Generating adventure site in Forbidden Lands

The Aslene were fighting their way through the Shadowgate Pass, demons swarming all around them. Losses were heavy, and hope was waning. Still, it was better than the fate of the western lands where horses of outlandish creatures ravaged the refugees’ homeland. Among them, a warrior princess led the bravest fighters to secure the passage for their relatives. Old songs tell of her bow, shooting fiery arrows that made the fight with demons possible. She made her last stand in the mountain keep called Eagle Nest. And generating it was the first adventure site in my Forbidden Lands RPG campaign.

Forbidden Lands Adventure Site Generating Tables

I like how the generators for the adventure sites in the GM’s rule book look. Primarily, they provide the necessary inspiration to draw on. Besides this campaign, I used it in a couple of solo sessions and a short game with another group. From my experience, the results are easy to fit regardless of the already developed story. One thing that allows it is the modularity of the generation. Suppose you’ve already established who might have built the given site or for what reason. You may easily skip these parts. And if you have a good guess who may occupy the place or the region’s problems, you omit the other. On the other hand, you’ll always have the essential information to flesh out to add more depth to the narrative.

How to fit the backstory of the adventure site you generate into the overall narrative?

In this case, I didn’t know what the Eagle Nest Keep looked like until the players got there. Before, I had established if the legend that Grulf was following was true or not. And that it’s a castle found on the original map, hex no. I-32. That’s an effortless way of integrating an adventure site that you’re generating into your own Forbidden Lands game – or any similar. If it’s something that the party finds along the way, start with why the party hasn’t heard of it before. Is it a place that no one knows about, or it’s just the characters? Where does it lie in the broader context – is the area populated, blighted, or hardly accessible? Then, you may take advantage of the modularity I mentioned above. One thing that may leave you with a cluttered plot is following the tables to the letter. In an RPG, the GM improvises a lot but keep in mind that anything that has happened in-game is cannon.

Going back to my campaign, I rolled my “oracle die” to answer a yes/no question: Is the legend that Grulf the Ailander pursues true or not. It yielded “4,” which translates to “yes, but…” – one of the most narrative-driving results. So the legend was generally true, but something was imprecise. I filled the gap with the story of the Fire Wyrm’s Arrows lost in the battle for Eagle Nest. They were kept in another adventure sit that I was to generate somewhere near the Forbidden Lands.

Putting the Generation Tables to Work

Finally, after the long and exhausting trek through a few mountain hexes, my party arrived at the adventure site, the Eagle Nest. How did it look? It turned out that it was just a small, ruined outpost that was empty but haunted by the ghosts. I was ready to tinker around with all that tables for generating adventure site in the Forbidden Lands’ GM’s Guide provide. But that it was actually empty surprised me. But from that perplexing result came a genuinely ominous atmosphere. I felt like I was discovering the place together with my players. Even though I had generated the site before the session started, knowing that the party would enter it that time. I also decided to specify why the place was desolate now or how exactly it fell to the enemy. The results easily fit into the legend that my players already knew. Ravaged by fire – as the dice told – could refer both to the demons and sorcerers and the Horn’s arrows.

An oddity – a very nice addition in the tables for generating the adventure sites in the Forbidden Lands – yielded “fungal fields,” which was the only really strange result in the whole process. But I figured that the fields were a blighted area on the other slope of the mountain, behind the fort, that the Horn cursed. The story suddenly was complete. When the Zygofer’s forces finally breached the defense, and the commandress fell, one of her soldiers, desperate not to let the demons lay their claws on the sacred arrows, threw them from the keep’s tower. Horn caused the whole area to burn, and only strange fungi grew there now. At the session’s end, a remorseful ghost of that soldier told this tale to the party. What came next is a matter for the next post.