A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Forbidden Rules

Forbidden Rules by Robert J. Schwalb is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is a collection of new optional rules for the system.

This is a 36 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $8, as a print on demand softcover for $17 or as both PDF and softcover for $17. It is also available in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed, although it was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter, one page the Table of Contents, two pages are the Index and one page is an ad.

The few paragraphs of the Introduction explain that the rules are generally more complex ones that were rejected from the core rules in order to keep the basic game simple, yet with the ability to become more complex. This supplement contains options that didn’t make it into the core that can be used to tweak the game, although users should pick and choose because the rules will not all work together.

Die Rolls has new ways of using dice. Cooperation allows characters to work together on a task. Boons and banes can be static and cancel each other out and damage can be consistent. Attack rolls can be replaced by challenge rolls. Players can make all the rolls. d20s can be replaced with 3d6 rolls producing a bell curve. Critical success and failure can also be changed.

Corruption has some new Marks of Darkness with reference to The Hunger in the Void and alternative marks found in Exquisite Agony and Ghosts in Machines.

Fortune Points replaces Fortune in a way that can lead to a more heroic game.

Damage-Reducing Armour means that armour prevents a portion of damage coming through. It is said to be most difficult to calculate for creatures.

Wounds replaces damage with wounds.

Simplified Death and Dying has an instant death variant and rules on being incapacitated.

Variant Healing has a new spell and options for healing

Social Combat is a new way of running social interactions.

Combat has alternative falling damage and variants for replacing the turn system in the core book with initiative, both team and individual. There are some new actions and a rule on using two weapons.

Abstract Combat is a replacement combat system. That in the core book is intended to work with both those who use miniatures and those who don’t. This section has rules intended to work solely without miniatures by, as the title suggests, making combat abstract. This requires ways of interpreting spells with areas of effect, weapons with ranges and other matters.

Chases has some rules on dealing with these, including rounds, turns, actions and impeding others.

Character Creation starts with the idea of random attributes by ancestry, first introduced in Only Human, with some ways of modifying these based on ancestry.

Skills replaces the looser idea of professions with more tightly-focused skills; professions have broad ideas as to what a character is capable of whereas skills are much more tightly defined.

New Novice Path: Adept is a magic-using path different to the magician or priest; it lacks the focus of the former or the religious aspects of the latter.

Simplified Armour divides armour into four basic types and lessons the penalties for the heavier armours.

Simplified Weapons divides weapons into general categories; the specific form of the weapon can then be agreed on.

Variant Magic: Power Points is an extensive section on replacing Power with Power Points. It’s extensive because there are a lot of changes that need to be made to such as paths, items and spells to accommodate this.

Downtime has extensive tables on what could happen to characters between adventures. After the type of event is rolled, the particular one is then determined. Good, bad, weird and indifferent things can happen, with the fourth being the most common. Death is a possible outcome, but there are suggestions around that – create a new character, come back with insanity or use the revenant and vampire ancestries from Tombs of the Desolation.

Beyond Level 10 is the final bit and it is designed for characters to continue beyond level 10. Normally, at this point, characters would retire from adventuring and go on to do other things, often running organisations (although in Shadow of the Demon Lord there is a good chance that the world will have been destroyed at this point). This section has a new Legendary path, the Paragon, to continue adventuring from this point.

Forbidden Rules in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked, with major sections and subsections linked. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth and is also hyperlinked. The Index covers more areas and it, too, is hyperlinked. Navigation is very good. This is not a huge supplement but there are a lot of different sections, so good navigation is important. The text maintains a two column colour layout and appeared to be free of errors. There are a variety of colour illustrations, up to around half a page in size. Presentation is very good.

This is a collection of optional rules and therefore does not look that coherent – mostly because it isn’t. Instead, this is a grab-bag of different and optional rules to pick and choose from – and choosing none is of course an option, but would make the supplement pretty irrelevant.

No group will, or even can, use everything in the supplement, and most will probably only use a few things. In some ways, this could be considered to be a collection different house rules (there have been a few collections like this over the years; some of the Rolemaster Companions spring to mind). With it likely that only a few parts of the supplement will actually be used, this is more of a luxury supplement than anything – there are other supplements that will prove far more universally useful and usable. Still, it’s an interesting collection of optional rules. Forbidden Rules can be found by clicking here.