Just curious if that’s even a possibility really. I missed the boat and now my only way to get the dice and cards is to drop like 200 bucks each on eBay.

I’d love to have the official items. Because this game is great.

Quick question that came to mind: If I roll a 1 on a skill die, if I push can I reroll it or not?

I’ve finish to read it now and have My session in 30 minutes. Maybe I should change to another adventure?

Hey everyone

As you know, for those who have pre‑ordered Alderland, the PDF beta version is already available, and, to put it mildly, not everyone was satisfied with its content.
Some time ago, I created the “Improving Alderland pt. 1” topic to gather all the mechanics and tables that are missing from the book; I plan to put them together manually using existing books. But, as usual, everything didn’t go according to plan, and I practically abandoned this idea due to a lack of free time and energy.

Recently, I decided to take the easier route and use Claude so that the AI could analyze the books and mechanics for me. I put FL and other YZ books in there and *cough* some other books as well. Surprisingly, it worked well. Of course, I had to put in some work with the edits, but I really liked the result, and I intend to use it.

Feedback wanted
I would like to ask you not to be skeptical in advance and to at least skim through the file, to share your criticism and impressions.
It’s free :)

Current version - v0.7
ENG
RUS

A very convenient one‑page generator based on tables.
Link

Bring Your Own Book framework, allowing to generate your own content using your own legally-owned books.
Link

Instructions on how to construct your own personal edition, filled with the names, factions, places and stat blocks of Alderland, using provided Community edition and your personally owned Alderland PDF
Link

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Ash and Iron (Community Edition): free optional rules for war-torn Forbidden Lands campaigns

What’s inside

Players’ Section

• 5 professions: Saboteur, Barber-Surgeon, Scavenger, Legate and Inquisitor, each with three Paths.
• 11 general talents, such as Appraiser, Captain, Forger, Low Profile and Theologian.
• 5 magic schools: Symphonic Magic, Herbomancy, Clay Song, Mistweaving and Mirror Lore, with 10 spells each.
• Gear for a land at war: iron coins, war gear, papers and services.
• Survival: food and shelter in farmland and war-torn land, looting a battlefield, laws and taxes, and full fire rules.
• Mercenaries: hiring, wages, Loyalty and morale, plus generators for hirelings and mercenary companies.

GM Section

• 5 artifacts.
• Encounter tables: three road types and six terrains, plus a Battlefield Magic Fallout table.
• Town generator: districts, courts, work, conspiracy chains and rumours.
• Faction Warfare: a background war run on Resource Points, with military, intrigue and civil actions and war events for strongholds.
• Faction Allegiance: a −5 to +5 standing track with five faction templates.

Appendices: Design Notes (how to build your own professions, talents and spells), Sources, and the Changelog.

Solo Actual Play!

Hey y’all!
Just ran my second session of Forbidden Lands and I read in the GMG that when monsters take damage they don’t become weaker like usual (or something similar to that).
Are players supposed to roll less attribute dice if they have taken damage and if so is there a page number in the PHB for that rule?
I tried skimming the whole thing looking for that info but couldn’t find it myself.

Thanks!

I realized I'm not really that sure how to manage monsters during combat. As I understand they are to be treated as NPC with special attack. So they have a slow action (random attack) and a fast action (most probably run). Usually engaging with an enemy takes two move actions leaving attack for the next round BUT due to random attacks for monsters they are performed at different ranges. So only until I roll for attack I might know at which range monster might attack. Meaning that most probably they don't need to be at arm's range to attack in the first place making only one move and then attack! I feel like I miss something essential here because otherwise treating monsters movement as it is for NPCs doesn't really make a lot of sense.

My first session playing forbidden lands solo. Let me know what you think.

We had a discussion with the team how to understand the spell's description: "This spell immediately heals a critical injury. A lethal injury requires Power Level 2."

I argued that it does not fix permanent critical injuries (e.g., "Crushed knee") as it is not able to regrow limbs.

Mend wounds would replenish Strength, decrease healing time for injuries as broken toes to zero and save someone with lethal injury from death as opposed to risking failing a healing skill check.

The players were unsure and obviously would prefer if the spell would heal permanent damage.

What are people using to track time? Is there a calendar someone has created? I want to track the date accurately and make notes on when they discover adventure sites or things important to the group.

Along the same lines is there a random weather chart someone has created based on seasons?

I figured I would ask here before creating something.

Especially with Villages.

I started this hobby a few months ago. I love Starforged, Ker Nethalas, and Alone Among Stars, and I'm still learning and exploring different systems. I play Forbidden Lands because of its procedural hex-crawling structure, but I don't really understand how Adventure Sites work. I'm not sure how to use the three examples in the GM’s Guide (or the fourth one in the Quickstart).

How long do your characters stay in a newly discovered village? Do you always design quests, events, important NPCs, and encounters for villages? I don't mean villages or strongholds designed for your characters to return to, but rather the ones they encounter during their travels. Do you explore every one of them? What do you do if a village doesn't have any pre-existing connection to your characters?

I know the answer to many of these questions might just be "up to you," but I'm curious about the ratio of time your characters spend traveling across the map versus staying at Adventure Sites (especially villages). Also, what role and function do these villages serve in your character's adventure?

I noticed that both Bitter Reach and Raven's Purge no longer appear on Free League's online store under the list of expansion books.

Do we know whether this is temporary? Permanent? Are they being reprinted?

I know there are probably several threads like this already (I only managed to find one), but I'd like to hear what the community thinks about this combo.

Axe Fighter 2 lets you inflict a critical injury whenever you deal at least 1 point of damage to an enemy.
Executioner 3 lets you freely choose which critical injury you inflict.

Put together, these two talents let you one-shot any non-monster enemy in the game — for free, and with no limitations. For just 27 XP you turn into the ultimate slaughter machine, which in my opinion makes the game boring for everyone at the table.

Yes, I'm aware there are plenty of ways to balance this: add a Willpower cost, rework the talents, or simply ban them. But what I want to discuss here is what's actually written in the books by the authors. So my main question is: did they playtest these talents at all?

New game by Paradox still under development. Looks like a good candidate for a Forbidden Lands mod for a 4x.
Ruins exploration, finding other settlements, strange technology magic, resources management.

Let's talk Monsters.

My key questions are:

• Are other people finding that monsters are generally underwhelming?
• What do you do to make monsters more interesting?
• Am I missing any rules?

I've been running FL for a while now - I've put three parties through a combined total of about 30 sessions. In that time I've sent people up against:

• Two Mire Drakes
• a Shapeshifter
• a Death Knight (albeit one with no resistances)
• Some Harpies
• two demons
• a Mara
• a Basilisk

Overall, I'm underwhelmed. Monsters in this game are occasionally extremely dangerous. Mire Drake 1 scored a TPK, and the Shapeshifter almost killed another party. The Harpies also nearly killed the party, but only because they were all diseased from a magical mishap.

However they are also far too easy to kill if players find a 'weak spot'. Both demons went down quickly to a 'banish demon' skill (fair enough), and the second Mire Drake was broken in one round by a 'Sharp Tongue' attack on its very anemic empathy stat.

I've found the monster rules are too restrictive (with the enormous number of spells, talents, and basic moves that can't work on monsters). My players hate the arbitrary monster limitations.

They're also not always accurate to their own write-ups. For starters, armour is notoriously unreliable and I've found very unlikely to blunt damage all that much. A 'heavily armoured' enemy might never bounce a single damage. Likewise, some of their attacks sound huge but just... aren't. 9D can whiff or do only plink damage pretty easily, especially absent the WP-powered tools available to players to greatly increase damage.

I find the way 'broken' works with Monsters to be particularly uninspiring, especially for Wits and Empathy:

• Monsters with Wits and Empathy can be manipulated and also take damage to those stats (GMG 73).
• 'Broken' means the monster is "put out of action in one way or another." (PHB 107)
• for Wits, it says "You’re paralyzed by fear or confusion." and "you can RUN to a safe place, but you can’t perform any other actions or roll for any skills."
• Empathy says "You must either explode in a violent outburst, kicking and breaking everything around you, or withdraw from everyone around you."
• "A Broken monster is dead or dying – don’t roll for a critical injury." (GMG 74)

I had an encounter last night where my players very cleverly deduced that the Mire Drake was able to be targeted by 'Sharp Tongue' and came up with a cool in-game insult for it. Mechanically, they killed it in one hit by focusing down a weak point. It was cool and I really want to reward that sort of cleverness, but once that's happened... what do you do?

• You can have it run away - fine, but it's not really 'dead' is it?
• You can have it go crazy with rage and thrash about and hit the players - but that's basically saying 'well done on finding this weak spot (2 Emp) - the reward is to have to attack it in its strong spot (32 Str)'.
• You can have it surrender and say it's at the Players' beck and call - wouldn't have worked in this instance but I'll keep in in mind.
• You can have it lash out angrily and hurt itself until it's out of the fight and vulnerable - this is what I'll do in future.

In the end I was lucky, one of the Stonesingers had already dropped an old, ramshackle stone tower on it, so it was trapped under the rubble and could be easily Coup de Gras'd - although strictly speaking the rules for Coup de Gras don't allow that unless it's broken by Agility or Strength (PHB 108).

All in all it just feels like the Monster rules are well-intentioned but poorly written. They seem to want to direct players to just grind them down with physical violence only, but still have all of these quick workarounds built into the rules to enable some occasionally interesting shortcuts, but those shortcuts lead you into some messy grey areas of the rules.

On top of that, they aren't all that hardy, even with mammoth strength pools, and don't seem to deal all that much damage. The scariest ones are the ones with masses of damage reduction (eg. Harpies), rather than armour pools.

I dunno, I feel like I'm missing something. I did a quick search, and comments here seem to gravitate to the two extremes - "they're deadly" and "they're too easy". Suggestions include doubling their attacks (which I'm going to do), but has anyone else found anything else to make them scarier/more fun/better balanced?