I'm looking to run a game using picrel, do any anons have experience with it? What does it do well and what does it do poorly? How does it support homebrew settings?
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I'm looking to run a game using picrel, do any anons have experience with it?
You can really run it with any settings. Treat it as Year Zero system with its own setting
I like how simple it is and how it tackles character progression. You have all the means to specialise or become a jack of all trades and, no matter your choice, the game still is fairly lethal.
I heard that a lot but where exactly does the lethality come from? Is it just because Most stats are 4 or lower and many effects reduce them? The book specifically mentions it should be hard for characters to die so I'm quite puzzled.
Make sure you enforce the rule where you need skill checks for new character abilities because if you don't characters grow way too fast. Before you play you should be aware that combat is janky, the random events might get old too soon, and the published adventure paths aren't so great from what I've seen of them. And lastly it's not easy to port D&D adventures because of the death spiral, Forbidden Lands is for smash and grabs, not megadungeon expeditions or gauntlets of setpiece battles. But the system works fine with custom settings, homebrewing races is as easy as coming up with an ability for them, the demon generator in the box set is cool, and the general tone manages to be grim and bloody without going full mudcore.
There's always a possibility of death, but it's also always on the low side. 1 attack is enough to break a high strength character if the dice roll like bastards, and spell fumble tables make every spell risky. Plus you get weaker from taking damage. Expect many more deaths than an average 5e game, but not actually much more than a 5e game where the DM rolls in the open.
I got the impression even if characters grow, they cannot ever get really powerful from reading the book. Is the problem How versatile they can become?
I think some of the abilities are better than they look. Eventually you can be Guts Berserkman if you grab the right skills, but the intention is for that to be hard. I think the idea is the geek who made a brainy character can take two skills and be versatile, and the guy who made a wall of muscle gets one killy power, but gets more use out of it.
>buy this six months ago
>still haven't got a game together
Next time I invite people over to play 5e, I'm switching their character sheets
This game gave me what I've been trying to shoehorn onto 5E with houserules for years. I can only fantasize how happier I'd be had I started with this.
Do tell.
Pretty much tried to make the game more lethal and about survival. Made the players track resources, durability and inventory (somewhat modified rules), made custom Injury tables, implemented a Stress mechanic. What specifically do you want to know?
played a session with a friend using solo rules
really liked it, but still hadn't run a campaign because my players like high fantasy (Pathfinder 2e, 5e)
Does anyone have experience running the advanced melee combat? It seems like it would be an unnecessary slog.
Don't even bother.
Depends on what you're looking for in a game. Forbidden Lands leans closer to OSR/Sword and Sorcery than heroic fantasy. Combat can be quite lethal since if a character is Broken (dropped) they roll on the crit table and there are instant death criticals on that table. You can homebrew the world pretty easily though the default is pretty good (and very different from your traditional D&D type world).
Exactly what I'm looking for. Is the danger/lethality ever frustrating or is it part of the fun? My players are somewhat prone to throwing wrenches when things don't go their way, but I don't know how much that is due to my incompetence, how much due to a shitty game, and how much they are just complaining about randomness.
Why?
Having run 63 sessions for Forbidden Lands so far here's my take aways.
1 - Resources matter. Food/water/torches/arrows/ All easily tracked.
2 - Encumbrance matters (and again is easily tracked).
3 - Magic is dangerous and powerful.
4 - Any time a character is broken (reduced to zero Strength) there is a chance of death. Sometimes instantly.
5 - You can do hexcrawl and dungeons crawls easily but characters need to prepare for them.
6 - The campaigns (there are three) are very sandbox-y and more a collections of situations and locations and npcs and factions than a typical adventure.
7 - Characters can get quite powerful but combat is always dangerous. 50-ish sessions in our party almost got TPK'd by skeletons.
There is a free 150-ish page Quickstart available on drivethru, which has an adventure site, rules and pregenerated characters.