Forbidden Lands Core Game is a role playing game published by Free League Publishing. This is the core set for the Forbidden Lands game and setting, described as an open world survival game in which the characters are not heroes but raiders and rogues out for themselves. It’s based on the Year Zero Engine.
The supplement is available in PDF form from DriveThruRPG for $24.99. It is also available as a printed box set from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed, but was purchased at a discount during a sale. The electronic version contains four PDFs.
Player’s Handbook
The Player’s Handbook is a 209-page PDF. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, two the Contents, two the character sheet, one the stronghold sheet and five the Index.
The Introduction starts with a brief overview of the Forbidden Lands, players, the GM and what the characters can do in the land. It mentions the default setting and using the rules to play in other worlds, then the tools used in the game; character sheet, map, stickers, dice and custom cards. Finally, it briefly explains what a role playing game is.
Your Adventurer is on characters. There’s a list of the steps needed to create a player character, which starts with Kin. The Kin are humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings, wolfkin, orcs and goblins. Each is given some descriptive text followed by details on their key attribute, talent, typical professions and typical names.
Following this are professions. Each is given descriptive text, key attribute, skills and typical nicknames, followed by examples of pride, dark secret and relationships. Last is starting equipment. The professions are druid, fighter, hunter, minstrel, peddler, rider, rogue and sorcerer.
Next is Age. There are three different age categories, which have game effects. Each Kin has different ages to be in each category, with the exception of elves who don’t age in the normal way.
There are four Attributes, strength, agility, wits and empathy, and points are divided amongst these. Skills explains the starting skill levels. Talents are tricks and abilities. The points these have to use depend on the character’s age.
Pride, dark secrets and relationships are explained, and so is gear and money. Experience is a fairly abstract system. As well as regular items, they can also be Tiny, Light or Heavy. Tiny items don’t affect encumbrance, Light items take up half a slot and Heavy items take up two slots. Encumbrance is determined through strength and being over encumbered causes problems.
Consumables are items that are consumed regularly and individual units of these are not counted; instead, they have Resource Die that decrease in steps when used up.
Appearance and Name are mentioned then how experience is gained and used to enhance a character.
Reputation is how well known your character is and it can have an effect on how they are reacted to in the Forbidden Lands.
Skills explains how these work by rolling the dice, how to use the custom dice for Forbidden Lands or use normal d6s and how things fail. Rolls can be pushed or modified and group rolls may also be made. Sometimes, rolls may be more difficult or opposed by others. NPCs use skills in the same way and gear can be used to gain benefits. Artefacts can gain larger benefits. Pride may also be used when a sill roll is failed, once per session. Finally, the 16 skills are described.
Talents are tricks and abilities that characters have. They come in three different kinds; kin, profession and general. Each kin has a single talent and these only have one rank. The other talents each have three ranks. Each profession has three different talents associated with it. General talents can be taken by anyone.
Combat & Damage covers the combat system for Forbidden Lands. Some of the combat elements use, fortunately optional, cards that are bought separately. It includes ambushes, melee and ranged combat and social conflict, as well as weapons and damage and how to recover from such. Injuries, conditions and various hazards are also covered.
Magic covers the magic system and starts out explaining how spells are used and detailed; most spells have ingredients, which provide a benefit. There is a table of magical mishaps. The first spells are general spells that can be used by all sorcerers and druids, then there are spells for druids and sorcerers. Spells come in three different levels.
Journeys covers moving around on the map, which is essentially hexcrawling. Movement depends on terrain type and days are divided into quarters when travelling. There are rules on hiking, forced marches and mounts, the person who leads the way and keeping watch. There’s a d66 table of mishaps that can happen when leading the way and rules for foraging, with a d6 table of mishaps. Similarly, there are rules on hunting and fishing including mishaps. Making camp and resting are covered, with d66 tables of mishaps, as well as sleeping, with a d6 table, and brief rules on exploring and sea travel.
The Stronghold is the home base characters can have. This can be repurposed from another location, though there is a d6 table of flaws, or built from scratch. There are game details on the stronghold, including its functions and hirelings. Strongholds that lack guards or upkeep can run into problems, then the various different functions are listed. Each is described, given the requirements, raw materials, tools and time needed to build, effect on reputation and game effect. There are details on hirelings and what benefits they provide, a reference to events and a way of resolving battles at the stronghold.
Gear has details on services, tools, armour, weapons, trade goods, raw materials and animals, as well as how easy they are to obtain and how they can be crafted.
Critical Injuries has tables for different weapon types.
Gamemaster’s Guide
The Gamemaster’s Guide is a 256-page PDF. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, two the Contents and three the Index.
The Gamemaster is the first section and it gives some details on running the game. It explains that the setting, the Forbidden Lands, is full of legends and dangers. Characters will more often become Broken than die, but death can and will happen. There is advice on running the first session, by selecting a point of interest on the map, preparing for sessions and handling non-player characters. The opposition, foes that characters will face, and handling consumables are given and the final section is a d66 table of events at the characters’ stronghold, when they build one.
History starts with a brief overview of the history of the Forbidden Lands before going into it in far more detail, from Year Zero to the present. This section ends with some information on the calendar.
Gods covers the various deities worshipped in the Forbidden Lands, together with the occasional stat block for relevant worshippers.
Kin covers the different inhabitants of the lands. Some of the different peoples have different types, with the differences sometimes cultural, sometimes larger. In a number of cases, sample stats are given. There is a two-page spread that has a map of the Forbidden Lands with the areas where each species can be found marked.
Bestiary has the different creatures that can be encountered. Most of these are monsters, and monsters have an unusual ability; they can perform monster attacks. Each monster has a d6 table of attacks unique to them that they can use. Monsters don’t become weaker when damaged; it is only when they are Broken that they are dead or dying. The different monster stats are covered before each monster is gone into in detail.
Artifacts explains that there are many treasures in the ruins of the Forbidden Lands and artefacts are the most valuable of these. There is a d66 table for rolling for artefacts and the results are gone into in detail. Each has a name, an associated legend, appearance and effects with suggested locations and drawbacks in some cases.
Encounters has a d66 table of encounters divided up by location. The individual encounters are then detailed with some fluff, game details and terrain in which the encounters happen; some encounters can happen in different terrains, others can only happen in one.
Adventure Sites is on creating locations for characters to visit in the Forbidden Lands. There are three categories of sites; villages, castles and dungeons. Most of this chapter consists of tables, divided by adventure site type, for creating the sites, together with creatures, NPCs, treasures and finds.
The Hollows is a sample adventure site, a village. The village is mapped with locations described, background to it is given, random strange events, monsters and NPCs and a series of larger events.
Weatherstone is another adventure site, this one a stronghold. There are hooks for getting the characters to go there, its background and legend, a map of the site, monsters and NPCs and a series of events.
The Vale of the Dead is the final adventure site. Again, there’s background and hooks and the legend, a map with described locations, monsters and NPCs and events.
Legends is a series of handouts for players. There are sixteen pages of handouts and these duplicate the legends found in various places throughout the book in handouts for players.
Legends & Adventures
Legends & Adventures is a 40-page PDF with one page being the front cover. This PDF lacks bookmarks.
It starts with a single page reference guide on how to create an adventurer.
Backstories takes up more than half of the supplement. This is a series of tables for rolling up a random character.
Legend Generator is another series of tables, these for randomly generating legends.
Finally, the Monster Generator is a series of tables for randomly creating monsters.
Forbidden Lands Map and Stickers
This is a two-page PDF. The first page is a hex map of the Forbidden Lands. The second page contains “stickers” – with this being a PDF, they are not actual stickers – that can be applied to the map to mark adventure sites and other locations.
Forbidden Lands Core Game in Review
Both the Player’s Handbook and Gamemaster’s Guide are bookmarked, with major sections linked. Neither Legends & Adventures nor the map are bookmarked; the map doesn’t need them but Legends & Adventures could have used bookmarks. Both the Player’s Handbook and Gamemaster’s Guide also have Contents to a similar level of depth to the bookmarks as well as indices. Navigation is okay but, given the amount of material, could be better. The text primarily maintains a two-column black and white format and appeared to be almost free of errors. There are a variety of black and white illustrations that appear to be custom. Presentation is decent.
In an overview, this is a fantasy RPG of a nature that should be broadly familiar. Characters in Forbidden Lands are not as powerful as they typically are in D&D and derived games. This is also set up more as an exploratory game; it is essentially based around a hex crawl. Characters follow rumours and legends to adventure sites in hexes, deal with what they find there, or possibly die in the process, then travel to another. The stronghold adds a useful home base for characters, as well as what could be considered to be a minigame in developing, running and protecting it.
With a couple of locations already detailed, a GM can start out with the Forbidden Lands, then develop more with the various tables provided, or get additional supplements – Raven’s Purge is frequently referenced, as a number of things in the supplement refer to that campaign. Forbidden Lands is not a particularly low-fantasy setting, as there is quite a bit of magic knocking around, but it’s not a truly high fantasy setting either. Plus, characters are not heroes in the typical RPG sense. Monsters, true monsters, can also be rather more dangerous.
In general, the game should be easy enough to pick up for an experienced player, or even a newcomer. It is less complicated than many games, though it is set up a bit differently which may take a bit of getting used to. Some mechanisms are simplified and new mechanisms are also introduced. This is not, however, a game for players who want their characters to be unstoppable superheroes; it’s a grittier game than that. Forbidden Lands Core Game is an interesting take on the fantasy RPG and it can be found by clicking here.
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