Forbidden Lands

I’ve always had that impression of Forbidden Lands reflecting the Wild West movies, especially the old ones like Dollars Trilogy with 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.

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.

I know I’ve written here and there about how the environment could be dangerous and why it is vital for me in a sandbox game. It puts pressure on the PCs to think and manage their resources. Today, I’d like to show you a few types of challenges that the players can encounter while on a journey in the Forbidden Lands. And I think that some may not be that obvious.

If I haven’t run the Forbidden Lands campaign for 1,5 years, I wouldn’t think that the Legends and Adventures generator may lead me to create a full-blown module that I’ll publish. But here I am: Today, I describe how I put this great tool to work and what precisely this thin leaflet is capable of. Namely: creating setting-friendly stories on the fly that might yield you a complex plot for a whole campaign with little to no effort.