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.
It all started with the company taking prisoner a sorcerer foraging the cursed mushrooms below the Eagle’s Nest Keep. They followed his clues to reach the monastery where they hoped to find Arrows of the Fire Wyrm eventually. The legendary artifact was their primary goal for the past few weeks now. They were hired by Grulf the Ailander to help him with his search throughout the Forbidden Lands and thus set off on their journey.
1. Encounter
Playing different RPGs, you may come across various definitions of “an encounter.” In D&D, it pretty much stands for a fight. In some more OSR-ish games, it is more of a chance meeting. It could be virtually anything from a monster to a merchant. And in The One Ring 1st ed. “Encounter” was a mechanic for resolving more complex social interaction scenes. It’s the middle OSR definition that applies here. In the Forbidden Lands GM’s Guide, there is a table for rolling encounters that should be used, as I see it, primarily as a way to add a layer of diverse challenges during a journey.
Play the encounter as a challange to overcome and not a journey intermission
Hrod, Mara, and Buri followed the instructions of a captured sorcerer. They decided that, since the dwarf was barely in his senses and someone had to watch the dangerous captive, Hrod should go and scout on his own. On his short way to the alleged sanctuary, he found a man’s corpse. Apparently, it was another monk lying dead on a rocky mountain trail. It wasn’t placed there by me, simply a beautiful sequence of dice rolls on the GM’s Guide table. Hrod, being a greedy, green bastard, looked very carefully for any precious items on the body and found only a pendant. And a little something he didn’t quite spot but caught nevertheless. A disease that felled the late monk, which was going to prove vital in a bit of time.
The poor goblin was in a bit of a tough spot there. He rolled Healing to determine what killed the monk but failed. He also hailed the roll of Endurance (which he thought to be from the heat and thirst.) Nevertheless, the Encounter here was a challenge in his journey – as could any of those found in the Forbidden Lands books. If you tie them to the story of the players, make it somewhat important to solve, they enrich the story. And if you just throw them at the players and describe someone approaching them, demanding this or that, they’ll be just a bit boring decorations. The encounter has to present something to be gained from the beginning.
2. Weather
I know I wrote a post about it, but it’s good to mention it here. When Hrod arrived at the mountain retreat location of the sorcerers, Hrod noticed the sky was growing dark – and not only because of the dusk. His original plan was to go around the sanctuary by night, taking advantage of his goblin Nocturnal talent. But the mighty storm heading his way was a bit of a problem. Previously, heat and thirst were the main threats to PCs. Now their role was taken up by slippery slopes.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party looked for a spot to make a camp. I allowed them to have additional success in Survival give them a sense of the coming storm, so they were prepared. And they were worried about their companion, who was out there lonely, too. A great moment of seeing relationships at work there!
3. Time
Scouting revealed the sorcerer’s information to be generally true. But Hrod didn’t want to risk sneaking past the rocks next to the monastery’s entrance. He failed a Move to avoid slipping once and was too afraid to get exposed by the next. So he turned back to the friends he wanted to see in the morning. It was also in the morning when he started feeling ill. The delayed mechanics of disease incubation are excellent in what I’d like to show you here. They suddenly and surprisingly introduce a threat.
Racing with the time gives a feeling of an achievement.
Gradually increasing dangers – like the damage from sickness, poison, or low resources – put time pressure. And that also makes a terrific challenge during a journey. It’s like competing against the clock. Thus, reaching the destination in time is not only a completed task, getting from A to B but also an accomplishment on its own. And if you stick to the end of this post, you’ll see how satisfying that could be.
4. Monsters
That was probably the least obvious, right? Random monsters DO roam the wilderness of any fantasy setting. While heading into the mountains, the company encountered a giant wading-bird-like predator. Now, descending into the ravines just before the lowlands, they spotted something different. Purely Lovecraftian monstrosity, resembling a star vampire – a winged mass of tentacles armed was hovering over the area. To their luck, they managed to hide in time. But they intensively debated how to handle the situation. They took the risk – and had to face it.
Make sure each monster is a different challenge!
What I like about most of the monster challenges in the Forbidden Lands – not only during a journey – is that they have weak spots. Giants’ heads, wyrms’ lust for gold, and especially the sea serpents’ tails – are all excellent examples of how the game rewards playing smart and attentively. The same is with those created using the Legends & Adventurers leaflet. Thanks to that, the journey – and our whole Forbidden Lands campaign – didn’t end on that challenge.
When the winged aberration swooped to engage the party, Hrod tried to shoot the thing with his bow. But he missed his shot, and it looked like the hunting monster will get them. But Mara desperately tried to intimidate it, screaming the heck out of her lungs. And it worked. The horror I rolled from the mentioned generator was scared by the noise. Thus, the peddler’s desperation saved the party. And I have to tell you – it felt like a complete blast! That feeling came from the fact that Mara’s player found the opponent’s weak spot, albeit by accident. So make sure that most of the fights have more to them than just rolling PCs’ strength vs. monster’s.
5. Ruins
Another common thing encountered during travels in any RPG. But not every ruin has to be a dungeon that takes several sessions to explore. Here’s an example of how you may turn tiny ruins into non-obvious journey challenges in our Forbidden Lands game.
They were just one day away from the Hollows. Hrod was not well and needed help, or he could die from the disease in two days. They were looking for a safe place to make camp when I rolled a “dungeon” in my exploration table. It was a small ruined outpost. It turned out it was flooded and occupied by yet another monster. I didn’t want to roll on any tables that session, so I decided to have a giant squid live there. I know I was lazy, but it turned out pretty well.
Mystery adds depth… here in a literal sense.
The flooded cellar under the deserted watchtower was, in fact, just an entrance. Should the players be more willing to explore, they’d find out that. But they weren’t. The time was ticking. Nevertheless, they sneaked a peek inside. A few steps down the staircase and they reached the water surface. I rolled where the squid was, and the die told me it was just in the room next to the entrance. Any vigorous activity would wake it up from its slumber, and after one turn, it’d attack anyone in the water. But there was also a treasure lying on the bottom of the first flooded chamber.
The characters saw that underground chamber – a former cellar of sorts – filled almost up to the roof with dark, murky water. They were dying to explore it. And through the concise description, I’ve set the ominous atmosphere from the first look. They camped there, took a rest, and were ready to set off. But the mystery remained. So Buri took out his rope, wrapped it around his waist, and told the rest to hold it while he took a swim. Aww, the tension was high! He discovered some minor trinket underwater but was wise enough to pull back. The squid was just stretching its tentacles after a long, long sleep when they finally got back on their trail. But the watchtower stayed behind an unsolved mystery and a reminder of that great tension. And I tell you, every time they passed it by, they eyed the site with both an impulse for discovery and a bit of jitter.
Challenges add a feeling of an acomplishment to the journeys – not only in the Forbidden Lands.
When the party finally reached the village, they were almost dead. And they had a hostile sorcerer still tied as a prisoner. Hrod suffered from the disease badly over the last day and was saved last-minute by Nirvena’s magical herbs. Meanwhile, the rest had to think about handling the captive while staying at the inn. But that’s a story for another post. What’s most important for that part – they were finally there. And they were very, very happy about it.
As I’ve tried to show you throughout this post, I found it remarkably satisfying to build a travel episode like this one. The journey is an intrinsic part of the Forbidden Lands, and it has a lot of elements to it that make it a very effective narrative tool – but if you strip it of some more divert challenges, it turns to a slog of repeated rolls. Conversely, if you use the same simple tools as always to create some of those, you and your players will get that feeling of a vital difficulty being overcome. Of course, you don’t need to do that every time. Free exploration is also a great source of fun. But keep in mind that a good story needs some dramatic events.
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