I’ve always had that impression of Forbidden Lands reflecting the Wild West movies, especially the old ones like Dollars Trilogy with Clint Eastwood. | Photo by Spring Fed Images on Unsplash
I’ve always had that impression of Forbidden Lands reflecting the Wild West movies, especially the old ones like Dollars Trilogywith Clint Eastwood. And it never was stronger than when my group was gearing up for their final dungeon exploration. They searched for an outlawed ranger, Vike, to enlist him as additional support in upcoming fights. A gruff hunter banished from the village greatly resembled a gun-for-hire theme in Western films. Besides, as I’ll get to expand at the end, the latter turned out to be very rewarding and easy to work with as source material – including publishing my own modules as well.
I love how realistic the religions and beliefs about gods seem in the Forbidden Lands setting. | Image by Matthias Grießhammer from Pixabay
So it wasn’t long ago (speaking about game-time, it was two years on the blog x.x) when the Trio escaped the grave (sic!) consequences of their greed in the tomb of Count Nepola. After a few weeks of recovery, they finally decided to face what emerged as the campaign’s main goal. Retrieval of a powerful artifact from the sorcerous monastery they agreed to undertake for Grulf. The story about Forbidden Lands’ gods and religions added a lot to this ultimate chapter – thanks to the presentation, I haven’t come by in any other RPG.
The campaign was drawing to its conclusion. The tension was building up — some aspects of which I handled intuitively. Now I’m learning from what I did better than many times after that. See the critical points at the narrative’s conclusion. | Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash
Lately, I told you how the party of the Brown Lands decided to split up and handle various tasks at once. Bruni and Eradom were waiting by the fords on Anduin to guide Rohirrim soldiers. At the same time, the Rook and Ingolf were about to scout ahead and gather more information about the bandits’ camp in the Raven Gully. To everyone, it was clear that the campaign’s conclusion was drawing close. The proximity of the finale raised the tension tangibly, but I see it could be disrupted if not played right. Have you ever felt that all was going great for your game, but suddenly, the mood was gone? Everyone at the table was invested in the game, immersed in their characters until abruptly, they felt disconnected? A scene everybody was edging to play out passed by without almost any impression or impact? I indeed felt that a handful of times. And I think reflecting on this particular case may help me (and hopefully, you too) handle such situations better in the future. So let’s see what happened just before the final chapter of the Ghosts of the Noman-lands. Especially since I’d love to find out why and how I, unconsciously, handled building up the tension right up to the final session.
Critical injury in the Forbidden Lands may stop the party from exploration and turn their attention to more conventional ways of making their living – like crafting. | Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
This may not sound like an obvious connection, but it is for me. And I’m curious if you’ll see it so after reading the story of the following two sessions of my Forbidden Lands campaign – which the PCs spent mainly on healing their wounds and crafting to earn a living. It was also a very nice breather before what turned out to be the action-packed final chapter of our game.
Splitting up the party in RPG creates a very tricky plot to run. You’ll see that when the tension could be lost just before the campaign’s climax. | Photo by Joshua Brown on Unsplash
When the party left Medusled with the promise of Eastfold’s help, they were lifted up. They thought that they were all alone in a forgotten corner of the Middle-earth for a long time. And, in fact, they were. But after a long journey and an uncertain council at the hall of the Riddermark king, they found, at last, a powerful ally. But at the same time, they knew that a lot was going to happen in a very short time from now on. While they were on their way to the Brown Lands, they agreed on splitting up the party – an idea that often seems like a perfect solution at many RPG tables but is nevertheless somewhat problematic to handle.
I wrote some time ago about why I love randomly generating player characters in RPG – it worked even better in the case of Sub-Roman Britain.
This new campaign really got my creativity running. I pulled off prepping the tables for this setting in two days, and we were ready to play. Since we’re far from the experts in Britain’s history, the players warmly greeted the possibility of randomly generating their characters. In our session zero, they decided only broadly what their characters’ professions would be, and that was all. Next week, we’ve met to generate characters and establish some basic lore. I introduced them to the rules (Forbidden Lands hack), and the fun began. I wrote some time ago about why I love random generation of player characters in RPG, and it worked even better in the case of Sub-Roman Britain. We had a lot of fun this time. Today, I’m going to only briefly introduce you to the ones who will brave the precarious ex-province of Britannia.
