundle of two manuals. The Player’s Manual contains everything you might need for a quick immersion into the game. The Gamemaster’s Guide goes deeper, giving the GM all the tools to handle the behind-the-scenes of the game. In the Core Boxed Set you’ll also find the Legends & Adventures booklet. But most importantly, a full-color map, complete with stickers to customize it. We’ll see what they’re for in a bit.
Forbidden Lands is a game suspended between two worlds. On the one hand it meets many of the requirements of OSR games, the Old School Reinassance that reminds of the early days of role-playing games. So we have a style strongly focused on exploration, dry mechanics, deadly fights and many, many tables for a strong randomness. All features very dear to those who love the “old school“.
Joining Link
On the other hand we have very innovative game design solutions. The engine is the Year Zero Engine, which Free League launched with Mutant: Year Zero. But that has made famous with Vaesen, Alien, Coriolis and others. A system that with a few changes adapts to any setting, strict but not too much punitive. And with the mechanics of the “pushed roll” allows players to challenge fate, facing greater risks in order to complete their action.
Forbidden Lands is a bridge between old and new also from the artistic point of view. Already from the cover recalls fantasy illustrations of the ’80s, a “Frazetta style” without too many muscles, to be clear. The internal (black and white) artwork recall the images of the manuals of the same period. They are deliberately retro but they also maintain a certain plasticity that does not make them seem automatically “old”. An excellent work that recalls a precise style of game, without looking dated.
Review of the Forbidden Lands’ Player’s Manual
The Player’s Manual starts with a good introduction to the role-playing game, and then goes right into the mechanics. Forbidden Lands makes things clear right away. This game is not meant to play heroes, but explorers, adventurers looking for luck. Who are willing to risk as much as their players. In addition, it is not a game that requires much planning, just let the adventure proceed, deciding from time to time what kind of challenges to submit to the group and letting the dice and the appropriate tables give them a shape.
A distinctive trait of the Year Zero Engine is in fact in the management of the game. The map is built as you play, populating it with prepared challenges; this is what the stickers are for. There are also the rules for building the headquarters of the characters, a safe place where to return between one adventure and another.
Character Building
The manual then continues with the character options, which are pretty classic.
Among the races (Kin) to choose from, there are humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs and goblins. The “standard” of fantasy imagery, with the addition of wolfkin, wolf-headed humanoids with feral instincts.
The same goes for the classes (Profession), which allow you to choose between Druid, Fighter, Hunter, Minstrel, Rider, Rogue and Sorcerer; the first and last are the only ones able to use magic. Again, very classic, except perhaps for the addition of the Peddler.
Both Kin and Professions allow access to exclusive talents, in addition to the more generic ones.
Mechanics and Hazards
The mechanics of the Year Zero Engine are very simple. You roll a pool of d6s equal to the sum of your characteristic (one of Strength, Agility, Intellect, and Empathy) and skill scores, plus those given by your equipment. Every 6 is a success, and usually one is enough to succeed in the test. In case the result rolled is not enough, you can “push“. Roll the dice that did not get a 6 or a 1, but in this case each ace inflicts damage to the characteristic used.
This is a system that allows the player to choose the destiny of his character, risking to get more glory. Note that in this way you get Willpower points, which allow you to use the spells, divided by magic schools accessible to either the Druid or the Sorcerer.
The rules are quite rich, especially for combat, but never confusing. It is very easy to follow the game, and the consultation in case of memory lapses is very practical. Especially important are the tables of critics, at the end of the manual. When a characteristic score reaches zero, the character is “broken“. If the attribute is Strength or Intellect, this leads to a critical wound, which can have lethal consequences.
Review of the Forbidden Lands’ Gamemaster’s Guide
The Gamemaster’s Guide focuses, as the title suggests, on the aspects that affect the narrator. The introductory chapter is full of suggestions, valid for any role-playing game but especially for the experience that Forbidden Lands wants to convey.
Then we move on to the setting. In the Player’s Manual, it is deliberately outlined in brief. The blood mist, the deadly mist that rose every night from the ground, has disappeared very recently, allowing again to travel. The characters are therefore part of the first generation of explorers for a very long time. This also justifies the very little knowledge that players have of the setting.
This obviously does not apply to the Game Master, who finds in the dedicated guide all the history and background of the setting. Together with an in-depth study of the various gods and habits of the various folks (playable and not); it also provides all the tools for an appropriate framework for the adventures of the party.
A Table for Every Situation
The Gamemaster’s Guide proceeds with a useful bestiary and a mandatory section dedicated to magic items, here called artifacts. The remaining one hundred pages are entirely dedicated to the construction of encounters and locations, using an impressive amount of tables that allows you to face a game session with a very minimal preparation. A vague idea and a few dice rolls allow every Game Master to manage the adventure of the day in a perfectly satisfactory way.
For those who want more depth, three example adventures are presented. Three locations with background, adventure ideas, NPCs and significant events. Useful both to have something ready to play and to get an idea of how the Forbidden Lands style of play should be handled.
Concluding the Review of Forbidden Lands
Altogether, the Player’s Manual and Gamemaster’s Guide offer more than five hundred pages of material. Free League has accustomed us to very high standards, and it absolutely does not disappoint us here. It was not at all easy to combine a dynamic, almost cinematic system like the Year Zero Engine (full of very modern gimmicks) with a playing style close to OSR. Forbidden Lands succeeds, becoming a reference point for those who want to recover certain suggestions without having the feeling of taking a step backwards.
A product rich and polished in every aspect, a game that is absolutely worth trying to get lost in a whole new world to explore. It is not just recommended: it is HIGHLY recommended.