Interest check / looking for game: Forbidden Lands

I recently came across Forbidden Lands, an open-world survival RPG from Free League Publishing, where players are not heroes sent on missions dictated by others - instead, you are raiders and rogues bent on making your own mark on a cursed world. You will discover lost tombs, fight terrible monsters, wander the wild lands and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend. I've never actually played it, but it looks interesting and I'd love to give it a try.

There is a trailer available here and even a free quickstart available here and in the Free League website, with most of the rules. It uses a Year Zero Engine, like most of their RPGs.

Looking for a game
Please DM me if there is an open spot in your Forbidden Lands's game here in Gamersplane. =)

Interest check
I am not ready to start this game, but I may be in a few weeks if there is interest. Just note that there will be no one to hold your hand and show you where to go in the Forbidden Lands. It is up to you and the other players to decide where you are going, together. The GM will let you make fantastic discoveries and face tough challenges, but in the end the stories of the game are created by you, they are not written down beforehand. You have control over your adventurers’ lives and, one day, the fate of all of the Forbidden Lands.

For me to GM that, I’d like to play no more slowly than 3 posts a week, and ask players to keep to that pretty reliably (or let me know if things get tight IRL). I would also like to try it with a smaller group (2 or 3 people max) who already know/play well with each other and are willing to sign up together. I believe that this way they will probably have no problem exercising their agency and using the system to engage the game world.

I believe the quickstart contains everything interested players need to play, but I have the complete books and would be more than willing to assist players with character generation using direct messages and on-demand explanations on a case-by-case basis if there is interest in that.

The game forum would probably be public and this game would explicitly welcome friends from all groups.

Talk me out of this! =D

Hey! Would you use the stronghold rules too?

Sure! Its part of the core game and I love sandbox =)

I have the main rule book. I am running 2 dragonbane games which runs a similar game mechanic.

So I am willing to play or even gm a game. I would have to read up to get ready to play it though.

The game sounds like a fun struggle. I'd be down to play.

Hi! I'm a fan of Year Zero Engine(I like the reference dokument the most:)) and games based on it + was looking for FL game for sooo long. So that would be perfect for me to join a game of it:) And it's even better that it will start not now, but later. I've read the rules carefully so shouldn't have any problems with them or even be able to help others if there would be such need.

I like active games, so most time it would be no problem for me to 3+ or 5 post per week, but I don't play at weekends.

I'm also for going with smaller, but dedicated group.

Especially as for my experience here on GP with one hexcrawl game and reading some more: it looked like there is a problem in PbP format with making decisions by players - as with sandbox there are many decisions to make and not enough possibility to discuss with slow format. I think some sandbox games die out because of that. Do you have any good idea how to handle it?

I was thinking about it, and considered making turns(1-2 real time weeks?) for players to hold a position of leaders that can make a decisions for the group? But I'm still not sure about it.

Besides do you plan to use any of the official or not campaigns? If someone would GM it I would consider buying with my own money this campaign that takes place in snowy land for our group. Forgot it's name right now:)

I was planing to run a game of FL some day in the future, but probably not any time soon. But there is still such possibility for me if the interest would be very high.

I actually don't have any good ideas. I was thinking about this too... Yours is a good suggestion, I thought about that as well, but I didn't propose something along these lines because this rotation could be problematic or could seem artificial if the specific group doesn't need it.

So I guess this interest check thread can help me talk about it with the community and interested players. =)

I think my preferred solution involves this smaller group (2-3 max) of players who already know each other/play well with each other and are willing to sign up together, deciding among themselves. Being a smaller group, they could probably enjoy the roleplay or even use face-to-face, Discord or other messaging tools in deciding how to proceed if OOC talk is necessary. There's not even a need to have the GM in it or maybe the GM is just an occasional participant.

What do you think?

I never played the game before... But from reading the core books and paying close attention to the odds, winters and snow seems brutal. A whole group could easily be killed by that. =D

The Bitter Reach campaign sounds interesting. =) I don't have that and would be willing to GM it, but only after I finish one or two shorter adventures played as a GM or player, to get a better feeling for the setting and the rules.

Sounds very interesting I would be interested.

Yes, I think if there would be (smaller) group of players that really know for what they have come to this game - it should work. And I'm all for RPing of making decision in-character, I always try to do it this way, seams more interesting and natural. So maybe players themselves should choose their leader i.e. for the duration of single journey/trek and then change. Besides as far as I understand the rules the roles in the journey procedure provide each player with some decisions that only they can make - so maybe in FL case the issue would be much smaller? But in the end of the day someone should decide if we go i.e. through the valley or through the mountains in our current journey. Or there should be odd number of players so voting in the poll would always work? :)

Yeah, Bitter Reach sound to me mighty interesting too... so I would like to experience it as player, but maybe someday(being less busy IRL or having less games) I will GM the first campaign here, so others could GM Bitter Reach when we will change places :)

I am willing to run it. Tomorrow I will put in an order for the game and a campaign book as I was already planning on buying it at some point. I will start reading through the rulebook again.

If someone else want to run it I am fine with it though I wouldn't mind be a player then.

If we want a quicker start, I will read the quick start and we can run that while I get the campaign books and read through them.

I won't be able to set anything up till tomorrow when I am not at work.

Prepare for the death spiral. ;)

Nice!

I would love to play in your game, if possible, and then I may even GM a couple of homebrew adventures to keep things novel for you as a player. We can do that in sequence or, if we go for a longer campaign and you want to play as well, in parallel. =)

2 games are better than 1, right? =D

I want to thank you for giving me the final excuse to buy the forbidden lands rpg.

So I have coming in the mail (PDFS are already downloaded).
Forbidden lands core boxed set
Quickstart
GM screen
Forbidden lore map and stickers
FL card deck
Custom dice (who doesn't like themed dice)
Book of beasts
Raven purge campaign
Bitter Reach campaign
Blood march campaign
Blood march map and cards

I would have gotten the players handbook and another copy of the bitterreach map set but they are OOS for the US.

I say this because so far any game I have ordered from them has been well done. I also have all the Dragonbane and Twilight 2000 rpgs material as I think this is becoming my favorite game company.

I would kill Ok, maim for a chance to get in on a Forbidden Lands game.

I'm just coming back to GP after a RL hiatus due to work and more. Like Viking1031 I've really come to like aa LOT of what Free League has put out. I too have all the T2K stuff since I backed the original KS and recently got the hardcopies of all the Walking Dead Universe RPG stuff.

I haven't gotten around to any of the FL in physical form yet, but mostly due to not having a group locally. :)

Ok I am reading through the rules, I am impressed that the quick start is 150 pages long which is most of the players handbook.

I would say if you want to play start reading that except for the adventure.

One interesting thing I forgot about with Forbidden Lands. If you purchase the Core rules on DTRPG it includes an additional booklet:
It looks like the tables on it can help randomly generate a character’s background from scratch if you have absolutely no idea about the world and it’s people and places.

I'll ride or die with you all.

(St)Rider is my favorite class

I don't want anyone thinking I forgot. I am about a 1/3rd of the way through the rules and I will open up a game soon. The only issue is right now I have my store's inventory July 1st and as the manager I will be very busy getting it ready. So my posting time is going to be limited and erratic as well is my time to read and prepare a game. So never fear I will be running a game it is just going to take a little more time so I ask for patience. I am also trying to figure out how many players and it looks like 2-4 mostly likely 2 or 3.

I am also still preparing some adventure sites and NPCs and won't be able to GM a Forbidden Lands game for a couple of weeks. But fear not, between my game and Viking's there will probably be 4-6 slots in total, so even though we seem to be aiming for smaller games, more people will be able to experience this setting =)