Watch This Before Running Forbidden Lands

Agree? Disagree? If you’ve run Forbidden Lands what has worked for you?

I would say that Ravenlands isn't a place of swift information exchange. Let the party come to a village who still believe the Blood mist to be a thing. And are extremely suspicious or even hostile to the characters being able to traversse the lands. The Ravenlands are dark. There are terrors hiding in the dark that are way worse than the blood mist and the party knows absolutely nothing of these dangers. As nobody has encountered these denisens of the night. Make the dark terrifying.

The players have a Dark Secret but it's not something they can actually 'use', more like be exposed to it, that can net some XP. But the Pride is the one that the player can actually 'use' if the situation allows for it.

Very interesting points. Running my first Forbidden Lands campaign right now, one year and ~30 sessions in. ** I'm using the legends about adventure sites and artifacts from the books (modified some of them), and I've also made a lot of new legends from the GM-book on kin, factions and history. I let the players roll a lore check once every session to see if they remember an old legend or hear it from someone they meet (they pick a random one). I limit how many legends each player can get based on the character's lore skill (and I also give 1 xp to the entire group for every five legends they learn). I think it's a pretty fun way of doing it. My players just recently managed to puzzle together the history of Ravensland, though the legends leave a lot of details out. ** I let the players have the physical map and put the stickers on it, mostly because they were super excited about having a cool map to move around on. But I made them finding the map a story thing. First they found a strange clue and small map that led them to the actual map. Unbeknownst to my players, the map was in fact planted by one of the campaigns main "antagonists" – Merigall – just to see if anyone resourceful and interesting would find it and use it. If I would run the campaign again I would probably print out a version of the map without the adventure sites and (if possible) make my own stickers. The map in photoshop format, so you can hide/move adventure sites, can be found on free league's forum (can't remember exactly where though). ** When? Started the campaign around 5 years after the bloodmist. Didn't think it through, just went with what was in the books. But it has worked fairly well. Factions will have had time to establish themselves and started plotting, and the descriptions in the books kinda of make it sound as other factions and peoples are not entirely unknown to each other. But I would probably start a little earlier if I would run the campaign again. ** Where? Started the campaign in the middle of nowhere where the PCs had just met, as they came from very different places and wanted their own backstories. Next time I'll probably do something else, like the PCs are all convicts/exiles from Alderland dropped off on the north side of the Iron Wall. ** Prepping - yes, partly agree. I prep a lot just to have many adventures sites to choose from, and I try to ask my players after each session where they plan on going next. But I also use a lot (A LOT) of random encounters, have even made a google sheets randomizer with hundreds of encounters. Many sessions when I've planned something they've been completely sidetracked by random encounters - which I really like, whatever I prepped can wait until they get there.

we are playing dragon bane (by the same company) currently and interested in forbidden lands, so thank you for posting. very helpful video and clearly explained!

Oh, and the Ravens Purge campaign book is amazing. There is even more of the back story in it. It extremely well fleshed out, pun intended. And it will last several sessions and by the time the party is done with the campaign you will have created a very living world together with the party. There will be no shortages of plot twist, advernture sites and adverseries. If I had the chance to do anything different with my Forbidden Lands it would have been to buy the Raven bundle.

Thanks, I like a lot of this advice. I'm okay with showing the full map. I play marked locations as the collective knowledge of rumors. So it makes sense that the PCs will explore in those directions. It's some kind of goal until a more compelling goal emerges.

Absolutely love this! 🙂 Such a great game! Letting the story unfold, discovering the world together (GM and PCs) is such fun. Also... This game is pretty friendly to running it as a solo RPG!

I had my players all make younger PCs and said that part of their motivations is the urge to get out of the Hollows to find something. It could be wanderlust, more teachers to expand their magic, greed, etc.

The Gods actually represent a bit of a stopping point to playing the game outside of the Raven lands.

I love this RPG, and the unique exploration/world generation. I usually create my own worlds, but was interested in using the game contents including The Hollows adventure which upon browsing, looked okay. This is what I regret: To run the adventure you have to read the unnecessarily long and dry history of the world. It's torture. If it was condensed to five pages, great, but no, it's a high school history reading assignment. I had a blast traveling to the site, watching the world unfold, but The Hollows adventure required reading is a punishment.

I've only ever run sci fi and post-apoc as settings (Star Wars, Alien RPG, Numenera, Mutant Year Zero etc). I'm super keen to give this setting a try and give my players a pure emergent sandbox to jump into with my group!

Good stuff, Sean. I love Forbidden Lands, but there are some tripwires that can send a GM stumbling if they aren't aware of them...

Great advice! Going to be running this game in the new year, and this was super helpful. Subbed!

Super interesting tips! Loved the prisoners tip and the one about the history of the land. I haven't played it yet and I think that I will follow almost all of your tips. But knowing my players I think that the only tip that I won't follow is the second one, they would love to see the whole map, it is beautiful! I don't mind about they knowing that around the mountains there is a ruin, the troubles are going to come anyway in the way to get there hehe. Also it could give me some hints about what to prep before session.

Nice video! Thanks!

the prisoner way seems like the most believable way to get so many different kins together in one place.

Thank you. This is very useful advice.

If your players don't like the stronghold mechanics in forbidden lands, you can use the Ark rules from Mutant Year Zero. It's very similar in concept but you make skill rolls in stead of keeping track of resources. Some light rule hacking is needed but it's not too hard. I really recommend looking around at tye other Year Zero Engine games for ideas and house rules.

I've actually been pondering the same points covered in this video, as FB is the next game I will be running for my group. After watching this, I think I'll be sticking with a fog of war for this campaign. I also wanted to start the players lost and desparate to find civilization from the start, but still have some shared history. I've settled on having the group generate a homeland with it's own faded history and peoples and then burn it all to the ground as the starting point of the campaign. Give them all some juicy survivors guilt. I think I'll now add some knowledge of legends based on their backstories and personal goals as suggested here as well. Good stuff.