Jun 24, 2024 6:14 pm
The fate of Nirmena
A Forbidden Lands adventure for two or three intrepid adventurers
Once, Zygofer the Spellbinder was one of us, leading the passage through the mountains into the promised land. But when faced by the savage orcs, he opened dark gates to seek the help of demons. That was his undoing. Zygofer turned on us and placed himself on the throne of the Ravenland, his daughter Therania by his side.
To keep their vile corruption from spreading, the king in the south built a great wall across the mountain pass and forbade all to ever speak of what had happened. Since then, the Spellbinder’s domain, our home, is known as the Forbidden Lands.
More than a century has passed since this. Using the feared Rust Brothers, and the demonic Blood Mist that sucked the life out of anyone who dared stray too far from their homes at night, Zygofer and Therania have kept the human folks here under their heel. Civilization collapsed and villages became isolated. If you couldn't reach somewhere safe before nightfall, you couldn't reach it at all.
Yet, not all is lost. For now, the Blood Mist has mysteriously lifted. Trade is returning and there are those who dare defy the demon-king and his daughter. Adventurers. Treasure hunters. Scoundrels. Not heroes, far from it, but men and women who dare travel the land as they choose and make their own mark on it, unbound by any fate or story set for them. They hunt for ancient treasures, they fight whoever gets in their way, they build a new world for themselves on the ruins of the old.
They are the raiders of the Forbidden Lands.
✅ The Meta
In Forbidden Lands, you 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 wander the wild lands, discover lost tombs, fight monsters, and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend. During your adventures, you will uncover the secrets of dark powers lurking in the shadows and, in the end, you can be the ones to decide the fate of the Forbidden Lands
This game is a hexcrawl, sandbox-style game with an emphasis on wilderness exploration. The players are free to make their way in this dangerous world as they see fit. There will be a lot of randomly generated content and homebrew adventure sites. We may also engage with some of the published adventure content as appropriate for the story, but with tweaks and twists to it, to protect intellectual property and to keep things new and interesting for someone who already played or recently read those published adventures.
✅ Our goal
To play one short introduction/tutorial mission and one mid-size adventure, learning the game and hopefully having a blast. Suspect this will be a 6-12 months PbP, but that's quite hard to predict...
✅ Expectations
- Characters may die: They are people, not superheroes. Make the most of your time and have fun.
- Violence is deadly: Unless your PC is good at that, if you're in combat, you may have already lost. Like in real life, violence should be a last resort. Pay special attention after you take those first hits in combat. Your damaged attributes will make you even more likely to die.
- I plan the adventure sites, creatures and random encounter tables with a focus on "realism", not on PCs levels: This also means your characters may die, if you take too much risks. But you have the freedom to do as you please, flee or go elsewhere. This is a sandbox-style game, after all, and there will be plenty of reasonable options, things to do and places to explore. Just stay a couple of days in the village to heal after a dangerous combat or to avoid snowstorms.
✅ The Game System and Rules Version
This game uses the latest version of the Forbidden Lands ruleset by Free League Publishing. There is a free quickstart with most of the games rules here
✅ Adult Content or Controversial Themes
Game will include blood, demons, violence, poisoning, starvation, dehydration, environmental exposure, and many forms of character death. There's also depictions of tobacco and alcohol use, but not alcoholism.
Slavery, racism and prejudice is part of the setting, murder and breaking a slave free may be something that the players may or may not choose to do. They may want to choose the lesser evil (or not). Slaver PCs are not allowed, though.
I normally have lines around all sorts of things -- sexual assault, violence against children, racism, sexism, etc... but in a darker setting like this I generally prefer to leave more troublesome topics on the table as things that exist in the world, even though we should not focus on them on-screen or put them behind notes. The threat of the thing will be a thing, though. So here I will generally use veils rather than lines. I have a thread with all current lines and veils and they can be improved by the players.
I'm aiming for something around PG-13 for public posts and R for those with notes, I guess.
The X-Card will be in play. We can stop in the middle of any scene that's making people uncomfortable. Moreover, I will respect any lines and veils brought to my attention by the players either ahead of time or as situations arise in game. Please bring things to my attention before they become a problem and I will try to move the story in a different direction.
✅ Character Creation
Players will create their characters following Forbidden Lands rules as described in the Player's Handbook or in the Legends & Adventurer's Supplement. No homebrew or additional kins, professions, skills, talents or gear are allowed.
We will create all PCs in a Session Zero thread, where we will try to make a balanced and cohesive party.
✅ Post Frequency
Daily posts are ideal, but posts that move the story forward at least every 3 days are required. This is enough to skip weekends if you want to (ie. you can post on weekdays, as long as you post at least every Monday, Wednesday and Friday)
If you will be absent for more than 3 days, please tell the group, so we can continue on until you return (don't leave us hanging!). I will take control of and roll for players that have not posted after 3 days without prior notification. After one month without notice, the player's character will be lost in the wilderness or otherwise be removed from play. If the player wants to return after that, they can take over a NPC, create a new character or we can work on reintegrating the lost character. This isn't intended to punish the player, just to keep the game going for me and the rest of the players.
✅ Public forum
This game will be public, so people can follow and read our posts, if they want to. Some private notes and closed messages can be used by the GM or the players, especially during chargen and for some controversial / adult content parts.
✅ Application
Unlike most games, here I would like you to apply as a group. Please talk to 1 or 2 people that you would like to play this game with - using Discord, direct messages or even this thread. If you confirm with them that they are interested and you all wanna play together, post a message here telling me their @usernames. A person should only apply as part of one group. For this game, I won't accept solo, multiple groups with the same person or "I will play with anyone" applications. Please convince someone to play, commit to this game together and apply =)
This is not a first-come, first-served thread, so please apply with your group even if there are already enough people in this thread. I will leave this open for at least one week or, if someone requests a little more time to talk to their group, a couple of days after that.
✅ Player Experience
No previous experience with the game rules, PbP or Gamersplane.com are necessary. I'm more than willing to help.
✅ Selection criteria (if necessary)
I'm looking for a single 2-3 players group and will use your and all your group’s public posts here on GP to decide who will receive an invite and who will go to the waiting list if, by any chance, there are more than 1 group applying. I will give bonus points for groups with GMs of other public games, as I believe you're the lifeblood of this community and I really enjoy reading your games.
✅ Welcome All
This game is explicitly friendly to LGBT and any other minorities or marginalized groups, orcs, globlins and wolfkins. Please, let us all be fans of each other and all their PCs.
A Forbidden Lands adventure for two or three intrepid adventurers
Once, Zygofer the Spellbinder was one of us, leading the passage through the mountains into the promised land. But when faced by the savage orcs, he opened dark gates to seek the help of demons. That was his undoing. Zygofer turned on us and placed himself on the throne of the Ravenland, his daughter Therania by his side.
To keep their vile corruption from spreading, the king in the south built a great wall across the mountain pass and forbade all to ever speak of what had happened. Since then, the Spellbinder’s domain, our home, is known as the Forbidden Lands.
More than a century has passed since this. Using the feared Rust Brothers, and the demonic Blood Mist that sucked the life out of anyone who dared stray too far from their homes at night, Zygofer and Therania have kept the human folks here under their heel. Civilization collapsed and villages became isolated. If you couldn't reach somewhere safe before nightfall, you couldn't reach it at all.
Yet, not all is lost. For now, the Blood Mist has mysteriously lifted. Trade is returning and there are those who dare defy the demon-king and his daughter. Adventurers. Treasure hunters. Scoundrels. Not heroes, far from it, but men and women who dare travel the land as they choose and make their own mark on it, unbound by any fate or story set for them. They hunt for ancient treasures, they fight whoever gets in their way, they build a new world for themselves on the ruins of the old.
They are the raiders of the Forbidden Lands.
✅ The Meta
In Forbidden Lands, you 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 wander the wild lands, discover lost tombs, fight monsters, and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend. During your adventures, you will uncover the secrets of dark powers lurking in the shadows and, in the end, you can be the ones to decide the fate of the Forbidden Lands
This game is a hexcrawl, sandbox-style game with an emphasis on wilderness exploration. The players are free to make their way in this dangerous world as they see fit. There will be a lot of randomly generated content and homebrew adventure sites. We may also engage with some of the published adventure content as appropriate for the story, but with tweaks and twists to it, to protect intellectual property and to keep things new and interesting for someone who already played or recently read those published adventures.
✅ Our goal
To play one short introduction/tutorial mission and one mid-size adventure, learning the game and hopefully having a blast. Suspect this will be a 6-12 months PbP, but that's quite hard to predict...
✅ Expectations
- Characters may die: They are people, not superheroes. Make the most of your time and have fun.
- Violence is deadly: Unless your PC is good at that, if you're in combat, you may have already lost. Like in real life, violence should be a last resort. Pay special attention after you take those first hits in combat. Your damaged attributes will make you even more likely to die.
- I plan the adventure sites, creatures and random encounter tables with a focus on "realism", not on PCs levels: This also means your characters may die, if you take too much risks. But you have the freedom to do as you please, flee or go elsewhere. This is a sandbox-style game, after all, and there will be plenty of reasonable options, things to do and places to explore. Just stay a couple of days in the village to heal after a dangerous combat or to avoid snowstorms.
✅ The Game System and Rules Version
This game uses the latest version of the Forbidden Lands ruleset by Free League Publishing. There is a free quickstart with most of the games rules here
✅ Adult Content or Controversial Themes
Game will include blood, demons, violence, poisoning, starvation, dehydration, environmental exposure, and many forms of character death. There's also depictions of tobacco and alcohol use, but not alcoholism.
Slavery, racism and prejudice is part of the setting, murder and breaking a slave free may be something that the players may or may not choose to do. They may want to choose the lesser evil (or not). Slaver PCs are not allowed, though.
I normally have lines around all sorts of things -- sexual assault, violence against children, racism, sexism, etc... but in a darker setting like this I generally prefer to leave more troublesome topics on the table as things that exist in the world, even though we should not focus on them on-screen or put them behind notes. The threat of the thing will be a thing, though. So here I will generally use veils rather than lines. I have a thread with all current lines and veils and they can be improved by the players.
I'm aiming for something around PG-13 for public posts and R for those with notes, I guess.
The X-Card will be in play. We can stop in the middle of any scene that's making people uncomfortable. Moreover, I will respect any lines and veils brought to my attention by the players either ahead of time or as situations arise in game. Please bring things to my attention before they become a problem and I will try to move the story in a different direction.
✅ Character Creation
Players will create their characters following Forbidden Lands rules as described in the Player's Handbook or in the Legends & Adventurer's Supplement. No homebrew or additional kins, professions, skills, talents or gear are allowed.
We will create all PCs in a Session Zero thread, where we will try to make a balanced and cohesive party.
✅ Post Frequency
Daily posts are ideal, but posts that move the story forward at least every 3 days are required. This is enough to skip weekends if you want to (ie. you can post on weekdays, as long as you post at least every Monday, Wednesday and Friday)
If you will be absent for more than 3 days, please tell the group, so we can continue on until you return (don't leave us hanging!). I will take control of and roll for players that have not posted after 3 days without prior notification. After one month without notice, the player's character will be lost in the wilderness or otherwise be removed from play. If the player wants to return after that, they can take over a NPC, create a new character or we can work on reintegrating the lost character. This isn't intended to punish the player, just to keep the game going for me and the rest of the players.
✅ Public forum
This game will be public, so people can follow and read our posts, if they want to. Some private notes and closed messages can be used by the GM or the players, especially during chargen and for some controversial / adult content parts.
✅ Application
Unlike most games, here I would like you to apply as a group. Please talk to 1 or 2 people that you would like to play this game with - using Discord, direct messages or even this thread. If you confirm with them that they are interested and you all wanna play together, post a message here telling me their @usernames. A person should only apply as part of one group. For this game, I won't accept solo, multiple groups with the same person or "I will play with anyone" applications. Please convince someone to play, commit to this game together and apply =)
This is not a first-come, first-served thread, so please apply with your group even if there are already enough people in this thread. I will leave this open for at least one week or, if someone requests a little more time to talk to their group, a couple of days after that.
✅ Player Experience
No previous experience with the game rules, PbP or Gamersplane.com are necessary. I'm more than willing to help.
✅ Selection criteria (if necessary)
I'm looking for a single 2-3 players group and will use your and all your group’s public posts here on GP to decide who will receive an invite and who will go to the waiting list if, by any chance, there are more than 1 group applying. I will give bonus points for groups with GMs of other public games, as I believe you're the lifeblood of this community and I really enjoy reading your games.
✅ Welcome All
This game is explicitly friendly to LGBT and any other minorities or marginalized groups, orcs, globlins and wolfkins. Please, let us all be fans of each other and all their PCs.
Last edited July 1, 2024 9:08 am
