What do we think of Forbidden Lands? I heard through the grapevine that it's the best system for overworld and wilderness encounters and adventures. World sprawling system.
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God no. It sucked major shit when I played it.
How so?
The systems don't mesh together very well. Half the classes are non-viable. The book is unnecessarily hard to navigate as a reference manual. And goblin archers killed everybody.
I own it but haven't played it yet. I think you can't easily spawn random encounters in it. It requires a lot of dice rolling, page flipping and reading in advance.
For example, your party met a wierd FOX. Who is secretly a demon lord. And you have to make like ten extra d66 rolls to set the demon stat block in case you need it. Since there are no sample stat blocks for demons... Stuff like that.
Its fria ligan. You either like their core system(year zero engine) or you don't. The title of the book has very little to do with this since all of them are just glorified setting books. A sin very common in the industry nowadays(yes I am looking at you modiphius).
Personally I find their games tedious to run, mostly because of the main resolution system. It is, at its core, a pass/fail one but with extra steps and that leads to the game halting every time a dice roll needs to be made. In their books their brilliant idea to alleviate that is to advise for less frequent rolls but the game it self calls for rolls constantly.
Isn't like every system a pass/fail with extra steps?
No. Some games embrace their nature and cut out the extra steps, like Apocalypse World or Lasers & Feelings.
It's very good. A lot of complaints in this thread give me poster vibes.
>if you roll more than one 6, well, uhhh the DM tells you what happens further
Usually nothing. If it's combat, and it's an attack, it's more damage.
Frankly I'd prefer what you're saying to be the case, but I suppose it would slow the game down.
>no 6s? Reroll but your 1s hurt your mental peepee meter, for some reason!
It hurts the stat that you re-roll. If it's an agility task, then you sprain something. If it's a strength task, you pull out your back too hard.
Wits and Empathy checks don't normally allow re-rolls, but in the events that they do, they'd be stressful situations. Empathy burn would be losing one's temper or embarrassing oneself. Wits burn would be frustration, confusion, of fright.
Burning your own stats does not cause critical injury, so you can't think yourself to death.
The art is nice, but it's got an actual setting and hexcrawl rules, comes with a map and stickers to put on it, and a few adventure sites.
It has the players book and the GM book and the map and stickers, all for less than just 5e's player handbook.
I would say it's underdesigned more than over, but I guess that's my perspective.
I should elaborate on why I think it's very good, actually. And I'll point out it's flaws, too, though frankly I feel it doesn't have that many.
>Survival
It's Hexcrawl. Rations wont last you the treck from one town to another, so hunting and gathering are important. Having a dedicated hunter is therefore a great idea, and having a cook makes the food you earn last. Weather can turn dire, and without warms, death comes quickly. Anyone who can make suitable furs or who knows how to make a safe and well hidden camp is also a great companion for that reason.
Carry burden is based on Strength, and items weight is done simply, it's either Heavy, Meduimweight, Light, or Tiny - the latter has no weight burden unless hoarded. Buying (or stealing) a mule will help. If you have a Merchant PC, a horse and cart, or even a boat, will be great for trade.
Building a settlement is one of a bunch of goals a party can work towards. They start out small, and require defending and upkeep occasionally, but npcs can be hired (or enslaved) to work at the stronghold.
The land is mostly lawless. Each town has it's own way of life.
You can have multiple strongholds, too. Functions of a stronghold include farms and wells, prisons and gallows, guard towers, forges, libraries, trade/craft stations, and so on. These require the right materials to build.
Combat has an optional Rock/Paper/Scissors rule that nobody likes, because while it's technically more gamey, it's not any deeper than the default rules.
Combat is lethal and quick, and while the game has a combat focus, it's much less of a focus overall compared to most fantasy TTRPGs. Fighters, Rangers, and Riders are outright the best at combat, but the game has many skills and makes many other demands outside of combat that the party should caution on being too combat capable at the risk of being clueless survivors with no talents or trade skills.
Oh, Willpower isn't too well implemented...
Some flaws:
>Willpower
Awarded to a character for pushing rolls and suffering for it. A character can stock 10 points total.
It is used to activate class talents, and some legendary weapons and artifacts also have a willpower effect to activate. Class talents include: Fighter being able to attack again as a free action, Rogues changing their appearance with a disguise, Hunters being able to retrace their steps which prevents them getting lost, and so on.
It's also used for any magic. There are only two spellcasting classes, and spells always work, but can have side effects.
The problem is, it's somewhere between metacurrency and power resource. Fortunately, the more mundane class skills are something any character can replicate to a lesser extent, like disguising, healing a lethal wound, hitting a foe harder, but Willpower itself doesn't make any in-universe sense. It kind of works ok with magic, because it's magic, but it could have been implemented much better.
>The fricking card minigame
It's a novel idea, some attacks beat out others (Slashing, Thrusting, Blocking, Parrying, etc) in a rock/paper/scissors method, it's like a guessing game against the GM. Those same attack options do things in the normal combat rules, too, though, so the optional card version isn't any deeper than just rolling to slash attack against an opponent who's likely to try and roll to dodge instead of rolling to parry.
What's worse is, the Fighter specifically has an entire class talent tree dedicated to this cardfight shit, so they have less growth options as a direct result.
>More stuff Iike about it
Character growth options are nice. You start out with a class and one of the three class talents, as well as at least one general talent. There's no multiclassing, but a great deal of what your character becomes is only suggested to you by your starting class - there's no reason a Fighter can't dabble deeply into the lore of the land by ranking up Lore, while another Fighter may be stubborn in his refusal to do peasant work and have no points in Craft and few in Might or Endurance, instead prefering to yell at people with a high Manipulate or Performance skill.
You could start a slave trade of your own if you wanted. The land is lawless, mostly, and it's an easy way to earn money if you have a big strong warrior in your team.
Or make a fairer reputation with honest trade and craft. A party member who can smith has something to provide NPCs in exchange for coin, and being able to repair the party's weapons while out in the wild is good too.
Your reputation will begin to precede you. This has it's downsides, especially if you're known for having treasures, or have pissed off the wrong crowd.
The last two sound setting specific, but this is stuff the game has rules for. I could be saying this about DnD, sure, but there aren't any good rules, or any at all, for a lot of this stuff in 5e. Hell, the DnDone UA recently introduced Bastions, which are an exact emulation of FL Strongholds (Which are halfway in the full circle of emulating the Fighter's Earl status as they level up in earlier DnD).
>It hurts the stat that you re-roll. If it's an agility task, then you sprain something. If it's a strength task, you pull out your back too hard.
that sounds incredibly legit
For a little more detail:
>d6 pools
Attributes and Skills should have seperate color dice...
>Attributes range from 2 to 6 ranks, each rank is 1 die to the pool
>Skills range from 0 to 5 ranks, each rank is also 1 die to the pool
>Talents may add dice to the pool, gear may add dice to the pool, difficulty modifiers remove or add dice to the pool
>A single 6 among the pool is all that is needed to pass a check
>Contests, such as attack vs dodge, or manipulate vs insight, will cancel out each other's successes, offense needs to beat defence with just one 6 more
>1s have no effect unless a roll is "pushed"
>"Pushing" rolls means re-rolling, can only push each attempt once
Not all tasks can be pushed. It's when a character extends extra effort to a task, pushing their luck.
>If pushing a roll, all 6s and 1s (Only 1s from the ATTRIBUTE DICE, not the Skill Dice) are set aside - they are not re-rolled, but still count to the ultimate result
>All 1s from the ultimate result of both rolls deal damage to the relevant Attribute
If a check was successful from the first roll, it can't be pushed, since it's already a success.
Because Skill Dice never cause damage to you on a 1, they'll always be available to you on a re-roll, making a highly skilled character better with odds at pushing their luck.
That said, it's still d6 pools, so this can happen:
>Sneaking down stairs passing a sleeping guard
>5 Agility, 3 Stealth, +2 cos the dude is asleep
>10 dice
>No 6s, but no 1s either, may as well push!
>All 5 Agility dice are 1s
>"Broken"
>Slip
>Tumble down the stairs loudly
>Battered heap on the floor with bruised elbows and aching knees
>Slung in a cell
Damn, dice pool systems with loads of dice and a low success rate per die suck.
The rest sounds decent but could you salvage the system in any way so that you get a better success chance per die?
very mediocre. The core resolution mechanic seemed uninspired and clunky to my playergroup.
I think its a bit too much style over substance and doesn't offer enough of what it promises in a consistent way
I wonder which mechanic your group find not clunky?
if your dice resolution mechanic is
>roll at least a 6 on a 3d6 to have success
>if you roll more than one 6, well, uhhh the DM tells you what happens further
>no 6s? Reroll but your 1s hurt your mental peepee meter, for some reason!
>the DM will incorporate this into the story in a cohesive way
and let's not get into the card combat mechanics, that was embarrassing
Why the antic? You could just answer the question.
Why should anyone answer a bad faith question with anything more than a mocking answer.
Free League got baited by grognards that say that balance is shit so they made a game were everyone will not hit for shit and probably die in most encounters.
If you're going to shill learn how to discuss what the game does instead of getting defensive about criticism.
Over-designed eurocuck slop. Coffee table art books that survive by shilling some (semi)famous IP on kickstarter. If they keep going the Symbaroum route and drop the year 0 engine for 5e maybe some people will start playing their setting books. Not that they care about anyone playing their game. It shows in their design.
is D&D really so much better than Year Zero?
no
Its more playable, just by that factor I would say yes.
awesome I already own the core books for 5e, I will just cobble together some survival wilderness rules I guess.
>What do we think of Forbidden Lands?
I don't know about anyone else, but I just don't. I opened it once to pilfer for options I could convert to Mutant: Year Zero, but that's it.
I want to run a FL campaign some day. The only way to get to know for sure if the game is good or not without fake outrage or reddit praises.
Do yourself a favor and pirate the book, then only pay for it if it manages to impress you. It won't.